I think one category of its own is also achievements which require you to complete a mission or level in a linear game. It's nothing special, but despite those achievements being basically placeholders I think they're a good placeholder because they allow easy access to a statistic: How many people played how much into that game.

I usually like to separate the achievements in 3 diferent categories: 1. History achievements: achievements that you need to get to progress through the story, you should have all the achievements in this category unlocked after you beat the game. 2. Challenge achievements: the types of achievements that tell you to do something, and if you do that thing, you will be rewarded, they are the most common ones, and can be either really easy or insanely hard. 3. Cumulative achievements: these ones count some kinda of stat, and when that stat reaches a certain number, you unlocked the achievements, example: kill 1000 enemies, collect 10 red gems, hit 100 headshots. You will usualy get these by just playing the game normaly, although these take more time than the history achievements.

some of these retro achievements feel like when you go out if your way to go to the dishes, but your mom tells you to, so now you don’t want to do it

I checked out the site, and I would like to commend whoever named the earthbound achievements. They gave us gems like "Is this legal?,", "It's a secret to everyone", "Four fried chickens and a coke" (and other Blues Brothers references) and "Jumping the sharks". These names are great, and all fit the actions you need to perform the terrible achievements.

I like achievements because they can give me stuff to do in games I don’t have much left to do.

Achievements were necessary in order for the game to be compatible with Xbox, which is why Toby forced them in. Steam is an even more interesting case, because developers can use them as progression flags to get feedback about how players interact with your game, and you can even use them as a rudimentary form of anti-cheat. EDIT: Wrote this before the video started

I like it when the achievements are fun little challenges. Something like "defeat 20 enemies with environmental hazards", "reach the boss of level x within 1:45 and without taking damage" or " defeat three enemies with a single attack." Freedom Planet has a few fun achievements like that that reward players for doing things like using an ability at just the right spot to skip a door puzzle or disabling the boss' barrier before he finishes his monologue.

One thing that I love about Celeste is that the Achievements alone will have you stop playing for them at 176 berries, the goldens which are the hardest part of the game go out of their way to ensure that you do them for yourself, not some reward, or a platinum trophy, or whatever, you do it for the intrinsic value of growing as a player and going that extra mile, which makes them brutal, but also a special kind of satisfying.

why is sans in both 2nd and 3rd place

Got a thousand 'chievements in game but achieved nothin' in real life.

I find John Gutter's achievements specifically to be a stroke of genius. You basically get the first one for free, wheras the other two require what is basically a speedrun and a P-rank. Since you got that one achievement, the other two will probably bug you until you're skilled enough to get them, allowing the level to serve as not just an introductory level for the game, but also as an introduction to the postgame.

I think Undertale's PS4 trophies are more than just funny joke achievements, they're thematically relevant to the story itself. The story of Undertale has always had a big focus on fading emotional investment, especially under the lens of completionism. How far will you go just to say you've done *everything?* What point is there even to doing everything when it starts to deconstruct your attachment to the world, turning funny and lovable characters into repeating lines of dialogue? Will you take away their happy ending, just to see another? Will you do the worst thing possible just to see what happens? Will you sit in front of this dog box constantly sliding in individual pieces of money, doing something patently unfun just to say you've completed something? "Don't you have anything better to do?" That's not just a sick burn from Toby after you get through the thing he specifically designed for people not to do, it's a line from the game itself (And spoilers so stop reading if you haven't gotten to this part of the game.) It's a line from Asriel, and Flowey by proxy. Who is the concept of fading emotional investment more than anything else - he's someone who had the ability to save, reload, reset. And he used to do all the good things, before getting bored. And starting doing other things, seeing what would happen, if he could get the things that everyone else said to change just a little. Even if it meant murder. Even if it meant genocide. He's the end result of what happens when a player stops caring about the characters, and starts caring about seeing everything he can. And then, at the end of the game, when he's given a soul, given a chance to feel, when that emotional invest has returned to him, when he can feel and care about these people again, you can find him after backtracking through the entire game in the final moments. And when you've literally walked your entire journey back to the beginning, he just asks... Don't you have anything better to do?

I HATE achievements where you have to do a crazy amount of grinding or trying to build up something. When done wrong they aren't even challenging, just really annoying.

personally, i think henry stickmin has really good achievements because of how they don't force you to change how you play the game, they're just things to collect/spot while going through

Someone in my game dev studio passed this video over, and I wanted to say that you are MORE than capable of getting sponsored. While you may feel small as a channel right now, know that you're not too small to ask for sponsorships when making videos. Do what you love, love what you do, and that little bit of cash will start showing up more and more. You're gonna do great.

