PS3 to PS4 - Easier Games, Less Difficult Trophies

[pinkrobot_pb]

To be honest, when trophies were still very new to developers in the early PS3 days, I think too many went a bit nuts with the trophy requirements. You can do about 3 or 4 later F1 titles for all the time it took to get the F1 2010 plat. Games like Far Cry 2, Virtua Tennis 2009 and something like IL-2 Sturmovik (which even had its requirements nerfed quite a bit) were just ridiculous. I do not see any added benefit to just grinding for ages and ages and ages. That is time that could be spent on another game. The mentioned games have very low completion percentages but those are not really a measure of the skill needed to complete them, but more how willing you are to be bored to fuckery and back to get the plat.

Edited September 19, 2019 by pinkrobot_pb

[danceswithsloths]

I never owned a PS3, but I've used PSNow to plat a few games I always wanted to play on the system and they were easy as hell. Grindy? Definitely. Hard? Not really. Maybe I just got lucky.

[Evil_Joker88]

For me it definitely is true i have played harder ps3 than ps4 games but only because i am doing more thoughts on which game to start on ps4 than on ps3. Some franchises lowered they're trophy requirements from one game to the next like Bf Bad Company 1 to 2, Gran Turismo 5 to 6, Far Cry 2 to 3, Lost Planet 2 to 3 but those felt good in my eyes. GT5 is for example 600+ hours and that's necessary to a certain amount because of the endurance races. GT6 is supposedly 50 hours which is just 2 races worth in GT5 racing tome

 

Some games just had ridiculously high requirements like being best player in ranked matches in a week/at all, winning 10 ranked matches in a row ? But with years to pass by games and trophies became easier in total. Compare God of War PS3 Plat vs God of War PS4 Plat. Demon's Souls/Dark Souls vs Bloodborne. But of course there are still hard games like SMB, Wolfenstein II, Crypt of the Necrodancer so if you want a high challenge you can find it. But the majority goes the easy/easier way Myself included. I hardly start a game higher than 5/10 difficulty nowadays. 3 years ago i started whatever i wanted

Edited September 19, 2019 by Evil_Joker88

[Fr_0zt]

I've notice that it's now easier/ less troublesome for the most part and it's better that way.  I like been challenged but without having to no life the game is the best way to go. 

Edited September 19, 2019 by Fr_0zt

[Upendo_Vitani]

A lot of people were complaining that trophy requirements were too tough or stupid or whatever on a lot of games. Developers making AAA games seemed to have actually listened to that and made some actually really good trophy lists. And now we get people complaining they're too easy. Proof positive you cannot please everyone. There is always going to be games that will satisfy whatever difficulty you are looking for; you don't always have to play AAA games. There are so many unique indie or small games there's really no reason to be afraid of where this generation is going in terms of challenge. 

[PhantomFear94]

I agree with OP if we are talking about the general release of "marquee" AAA experiences (and yes, of course, the Ratalaika frenzy), although I don't think it's a bad thing necessarily. I don't necessarily think that there fewer difficult PS4 games than PS3 games, I just think that the average standard of completions for AAA games seems much easier than the previous-gen on the whole. Maybe we've all just gotten better, idk! 

 

For myself, I personally feel that 4-5/10 and 40-60 hours (using traditional trophy guide and roadmap scaling for a broad reference) is the perfect level of difficulty and time. Resident Evil 7, God of War, DOOM, games like that. This isn't hard and fast by any means, as I often deviate, but I feel with this baseline standard I get my money's worth and fulfill my completionist tendencies whilst feeling the game is giving me a challenge, yet not demanding complete mastery.  This way, if the game is really good I can enjoy it, complete the 1000G/platinum, experience the majority of its content, and move on within 1-2 weeks.  I'm around 1/3 through Borderlands 3 right now, which is a very good example of what I'm talking about. 

 

Overall, I think it depends quite widely by the studio, but I feel as an industry trend most games are getting easier and more straightforward to complete. I imagine this is to do with a) the increasing popularity in trophy hunting as a reason for purchasing games, and ii) increasing stringency in trophy requirements (as much as gamers might complain, achievements/trophies seem undoubtedly more "reasonable" for the most part in my eyes).  I find that  difficult completions that do exist are also more often than not for suitably difficult games by their nature (Souls, Hollow Night, Binding of Isaac, etc.) In the previous generation, I'd find that games in general, which tons of people could get through story-wise, had challenging or down-right awkward optional achievement/trophy requirements for hunters - this seems much less the case these days. By and large, the difficulty of the game itself is the difficulty of the completion, and lots of games with higher difficulty options don't have corresponding achievements/trophies, making the completion easier even if the game itself CAN be difficult (I hope this makes sense in writing as much as it does in my own head). I also think that even though some games require 100% completion, others are easing off the "collect absolutely everything" cliche. 

