Why trophies are needed !

[Saintilaire]

To be honest, if it wasn't 4 trophies i wouldn't enjoy the games I play as much if it didn't have trophies ! I mean C'mon isn't it one of the main reasons why we play the games. That excitement i get when i hear that notable sound that a trophy has been obtain is a sense of achievement ! At least from my opinion, so guys, how do you feel about trophies?!

[Death]

I've been playing and collecting games for about 18 years and can tell you that it isn't all about trophies. Trophies certainly are fun to collect and is a little something extra to do. I'd say more, but meh.

[Saintilaire]

True but everybody has their own opinion and have different perspective. But its a great added extra nonetheless...

[AnRoDr]

I think it motivates players to do some stuff in their games they would not otherwise do. So in that perspective they are a fun addition to our games and the "bragging rights" under fellow gamers can lead to some funny little competitions.

[AlteredFormula]

No, I couldn't disagree more.

As you are new, I wont go to town on the subject, but you'll see various posts by me around the site with my views on trophies. I have no issues with trophy hunters, who enjoy a game, but cant abide people who will play something they hate just for the trophy count.

To keep it short and sweet though, trophies are one of the main reasons why so many developers can get away with releasing a 4 - 6 hour campaign that needs to be replayed 4 times by those addicted to trophies.

If its your thing, that is great, but nobody can convince me that trophies / achievements have improved gaming.

[AnRoDr]

A good point you made there.

To put it simple: trophies give a good game just that little extra, but it can't be used to improve or hide a bad game.

[exsentry]

All trophies are, are a new format of what existed before. Back in the day there was just "High Score" leaderboards. There were no trophies for getting 100% on Vice City back in the day, but now you publicize you're gaming accomplishments - hard to go back now.

[furbeach]

All the trophies in the world can't make me play Two Worlds 2 again. They're an added bonus to games, not a requirement.

[allenbird]

I enjoy getting trophies. Could be the same as saying...I like accomplishing things. I like working towards a goal and accomplishing that goal no matter what area of my life that is in.

Trophies fortunately don't require me to sweat my ass off, endure stress, the drama that comes with working with others in a task, or putting in tons of hours to get a task accomplished like it does with so many other goals that other people have.

Oh wait...

Before trophies I would have never done many of the things I have done since trying to go for trophies. To say it has improved or deminished gaming is a little short sighted.

If you cannot think beyond what is fun or not fun for you, then you will not see the bigger picture or grasp the affect that trophies has had on gaming and you should just go back to whatever genre game you enjoy and have fun.

I am not saying I don't believe developers create certain trophies just to sell a game. Honestly I think developers should create more trophies and in a sense creating games that are deeper and more involved.

I have not stopped gaming, so obviously trophies haven't ruined gaming for me.

I don't believe trophies are needed. They weren't needed when I wanted to get 100% on any of the previous games I have done so that was way before trophies.

Even on PS3 games before trophies spending 1000 hours on Oblivion maxing out every job or searching every cavern and talking to every person, trophies might have saved me 500 game hours so I could actually move on to another game.

Was it fun? I don't know. I guess it was fun. To me it wasn't just about the enjoyment of it...it was being able to focus on anything other than my real life for any number of hours. I don't always play games to have fun....sometimes I play games to escape. trophies give me something to focus on thankfully.

Edited August 17, 2012 by allenbird

[Rares2cristea]

Sometimes I happen to get a game which I don't enjoy: for example Terminator Salvation. But thanks to the trophies I got to play the game further and saw that it was mildly enjoyable, however if the trophies didn't exist I would have thrown it away. So for Terminator , the trophies were the Salvation.

[Azakos]

Glad you like trophies and all, but don't let them be your sole reason for gaming. Trophies can be great; they've gotten me to explore single player campaigns in games I wouldn't have otherwise played. Trying everything that a game has to offer is a benefit to hunting. But when you spend countless hours getting 200 kills on bots in a private match by yourself for 50 matches, exiting the game after each match to change the date on your internal clock, then you know you've gone too far...

Let trophies be your blessing, not your curse.

