Either one or both works.
Mine is completing the Pokedex in the original Pokemon games. All you get is just Professor Oak giving you a wink and a small few second cut scene. And a congratulations text. Imagine spending all of your time then, getting all 151 and even 252 pokemon just for that? Yeah no thanks, I never completed the pokedex.
Going the Joja-Route in Stardew Valley. I say this mainly because, it is what you make of it. You forfeit being able to complete the Community Center by earning things, when you sign your soul away to Joja. What I would’ve liked is seeing Pierre go out of business completely. I just think that would add a route of depth in the game where you have to make ends meet through Joja because Pierre is permanently closed.
But, that doesn’t happen, he’ll still be in business despite his depression about Joja running things. Kindof ruins the whole concept of doing it for the achievements even.
On the whole, achievements encourage players to do stuff that isn’t fun. Sometimes they’re funny or encourage good gameplay, but too often they’re just busywork, mindless random drops, or insane investments in time/skill.
Yeah I agree with this. Most achievements just don’t have the fun or inquisitive nature they should and are pretty much meaningless.
Trophies can be very fun when they incentivize the player to interact with the game in ways that you normally don’t do during a regular play through.
Most games have trophies designed by some corporate drone and consist of a handful of trophies giving for completing the storyline and the rest for token actions that you’ll inevitably do while playing. They fucking suck!
Ratchet and Clank did it right back in the day before trophies with their Skill Point system. Little fun challenges that you wouldn’t normally do. Gave you points to unlock some skins and cheats.
Is that really so much to ask for… yeah I already know the answer.
Most games have trophies designed by some corporate drone and consist of a handful of trophies giving for completing the storyline and the rest for token actions that you’ll inevitably do while playing.
Those are basically just publicly accessible analytics for how far people typically get in a game.
They weren’t trophies but I liked the challenges for Titanfall 1 that allowed you to ascend to the next level.
They were mainly using different weapons that I probably wouldn’t have tried because they didn’t seem as good as the easier to use weapons.
But dodging 100 random lightning bolts is fun!!
Action games, for the most part, have well-thought achievements, TBH. If designed well, they can nudge you towards the intended way to play the game and by the time you’re done, you will have mastered the gameplay or got really close.
In Hi-Fi Rush, for example, some achievements encourage you to parry, parry counter, air juggle… etc.
After someone on Lemmy recommended Dwarf Eats Mountain (it’s okay), I checked out the idle game genre for the first time.
On one extreme, Magic Archery was completed in under an hour and all seven achievements were earned during normal gameplay.
But most other idle games, ho boy. They tend to have several hundred achievements, many of which would take literal weeks if not months to achieve, and often require resetting the game back to the start dozens of times due to prestige mechanics that are necessary for late-game progression.
You can beat factorio with extremely inefficient gameplay, layout, etc. There are two achievements in that sort of “taught” me how to play better. First was the one that limited how many items you could handcraft, and second was the speedrun achievements. Both were doable but forced me to automate more and plan things out in advance, and I can’t remember any other game’s achievements that qualitatively changed how I played.
Breath of the Wild: getting all 900 or whatever Korok seeds. The reward is a golden Korok seed whose shape makes it very obvious that you’ve been cleaning up Korok poop this whole time. Pretty funny prank for Nintendo to pull tbh.
I’m glad Nintendo did that. Almost all completionist achievements are shit compared to actual substance in a game especially one as rich as BotW. Give the achievement hunter their dessert.
Super-bosses that award ultimate weapons… like why am I going to use this weapon now that the biggest challenge is done?
You killed the ultimate boss; now with their drop you are the setting’s ultimate boss. You just need to wait for another plucky young upstart to rise and take you down.
Diablo spoiler?
Or many of the Soulsborne games.
Tap for spoiler
Replacing Gehrman in one of the Bloodborne endings being the most direct example.
Rarely even happens in-universe.

There is sadistic satisfaction to be had from absolutely nuking enemies who gave you trouble before.
I also like collecting shiny things.
You might need them for ultra-bosses that reward ultimate ultimate weapons.
It’s for the secret boss!
Hey, that’s not fair. If you complete the original 150 Pokedex, you also get a little diploma you can print on your GameBoy Printer.
Oh BTW I am currently waiting to complete a “challenge” (its an achievement) for a special game, with a special achievement. All I have to do is, not to play the game. No seriously, “The Stanley Parable” has a famous achievement, that you get if you don’t launch the game for 5 years. The fun story is, I purchased the game just to get this achievement. Really. I purchased it and waited 5 years, then installed it and run it.
But wait, why don’t I get the achievement? After an investigation I came to realize that the game has to run at least once, so the timer starts counting. Well, since then I played the game and wait another 5 years. I almost reached the fifth year. So to complete everything (which I did not honestly) you would need to do not to play the game. Is it worth it? I say absolutely!
