Is Trophy/Achievement Hunting on a Downwards Spiral?

[madbuk]

This is something I've been feeling for the past year or two, and it's rather sad. So I decided it could be an interesting topic to discuss.

 

1. Petitions to change trophy requirements
2. 30 second platinums
3. Less activity across all trophy forums
4. 10,000+ achievement games on PC
5. All games have 1000G+ on Xbox One
6. More and more discussion about these 30 second-1 hour platinums rather than other games that aren't bait
7. Trophy point inflation
8. Skipping VNs/stacking extremely easy games and harming the perception of VNs as a whole and replaying games.
9. No standards set by Sony since PS4 released
10. Negative reception from communities outside the trophy/achievement hunting circle
11. Getting paid to trophy hunt

 

So now that I've listed out these 11 points, and there are probably quite a few more, I just can't think of them, let's go over them in more detail

 

1. Petitions to change trophy requirements

I'm sure we all remember that Wolfenstein II thread. A trophy that was challenging appeared in an AAA game, and it caused an unreasonable amount of outrage. This was never a problem before, so why is it that all of a sudden, almost everyone seems to be shying away from a game they had a genuine interest in just because of one hard trophy? From what I've been told it isn't even that outrageous of a trophy, it's a 3-4 hour no death run essentially. The way that people now look down upon hard trophies in a way they never did before just causes an overly negative perspective to be thrust on a game that doesn't really deserve it, and I doubt it's a coincidence that this new trend of hating remotely hard trophies occurred shortly after games like My Name is Mayo and 1000 Top Rated began to crop up.

 

2. 30 second platinums

Okay, so this is a bit of an exaggeration. I can only genuinely think of one 30 second platinum, but the point really is that there are loads of games now in which you can get their platinums in an hour tops and have no difficulty doing so whatsoever. Platinums aren't an achievement anymore. You used to be able to look at a 100 plat profile, and most of the time it was impressive. Sure, there might be some Hannah Montana or a skipped VN or two here and there, but it was far rarer than it is now. This is largely because of point #9.

 

3. Less activity across all trophy forums

It feels like the trophy community is shrinking as time goes by. I won't specifically name other sites because I'm not sure if that is against the rules or not, but yeah... One trophy site is outright dead, it died a few years back. Then there's another trophy site which, while it does still exist, had its userbase plummet of a cliff and hasn't had any updates since the release of Fallout 4 and very, very sparse interaction by moderators. Then there's another which, to be fair, only started a few years ago, but still doesn't have a very large player base or a lot of activity. And this just keeps going. PSNP is still very active, and that's great, but it does seem to be much less active than it was a few years ago, like 2013 for example.

 

4. 10,000+ achievement games on PC

I don't think there really needs to be a paragraph for this. It's fairly obvious what the problem here is - why should anyone care about Steam achievements when you can buy a bundle that straight up gives you 10,000+ achievements for no work whereas most games only have about 10-100?

 

5. All games have 1000G+ on Xbox One

This is an extension of the problem currently plaguing PlayStation, which will be expanded upon in point 9. I think there's a pretty blatant issue when you can buy a game that lasts maybe an hour, or even less, and get just as much value, as far as achievements are concerned, as a 100+ hour RPG. There's no balancing going on here whatsoever and it's making the system largely pointless as a result. It's just a number with no meaning if you can so easily exploit it.

 

6. More and more discussion about these 30 second-1 hour platinums rather than other games that aren't bait

Games that can be done in an hour or two, or even less than that, spawn large threads with people discussing them and getting hyped about it, whereas when a brand new game that other non-trophy hunting sites rave over (like the upcoming God of War, for instance) might get a discussion thread that reaches two or three pages, if it's lucky, but that's about it. The shorter, easier games designed as nothing but trophy bait get regular activity however. I feel this is a little harmful and raises more awareness to these games rather than to games that may actually benefit from attention, for example smaller indies with no exposure.