I usually never look at achievements, like why would I look at spoilers for a game I’m going to play? Which is why I don’t get all achievements, I just get a nice surprise when I do something cool or unexpected!

As someone who discovered RA last year, I'd like to weigh in with my thoughts on the matter. Not every game is suitable to have achievements, I will give you that. I can't speak for Earthbound in particular because I haven't played it (yet), and I must admit that some achievements aren't well designed (case in point: the SM64 set originally had achievements for getting every coin in every stage. These have since been moved to their own subset after some backlash). However, not only are most achievements on the site rather fun to hunt down, but the mere purpose of the site itself is bound to attract people who'd enjoy earning them and drive away those who don't. I can confidently say that playing Banjo-Kazooie and Star Fox was made substantially more enjoyable by virtue of achievements existing. I even endured trough 200 hours of repetive grind on Destiny Islands merely because it was a set on RA. I just enjoy getting achievements that much that I'm willing to push trough for the mastery badge, and I believe most of the site's active users are no different than me. Not to mention, the entire site is entirely made for and by its community. People can vote to modify achievement sets if they disagree with the creator's choices. Games on RA don't have achievements because some people demanded for it to be so (like with Undertale on PS4), they have them because someone cared enough to develop a set for it. Every developer on the site is a volunteer. They do get shiny badges on their profile for being developers, but if they do it they must enjoy making achievements to some degree. That's how I feel about the site as a whole, really. The games themselves are fun as is, but for some people it's even better when you slap an achievement set on top of it and that's why RA exists.

I like the way Terraria does achievements. Some are obvious like defeating bosses, or killing certain enemies, but others are downright useless, hilarious, or torture. One is called “Unusual Survival Strategies” and requires you to drink water, which restores 20 health, while drowning. Another called “And Good Riddance” requires you to purify the world of Crimson, Corruption, and Hallow, which are biomes that spread to adjacent blocks. This achievement is very difficult.

Pizza Tower's achievements might be the great, but what isn't great is McPig's (lead dev) driving skills (in reference that in a recent stream he fucked everything up while playing Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers)

Finally had a chance to watch this, and i 100% agree. while the dopamine from achivements is nice, i feel like far too often they are simply there as time wasters. I platinumed Bloodborne and Spiderman because the tasks the achievements gave me were genuinely interesting challenges, but more importantly it wasnt tied to literally everything in the game (and as such, the non achievement side content was also fun)

I've put tens of thousands of hours into RetroAchievements. I never really cared about official achievements, it's the user generated nature of the website is what keeps me playing - it's like Mario Maker for can you beat stuff plus checklists to truly exhaust doing everything a game has to offer. For these games that I've played hundreds of times, it's amazing having new stuff to do with them and reasons to do parts of the game that I never bothered with before. But this is a double edged sword. I actually like those checklist type achievements you complained about the Earthbound set having... but only for games I've already played. I would never want to play Earthbound, or most RPGs for that matter, for the first time on RA (or ever in some cases). To earn these types of achievements, my options are either follow a guide the entire time, ruining my first playthrough, or miss content and be forced to 100% the entire game again, neither of which is fun at all. There's also the sets that go too far in general - Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2 is one of my favorite childhood games. It was one of the first if not the first racing game I ever played, and started a lifelong obsession with racing games. That being said, I could never recommend the set to a single human being on the planet other than myself. The set requires you to do the maximum of 8 laps on every single track in both modes with every car class. This is insane and the game never expects you to do this at all (after a few attempts, the game actually crashes after a restart. lmao). Just 8 lap races would be doable for me EXCEPT THERE'S THE EXTRA RESTRICTION THAT YOU HAVE TO WIN THE COP RACES WITHOUT GETTING BUSTED AT ALL! These races are 30 to 40 minutes long, in a mode where the cops do not screw around at all - one mistake or even a bit of bad luck and your ass WILL get busted. This set took me 140 hours to master and about 90% of that was these stupid races. The thing with RA is that unlike other platforms, we're in the unique position where we have solutions to all these problems - sets can be revised if they're truly egregious. There's also these things called Subsets where essentially it's extra achievements that aren't a part of the main achievement set. There's also a Beaten status for every game and a leaderboard for how many games you've Beaten. I think expanding all of these features is the solution to making everyone happy, whether you just want an excuse to enjoy these games or completely ruin a children's game by doing the most sadistic challenges possible. I'd actually really enjoy those Hot Pursuit 2 achievements if they were in a [Subset - Endurance Races] since at that point it's just extra stuff to do in a game I've already completed, rather than being a requirement. I'm actually a set developer on RA. This doesn't apply to every RA developer but I mostly make sets for myself to play - I won't add achievements to a main set that I wouldn't want to do myself. My tolerance for stuff is probably higher than the average player so I've had the honor of many people, including those in this very comments section, completely shit all over my work, but at least I try.