 

For me, I welcome the slightly easier (or if not easier, more "user-friendly") approach to achievements and trophies most companies seem to take. I work full-time, am studying a masters degree part-time, am getting married, etc., so my gaming time at the age of 25 is much more limited than it was a few years ago. This kind of range (with easy games padding it in between) gives me a nice balance of having a variety of games I have completed and making sure I get to play all the AAA's I want to play. If people love challenging completions, they exist and they are good to go for them, if they play games after completing them, and they have harder difficulties or challenges, they should do them. I don't think the general lower-difficulty of your average game's platinum should have any interference with that. 

 

Finally (if a bit random), I find Sony exclusives on PS4 on average far easier to max out than Microsoft exclusives on XB1, which on average often have A LOT of achievements and have reasonably difficult or long (or both)  completions.  Obviously, in both cases, there are deviations from this pattern.

Edited September 19, 2019 by PhantomFear94

[Helyx]

Wait, you guys are getting trophies?

[starcrunch061]

I don't know if I buy it. Certainly, there were hard trophy lists on the PS3 (I'm thinking of music games like Guitar Hero: Smash Hits), but many of the lists were just awful grindfests. There's not a single difficult thing to do in White Knight Chronicles, but you likely won't get the plat, since you'll be doing that same, simple action for 500+ hours. Star Ocean 4 was another one like this (difficulty-wise, Star Ocean 3 knocks Star Ocean 4 on its tail, but the plat is significantly "easier", because it takes much less time).

 

Furthermore, even on PS3, we had developers changing trophy requirements because they were "too hard". 3-D Dot Game Heroes had a pretty challenging set of obstacles requiring you to beat dash times of 20 and 60 seconds, if memory serves. Later on, though, these requirements were changed to 25 and 65 seconds, which is significantly easier (though my European brethren still have the original times on their game).

 

As far as actual game challenge, again, I don't know about that, either. One thing, though, that has been lost, is the sort of "AA" game. We have AAA, and we have indies, but in the PS3 era, we had a lot of middle ground. Games like Enslaved, or El Shaddai, or Spec Ops, etc., were decently-budgeted games that also had a modicum of difficulty (some more than others). Those games just don't exist in this generation, making it easier to lump everything that isn't indie into the AAA category, and that category was easy on the PS3 as well. 

 

Unfortunately, the indies of this generation are so small budget that they can't possibly provide the same level of technical sophistication as the titles I've mentioned, so while the challenge is still there, a lot of people might not find it, because they just aren't interested enough in playing a game that looks like it came from the SNES era.

Edited September 23, 2019 by starcrunch061

[djb5f]

I feel they are pretty comparable when you compare games in the same series.

 

Far Cry 3, 4, and 5 all about the same.  Far Cry 2 was harder/more time consuming but that already dropped by Far Cry 3 (PS3 only).

 

Uncharted 1-4 all about the same. In fact, you could argue Drake’s Fortune is the easiest as it has the highest percentage completing crushing and getting platinum.

 

Red Dead Redemption is similar, so is GTA IV to V (technically both were PS3 first anyway).  

 

Sports games have kept their difficulty, NHL to NBA to FIFA to Madden to UFC, really no change on PS4.  What sports games are you referring to that are easier on PS4?

 

Rhythm games seem just as hard to play on the PS4, see Rock Band 4, very similar trophy list.  Same with pinball games.

 

Lego games are the same, as were Telltale games (if anything harder with Walking Dead Final Season on PS4).  Quantic dreams also same.

 

i think what is skewing things here are there a lot of easy platinums now (Ratalaika) but games within a series seem the same to get a platinum as in PS3.

 

Edited September 19, 2019 by djb5f

[GoldenShaka]

If you are referring to most of AAA games, probably.

But not the whole market

In fact this generation is getting obsessed with rogue like games if you haven't noticed.

[EcoShifter]

I've only seen trophies being primarily easier to obtain in terms of the ability to stack and at times less MP or less grind based MP trophies (i.e., predecessor says get to level 60 in online multiplayer, while the successor that also has OMp either says get to a much lower rank like 10-30, or it won't be a trophy at all). Asinine MP trophies requiring you to get to max rank online that are on the high end or collect a large amount of titles/cards online should have never existed to begin with. And I've noticed there are series out there that rid those ideas later on. For example, installments after Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 rid the "get x amount of ninja cards/titles" (thank the lord). Dragon Ball series has had identical trophies, but it took until the much later Xenoverse series for them to rid that. However, offline time investment and difficult has been fairly comparable throughout both their entire franchises.

 

Offline trophies tend to stay around the same in terms of grind and difficulty, even across completely different series/IPs. Newer/more recent installments in series, though, like Uncharted, Killzone, Naruto, Dragon Ball, Call of Duty, Just Cause, etc, have at times been harder than previous entries on last generation or on par. It's still baffling to me that KSF implemented a survival type trophy that works in the same way Alien Isolation's and Dead Space 2's does, and U4, which funnily enough, also upped the amount of survival based (and MP) trophies from prior installments, ultimately making it harder.