 

7. Trophy point inflation

Due to point #9, trophy points are becoming easier and easier to amass in short periods, meaning high trophy levels... aren't really high anymore. It's so easy to just play a bunch of games like Slyde or Mayo and you could probably easily reach level 30 or 40 before you're done with them, maybe even higher. This causes someone who's level 60 or so to be less impressive to most people regardless of what games they've played, because who has time to check a profile with the amount of games that a level 60+ player will own?

 

8. Skipping VNs/stacking extremely easy games and harming the perception of VNs as a whole and replaying games.

This is a big one I wanted to cover. Visual novels had always had a bit of a negative connotation associated with them in the trophy hunting circles, but it has escalated to the point where almost everyone seems to look down upon them. This is very harmful because they're already niche products that need as much support as they can get, and the negative reception could cause pressure on people to avoid them to 'preserve' their profile. A lot of visual novels are genuinely good and worth playing - just like there are many books out there that are genuinely good and worth reading. But so many people are skipping VNs these days, that people see a VN on your profile and just assume you're 'trophy whoring' rather than actually reading, regardless of the timestamps. VNs don't deserve this reputation because a lot of work is put into developing them. In regards to stacks, I question the people who look down on them so much. Okay, stacking a game like My Name is Mayo is pretty iffy, but where's the problem with replaying a genuinely great game? For example, I loved Kingdom Hearts and Tales of Xillia 1 when I first played them, so I wanted to replay them at some point. Why not get extra trophies while I do so? It costs extra money but that just simply isn't a big deal to some people, and there will always be sales. Having stacks on your profile doesn't automatically make you a trophy whore no matter how much certain people believe otherwise.

 

9. No standards set by Sony since PS4 released

Back on PS3, you saw a lot of games without platinums being released. These were generally smaller digital-only PSN releases, though there were some that people questioned such as Sonic Adventure and Resident Evil 4. Regardless of these exceptions, there was a fair line between games without a platinum and games with a platinum. Since the release of PS4 though, that line was thrown out the window and now any game can have a platinum if it wants one. This ends up devaluing platinum trophies as a whole, as a 1-2 hour indie game offers the same amount of value as a fullblown new AAA release like Horizon Zero Dawn.

There is nothing wrong with making indie games. Some of the greatest games this gen have been indies, in my opinion. However, a smaller game should also equate to a smaller trophy list. Surely that's just common sense? But that's not how the system works anymore, and that creates a big balancing issue. Platinums are just another trophy now, no different to golds, silvers, or bronzes.

 

10. Negative reception from communities outside the trophy/achievement hunting circle

It seems that more recently, since the rise of these bait platinums like Mayo, the reception that trophy/achievement hunting has received a lot of negative attention from people outside the trophy hunting circles. You'll often see words like "pathetic" or "pitiful", or sarcastic phrases like "having fun with games is silly". This is due to the growing trend of people ignoring a games quality and simply playing games like Mayo with easy trophies, or outright avoiding high quality games like Wolfenstein because they're hard. Non-trophy hunters look in on this and shake their head in disbelief. This never used to be a problem, or if it was it certainly wasn't as noticeable.

 

11. Getting paid to trophy hunt

Sony Rewards now offers you monetary awards for your trophies. While this may seem like a great thing at first glance, if you stop and consider the consequences, it becomes a lot more concerning. You're actually earning money if you buy these garbage plats that cost under $1, because you get $1 per plat. This ends up funding these games as people rush out to buy them - even non-trophy hunters when they figure it out - and thus supporting them and causing more to crop up as companies catch on to the fact they can exploit this new Rewards program and the people participating. So more and more of these games crop up, and points 7 and 9 become more and more prominent and an issue.

 

Has anyone else noticed any of this or am I just crazy?

Edited April 15, 2018 by madbuk

[ProfBambam55]

sorry, I'm not much of a trophy hunter so this will be rather brief but I see some basic things that affect trophy hunting and that pretty much always have:

 

- spare time...

- income...

- dedication/consistency...

