5 Ways that Sony could improve the PlayStation Trophy System

[Reinachii-]

41 minutes ago, MCH-MONOH7DRAT3 said:

As for games with unobtainable trophies due to server shutdown, Sony or any developer should make last patch that unlocks those trophies

 

Wow, what a terrible idea

Edited May 17, 2020 by Reinachii-

[MCH-MONOH7DRAT3]

1 hour ago, Reinachii- said:

 

Wow, what a terrible idea

Why that ? Got any better 

[EcoShifter]

An actual sorting feature, with multiple options. There is currently not even a basic one in place. No-one wants to constantly scroll down to the bottom of a long ass list to access trophies and platinums achieved a long time ago—i'm seriously getting tired of it everytime I feel nostalgic or just simply want to look at trophies from last generation or even earlier this generation. The sorting feature also has to provide multiple options, like alphabetical and date at the very least.

 

The trophy window should also be expanded or updated to allow a pinned favorite platinum by choice of the player, that other people can see without (inconveniently) clicking on the profile. The immediate trophy profile window, especially beyond its first generation, should consist of more than just seeing total number of the different grade of trophies, trophies overall, level and percentage bar to next level.

[ladynadiad]

6 hours ago, CrimsonMercury said:

Then trophy hunting would become pointless and everyone would be walking around with 100% completion accounts.

 

Not only that but it would cause so many problems with hackers and other people being able to delete a trophy list you didn't want to delete.  Don't blame Sony for not wanting to deal with pissed off trophy hunters who lost really hard plats/100%s because their account got compromised or their little sibling was pressing buttons randomly.  I personally think if it was something that could be done that it should only be reserved for Sony employees who handle compromised accounts so it can be used to restore the account back to the state it was in before it was compromised.

 

2 hours ago, shakie19 said:

And this may seem controversial, but removing trophy support for POWGI, Ratalaika, cheap games and region stacks.I prefer profiles that have "real games" on them, they make a mockery of gaming and i rate a gamer more on quality rather than quantity scale. 

 

I disagree with this.  I do think it fair that Sony require multiple trophy stacks can only be made if a new version of a game has different or additional trophies, but not disallowing them for certain games.  It has been shown on Steam that games without achievements on there don't sell as well as games that do have them, but Steam leaves the decision to include or not include achievements up to the dev/publisher.  It would be a very slippery slope for Sony to force such a decision that will impact sales based on a subjective factor such as game quality. 

 

I think a fair compromise here would be to not allow multiple trophy stacks for games where the only difference is region and platform.  It's fine to allow a new stack for a different version of a game that has added content the dev/publisher may want to tie to trophies, but there is no need to have a stack for every region and platform when the game itself is the same on each.  Those should share one worldwide trophy list.  It has been shown that devs and publishers can later add a platform and region to an existing trophy list just fine.

[shakie19]

7 minutes ago, ladynadiad said:

I think a fair compromise here would be to not allow multiple trophy stacks for games where the only difference is region and platform.  It's fine to allow a new stack for a different version of a game that has added content the dev/publisher may want to tie to trophies, but there is no need to have a stack for every region and platform when the game itself is the same on each.  Those should share one worldwide trophy list.  It has been shown that devs and publishers can later add a platform and region to an existing trophy list just fine.

That is what i said, region stacks. Games with the only difference being EU/JP etc sharing exactly same trophies/gameplay but having 3-4 seperate lists is wrong, especially those with auto-pop. 

 

 

[Sword]

It might seem stupid, but I really wish there was a special sound effect/visual cue for unlocking ultra-rare/platinums on your games. Although I prefer the trophy system over the achievement system (one of those reasons that additionally led me to PlayStation), I'm really thrown off by how the sound and audio for these trophies are handled. I was ultra shocked when I swapped from my 360 to my Xbox One and unlocked my first rare achievement. That diamond icon and sound effect that accompanied it made me feel like I achieved something a vast majority of others didn't in the game I was playing. 

