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Sony's outdated Trophy policies are affecting achievement parity with other platforms

Tapejara

Member
I don't think discounts necessarily are feasible or worthwhile to implement. But adding things like themes or such might be an interesting way to give an actual reward to Plats. But that's a different discussion

I remember White Knight Chronicles would unlock items for PlayStation Home.
 

Gorger

Member
I wasn't unaware of that. That's unfortunate, Sony should make that a standard feature.



Gold, silver and bronze trophies all have different values. For a game to have a platinum, it usually requires 1230 "points" - though as Joni mentioned earlier, some games get away with as low as 1100 points. Each trophy has a different weight assigned to it; off the top of my head bronze are worth 15 points, silver are worth 30, gold are worth 90 and platinum is worth 180. Spare Parts trophies are worth enough points, because it's mostly comprised of gold and silver. Other games that do this include Terminator Salvation and Scourge: Outbreak. Small lists, but heavy on gold trophies.

As has been mentioned in this thread, there's more to actually adding a platinum trophy to your game, but that's the reason why Spare Parts has a platinum despite so few trophies.

Since we've seen so few recent games exploiting the value system, I think Sony has made some rules against it, or gotten more strict in what's is required for a gold trophy.

I always thought that short games not meeting the platinum criteria could reward us with... let's say a Diamond trophy for completing every trophy in the game. It's not worth as much as a platinum, but at least it confirms and rewards you for getting 100%, and it could be worth worth more than a gold as well.
 

Andrefpvs

Member
To be honest, I don't really care very much about th--nowaitWAIT I have an actual reason to be in this thread!

Platinum trophies in themselves are odd to me. On the one hand, I like how you can use them as easy ways of saying you've achieved all there is to achieve in a game (setting aside for the moment that often this isn't technically true). You can look at your Platinum trophy count and know exactly what that means. On the other hand, it's not like you couldn't also point to the number of 1000/1000 games you have on Xbox Live, or the number of 100% games on Steam. You can even have the number of Perfect Games show up on your profile.

The OP spends a lot of time on how the number of achievements and their individual worth is not up to par with Xbox Live. I understand the criticism, but to me it doesn't really matter because we're talking about an arbitrary number of slices of an arbitrarily sized pie of "gamer points" or what have you. The problem is that by giving people an artificial aggregate of their total achievements or trophies (Xbox has its gamerscore, PSN has its leveling system), both services require that achievement standards be maintained to an extent across all its games. Thus a small game can't be seen as "equal" to a large game, but the split between "small" and "large" is too simplistic.

So while on some level I think I actually agree with the OP, in that the way the Xbox One handles achievements is better, on the other hand my solution would be more drastic and in the opposite direction. Instead of trying to make sure every game meets some arbitrary level of "achievement points," just throw away the concept altogether like Steam has. All there is is the number of achievements you have. No one achievement is "worth" any more than the others, and no game has to have a minimum or maximum number of them.

Yes, it means you can't have an Xbox gamerscore anymore, but honestly, who cares? The single biggest innovation to achievements I've seen in the last few years is showing the relative rarity of an achievement. That's the only achievement metric I care about and it's the only real metric Steam highlights besides # of achievements and # of perfect games. PSN moving to show trophy rarity is fantastic, and I'd much rather have that sort of thing rolled out across all platforms than hand-wringing over more games getting platinum trophies.

That's a very interesting way to look at this. In the end, my main problem is the lack of consistency, so I'd actually appreciate this solution.
 

Gorger

Member
I don't think discounts necessarily are feasible or worthwhile to implement. But adding things like themes or such might be an interesting way to give an actual reward to Plats. But that's a different discussion

They could easily put in exclusive themes, avatars and special content when people level their PSN account. The higher you are, the cooler stuff you unlock. I am actually baffled Sony haven't included such things already. Some games like Final Fantasy 13 gave us themes when we achieved specific achievements, but few games have done anything similar.
 

Tapejara

Member
Since we've seen so few recent games exploiting the value system, I think Sony has made some rules against it, or gotten more strict in what's is required for a gold trophy.

I always thought that short games not meeting the platinum criteria could reward us with... let's say a Diamond trophy for completing every trophy in the game. It's not worth as much as a platinum, but at least it confirms and rewards you for getting 100%, and it could be worth worth more than a gold as well.

It's definitely possible. This year we've had only LA Cops and Ether One, both of which have less than 15 trophies and a platinum.
 

Ravidrath

Member
Thanks for the input!

If devs really don't know then I hope Sony make this information more widely accessible within the DevNet. It's kind of a shame that some games end up shipping with 21 bronze trophies, when they could have easily had the Platinum.

Yeah, I was actually kinda shocked that Galak-Z, a $20 game, only had a small scope / 350 point trophy set.

I thought the general rule before they loosened it was that anything over $15 should get a full Platinum.
 