- general gaming philosophy...

 

I see the first three having a direct impact on how many potential trophies a person has...then you have "I just wanna play whatever I like, have fun, and earn trophies" vs "I don't care what game it is, I just wanna earn as many trophies as quickly as possible" extremes...the playing field is pretty even and, even if it changes with regards to titles catering to both extremes, the chances of earning trophies remains the same...so I guess I'd have to say, no point in hating on the industry, hate on the game...haha...

 

 

 

 

[Leaderboards]

All that matters is that I like to trophy hunt >:)

[Gage]

Worry about your own stuff and what you want to play, instead of what other people are doing or playing. The entire system has always been and always will be arbitrary and dumb, so it's "value" or your idea of it being "in a downward spiral" as you say is entirely from your perception of it. It's much more enjoyable when you don't worry about how other people feel about it or what random shit comes out if you aren't interested in it. 

Edited April 15, 2018 by Gage

[atlasxof-]

You're literally crazy, lol. 

[bezdomnekoty]

26 minutes ago, madbuk said:

Has anyone else noticed any of this or am I just crazy?

You are crazy! ?

[LuciaRosethorn]

I agree with you honestly. Platinums use to mean you put effort into a game or you actually needed skills, now there's many games like Mayo which sell because people don't care what they play. I think that's the biggest thing, people would rather buy something just for a platinum then for actual content. Many people have said they would rather get an easy platinum than play something like Resident Evil 4 just because it's 100% and you actually need to work for it.

 

I personally don't care for those profiles who play games such as mayo no matter what other hard games they've played, but just remember that doesn't represent the person (well most of the time anyway). My best friends have both played mayo but they're amazing people, at the same time they know how much I hate mayo and we can have a laugh about it. Always give people a chance and don't judge them just by they're profile, people can play what they want and as long as they're happy then why stop them? 

 

I think Platinums are still the same but people do care less about putting effort into things and plus this site if for getting trophies so of course you'll see a lot of profiles with Mayo, again this doesn't mean everyone.

[Zolkovo]

I personally don't care for trophies, never have and never will. I do however consider myself a completionist which typically goes far beyond a platinum. This site is a fantastic asset to use along side other resources to get the most out of my games whether that's to find co-op partners, stumble on useful hints and tips or simply ask the community for help/advice when stuck. Truth is most of us only really care about our own profiles and don't give a toss about what others do with their time/money.

[Yrva]

To add onto what @Zolkovo said a bit, I use platinums as a way to gage my favourite game's completions, but I'm not cut out to be a hardcore completionist like most people here.

 

Is trophy hunting on a downward spiral? No, I don't think so. It's the popularity factor that is driving you to ask these questions. A lot of your comments and concerns stem from how popular the achievement/trophy collecting community is becoming, and a bad apples aren't going to ruin the well established batch. People will never be satisfied, nor will they be okay with everything, so it's best to focus on what you love about the community, and let that flourish.

[AJ_Radio]

I can't say I'm a long time user of this website compared to some of you like Dr Mayus or Phil, but I've definitely started to notice a trend which has catered more so to a casual crowd than to a dedicated gamer base who has played video games for over 20 years.

 

Sony is becoming more like a Steam platform. I've been on Steam for a long time now and I can definitely tell you all from experience that it has a fuck ton of shit. So much shovelware on their platform that you may have to do some searching to find an actual good game. Then there's the beta crap that allows users to play a game before it is even fully patched. Isn't that what game testers are supposed to do?

 

The Playstation 4 has seen vast sales, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch are nowhere close to the recognition and praise Sony has gotten with their console. Yet Playstation Network is awful. I've had numerous issues with PSN over the past two years and I am far from alone. Sony can piss off a lot of people but still get to keep a lot of them because they have the numbers.

 

As far as platinums go, I wish I had started much earlier. If I started in 2010 or so I would have had a nice amount of platinums at this point.