 

Also I really hope they don't remove trophy support for PS5 games. I don't see how removing trophies helps "improve games". Games are games regardless of trophies and a bad game will always be a bad game. If anything, I enjoy the trophy/achievement systems so much because a great game with a awesome trophy list fully brings out the game for me imo. A lot of these games are great (even if no trophies) but I'd hardly play past the credits in 95% or more of my games unless trophies were involved. Trophies can really help make you see, do and collect everything about a game.

 

An interesting change for trophies might be to their points scale off of the rarity of the trophy. For example a plat might be worth 180 points, but let's say the plat rarity is like 90% common. Then scale the actual points awarded for that platinum down to something like 20 points. The player is still rewarded for the platinum trophy, but the actual points are vastly reduced due to it being super common. 

 

Or you can just make every single trophy worth the same amount of initial points on launch (maybe 100 points) and every trophy scale their points based on how many people unlock it over time. This is because I KNOW some bronze trophies out there are only 15 points but the requirements to earn the trophy are NOT bronze worthy at all. But because devs need to implement a lot of trophies for these games instead of just having like 15 trophies in their list, they make alot of hard ones bronze trophies. It just sucks finally earning that trophy and it's worth only a crappy 15 points. I just think it would be a lot more rewarding to base the points off the actual rarity of the trophy, regardless of if it's bronze, silver, gold or even the plat. That way when you finally get it, it actually respects your time. Rata-like games wouldn't give 0 points, but it sure as hell would be a lot less than it is now. 

 

Unfortunately so much real-time database calling would be in order, plus shifting millions of players points that it would be ridiculous to implement. So I think they will stick with the same-ol-same-ol "static points per trophy" regardless of if that trophy is 90% common or 0.1% ultra-mega-rare. Sigh.  

[ladynadiad]

48 minutes ago, Sword said:

This is because I KNOW some bronze trophies out there are only 15 points but the requirements to earn the trophy are NOT bronze worthy at all. But because devs need to implement a lot of trophies for these games instead of just having like 15 trophies in their list, they make alot of hard ones bronze trophies. It just sucks finally earning that trophy and it's worth only a crappy 15 points. I just think it would be a lot more rewarding to base the points off the actual rarity of the trophy, regardless of if it's bronze, silver, gold or even the plat. That way when you finally get it, it actually respects your time. Rata-like games wouldn't give 0 points, but it sure as hell would be a lot less than it is now. 

 

Honestly that's a problem on the dev's end.  There are definitely games with smaller numbers of trophies and more gold and silver trophies.  Sony only requires that games with plats award a certain amount of XP, but how the dev splits that up among gold, silver and bronze is up to the dev.  From the games I own, it ranges between 1140 and 1230 XP (including the plat) for games with no DLC.  I definitely have games with under 20 trophies that have few to no bronze trophies. A lot of bronze trophies happens when a dev is going for a large number of trophies since they can't have a bunch of golds with 50+ total trophies.  But the point is, a dev can choose to just have 15 trophies and there are devs who have done this with games that have a plat.  You just tend to see this more with the easy games.

 

That was one thing I actually liked about Xbox's system for achievements.  Games were worth 1000 gamerscore, but the dev could choose how many points each achievement was worth.  They could easily make story related stuff be 5-10 points each and then make the hard stuff worth over 100 points each so it was very doable to still have a lot of achievements and make the hard ones actually worth good points because they can make the easy stuff worth a very small amount.

Edited May 17, 2020 by ladynadiad

[Reinachii-]

8 hours ago, MCH-MONOH7DRAT3 said:

Why that ? Got any better 

 

I want old games with servers closed as much as the next, but your proposed idea would cause at least 2 issues:

1. Nobody will ever play MP. Just wait for servers to close, and then earn all MP trophies for free.

 

2. It is extremely unfair on all the people who spent countless hours playing legit or boosting. 

 

The only fix i see here, is Sony allowing us to create our own servers. Which will never happen. 

[PalaceOfLove706]

I say keep everything the exact same, as it is, without any changes, and we all continue on in harmony, as a great community, and be happy with what we have. 

