The End of an Obsessive PSN Trophy Completionist

[fresquinho]

Edited May 5, 2021 by fresquinho

[BlackSquirrell1]

Even though you've lived it, try to give advice to others to just enjoy their games, people still have to go through burn-out before they decide to go back to what gaming is supposed to be. Enjoying a game and having fun.  I was like you until I just decided to start over again and play whatever it out there, good or not.

[fresquinho]

8 minutes ago, BlackSquirrell1 said:

Even though you've lived it, try to give advice to others to just enjoy their games, people still have to go through burn-out before they decide to go back to what gaming is supposed to be. Enjoying a game and having fun.  I was like you until I just decided to start over again and play whatever it out there, good or not.

 

Yes man you are damn right, I will give this advice to everyone, I am currently playing Rise of The Tomb Raider which is a game that I love, it sucks that there is to much collectibles but I can deal with that that's no problem for me, but I will NEVER avoid games because I wanna be a perfectionist. Thanks for reading all that man!

[Suffocation1982]

Good luck in the future gaming choices.

Edited November 4, 2019 by Suffocationgr

[fresquinho]

1 hour ago, Suffocationgr said:

Obsesive completionist of Sound Shapes 5 ! times ? For what reason ? To "climb" up in the leaderboards ? Hannah Montana and many easy games 2-3 times(Fragments, My Name Is Mayo etc) ?

 

When I first read your topic's title, thought that u have a list with good games only and 2-3 easy ones.  I am not saying that u dont have some good and hard, time consuming games, but cant understand why to spend your gaming time on the titles above.

 

And I will put a question , a gamer with 1 platinum on Mortal Kombat 9 for example deserves less reputation that someone with 100 Sound Shapes or Mr. Massagy ? 

 

For me the 2nd category is not even a gamer. 

 

Had a good laugh watching your PSNProfile troll, nice one! lmfao. 

 

1 hour ago, Suffocationgr said:

Good luck in the future gaming choices.

 

I have never said I had 2 or 3 easy games. I have what I have, I clearly have more triple AAA platinums than crap games. Who are you to judge me uh you lvl 1 nobody who pretends to have another account? Shut your a** up. 

LMFAO Now you deleted your little butthurted post, not replying to any more of this loser posts, focusing on positive comments only. 

See everyone? This is how you catch guys like this running their mouth thinking they know everything and can judge others, incredible how you only cared to "expose" some of my bad games and ignored the rest. Your disgusting comment and then telling me that your "friends" are all laughing to my post after everything I just expressed shows me of how much of a horrible "human being" you really are, gosh that's why I love animals.

I want positive and good energy not your bad vibes bro. 

Thank GOD this doesn't get deleted ^^

 

Thanks for reading it anyway  

 

Edited November 5, 2019 by fresquinho

[DaivRules]

Thanks for sharing your story! Hope you’re able to keep a positive perspective as you game in the future!

[fresquinho]

3 minutes ago, DaivRules said:

Thanks for sharing your story! Hope you’re able to keep a positive perspective as you game in the future!

 

Thank you bro, I really appreciate the time you took to read it all!: 

Edited November 4, 2019 by fresquinho

[Beyondthegrave07]

Yeah, I remember when the trophy bug bit me. I'd try to plat games as many games as possible. Then, there was a time I was grinding for trophies and realized that I wasn't having fun. 

 

Once I realized that, I stopped caring about trophies as much. That's when I realized fun should be your #1 priority.

 

Good to see you realizing this fact too. It's possible to hunt trophies and have fun. You just have to find a good balance.

[fresquinho]

2 minutes ago, Beyondthegrave07 said:

Yeah, I remember when the trophy bug bit me. I'd try to plat games as many games as possible. Then, there was a time I was grinding for trophies and realized that I wasn't having fun. 

 

Once I realized that, I stopped caring about trophies as much. That's when I realized fun should be your #1 priority.

 

Good to see you realizing this fact too. It's possible to hunt trophies and have fun. You just have to find a good balance.

 

Yes it is! I do remember how fun it was hunting trophies AND having fun at the same time! 