 

The major issue/concern are mainly ported games with different trophy list, like The Walking Dead games (including the different language versions), and people of course inherently making alternate accounts with relatively easy games. But difficulty itself has varied since the beginning of time, and a lot of us have become more skilled gamers from out long term exposure playing games, even though there's still plenty of challenging trophy list out there across both generations if you're not confined to little genre or series of games. Time investment/grind is similar, as it's still very prominent in the gaming industry, be it the Ratchet & Clank series with their upgrade all gadgets to max/other trophies and gather 1mil currency trophies, Dragon Ball with their competitive online rank trophies, collecting of skills/items trophies, getting all stars on challenges trophies, etc, Naruto with similar requirements to Dragon Ball games, Sonic with collecting all customization items trophies, saving large amounts of currency trophies like R&C, defeat high-x amount of enemies trophies, etc, the very existence of RPGS, racing games with their high amount of "complete x amount of challenges/missions/tours/etc" trophies, etc. Regardless of genre, price, and even IP, i'm nearly always, if not always, guaranteed to be in for a notably difficult of some kind experience (grind, MP, and/or pure challenge) when I get my platinum trophies, even for series im a veteran in or love...

 

... Gravity Rush 2 has a grind based trophy that makes it longer to get its platinum than Gravity Rush; Sonic Forces also has a grind based enemy and especially currency trophy that makes it feel longer if not more tedious than Sonic Generations; Killzone Shadow Fall has the overall long MP grind trophy(s) and beat game on hardest difficulty with three saves trophy; Dragon Ball Fighter Z is the first Dragon Ball game I have given up on getting its platinum because of the literally-insane grind, and I somehow managed to get its difficult "get high amount of online BP" trophy.

 

Didn't tackle all the subjects, like trophy hunters' decisions and interests. Just wanted to speak on the time investment and difficulty subjects primarily, because I still play on all three systems (primarily PS4, followed by PS3, and the most least Vita) and have over the whole decade yes noticed improvements but also regression and stagnancy in trophy list, still having my work cut out for me each and every year I go for platinums, especially with ongoing series. 

 

[machaesthetic]

AAA games in general are getting more shallow, homogenized, and cinematic so the big single-player games on PS4 have simpler trophy lists to match. Also there is a lot more indie games this gen so you have more games on both extremes (very easy and brutallty difficult). Online games and sports game are grindy as ever, perhaps even worse (in a bad way), requiring excessive grinding, microtransactions, and DLC. 

 

I don't really think any of the games listed in OP are difficult, nor do I think they is that big of a difference in difficulty between the AAA games of this gen and last gen, I think we have just trophy hunted for years and it starts to become a routine where we know how to approach a game and its trophies. Although, there certainly is a lot of bad, low effort games with no other appeal than to attract trophy hunters for easy and meaningless platinums, but aside from inflating the leaderboard, I don't really see that as being a serious issue. Honestly, it really just floods your profile with junk and completely misses the entire appeal of trophy hunting so I don't know why people do it. 

 

If you are looking for good, difficult games or difficult trophy lists, I don't think they are hard to find at all, and you just have to look beyond only the AAA multi-million sellers. Rhythm games, racing games, action games, platformers, and sidescrollers/shmups tend to be consistently difficult genres and typically have more difficult lists.

Edited September 20, 2019 by machaesthetic

[AJ_Radio]

18 hours ago, Upendo_Vitani said:

I think it's because gaming in general is becoming more and more socially acceptable and more people are playing now than ever before. That being said, there's now a larger demographic to cater to; the average person spends most of their day at work and doesn't have a lot of time to devote to gaming so the more they feel like they're progressing in a game, the better, otherwise there's the danger of them stopping playing entirely. Developers know that if they churn out a game that appeals to the masses, the more the masses will buy their next game, and so on. It's the science of business in my opinion. 

 

That's true, and while there is a lot of hard stuff out there when you look at the indie market, and stuff on Steam that still challenges you, AAA games are much easier now.

 

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune was considered hard for many because of Crushing difficulty. Today I can breeze through Crushing without much trouble, but newer AAA games take a lot of the difficulty away in place of a more casual experience. The reason for this is because these companies want to attract more people. Turns out that the masses can't handle stuff that is challenging, so they cater to them and more people = more money.

 

18 hours ago, Copanele said:

Just to give a proper example ... Demon's Souls vs Dark souls 3/ Sekiro. Any of it works.

While DS3 and Sekiro aren't the easiest of games ( you need an NG+ run at least for each of them and for a newcomer they will absolutely whoop your ass) the trophies are...pretty straightforward. Kill this, gather that , rings can be traded, farm level Y . Plain and easy. Yeah...good luck with that on Demon's Souls. Game is a pain even with a guide ( nobody mentions that Black Phantom Satsuki will destroy your sorry ass unless you have a greatsword). Without a guide...figuring out World Tendencies and Character Tendencies is horrendous. Even Dark Souls 1 was difficult with all the upgrade paths and figuring stuff out.

 

Example 2 : As @Spaz mentioned , God of War . God of War 2018 is a very good game ( I personally love it alot) however trophy wise the hardest trophy was...idk finding all those ravens? Compared to the first God of War and its absurd challenge of the gods, GOW 2018 felt like a walk in the park. Or GoW 3 on Titan Mode , whoowhee that one was a challenge!