[TheDblTap]

@Sword

I don't see them ever removing trophy support, trophy hunters make up a pretty considerable percentage of the player base, which is constantly growing and thus hopefully will result in many improvements to the Trophy System for PS5.

 

And yeah, you're right about the points system, it would just get too complicated. I always assumed that Sony played a hand in overseeing any new trophies added to the system by a developer but thee longer I hunt trophies the more I realise that maybe developers can just do what they want.

 

I've been trying to get hold of an indie developer to try and interview regarding this process for my site so we'd actually have a good idea of how this all works but I haven't had much luck lately, maybe once the site grows a bit more.

Edited May 18, 2020 by TheDblTap
typo

[DaivRules]

15 minutes ago, TheDblTap said:

I've been trying to get hold of an indie developer to try and interview regarding this process for my site so we'd actually have a good idea of how this all works but I haven't had much luck lately, maybe once the site grows a bit more.

Good luck on this part. Every developer I’ve had a chance to ask about this in the last 10 years has clammed up when it came to details claiming the developer contract NDA. 
 

The only way you’re probably getting details is to sign up to be a developer yourself. 
 

 

Edited May 18, 2020 by DaivRules

[TheDblTap]

1 hour ago, DaivRules said:

Good luck on this part. Every developer I’ve had a chance to ask about this in the last 10 years has clammed up when it came to details claiming the developer contract NDA. 
 

The only way you’re probably getting details is to sign up to be a developer yourself. 
 

 

Ahhh, that's a very good point, I hadn't considered that...

 

Damn, it'd be so interesting to know how much involvement Sony has regarding trophies.

[dieselmanchild]

On 2020-05-17 at 4:19 AM, TheDblTap said:

@dieselmanchild Ayy, here he is, our favourite guy! Haha

 

You make some really fantastic points there, mate, @MrZhangetsu seconds that sentiment too.

 

Sadly I just don't think our community is big enough yet for Sony to prioritise their efforts on such vast improvements to the trophy system. I think that some of my ideas and the other ideas which I've just added from reader suggestions would certainly help to motivate more people to get into trophy hunting and help to build out the community but at the moment, alas, I think you're right.

 

Perhaps in the coming years, we will get more of a spotlight as Sony free themselves up a bit more to hone in on sub-communities of the overall player base, but hopefully, they've taken the time to clean things up a little for the PS5 and we'll find out soon enough what's going to change.

 

As always, loving hearing from you my guy. I'm doing good, just been keeping busy and trying to improve the site and keep content coming. I hope you're doing good too man.

Well said, I agree completely.

 

I do think the small improvements being discussed in here are a lot more realistic than a big overhaul or rebalancing of the system, and would increase the chances of new players becoming trophy hunters.

 

Personally, I think Sony has something really special with the trophy achievement system. For this reason, I would love to see them make it a bigger part of the brand. Some of the suggested improvements - a social “trophy hub” on the XMB, a consistent rewards system, official recognition from Sony themselves for outstanding achievements etc. - could potentially become part of the whole PlayStation pitch to lure in new gamers or gamers from other platforms. 

 

With more emphasis on the benefits of being a trophy hunter, I’ve no doubt it would go a long way towards growing this community! And then one day we might see some of the bigger changes we desire.

 

On 2020-05-17 at 10:39 AM, Sword said:

This is because I KNOW some bronze trophies out there are only 15 points but the requirements to earn the trophy are NOT bronze worthy at all. But because devs need to implement a lot of trophies for these games instead of just having like 15 trophies in their list, they make alot of hard ones bronze trophies. It just sucks finally earning that trophy and it's worth only a crappy 15 points. I just think it would be a lot more rewarding to base the points off the actual rarity of the trophy, regardless of if it's bronze, silver, gold or even the plat. That way when you finally get it, it actually respects your time. Rata-like games wouldn't give 0 points, but it sure as hell would be a lot less than it is now.  

