Should Online Multiplayer Trophies Be Mandatory to Achieve a Platinum Trophy?

Angie Santiago of SpawnFirst discusses why she believes online-only trophies are unfair to some players.

[-Foxtrot]

Nope...because most of them take the p***

Like we all have that much free time in our lifes for most of those online trophies. One could be only a bronze and even then it would take you ages to get.

[BuddyAcker]

Yeah, I hate mulitplayer trophies that are like "Kill 500 enemies with grenades - Bronze"

[Gster]

I know some of them can be real tedious long drawn out grinder trophies, but I think developers in general are getting the hint that most gamers don't favour these types of trophies.

I think they should introduce 2 Platinums per game, where multiplayer is included. Say you had one Platinum for all trophies achieved in single player only, and a second platinum (a more brightly glowing one) for all trophies achieved in both single and multiplayer.

That would give both types of gamers/trophy hunters something to strive for. Those who just prefer just the single player aspect of the game and those who enjoy both single and multiplayer.

[metsgaming]

TLOU mp trophies ruined any chance of a platinum i didnt even bother to try. If that wasnt there i would have played the sp on the higher difficult for the other trophies to earn the platinum.
Even if they were easy like 10 kills or win a match i dont think they should be in there. Some point the game wont have anyone playing it thus making getting the platinum impossible.

[serratos27]

I've heard complaints about those repetitive type trophies on GTA. Having to fly under 50 bridges or the stunts lol. It's not worth it! Because it just takes so much time for a single trophy.

[Azmatik]

Thats a tough one to decide. I have 20+ plats and all of them are hard to get i dont get no kiddie plats, but some like resistance have the trophy to kill 10,000 enemies WTF! So i was never able to get that plat because i dont have that much time. But then theres games like KZ2 where u have to get in the top 1% of the leaderboard in the week to get the trophy and because of that i feel i did earn my KZ plat where as if someone didnt do the online and got the plat id feel ripped off because clearly i deserve it more if i got the online one right? Its definatly mixed feelings. Over all id say keep the online trophys needed to get a platinum but stop making most of them so rediculous! Or make it so theres some sort of SP only plat and MP only plat or something but doesnt count as 2 plats in ur profile. Something along those lines you get my drift?

[BuddyAcker]

Gster - That's a great idea.

serratos27 - Also, flying in GTA games is sooo damn tedious to begin with.

[kreate]

All trophies should follow the format of fallout3.

[PoSTedUP]

i agree. but if a game is good ill play it or replay it, how i want. really not gonna grind through a game just to get some troyphies. there are too many games to play and on top of trying to play them all with 100% trophies you have to have some serious down time. but i do think its cool that they pop up from time to time and some of them can be pretty funny.

[AusRogo]

F***ing Tomb Raider.. man I love that game but the online sucks balls. I only go for platinum on games that really get me going back for more, but some multiplayer trophies are stupid. In BF4 its the other way around, nearly all trophies are single player! I loved how most trophies were online in BF3, because I got it for multiplayer (still went through campaign though)

[kneon]

Tomb raider might be my pick for all time worst multi-player. The spawn points and spawn camping are horrendous. And it's the only game I've ever encountered that allows you to gain experience and money in a private match with no other players.

[Insomnia_84]

There's only one trophy holding me back from Paltinum on BF3 and it's on of the co-op missions, the sniper mission.

[jukins]

isnt playing a game the very definition of free time? If its a game that typically has multiplayer then yes they should be mandatory for those that care. But honestly is a notification that you did something and a higher gamerscore or level all that important. Just play the damn game.

[Snookies12]

No.

[_QQ_]

yes, because you don't deserve to be called a platinum level player untill you masterd the entire game.

[Nitrowolf2]

yep, because I sure as hell want to play a game with broken Online. What about the kill trophy in Resistance 2? Or what abotu the stupid 6 month later trophy in Crysis 2? U probably forgot the /S, but it's still BS they make trophies liek that

[kneon]

There should be 2 separate platinum's, one for single player and another for multi-player. That should make everyone happy.

[stavrami]

no online trophies suck

[willie32]

Uncharted 2 did their online trophies perfectly. They required you to try the two modes.

[stavrami]

It might be just have a go but even that is to much.I like to avoid mp on some games just makes the plat uninterestin and boring far cry 3 and tomb raider Im Talking to you

[Malice-Flare]

nope... multi-player tropies should be a separate Platinum or 1000G...

[Summons75]

No....trophies shouldn't be mandatory to begin with. All they do is give devs and excuse to be lazy and not but in effort to make the game replayable by it's own merits. A lot of great devs do make games replayable by their own merits but most nowa days are lazy due to trophies.

[admiralvic]

It's a two way street. Some games, like Catherine, really motivated me to unlock something totally surprising that I had no clue existed. Other games, such as Vanquish, add a little extra boost to doing things like Tactical Challenge 6. Sure some devs are lazy, but there were plenty of lazy devs in the past too.

[Summons75]

yeah and the lazy devs in the past never had their games replayed and complained about people not replaying their most likely awful games. Games like FF 1-10, Super Mario games, Zelda, Crash Bandicoot/ Zelda, MGS pre 4, Splinter Cell CT, Chrono Trigger, Ninja Gaiden and tons more are all remembered for their own unique things and are still replayed tens of times even today and they didn't have trophies to justify replayability. Now devs hinge on trophies for replayability instead of putting things in the game to drive players to replay it.

