Developers, how's it going? Rough year that 2020 was, right? Well did you know that 2020 marked 15 years since Achievements were introduced on the Xbox 360? With so many years with Achievements and Trophies being a thing, I think it's high time we discuss some things that it'd really be appreciated if you'd stop doing with your Achievement and Trophy lists, and how better to do this than something everyone likes? A Top 10 list.
Concise list for those that don't want to read the descriptions:
Top 10 Types of Achievements/Trophies Devs Should Stop Putting in their Games:
10. Achievements that don't end in 0 or 5 (Xbox Specific)
These kinds of Achievements aren't as prevalent these days as they used to be, but I still see indie games out there putting these Gamerscore ruining Achievements in their lists. You think you're so cute. Well you're not. Cut it out.
9. Luck/RNG Based Achievements/Trophies
I'm sorry game developers, these kinds of achievements just are not fun. Anything that requires your random number generator to proc on a low chance that I'll get an achievement isn't fun, it's just annoying. This is the literal antithesis of "achieving" something. It's just a thing randomly given out. Please stop.
Example:
Assassin's Creed Origins
Overheating
This achievement requires you to hallucinate "raining bugs" in the desert except it's not a guaranteed thing. It only happens at random, and despite having spent hours upon hours combing the desert in this game, I've never seen this phenomenon and the achievement is still not in my list. Apparently it's very rare. More infuriating, a friend of mine who only logged 5 hours in this game has the achievement. Thanks Ubisoft…you jerks.
8. Permadeath Achievements/Trophies
Any Achievement that requires you to be so good at the game you have to be able to beat it without dying has to go. Especially if the game expects you to beat it on the hardest difficulty level while also not dying. Fuck that shit. Unlike the previous achievement type in this list, this kind of achievement would be something one might actually consider a real achievement, but never the less, please stop including these on your Achievement lists.
I tried earning one of these trophies once and made it 5 hours into a game before dying an really stupid death due to collision physics and falling through the game world to my death. There has never been another 5 hours of my life I've wanted back more.
Example:
Wolfentstein II: Shadow of the Colossus (edit: I'm leaving this gem of a typo in here)
Mein Leben
This trophy requires you to beat the game on the hardest difficulty level (I am Death Incarnate) without dying. Oh, and you can't save. Have you played this game? Not only is it long, it's INDCREDIBLY difficult on the highest difficulty levels and there are enemies that can easily shred your life bar in picoseconds. Achieving this feat is not so much as an achievement as it is a signifier you're a masochist. Though I'm not judging if you are…
7. Secret Achievements/Trophies that are not story related
Secret Achievements are great when they're story related and/or you're definitely going to get them in the normal course of playing the game so you the player won't be spoiled by looking through the achievement list. Secret Achievements that don't have their requirements plainly laid out and have to be stumbled upon, however, can get the fuck right out. I shouldn't have to consult a guide to get your hidden achievement or trophy because you didn't tell me the requirements. If I'm not going to naturally get your secret achievement by playing the game to completion, the achievement requirements shouldn't be secret.
Example:
Control Foundation DLC
One of Us
This secret achievement requires you to find 8 really well hidden "lucky cats" hiding around the Foundation DLC. They're super easy to miss, so unless you have an Achievement Guide and know this Achievement exists, you could have 95% of your list done and have this one nagging secret achievement left over and not even know where to begin to unlock it. The fact that this achievement is secret isn't fun, it's obtuse.
6. Achievements/Trophies that require you to be a multiplayer God
Look It's clear most of us are not Daigo Umehara. Some of us are just not going to be able to get to "Gold" rank or whatever in your skill based multiplayer game no matter how hard we try. So maybe stop making Trophies and Achievements for this. There's nothing wrong with making trophies for "play this many ranked matches", or "win X multiplayer matches" but when you're requiring your players to achieve legendary like status within your game's multiplayer ranks, that's just not cool.
Example:
Street Fighter V
Let's fight someone strong!
