Does the Trophy System Need an Overhaul?

[Zenpai]

Only thing I would change is the ability to delete whichever lists you felt like at whatever point in time, or at least the ability to hide them from yourself. I like my lists clean and organized and not full of games that I'll never go back to or weren't even played by me.

 

Otherwise, the trophy system works just fine.

Edited July 3, 2019 by jrdemr

[kenseizenkai]

I like the trophy system as it is, but I would change some things like:

1. You get reworded from PSN for collecting trophies, like 1 bronze trophy=1c

                                                                                           1 silver trophy=10c

                                                                                           1 gold trophy=1$

                                                                                           1 platinum trophy=10$

 

2. No multiplayer trophies for games that are focused on single player, like Uncharted 2, 3 & 4, The Last Of Us, Batman: Arkham Origins, Driver San Francisco, Max Payne 3 (remember: Max Payne 1 & 2 DIDN'T have multiplayer). For all those games, multiplayer SUCKS!

 

3. When you buy a game (digital or disc) you can plat it 100% WITHOUT extra DLC (e.g. no trophies for extra DLC missions or stages). Remember Batman: Arkham Knight?

 

All in all that's my 2 cents.

 

 

[Varhur]

3 minutes ago, kenseizenkai said:

I like the trophy system as it is, but I would change some things like:

1. You get reworded from PSN for collecting trophies, like 1 bronze trophy=1c

                                                                                           1 silver trophy=10c

                                                                                           1 gold trophy=1$

                                                                                           1 platinum trophy=10$

 

 

Holy shit. No better way of introducing people to 30 min plats, ay?

[Super-Drak]

I would love if online trophies were not included for a platinum. You wouldn't have to remove them completely, I can think of three ways you could do it:

 

They could still count for 100% but without contributing to the plat (working essentially like DLC trophies do now, but without having to pay for them obviously). 

Sure, I would probably still end up doing them to get that 100% but at least if the servers went down or if something made it that they became unachievable, you could still play a game without thinking it's a waste because you won't be able to complete it.

 

Another idea (although I know this will never happen) would be to have a platinum for the offline game (the one we already have). And then a different kind of trophy for completing the online portion of the game. It could look like a platinum but be red for instance and have a different name. 

 

A third option (and my favourite of the three) is that you could just have two trophy lists for each game. One for the offline portion and one for the online portion. That way you could just do the offline portion of it and have 100% if that's what you wanted. Or vice versa if you just like to play online. Or go for both. The bottom line is you would have a choice. You wouldn't be stuck having to do both the offline and online if you didn't want to. And you wound't be stuck if something happened to the online servers. Like it has happened for so many games already.

[Black_Rose_IX]

I really don't like the idea of including dlc trophies in the trophy list to lower the % but it's probably gonna remain that way forever since a lot of money is made out of it from 95-100% completionists.

 

A trophy tracker would be very useful especially for trophies that require performing a certain action many times eg.1000 kills.

 

I'd also love to see some sort of psn level up notification instead of getting a surprise when visiting the home screen. 

[IntroPhenom]

I'm going to keep playing my games, popping trophies along the way, and not put any care or thought into rarity, leader boards, or levels.

[kenseizenkai]

43 minutes ago, Varhur said:

Holy shit. No better way of introducing people to 30 min plats, ay?

Well I was also thinking that indie games & free PSN+ games shouldn't have any trophies. That also crossed my mind. By the way, you don't have to be rude, I didn't come here to start a fight. It was just an idea.

[Varhur]

22 minutes ago, kenseizenkai said:

Well I was also thinking that indie games & free PSN+ games shouldn't have any trophies. That also crossed my mind. By the way, you don't have to be rude, I didn't come here to start a fight. It was just an idea.

You took that as rude? Weird.

[Rally-Vincent---]

18 hours ago, Undead Wolf said:

Without a solid reason? I disagree. I think it's perfectly valid to want a system that values platinum trophies differently depending on the game. I mean how is it right that a platinum in My Name is Mayo gives you the same amount of EXP as a platinum in Super Meat Boy? And for the last part of your post, the changes I mentioned doesn't benefit people who play more games than someone else. Actually, it's quite the opposite. It encourages people to spend more time with fewer games instead of buying a ton of cheap shovelware.

 

This is what I mean when I said that you want to bias the trophy system. As it is now, the trophy system has one purpose - the trophies are not designed to show something - difficulty, game time etc - in relation to other games. All a platinum trophy shows is that you did everything the developer thought was noteworthy in a specific game. Trophies show off progress in a specific game. Difficulty, rarity and leaderboards are interests that lie outside of the trophy system, on supplementary pages like PSNP or PSNTL. And I am sorry, I have not heard a solid reason why the game-progress-system should be replaced by a biased system that relies on subjective opinions like 'too easy', 'UR or death' or 'nobody should develop or play a game like that'.