 

Demon's Souls I had to be very careful because one slip up could mean ruining an entire playthrough. In Dark Souls you can pay a certain someone a fee to make NPCs not aggressive towards you, for instance the Blacksmith you meet before you go to Anor Londo. But in Demon's Souls, hitting Stockpile Thomas on accident and having him turn aggressive can mean trouble. I actually hit him once by mistake while using the Duping Glitch. Even while following a guide to an absolute T, you still got the extremely low drop rate of the Pure Bladestone. I got extremely lucky and obtained it in less than a hour. But I've heard of people taking over 40 hours to get the drop.

 

God of War 2018 was good story wise but it just didn't provide the same octane thrill the older games had. In the story Kratos is now an old man and perhaps he has slowed down with age. But where was the challenge? The Queen Valkyrie was the best moment in the entire game.

 

16 hours ago, Arcesius said:

Also more mainstream games such as The Witcher III, while admittedly easy, has a trophy for playing through it on the highest difficulty.

 

Death March difficulty is nothing difficult at all if you utilize dodging properly and you're not running out of food. A few encounters gave me some difficulty but nothing overly challenging.

 

Still remains one of my favorite PS4 games.

 

One of the points I wanted to make was games in general are becoming more straightforward and easier over time.

 

There is always the case of indie games being extremely difficult and frustrating, but those kinds of games have always been around. The stuff that Angry Video Game Nerd covered in his old videos years ago was difficult, but some of it was outright sadistic. In more recent times there is stuff on Steam that is certain to give a seasoned gamer a lot of trouble. Many of the indie games we get on PS4 came from Steam.

 

AAA games have notably gotten a lot easier. Killzone: Shadowfall and Knack as I mentioned were time consuming and considered difficult for many. What has happened is there have been too many people who have complained that games with those kinds of trophies should be changed, and I think Sony caved in to that.

 

Days Gone at least has those challenges in the DLC that people have only recently started to finish. But as far as getting the platinum trophy, there is nothing difficult at all as far as what you need to do. Early in the PS3/360 generation, a lot of AAA games made you work a lot harder for the platinum/achievements. Killzone 2 was noted for having a very hard difficulty setting you had to beat that a lot of people struggled with on top of having an online trophy that requires you to be in the top 1 percent of players in any given week. Nowadays you just don't see stuff like that. It's just a shame I didn't get around to that game much sooner.

[Property_Damage]

whoever was in charge of trophies when they first introduced them clearly isnt the head of that department anymore

[XileLerinril]

While I agree overall that games on the PS3 had more difficult lists, I don't think it is entirely based on the games themselves and more the way developers approach trophies. A lot of early ps3 games, and for me at the time 360 games, had really tedious lists. Non stacking difficulty trophies, long grinds for multiplayer, ect. Most of those I would not qualify as hard, they just take forever and a half. Im honestly ok to see these kinds of trophies go, spending 10 hours in multiplayer or 60 does not reflect my skill, just my free time. Likewise if I can beat a game on super hard I should not need to prove I can do it on hard/medium/easy. Devs were not sure what to do with them, so they just kinda made it up. That's why you would get lists with insane numbers requirements. 

 

The other issue that I have not seen brought up is how much the internet has grown since 2006. When achievements and trophies were new YouTube had barely become a thing, Gamefaqs was still the go to place for game guides, and most people were not focusing on trophies. This made information a lot harder to come by. You could not just go watch a video on how to get all the collectibles, or if you could it would be super low quality, just some dude with a video camera and no organization. Trophy guides were not a thing so you had to figure it out on your own, now Powerpyx has a guide out day one for most major games. It makes it a lot simpler when a plat only needs 20-30 hours of dedicated play instead of 60-90 of just faffing about till you figure it out. 

Edited September 20, 2019 by XileLerinril

[AJ_Radio]

18 hours ago, willmill97 said:

Yes I’ve noticed this a lot lately, especially in the last year. You still get some really difficult and rare platinums like Black Ops 4 and Wolfenstein 2. But games these days seem to be less MP focused than on PS3. 

 

PS3 games such as Far Cry 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 1and so on just had ridiculous trophies where you need to boost online kills for what seemed like forever. But I can’t even remember the last game since KZ Shadowfall to have this sort of trophy list. 

 

Im probably in the minority where I like online trophies, providing they’re not like the games in paragraph above, ones where you’re able to just play it out at your own pace are fine with me. I wish games these days would have some more challenging SP trophies and non-tedious MP trophies. For example I see Far Cry Primal has a permadeath mode, but no trophy attached to it, wasted opportunity I think.

 

One big shift I see is the multiplayer requirements being nerfed, or some cases being outright removed.

 

Red Dead Redemption is a game that I consider to be my favorite from the PS3/360 generation. Yet the online requirements even for just the platinum were a bit hectic. Even in it's prime when multiplayer was very active I don't think you would of easily gotten 10 Assists without a boosting partner. Posse Up needs eight people although that was probably fairly easy early in the game's life.

 

Red Dead Redemption 2 just looks grindy. The multiplayer trophies are certainly much easier, the only trophy that may pose a challenge is getting those Gold Metals in the Story Missions. Other than that it's pretty much a 200+ hour adventure, but at least Rockstar made it time consuming so too many people wouldn't get it.