Like I said I'm proud I worked very hard on my account but from now on my main focus will be HAVING FUN and not TROPHIES TROPHIES TROPHIES. I can achieve them after I complete the games, I don't need to be looking at guides like a maniac anymore. I'm done with it. 

[X_Wizi_X]

I know what you're feeling. I'm a completionist gamer too and going for 100% everytime is not easy. I'm not even talking about how hard a game is, I played a lot of games that are considered "hard" or too grind to be considered fun, but you know what? Everytime I enjoyed them (singleplayer speaking).

 

I'm talking about being sure everytime a server is working, organize a boost, if a dlc is still available and, if not, how or in which store is still available. Plus I like to play consecutive series as you can see in my profile, but that's my personal taste.

 

Good luck with everything mate.

Edited November 5, 2019 by X_Wizi_X

[fresquinho]

5 minutes ago, X_Wizi_X said:

I know what you're feeling. I'm a completionist gamer too and going for 100% everytime is not easy. I'm not even talking about how hard a game is, I played a lot of games that are considered "hard" or too grind to be considered fun, but you know what? Everytime I enjoyed them (singleplayer speaking).

 

I'm talking about being sure everytime a server is working, organize a boost, if a dlc is still available and, if not, how or in which store is still available. Plus I like to strike series as you can see in my profile, but that's my personal taste.

 

Good luck with everything mate.

 

Thank your for sharing your opinion! 

Dude I saw your profile and it's so cool! But tell me how in the blue hell could you platinum 18 AC games in a row without getting bored?!?!?

 

That's some good dedication man! I love it! I'll add you on PSN, but yeah as for me I'm completely done with being a completionist in EVERYTHING. I respect you sir!

 

 

 

[X_Wizi_X]

9 hours ago, fresquinho said:

 

Thank your for sharing your opinion! 

Dude I saw your profile and it's so cool! But tell me how in the blue hell could you platinum 18 AC games in a row without getting bored?!?!?

 

That's some good dedication man! I love it! I'll add you on PSN, but yeah as for me I'm completely done with being a completionist in EVERYTHING. I respect you sir!

 

 

 

 

That's one of those "less fun" things in playing consecutive series and I still have to start God of War   and you perfectly know how it feels when a new trophy set pop ups 4 or 5 years later in a completed series, screwing everything I did till that point lol.

 

Thanks bro  

Edited November 5, 2019 by X_Wizi_X

[Dauersack]

I can somewhat relate to that, though I was not as extreme in my behavior and I made myself the promise of avoiding almost no games no matter how difficult or grindy if I thought I'd enjoy them somewhat. My completionist goal basically ended with Outlast 2, a truly shitty platinum that made me miserable as hell and lead to me giving up on completing it. I wasn't at 100% for quite a while already thanks to Super Meat Boy, but not even that game I casually started despite its 10/10 difficulty being a likely death sentence to my 100% got me this mad, I stopped going for it many times but always came back and I was pretty close to getting it, but Outlast 2 was too miserable so I stopped putting in much effort to complete stuff. I did some annoying crap for the 100%, I faced 2 insanely boring grinds for weeks on end to get the platinums of Orcs Must Die Unchained and Monster Hunter World, completed bs difficulty modes like Uncharted 1 brutal or TLOU grounded and fought through buggy trophy lists like with The Forest to get a game completed, it was certainly annoying and pretty tedious at times and frustrated me a lot, but I always felt it was worth it to see that S rank in the end. Gotta say now with the current state of my profile, it feels like going the extra mile with some of these games was a wasted effort.

 

Basically I had the one thing happen to me you were afraid of because I was not careful with my game selection, the only games I ruled out were games with impossible plats due to server shutdowns, anything else was fair game, and look what that got me. Gotta say I am a little less stressed now because I do not really think about trophies that much anymore until I am through with the game, a few exceptions aside to save some time and avoid backtracking, but I wanna puke every time I look at my profile now and see the varying states of completion above Outlast 2, the steaming pile that proved too much to endure further. I'd say I am having a more healthy approach to trophies now and avoid a lot of frustration because I decide that going for a challenging plat is just worth doing anymore, but I kinda wish I still was close to 100% because the satisfaction and feeling of accomplishment was just much higher before.

