Fenyx Rising associate game director Julien Galloudec is a person who understands achievements/trophies

[DrScruffleton]

Immortals Fenyx Rising dev says achievements "should not require specific ways to play"

Associate game director Julien Galloudec told us a little more about the team's approach to designing achievements for Immortals Fenyx Rising and its first expansion, A New God.

www.trueachievements.com

"Achievements should be a reward for something you can do in the flow of the game," Galloudec says, adding that the team used the same approach for A New God as for the main game itself. "Yes you can encourage players to go a bit out of their way, or to complete things. But it should not require specific ways to play, or things you can miss and cannot do unless you replay the entire game."

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If you take a look through the 50 Immortals Fenyx Rising achievements, you'll see that most do indeed unlock naturally as you explore and make your way through the story.

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Can every dev just get on board with this style of thinking? Nobody cares about having to use a specific weapon to kill 1,000 enemies or other ridiculous ones like that. I cant imagine anyone actually likes achievements like that. My liking has always been an achievement list that rewards players for experiencing everything a game has, or most of it. Not having players have to a choose a strict path on how to play the game and punishing players who go off that path.

 

[RockmanBN]

I like challenge trophies like completing something on the hardest difficulty or trophies like completing something without getting hit once. Wish Crash 4 had a trophy for completing all the Developer time trials. Getting achievements for completing hard challenges feel more rewarding than just doing what you normally will do in the first place.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

Damn, the thread title scared me for a second

 

[PlanetSmasher]

Yup. Intuitive trophy design is something a lot of developers need a crash course on. Japanese devs in particular really love making their trophy requirements, like, actual menial busywork.

It was cute, once, in Dead Rising 1. After Zombie Genocider though it stopped being funny and it just started being annoying.

 

[AViewtifulMind]

But when all achievements unlock naturally as you explore and make your way through the story, then there's no point in having achievements. The player already gets rewards in the form of cutscenes (story) and special gear/items (exploring).

 

[Deleted member 18400]

Yeah some trophies are just stupid. There is one in Valhalla where you have to kill two captains with one attack while you are on fire (or something along this line)....completely stupid.

 

[Dolce]

There isn't one singular idea for trophies. If they should unlock through normal play, just make start tracking instead.

Not everyone wants the same thing from trophies which is why there's so many different kinds.

Edit: this also reminds me platinum trophies shouldn't exist either. Just make it like XBOX where you get points. That way if you miss out on completing the trophies in a game it matters less.

 

[pixeldreams]

GrIndy one are by far the worst, it always surprised me how bad the Uncharted trophy lists were because nearly half of them were just get X kills with Y weapon.

A good list should get you at least half of them, and getting all of them shouldn't take you significantly longer than it takes to complete the main campaign. I've lost track of how many games I gave up on getting them all since it took 20 hours to complete the story but another 30-40 of hunting.

 

[DrScruffleton]

Yeah some trophies are just stupid. There is one in Valhalla where you have to kill two captains with one attack while you are on fire (or something along this line)....completely stupid.

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Literally took me 3 hours of standing on a burning roof top killing myself over and over trying to get that.

 

[Edge]

So basically like the Spider-Man games?

 

[Stopdoor]

It's nice to have a dev who's thoughtful about it but I still think the perspective of "achievements must always be 100%able" is a misguided one.

 

[JCADX]

I think there should be like 5-10% or the trophies that challenge the player in some form, even if it is archieving a 100% completion in a difficult game.

 

[New Username]

edit: deleted post

 

[Ryuelli]

But when all achievements unlock naturally as you explore and make your way through the story, then there's no point in having achievements. The player already gets rewards in the form of cutscenes (story) and special gear/items (exploring).

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I prefer my achievements be unlocked as I play through the story. I don't like the idea of achievements as a job, I see them more as a neat way of documenting what I've done.

I can't remember the last time I went out of my way to get an achievement/trophy. Maybe that ninja-looking armor back in Halo 3.

 

[Tom Nook Says...]