 

16 hours ago, scemopagliaccioh said:

Yes, it's something I definitely noticed during this gen. It's not always connected to the online or lack thereof but it has  its part for sure. As gaming becomes less physical and more digital (for example I only have three physical ps4 games, when the previous gen most of my stuff was physical, since ps3 store lacks a good deal of digital titles) developers are less likely to add trophies that avoid for someone to sell the game used after completion like they did in the past with 10,000 kills trophies, connect 6 months later in Crysis 2 etc, though you still  have some scumbags like the devs. of Dragonball Fighterz,  but it goes beyond online, I remember a Square Enix interview talking exactly how back in the ps2 gen games they made were overly long and cryptic, and how things have changed now, and if you look at Final Fantasy 15 to previous entries you see the difference,  or even Bloodborne,  much more straightforward than Demon's Souls. Games seem to have taken a shift with them being more "accessible" and shorter, as the medium needs to account the increase of people interested (and the money they give in).

 

I don't think it has to do with physical going away and digital becoming more commonplace. It's more to do with everything being more streamlined. I think most of everyone will agree that that is a good thing, myself included. But I have definitely noticed you don't have to put in nearly as much work for a lot of AAA games anymore as you had to do back in the day on the PlayStation 2 or early in the Playstation 3 era.

 

That's not me singling out trophy hunters/achievement hunters. Just gamers in general being a big more casual and less tolerance for stuff that is overly cryptic and long. I struggled with a lot of PS2 games back when I went to high school and college. Nowadays with the late PS4 era and probably the PS5 generation, I don't have to try hard at all to beat the story in a lot of AAA games.

 

Probably more to do with me having 25+ years of gaming experience and being in my 30s. But it's definitely an interesting topic to think about.

 

16 hours ago, fbdbh said:

Most PS3 games with "rare" or "uncommon" platinums are not that hard or challenging, at least not intrinsically, but more like because of lack of stable framerate and quality of life features.

 

But yes, I kind of feel it too. Most "rare" or "uncommon" platinums on PS4 are just time consuming (any challenge can be overcome with grinding). I can't find a really nice sweet spot, where the platinum requires a fair deal of skill, a little bit of completionism, but nothing too insane. Something like Uncharted 2 or Resident Evil: Revelations. A chill playthrough on the first weekend + a really intense cleanup on the second (or a really intense playthrough + chill cleanup) is a good formula, but nothing hits it quite right. I used to do this with all Uncharteds and Ratchets, and it was just right.

 

A lot of PS3 games were like this. Nothing too hard but you had to play with the difficulty turned up if you wanted those platinums. Most AAA games required you to beat them on a certain difficulty setting, find all collectibles and maybe have a trophy for beating a section without dying.

 

In the past year much of that has been removed. Assassins Creed Odyssey from what I've seen in videos looks like the easiest Assassins Creed game in the franchise. It's just time consuming. A big reason why it's so popular is much of the challenge has been removed to make way for a Game of Thrones like experience.

Edited September 20, 2019 by Spaz

[AJ_Radio]

17 hours ago, Upendo_Vitani said:

A lot of people were complaining that trophy requirements were too tough or stupid or whatever on a lot of games. Developers making AAA games seemed to have actually listened to that and made some actually really good trophy lists. And now we get people complaining they're too easy. Proof positive you cannot please everyone. There is always going to be games that will satisfy whatever difficulty you are looking for; you don't always have to play AAA games. There are so many unique indie or small games there's really no reason to be afraid of where this generation is going in terms of challenge. 

 

Games were more difficult years ago not necessarily by their trophy lists but the way they were designed. Never before have AAA games been so easy and accessible, and the reason for that is the masses can't be bothered with something that is challenging. Marvel's Spider-Man has one of the easiest trophy lists for a AAA game and all the praise that game has gotten is a reflection of that. Then again it's Spider-Man, the most famous and popular superhero from the Marvel universe, so having millions of copies sold in the first week isn't a big surprise.

 

Personally I like to play a big variety, that's what keeps me going. I feel the balance of having somewhat of a challenge while not being too overwhelming has been lost in a number of AAA games. A lot of indie games have taken to both extremes. Extremely easy with no effort needed as is the case with Ratalaika Games. Or extremely difficult with countless hours of practice, such as Bleed, Super Meat Boy and Crypt of the Necrodancer.

 

17 hours ago, starcrunch061 said:

I don't know if I buy it. Certainly, there were hard trophy lists on the PS3 (I'm thinking of music games like Guitar Hero: Smash Hits), but many of the lists were just awful grindfests. There's not a single difficult thing to do in White Knight Chronicles, but you likely won't get the plat, since you'll be doing that same, simple action for 500+ hours. Star Ocean 4 was another one like this (difficulty-wise, Star Ocean 3 knocks Star Ocean 4 on its tail, but the plat is significantly "easier", because it takes much less time).

 

That was probably the case back in 2008 - 2010. Trophy lists in general became a bit easier after that although many games still required you to beat them on higher difficulty settings.