 

So yes, I think exactly that every platinum should be worth the same, as it indicates the same thing: The game is finished. That is a measurable fact rather than indistinct opinions, with (by the way) many of which I strongly disagree. The sugeestion to bias the system will be a potpourri of people who think they are entitled to tell other people what games are 'worth' something.

 

As a sidenote, taken just from this thread: People attack shovelware as 'money for trophies', and then there was a suggestion for a leaderboard-type that only counts 100% games. That's basically the same thing: spend money for trophies by buying DLC. The term 'elitism' that others used are not that unjustified as people who feel attacked by it say.

Edited April 10, 2019 by Rally-Vincent---

[Undead Wolf]

I've seen a lot of people say they like the current system but wish Sony cared more about quality control and had better standards when it comes to which games are allowed platinum trophies. I agree that this would be the best solution, but I don't see them going back to the way things used to be. Besides, are things too far gone at this point? I mean just think about how many easy, sub 1 hour plats there are now. Even if Sony did start to care about preserving the value of trophies once again, that doesn't change the fact that tens, maybe even over a hundred of these games are available on the store now if you take into consideration all the different stacks. The suggestion I made in the OP is a way for the trophy system to gain value once again without requiring Sony to take action against these developers who are out to make a quick buck from trophy whores.

 

As for my suggestion about having the EXP value given from a trophy depend on the rarity, I've thought about how that could be expanded upon. First of all, it would require a "fix" to the current PSN rarity. As people have rightly pointed out, most platinums on PSN are considered rare even when they're actually quite easy due to all the non-trophy hunters and people who play a game for an hour or so before stopping. It's just a thought, but maybe people who only have something like 20% or less of the trophies in a game wouldn't count in the overall equation. Maybe then the PSN rarity would be a little more accurate as it would only take into account people who were serious about playing the game.

 

Secondly, I propose some kind of tiered system that a game can fall into depending on the rarity of its platinum. What I mean by this is that all games with an ultra rare platinum would have a set amount of EXP assigned to each trophy, very rare would have different EXP values, and so on. For example...

 

Games with an 'ultra rare' platinum:

 = 360 points

 = 180 points

 = 60 points

 = 30 points

 

Games with a 'common' platinum:

 = 60 points

 = 30 points

 = 10 points

 = 5 points

 

So essentially every game comes with a platinum as standard but the trophies in that game are valued depending on how rare the platinum is. I hope that makes sense to everyone.

[Blood-Stalker1]

They need to change the base on what they consider bronze and gold 

 

I have a few trophies that with the total effort it need it, it was bronze what clearly need to be gold 

 

same goes for the gold some gold trophies pop with zero effort and they don’t need to be gold 

[KainDMD]

Yes it needs an overhaul so we can get those cheaters out of the system. Trophies are becoming more and more like steam achievements, and you know how much those suck?

[qregory]

I'd just like that tracker that tracker that Xbox has that shows how close you are to achieving the goal for the achievement.

Also no reason for different region games to have different trophy lists if they're basically the same game.

[steel6burgh]

The never ending list of easy complete shit platinums is actually ruining the sport of trophy hunting.  This isn't why you started doing this to see if you could stack storm boy and mayo across all the platforms.  Trophies shouldn't be included with games sold for under a certain price at launch.  That would do away with these shit companies making easy games to exploit dollars from trophy whores.   Nobody cares if you're in the top 100  because in order to do that you had to platinum 600 hundred plus shit games some of them 4 times.  You won't find the best trophy lists in the top 100, just saying.  Probably not even going to find them in the top 1000.  I see these lists with over 200 platinums on them and if they have ten good platinums they're lucky.  I know a few people that mix in good with bad but honestly you don't notice the good amongst all the shit. I so wish only AAA games had trophies.  It would make it more fun for those of us that don't want to waste time or money playing shit.  It's a money exploit is all it is.  

54 minutes ago, Undead Wolf said:

I've seen a lot of people say they like the current system but wish Sony cared more about quality control and had better standards when it comes to which games are allowed platinum trophies. I agree that this would be the best solution, but I don't see them going back to the way things used to be. Besides, are things too far gone at this point? I mean just think about how many easy, sub 1 hour plats there are now. Even if Sony did start to care about preserving the value of trophies once again, that doesn't change the fact that tens, maybe even over a hundred of these games are available on the store now if you take into consideration all the different stacks. The suggestion I made in the OP is a way for the trophy system to gain value once again without requiring Sony to take action against these developers who are out to make a quick buck from trophy whores.