My favorite achievement in any game is the one from ghost trick, it basically challenges you to do a reverse puzzle that removes a key puzzle element from play which triggers funny dialogue. That and the achievement for doing all the optional sliding puzzles, that was a good time

Never even thought about seeing achievements like this, but this is super interesting the pizza tower achievements are so genius, as you say they guide you towards how to improve while still making you rely on your own skill to actually earn them, it's perfect for this type of platforming game I think the earthbound custom achievements COULD work but not in the game they are in. Potentially for something like an MMO where grind is inherent, and where what you gain from it isn't just a waste of time, but rather grants you resources you can use elsewhere and also a flashy badge to show off to other people in the same game

Here's the thing. 99% of people won't look at achievements before playing a game, and just play the darn game. If an achiv directs you towards a fun side gag, isn't it better that a person who would've missed it otherwise, st least got to see it? And when the person doesn't see it, then I doesn't change anything since they will find the gag on their own and then the achievement will pop up after. I don't think the game acknowledging the fact that you did something, ruins the fact that you did it. Achievements are intrinsically worthless. A bad, un-fun achievement can always just be skipped. Imagine if there was, for example, an achievement that has a 1% chance of appearing when you open the game. Now, that's an awful achievement, but no-one's forcing you to get it. I do think that skill/gameplay focused games like pizza tower just have an advantage when it comes to achievements beacuse for simplistic RPG's like earthbound and Undertale, there just aren't any Gameplay related achievements that are fun to get. For my indie rpg example, Sea of Stars. It has achievements related to story progression (beating bosses), completion (finding hidden treasure chests, etc.), and only a few handful of Gameplay related achievements. The only one I can think of from the top of my head is to bounce the boomerang special attack (think: green shell from Mario and Luigi) 20 times in a row. Sea of Starts already has a much more engaging battle system with blocks and stuff (like in paper Mario), and even then it's struggling. All in all. Being rewarded with an extrinsic achievement for an otherwise intrinsic action doesn't take away the intrinsic value of it. You can do a job because you like it, and because you get paid to do it (literally what you're doing with KZfaq, even if it's a hobby, you're getting paid). If there was an achievement in Undertale for stacking 30 hotdogs on your head, that doesn't take away to hilarity of the situation. And for a person that might've missed the joke, they wouldn't have gotten any reward otherwise at all.

I like RetroAchivements, and I like Super Mario 64 and its ROM hacks. But those two things DO NOT mix. Like, there’s a bunch for just collecting stars, beating stars cannonless, beating the bosses no-hit, then finding all the warps (?), doing combo moves (What does that even mean? This is a Mario game), getting all the extra lives, random speedrun tricks, and getting the red coin stars damageless? Why? And these aren’t even the bonus achievements, by the way. The BONUS achievements include doing a 0 star speedrun, collecting the impossible coins, 100% the game without dying, clip out of bounds, do the Lakitu skip, doing the hat in hand glitch, doing a bomb clip, doing cannonless, doing the A Button Challenge, doing the green demon challenge, and… going idle? Really, they put carpetless, an INCREDIBLY hard trick to perform, in the main category, meanwhile going AFK is considered bonus.

On the topic of Undertale, I like how the console versions' exclusive rooms have a tiny connected story between the platforms in the order they were released. On playstation you donate to the annoying dog to help it build up a shrine, on switch it's all worn down and abandoned, so Mew Mew uses it as her hiding place, and on xbox the whole shrine gets bulldozed in place of the casino that raised the whole game's age rating only on that platform lol

My favorite gaming achievement is the one in Stanley Parable where you have to stop playing the game for 5 years

I like how the Switch doesn't have achievements. It allows me to play through games without the stress of collecting everything. I only collect everything if I really enjoy a game or if there's extra bonus levels behind it. Achievements can be fun if you really enjoy a game and want to get more out of it, but they usually end up being more tedious than fun.