There's definitely an irony to games moving in an open world, sandbox direction while being tethered to achievements that require you to play in a very specific way or do very specific tasks. Of course, if someone finds an achievement to be too arduous or tedious, it's easy enough to just not bother with it. I'd have to imagine the vast majority of people don't even remember having earned specific achievements in any given game more than a couple months after the fact.

 

[Yuntu]

But when all achievements unlock naturally as you explore and make your way through the story, then there's no point in having achievements. The player already gets rewards in the form of cutscenes (story) and special gear/items (exploring).

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I think the purpose of achievements should be (if there even is any at all) to encourage players to engage with everything a game has to offer. I think especially for Open World games forcing the player to do something specific defeats the purpose.

 

[ToddBonzalez]

Damn, the thread title scared me for a second

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Yeah anytime you start reading a title that begins with "Man in a powerful position at Ubisoft..." you need to brace yourself for what's coming next.

 

[ThereAreFourNaan]

Achievements are torn between actually being achievements and catering towards people who psychologically cannot not go for the 100% achievements list and whose lives you are basically diminishing the quality of by making things too hard or too complex.

 

[vlaar]

I disagree.

It's not an amazing feat or a huge achievement that you played the game. You should feel a sense of accomplishment and excitement for getting an achievements and not just pressing X twice. (Like that achievement in Assassins Creed 2 with the baby, which was basically "start the game and get an achievement". )

I mean, it's in the name. Achievement, or even better, the way PlayStation does with Trophy. Trophies shouldn't just be handed down for "documenting". You want a trophy? Work for it.

 

[DrScruffleton]

Yeah anytime you start reading a title that begins with "Man in a powerful position at Ubisoft..." you need to brace yourself for what's coming next.

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Damn, the thread title scared me for a second

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sorry, didnt even think about that

 

[TheMadTitan]

It's this smart line of thinking that would make me actually bother with Achievements. According to Exophase, I'm sitting at 22% completion for Achievements/Trophies across all platforms, and a large part of that comes from annoying to get Achievements.

 

[RecRoulette]

There isn't one singular idea for trophies. If they should unlock through normal play, just make start tracking instead.

Not everyone wants the same thing from trophies which is why there's so many different kinds.

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Agreed. I'm not really an achievement hunter but I love achievements that require weird things or trigger at a specific time (Like in Double Dragon Neon, the credits song has the villain singing about his foiled plan and he says here's a medal for your victory and the achievement pops up.)

One of my favorite achievements of all time is called "Level 4 Revive Materia" from Hate Plus, which requires you to finish the game with a character that dies partway through. Nobody has this achievement, and nobody will ever get it. It's brilliant yet I understand why so many people absolutely despise it.

From the same game that required you to take a picture of a cake you baked (or bought) and send it to the dev to have it unlocked.

 

[Osu 16 Bit]

There's a good middle ground with the stuff like the weapon grind ones. It can be useful to encourage the player to try out new weapons but it absolutely shouldn't be a thing where you're forced to ignore the trophy or specialize and spend hours and hours on a weapon. I'm replaying Dead Space right now and it has a trophy for getting 30 kills with each weapon. That is reasonable. If it was 1000 or whatever then I'd just ignor eit.

 

[TheMadTitan]

I disagree.

It's not an amazing feat or a huge achievement that you played the game. You should feel a sense of accomplishment and excitement for getting an achievements and not just pressing X twice. (Like that achievement in Assassins Creed 2 with the baby, which was basically "start the game and get an achievement". )

I mean, it's in the name. Achievement, or even better, the way PlayStation does with Trophy. Trophies shouldn't just be handed down for "documenting". You want a trophy? Work for it.

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Kill X dude 4000 times with your Axe isn't an Achievement either, but there's plenty of those in far too many games.

 

[Stopdoor]

I disagree.