 

You seem to share the same thoughts and opinions as KingSuperOne and CARLOHAS, both of whom started trophy hunting back when the Playstation 3 was in it's prime. 2008 - 2010 definitely seemed like a time when you really had to work with your trophies. Battlefield Bad Company 1 with it's 10,000 kills, Killzone 2 with Valor Grand Cross, so on and so forth.

 

I never thought we would see an easier platinum than My Name is Mayo. But today you buy Slyde and earn a platinum in less than one minute. Yet there are games like Cloudberry Kingdom that only a very small handful have completed, and that doesn't have a platinum. I will agree that the trophies as far as balance goes are completely wacked.

 

Since September last year I have focused more on games I want to play, rather than just a bunch of easy platinums anybody and their brother can earn. Yeah I bought Orc Slayer and My Name is Mayo purely for the platinums. Who didn't?

 

It's sad, but there isn't much we can do at this point.

[Beyondthegrave07]

18 minutes ago, LuciaRosethorn said:

I agree with you honestly. Platinums use to mean you put effort into a game or you actually needed skills, now there's many games like Mayo which sell because people don't care what they play. I think that's the biggest thing, people would rather buy something just for a platinum then for actual content. Many people have said they would rather get an easy platinum than play something like Resident Evil 4 just because it's 100% and you actually need to work for it.

 

I personally don't care for those profiles who play games such as mayo no matter what other hard games they've played, but just remember that doesn't represent the person (well most of the time anyway). My best friends have both played mayo but they're amazing people, at the same time they know how much I hate mayo and we can have a laugh about it. Always give people a chance and don't judge them just by they're profile, people can play what they want and as long as they're happy then why stop them? 

 

I think Platinums are still the same but people do care less about putting effort into things and plus this site if for getting trophies so of course you'll see a lot of profiles with Mayo, again this doesn't mean everyone.

Yeah, I am honestly appalled at the fact that people were refusing to buy Sonic Mania  because it doesn't have a platinum. It makes me wonder if people would skip the new God of War if for some reason SM just opted to say, "Sorry, no platinum!"

 

I remember I used to get really excited about getting platinums and used to think the same as Madbuk thinking "Wow, 100 plats..." Now I have to look through the list to see how many cross-plats, 1 hour plats, etc. the person has to determine if it's really that big of an achievement. .

 

I play games for fun. I do not play games to earn trophies. Big difference there.

[Cobby_]

 

#ConeTITS #SueTheDevs

[Cobby]

I'm not being funny but we I think we all know deep down within.. past the dark recesses of our souls, past the cockles and just above the intestines that Android achievements are the only achievements that matter in this plane of existence.

 

PSN can go suck a carrot cos 1) it's healthy and 2) they're shit.

 

But seriously, iPhone achievements FTW. Trophies/Achieves only matter until a game has 60 FPS and nice butts, cos once you got a nice butt it just distracts you ✊??

[BlindMango]

Yeah, I've actually thought a lot about many of these same points brought up over the past couple years.

 

Steam Achievements are "Valueless" (Hyper-Inflated from their original sense of rarity), and Xbox Achievements are going in that direction too. What I will say about the Trophy system is that Sony has actually managed to keep it surprisingly unchanged, which is great (Though it has issues like allowing dumb games such as My Name is Mayo to have a platinum or being unorganized with identical game lists over past years). That being said, it seems when Sony rarely adds a function to the trophy system, it's really thoughtful, and they keep it as a whole a fun system because they don't mess it up by thinking they have to break the rules or add pointless things.

 

Trophies if anything might descend in a really, really slow rate rather than an extremely quick rate like Steam Achievements did, for example having 10 platinum trophies was impressive 7 years ago, but now seeing someone with 10 platinums isn't impressive because the idea is games like My Name is Mayo or all Sound Shapes lists might be in there. Basically it's death by 1,000 cuts by very slow inflation from pointless games getting platinum trophies. A platinum trophy is supposed to be "valuable" (Yes, in a "valueless" system) and well earned when you see one, and that's not always the case now. 