[Sir_Bee]

I don't think that trophies are 'required'. I love the fact that they are there, I love working hard and coming away with trophies like "Hard to the Core" from Dead Space 2. It makes me feel like my practice and hard work actually got me something. That being said, I would never pick up a crappy game that is classified as 'easy' just to get the trophies. If I have the platinum on a game, it is because I enjoyed playing them, not because I just wanted to get more trophies. If you look at my list, you will see that there are some easy games I have all the trophies in "Trivial Pursuit" as an example, but I loved playing that game, and didn't do it just for the platinum. In fact I still go back and play it from time to time when people are around to play too. Also, I have NHL 2012, a game that I will never platinum because I only enjoy playing one mode of it.

This being said, I do find that some games suck me right in, like Skyrim or Rainbow Moon, and I love every minute of playing them. However, after I get that platinum trophy, that enjoyment is not nearly as deep, and I move on to another game. There aren't many games that I will play with the same excitement after I get the Platinum. But if I look back, the games that I have played the most of over my life (Dark could 1 and 2, Final Fantasy VII and X) never had trophies to begin with.

Trophies are a double edged sword. If done right, they are easily capable of expanding the gaming experience, and pushing players to explore all aspects of a game (I thought Rainbow Moons trophies were well laid out and encouraged exploration to some degree), but if done wrong, they can ruin the experience (Off the top of my head I think of Sacred 2, needing to do 4 full play-throughs and still require you to be lucky to get the platinum by then).

[BIGGAMER67]

trophies push me into playing games that i wouldnt normally play. i would be playing first person shooters everytime i played on my ps3 if there were no trophies

[Senshu573]

This topic makes me feel like all those 10,000 hours I logged in for my PS2 were kind of pointless.

[Dreakon139]

I'm on my phone so I can't quote, but AF, what developers are getting away with 4-6 hour campaigns?

8-10 is pretty much the standard for shorter single player campaigns without a heavy emphasis on multiplayer.

[theshino]

Trophies are both good and bad for me I guess. Before I got the ps3, I used to tell my friends I'm the halfway man since I never beat any game.

Enter the ps3, I'm starting to beat games due to the motivational effect of trophies and it did double the time I spent on FF13 (50+ hrs spent to beat main story, 100+ hrs on plat)

That said, I did allow the craze to get the better of me and would drop games that I felt platinum was impossible for me instead of just enjoying it.

Now I'm still trying to find a balance and hopefully I'm on the right track (gaming on the psp, woah no trophies~!).

Personally I'm glad trophies helped me beat games and I do appreciate how the system lets me know I could do such-and-such yet still. But I'm also thinking that it would be a shame to pass over games just because they'll reduce your game completion %.

Bottomline: Lets just have fun yeah~?

[silver_pigy]

trophies are nice and they almost make up for the lack of real trophies i could have won if i was good at sports

[Mophie13]

I don't need trophies in a game to completely enjoy it, but there are parts of a game I'd NEVER bother to do if it wasn't for trophies (ie 100%ing Final Fantasy XIII, doing Hard on BF3, getting level 30 on Fallout 3) etc.

[AlteredFormula]

I'm on my phone so I can't quote, but AF, what developers are getting away with 4-6 hour campaigns?

8-10 is pretty much the standard for shorter single player campaigns without a heavy emphasis on multiplayer.

Apologies for the late reply, only just seen this.

Granted, a lot of the games that have 4-6 hour campaigns do have a heavy emphasis on MP, (not that it makes it right imo.) I cant deny it, but there are still a few that are guilty.

Off the top of my head, Vanquish and the Saw games being a couple that I'm aware of, fall into that limit and many more fall into the 6 - 8 hour mark.

Either way, my point is more about how trophies are structured in a lot of games which is why they don't appeal to me. Trust me, I know in in the minority, and my views on it can be seen as slightly similar to those of a Luddite, but its just how I tick.

When I read Sir_Bee's and Allenbird's responses to the thread, although I may not be in full agreement, I can see and respect what works for them as gamers. I just cant get my head round those that do it, but are not enjoying the experience.

