I'm confused why he would put so much time into it. I think SyntheticMan played something like 10 hours tops?
I might have to put Shadows platinum on ice for now. I need to sketch these "legendary" animals that only appear during 1 of the 4 seasons. The problem is you can't change the seasons manually.
Good grief man. I never understood the point of achievements or trophies in the first place. Ok sometimes it's funny or satisfying to get a unique achievement, but I could never see myself trying to get all the imaginary points in a game I like. Why would that even be a consideration for a game you hate? That goes beyond trying to be a thorough reviewer. Nobody gives a shit about this game and even those of us laughing about it have moved on already.
As a side note I heard Endymion was one of the grifters initially praising KCD2 - but to his credit when he got further into the game he admitted how woke it was, so we can still trust his opinions on that at least.
I miss the old way, when achievements were how you unlocked stuff like secret weapons and skins. Now you unlock things with a credit card and achievements are just a skinner box.
the old way, when achievements were how you unlocked stuff like secret weapons and skins
That still happens, which is entirely part of the "FOMO" problem. Players now "need" to take advantage of seasonal achievements or miss out for another year. WoW has meta achievements like "What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been" which requires played to earn an achievement from 8 different seasonal events, Xmas, Easter, Halloween, Valentine's Day, Octoberfest, etc and if you miss even just one of the smaller achievements you have to wait until next year for it to come around. For mount collectors this can be particularly annoying since the meta reward is a mount. For completionists it's a similar problem albeit one more focused on earning the achievement rather than the end reward.
The heavy shift to "seasons" in most games is like this and WoW is probably one of the biggest offenders around not just because of the above which can still be continually earned in subsequent years, but limited season only exclusives based around various achievements. Maybe the one saving grace is that these things still aren't purchasable, however what is purchasable in WoW these days is likely magnitudes worse such as those recent mounts requiring either 6 month->en entire year or sub paid, or into the triple digits in price.
The old way was no defined achievements at all. The “achievement” was doing something interesting or stupid in a video game in order to entertain yourself and your friends. Now every behavior is part of a predefined checklist. It’s completely soulless and inverted.
The old way was no defined achievements at all. The “achievement” was doing something interesting or stupid in a video game in order to entertain yourself and your friends. Now every behavior is part of a predefined checklist. It’s completely soulless and inverted.
Or he’s just old. I played video games before achievements existed. When they are introduced, I couldn’t imagine anyone caring about them at all. Fast forward a couple decades and some people are basing their entire identity around securing arbitrarily defined “achievements” in video games. We used to do weird whacky stuff in games just for the fun of it - just as pure ace raw creative expression. Now even “drawing outside the lines” is meticulously predicted and codified behavior.
One of the earliest iterations with Mass Effect on the 360, which showed them as literal roguelike upgrades to all future games you played. Halo 3 used it as a metric towards unlocking armor.
So it was just another version of unlockables at the time it came out, but like all things Microsoft they just lazily let it rot into the lowest form possible.
Seems to track with when I started seeing it in some other games I played around that time in 2007. WoW added achievements part way through TBC which came out in 2007 so that looks to be the time of infection.
It's just one of the ways they try and keep you playing longer. Just like "seasons" or events where you have to unlock the content by playing every day or playing a certain amount of time. Or like how DLC slaps a new coat of paint on an old game and allows them to dip back into your wallet again.
At some point around 15 years ago it seems like all the game companies decided putting out new games was too expensive and they would focus on extending the life and income stream from every game they released as long as humanly possible.
Except for sports games. They've always had the changing team rosters as an excuse to release a new version every year, and sports fans eat that shit up.
I'm so fucking glad there are people out there who know how to crack existing games that then did this shit. Stellaris was pricey enough beforehand but then putting it all behind a season pass was just an absurd level of greed from an already greedy developer.
. I never understood the point of achievements or trophies in the first place.
It gives you some restrictions to create a challenge or add additional flavor to a replay. Sometimes even teaches you ways to play the game you'd not even think about otherwise because its so outside the box. Like, I'd not even consider some of the tactics needed to get the Mastery/Brutal achievements in Starcraft 2 because its just a completely different method of play, and in turn widening my skill set.
I get that the majority of games use them extremely lazily as just checklists and dopamine hits, but that's not a flaw inherent to the system anymore than "yellow paint" means platforming is a failed mechanic.
I'm not going to claim I totally understand or know anything about this guy, but from what I have seen on his tweets on this it is like a "self defense" type of reasoning for doing this. If he has 100% completed/platinumed the game, all of his criticisms are legitimate because he completed it.
You can likely find "I platinumed xyz" in a variety of his posts defending himself, but I am just extrapolating from what I have seen so far.
I'm confused why he would put so much time into it. I think SyntheticMan played something like 10 hours tops?