 

Also I think the trophy community is ever more popular, just look at the popularity of trophy hunting YouTube channels, trophy guides, and so on compared to years ago. I would say the "trophy hunting community" has just moved around to different places over the years and sites and places have come and gone. But places like here and PlayStationTrophies have equally gone up in their traffic over the years (More than ever).

 

Basically I think Sony puts care in the trophy system but is too oblivious to the 'little things' and if they don't pay attention to and fix those things it will just slowly drive down the "value" of the system over the course of many years  Still a fantastic system though in my opinion even considering the garbage games getting platinum and unorganized lists compared to when the trophy system first launched.

 

Edited April 15, 2018 by BlindMango

[Ojama_Country]

Sure, the perceived value of having a lot of platinums might have decreased (and i'm just as guilty of contributing to that as many others, lol, i love me some easy plats) but nothing can diminish the perceived value of the individual plats that actually take time and skill to get. And those are the ones that really matter, at the end of the day. The rest is just profile padding.

 

Honestly, i can't see trophy hunting actually entering a downward spiral unless Sony one day decides to let games use platinum trophies as actual trophies to replace bronze/silver/gold for some reason. Then it would get silly

[MidnightDragon]

I think trophy/achievement hunting is whatever you make of it. And I agree, while the site's activity may not be what it once was, it's still hardly what I'd call a ghost town,

 

Still, Sony doesn't have to accept every single Steam-like game that's thrown at them.  To be fair, it obviously must make money or they wouldn't even bother.

[MMDE]

At this point trophies are more of a thing you do for yourself. Sure, it's always been like that, but they used to represent what you had done in various games. When you saw others had done various trophies, you knew they had likely done them. It's so easy to cheat these days, and so all of madbuk's points become meaningless to me. You can stack a lot of VNs, but what's the point? Some other dude will stack a lot of those same VNs and a lot of difficult games they never even played. And the VNs stuff is basically just a group of people buying and sharing games with each other, that's if they even play the games. I know how many of the remaining people on the leaderboards who I've caught cheating, and so I know the few games I've caught each ones for is likely just the top of the iceberg, and they're way better at it these days. I've heard talk of so many not caught as well, and some people get caught and just make a new account that they do a better job to boost their way back to the top with. I could show you all a lot of accounts you would never be able to figure out how I know has cheated, and so imagine those who doesn't mess up so I'm able to detect. At some point many of them do mess up, but will someone find it?

 

All games can have platinum too, devs are just too lazy to add the platinum.

 

I would have had no issue with someone paying someone else to earn them trophies if I didn't know they are almost exclusively cheated. Legitimate trophy shops? A fool and his money!

[Feral]

Knew things had changed when people petitioned to change a trophy, not a game but a bloody trophy. Pathetic.

 

Anyway each to their own, I'll keep playing for fun and not worry about what others are doing or not doing.

[ExHaseo]

I wouldn't say trophy/achievement hunting is on the decline, but it's becoming more popular. There's more of an influx of people trying become trophy hunters, as well as a lot of people who have transitioned from Xbox, and those are the real roots of everything that you mentioned.

 

1. Petitions -

People are lazy, but still want to be able to get the plat. They feel like they should be able to get them once they beat a game. This is the kind of logic that's plagued gaming forever. Before, it was just people complaining about how long a game was, or how difficult. Now that pretty much every game is easy and relatively short (especially AAA games), people are moving on to trophy hunting, because games don't present any real challenge anymore.

 

2. 30 Second Platinums -

Just like the point above, people are lazy, but still want to be able to get plats. That's why there's people flocking to those kinds of games, because they think it makes their profile look good to have a bunch of plats, even if all of the plats are easy. This is something that's plagued achievement hunters since the beginning. People who only cared about how big their gamerscore was would only go after easy achievements, to make that number bigger, because it made them think their profile looked good. A lot of those people are now trophy hunters, because they switched to PS4. Their mentality of getting as many achievements as possible stayed with them.