 

As for my suggestion about having the EXP value given from a trophy depend on the rarity, I've thought about how that could be expanded upon. First of all, it would require a "fix" to the current PSN rarity. As people have rightly pointed out, most platinums on PSN are considered rare even when they're actually quite easy due to all the non-trophy hunters and people who play a game for an hour or so before stopping. It's just a thought, but maybe people who only have something like 20% or less of the trophies in a game wouldn't count in the overall equation. Maybe then the PSN rarity would be a little more accurate as it would only take into account people who were serious about playing the game.

 

Secondly, I propose some kind of tiered system that a game can fall into depending on the rarity of its platinum. What I mean by this is that all games with an ultra rare platinum would have a set amount of EXP assigned to each trophy, very rare would have different EXP values, and so on. For example...

 

Games with an 'ultra rare' platinum:

 = 360 points

 = 180 points

 = 60 points

 = 30 points

 

Games with a 'common' platinum:

 = 60 points

 = 30 points

 = 10 points

 = 5 points

 

So essentially every game comes with a platinum as standard but the trophies in that game are valued depending on how rare the platinum is. I hope that makes sense to everyone.

This concept is a good idea but the point value from common to ultra rare needs to be even wider than it is considering some common games can be completed in seconds.  Common games should be worth a very very small amount or even more perfect is to not award points at all for common games.  

[thefourfoldroot]

49 minutes ago, Blood-Stalker1 said:

They need to change the base on what they consider bronze and gold 

 

I have a few trophies that with the total effort it need it, it was bronze what clearly need to be gold 

 

same goes for the gold some gold trophies pop with zero effort and they don’t need to be gold 

This is why I only really care about platinum trophies to be honest 

[Fish613]

Sony just needs to allow us to delete any trophies we want from our list. They're MY trophies, i should be able to do what I want with them.

 

I have a collection of baseball cards and guess what? I can throw any of them I want into the trash. I have a collection of digital video games.... and guess what? I can delete which ever games I want.

 

But for some reason, Sony doesn't have logical common sense when it comes to trophies.

 

I already know all the arguments for and against the idea and I always come out on top knowing it makes perfect sense and is doable to allow us to delete any trophies we want.

[gieras]

I would like Sony to launch one common leaderboards that would complement the psnprofiles or other similar leaderboards. Problematic are of course cheaters, but I believe Sony is capable of organising moderators alike psnprofiles for cheater elimination. This way we know what is the real rank among all PSN users as well as how many people are really playing specified title.

 

Secondly I also support strongly the idea of having tracker showing the progress in each of the trophies, alike in the XBOX achievements. In too many games I had to struggle a lot now knowing how far I am in the process of collecting certain trophy.

 

And thirdly I would appreciate some kind of special offers, gadgets or other kind of recognition for achieving specific levels in PSN. Alike free of charge code for digital game or PSPlus yearly subscripion for user that reached level 20 and new console (of course phisical one, not downloadable (-:) not for user that reached level 50. That's just an example.

[PhantomBlade19]

People keep worrying about cheaters on leaderboards, when they real problem is "gamers" who play easy games for trophies just to climb faster. Of course they don't want a rarity points system, they would hit the bottom of it just as fast as they climbed the current system.

[Varhur]

Why do you care so much about what people play, if someone cares about stacking POWGI games, then it's on him, if he's bragging with 1000 plats with 80% of them being less than 2 hours, it's his problem on being dickwad. You just want to change everything to the "true gamer" bias. Yes, i won't idolise someone like that, but i don't see why if someone is silent about it, he should be called trophy whore.

 

If anything, make rarer platinums give you more points and/or remove stacks. No idea how stacks work in terms of making them and why (except for those double-platting the game).

[crauuecrauue]

I wish they'd just scrap the trophy levels, rarity, and points entirely, and make trophies and descriptions only visible after you've earned them yourself. Make them fun surprises instead of goals to boost to reach because you know about them in advance.

 

In place of individual trophy rarity, an average amount earned value for the game as a whole, without ever revealing to the players how many a game has in total (so no more platinums to boot).

 

When viewing another player’s profile, it will only show images of the earned trophies per game, no descriptions unless you have also earned them and no total number to fetch for leaderboard sites.

Edited April 10, 2019 by crauuecrauue

[Varhur]

5 minutes ago, crauuecrauue said:

I wish they'd just scrap the trophy levels, rarity, and points entirely, and make trophies and descriptions only visible after you've earned them yourself. Make them fun surprises instead of goals to boost to reach because you know about them in advance.

