The Daily Grind: Are you an achievement junkie?

I find that achievements help me discover and try out content I wouldn't normally find on my own, so I like them. I'm not one to try to unlock all of them, but getting a little recognition never hurts.

I dont mind getting achievements, but i dont usually go out of my way to get them either. I like more to discover them, instead of knowing the list and knowing what to go for. Makes it more fun and rewarding for me that way.

Like in Deus EX, theres the part with the basketball hoop and the basketball. I saw that and wondered if there was an achievement, or even possible(to get the ball through the hoop). And well, i made the score and found the achievement.

I like that they're there, but I don't particularly go out of my way to get them. They're most useful when you've 'finished' a game, in giving you further goals to aim for whilst playing at the limit of what you can do or become in the game.

The other side of the coin is that they're another way of robbing the imagination of the player. In Morrowind for example, or any of those old-skool, open world sandboxy games, once you'd 'finished' the game you had nothing to do but wander about as a max level avatar and find your own fun - which often was as much fun or more so than any of the scripted story parts. WIth acheievements, you don't do things to challenge yourself or your skills, but because you got a box to tick.

But that's the cynical view, and I don't totally go for it myself. ;)

I like achievements....I find it helps me to explore and locate or see other content I may never have seen in the first place.

Besides it's nice to do something you didn't have to do and get a little ding for it even if there is no reward involved.

I can still remember thinking to myself when achievements first started being implemented that the industry was now officially designing for a different generation.

On one hand I realize the point is to get more out of the content, yet on the flip side it serves as a vehicle for e-peen measurement.

I like earning achievements spontaneously, just playing around and suddenly ding, you did this and that, congrats. It pulls your attention to something interesting you might have done (or have happened to you through circumstance/luck), and it's reinforcing a positive feeling about it. For me a lot of this feeling is lost when i specifically look at the list of achievements and pick out ones i want to do. I wouldn't call myself a junkie. I don't miss achievements when they're not present in a game.

Achievements and trophies are the bane of games these days. They make many MMOs have a huge catch 22. Since you have to have the achievement to go get a group for that dungeon/boss/raid/to do anything in games now.

Plus achievements/trophies make you feel like your in the Special Olympics.... Especially when you get them for turning on the game or doing the most mundane tasks.... (Just like scripted boss fights in everything now, press button X now!)
"YAY! I gots someting for doin wut teh game told me to do! I pushd teh button and I gots this trophie! YAY!

I like them only if they serve a real purpose. I like the GuildWars titles that give benefits such as increasing the power of abilities or improving salvage chance, stuff like that, the more pure "fluff" ones I tend to leave for last if I do them at all. I've never been one to care about bragging rights or crave the accolades of people I'll likely never see again and certainly won't remember.

I like achievements. It means i have something to do after i do the regular stuff in a game.

Like i say about WoW, i don't dislike it, but i still have almost 700 things to do there.

I like achievements in console games, but in mmos they are pretty useless to me.

Games give you achievements for stupid things (dying once, dying five times, jumping off a bridge) in mmos which isn't why I play them.

It gets to be quite ridiculous anymore and in some games, people actually count achievements as game CONTENT. When someone quits in RIFT due to boredom at max (when dungeon grinding gets old), the reply from fanbois is always "Did you unlock all the achievements?" as if that's actual content.

I honestly couldn't care less about achievements. They have just never interested me in the slightest.

I don't mind achievements, but I don't go out of my way to earn them.

Just look at what achievements did to WoW. No thanks.

I will admit, I am mostly into end game content ... however, I do regularly cast an eye to see what achievements are available in the content I am running.

Its also something to do to get me to discover content I might have skipped ... and it fills time between instances and raids :D

I hate achievements that are pointless. You passed Chapter 1. You killed 10 dudes. You learned to jump. Those aren't the type of things you want to show you accomplished. You took down a secret boss, that's something worth noting. Or you gained the ultimate weapon, etc.Or you did something quite clever.

Other than that, they are pointless.

Achievements add extra hours of replayability. Once you've finished a game, you can always use any missed achievements as a reason to keep playing.

I like achievements on Xbox. Some games I will go out of my way to get the full 1k GS which in a lot of cases adds to the longevity of the title, others I'll just pass up the achievements and finish up once I'm bored with the game. It really depends on the game and what the achievements are.

As for MMOs, I'm happy that achievements made their way over but I pretty much agree. Don't give me an achievement for winning my first duel or hitting level 10. Achievements - all achievements - should really be achievements, and I think less is more as far as that goes. I'm also fine with achievements awarding cosmetics - I always felt LotRO handled that well with its titles but, again, way too many.

I admit that I love achievements. Once I figured out that I never wanted to raid again, completing soloable achievements became my version of endgame.

I love achievement systems.