 

This is exactly what I was trying to touch on in my previous post, and another reason why I dream of a rebalancing of the entire system.

 

Right now, an unintended effect of having such rigid requirements for each platinum in terms of points value (approximately 1100-1200 points per platinum) is that much of the time, the balancing is way off when it comes to the actual achievements and the trophy/point value you are awarded for completing it.

 

If a developer makes a game that takes 50 hours to platinum and they want the game to have a full and well rounded trophy list (ex. 50 or 60 achievements), it means that in order to meet or stay under that ~1200 point limit, they have to fill the trophy list mostly with bronze trophies. This is why most full length games sadly only have one or two gold trophies.

 

It’s a HUGE pet peeve of mine, but I’m constantly playing full length, AAA games that have really large tasks/ultra rare achievements that are only valued as bronze, even though they should really be worth a gold based on the requirements of the achievement.
 

I mean... there really should be no excuse in the universe for an incredibly difficult trophy like ‘Mein Leben’ in Wolfenstein 2 being valued as a measly 15 points/bronze trophy. It’s a joke! But the reality is that most trophy lists have similarly unbalanced achievements, and they will continue to do so for as long as the developers are handcuffed by that rule that every platinum needs to equal a specific number of trophy points.

 

 

[DaivRules]

To improve the trophy system, Sony could be more transparent about their developer guidelines surrounding trophies. In fact just release them. I’d be surprised if it’s more than a couple paragraphs.

 

Then, the only other thing I’d like, which would require Sony to actually care about trophies more than “We implemented them, do whatever” would be to eliminate all stacks of trophies, with two exceptions: a new stack must have new/different trophies (I’d love for this to be a 25% minimum of Original point values in new/different Trophies) or a different developer releases the game (allowing for ports to choose to implement different trophies.)

 

Frankly though, I’m not heavily invested in either of my suggestions and have my expectations set at practically zero for any trophy changes. 

[RadiantFlamberge]

If a game has the same exact content with no gameplay differences over two or more different platforms, it should share the same trophy list (like Trails of Cold Steel I and II, and Ys Memories of Celceta). That way, work done on one system towards a platinum can be carried over. Tokyo Xanadu and Ys VIII have some stuff on the PS4 version that's not found in the Vita versions, so I can understand these having separate lists.

 

Also, trophy progress bars would be really nice to have. Thanks to a good move by the developer, some games like Hard Reset Redux, Ys, or Trails of Cold Steel series do have a way to tell in-game. For example in Ys VIII, you can check the stats to see how many more Flash Guards you need to reach 100.

 

On 5/17/2020 at 2:27 PM, ladynadiad said:

That was one thing I actually liked about Xbox's system for achievements.  Games were worth 1000 gamerscore, but the dev could choose how many points each achievement was worth.  They could easily make story related stuff be 5-10 points each and then make the hard stuff worth over 100 points each so it was very doable to still have a lot of achievements and make the hard ones actually worth good points because they can make the easy stuff worth a very small amount.

I agree, it'd be nice if Sony's system were like that, instead of being restricted to 15/30/90/180. At least one good thing EA did was to copy Xbox's point system for Origin... though EA and MS should really consider encouraging devs to add completion (platinum) achievements for full-length games.

[ladynadiad]

2 hours ago, RadiantFlamberge said:

I agree, it'd be nice if Sony's system were like that, instead of being restricted to 15/30/90/180. At least one good thing EA did was to copy Xbox's point system for Origin... though EA and MS should really consider encouraging devs to add completion (platinum) achievements for full-length games.

 

Agreed there, but not a 0 point one like Tales of Vesperia on 360.  Sony having the plat be worth the most is a good idea.  I do think having a upwards limit on value is a good thing though. That has definitely prevented PSN and XBL from getting the worthless spam games Steam has and kept some value to trophies, even if some don't agree there.