 

In place of individual trophy rarity, an average amount earned value for the game as a whole, without ever revealing to the players how many a game has in total (so no more platinums to boot).

 

When viewing another player’s profile, it will only show images of the earned trophies per game, no descriptions unless you have also earned them and no total number to fetch for leaderboard sites.

Not in this timeline pal

[gieras]

In my opinion rarity system is not really feasible and will demand continous recalculations of leaderboards, rankings etc, because level of rarity is not know at the launch of the game, but after some time, when reality is verifying how many players are capable of collecting a trophy.

 

And in my opinion the idea of making surprises out of trophies is not in favour of both players and game developers, because only completely hidden trophies are not encouraging players to explore the game areas or specific game mechanics that developers spent time and energy on creating. Trophies are in my opinion one of the way to motivate players to look into the places in the game that otherwise would never be visited or using all the items, weapons etc that developers prepared for us. Good example are open world Ubisoft games.  

 

One idea I have but rather for Psnprofiles than PSN is to assign games into different leagues, alike triple A games, Indie games, 1$ games etc (just example) so them leaderboards can show rankings in different leagues. This would minimise the frustration among people that are collecting trophies in more demanding (usually also more expensive) games and can not rank up because there are lots of people playing some third-sort 20 min. platinums.

 

If we go this direction there shall be also league for people that collect trophies from one region only, not stacking up points from all regions available for a title. 

[dmland12]

It's been interesting watching this poll go from 30/70 to very close to 50/50.  I don't know what it means, but it's been interesting.

 

I'd love to see Sony rework it's trophy system to better take into account rarity, but I think it's unlikely.  More practical would be for trophy sites like this one to introduce their own systems and see what people prefer.  The top xbox achievement site and it's less popular trophy sister site already consider rarity on it's main leaderboard, and it works well enough for them.

 

One benefit of promoting something involving rarity is that it's somewhat self-correcting.  If there's something out there that's easier than it's rarity, then people would chase it and drive the rarity up.  That's a different dynamic than just counting PSN points.

[SuperSmash5U]

23 hours ago, Undead Wolf said:

Platinum trophies used to mean something!

I do admit I am part of the problem. I am a person who doesn't really like hard challenges so when a game promises me a EZPZ platinum, I sometimes go for it. I do agree that the idea of the platinum has lost its luster because there are all sorts of games which could have probably better as non-platinums. (My Name Is Mayo, Super Weekend Mode, etc.) However, on the other hand, I think that some games should have been given a platinum trophy because getting 100% in the list is tougher than you think. (Song of the Deep deserves a platinum trophy.)

 

What I think Sony should do is give all games which do not have platinum trophies a minor form of platinum trophy called the electrum trophy, which would be awarded for getting 100% in the game. However, to make it implantable, the points would have to be reworked: Platinum trophies would have to be worth more than 180 points because the electrum trophy would be 100 points and therefore be almost as valuable as a platinum, forcing the game's point scores to be increased. Therefore the Platinum would have to be worth something like 270 points to push those games into higher point totals.

 

It would take at least a year to implement this idea if it got approved so that's why the system hasn't changed for a long time. You need to remember that changing the trophy system requires changing the network itself. We took years before the PSN Network was able to allow you to change your PSN Name.

 

I am not saying that the current trophy system is awesome. It's far from perfect. But it's better than nothing. Nintendo doesn't have a trophy system and people aren't complaining about it. Trophies are a young art(they have only been around since 2009) so maybe it'll change. Maybe not.

[crauuecrauue]

8 minutes ago, gieras said:

And in my opinion the idea of making surprises out of trophies is not in favour of both players and game developers, because only completely hidden trophies are not encouraging players to explore the game areas or specific game mechanics that developers spent time and energy on creating. Trophies are in my opinion one of the way to motivate players to look into the places in the game that otherwise would never be visited or using all the items, weapons etc that developers prepared for us. Good example are open world Ubisoft games.  

Pretty sure developers would be far happier to read about 15% of players exploring for exploration’s sake and discovering the secrets on their own over a few weeks than about 20% of players boosting for a weekend while watching a walkthrough and never touching their game again because all they cared about was checking off a list.

 

Play doesn’t require a set of bright yellow goalposts for every interaction to be viable, and keeping the goalposts hidden doesn’t preclude walkthroughs helping other players eventually. Plus, sharing your discoveries and hearing or reading others’ reactions, on top of stories of their own, is infinitely more satisfying than just having a value assigned objectively stating “yep, this is rare, but you knew that before didn’t you?”.