[HeartUnderBlade]

To be honest, if it wasn't 4 trophies i wouldn't enjoy the games I play as much if it didn't have trophies ! I mean C'mon isn't it one of the main reasons why we play the games. That excitement i get when i hear that notable sound that a trophy has been obtain is a sense of achievement ! At least from my opinion, so guys, how do you feel about trophies?!

not at all , at first you just play the game to have fun, later on you enjoy getting the trophies, you check every time the trophy list to see what can you get next, however if there are games that you really like, trophies won't matter, hell i used to play the hell out of ps2 games in my old ps3, but yes trophies are real cool and do add some excitement to the already fun game

[daftprophet]

I agree with most on this topic. For me it's quite simple. I play a game because it's fun, not because of the trophies. I think they are both good and bad.

Good: Something else to do, especially if you're a completionist...a delightful(sometimes dreadful) addition to a game

Bad: Absolutely ruining why people tend to play "this game" or "that game"...I've heard way too many times that someone won't play a game because it doesn't have trophies or even a platinum

To each their own though and I bid you happy gaming

[Lady Lilith]

I must be weird for playing so many games on PS2/Dreamcast lately, then. Those don't have trophies, and I still have an absolute blast with the games, namely Sonic Adventure (no, not the PSN version, the original DC version), Code Veronica (DC), and Indigo Prophecy (Think of it as the prequel to Heavy Rain)

In short, a game can still be very fun without trophies. Trophies are just something cool to show off stuff to others. Frankly, I'm kind of realizing trophies are kind of pointless or even take away replay value for games you've 100%'d/platinumed. I'd love to replay Jak and Daxter, but there being no more trophies to earn is preventing me from replaying it, and I kinda hate that.

[Apex Predator]

The fact that you don't wanna replay J&D because you have all the trophies, can't be blamed on the trophies. The trophyhunter inside you is to blame

For the gamers who care, the trophies are a nice extra that will sometimes make you do things you wouldn't have done without the trophies.

The real advantage is obviously for the developers, like people here said before. Bad/short games will be sold more, even though they really shouldn't. And I bet at least 50% of the DLC sales are made by trophy hunters. I don't mind new trophies on DLC, the only thing that seem pretty pointless to me, are the grind trophies. Nobody likes them and there aren't any advantages to them for the developers.

[JCChrono]

The fact that you don't wanna replay J&D because you have all the trophies, can't be blamed on the trophies. The trophyhunter inside you is to blame

For the gamers who care, the trophies are a nice extra that will sometimes make you do things you wouldn't have done without the trophies.

The real advantage is obviously for the developers, like people here said before. Bad/short games will be sold more, even though they really shouldn't. And I bet at least 50% of the DLC sales are made by trophy hunters. I don't mind new trophies on DLC, the only thing that seem pretty pointless to me, are the grind trophies. Nobody likes them and there aren't any advantages to them for the developers.

Developers also seem to use trophies to showcase the various things you can do in their game and sort of force a trophy hunter to experiment. Fallout: New Vegas added the bonus skill for food items being more useful with the new survival skill. When I made my character I originally found it useless and kept it at zero. But I made a second character for collecting remaining trophies, and once I had that skilled trained enough to earn the trophy cooking food had it's advantages for that guy, and his melee fighting was a fun contrast to my main's gun skills. I probably would have never played that way without the trohies, and developers spent time to make those skills more useful to players, so they use trophies to ensure more people try them out. Same with skill shoots or X number of headshots in a row. It's not needed to beat the game, but they add an extra challenge that will inevitably make a player more skillful (or lucky, hehe).

As long as the trophies don't limit the freedom of how a player can play and still earn trophies, I always enjoy the extra challenge. But I could do without those horrible grind trophies. That's just a lazy developer.

All in all, trophies (hopefully) add extra fun to an already great game.

[siuilarun]

I don't think a game has to have trophies to be great, hell I own a wii and for those who don't know, it has no trophy/achievement system. That said, they do stretch out some games. There are times I've picked up a game that I had already beaten to my satisfaction just to pick a trophy or two, especially since I started moderating at 1upgamesonline.com, and needed my trophycard (from here) to look as little half-assed as possible for my signature.