This achievement requires you to get to Golden League in ranked play. Let's consider that feat will require 4000+ LP, you only get 56LP per win and you lose 24LP per loss. That's approximately 72 matches in a row you'd have to win versus live human beings the game matches you up with without losing once. Considering you're going to be losing, a lot, making this trophy gated to all but the most skilled players. Good luck getting that one (especially once you get out of Bronze League)… but hey, 72 ranked match wins in a row is just a small drop in the bucket to 300 ranked match wins you need for one of SFV's other grindy trophies…
5. Achievements/Trophies that are missable in games that take more than 5 hours to complete
Let's imagine you've gotten to the end of a 30 hour single player story campaign, you've beaten the game, and now you're looking to clear the couple of last remaining achievements off the list. "Collect Every Doodad", well that can't be hard… I found a TON while playing the game. And you look at your Doodad list to find you're missing one. But no matter how hard you try, you can't seem to find that last Doodad. So you turn to an Achievements guide to help only to find out you missed a specific Doodad in Chapter 6 (of 20) during a special mission in an enemy base that blew up and you can no longer access it. You're locked out of the achievement FOREVER, unless you want to replay the ENTIRE game.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF----
Devs, please. Please stop doing this to your players. If you have collectibles in your game that can be missed, provide a method to access these items once the game is over either by a chapter select or some other means.
Example:
Witcher III
Card Collector
This is the mother of all collectathon nightmares. The worst missable trophy based on item collection in any game I've come across. The myriad of ways you can completely F yourself in your quest to collect all the cards in the game are too numerous to mention, so I'll just mention one of the ways you can miss it.
In the game, there's a specific NPC in a cage in a bandit camp. This bandit camp, is not unlike just about every random bandit camp in the game featuring a guy in a cage, but this one in particular has an NPC that you must play the card game Gwent against and win. So, you have to free him from his cage, then escort his ass allllllll the way back to his home (a 15 minute walk) protecting him from all manner of bandits and wild animals (because unless you do he will die on the way back and you miss your chance for the card, believe me I tried fast travel, he never makes it), play Gwent against his deck and win. God help you if you stumbled across this bandit camp early in the game and didn't escort this jerk back to his hovel and he died, because now you have to start the game ALLLLLL OVER…
4. Achievements/Trophies that require you to do dumb shit in multiplayer modes
We've all been there, we're playing a team based multiplayer game, and one player on your team of randos is running around and doing apparently everything BUT working with the team towards whatever the objective is because they're "trying to get an achievement". Apologies… I'm that rando on your team. But it's not my fault! Developers are the ones that put these ridiculous achievements into their games and well I can't NOT try to get them.
Example:
Overwatch
Mine Sweeper
This achievement requires you as Winston (the gorilla character) to destroy 10 turrets without dying. Turrets only get spawned by Symetra and Torbjorn, and dying is super easy to do. So when you see a Symetra on the opposing team and you've selected Winston, you're doing your best to just stay alive long enough to get rid of 10 of her turrets and maybe not play the objective so much. "WINSTON! WTF YOU DOING! PUSH THE OBJECTIVE!" "Nah bruh, I'm trying to get an achievement…"
Honestly, I could have picked SO MANY of this kind of achievement from Overwatch it's not even funny…
3. Achievements/Trophies that require multiple playthroughs to unlock
"How do we make our game more replayable? How? How? How? WAIT! I'VE GOT IT! We'll make the player play through it in its entirety A SECOND TIME for certain achievements! BRIALLIANT!"
Devs, come on. Come on. Have you seen my backlog? Have you seen the amount of new content arriving all the time on Game Pass? Maybe making players go through your game multiple times for replayability was cool 15 years ago, but that was before the digital age. Before Steam Summer Sales, and the general cheapness of videogames on various digital marketplaces after numerous sales. There's so much to play, that forcing me to go through your game 2 or even 3 times just to get all the achievements can really turn me away from getting your game in the first place if I know this is a requirement for the Platinum trophy in advance.