I dont think its fair to compare achievements on a turn based rpg like earthbound with an action platformer like pizza tower, there arent much achievements to be made on turn based rpg other than "get to the max level" or "here is a list of the sidequests and easter eggs, go get them"

"how it encourages the players to keep going" *meanwhile video with flowey telling the soul to die in the background*

probably some of my favorite achievements ever are on your only move is hustle which is a fighting game, while it has a handful of generic progress achievements like "win x matches" it also does something fantastic with a couple of its achievements, which is tasking you with figuring out advanced techniques on your own to get them. Stuff like "combo off of burst", "combo off of robot's command grab", "launch yourself with wizard's spark bomb" and "land 3 palm strikes in one combo as ninja" are all basically optional mini-tutorial puzzles that just say "hey here's this cool thing you can do, can you figure out how?". None of them are particularly hard to get if you just experiment with your character's kit, and the game also clearly focuses on the fact that the challenge is only to figure it out and not to apply it in a real match, since every achievement of this type is obtainable in training mode where you have full control over both characters, i wish more games used achievements to teach obscure tech like this

Optional content is still extrinsic if it has a award that's kinda the point extrinsic motivation is to 100% a game and the such

On the subject of "Sesame Seed tier" cheevs... I'm actually the sort of player that, without something pointing me towards these little moments, will completely bypass them. Not because I wouldn't care about their intrinsic value, but because I wouldn't look outside of "100%" much. Having achievements of this sort directs me to these sorts of moments, meaning that for my personality, _they are essential to experiencing said moments._ On the _other_ hand, I'm not a fan of traditional RPGs. Outside of Chrono Trigger, every single one has had something that either discounts it as such in my mind (Paper Mario is prominent there), or is way too easy to enjoy (Pokemon Red), or is obnoxious with grinding (Final Fantasy 9 and 10)... so the presence of the "random drop" cheevs definitely doesn't help. Not to mention, because all the cheevo sets are made by different people, quality isn't always consistent. There are of course standards, but some are standout while others lack something. My own sets for instance: they're excellent in terms of titles and descriptions, but are pretty lacking in non-progression.

It's nice to see others concerns about placing achievements into everything. I feel like I can especially vibe with the first portion of this video because I have a similar story. So, I made a ROM hack of my favorite game and eventually discovered someone actually made achievements for it in RetroAchievements. It was a bitter-sweet feeling. On one hand, I was honored that enough people enjoyed it that they were willing to put the time and effort to make up achievements for it. But on the other, I felt like I lost a bit of agency to my own creation. More importantly, however, I was worried people wouldn't be able to enjoy it as much because achievement hunters might feel obligated to do things that they didn't find fun. The biggest offender was an achievement that required a sequence break that I accidentally introduced into the game. The fact it existed wasn't a problem to me, but the fact there was an achievement behind it spotlighted it and made people feel like they had to do it to "100%" it. I think the worst part I think if I had more agecny over my own achievements, I'd be more happy with them. Anyways, great video. It's nice to see people talking about this. Not because I think achievements are inheritely bad, but because they have pros and cons that I feel go underlooked, due to them being considered part of a "staus quo".

My favorite achievement in a game is “The Part Where He Kills You” from Portal 2.

Toby: "Collect Four Items" Me: *dies*

One of my favorite achievements in a game is the platinum for Don't Starve. When Ps4 forced them to add trophies, the devs of the game were pretty annoyed at that, so they added a new item called the Accomploshrine. When you craft the shrine (using a pretty hefty amount of materials, mind you), you get the first achievement "Look upon my works, ye mighty...". You can then crank the lever on the Accomplishing to wind it up. After you wind it 25 times, a firework will shoot out, and your character will be like "yay I did it!" or something along those lines. Okay, funny joke, you get the achievement from that and are done right? Wrong. In order to get the achievement, you need to wind the Accomploshrine up an additional SEVEN-HUNDRED TIMES. Each time shooting another firework and having your character get excited again. Only then will you get the second achievement, "...and Despair", and earn the platinum. The achievement names reference the poem Ozymandius, referring to how the Accomploshrine was meaningless, just like the king's "works" from the original poem. I'm pretty sure that the reason they didn't want to add achievements is because in old versions of the game, they actually DID have achievements, but it created an issue where most players just did all the achievements and then stopped playing, whereas the point of the game is just to survive as long as possible in creative ways, so they removed them.