 

3. Less activity -

I don't see this. The forums have felt more and more active recently. Especially after the addition of the events forum section. I don't pay attention to other communities, because when I first started trophy hunting, I tried the other communities, and they were full of elitist assholes. If they died, it probably has to do with the fact that they were very unwelcoming. So as their current user base left, no new people came in to replace them, so they died.

 

4. 10,000+ achievements on PC -

This is being done to exploit people who care about achievements, and have come over from Xbox. They are of the mindset that the bigger the number is all that matters. So, developers are using that as a way to sell their game.

 

5. All games have 1,000+ on XB1 -

Just like mentioned above, Xbox gamers don't care about anything but total number of points. MS is exploiting this to get more overall sales.

 

6. More and more discussion about these 30 second -

1 hour platinums rather than games that aren't bait - Unfortunately, this is an extension of the popularization and exploitation mentioned above. Your casuals/trophy whores are only going to care about these kinds, and casuals/trophy whores will always outnumber trophy hunters. Most people will always gravitate to what's easy, not what's most rewarding.

 

7. Trophy point inflation -

The same thing happened on MS consoles. People became more obsessed with total number, than quality, and it ultimately devalued a high gamer score. There isn't a whole lot that can be done about this, except for a change in perception. Which will happen sooner or later. Eventually no one will care about number of plats, and will look more at stuff like average rarity, and how many rare plats a person has. This is already becoming more common in the community here, and it's only a matter of time before it extends to every community.

 

8. Skipping VNs - 

There isn't a lot that can be said about this. It is unfortunate that people look down on them overall, but at the same time, the easy plats are getting them a lot more sales from trophy whores, than they would have gotten from just fans. It sucks that the public perception is a negative one, but I'm fine it, because it's making them more profitable for the developers, and the easy trophy lists make them far less of a risk. If I'm not enjoying one, I can just skip the rest and get the plat, without having to worry about it dragging my profile down. And if I do try something and I like it, then I get to experience a great story.

I'm not going to touch stacks though. There's way too many layers to that argument.

 

9. No standards set by Sony - 

There's nothing that can be done about plats being devalued overall. However, nothing will every devalue individual plats. A profile that has 50 UR plats is always going to be more impressive than a profile with 100 common plats. Something like Star Ocean 4 will always be of more value than My Name is Mayo. Nothing can be done about that. All that needs to be done, is looking at individual plats, instead of plats overall, and you'll see the real value of a person's profile.

 

10. Negative reception - 

This is one I don't get at all. There is FAR less negative reception for trophy hunting than there used to be. Especially compared to last generation. These days, it's more widely accepted, and there are a lot of people who don't trophy/achievement hunt, but will still go for them in certain games. I have a bunch of friends who aren't trophy hunters, but have gotten a few plats, just because they wanted to keep playing the game. Because of the points mentioned above about the popularization of trophy/achievement hunting, people have become more understanding of the hobby, from what I've seen. Of course there's still plenty of people out there who are dicks about it and make fun to trophy hunters, and especially trophy whores, but it's far less than is used to be.

 

11. Getting paid to trophy hunt - 

Anyone who spends money in order to get that free PSN money is falling into a marketing ploy. Even if you're only spending $1 per plat, you're spending $10 in order to get 10 plats, which only gets you $10 on PSN. Anyone doing that is an idiot, because there isn't any point to it, and you aren't making any money. Anyone who is spending more than $1 to get easy plats, in order to get that $10 on PSN, is even dumber. They're spending more money than they're making, which is exactly what Sony wants, because it's making them more money. They don't care if people are buying these cheap games for the easy plats, because it makes them money. At the end of the day, they're a business. The only thing they care about is making money. If they can take advantage of dumb people, then they're going to. If people want to waste their time and money, then they can. It certainly doesn't bother me.