The Stanley Parable is a meta game - a game about playing and making games. And there you are having fun not playing a game…
Change your system time and relaunch the game for a sneaky cheat.
Yeah I know, there are methods. But I want to “earn” it the right way, as I don’t like cheating for this kind of stuff. But thanks for the tip nonetheless. Edit: Especially as I’m in the ninth year now…
I cleared all the question marks in Skellige in Witcher 3. I expected…something…anything?
i broke the boat in the middle of the water and then quit the game for few months
Beg to differ on the Pokemon example, but then again I am a completionist so that type of challenge gives me lots of self satisfaction (plus now I have achievements through RetroAchevements so a little bragging rights). Frankly, things like that should have internal motivation, so literally no reward is fine by me. I’m literally doing a professor oak challenge right now, which is significantly worse, lol.
Where I draw the line is mostly challenges that I just don’t see myself being able to accomplish in a given lifetime. Like the Balatro golden chip on every joker is way too RNG and time consuming for me. I also generally prefer not to have to do a speed run, but that’s mostly because I have kids now and setting something down without worrying about time is ideal.
I think something that makes a challenge worth it or not in a game is a combination of how fun it is and how much time it will take.
I recently got all the achievements in Another Crab’s Treasure. Most of the achievements you get naturally from playing the game, and I only had to hunt down a handful once I completed the game. All I had to do was fight 1 optional boss that I missed, grind a little bit to buy shells from a store, and play a couple of hours into NG+. Hunting those down was worth it because the combat is fun, and it showed that things are different in NG+ (I had to fight a brand new boss that wasn’t in the regular game), plus it didn’t take more than 3-4 hours.
On the other hand, I also played Schedule 1 again (post cartel update, but before shrooms were added). I love the game. I love the process of starting small and doing everything myself, and eventually building up to buy other properties, hiring employees, and refining the process to be more efficient. But man, that achievement to get $10 million is fucking nuts. I had all the properties producing drugs, the dealers and I were overflowing with product and I still haven’t gotten the $1 million achievement either. The game stopped being fun because everything was built up and I was basically there to restock the properties. Also actually getting to $10 million would have taken forever, so I gave up on it. I’ll definitely go back and play the game again, but I think I’ll wait until there’s another update after the one that added shrooms.
I’m at 99% of RDR2 for like 2 years now because I can’t be bothered to do the dominoes part of the gambling challenge.
That dominoes shit makes no sense to me. I’ve tried to look up the rules multiple times online and then I go into the game and try to make a legal move and the game won’t let me.
Whoever programmed that shit was on crack.
Same, no idea wtf I’m doing with that one.
Any challenges from Ubisoft games.
I 100% RDR and killing cougars with a knife still haunts me. It’s exactly as it sounds. Go do melee combat with a gigantic pissed off cat that almost always comes in pairs, sometimes a trio.
I fucking hate how if certain animals come at you at a particular angle, there’s literally nothing you can do. Sure they give you the button-mash prompt, but it does literally nothing, and you still get mailed to death. Every. Single. Time.
I know you meant mauled, but the image of a giant cat sticking you in a box and mailing you to the reaper was just too funny 🤣
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I’ve decided not to go after the golden strawberries in Celeste. The only other thing I’m missing is the moonberry.
Gosh, y’know, these days breathing gives you an achievement because gamers like to get achievements to have achievements. Why do gamers like to have achievements? Sense of pride and accomplishment, I suppose. And because I am very simple, I’m the same - I crave that dopamine of the li’l 🎶Di-Ding. And platinuming a game is of course more dopamine. It’s just very useless in most games, it’s nothing but a number somewhere in some statistics. Paradoxically, I think nobody needs achievements and I’m annoyed at how important they’ve become, and at the same time I’m disappointed if there are none.
Challenges that give me equipment that simply has some better stats are … well, challenging. Especially when I don’t get around to them until after I finish the story. That’s when I care the least about increasing my ice damage by 2 points.
Make me explore the world to find things, that’s my jam. Especially if the things I find add to the lore. … No I can’t think of any examples right now.
I got one character to lvl 60 in Classic WoW Hardcore. When I got that last level up, I cried a bit. Very emotional journey.
That was an achievement.
I tried doing Ironman a while back. Not even on classic, just on whatever the latest patch was. It was only getting easier with time and I wanted my name on that leaderboard. In my mind, it didn’t seem like it would be that difficult as long as I played carefully.
I gave up after level 20. I didn’t die, but I had a few close calls and figured it wasn’t going to be worth it to grind out 90+ more levels using the worst gear in the game and no healing or stat boosting items.