 

But I think Sony could also resolve this by adding a level of trophy to the bottom.  Something worth 5 XP could easily help devs be able to have some more leeway to give trophies value, but still cover many tasks if their game has a lot of optional content.  I know some people think story related trophies/achievements are silly or pointless, but I think they are great to let a player feel a sense of making progress and be able to see how far they have to go.  Having a lower level of 5 XP for stuff like story related trophies would allow devs to still give that and also be able to give the harder tasks added value.  The main thing would be that Sony would still want to keep a hard limit on the total trophies in a game and encourage devs to go with around 50 total trophies or less.

[TheDblTap]

1 minute ago, ladynadiad said:

 

Agreed there, but not a 0 point one like Tales of Vesperia on 360.  Sony having the plat be worth the most is a good idea.  I do think having a upwards limit on value is a good thing though. That has definitely prevented PSN and XBL from getting the worthless spam games Steam has and kept some value to trophies, even if some don't agree there.

 

But I think Sony could also resolve this by adding a level of trophy to the bottom.  Something worth 5 XP could easily help devs be able to have some more leeway to give trophies value, but still cover many tasks if their game has a lot of optional content.  I know some people think story related trophies/achievements are silly or pointless, but I think they are great to let a player feel a sense of making progress and be able to see how far they have to go.  Having a lower level of 5 XP for stuff like story related trophies would allow devs to still give that and also be able to give the harder tasks added value.  The main thing would be that Sony would still want to keep a hard limit on the total trophies in a game and encourage devs to go with around 50 total trophies or less.

 

Solid idea.

 

If they were to do something like this for PS5 and assign an XP value to trophies, how would you see this working for PS3, Vita and PS4 games?

Would every dev need to then retroactively assign XP values to their trophies? Would Sony need to do this? Would they be able to apply a blanket value to older games which could then be updated by devs if they can be bothered?

 

I think that's probably going to be the biggest issue they'd face in trying to adjust the trophy system. Not to mention that they'd need a lot of control over what XP is being assigned to new trophies, meaning they'd have to have a full team of trophy evaluators who would need to play-test every new game. Otherwise developers would definitely just exploit the system to entice hunters into buying their games.

[AJ_Radio]

On 5/17/2020 at 2:36 AM, Juzota said:

Best improvement would be removing the whole trophy system.

 

On 5/17/2020 at 2:43 AM, Juzota said:

 

Removing trophies would make me enjoy more of the games themselves, like I used to do. Trophy hunting was lots of fun at first, but now it feels more like a chore. That's one reason why I have been playing more on Xbox One lately. Never really cared about achievements, not sure why.

 

Or you can just turn off trophy notifications..... Or you can just quit playing on your PS4. Your choice.

 

I still enjoy getting trophies, so it will be a while before I get burnt out by them.

[ladynadiad]

2 hours ago, TheDblTap said:

 

Solid idea.

 

If they were to do something like this for PS5 and assign an XP value to trophies, how would you see this working for PS3, Vita and PS4 games?

Would every dev need to then retroactively assign XP values to their trophies? Would Sony need to do this? Would they be able to apply a blanket value to older games which could then be updated by devs if they can be bothered?

 

I think that's probably going to be the biggest issue they'd face in trying to adjust the trophy system. Not to mention that they'd need a lot of control over what XP is being assigned to new trophies, meaning they'd have to have a full team of trophy evaluators who would need to play-test every new game. Otherwise developers would definitely just exploit the system to entice hunters into buying their games.

 

To be honest, I think requiring devs to update older games would be a bad idea.  On Steam devs can modify, add or remove achievements.  I've definitely had cases where devs went in and changed achievements I earned and that's very not cool because it takes away from what was already earned.  I'd think this should be a change going forward available for new games to add more flexibility but not retroactively added to older games.