 

These games still have nothing on Runescape and Maple Story, two MMOs I sunk thousands of hours into over the course of several years. A skill such as Fishing I easily sunk hundreds of hours into, and I still didn't get level 99 in it. But that's a completely different thing from trophy hunting, so I won't go any further in that.

 

17 hours ago, starcrunch061 said:

As far as actual game challenge, again, I don't know about that, either. One thing, though, that has been lost, is the sort of "AA" game. We have AAA, and we have indies, but in the PS3 era, we had a lot of middle ground. Games like Enslaved, or El Shaddai, or Spec Ops, etc., were decently-budgeted games that also had a modicum of difficulty (some more than others. Those games just don't exist in this generation, making it easier to lump everything that isn't indie into the AAA category, and that category was easy on the PS3 as well. 

 

Unfortunately, the indies of this generation are so small budget that they can't possibly provide the same level of technical sophistication as the titles I've mentioned, so while the challenge is still there, a lot of people might not find it, because they just aren't interested enough in playing a game that looks like it came from the SNES era.

 

You can throw in Dante's Inferno, Vanquish, Splatterhouse, Shadows of the Damned, The Saboteur and numerous others on that list. Not quite as big budget and massive as the Battlefields, Killzones, Call of Dutys, Assassins Creed or Uncharteds were. But still good games in their own right and playable for most.

 

The Tony Hawk Pro Skater games were also games that reached middle ground. The Playstation 2 generation had the best variety when it came to AA - AAA stuff. Not just some massive bloated multi million dollar AAA game and not some shitty indie game with a retro 1980s - 1990s look to it that some 20 something year old guy made in his garage over the weekend. It's either massive budget generated by companies like Ubisoft, or very low budget indie stuff that Ratalaika Games is probably going to try to publish into a shitty trophy list. When you look at what the PS2 and early PS3 gave us you had more of a selection of good AA titles. Now there's virtually nothing as it's basically everything but inbetween.

 

I noticed recently we've been getting stuff that is more akin to Baldur's Gate - Diablo 2 style ported over to the PS4 from Steam. At least there's that, because I'm sort of tired of playing these retro indie low budget games.

Edited September 20, 2019 by Spaz

[Spinosaurus Rex]

Another thread about how nowadays trophy hunting sucks. But at least it's not about Ratalaika Games stuff, so I guess I can reply.

 

While I cannot disagree with topic argument (and it's just easily seen by looking at trophy percentages of most popular titles on PS3, sitting at under 20% rarity), I'm not ashamed to say I don't miss these times. As many people here have answered, majority of the AAA PS3 platinums were indeed tedious and grindy.

 

Missing the fact there's no need to beat the game on the highest difficulty isn't required for plat is ridiculous in my opinion, because majority of AAA titles just multiplied enemy damage + health and called it a day. I doubt if they even tested the games on these difficulty levels. And I don't feel like playing on higher difficulty makes you discover new content of the game.

 

A lot depends on how the game is enjoyable. My few examples (which has been mentioned here too): I could spend more time to get a plat in Marvel's Spider-Man, but it's wasn't an issue because I bought all of the DLC. On the other hand, I'm happy there was no more tasks to do in God of War (2018) as I was sick and tired of this game (mostly of side content). Assassin's Creed Odyssey doesn't even net a trophy for higher difficulty which actually saddens me because the fight is a lot of fun. Witcher 3 could have a great trophy for doing all possible sidequests, yet they included a trophy for 50 headshots with a crossbow in a game where you barely use this weapon to attack and the hit detection is broken.

 

Another thing I'm happy that changed from PS3 era is that indie games can have a platinum, which is a way more important change for me because I prefer indie games over most AAA titles. I couldn't imagine crushing Super Meat Boy (or even better, stuff like Crypt of The Necrodancer) for a mere 285-315 points and no plat. There's a plenty hard games that are close to 10/10 in difficulty yet they don't have a platinum though.

 

To sum it up: easier (less tedious?) platinums nowadays don't hurt me, because I prefer to play 3 games and have 3 more common, sitting at 30-40%, albeit satisfying platinums than 1 rarer 10-20% plat where I had to press myself because of grind/fake difficulty/tediousness.

 

On 19.09.2019 at 4:43 PM, Evil_Joker88 said:

Some games just had ridiculously high requirements like being best player in ranked matches in a week/at all, winning 10 ranked matches in a row ? But with years to pass by games and trophies became easier in total. Compare God of War PS3 Plat vs God of War PS4 Plat. Demon's Souls/Dark Souls vs Bloodborne. But of course there are still hard games like SMB, Wolfenstein II, Crypt of the Necrodancer so if you want a high challenge you can find it. But the majority goes the easy/easier way Myself included. I hardly start a game higher than 5/10 difficulty nowadays. 3 years ago i started whatever i wanted

 

I'm curious why so many people here compare GOW 3 plat to GOW (2018) plat. GOW 3 has been rated 3/10 in difficulty https://psnprofiles.com/guide/2007-god-of-war-iii-trophy-guide, less than GOW (2018) (4/10) and the latter also takes roughly over 2 times more time to platinum. Yet many here praise GOW 3 plat for being harder to get. Was there an exploit or something?

