Multiplayer achievements is the worst idea I’ve encountered in a long time.
For a while, I was somewhat ashamed of my fondness for collecting achievements. To me, their appeal is similar to collectible card games and the likes: I enjoy having them and looking at them. It’s like collecting stamps, except you can’t sell your collection expensively when you get tired of the hobby. But I wasn’t really sure why I found them so enjoyable to hunt for in my games until Nick described why he found them amusing: When done right, they encourage you to play the game in a way you otherwise wouldn’t have.
Progress achievements are alright. They’re not really that great, because as long as you complete the game, you’ll get them all. Everybody always has these, too, so they’re not much fun to compare. Their only real merit is that they provide an extra incentive to complete a game that you’d otherwise just sort of stop playing in favour of something else. Grind achievements are rarely very enjoyable either, I feel – 10 lousy gamerpoints and another icon in my achievement list is hardly worth the boredom of trying to kill 200 enemies with grenades, or whatever silly task the developers have come up with.
The really good stuff is the achievements that make you explore every corner of the map, finding details a regular playthrough wouldn’t have revealed, or use every weapon or ability or combinations of same, such as the companion-related achievements in Mass Effect (although it’s kinda crazy that you have to play the game 3 times to get them all). The special zany achievements most games seem to have are also usually quite a hoot, such as Guitar Hero 3’s Tone Deaf achievement or the Paleontologist achievement in Stranglehold.
But the MP achievements just annoy me. First of all, they greatly contribute to the feeling of missing out on half the game. I like to try to get as many achievements as possible when I play a game, for largely the same reasons that I always explore every corner of each map and talk to every NPC in the game, so when half the available achievements are tied to the multiplayer, I get a little annoyed with myself and that in turn makes me annoyed with the game. Secondly, for some reason, MP achievements tend to be grindy in nature. Win 50 rounds, win 20 rounds with a shoutout, kill 150 enemies, etc. How is that fun?
How is that fun!?
I dislike MP achievements for another reason too. If your only interested in the achievement they’re really easy to cheat your way through. For example, one of Team Fortresses new achievements FYI I AM A SPY (yeap, based on the movie) is probably going to be gained with a lot of people taking it in turns stabbing each other.
Still I do love achievements. As you’ve said they’re an excellent way to make players go through the game over and over and they play on one of the oldest reasons people enjoy games. Bragging Rights.
Any good game design book will tell you bragging rights are tremendously important… at least they were back in the days of arcades, but until achievements came along they were lost on home gaming.
While achievements are a nice little sticker in your metaphorical gaming passport, for MP I prefer raw statistics. Again TF2 seems to do this best. Using Steam you can compare your damage dealt / number of kills / etc for any character against any of your friends. This is a little more complicated however.
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Did I mention Bragging Rights?
I agree completely. You’re absolutely right
Some of Halo 3’s MP achievements are decent because you can only get them in a ranked free for all playlist (there’s only one right now) which means that cheating them is next to impossible since you can’t choose who you play with. A couple of them are really hard too, namely Overkill and Steppin’ Razor, both of which I’ve gotten close to getting but never actually gotten. Most of the time they’re lame because people will “boost” in a public MP game and actually make it less fun (and the point of the achievements moot). COD4 probably had the right idea with all SP achievements and MP unlocks for various tasks.
Yeah CoD4’s way sounds more attractive. I was quite interested in trying out some CoD4 MP because of the RPG-ish systems they implemented, but I could never find anybody I know to play with, and I don’t think it’s the sort of game I’ll enjoy playing against strangers.