0:14 ONE PIECE

Love the video man. I'm so excited for the next Hawaii part II video!

Why should games stop having achievements? It's great fun to try and get them if they haven't become imposible to do so. It brings extra satisfaction, I believe.

Toby is a genius

ok, with the sesame seeds example i can already see where you're going, i agree with whatever you said, probably not all of it but for the most part, good video

Really cool video! Another reason why Pizza Tower's level achievements work so well is because they can all be beaten in one attempt (except for the first level), creating an extra intrinsic challenge to practice when just getting a p rank becomes too easy. This makes the 101% speedrun category feel fun, but not too tedious. Really recommend it😄

ace attorney retroachievements gives an achievement every time you finish a line of testimony by objecting to a statement

Really good, thoughtful, and well put together video. I really do love the concept of achievements, but feel like so many games drop the ball when figuring out how to implement them in a meaningful way. Achievements, to me, shouldn’t so much push menial, grindy, or luck based tasks, but ways to push a player to achieve challenging goals or hone their skill at a game. Some of my favourite childhood gaming memories are playing on Hypixel and working to win at mini games while simultaneously managing odd restrictions that made me view them in a whole new way. This isn’t to say it handles achievements perfectly (believe you me it has a lot of sucky, grindy ones), but at its best I think it demonstrates how achievements can work to better games, rather than detract from them.

When Flowey kindly asked me to leave everyone in peace after a pacifist run, I genuinely felt bad I was planning on doing a GENOCIDE run. I haven’t touched Undertale in years because of that.

this video luxied my hugs jokes aside very epik video as always, your videos always make my day better and i hope you become famous one day

(Part way through the video) I think my least favorite kind of achievements are online only achievements, especially when those games shut down. It just puts a time limit to getting them. I will never be able to complete the Halo 3 achievement list because the servers are dead. Same with so many other games

"having achievements... is le bad! even though they're completely ignorable and have nothing to do with the main game" copetown population you

I mostly disagree with your points here, more than anything because I don't think extrinsic achievements are a thing in most games. You'll only go out of your way for an achievement if *YOU* want to. If all you get is a trophy, sticker or whatever, that's just the game rewarding you for doing an achievement you wanted to do. Not only achievements, but 100%ing a game as well. No, getting those endings in Undertale was not a waste of time more than any other thing I did in the game, I did them because I wanted to see them. I got nothing out of it neither did I want to, the reward was completely intrinsic.

Why are you viewing them as tasks? That's not what they are. They're not forcing you to do anything. No game creator expects you to get all of the achievements. Achievements are supposed to commemorate your... well, achievements. Honestly, I think you're looking too deep into Pizza Tower, but even if you're not, that kind of stuff has never been a standard. Achievements also highlight stuff you could do if you want more playtime and provide recognition for doing impressive stuff. They were never meant to just be tests of skill really. Also, there are such a thing as hidden achievements on steam, which don't spoil you or direct you to anything. Also, I think if you're looking in the achievements to find what to do, especially before a game, you shouldn't complain when the reward is extrinsic. The kind of silly achievements in PlayStation Undertale are exactly what I want. Achievements aren't forced, and they're not requirements unless you want to 100% a game, which isn't what you're really ever intended to do. (I do agree, though, that forcing achievements makes literally no sense)

I've never seen this guy in my life but this is some good content

I watched a video from cadicerusa or whatever how his names correctly spelled and in the Ratatouille video game he got an achievement for watching a cutscene which was the very first cutscene in the game and he hadn't even done anything yet, the only other achievement that's even as close to being pathetic was when he got one for pressing the left stick in bee movie.

13:17 Honestly it sucks that most of the endings are lumped into the “neutral” route, because it kinda takes away from everything else.

this inspired me to make an achievement where you go through an entire rpg game and win while either having the bare minimum level or stuck at level one, testing true skill, timing, and strategies

My favorite achievements are those that are directly related to gameplay, whether it be to teach or to test you. I remember learning about the mechanic called EX skills from the achievement list in the mega man zero collection, and it has since become one of my favorite games mostly in part to that mechanic. I also got hours of fun doing all the challenge runs in the shovel knight series.