 

Anyway, overall, I don't really see that much of a problem. Number of plats has never really mattered all that much to me. Anyone can have a lot. It that just means you have a lot of free time, have been doing it for a while, or possibly have more than one person playing a single profile. None of those things have ever been especially impressive to me. If you really want to judge a person's profile, then look at their average rarity,or look at the actual plats they have. Nothing will ever be able to devalue a hard plat. Nothing will ever be able to devalue average rarity. And no matter what other people say, it will never change how much you personally enjoy something. So there's no reason to listen to haters anyway.

 

At the end of the day, trophy hunting is what you make of it. If you enjoy getting a lot of easy plats and being as much of a trophy whore as possible, then go for it. Why should anyone else care if you're enjoying yourself? If you like getting exclusively super mega ultra rare plats, then go for it. Why should anyone else care if you're enjoying yourself?

[JohnCenaSong-]

Don't really care about anything aside from numbers 1 and 9:

 

~ Petitions to change trophy requirements - Grinds my gears a little bit because it does somewhat effect anyone else who wants to set a trophy as a goal and wants the satisfaction and in some cases bragging rights. It makes the community sound like whining entitled brats, if it's too hard for you suck it up and play an easier game or sit at 99% or whatever. As long as it's obtainable no trophy should be nerfed, even if you think it's unfair, excessively difficult, luck based, ultra grindy, it doesn't matter why, if it can be obtained it should stay. Trophies are optional additional challenges and if a studio decides they want a trophy to be hard to award dedicated fans it's up to them, don't start whining just because you personally cannot do it. 

 

In short, bitch moan and avoid these games all you like but don't ruin things for other people.

 

~ No standards set by Sony since PS4 released - This effects everyone, whether you like trophies or not it's safe to say the utter trash that ends up in the PSStore the last couple years is highly questionable. It's by the time that the Black Tiger game came that it became both more common and people started taking notice. We do not want PSStore to become Steam, or, god forbid... The iOS and Android app stores! Oh wait, if that happened it would be even worse than those stores because App ported to console seem to be slapped with ~$10 price tags for games that were originally FREE...

 

I'll talk a little bit about the rest of your list, just enjoy some of my random jibber-jabber

 

~ 30 second platinums - Eh, who cares, there's always been easy games and trophy hunters have always opted to play them. Whether they get easier or shorter doesn't make too much of a difference as at the end of the day the same people would just be playing other easy/quick games like Hannah Montanna. Are we really getting to the stage where people are judging people more negatively for these easier games than Hannah Montanna? Surely that's still one of the most shameful to have, regardless if it's technically 'harder' and longer than Mayo.

 

~ Less activity across all trophy forums - While this doesn't matter it could be a sign of trophies kind of dying out on some level, but... It's also kind of always been like this. It's certainly not very generally accepted as much as say, achievements. Discussing going for an achievement seems normal chatter to xbox players but discussing going for a trophy would raise an eyebrow from non trophy hunters. I'm not entirely sure why, but that basically means the only people who care to talk are the dedicated hunters and a lot of those have also claimed to have 'retired' (love how stupid they are to use that word though... It's not a job), likely because the community wasn't so vast and they realised they were doing something almost no one else cared about. It interestingly shows a bunch in terms of youtube 'guides', lot of non achievement hunters put out the odd achievement guide, usually for something AAA, but for trophies it's normally only someone inside the trophy community, not your 'average' gamer/youtuber.

 

~ 10,000+ achievement games on PC - Almost nothing new, Steam achievements are much like mobile achievements and the like, literally less people care and they have absolutely no real fomat or system. But, it's also kinda good because of that because it's more about the individual game unlike PS trophies where it's all about overall quantity of trophies/platinums.

 

~ All games have 1000G+ on Xbox One - Isn't a universal system like 1000G each game better? A formatted system.

 

~ More and more discussion about these 30 second-1 hour platinums rather than other games that aren't bait - To be fair, it's not just trophy hunters discussing these games a lot, why? Because it's unusual, Sony wasn't like this, letting crap cover the store, so I'm pretty sure everyone's constantly discussing them. Besides, as I mentioned, easy games have always been a thing, I imagine games like Terminator Salvation had plenty of discussion too in trophy communities.