If a player wants to play through your game a second time because they liked your game and have nothing else to do, great! Let them choose to do that. But I'm busy. I want to experience as many games as I can and my OCD compelling me to get all your multi-playthrough trophies is slowing me down. (Edit: yes I have been diagnosed, and yes it's a problem.)
Edit: a lot of people are accusing me of saying "you just want participation ribbons and easy trophies", which isn't what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is, "trophies should be reasonable and not waste my time". A good example is games that lock "hard mode" behind finishing the game on "Normal". Well that's going to make me play your game twice even though I could have possibly beaten your game on hard from the get go. If I want to play your game on the hardest difficulty from the start, let me. I frequently do.
Example:
Dark Souls III
Master of Rings
"Aquire all rings", sounds simple enough right? WRONG. There are 109 rings in the game, only 70 of which can be found in your first playthrough. 21 more rings are found in NG+ and 17 rings only found in NG++. The only way to acquire these rings? Beat the game, then beat it again and then collect the final rings in the next playthrough. And it's a Dark Souls game, so you know this will be a task not for the faint of heart, especially considering one of the rings is locked away behind the hardest boss in the game on NG++.
2. Achievements/Trophies tied to making story choice(s) in an RPG
Developers, it's called a "ROLE PLAYING GAME", let players ROLE PLAY! When you attach an achievement to a specific story choice a good chunk of the player base who care about Achievements will go for the Achievement instead of making the choice in game they would have made if it had been let up to them. This sends the signal to the player that there's a "correct" choice to be made based on what the developer decided and removes the player's agency if they want that coveted platinum trophy.
There's a more insidious version of this trope as well in roleplaying games that require you the player to achieve 100% "dark or light" status based on your good actions or evil actions. It forces the player to either be 100% an angel or 100% the devil incarnate and doesn't let the player explore roleplaying in the morally grey area.
Developers believe having achievements like these will lead to "replayability", by allowing players to make different choices on subsequent playthroughs, but like the previous item on this list, given the backlog most gamers have these days due to the abundance of amazing games to play and cheap digital prices, WE DON'T HAVE TIME for multiple playthroughs of your 100+ hour RPG!
Example:
The Witcher III
Friends With Benefits and Full Crew
This is a twofer from the Witcher III. I hope you like the witch Kiera Metz, because if you kill her, choose not to help her or don't make the appropriate decisions in the game for where she should go, not only will you miss out on the "Friends with Benefits Achievement", but you won't be able to get the "Full Crew" Achievement for having 7 specific NPCs available to you at the end of the game.
Yes it's easy to go through Kiera's quest line making the "right" choices, but the devs shouldn't force you to roleplay a specific way just to get some achievements when the game is supposed to let you decide how Geralt should act and then punish you for not acting how they wanted you to. Moreover, her quest line is very early in the game, if you don't do it correctly you could be 100 hours into the story and find out you're locked out of several achievements. This game is full of trophies that can be missed if you don't stick to exactly the series of events the developers intended and that's a shame given it's a game supposedly about your choices.
1. Achievements/Trophies that do not unlock once the requirements have been met
We've all had this happen right? You go through painstaking efforts to meet all the requirements for an achievement or trophy only to sit there when you've finally completed the final task and nothing happens. No "DING!" nothing. Silence. And then you know "Dammit, the achievement's bugged!"
As a developer of software myself, I understand that bugs are an unavoidable given, but if you discover a bug in your Trophy/Achievement giving code, do what you must to provide an quick method for your players to unlock the trophy or achievement so it doesn't stay locked on their lists forever without making them jump through all the hoops a second time, load an earlier save, or worse, start over entirely.
Destiny is an amazing example of this. There were a bunch of bugged achievements at launch so there's now a check when the game starts up to determine if you should have been awarded achievements but were not and it will award you what you're missing.
Edit: This item isn't about how developers add bugged achievements, it's about how they frequently do not FIX bugged achievements once the community determines there is a bug, frequently while the game is new. Developers, if your customers have found a bugged achievement, don't sit on your hands and do nothing. Fix it like you would any other bug and rectify the situation for all affected users if possible. Don't turn a blind eye and deride them on Twitter when they come to you with a bug report because "it's just an achievement".