 

Good for you getting it under control though, what you described sounded worse than throwing up in your mouth a little after checking your profile occasionally, if it compromises your fun for gaming to that extend it is not worth it anymore, though you always could have used a second account for the games you deemed too risky for your 100% profile, quite a few completionists do this to play it safer.

[Baker]

I’ve had the same feeling many times. But I can’t help myself, I want 100% in all games I play. Ofcourse I just play games that I like, I don’t care if it’s hard, easy, short or long. But sometimes I really don’t want to do some trophies. For example: I recently played Deponia Doomsday. Easy platinum but there is a trophy for which I need to follow a 2 hour video guide. I hate following videoguides. So it currently sits at a B rank which just hurts my eyes. So eventually I’ll force myself to play it, even though I really don’t want to. Anyway, good luck!

[fresquinho]

14 minutes ago, X_Wizi_X said:

 

That's one of those "less fun" things in striking series and I still have to start God of War   and you perfectly know how it feels when a new trophy set pop ups 4 or 5 years later in a striked series, screwing everything I did till that point lol.

 

Thanks bro  

 

Damn I can't imagine... I think that's one of the few things I would not be able to do... Your gaming profile looks very amazing, congratulations!!!

 

Edited November 5, 2019 by fresquinho

[fresquinho]

23 minutes ago, Nighcisama said:

I can somewhat relate to that, though I was not as extreme in my behavior and I made myself the promise of avoiding almost no games no matter how difficult or grindy if I thought I'd enjoy them somewhat. My completionist goal basically ended with Outlast 2, a truly shitty platinum that made me miserable as hell and lead to me giving up on completing it. I wasn't at 100% for quite a while already thanks to Super Meat Boy, but not even that game I casually started despite its 10/10 difficulty being a likely death sentence to my 100% got me this mad, I stopped going for it many times but always came back and I was pretty close to getting it, but Outlast 2 was too miserable so I stopped putting in much effort to complete stuff. I did some annoying crap for the 100%, I faced 2 insanely boring grinds for weeks on end to get the platinums of Orcs Must Die Unchained and Monster Hunter World, completed bs difficulty modes like Uncharted 1 brutal or TLOU grounded and fought through buggy trophy lists like with The Forest to get a game completed, it was certainly annoying and pretty tedious at times and frustrated me a lot, but I always felt it was worth it to see that S rank in the end. Gotta say now with the current state of my profile, it feels like going the extra mile with some of these games was a wasted effort.

 

Basically I had the one thing happen to me you were afraid of because I was not careful with my game selection, the only games I ruled out were games with impossible plats due to server shutdowns, anything else was fair game, and look what that got me. Gotta say I am a little less stressed now because I do not really think about trophies that much anymore until I am through with the game, a few exceptions aside to save some time and avoid backtracking, but I wanna puke every time I look at my profile now and see the varying states of completion above Outlast 2, the steaming pile that proved too much to endure further. I'd say I am having a more healthy approach to trophies now and avoid a lot of frustration because I decide that going for a challenging plat is just worth doing anymore, but I kinda wish I still was close to 100% because the satisfaction and feeling of accomplishment was just much higher before.

 

Good for you getting it under control though, what you described sounded worse than throwing up in your mouth a little after checking your profile occasionally, if it compromises your fun for gaming to that extend it is not worth it anymore, though you always could have used a second account for the games you deemed too risky for your 100% profile, quite a few completionists do this to play it safer.

 

Oh man I can really understand what you are saying about feeling angry looking at our own profiles and seeing games not at 100%!

I never went for those 10/10 platinums on this generation because I was already feeling that I shouldn't even try a 7/10 to not screw my completion rate, so a 10/10 platinum I would never even think of doing it. But from now one I say F*** IT! If I see a game that I truly love being released and I see that the difficulty will be a 10/10 or 9/10 I will still go for it. I'm tired of ruining my experience as a gamer. Games should be fun, they should NOT STRESS ME anymore!

 

Your profile looks great buddy and it's always a pleasure to meet completionists! I know I'm still a completionist deep inside, but I will not be to the extreme I was! 

