The Trouble with PS3 Trophies

Push Square: "Love them or loathe them, Trophies have become an important part of the PlayStation experience. Introduced in mid-2008 to muted fanfare, the digital trinkets have bloated in popularity over the past four years, promoting dedicated online communities and even minor gaming celebrities. But while the rewards look certain to play a pivotal role in the future of Sony’s gaming plans, we’re not entirely convinced that developers have found a way to fully leverage the potential of the system. Trophies, in their current guise, are flawed."

[GribbleGrunger]

Is this a follow up to the other article on the main page?

[get2sammyb]

Hah, it's actually not. Just a coincidence.

[Nes_Daze]

The MGS4 main story or the OTHER one. lol

[Knushwood Butt]

I think this article was introduced to muted fanfare.

[JDcg]

That was honestly my first thought.

[Hellsvacancy]

The trouble with PS3 trophies is because of them, we know have to deal with articles like this

[ChunkyLover53]

The only problem I have with Trophies is that they weren't mandatory until 2009, I wish Sony would have implemented them at the start of the PS3's life. I mean they had a whole year where the Xbox 360 had Achievements and they had to realize how successful they were. Why not work it out for launch?

[Hicken]

Why should they be mandatory? Speaking for myself, I don't really care about trophies. I've spent most of my gaming career without extraneous achievements that do nothing for me in-game; these past few years WITH them hasn't been dramatically improved by the inclusion of trophies.

Likely, they were added later ONLY because of the success of the 360's achievements. Until then, I doubt they even thought they were necessary.

[ChunkyLover53]

Simply put, I personally don't like playing through games that lack an Achievement system. I know its something that some people wont agree with, but I have actually found some very quality games by playing a game with easy Achievements that I probably wouldn't have played through otherwise, so its at least a double edged sword.

They should definitely be mandatory and I'm glad they are. Honestly, having Achievements caused me to build up quite a lot of Gamerscore early on with 3rd party games, and because they all supported Achievements since the Xbox 360's launch, that is the console I buy 99% of my 3rd party games on.

[ZeroChaos]

The problem with trophies is a shared problem with achievements. Most of them listed to get more people to play them, for longer hours and doesn't factor in rewarding the player in the correct way.

Resistance's 10,000 one was inspired by Gears which it was in direct competition with according to gaming outlets. The same with Dead Rising achievement killing xx,xxx amount of zombies which L4D, DR2, DR:OTR and Prototype game copied.

I think as well dedicated fans will have no problem achieving those types of trophies/achievements its just a pain.

I do wish if they make us go on a collecting mission that I have some on screen prompt to help me find them Prototype 2 was a god send with the "pulse", Spiderman is a ball ache until you get around half way, and most other games just go we've hidden them have fun (GTA for example) thought there is no fun at all looking in such a big world like that for them.

[-Alpha]

I'm telling you, TimeSplitters did it best (and other games of that nature):

You can tackle a challenge and get bronze, but keep doing that same challenge to turn that bronze into a silver, or gold. That way, a truly skilled player would have more gold trophies than bronze, and it would make the trophy system actually make sense

[TheDivine]

Good idea. Id also like rewards for your trophies/achievements. Maybe from the dev like a new costume, level, weapons exc or from ms/sony themselves. Make your gamerscore be spendable on a special section of the store for exclusive avatar items, arcade games, movie rentals exc. The people with high scores obviously play more and more loyal customers. Rewards would make more people play more thus benefiting everybody.

Nintnedo rewards is a good start although a pain because you register a game and take a survey. You can get real stuff and games though. Tie that into the wii-u's nline and hopefully the trophy/coin/stars (whatever i HOPE they use for achievements) and we would have a winner.

[12345bnm]

The only problem i have is that i can't see my Vita trophies on my PS3.

[ToZanarkand86]

Stupid that, you cant even see people online on Vita when you're using PS3!

[RoXante]

well, if their avatar keeps loadin'(via ps3), you'll know if they r on vita.

[OldSnakePS3]

my only problem is heavenly sword and resistance 1 dont have em

[DigitalRaptor]

Valkyria Chronicles and Folklore too. Those are the only 4 I really want to be patched.

[MysticStrummer]

The trouble with Trophies is the same as the trouble with Achievements. They're both just an illusion of more content, when in reality we are getting less content.

[Kaos_Vll]

don't know who in their right mind disagreed. the problem with this gen is this new gen of gamers who don't know or care about anything other than pretty graphics and blowing everything up.

hope they grow up soon

[DivineAssault]

The only problem is the sync mechanism.. It should auto sync the trophies as quickly as the xbox does.. PS3 wasnt designed to have them & was later added so i understand why.. PS4 should eliminate that issue.. I like ranked trophies much more than just points

[Scottis]

I got my first platinum trophy last night and was sadly disappointed. It just popped up in the corner of the screen for a second, I was expecting it to be a bigger deal, perhaps a congradations. For me the reward does not match the time and effort required. Dont think I'll bother getting another one.

[Scottis]

Trophies are just there so developers can gather statistics on players. One that we here about is the completion rate of games, how else would they get this information? Multiplayer trophies are there because they want to know how many players reached level X. These are the only trophies they care about. The rest are only there to reach a quota which is why we get rediculus challenges.

[admiralvic]

While you're entitled to your opinion, not every game has useful statistics. For instance you don't need to beat Trine 2 to platinum it. If I recall correctly none of the trophies actually related to anything story related, just stuff you can do if you want to.

Additionally most of that information is obtained through research and studies. Like you don't honestly believe the developers can't just obtain the ratio of levels, kills, time played on certain classes and other info from their server directly? Hell not every game even cares about that data. Last time I looked more people beat Demon Souls than Ninja Gaiden 2 on normal, but the souls series is marketed as some sort of elite breed game that 60% (last time I looked that was the complete percent) of all buyers beat. Finally trophies / achievements are there to make games addicting and strive for you to spend more money. They're meant to discourage being stagnate and promote being better / higher than others.

[Sizzon]

I wish they were auto synced

[Oh_Yeah]

yeah the only prob is they should auto sync and also display on the top right corner like achievements. you have to..dig threw your friends list to find your score.

[SteveSmith]

I enjoy getting platinum trophies when it's a decent challenge, but not too extreme. I really hate when games have ridiculous trophies like "win 500 online games" or "grind for 500 hours". Well implemented trophies can really make a game more fun.

[Kaos_Vll]

trophies and cheevos have ruined gaming. taking out real content from games and replacing it with worthless icons is NOT a good thing people.

wake the f up