When I first heard about trophies I had no idea what they were for. I thought maybe you would get rewards or enter ruffles by geting them or something.

I checked online and the answer is that they do... nothing. I was baffled at why something so pointless and stupid would be necessary.

With time, though, I've learnt to appreciate them. I'm not a trophy whore or anything, but when there are no new games that I'm interested in I pop one of my favourites in and go for the trophies, simply because it extends the life of games I like. However, I will never put getting trophies above playing new games, and I don't care for competing about who's got more or anything.

I know some people are so addicted to them they even play games they don't like for them. I can't understand that and in my view that's a case were you could say they've made things worse.

In the end, they give me some entertainment sometimes but I'd be perfectly fine without them.

So, what's your opinion on trophies? Have they made gaming better or not?

People are too busy getting trophies.

Maybe, but that's the personal problem of those sad people. I can understand why people did this at the beginning of the generation when Gamerscore was a new thing and there weren't many good games, or because getting 1000 Gs in about two minutes from Avatar: The Burning Earth is kind of hilarious (I'm guilty of this!), but once the novelty wears off and there are more good games than there is time to play them, it's just beyond me why people punish themselves in this way.

Trophies/achievements are just a cool track record of what you've played and what you've done, IMO. So yes, it's only a good thing.

They haven't, but since nobody forces you to obtain all of them it's a nice addition. Nothing more, nothing less.
There are a couple of games I've played longer than I normally would have because of them but only if I considered them to be fun (well mostly anyway) and not a chore.

Having said that I would like to see something like it for the WiiU...

People are playing terrible games to inflate their gamerscore so no it has not improved gaming.

Yes and no.

It's nice to have some sort of archive of what you have played and done in games, and see what games your friends are passionate about. A simple play time indicator per game like in Steam would be nice too.
Some trophies give you an idea to try something fun you haven't thought of before.

What I don't like is how it has replaced unlocking cheats, concept art, making of featurettes, deleted levels etc. If you have dumb progression throphies (like get x kills with y gun) at least make it worthwhile by unlocking something interesting.

Not yet.

I say not yet because I live in hope that one day we'll be able to actually do something worthwhile with them, like get credit for digital downloads or something like that.

Until then, they won't realise their potential.

"With time, though, I've learnt to appreciate them. I'm not a trophy whore or anything, but when there are no new games that I'm interested in I pop one of my favourites in and go for the trophies, simply because it extends the life of games I like. However, I will never put getting trophies above playing new games, and I don't care for competing about who's got more or anything."

I follow a similar philosophy, but only if they are implemented well. For instance, If I don't have any new games & I notice that I have a few remaining trophies in a game, I'll check them out and see if they're fun. If it's something like "Collect all of the Blast Shards" then I'm like fuck that! I didn't buy this game to check the internet for random items, then scour the city looking for them.

But If they are something fun like "Complete mission 7 without being seen by any enemies & without killing any innocents", then I'll try it out. In these cases, I usually have some fun accomplishing a fun goal that I would have necessarily done without trophies.

Like others have said, it serves as a nice archive for the games you've completed. And you feel truly accomplished when you've 100%ed a game.