 

Thanks so much for leaving your thoughts!

 

22 minutes ago, BB-BakkerJ said:

I’ve had the same feeling many times. But I can’t help myself, I want 100% in all games I play. Ofcourse I just play games that I like, I don’t care if it’s hard, easy, short or long. But sometimes I really don’t want to do some trophies. For example: I recently played Deponia Doomsday. Easy platinum but there is a trophy for which I need to follow a 2 hour video guide. I hate following videoguides. So it currently sits at a B rank which just hurts my eyes. So eventually I’ll force myself to play it, even though I really don’t want to. Anyway, good luck!

 

Damn those horrifying video guides man... I completely know your struggle! It's terrible! Good luck with that man I hope you finish it thank your for sharing your feelings man! I really appreciate it!

 

Edited November 5, 2019 by fresquinho

[black__bunny]

Thanks for sharing your story. It may not look like I try to be a completionist from my profile, but your previous approach to being a completionist is something I feel like I relate to in the way that I struggle with looking at guides, checking servers, trophy difficulty before I think about playing a game. It has started to feel like gaming is more of a chore, always trying to finish a game to 100% and always working through my back log. It shouldn't be work. I only play games I like, but the approach to trophies is starting to kill what should be a fun.

 

I used to feel ok about going for 100% as I was able to keep up with server closures and didn't end up doing too many grinds together. But some life circumstances reduced the time I could commit to games with server closures announced, I have ended up with quite a few unobtainable games on my list which really started to bother me. Most recently, Uncharted 3 really burnt me out trying to grind so much for so many trophies. And I still couldn't finish it. Most of the time, trying to complete games through boosts, means I have to be up at insane hours due to my timezone being so far away from everyone else's. 

 

I am currently trying to change my perspective. I don't want to care about completing every game to 100% anymore. I want to play games just because its fun and if I can 100%, great! If not, I want to move on to the next game and not be bothered. I want to be more selective about what I want to play now that I don't have much time as there is no way I could find time to play every game I want if I'm playing to 100%. That being said, I enjoy trophy hunting. I feel like I explore more of a game and certain elements when trophy hunting is a positive as its a rewarding outcome besides getting that trophy. 

 

Currently i'm playing Castlevania. I don't want to play the 2nd DLC because of the time/difficulty it would take to finish what really isnt a great addition to the game. But I also want 100%. I want to be able to let that go and move on to another game i'll enjoy playing. 

 

On a side note, a platinum count of 200 is a great feat by any means. I don't know if I could ever reach that no mater what games I was playing. Well done.

[Arcesius]

10 hours ago, fresquinho said:

Some of you may think this is all stupid and a total joke but ONLY TRUE COMPLETIONISTS will understand this pain and this unhealthy obsession that affected my passion for games and it's ruining my love for trophy hunting. 
I obviously will not stop trophy hunting, I love it and I think trophies/achievements are a good thing because it extends gameplay and can show us very interesting things that we would not see if we just played the games without an "objective". To me trophy hunting is exactly that, an OBJECTIVE that I need to reach and what motivates me to keep playing the game. I like the idea but what I don't like, actually I hate is the fact that I turned that beautiful objective into a pure stressing anxious and not enjoyable thing. I will never avoid games again that I want to try just because I like to 100% everything.

PLEASE, if you're on a same situation as me rethink what you are doing, I'm not judging you if you like to go for 100% in everything, I freaking love to do it too, but it will come a time where you will feel tired of it and you will gonna start thinking about all the fun you didn't have by avoiding some games that are probably awesome and you never touched them because you are all about being a perfectionist. 

 

First of all, I think it is fantastic that you realized that you weren't having fun anymore and, more importantly, that you decided to actively do something to fix that. Congrats, I know that is not necessarily an easy thing to do

 

Personally, I never really "decided" to go for a 100% account, it is just the way I have always played games. The most important factor in playing videogames? Well, if you ask me, having fun doing so. As long as going for 100% is still an enjoyable and fun experience, I will continue to strive for that number. If I wake up some day and notice that I hate doing this... Then I hope that I will be able to do what you did. 