Example:
Borderlands 3
Master of All You Survey
This achievement requires you to visit every named location in Borderlands 3 and despite your in-game location count showing 223/223 named locations, the achievement will not unlock. The developers, Gearbox, have never rectified this issue despite being notified by multiple users about this issue as well as there being a variable in the game letting them know you should be awarded the achievement. The only way to get this achievement once it has been bugged for you is to visit every location in the game AGAIN in one sitting without turning off the game or console, a feat that took me 5 hours.
Thanks Gearbox devs, thanks a lot.
_________________________________________
Honorable Mentions
Difficulty Based Achievements/Trophies that don't stack
If you beat the game in Hard, it stands to reason that you should get the achievements for Normal and Easy too right! WRONG! Some developers apparently think you should go back and beat the game a second and third time in the easier difficulties because... reasons.
This has been mentioned a ton of times in the replies so I should add it. I was trying to come up with examples of bad trophies I've come across recently, and I haven't run into this personally, but apparently it's still a thing.
Example:
Devil May Cry V
How did a game released in 2019 still have this issue where beating the game on Hard doesn't unlock the other trophies for normal and easy? HOW?
_________________________________________
And so that's it. Are there more annoying achievements and trophy types in games you dislike more than the ones I've mentioned? If so comment below. Do you disagree with my list? If so, comment below too.
But more importantly, are you a developer guilty of any one of these sins and would like to atone for your past transgressions? By all means, confess your sins in the comments below and seek atonement! Repent and be threadmarked!
Concise list for those that don't want to read the descriptions:
10. Achievements that don't end in 0 or 5 (Xbox Specific)
9. Luck/RNG Based Achievements/Trophies
8. Permadeath Achievements/Trophies
7. Secret Achievements/Trophies that are not story related
6. Achievements/Trophies that require you to be a multiplayer God
5. Achievements/Trophies that are missable in games that take more than 5 hours to complete
4. Achievements/Trophies that require you to do dumb shit in multiplayer modes
3. Achievements/Trophies that require multiple playthroughs to unlock
2. Achievements/Trophies tied to making story choice(s) in an RPG
1. Achievements/Trophies that do not unlock once the requirements have been met
9. Luck/RNG Based Achievements/Trophies
8. Permadeath Achievements/Trophies
7. Secret Achievements/Trophies that are not story related
6. Achievements/Trophies that require you to be a multiplayer God
5. Achievements/Trophies that are missable in games that take more than 5 hours to complete
4. Achievements/Trophies that require you to do dumb shit in multiplayer modes
3. Achievements/Trophies that require multiple playthroughs to unlock
2. Achievements/Trophies tied to making story choice(s) in an RPG
1. Achievements/Trophies that do not unlock once the requirements have been met
Top 10 Types of Achievements/Trophies Devs Should Stop Putting in their Games:
10. Achievements that don't end in 0 or 5 (Xbox Specific)
These kinds of Achievements aren't as prevalent these days as they used to be, but I still see indie games out there putting these Gamerscore ruining Achievements in their lists. You think you're so cute. Well you're not. Cut it out.
9. Luck/RNG Based Achievements/Trophies
I'm sorry game developers, these kinds of achievements just are not fun. Anything that requires your random number generator to proc on a low chance that I'll get an achievement isn't fun, it's just annoying. This is the literal antithesis of "achieving" something. It's just a thing randomly given out. Please stop.
Example:
Assassin's Creed Origins
Overheating
This achievement requires you to hallucinate "raining bugs" in the desert except it's not a guaranteed thing. It only happens at random, and despite having spent hours upon hours combing the desert in this game, I've never seen this phenomenon and the achievement is still not in my list. Apparently it's very rare. More infuriating, a friend of mine who only logged 5 hours in this game has the achievement. Thanks Ubisoft…you jerks.