 

I also don't think it should be required for Sony to play test games.  Every game is different and the current overall guidelines on total XP and the max number of trophies a game is able to have does prevent abuse.  The last thing needed to limit abuse would be to limit additional stacks of trophies for games.  The devs appealing to trophy hunters are making lists with few trophies that have more golds and silvers than bronzes and give a quick plat.  Those games also are cross buy and give two plats for one purchase in a region.  The only reason a new trophy list should be allowed to be added is in the case of a new release/port that has added or changed trophies (like Tokyo Xanadu and Tokyo Xanadu eX+) or in the case of a release having a different dev/publisher (like a JRPG being released by one company in Japan and another for the western release).  Something like Ys VIII having a stack for Vita and PS4 versions is fine, but there isn't really a good reason for an EU list on each platform to be separate from the NA list since those were released by the same company and have the same trophies.

 

About the only reason I could see devs trying to justify all the regional/platform lists is for stats so they know if it is still worthwhile to keep releasing games for older platforms or in certain regions.  If that is the case, Sony could improve stats available to devs to allow them to see this without having to do additional stacks.  To be honest, I think it would be nice if trophies indicated what platform it was earned on for multiplatform games.

 

But overall, I don't see adding a new trophy type resulting in a bunch of games with high trophy counts since easy games tend to have fewer trophies.  Total trophies doesn't mean as much here as the number of plats and higher value trophies like golds and silvers.  What it will do is allow devs to give more value to the harder trophies and less value to the easy trophies and still be able to make a list that covers everything they want along with a bit more flexibility on values that is more similar to the systems XBL and EA have in place.

Edited May 19, 2020 by ladynadiad

[Juzota]

4 hours ago, Spaz said:

 

 

Or you can just turn off trophy notifications..... Or you can just quit playing on your PS4. Your choice.

 

I've considered both, but knowing myself I can't do either. When next gen arrives I'm pretty sure I'm gonna get Xbox SeX first, but I'm sure I'm gonna buy PS5 as well later, because Playstation has better exclusive games.

 

It's difficult to be a gamer.

[Berendsapje]

Trophy progress bars are really one of the things I'd like to see. I believe there are some games where the trophies are also imbedded in the game themselves as achievements, and they have a progress bar. Can't really think of an example right now, but I believe there was a rally game that had that exact feature. WRC 6 had it's trophies as achievements, but I can't remember if they had a progress bar. Not that long ago, I was preparing for a grind for a trophy for having done 250 kms in a rally car. I'd driven one a bit, but not a whole lot. It popped halfway through the first race, and I didn't really know what I had to do after that. Wish it had a progress bar, so I knew I was close. It would make Grindy trophies like "Complete 250matches" or "Drive 7886 km" way easier.

 

I heard like a year ago that Sony was going to offer some sort of reward for trophies, like a certain amount of money on the PlayStation store, and that they would test that out in the US. What came of that?

 

 

Edit: found the game with built-in trophy bar. Sega mega drive classics. So no rally game. Whoops

Edited May 21, 2020 by Berendsapje

[RNumbers]

11 minutes ago, Berendsapje said:

I heard like a year ago that Sony was going to offer some sort of reward for trophies, like a certain amount of money on the PlayStation store, and that they would test that out in the US. What came of that?

 

They sort of did this with the rewards passes on the Sony Rewards site. People were able to get quite a few points from earning silver/gold/platinum trophies which could then be exchanged for PSN cards. The program didn't last very long, presumably because people abused it. It was very nice while it lasted, though.

[ladynadiad]

1 hour ago, Berendsapje said:

Trophy progress bars are really one of the things I'd like to see. I believe there are some games where the trophies are also imbedded in the game themselves as achievements, and they have a progress bar. Can't really think of an example right now, but I believe there was a rally game that had that exact feature.

 

Kemco games very often have that.  A good number of the games have a spot in the menu you can go to check progress on trophies.  They also had stats for stuff that wasn't included in the trophy list as well.  Once you made a certain level of progress you also could claim a reward in game of stuff like items, money, equipment, etc.  I definitely think games not only showing progress but giving some reward in game is a nice feature. 

[Dangisuckatgamin]

I love the idea of more statistics (i love the design they did) and tracking (have always wanted this after seeing Xbox get it). 

[Adsor_]

This is a wet dream but if it is true that ps5 is compatible with psone and ps2 i would love to see trophies in that games, but once again just a wet dream.