 

However, when I got a PS4 and started tracking trophies, I swore myself that i would never play games I am not necessarily interested in playing, and conversely that I would never skip games I want to play because of their lenght or challenge. I have currently one open game on my profile that might prevent me from ever getting 100% again (guess which one ?), but I would have been a hypocrite if I had decided to skip it. 

And sure, there have been trophies that were not necessarily a joy to get (not many though... some grinds, especially Red Dead Online or some boring gameplay, such as the silent playthrough in Oxenfree or getting all hints in The Last Guardian), but I can count those trophies with one hand. 

 

In any case, I hope you find back to enjoying playing games, and again congrats for getting out of the negativity!  

Edited November 5, 2019 by Arcesius

[KN_Kirai]

Good luck in your future gaming, I am somewhat of a completionist myself and I understand the feeling of wanting to keep the 100% streak, so much that it makes you not play hard games because you probably won't be able to complete them. But in the end, I also think that if you realise that you're only playing to keep your profile complete and not to have fun as the main objective, it's better to stop and think about what you really want to do with your gaming experience, but to each their own.

 

There is one thing that I don't know if most people don't know about, or simply don't care about and never mention: even I found out about it a little while ago, I'm talking about blank accounts. These are like secondary account, but are not linked to any PSN account, and you can earn trophies on them without syncing as soon as you do, so you can play the game and log in with your own account to add the trophies to it afterwards.

 

What it lets you do is play the games you want without worrying about "staining" your profile with a game you won't be able to complete, and if you do manage to 100% it, its trophies are not lost as they would be with a secondary account, and can be added to the main account.

 

I've used this method sometimes when I wasn't sure if I was going to enjoy the game I was playing, and didn't want to risk leaving it uncompleted: some people would say it's stupid since it's all about keeping a number as close as possible to 100%, but there are people that care about their own completion, so I say, since there is this method, might as well use it. Everyone is free to do as they please though, of course.

 

One issue with this system is that if you don't complete it and don't want to add it to your main account, no one will be able to see that you played that game, if you care about that; the other issue is that, of course, it doesn't work for online trophies, as you need to be logged in to your account.

 

Sorry for the long post, especially if you knew about this already and had to read a paragraph of things that don't add very much to your knowledge, or didn't know but you won't be using it anyway. I thought I'd put it out there just in case, if it may help.

[Lonemankane]

Good on you for taking the step to stopping yourself from letting the hunt stop you from enjoying games. To many hunters do that and I was in the same place as you but for me now I don't care I only pick up the games I like and if I can't get the plat I am fine with it, I just keep going and plat other games and I only plat the games I really like.

[XxIsa-GxX]

Uncharted 4 is a must play game. If hunting takes control of you, then you'll be missing a valuable treasure, even more valuable than El Dorado. I'm also a completionist, can feel the struggle but letting hunting take over someone stresses out the person and prevents from enjoying the games at all (even more anxiety/stress on multiplayer games because of servers and such). Heck if I let that take over me, I wouldn't have a chance to try out different sports, Injustice and other games (but still trying to keep the percentage as high as I can).

[AJ_Radio]

We both are sitting around the same trophy count. Both of us have a similar completion percentage and we’re only 20 games apart from each other. 

 

The big difference is you started much earlier than I did. I caved in to PlayStation after I grew sick of the bullshit from Microsoft. I ‘trophy whored’ for a while then gave up my desire to play easy stuff just for the trophies two years ago. You played a lot of the harder and more time consuming games circa 2009 - 2013, when PlayStation still maintained a standard for trophies.

 

I have a huge amount of patience as one might note if they look at my progress at Super Meat Boy. Vanquish I will knock out at some point, get all those challenges done even if it takes me 10 - 20 hours. Same with Woah Dave! and a couple other hard games. 

 

I’m happy with 95 - 97 percent completion rate, but anymore than that is just overdoing it for me. 

 

Even I have my limits, and there are games I have no intention to fully finish, mostly due to shitty online. 

 

I regularly take a day or two break from trophies. I watch something or play a game without trophies. Makes me feel better if a game I’m working towards is frustrating or is time consuming. 

Edited November 6, 2019 by Spaz