Finally getting around to checking out Fallout 4. I played it through without the DLC a while back but I think it’s about time I get down to it on my list and play through the DLCs. I wanted to do it on the survival difficulty or one of the harder ones at least. That led to me checking out the achievements. I don’t keep up with newer games but I didn’t realize achievements have gotten quite this bad. Most of the achievements are ones you get from the story itself, no challenge there. Then I found out there is no achievement for higher difficulties. I enjoy a challenge, it’s why I go back and play games that I enjoy. And I know it’s a reward in and of itself to beat it, but it feels less validating to not have an achievement. Especially in an open world game where people will want to experience more of it.
It’s not even that games have gotten easier per se, but more than they don’t reward playing on harder difficulties and skimp on challenges like achievements. I like harder difficulty because it encourages me to engage with every system I can. So what gives? Is this just me or has everyone else noticed how phoned in most achievements and difficulty options are these days?
The secret is: You can still play the game in a harder difficulty even if there isn’t a tiny jpg you get on your profile for doing it.
Tbh, I don’t give a fuck about trophies or achievements. I don’t have a single platinum trophy despite having a ps4 for like seven years. I played Fallout 4 on Survival because it was fun. It’s a good balance for gunplay. I like the immersion of saving on sleep. It’s actually a damn good survival mode, and you should do it even without a trophy.
I use trophies to sort of push me to further engage with games that I really enjoy. That’s basically the only reason. I’ll still play the harder difficulty, and I’ll likely love it, but it is fun to collect trophies that encourage me to play in ways that I normally wouldn’t. So it’s weird not having one for difficulty because I’ll enjoy the play through, but there’s an itch to have the game celebrate your achievement with you.
Any other examples you can give since you feel most games do this, and not just Fallout 4? Starting to read your post you send the message you got surprised. At the end you write like all games do this now. Not trying to just argue here, I’m genuinely curious which one it is. Nice thoughts.
I can’t think of any off the top of my head specifically with difficulty achievements missing, but a lot of the new games I’ve played have achievements that feel very phoned in. Like far cry or assassins creed or fallout (76&4). There are others I’ll miss for sure but it seems especially bad with open world games. The only options there seems to be “collect 100 random toothpicks” or “complete the story on hardcore mode”. Occasionally there’s one’s asking you to do specific tasks or things that are fun, but the vast majority of achievements in games like that are gotten just by playing normally and that’s what I’m kind of irked about. It doesn’t encourage me to play the game better or differently basically
This is because some people who aren’t as good at the game still want to feel like they earned all of the achievements. I feel that its a lot more inclusive and even though it feels more like “everybody wins a prize” I feel like if you truly love a challenge you shouldn’t need an achievement for doing it. I would rather have gaming be more inclusive than exclude some people.
- SSUPII ( @SSUPII@sopuli.xyz ) English0•10 months ago
Achievements shouldn’t be locked behind things people might not wanna do.
Why? At least some people will want to do them, so if you don’t want to do them then just don’t do them!
To flip that around, if you wanted to do a thing just for the sake of doing it, what does it matter if you don’t get an achievement for it?
Exactly, create your own dopamine rush for completing the challenge, don’t let the machine blue-ball you!