Edited September 22, 2019 by Spinosaurus Rex

[Evil_Joker88]

1 hour ago, Spinosaurus Rex said:

I'm curious why so many people here compare GOW 3 plat to GOW (2018) plat. GOW 3 has been rated 3/10 in difficulty https://psnprofiles.com/guide/2007-god-of-war-iii-trophy-guide, less than GOW (2018) (4/10) and the latter also takes roughly over 2 times more time to platinum. Yet many here praise GOW 3 plat for being harder to get. Was there an exploit or something?

 

I didn't mention GoW3 but God of War PS3 (the ps2 game which was ported to ps3) Yes for GoW3 there is an exploit you can use to max out Kratos and that made the Titan Playthrough easy (in ps4 you can skip the majority of a playthrough thx to that).

 

But my point is actually that in God of War 1 you have to beat the Challenges of the Gods (10 different arenas with high time constraint and no save in between). That's why this game is considered 5/10 on the guide here on this website (https://psnprofiles.com/guide/1415-god-of-war-trophy-guide). So beating the game. Beating the game isn't the main issue

[Spinosaurus Rex]

3 hours ago, Evil_Joker88 said:

 

I didn't mention GoW3 but God of War PS3 (the ps2 game which was ported to ps3) Yes for GoW3 there is an exploit you can use to max out Kratos and that made the Titan Playthrough easy (in ps4 you can skip the majority of a playthrough thx to that).

 

But my point is actually that in God of War 1 you have to beat the Challenges of the Gods (10 different arenas with high time constraint and no save in between). That's why this game is considered 5/10 on the guide here on this website (https://psnprofiles.com/guide/1415-god-of-war-trophy-guide). So beating the game. Beating the game isn't the main issue

 

So I think I quoted the wrong person. Sorry about that. God Of War (PS3 & Vita) is indeed bi*ch to plat, but it's a bit odd case here because it's a game designed for PS2 where trophies were nonexistent and ported to PS3 (so trophy list is designed in PS3 era). And also game can be beat on any difficulty (thread is about nowaday games not requiring playthrough on higher difficulty for a plat).

 

GOW (2018) also has Trials of the Muspelheim and you also must beat them for a plat, but are much easier than GOW's CoTG. It's game design difference here, not trophy list.

Edited September 22, 2019 by Spinosaurus Rex

[AJ_Radio]

13 hours ago, Spinosaurus Rex said:

Another thing I'm happy that changed from PS3 era is that indie games can have a platinum, which is a way more important change for me because I prefer indie games over most AAA titles. I couldn't imagine crushing Super Meat Boy (or even better, stuff like Crypt of The Necrodancer) for a mere 285-315 points and no plat. There's a plenty hard games that are close to 10/10 in difficulty yet they don't have a platinum though.

 

I would agree with you. But these days with all the shit entering PSN there is a ton of crap, particularly indies that serve no real intention than to get your money. Shovelware that some lone guy out there shoved out in one weekend to see if anyone would buy his crap product. 

 

You would never see something like Little Adventure on the Prairie released on the PS3 during its heyday. There was a standard, but with the PS4 there’s no standard. Anything can have a platinum, even if it’s less than one minute like Slyde. Most people don’t care, but I don’t see the leaderboards worth anything if guys like Hakoom just stack a bunch of shit among the few good games they have here and there. There’s no possible way to compete unless you have a team account and you’re willing to stack a ton of shit. 

 

There are good indie games and hidden gems worth getting. But it’s getting harder to wade through all the crap that keeps getting released on PSN. 

[EcoShifter]

On 9/19/2019 at 9:32 PM, XileLerinril said:

The other issue that I have not seen brought up is how much the internet has grown since 2006. When achievements and trophies were new YouTube had barely become a thing, Gamefaqs was still the go to place for game guides, and most people were not focusing on trophies. This made information a lot harder to come by. You could not just go watch a video on how to get all the collectibles, or if you could it would be super low quality, just some dude with a video camera and no organization. Trophy guides were not a thing so you had to figure it out on your own, now Powerpyx has a guide out day one for most major games. It makes it a lot simpler when a plat only needs 20-30 hours of dedicated play instead of 60-90 of just faffing about till you figure it out. 

 

I have and will continue to base platinum trophy difficulty on how challenging (and time consuming) it is by intentional requirement design. Exploits (bugs, glitches, etc), does not change the default difficulty of a platinum, it just blatantly publicizes a cheap method someone found to other players for them to use and provide them an abnormally easier experience in getting a trophy using it. Difficulty is only affected when it's an one-hundred percent legit method. Any kind of unintentional/illegitimate exploits that makes getting the platinum easier should be discussed/mentioned in an entirely isolated post, line, or note. I've seen both people and websites do that, and it's best and proper way to do it. An example of a game, Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed has undoubtedly a very difficult platinum (which I have), but it can be made much easier due to a bug caused by the DLC that affects the difficulty; the bug doesn't change the fact that the platinum is naturally and intentionally very challenging.

