Trophies = Epic Fail?
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Trophies, in their current iteration, do not work.
I realise that statement is a sweeping generalisation. It is meant to be. So go ahead and wipe the spattered coffee off of your screen and read on before spouting profanities at me and saying untoward things about my mother. I know she’s fat.
The whole concept behind trophies and achievements is that people get trophies and lord over friends how awesome their gaming prowess is. For the most part this works really well. It’s exactly what I shall be doing when I FINALLY beat Zico.
But this starts to fall down very quickly when you look at the games which currently have trophy support.
Games like Ferrari Challenge would normally be skipped straight past in the store and are now instead being given a chance because they have trophies ‘in them there (gaming) hills’. With a metacritic of 70, this game is decidedly average. Whilst mediocre games garner more interest on the back of the trophy horde, potential gems are left out in the cold if they do not include trophies.
I have seen this with my own peepers so don’t try to dissuade me!
What I’m getting at is that until trophies are in every game without fail, the results are skewed. There are no trophies for seminal games like CoD 4, Singstar, Guitar Hero World Tour and Tomb Raider: Underworld to name a few (ahem). But you see my point? There is a distinct mismatch of trophies to games. If I happen to play a lot of games which do not support trophies, I look like a doofus*.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that I am some kind of gaming cabbage unable to R1 my way to the top of a leaderboard. Nor does it mean that I can’t tear about a track carving opponents singing ‘I’m a little teapot’ as though it is costing me little to no exertion.
No. This simply means I’m not playing that many games with trophy support and therefore my gaming abilities are not being rewarded or represented in my trophy cabinet.
Naturally this is a stop-gap between the introduction of trophies and their full integration across the full gaming spectrum. Don’t get me wrong, I have really enjoyed going back to games like Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, but I have found my gaming habits completely alter when on a trophy spree.
I think that even the most die-hard trophy worshipper would have to agree with me that the sooner trophies are rolled out across all games the better. By the looks of it we will be seeing trophies in all games after January. Above all, it would mean that people could buy any game and know that there would be trophies to be had somewhere on that shiny, shiny disc.
To steal a phrase from a certain jellied sweet “BRING ON THE (proper integration of) TROPHIES”.
Comments in the comments box, and leave my Mom out of this!
*Ok so I look like a doofus anyway, but that is neither here nor there. Just get back up there and read on!
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Oh God, you are so wrong!
Trophies work – games companies FAIL.
If the Infinity Ward had bothered to patch COD4 to support trophies (which from the sounds of it is an easy thing to do) then people would not only still play the game but many more people would have gone out and bought it safe in the knowledge that their gaming prowess would be recognised.
Criterion Games with Burnout Paradise should be the Gold standard for Trophy Supporting games. When they released the Burnout Patch it breathed new life into the game and spurred me on to complete it – I have the Platinum Trophy BTW
The same goes for Naughty Dog and Uncharted – Patched and replayed (almost to 100%).
Lazy developers who just don’t get the whole ‘trophy’ phenomenon should realise that not supporting Trophies is a serious impediment to sales – it certainly influences my purchasing decisions.
Plus – with the Trophy support and DLC support of Criterion they have engendered such loyalty that most fans of the game wouldn’t think twice about paying back some of that love when the chargeable DLC comes next year.
Certainly when trophies are mandatory for all games then the playing field will have been levelled – but it was the games developers who created the imbalance in the first place – not the trophies.
NB: Sorry if I’m rambling – it’s nearly one in the morning and I’ve had a pint or two
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Lol!
No worries – I completely agree! But the fact that there is an imbalance at all says it all for me. I’m simply suggesting that trophies could have been better implimented – by games devs themselves.
The market is demonstrating that people want trophies in games, and it is a great shame that some have let that dwadle past without grabbing it with both hands!
Like many before have said, bring on the trophies.
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Absolutely. I only play Trophy enabled games now, even if I don’t really like them that much. My gaming habits have been changed radically to maximize my Trophy count, you would be amazed.
I am the current undisputed king of the PS3 Attitude Trophy Wars and I approve this message (and article).
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Note: “current”
Not that I’m a threat right now, but hey!
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I’d just like to point out that while you make an excellent argument about trophies, Ferrari Challenge is far from decidedly average – it tended to be marked down because of lack of progression (the main challenge involves the same car from start to finish) and lack of variety (it was basically racing Ferraris, that’s it, plain and simple). However, to take an average score and assume an average game is just not right – the _racing_ in Ferrari Challenge (which is why I picked it up) is hands-down the best sim-style racing I have ever played. I’m damn glad they put trophies in there just to get a few more folk to play the game – it is a more entertaining _race_ than GT5P.
