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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - because Nintendo doesn't have an achievement system or trophies like Sony and Microsoft. and how much this is missed by its users

BasilZero said:

You dont have to like it or care about it - just like I didnt care about Miiverse or having non-gaming apps on game systems but its still a good thing to have because there will always be people who want these

For me are amiibos

And almost every first party have this feature 

But they don't bother me. As long they don't starting locking meaning features around them



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For me I like having achievements in game.
Not because I try to 100% a game and get all of them. But because they serve as a digital footprint to remind me of what I was doing, at a specific time in my life.

This actually unraveled a mystery for me about when I played MGS4 as my memory didn't check out (for good reason, because after looking at the timestamps on my achievements, I realized that I stopped playing it for years and then picked it up again.)

It also helps me know when a friend is past a certain point in a game so we can talk about it without spoilers.
Or even if we don't talk about it, just for me to know that, "Ah, they're past this boss now." or "They stopped playing at this point".

I don't think there's a reason for Nintendo not to add this if they add an option to turn it off, in case someone has an issue with it for whatever reason.

Last edited by Hiku - on 06 November 2023

Hiku said:

For me I like having achievements in game.
Not because I try to 100% a game and get all of them. But because they serve as a digital footprint to remind me of what I was doing, at a specific time in my life.

This actually unraveled a mystery for me about when I played MGS4 as my memory didn't check out (for good reason, because after looking at the timestamps on my achievements, I realized that I stopped playing it for years and then picked it up again.)

It also helps me know when a friend is past a certain point in a game so we can talk about it without spoilers.
Or even if we don't talk about it, just for me to know that, "Ah, they're past this boss now." or "They stopped playing at this point".

There's really no reason for Nintendo not to add this if they add an option to turn it off, in case someone has an issue with it for whatever reason.

Having an achievements system is also nice for devs and players to see how far people get in objectives and if they even complete the main quest of a game. It amazes me how many games have under 20% of players completing the main quest on PSN. 



Lifetime Sales Predictions 

Switch: 161 million (was 73 million, then 96 million, then 113 million, then 125 million, then 144 million, then 151 million, then 156 million)

PS5: 115 million (was 105 million) Xbox Series S/X: 48 million (was 60 million, then 67 million, then 57 million)

PS4: 120 mil (was 100 then 130 million, then 122 million) Xbox One: 51 mil (was 50 then 55 mil)

3DS: 75.5 mil (was 73, then 77 million)

"Let go your earthly tether, enter the void, empty and become wind." - Guru Laghima

As a Xbox One/Series X and Switch owner - Achievements are just a small fun bonus for me, which occasionally incentivizes me to do a bit extra in the game I probably otherwise wouldn't have done, but that's it. They give you a bit of that dopamine hit which is nice - and I'm sure that's by design. And it is kinda neat to have this big compilation of Xbox points that dates back all the way to when I first played my 360 in 2006.

But when I play Switch I don't really feel like I'm missing them, especially if there's a built-in achievement system in-game. Switch is more of my low-key console anyway - ie lounge on the couch and play handheld mode while watching TV. So I'm generally not 100% focuses on grinding and doing a super deep dive into a game when playing Switch.

I can't help but feel achievements are often just a cheap cop-out to make modern games feel more rewarding then they actually are, and frankly says something about the decline of modern gaming as a whole.



 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident - all men and women created by the, go-you know.. you know the thing!" - Joe Biden

It's good that Nintendo doesn't have it, because an overarching achievement system forces achievements into games that don't need them at all.

Any developer is free to put achievements into their games, so any multiplatform game on Switch that doesn't have them is a developer decision, not a prohibition on Nintendo's behalf. Given that more often than not there are no achievements, it's pretty telling how most developers think about achievements.

The best kind of achievement lists are those that result in in-game rewards of some kind, but what overarching achievement systems have done for the most part is not that at all.



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I haven't paid attention to trophies/achievements for almost a decade now. At first it was an interesting gimmick, adding some extra challenges, mixing up the gameplay by going for stuff like "kill x with weapon y". Yet after a while it just felt like a crutch to extend the game play in the most boring way. I much rather do extra tasks to unlock artwork or behind the scenes footage like games had before trophies/achievements. Only a rare few do that nowadays.