 

I primarily obtain trophies my way. It defeats the purpose buying/receiving games and constantly looking at guides and methods from other people in order to get passed and/or obtain task/trophies. The whole point in the (trophy hunting) process is to use your own skill to get pass/conquer the challenge(s). Personally, I make an exception for collectibles.. in mostly-non-collectathon games, because they usually seem tacked on and/or poorly implemented. At least in collectathons, the actual premise of them is to collect various items, and as a result they're primarily well and fairly placed.

Edited September 23, 2019 by EcoShifter

[XileLerinril]

13 minutes ago, EcoShifter said:

 

I have and will continue to base platinum trophy difficulty on how challenging (and time consuming) it is by intentional requirement design. Exploits (bugs, glitches, etc), does not change the default difficulty of a platinum, it just blatantly publicizes a cheap method someone found to other players for them to use and provide them an abnormally easier experience in getting a trophy using it. Difficulty is only affected when it's an one-hundred percent legit method. Any kind of unintentional/illegitimate exploits that makes getting the platinum easier should be discussed/mentioned in an entirely isolated post, line, or note. I've seen both people and websites do that, and it's best and proper way to do it. An example of a game, Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed has undoubtedly a very difficult platinum (which I have), but it can be made much easier due to a bug caused by the DLC that affects the difficulty; the bug doesn't change the fact that the platinum is naturally and intentionally very challenging.

I never said anything about bugs and glitches, so I dunno why you are bringing it up while quoting me. What I said was that there was more information available, so people are able to be more efficient.

 

15 minutes ago, EcoShifter said:

I primarily obtain trophies with my own skill and line of thinking. It defeats the purpose buying/receiving games and constantly looking at guides and methods from other people in order to get passed and/or obtain task/trophies. The whole point in the (trophy hunting) process is to use your own skill to get pass/conquer the challenge(s). Personally, I only make an exception for collectibles.. in mostly-non-collectathon games, because they usually seem tacked on and/or poorly implemented. At least in collectathons, the actual premise of them is to collect various items, and as a result they're primarily well and fairly placed.

  That's great I'm happy for you, but you sound pretty arrogant deciding for all of us what the "whole point in the trophy hunting process is" 

[EcoShifter]

1 hour ago, XileLerinril said:

I never said anything about bugs and glitches, so I dunno why you are bringing it up while quoting me. What I said was that there was more information available, so people are able to be more efficient.

 

  That's great I'm happy for you, but you sound pretty arrogant deciding for all of us what the "whole point in the trophy hunting process is" 

 

I never said you said anything about bugs and glitches, it was clearly an add on (both to your post, as well as the very thread itself that in part explicitly discusses trophy hunters and how they've in multiple ways changed), considering it obviously relates to "online guides" (as in typically being listed on them to help THs get platinums more easily), a subject you brought up/mentioned. That said, I originally had a section mentioning guides in my post but omitted it because I didn't know how to implement it, and I know what you said.

 

Has nothing to do with arrogance whatsoever, it's a fact. You clearly misunderstood the context and point. Whether you get them out of it being fun or your hobby, neither of which is relevant to the point I was making, or anything similar, the reality is that they are locked and need to be earned. There are only two options: you can either earn them with your skill.. or with help (excluding hacking). Trophies by objective design are meant to be earned by the skill of the person going for it. PSN trophies are no exception, at all.

Edited September 23, 2019 by EcoShifter

[XileLerinril]

1 hour ago, EcoShifter said:

 

I never said you said anything about bugs and glitches, it was clearly an add on (both to your post, as well as the very thread itself that in part explicitly discusses trophy hunters and how they've in multiple ways changed), considering it obviously relates to "online guides" (as in typically being listed on them to help THs get platinums more easily), a subject you brought up/mentioned. That said, I originally had a section mentioning guides in my post but omitted it because I didn't know how to implement it, and I know what you said.

 

Has nothing to do with arrogance whatsoever, it's a fact. You clearly misunderstood the context and point. Whether you get them out of it being fun or your hobby, neither of which is relevant to the point I was making, or anything similar, the reality is that they are locked and need to be earned. There are only two options: you can either earn them with your skill.. or with help (excluding hacking). Trophies by objective design are meant to be earned by the skill of the person going for it. PSN trophies are no exception, at all.

See but that's not what you said. What you said was: It defeats the purpose buying/receiving games and constantly looking at guides and methods from other people in order to get passed and/or obtain task/trophies. The whole point in the (trophy hunting) process is to use your own skill to get pass/conquer the challenge(s). You also said: Any kind of unintentional/illegitimate exploits that makes getting the platinum easier should be discussed/mentioned in an entirely isolated post, line, or note. I've seen both people and websites do that, and it's best and proper way to do it. That has nothing to do with people earning trophies and everything to do with you stating as an objective fact that the way you view trophy hunting is the only correct way, with the implication that people should not use guides because it "defeats the purpose". That is an opinion, to act like it is a fact is arrogance, hence why I called you arrogant. I'm pretty sure you are just trolling though, so I think I will leave this conversation from here on out.