Good grief man. I never understood the point of achievements or trophies in the first place. Ok sometimes it's funny or satisfying to get a unique achievement, but I could never see myself trying to get all the imaginary points in a game I like. Why would that even be a consideration for a game you hate? That goes beyond trying to be a thorough reviewer. Nobody gives a shit about this game and even those of us laughing about it have moved on already.
As a side note I heard Endymion was one of the grifters initially praising KCD2 - but to his credit when he got further into the game he admitted how woke it was, so we can still trust his opinions on that at least.
The trophies must hit some kind of psychological itch on people. Like loot boxes or some shit. You happen to be immune to it.
That's literally how they're designed now.
I miss the old way, when achievements were how you unlocked stuff like secret weapons and skins. Now you unlock things with a credit card and achievements are just a skinner box.
That still happens, which is entirely part of the "FOMO" problem. Players now "need" to take advantage of seasonal achievements or miss out for another year. WoW has meta achievements like "What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been" which requires played to earn an achievement from 8 different seasonal events, Xmas, Easter, Halloween, Valentine's Day, Octoberfest, etc and if you miss even just one of the smaller achievements you have to wait until next year for it to come around. For mount collectors this can be particularly annoying since the meta reward is a mount. For completionists it's a similar problem albeit one more focused on earning the achievement rather than the end reward.
The heavy shift to "seasons" in most games is like this and WoW is probably one of the biggest offenders around not just because of the above which can still be continually earned in subsequent years, but limited season only exclusives based around various achievements. Maybe the one saving grace is that these things still aren't purchasable, however what is purchasable in WoW these days is likely magnitudes worse such as those recent mounts requiring either 6 month->en entire year or sub paid, or into the triple digits in price.
The old way was no defined achievements at all. The “achievement” was doing something interesting or stupid in a video game in order to entertain yourself and your friends. Now every behavior is part of a predefined checklist. It’s completely soulless and inverted.
The old way was no defined achievements at all. The “achievement” was doing something interesting or stupid in a video game in order to entertain yourself and your friends. Now every behavior is part of a predefined checklist. It’s completely soulless and inverted.
Or he’s just old. I played video games before achievements existed. When they are introduced, I couldn’t imagine anyone caring about them at all. Fast forward a couple decades and some people are basing their entire identity around securing arbitrarily defined “achievements” in video games. We used to do weird whacky stuff in games just for the fun of it - just as pure ace raw creative expression. Now even “drawing outside the lines” is meticulously predicted and codified behavior.
One of the earliest iterations with Mass Effect on the 360, which showed them as literal roguelike upgrades to all future games you played. Halo 3 used it as a metric towards unlocking armor.
So it was just another version of unlockables at the time it came out, but like all things Microsoft they just lazily let it rot into the lowest form possible.
Seems to track with when I started seeing it in some other games I played around that time in 2007. WoW added achievements part way through TBC which came out in 2007 so that looks to be the time of infection.
It's just trained ocd/autism
It's just one of the ways they try and keep you playing longer. Just like "seasons" or events where you have to unlock the content by playing every day or playing a certain amount of time. Or like how DLC slaps a new coat of paint on an old game and allows them to dip back into your wallet again.
At some point around 15 years ago it seems like all the game companies decided putting out new games was too expensive and they would focus on extending the life and income stream from every game they released as long as humanly possible.
Except for sports games. They've always had the changing team rosters as an excuse to release a new version every year, and sports fans eat that shit up.
I'm so fucking glad there are people out there who know how to crack existing games that then did this shit. Stellaris was pricey enough beforehand but then putting it all behind a season pass was just an absurd level of greed from an already greedy developer.
Points are useless in most games. It just adds extra activities to the game
That's exactly it. I only ever do this for games I REALLY like which nowadays isn't a lot.
Play The Outer Wilds if you want some legitimately good/funny achievements. Just don't ever look up spoilers until you're finished the main story.
It gives you some restrictions to create a challenge or add additional flavor to a replay. Sometimes even teaches you ways to play the game you'd not even think about otherwise because its so outside the box. Like, I'd not even consider some of the tactics needed to get the Mastery/Brutal achievements in Starcraft 2 because its just a completely different method of play, and in turn widening my skill set.
I get that the majority of games use them extremely lazily as just checklists and dopamine hits, but that's not a flaw inherent to the system anymore than "yellow paint" means platforming is a failed mechanic.
I'm not going to claim I totally understand or know anything about this guy, but from what I have seen on his tweets on this it is like a "self defense" type of reasoning for doing this. If he has 100% completed/platinumed the game, all of his criticisms are legitimate because he completed it.
You can likely find "I platinumed xyz" in a variety of his posts defending himself, but I am just extrapolating from what I have seen so far.