So I've turned all trophy notifications off. (Some notifications even spoil what is about to happen, progress trophy popping at the start of the cut scene for example). I haven't looked at trophy lists for years and didn't miss them one bit in Nintendo titles.



Wman1996 said:
Moribond said:

Next : Why Nintendo doesn't have DRM?

I'm sure there is sarcasm in this response, but Nintendo very much has DRM.

If your Wii U is bricked, there has almost never been a way to recover games with your Nintendo Network account on another Wii U. That's quite severe DRM.

Nintendo has been encouraging digital purchases big time during Switch's life, and digital games in general use DRM.

I don't see the link between an achievements system and DRM. 

But the Nintendo Network ID does let you recover games. At least, they did for my 3DS. It was broken beyond repair so I bought a new one, called up Nintendo support, and they changed my registered system from the previous one to the new one, allowing me to re-download all my previous digital purchases. I didn't have my old data (RIP my perfect streetpass puzzles), but that's hardly a DRM issue.



psychicscubadiver said:
Wman1996 said:

I'm sure there is sarcasm in this response, but Nintendo very much has DRM.

If your Wii U is bricked, there has almost never been a way to recover games with your Nintendo Network account on another Wii U. That's quite severe DRM.

Nintendo has been encouraging digital purchases big time during Switch's life, and digital games in general use DRM.

I don't see the link between an achievements system and DRM. 

But the Nintendo Network ID does let you recover games. At least, they did for my 3DS. It was broken beyond repair so I bought a new one, called up Nintendo support, and they changed my registered system from the previous one to the new one, allowing me to re-download all my previous digital purchases. I didn't have my old data (RIP my perfect streetpass puzzles), but that's hardly a DRM issue.

Still a God awful system.  If my ps5 bricks...  I buy a new one, sign in and download.  Nintendo is stupid behind on how to handle digital.



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It was a fun gimmick for about a year, which for me was 2007-2008.

I don't have the time or interest to dig through everybody else's gamerscores on individual games, and a cumulative gamerscore says more about how many games you buy than it does about how good you are at them. The only platinum I ever got was FF7 OG, and that's because I cheated my way through Emerald and Ruby Weapons and used a guide to get Barrett at the Gold Saucer.

I'm too busy actually enjoying the games.



RolStoppable said:

It's good that Nintendo doesn't have it, because an overarching achievement system forces achievements into games that don't need them at all.

Any developer is free to put achievements into their games, so any multiplatform game on Switch that doesn't have them is a developer decision, not a prohibition on Nintendo's behalf. Given that more often than not there are no achievements, it's pretty telling how most developers think about achievements.

The best kind of achievement lists are those that result in in-game rewards of some kind, but what overarching achievement systems have done for the most part is not that at all.

Since in-game achievements don't allow you the convenient access to your "gameplay history" in the way a system wide feature does, I possibly wouldn't putting them in if I was developer either. For me it defeat the entire purpose.

I'm not going to dust off my old PS3, download, install and boot up MGS4 again just to check the thing I mentioned in my previous post. But if it's just a few clicks away on my home screen menu, why not.
And if it's in-game only I wouldn't be able to check them on my friend's side. The other day I noticed that my friend was playing a game I thought he already completed years ago. But upon looking at his trophies, I saw that he reached Chapter 1 in 2017, Chapter 2 a few days ago, and chapter 3 yesterday.

So it's pretty easy to figure out what happened there just from a quick glance.

I've also used the compare-trophies side-by-side feature at times and for example found it interesting how someone got a certain trophy, but missed another, since they seemingly go together. So the next time I spoke to them, I asked.


It probably takes very little development time to create. But adding additional code for one specific version is something that has the potential to cause issues when rolling out updates. So that could be an argument against adding an in-game version of it.

That said, I found a list of 513 Switch games that have in-game achievements of some kind, that someone compiled on Reddit a while ago.
List Of Switch Games With In-game Achievements (In Progress) : NintendoSwitch (reddit.com)