8. Permadeath Achievements/Trophies
Any Achievement that requires you to be so good at the game you have to be able to beat it without dying has to go. Especially if the game expects you to beat it on the hardest difficulty level while also not dying. Fuck that shit. Unlike the previous achievement type in this list, this kind of achievement would be something one might actually consider a real achievement, but never the less, please stop including these on your Achievement lists.
I tried earning one of these trophies once and made it 5 hours into a game before dying an really stupid death due to collision physics and falling through the game world to my death. There has never been another 5 hours of my life I've wanted back more.
Example:
Wolfentstein II: Shadow of the Colossus (edit: I'm leaving this gem of a typo in here)
Mein Leben
This trophy requires you to beat the game on the hardest difficulty level (I am Death Incarnate) without dying. Oh, and you can't save. Have you played this game? Not only is it long, it's INDCREDIBLY difficult on the highest difficulty levels and there are enemies that can easily shred your life bar in picoseconds. Achieving this feat is not so much as an achievement as it is a signifier you're a masochist. Though I'm not judging if you are…
7. Secret Achievements/Trophies that are not story related
Secret Achievements are great when they're story related and/or you're definitely going to get them in the normal course of playing the game so you the player won't be spoiled by looking through the achievement list. Secret Achievements that don't have their requirements plainly laid out and have to be stumbled upon, however, can get the fuck right out. I shouldn't have to consult a guide to get your hidden achievement or trophy because you didn't tell me the requirements. If I'm not going to naturally get your secret achievement by playing the game to completion, the achievement requirements shouldn't be secret.
Example:
Control Foundation DLC
One of Us
This secret achievement requires you to find 8 really well hidden "lucky cats" hiding around the Foundation DLC. They're super easy to miss, so unless you have an Achievement Guide and know this Achievement exists, you could have 95% of your list done and have this one nagging secret achievement left over and not even know where to begin to unlock it. The fact that this achievement is secret isn't fun, it's obtuse.
6. Achievements/Trophies that require you to be a multiplayer God
Look It's clear most of us are not Daigo Umehara. Some of us are just not going to be able to get to "Gold" rank or whatever in your skill based multiplayer game no matter how hard we try. So maybe stop making Trophies and Achievements for this. There's nothing wrong with making trophies for "play this many ranked matches", or "win X multiplayer matches" but when you're requiring your players to achieve legendary like status within your game's multiplayer ranks, that's just not cool.
Example:
Street Fighter V
Let's fight someone strong!
This achievement requires you to get to Golden League in ranked play. Let's consider that feat will require 4000+ LP, you only get 56LP per win and you lose 24LP per loss. That's approximately 72 matches in a row you'd have to win versus live human beings the game matches you up with without losing once. Considering you're going to be losing, a lot, making this trophy gated to all but the most skilled players. Good luck getting that one (especially once you get out of Bronze League)… but hey, 72 ranked match wins in a row is just a small drop in the bucket to 300 ranked match wins you need for one of SFV's other grindy trophies…
5. Achievements/Trophies that are missable in games that take more than 5 hours to complete
Let's imagine you've gotten to the end of a 30 hour single player story campaign, you've beaten the game, and now you're looking to clear the couple of last remaining achievements off the list. "Collect Every Doodad", well that can't be hard… I found a TON while playing the game. And you look at your Doodad list to find you're missing one. But no matter how hard you try, you can't seem to find that last Doodad. So you turn to an Achievements guide to help only to find out you missed a specific Doodad in Chapter 6 (of 20) during a special mission in an enemy base that blew up and you can no longer access it. You're locked out of the achievement FOREVER, unless you want to replay the ENTIRE game.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF----
Devs, please. Please stop doing this to your players. If you have collectibles in your game that can be missed, provide a method to access these items once the game is over either by a chapter select or some other means.
Example:
Witcher III
Card Collector
This is the mother of all collectathon nightmares. The worst missable trophy based on item collection in any game I've come across. The myriad of ways you can completely F yourself in your quest to collect all the cards in the game are too numerous to mention, so I'll just mention one of the ways you can miss it.