It's not an amazing feat or a huge achievement that you played the game. You should feel a sense of accomplishment and excitement for getting an achievements and not just pressing X twice. (Like that achievement in Assassins Creed 2 with the baby, which was basically "start the game and get an achievement". )

I mean, it's in the name. Achievement, or even better, the way PlayStation does with Trophy. Trophies shouldn't just be handed down for "documenting". You want a trophy? Work for it.

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Platinum trophies probably made this poison worse, Xbox at least you could focus on what's high value independently of completion.

 

[Rickenslacker]

I disagree.

It's not an amazing feat or a huge achievement that you played the game. You should feel a sense of accomplishment and excitement for getting an achievements and not just pressing X twice. (Like that achievement in Assassins Creed 2 with the baby, which was basically "start the game and get an achievement". )

I mean, it's in the name. Achievement, or even better, the way PlayStation does with Trophy. Trophies shouldn't just be handed down for "documenting". You want a trophy? Work for it.

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It's not an amazing feat or a huge achievement that you completed some challenge mode or whatever either.

 

[elenarie]

In all honesty, most first party achievements and trophy work is seen as throwaway to mostly satisfy first party requirements. We are not the early 00s anymore where you need a first system to be able to track account persistence.

To just simply move away from all the achievements and trophy complaints, games should just stick to requiring the most basic of things for these first party integrations. And make the actual interesting things you could call achievements / challenges to be tracked entirely by the game itself.

For example, if you have a game with 10 levels, just make 10 achievements / trophies to complete each level. And call it a day. That way, nobody complains about your game. And then make a system in the game, that presents achievements / challenges and requires players to play the game in a specific way, in a particular difficulty, and so on.

 

[Absurdeity]

I like challenge trophies like completing something on the hardest difficulty or trophies like completing something without getting hit once. Wish Crash 4 had a trophy for completing all the Developer time trials. Getting achievements for completing hard challenges feel more rewarding than just doing what you normally will do in the first place.

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the developer time trials... you are insane

 

[DrScruffleton]

I like challenge trophies like completing something on the hardest difficulty or trophies like completing something without getting hit once. Wish Crash 4 had a trophy for completing all the Developer time trials. Getting achievements for completing hard challenges feel more rewarding than just doing what you normally will do in the first place.

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Im mostly fine with difficulty ones, as long as they all stack. And as long as it is playable directly from launching the game the first time. If you have to play through the game to unlock the difficulties once or even a few times as ive seen in some games. Nope, forget it.

 

[DanteMenethil]

I feel like "naturally unlocking as you play through the game" is kinda antithesis of it being an achievement / trophy-worthy

 

[-Tetsuo-]

So basically like the Spider-Man games?

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I got like 20% of the trophies playing that naturally while beating the game.

 

[RockmanBN]

Im mostly fine with difficulty ones, as long as they all stack. And as long as it is playable directly from launching the game the first time. If you have to play through the game to unlock them once or even a few times as ive seen in some games. Nope, forget it.

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Yup it's pointless doing previous difficulties when you've already did it on the hardest difficulty. Glad the PS4 version of the KH ports fixed that by stacking them. I agree that grinding isn't achieving anything.

 

[MeltedDreams]

So basically like the Spider-Man games?

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I have only 23 plats and Spidey one was least satisfying to get. Not a single time you struggle through this and trophies donesn't feel like reward at all.

 

[AppleBlade]

I'm a Trophy/Achievement fanatic and in general I am in agreement with OP and the Immortals dev. However I am ok with Collect all of a collectable achievements if they give you a map. I am also ok with the kill X number with a certain weapon or skill as long as the number is not ridiculous and it is not a secret/hidden achievement.

Whenever this topic comes up, a lot of posters like to come in these threads and disagree with thisnotion and go on and on about how they should be special or very difficult to get or secret things but upon further discussion a lot of that crowd doesn't even care about trophies/achievements. I don't understand how someone who doesn't care about achievements/trophies feels so compelled to have a strong opinion about why the people who actually do care are wrong.

It's a metagame to me that brings me a sense of accomplishment by seeing my score go up AND it motivates me to play my games to completion or to play a way that I normally would not. If they're all super secret and hard to achieve, it meets neither of those two things that actually make achievements/trophies special to me.