 

~ Trophy point inflation - Same as points I've already made really.

 

~ Skipping VNs/stacking extremely easy games and harming the perception of VNs as a whole and replaying games. - Similar stuff here too.

 

~ Negative reception from communities outside the trophy/achievement hunting circle - Mostly always happened as I said before, specifically with trophies. But achievements are generally more accepted in the mainstream. It's weird, because, basically it's the same system.

 

~ Getting paid to trophy hunt - This is a problem? Doing something you enjoy or would be doing anyway in the case of most trophy whores, and getting rewarded for it, where's the issue? You think that big level trophy hunters are influenced by these rewards exclusively or heck, even just a little bit? Those who shit out platinums day in day out aren't doing it for the rewards, in order to afford to buy all those games they must be on pretty good money anyway, getting a few rewards along the way really isn't going to bother them that much, they're more concerned about their trophy count itself or a leaderboard rank.

 

 

[MMDE]

1 hour ago, Feral said:

Knew things had changed when people petitioned to change a trophy, not a game but a bloody trophy. Pathetic.

 

Anyway each to their own, I'll keep playing for fun and not worry about what others are doing or not doing.

 

I think the glaring irony in @madbuk 's post is just that one point. madbuk has multiple times said that Naughty Dog is the worst gaming company, because of the trophies in The Last of Us. He says not only are they glitchy, but ND screwed players over with their season pass. Oh, players got what they paid for with the season pass, but ND supposedly said there wouldn't be any trophies in the DLCs, and they released some DLCs with trophies after removing the season pass from sale.

 

So yeah, ND, worst gaming company ever... meanwhile, he thinks Ubisoft is great!

Edited April 15, 2018 by MMDE

[AJ_Radio]

28 minutes ago, MMDE said:

 

I think the glaring irony in @madbuk 's post is just that one point. madbuk has multiple times said that Naughty Dog is the worst gaming company, because of the trophies in The Last of Us. He says not only are they glitchy, but ND screwed players over with their season pass. Oh, players got what they paid for with the season pass, but ND supposedly said there wouldn't be any trophies in the DLCs, and they released some DLCs with trophies after removing the season pass from sale.

 

So yeah, ND, worst gaming company ever... meanwhile, he thinks Ubisoft is great!

 

Both companies have proven to make great games. The difference here is Ubisoft caters to several platforms, and generally tries to net a general audience. Since Naughty Dog is a Sony exclusive company, they mostly attract the Playstation crowd since they well, made The Last of Us and Uncharted 4: A Thief's End. Both of which have received countless awards.

 

My only pet peeve with Naughty Dog is them adding Uncharted DLC that takes a lot time to finish. But that is hardly anything to complain about since they are a great company with high standards.

[Sanetsuken]

Nah.

 

Videogames are dead son

[Conker]

How about you play what you like and enjoy it and don’t worry about trophys.

 

This really seems you have nothing else in your life but trophys 

 

pps How about we go back to the days of gaming with no trophies  

 

ND worst company.........you must be on some heavy drugs or incredibly dumb 

Edited April 15, 2018 by Conker

[Stardroid]

10 minutes ago, Conker said:

How about you play what you like and enjoy it and don’t worry about trophys.

 

This really seems you have nothing else in your life but trophys 

 

pps How about we go back to the days of gaming with no trophies  

 

ND worst company.........you must be on some heavy drugs or incredibly dumb 

His topic and write up isn't even unreasonable. It's one thing to disagree, it's another by attacking a man's personal life for no reason at all. I've read better poems in my life. Personally I care less about trophies than I used to. I think people like GrannyTranny, Floris, Lilpain etc are great and love how they use trophies as a platform to challenge themselves. That's what is it for me, really. I tend to look for games with ultra rares that fall in the genre I like to see what the deal is (on top of playing even easy games that I really just like).

Edited April 15, 2018 by Starlove-