In the game, there's a specific NPC in a cage in a bandit camp. This bandit camp, is not unlike just about every random bandit camp in the game featuring a guy in a cage, but this one in particular has an NPC that you must play the card game Gwent against and win. So, you have to free him from his cage, then escort his ass allllllll the way back to his home (a 15 minute walk) protecting him from all manner of bandits and wild animals (because unless you do he will die on the way back and you miss your chance for the card, believe me I tried fast travel, he never makes it), play Gwent against his deck and win. God help you if you stumbled across this bandit camp early in the game and didn't escort this jerk back to his hovel and he died, because now you have to start the game ALLLLLL OVER…
4. Achievements/Trophies that require you to do dumb shit in multiplayer modes
We've all been there, we're playing a team based multiplayer game, and one player on your team of randos is running around and doing apparently everything BUT working with the team towards whatever the objective is because they're "trying to get an achievement". Apologies… I'm that rando on your team. But it's not my fault! Developers are the ones that put these ridiculous achievements into their games and well I can't NOT try to get them.
Example:
Overwatch
Mine Sweeper
This achievement requires you as Winston (the gorilla character) to destroy 10 turrets without dying. Turrets only get spawned by Symetra and Torbjorn, and dying is super easy to do. So when you see a Symetra on the opposing team and you've selected Winston, you're doing your best to just stay alive long enough to get rid of 10 of her turrets and maybe not play the objective so much. "WINSTON! WTF YOU DOING! PUSH THE OBJECTIVE!" "Nah bruh, I'm trying to get an achievement…"
Honestly, I could have picked SO MANY of this kind of achievement from Overwatch it's not even funny…
3. Achievements/Trophies that require multiple playthroughs to unlock
"How do we make our game more replayable? How? How? How? WAIT! I'VE GOT IT! We'll make the player play through it in its entirety A SECOND TIME for certain achievements! BRIALLIANT!"
Devs, come on. Come on. Have you seen my backlog? Have you seen the amount of new content arriving all the time on Game Pass? Maybe making players go through your game multiple times for replayability was cool 15 years ago, but that was before the digital age. Before Steam Summer Sales, and the general cheapness of videogames on various digital marketplaces after numerous sales. There's so much to play, that forcing me to go through your game 2 or even 3 times just to get all the achievements can really turn me away from getting your game in the first place if I know this is a requirement for the Platinum trophy in advance.
If a player wants to play through your game a second time because they liked your game and have nothing else to do, great! Let them choose to do that. But I'm busy. I want to experience as many games as I can and my OCD compelling me to get all your multi-playthrough trophies is slowing me down. (Edit: yes I have been diagnosed, and yes it's a problem.)
Edit: a lot of people are accusing me of saying "you just want participation ribbons and easy trophies", which isn't what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is, "trophies should be reasonable and not waste my time". A good example is games that lock "hard mode" behind finishing the game on "Normal". Well that's going to make me play your game twice even though I could have possibly beaten your game on hard from the get go. If I want to play your game on the hardest difficulty from the start, let me. I frequently do.
Example:
Dark Souls III
Master of Rings
"Aquire all rings", sounds simple enough right? WRONG. There are 109 rings in the game, only 70 of which can be found in your first playthrough. 21 more rings are found in NG+ and 17 rings only found in NG++. The only way to acquire these rings? Beat the game, then beat it again and then collect the final rings in the next playthrough. And it's a Dark Souls game, so you know this will be a task not for the faint of heart, especially considering one of the rings is locked away behind the hardest boss in the game on NG++.
2. Achievements/Trophies tied to making story choice(s) in an RPG
Developers, it's called a "ROLE PLAYING GAME", let players ROLE PLAY! When you attach an achievement to a specific story choice a good chunk of the player base who care about Achievements will go for the Achievement instead of making the choice in game they would have made if it had been let up to them. This sends the signal to the player that there's a "correct" choice to be made based on what the developer decided and removes the player's agency if they want that coveted platinum trophy.