Also, given the nature of your article, it’s a little strange you didn’t note the official announcement that Trophies will be mandatory in all games from the start of 2009 – so only about five weeks and you can breathe easy again!
More importantly, though, I would strongly encourage all gamers to play what they find fun – if they are so sorely lacking in self-esteem that they need trophy bragging rights, they probably need something more than trophies! Not to say trophies aren’t cool, they rock – and I enjoy having a persistent record of what I’ve played and how well (or not – Wipeout, I’m looking at you!) I’ve played it – but I would never not play a game because of it’s lack of trophies or I’d've missed out on R6V2, for example, or 1942 Joint Strike. Granted many will comfortably be happy missing the latter! Trophies are an added bonus, but bragging rights or a quest for ticked boxes should never take the place of good old-fashioned fun
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Play games only for trophies = EPIC FAIL!
If you need recognition for playing games sorry to say buy that’s sad. Play a real sport, then when you get a trophy you’ve accomplished something…
Trophy support is a nice to have but is that the only reason you play games? I personally liked not having trophies cause I like playing games for the story,the game play, the music, the characters. I don’t want the game to tell me that I got an award for doing something that was in the game, I know I did it,I was there.
The day you tell some hot chick that you have the highest trophy count/score, whatever, and you get lucky then we can talk, till then why not just play the game for the reason the game was developed in the first place – to be enjoyed…
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Few weeks ago i was playing only games with trophysupport but now i just get bored with it. Now I’m playing all games only for single player and will sell them to buy LBP or PoP and its not because they have trophies but i just like them.
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I know what you mean. I recently added someone to my PSN friends list and I felt a little less than because their trophy level was 7 and I was barely level 4. What sucks is some of the games they have trophies for are games I don’t want to or will ever play. I am so glad that in Jan trophies will be mandatory.
It’s nice that this site supports gravatars. lol
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When trophies were announced, I told my friends I wasn’t too fussed about them. I’m still not. It is nice to get that little ‘bling’ in the corner occasionally though. I play for entertainment, not to show of a virtual cabinet of rare metals. This is PSN, not XBox Live.
Indeed, the places you can get your trophies are a little strange, so enabling all games with trophies will give people a much needed level ground. My fave game type is the RPG, I wonder how they’re going to implement trophies in Final Fantasy XIII…?
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Maybe Trophies could be better implemented, it would be nice but it’s no big deal.
Trophies are just a bit of fun in my view.
For example the Calamari trophy in R2 is a great example.
I really couldn’t care less about trophies and if they disappeared I’d only miss their entertainment value, like those cheap toys and paper hats inside Christmas crackers, they are rubbish but you still like to see them pop out and the crackers wouldn’t be the same without them.
The same goes for all this level stuff, i don’t care if some ‘friend’ has more trophies, I might occasionally get the ‘curses foiled again’ feeling and go on a trophy hunt just to get a boost on someone, but I am just as likely not to.
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Nice post, I really agree. I only own two games which have trophy support (GTAIV and Far Cry 2), so I have a little over 70 trophies. I see people on my friends list who are a higher level than me and sometimes this is not due to them having more golds/silvers or whatever than I do, it’s merely down to the fact that they have more games with trophy support than me. Most of the games I play have no trophy support. Like theturk said though, I only see them as a bit of fun. They aren’t the be all and end all of gaming that people think they are. If someone has a trophy I don’t i’m not going to lose any sleep over it. In the end they’ll go the same way as Xbox Achievements; people will initially care but after a year or so having trophies in a game really won’t matter a toss when people are playing it.
@Cerberus64
I absolutely love it when people say things like:
“When they released the Burnout Patch it breathed new life into the game and spurred me on to complete it – I have the Platinum Trophy BTW.
The same goes for Naughty Dog and Uncharted – Patched and replayed (almost to 100%).”
This cracks me up. What did that ‘platinum’ comment add to this discussion? This is why I am in a love hate thing with trophies. On the one hand they add great replayability to a game (It gave me a good reason to play through GTAIV again) and in the right communities be a real show of gaming skill. On the other hand, you get people like our good friend Cerberus64 here who see them as nothing more than another way they can brag online and show off their e-penis. Good for you that you got them, but why bother adding them into your comment when they add nothing useful to it. Your comment would have been just as effective if it read:
“When they released the Burnout Patch it breathed new life into the game and spurred me on to complete it.
The same goes for Naughty Dog and Uncharted – Patched and replayed.”
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I do not like the trophies right now because I cannot play games with trophy support
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