 

[jimboton]

Achievements are torn between actually being achievements and catering towards people who psychologically cannot not go for the 100% achievements list and whose lives you are basically diminishing the quality of by making things too hard or too complex.

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Agreed. I think games should have achievements that actually *are* achievements.

 

[RockmanBN]

I have only 23 plats and Spidey one was least satisfying to get. Not a single time you struggle through this and trophies donesn't feel like reward at all.

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Yup. All the crimes was such a drag. You have like 5 different sets of them that you have to complete 5 times in each district.

 

[Paz]

I've designed a few achievement/trophy lists and typically I try to balance it out between three areas: acknowledging progress, encouraging exploration (of game systems or actual content), and rewarding skillful actions.


With a non even split, favoring each group in order.

Nothing should be missable, and none of the exploration elements should be long or arduous (ie use weapon X for 5 hours etc). And definitely nothing should be multiplayer only if the game is largely single player focused.

 

[Deleted member 679]

I think the real issue with trophies in general is that people feel entitled to the platinum, specifically. Because the vast majority of games do give you trophies for just going through the story, or seeing all the content. You just don't get 100% of the trophies just by doing that, and people find that an unforgivable flaw, for some reason.

These are the achievements I don't have for Doom Eternal:

I'll probably try to get the final one whenever I feel like playing it again, but all of the multiplayer ones I'll never get, and I don't give a shit. It also doesn't bother me that they exist. Why am I entitled to the achievements when I didn't achieve these things? It's completely fine that I'll miss out on 100% completion when I refuse to do 100% of the challenges proposed by the game.

 

[LiquidSolid]

I think a trophy list should ideally be used as a guide to show a game in its best light. I have no problem with skill based games having hard trophies (like say DMC5) but if a trophy makes your game look like shit because you tied it to a ton of shitty quests or an extremely boring grind then you've fucked up.

I'm also a bit iffy on NG+ trophies. Personally, I feel like any game over 20 hours shouldn't have a NG+ trophy, especially if they're relatively slow paced and/or have unskippable cutscenes. Way too many JRPGs fall into this trap and it's frustrating.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

I can relate with some of the points he's making.
I can mention a clear example of a type of achievement I despise in one of my favorite games of all time: I love XCOM 2 (no shit), I have hundreds of hours on it (literally. More than 700) and I will never unlock the achievement "The Few and the Proud" that asks me to play the game without unlocking Squad upgrades because... Well, I HATE the idea of playing an entire campaign without any squad upgrade.

It's not even about the difficulty of doing so. I don't find it fun.
Every time I replay a campaign unlocking these squad upgrades so I can bring a larger and more diversified team on a mission is the first thing I look forward for.

 

[Addleburg]

I like that approach to achievements, but then again I'm not someone who typically gives a shit enough about trophies to go out of my way to earn them.

If it's slightly tweaking my play style or an incentive to try something new, sure. If it's "collect 500 of this dumb shit to get a bronze trophy," then fuck off.

 

[Aske]

There isn't one singular idea for trophies. If they should unlock through normal play, just make start tracking instead.

Not everyone wants the same thing from trophies which is why there's so many different kinds.

Edit: this also reminds me platinum trophies shouldn't exist either. Just make it like XBOX where you get points. That way if you miss out on completing the trophies in a game it matters less.

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Platinum trophies are awesome. They're the only ones I care about. "I love this game, and I did all the things, and here's my platinum." I actually feel a bit sad when a game I love has absurd, unfun trophy requirements, because if they're not fun, I won't bother, and then it looks like I don't care about the game as much as I do.

 

[hikarutilmitt]

There isn't one singular idea for trophies. If they should unlock through normal play, just make start tracking instead.

Not everyone wants the same thing from trophies which is why there's so many different kinds.

Edit: this also reminds me platinum trophies shouldn't exist either. Just make it like XBOX where you get points. That way if you miss out on completing the trophies in a game it matters less.