Good achievements should be built on strengths that are already present in the game. If the game is built around optional tools that make the game easier like mega man or shovel knight, make an achievement that forbids those tools. If the game is built on exploration and secrets, turn the achievement list into it's own hint map. Achievements exist in the first place because people want to get more out of the game, not because people want to do chores that happen to be in a game format. (I'll give undertale credit though since satire is it's own strength)

I feel the same way about games like BOPL Battle, I loved discovering stuff like shooting a growth ray in water to reflect it onto yourself when I played the demo and when I saw that all of those funny little things are just spoiled to you in the steam achievements list... I was a bit sad to be honest

This is crazy because I was literally using retroarch and beating Earthbound (until my laptop died a bit ago). IMO it’s fine to have it on in the background but if you start following the achievements it becomes less fun. There was this one achievement where you needed to be haunted and take a photo which was just annoying more than anything.

Personally, I find achievements really helpful because there's like 800000 billion games out there in the world now so it's just nice QoL to have a goal-oriented way to go about playing a large number of games. I especially love the achievements that point me towards cool easter eggs or hidden content that a ton of people would otherwise miss. Just think about how popular "game breakdown", "hidden secrets of X game", and easter egg videos are KZfaq are - it makes sense that achievements built into games would help people to experience these as well.

You have a poster of Hawaii: Part II in your virtual room so your take is automatically correct

counterpoint: getting a PlayStation trophy feels good

I got an achievement for watching the credits of an indie game, peak game design.

after all the hard work we do, we achieved a achievement that gets added into our achievements.

I think the best example of badges I've seen are the ones for Yume Nikki Online. Yume Nikki along with its fangames in general are extremely non linear, with no real goal and the only collectibles being effects, so achievements work well as a motivation to explore the world. Along with this, the achievements (called badges) don't have any information until you get them as a means of not spoiling things. Add in some amazing fanmade pixel art and online interaction and the badges become a great way to come back to the game.

15:24 i once saw a video of someone getting legitimately mad at undertales achievements and it’s really funny lol

I think it’s pretty neat when you find one of those cute interactions and the game basically says: great job! But it’s kinda bad when you’re actively trying to get them So, I think you should always play a game before hunting (specifically games like undertale, earthbound etc, the games that are actual experiences)

Great video! This is something I've never really thought about, but I cant say I don't agree. I've never been a perfectionist when it comes to video games, but achievements can stress me out because of the need to check all of the boxes. Even if I don't want to, but do it anyways because it looks unsatisfying if i don't. Like coloring over something and missing a tiny spot in the corner. The achievements that I do have an interest in are the ones that are incredibly vague. The ones that you earn, but the game doesn't tell you what you did to get it. Most of the time, it's just for getting multiple endings or something, but if you're going into the game with little knowledge then it's almost like a puzzle to solve. Using the clues in the game and what path you're on to try and get the ending or other secret thing that unlocks this achievement. I'm playing a game like that right now, and I have no idea what I'm doing, but I'm having fun while I do it, and that's the most important thing :3 it's good for replayability as well!

I think celeste does achievements really well because it gives you them for things you do already so they are not "tasks" but a way to easily to look back at what you, well achieved. (and 1-up too but you are not finding that out naturally(probably))

KEEP GIVING EVERYTHING ACHIEVEMENTS!!!! PROGRESSION, CHALLENGES, EASTER EGGS, UNLOCKS, YOU NAME IT, KEEP GIVING EVERYTHING ACHIEVEMENTS!!!

I only focus on achievements once I am done with the main game and had seen everything important that the game had to offer, achievement hunting afterwards can be really fun at times, but like it’s ultimately inconsequential, so I don’t have any qualms to use guides or look up what to do to reach them

I have a massive love/hate relationship with achievements. I like being able to show that I managed to do something challenging. My favorite achievements are usually some rather unorthodox challenges which make you play a game in some strange non-intuitive way. Not always difficult but different. It is a wonderful tool from dev side of things to encourage certain behaviours (and test the limits of the game) like you mentioned. I just really dislike completionist stuff in general. As a player I have to actively fight the urge to fill some weird quota for busywork. As a dev I'm under constant struggle of trying to design how I want to manage achievements. I want acknowledge the player's effort directly, but I don't want to make anyone do it FOR the acknowledgement itself. People are gonna burn themselves out doing things for it so it isn't worth it for the sake of the general experience. I generally think achievements work best as tools to direct the player or acknowledge some pretty wide things like beating the game or some very specific challenge, not for filling arbitrary quotas. This is the first video I've seen from you and I hope you keep up the good work!