There's a more insidious version of this trope as well in roleplaying games that require you the player to achieve 100% "dark or light" status based on your good actions or evil actions. It forces the player to either be 100% an angel or 100% the devil incarnate and doesn't let the player explore roleplaying in the morally grey area.
Developers believe having achievements like these will lead to "replayability", by allowing players to make different choices on subsequent playthroughs, but like the previous item on this list, given the backlog most gamers have these days due to the abundance of amazing games to play and cheap digital prices, WE DON'T HAVE TIME for multiple playthroughs of your 100+ hour RPG!
Example:
The Witcher III
Friends With Benefits and Full Crew
This is a twofer from the Witcher III. I hope you like the witch Kiera Metz, because if you kill her, choose not to help her or don't make the appropriate decisions in the game for where she should go, not only will you miss out on the "Friends with Benefits Achievement", but you won't be able to get the "Full Crew" Achievement for having 7 specific NPCs available to you at the end of the game.
Yes it's easy to go through Kiera's quest line making the "right" choices, but the devs shouldn't force you to roleplay a specific way just to get some achievements when the game is supposed to let you decide how Geralt should act and then punish you for not acting how they wanted you to. Moreover, her quest line is very early in the game, if you don't do it correctly you could be 100 hours into the story and find out you're locked out of several achievements. This game is full of trophies that can be missed if you don't stick to exactly the series of events the developers intended and that's a shame given it's a game supposedly about your choices.
1. Achievements/Trophies that do not unlock once the requirements have been met
We've all had this happen right? You go through painstaking efforts to meet all the requirements for an achievement or trophy only to sit there when you've finally completed the final task and nothing happens. No "DING!" nothing. Silence. And then you know "Dammit, the achievement's bugged!"
As a developer of software myself, I understand that bugs are an unavoidable given, but if you discover a bug in your Trophy/Achievement giving code, do what you must to provide an quick method for your players to unlock the trophy or achievement so it doesn't stay locked on their lists forever without making them jump through all the hoops a second time, load an earlier save, or worse, start over entirely.
Destiny is an amazing example of this. There were a bunch of bugged achievements at launch so there's now a check when the game starts up to determine if you should have been awarded achievements but were not and it will award you what you're missing.
Edit: This item isn't about how developers add bugged achievements, it's about how they frequently do not FIX bugged achievements once the community determines there is a bug, frequently while the game is new. Developers, if your customers have found a bugged achievement, don't sit on your hands and do nothing. Fix it like you would any other bug and rectify the situation for all affected users if possible. Don't turn a blind eye and deride them on Twitter when they come to you with a bug report because "it's just an achievement".
Example:
Borderlands 3
Master of All You Survey
This achievement requires you to visit every named location in Borderlands 3 and despite your in-game location count showing 223/223 named locations, the achievement will not unlock. The developers, Gearbox, have never rectified this issue despite being notified by multiple users about this issue as well as there being a variable in the game letting them know you should be awarded the achievement. The only way to get this achievement once it has been bugged for you is to visit every location in the game AGAIN in one sitting without turning off the game or console, a feat that took me 5 hours.
Thanks Gearbox devs, thanks a lot.
_________________________________________
Honorable Mentions
Difficulty Based Achievements/Trophies that don't stack
If you beat the game in Hard, it stands to reason that you should get the achievements for Normal and Easy too right! WRONG! Some developers apparently think you should go back and beat the game a second and third time in the easier difficulties because... reasons.
This has been mentioned a ton of times in the replies so I should add it. I was trying to come up with examples of bad trophies I've come across recently, and I haven't run into this personally, but apparently it's still a thing.
Example:
Devil May Cry V
How did a game released in 2019 still have this issue where beating the game on Hard doesn't unlock the other trophies for normal and easy? HOW?
_________________________________________
And so that's it. Are there more annoying achievements and trophy types in games you dislike more than the ones I've mentioned? If so comment below. Do you disagree with my list? If so, comment below too.
But more importantly, are you a developer guilty of any one of these sins and would like to atone for your past transgressions? By all means, confess your sins in the comments below and seek atonement! Repent and be threadmarked!
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