Not me. I was born 6'1 with a deep, booming voice, six-pack abs, and a license that allowed me to buy liquor. Must be an Irish thing.

Because there's no competition in it! Okay, the achievement for beating the game on Insane would be impressive, but the other achievements don't even seem difficult. Just time-consuming, and most people will get most of them without even trying. At a certain point it's less a contest to see who can piss higher and more a competition to see who has the most free time. That is what confuses me about the whole thing. It's like a competition without winners or losers. If everyone's pissing the exact same height, that's not a contest. That's a community urinal.

And don't CoD games have achievements? Pretty sure that system of feedback is flawed, if so.

You mean unlike the flawless Steam, which never causes any problems?

Achievements are there for bragging rights, nothing else, as far as the users go. There are games where you get most achievements by just playing the game like you normally would, but there are also games that reward you for doing something really difficult.

There are a few cases, such as Portal 2, where achievements are actually small guides to hidden areas and bonus content. They can be a good thing if done right. But yes, most achievements are completely dumb and useless.

I personally see them as small mementos. I can look back and go 'oh yeah, I did that... cool'. Tho I wish the achievements were hidden until you actually get them, that would make unlocking them so much more fun :>

Achievements set goals for players. You can see them as new quests with no rewards other than self satisfaction. There is no difference between trying complete a quest and trying to get an achievement.

Also, you can see the global achievements and that allows you to know how good you play. Still, there are a couple of achievements that completed by very few players. There's nothing wrong about someone who wants to achieve the unachievable. It's fun.

Not to mention TW2 was only $20 for Russians during the summer sale. :)

I never had any problems with Steam either, I love their service. Although they did screw up TW2 quite a few times, according to their forums.

It's $20 still for Rus region.
During the sale it was $13.39

Daaamn!

Time to befriend some Russians.

I agree when it comes to the MS Gamerscore for the most part. There is barely any sense whatsoever, other than making people want to buy more games and push their gamerscore.

On the other hand clever assigned achievements can guide a perspective towards something or make you act in a behaviour you normally wouldn't do in your progress. So some game elements might be overseen without that hint. There are some examples like Batman AA , Limbo and a few others which were actually really challenging. It's rare but that's something worth the time to spend on. IDK though if the devs are involved in any decision while implementing those.

You have no idea how depressing what you just said is. Is an achievement driven by narrative? No. Do you obtain anything (an item, points redeemable for anything) from an achievement? Negatory. The two are nothing alike, and "achievement" manages to be a misnomer most of the time. Maybe my opinion is informed by the fact that I'm fiercely competitive, but if any idiot can do something, it ceases to be an accomplishment. That's why they don't give out awards for breathing.

This is the best argument I've seen thus far. Still, I remember the days when you actually had to search around for things that are hidden. Having achievements as clues kind of defeats the point of hiding something.

Because gamers need hand-holding these days, it's just sad. On one hand, it's nice to have a clue, on the other, the feeling of accomplishment just isn't the same. You can simply not look at the achievement list (which is what I do), but most won't do that. Oh well.

I tend to swing between being neutral regarding achievements, and to be utterly frustrated by them. Like many have pointed out already, achievements can be done cleverly and end up being quite fun in general (Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts is one example of achievements handled well). An added incentive is if they actually add some sort of bonus to the gameplay itself, as well. When achievements are done badly, they are handed out in a haphazard manner, completely disconnected from the game itself, with no sense of actual accomplishment to them. I think the worst examples of this is when you gain achievement points for simply naming your character, or entering the options menu. If done with a sense of logic, and if they are integrated in the game in a way that makes them kind of feel part of the game, I don't mind so much - unfortunately, the vast majority of game designers throw them in there because they feel they must, or to use it to market a new DLC or whatever ("200 new achievement points to collect!").

Either way, I wouldn't even raise my eyebrow at the existence of achievement systems, if the damnable game designers had the decency to make them optional! Why can't I simply switch them off in the game menu, if I want to, and don't want my gameplay to be interrupted by an obnoxious pop-up in the middle of an intense story section?

well, you just quoted the part you like to answer. it continues with "no rewards other than self satisfaction". Obviously you don't like the achievements idea and I'm not going to argue on such a small matter.

Wanna know why?
Because they ACTUALLY have to. Afaik, it's part of the deal if you want to release a game for the 360 to include achievements worth 1000 GS (with certain restrictions on how many GS you can hand out for doing something specific).
Steam just included it, because the majority of gamers likes that sort of e-peen (and failed badly btw, by not including an overall count).

Do you have a source for that?

There's probably something like that for the PS3, too. Recently ragequit Infamous because of the stupid achievements. Kindo's totally right--there should be some kind of "off" button for them.

I guess my problem is that I can't see how anyone could possibly derive self-satisfaction from a little popup that doesn't have any real value, but if that's what you like then more power to you. More relevant than all that, I was taking offense to the comparison that you made between the two because narrative is such a huge thing that having its influence brushed off was depressing. Not meaning to argue, just trying to make a point that story is everything.

Now, if someone designed a game that broke the fourth wall ala Conker's Bad Fur Day and made "achievements" a necessary part of gameplay and the plot... that would be amazing.