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I actually prefer the platinum to the score because it shows up on the list at a glance that you completed games, not just did some random shit.

Always felt like basic progression trophies either shouldn't exist, be fewer at certain points or just be the lowest value (low points or only bronzes like most games) and reserve a higher point for completion and then for certain pieces like all missions or weapons or maxing all weapons or styles.

 

[Silvergun-Blue]

As with all these broad sweeping statements, it depends entirely on the game. For an open word game, the chances are the game mechanics aren't robust enough to have the player attempt fiddly challenges or wait for the perfect set of circumstances to align for something kinda random.
But for a more specific game, like an arcade score attack thing then there's plenty of scope for skill based achievements that really push the player.

But as I always say in these threads, developers can put whatever achievements they want in a game, the player isn't entitled to have them all by default an if you find certain trophy's unlock requirements unappealing then just move along.

 

[nihilence]

Yeah some trophies are just stupid. There is one in Valhalla where you have to kill two captains with one attack while you are on fire (or something along this line)....completely stupid.

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Literally took me 3 hours of standing on a burning roof top killing myself over and over trying to get that.

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I've yet to start. But that already scares me.

 

[Deleted member 46493]

I find the conversation about trophies kinda tired. Best thing you can do is stop caring about them. Still, I do agree it depends on the game and what the fanbase expects. For example, the majority of the Yakuza 4 trophies are too grindy, but that's what the Yakuza hardcore players like. Doesn't bother me.

If I had to make a blanket statement, I'd say trophies should follow the Pareto principle - 80% of them should be easily achieved via regular play, 20% should be for hardcore fans.

 

[Jimnymebob]

I kinda like trophies that encourage experimentation. So nothing too grindy like collect or kil 500 of each thing, but nothing simple like getting a platinum just for finishing a game 100%.
Things like getting trophies for seeing certain death animations in the Crash trilogy, trying to input a PS1 MediEvil cheat on the remake, using a certain Jotaro ability during DIO's super move on JJBA ASB etc. are what I like to see. So just sort of silly things that even if you don't get them naturally, you won't be guaranteed to get just for finishing, but won't have to spend hours grinding.

 

[thejpfin]

I like challenge trophies like completing something on the hardest difficulty or trophies like completing something without getting hit once. Wish Crash 4 had a trophy for completing all the Developer time trials. Getting achievements for completing hard challenges feel more rewarding than just doing what you normally will do in the first place.

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These type of trophies/achievements are my favorite. It kinda sucks that nowadays AAA sony titles and some AAA 3rd party titles no longer have difficulty related trophies. Like God of War, Spiderman or Ghost of Tsushima have no difficulty trophies.

 

[TheChungusAmongUs]

Put this man on the Assassins Creed team so they don't do "100% the map" again

 

[XR.]

In all honesty, most first party achievements and trophy work is seen as throwaway to mostly satisfy first party requirements. We are not the early 00s anymore where you need a first system to be able to track account persistence.

To just simply move away from all the achievements and trophy complaints, games should just stick to requiring the most basic of things for these first party integrations. And make the actual interesting things you could call achievements / challenges to be tracked entirely by the game itself.

For example, if you have a game with 10 levels, just make 10 achievements / trophies to complete each level. And call it a day. That way, nobody complains about your game. And then make a system in the game, that presents achievements / challenges and requires players to play the game in a specific way, in a particular difficulty, and so on.

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I really don't see the point of having game-specific challenges that can only be seen within the game itself. Achievements in its current form are fun because you can compare in various of ways, such as seeing what your friends are doing, what choices they make, how far they've come or what challenges they've completed.

If a developer wants to do that and just have 10 achievements for completing all the game's 10 levels, so be it - that's their prerogative, but I personally appreciate when a developer uses achievements to encourage the player to try new playstyles or explore further than they've already done.

Completely arbitrary achievements such as "Get 10,000 kills" should be banned across the board, honestly, but I think I see those less frequently these days.