0:48 Oatmeal, Kirby is a pink guy

I have a friend who, when playing a game, will make sure to unlock every single achievement, even if the game ends up not being fun for him. This also means that if there's knowledge of a certain achievement that it's less than desirable, he will most likely not play the game, which is a shame because he's missing out on Final Fantasy IX

I often forget achievements exist. When I get one I go, "oh yeah, that's a thing" and then proceed to keep playing. My favorite thing about them though is actually using them as a reminder/log of what I did during my last play session. I just played Hollow Knight for the first time, and when I had to take a week break between sessions, I would glance at my achievements to get a feel for what I was doing before. The only game I ever "achievement" hunted in was Banjo Kazooie, only because beating the main story gives you most of them, I wanted to get 100% which gives you even more, and then the last two weren't too much work and I figured it would be neat to have all the achievements. It's also a useful statistic to see how far people get in games or what mechanics are being engaged with. I was actually going to make my own Minecraft enchanting video, but when looking between the different versions with public achievements, I found that only about 20% of players made an Enchantment Table and only 40% got full iron armor on average. But finding 17 different biomes? 50%. Absolutely baffling.

nice analysis!

10:00 or an achievement for Buying Magicarp in the Kanto games called "Fish out of water"

So the makers of Don't Starve and Don't Starve Together used to be fully against achievements as a whole so when porting Don't Starve over to PlayStation they added in 2 achievements as well as one new in game building known as the Accomploshrine. Simply building the shrine gave you the first achievement which was named "Look on my works, ye Mighty,". Now this building could be interacted with to spin a small hand fully once which caused a long hand to move slightly and to get the second achievement you had to interact with the Accomploshrine 725 times which would cause a very small and pathetic firework display to come out of the building, resetting the progress back to zero and having the character say the line, "I feel so accomplished." Nowadays they have warmed up more to the idea of achievements and the PlayStation port of Don't Starve has more on it now that is just tied to unlocking characters which other than Maxwell is basically a nothing burger of an achievement. Meanwhile the console ports of Don't Starve Together having more achievements that imo are mostly unneeded other than seeing a tallbird lay an egg. That one is 100% needed and makes the game better as a whole, the more people who see that animation first hand the better. However neither Don't Starve or Together have steam achievements as it isn't needed and they don't seem to be making new ones for the consoles as the game gets updated.

Personally I like achievements where you do something that you would never do under most scenarios, like that one btd6 achievement where you beat the cornfield map on CHIMPS mode without removing the corn, like, WHY would you ever do that if you weren't a youtuber

void stranger does something funny with this, there's only one and you get it at the beginning of the game, before you even gain control of your character. it's a game about constant questions everywhere, and thus it makes you realize from the start you're doing this for yourself. I like it

If I could make an addition as someone who often hunts achievements and has 100%ed several achievement lists for games I love I can absolutely say there are good achievement lists, and bad achievement lists. But I think your look at them as purely extrinsic is limiting. I find achievements less like a checklist and more like a map. I don’t want to miss anything, I want to experience everything, and achievements are a good way of doing that for me. The little chime is one thing, but I’ve always valued what they lead me to more than anything. Not to mention, achievements are almost like a snapshot of your playthrough. There are days where I’ll scroll through my achievements and reminisce on the moment. You’re framing achievements as if they’re this dispassionate list of tasks that takes away from the experience, that makes it just a bunch of items to collect. I’m not gonna lie, some lists are like that. But I don’t think tying a small, in-game event to an achievement ruins the value of that event. It doesn’t spoil that interaction. It doesn’t stop you from reading the text. It just lets you know “hey, this exists” and gives you a little badge for deciding to do it. The badge is nice, but the real meat of the achievement was what it led you to. The badge is really more of a souvenir than anything. Still, this is a very well-made and well-argued video, and I can certainly understand your stance even if I don’t agree with it. It’s very clear you value games as an art, and this clearly comes out of a love for the medium and not out of hate for achievements. I like that.

I will never forget the statement Toby gave on if the PS4 port will have a achievements I'm sorry So it won't have them? No, it will. That's why I said I'm sorry.

I've played games where Retro Achievements expected me to understand very technical aspects of certain games in order to get achievements. Stuff like exploiting movement tech to sequence break.