They could easily put in exclusive themes, avatars and special content when people level their PSN account. The higher you are, the cooler stuff you unlock. I am actually baffled Sony haven't included such things already. Some games like Final Fantasy 13 gave us themes when we achieved specific achievements, but few games have done anything similar.
I remember White Knight Chronicles would unlock items for PlayStation Home.
Yeah I think those kind of small items would be great. It seems like doing that kind of thing would be a little costly initially but over time would vastly increase player retention and interest.
 

Joni

Member
Platinum trophies in themselves are odd to me. On the one hand, I like how you can use them as easy ways of saying you've achieved all there is to achieve in a game (setting aside for the moment that often this isn't technically true). You can look at your Platinum trophy count and know exactly what that means. On the other hand, it's not like you couldn't also point to the number of 1000/1000 games you have on Xbox Live, or the number of 100% games on Steam. You can even have the number of Perfect Games show up on your profile.
There is a an advantage to the Platinum. I have finished up both Prince of Persia and Never Alone, but I have 100% in neither of them because they both have DLC. I do have a Prince of Persia Platinum to count I finished it up.
 

JPS Kai

Member
I think it was FromSoftware invited some people into a bloodborne alpha, if they had the dark souls 2 plat. pretty decent reward in my opinion.

EDIT: yh, people were invited based on their trophys in dark soul 1/2 and demon souls.
http://www.destructoid.com/bloodbor...merica-are-going-out-later-today-281923.phtml

I remember getting a Bloodborne invite but that was before I even played Dark Souls. Maybe it was from having done most of the stuff in Demon's Souls (100% rings but my ps3 hard drive corrupted itself before I could ever get the platinum).
 

DryvBy

Member
I'm with you on this. I love how Steam does achievements. Some games have thousands of these little beauties. I understand not having that many, but it would be nice in collections to get more than just an overall trophy list as a collection instead of individual game.

Doom Collection on PS3 has 5-6 Doom games with it. They just tied a single silver for each game. It actually makes it too easy to 100% the game. There should be either a separate trophy list per Doom game or more trophies to give you a platinum.
 

autoduelist

Member
I'm glad to hear it's up to the devs. I hate when games don't have platinums... it really shifts how I see the game.

That said... despite having over 80 platinums, I hate what trophies have done to my gaming. I end up putting 10 hours of grinding into a game for that last trophy even though I have zero interest in doing so, or I end up stopping playing games even though I'm enjoying them because I got the plat.

Perfect examples -- just finished up running up and down a hallway for 3k battles in Operation Abyss... I loved the game, but that was hours of drudgery at the end. Or, I'm also playing NFS: Rivals, and stopped trying to gold new events because I got the 100 I need for a trophy and now it's 'faster' to just run short events to cleanup trophies... even though I was having a blast.

The rare game does have a well designed trophy list that complements gameplay well... but so many are just terribly designed and sap the fun out of games... yet by the time I beat a game, I've often invested so much time in stupid collection trophies that I feel a deep seated need to put another 10 hours into getting the last couple trophies rather than simply doing something -fun- like gaming is [generally] meant to be.

Still... overall, if we're going to have them, I think platinums across the board make sense. I'm glad we don't have tons like Steam -- that would be hell for those that feel the need to get them all. But I do wish that devs put as much energy into designing fun trophy lists as they do into their games.
 
I'm glad small games with limited content don't have platinums. They should require time and effort to obtain.

I've spent the last week on Stealth inc 2. 80 levels to S rank, difficult and long. It's hilarious that a game like Walking Dead has a platinum trophy over it.

Shit needs to change. We need consistency, and Sony to formally let devs know that Plats are available to smaller games.
 

Hypron

Member
I'm glad small games with limited content don't have platinums. They should require time and effort to obtain.

Legend of Korra has a Platinum that can be obtained in 6 to 8 hours with almost no effort. Infamous: First Light is very similar too (8-10 hours).

Spelunky doesn't have a platinum, but getting all the trophies for a first time player will take anywhere between 25 and 50+ hours (since it's an incredibly skill based game).

Getting all the MGS Ground Zeroes' trophies also takes about 25 hours (i.e. as much as MGS3) and requires more skill than the 2 aforementioned games. Yet no Platinum (even though the game's worth 1000G on Xbox. Go figure).

The way trophies are allocated right now makes no sense.

I believe every game should have a Platinum, that way your number of Platinum trophies would actually reflect how many games you've finished. Right now it doesn't represent anything worthwhile since which games have a Platinum trophy and which ones don't is almost completely arbitrary.
 
... affecting achievement parity with other platforms.

This is a thing at the moment?
Just enjoy the games you play on whatever platform you have/want.
 

Danneee

Member
Throphies/achievements need an overhaul, I mean, outside of steam achievements. The system in place have been the same for almost 10 years now.
 

EGM1966

Member
I'd rather remove all concept of score and just have the trophy or achievement itself with no associated value.

It's complete arbitrary and I feel makes the concept too "brag rights I have bigger score than you". I've never been a fan of their impact nor MS apparent goal in making them so points/score focused.

I'd like to see that aspect neutered and a focus purely on the achievement itself. More like Steam essentially were it's a bit of fun and a record of things in a game you've pulled off.
 
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