I think that's the reason why Steam hides achievements from you if you haven't obtained them yet. It's so it doesn't take away that feeling of surprise for first time players.

I found this achievement issue with Disco Elyisum, its obvious RPGs with many paths that the player can only build one path through weren't made for achievements. They did make some hilarious achievements related to DE's dialogue trees like: Unbelievably Boring F**k: Say 7 boring things Literally the Sorriest Cop on Earth: Apologize 10 (!!!) times World's Most Laughable Centrist: Defend the political centre 7 times. These, and many more achievements are cool because they encourage the player to role play and its clear that its not a ''collectible.'' However here's an example of a bad achievement: ''Medal dispenser'' requires you to get a medal item from a Veteran and then later you encounter a woman with dementia who thinks shes a police officer. You can pin the medal on her and bow to her with the very unlikely condition that your partner is not in your party. Its a very very sweet moment in the game that only a few people should have known about and it was ruined by the achievement telling me about it. The worst achievement is ''The Figurines Won't Win Her Back: They do nothing,'' this requires getting 2 figurine items at which point your character will suddenly have a revelation that his ex-wife loved figurines making it seem important. In the end-game, you can give the figurines to Her but she just thinks you're fucking weird for it. This would have been such a funny bit if she said, ''I don't want your figurines'' and left it at that, the achievement completely ruined the joke by making it seem like I did anything

The only game with linear ass achivements I can forgive is Thumper cuz that game is hard enough that just getting through it really feels like an achivement

Hey i know im a tad late but congrats on 3K subs!

Achievements are fun when you come across them organically during the game, but not if you go hunting for them.

There’s a reason Getting Over It With Bennet Foddey has only 3 achievements

I, personally, am an achievement addict. I just enjoy knowing that I have official made the most of the purchase of a game. It's also nice being rewarded for completing a difficult challenge in a less direct way than just an item Still, there are games that don't need them and a lot of developers forget that

Who was that brother guy who looked like a Pikmin? He seems pretty cool

Why would you compare official achievements to fan made ones

we need funny meme achievements like in Muck we have Big mistake: boot up the game the red plummer man lied: eat 50 red mushrooms Muck: beat the game with using only a rock taking no damage and using no power ups

I find it interesting how LEGO games have to tackle their Trophies/Achievements because they have almost no challenge factor. Outside of completion, they make achievements that require you to do specific things or play as specific characters for the sake of a joke. Or padding. While some come off as desperate, others can be downright hilarious. Let’s say you’re playing LEGO Lord of the Rings and are already familiar with the source material. The first level, to be exact. You fight a massive horde of Orcs, slay Sauron, and conclude by scaling Mount Doom as Isildur and Elrond to cast the One Ring into the fire. Finally, you make it to the bridge to reenact the inevitable. But…hang on. The cutscene doesn’t trigger until you reach the end of the bridge, and you still have control over Isildur. What if you just had him…jump? Y’know? Achievement Unlocked! “It Won’t Be That Easy!”

i never got out of the first area in earthbound bc i was so stupid to know (i think i still cant get out)

I couldn’t disagree with this video more, but the way you explain this all makes me appreciate the different mindset behind achievements and what they should mean and this video has sort of made me think about achievements as a whole I love bullshit funny as hell random achievements that you gotta go out of your way obnoxiously for, that sounds really funny to me, but also now I realize, you can can use them as a tool for helping players to master level design, or make the achievements jokes in and of themselves like in Undertale Gonna keep this video in mind when I make a game because its interesting to hear what others have to say on the topic, great video!

Point that he tried to make: Achievements are unnecessary Actual conclusion: Gameplay of turn based RPGs sucks

i think a good example of achievements is TF2. most of the achievements the player will just get naturally by playing the game or are just plain busywork, and those i cant really defend, but some of them are challenges (prime cuts or eagle eye) that the player probably wouldnt have come up with on their own.

You're great. Also, consider making more hawaii pt 2 videos soon.

retroachievements is cool until they pull bullshit like super mario 64 lifesaver. i like it whenever theres stuff like cannonless but the lifesaver stuff just isnt fun and feels like bloat what doesnt help that is the amount of rng that some of them require. like tiny huge island lifesaver is what made me literally give up on that achievement set i think its important to be able to separate the achievement set from the actual game, and use it less to "master" a game and more as just a tool to see what cool stuff you CAN do cause with these it can get to a point where it just isnt fun