[Kcube90]

No, no no no. It shouldnt be mandatory. Let say I get a game later on after its release and the number of people playing it online is greatly low or they turn off the servers cough cough ea; then there is no way I can get the online trophy.

[LightSamus]

Depends. MP trophies/achievements are fine if they're simple things like reaching an early rank or testing a few things out but when they require you to do insane things like reach max rank or play for far too long, I'm just not interested.

[nope111]

If it's a game like...... Battlefield, i would perfer most trophies be multiplayer because the campaign usually sucks so badly i cannot even force myself to play for a few trophies.

[noxeven]

I hate it when mulitplayer trophies and achievements are part of dead games or games that wont ever have players. I think if the game is dead you should just patch out the achievements to players that have the game.

[mhunterjr]

Think about it. trophies (achievements) exist to give players more reason to continue playing a game. It's artificial repeatability. By only giving platinum status to folks who play online as well, publishers are hoping that players hold on to their copies longer, which keeps games from being resold.

I don't see any reason why publishers would want to separate the two.

[zugdar]

No. I hate online achievements. Most are based off luck or grinds.

[admiralvic]

There should only be one mandatory rule when it comes to trophies. That is that it's completely possible to platinum any game, without the purchase of DLC. There is no reason to make multiplayer required, just like there is no reason to make single player required either. Especially since it will actively devalue your product.

How does it devalue your product? Instead of having people who want to play the multiplayer for whatever reason, you have people completely fixated on getting their trophies done asap. A perfect example of this is Rayman Legends, which requires you to be in the top 1% of a challenge for a trophy.

Now, even with the challenges being required to platinum, only around 1,000 people play the challenges every day. This means you must score within the top 10 on any given challenge for the trophy. While this is certainly doable, Ubisoft also decided to force you to get over 2,000 awesome points via challenges. While this is might not sound absurd, the point break down is 50 for diamond (top 1%), 10 for gold (10%), 5 for silver (50%), 1 for bronze (90%), 0 for the rest. So, if you score gold or higher on every single challenge, then you would need to do roughly 200 challenges. This comes out to roughly 87 days where you were able to maintain the top 10%. Sure some people can do this, but the more people that try harder, the less realistic the trophy becomes. What might have required an hour of work, will take several hours of work to maintain one of the highest 10 scores. Mind you, even if you obtain #1 in the world, unless the challenge ends with you being #1, then you could still get beaten and walk away with a gold. This ultimately limits many peoples enjoyment and in a lot of ways makes the online worse.

[McScroggz]

I would say yes, even though I'm not much into multiplayer, except that so many games have an online community that only lasts 6 months before it starts to become barren - if it ever had a thriving community. Plus, servers aren't on forever. It's disappointing to pick up a game you missed a few years back only to find it nigh on impossible, or in fact impossible, to get the platinum trophy.

[MRMagoo123]

I myself personally (hope i get that point across as in me not anyone else) find all trophies a waste of time, i didnt need them when i played games in the 80s, i didnt need them in the 90s, but now all of a sudden everyone needs some kind of silly thing to pop up to pat them on the back to continue playing a game, if the game isnt worth playing more than once without trophies it isnt really worth playing them again with trophies.

The only time i can see them being important to me is if they can actually be used for something like a currency for buying things such as maybe costume unlocks or maps, anything at all except for the "hey guys look how i spent 1000 hours playing this one game arent i cool" reason.

[DialgaMarine]

Honestly, Online Trophies should be the same deal as games like Uncharted. Fill the main trophy list with SP trophies, with mabye a very simple online trophy or 2 thrown in there, and then patch in a good list of Online trophies post release for those that actually care to go that extra mile, or just for something to do after you get the platinum. It's frustrating as hell to have 90% + completion of a game because there's those few online trophies that you just can't get for whatever reason. The only exception to that rule of course should be games that are online only, ie games like MAG.

[saminseattle]

Shut up, boot.

[mixelon]

I say - whatever the devs feel like! If the online component is important then putting trophies there makes sense.

I have no problems with games having difficult (near inpossible) multiplayer trophies. You dont have to aim for platinum in all of them, and by a dev making it hard they arent actually implying thats the sign of a "good" player. Some of the Warhawk trophies were hilariously difficult.

If you come accross someone with the crazy trophies you know theyve invested a lot of effort to get them.. If all games were platinumable by any competent gamer that'd be boring imo.

[dcj0524]

Yes. The whole point is for it to be hard.

[admiralvic]

Yes, but most online trophies are based off vastly changing your play style and relying a lot on luck.

Case in point...

Counter Strike GO has a trophy for winning a knife fight. While this is easy to do, all the difficulty comes from luck. While you can always have your knife out, you can't control what other people want to do. If no one wants to engage you in a knife fight, then you're stuck using that knife till you either get the trophy, give up or play long enough for you to encounter someone using a knife in a situation where you can swap out your knife and kill them before they switch out from their knife. This isn't fun. This isn't hard. It's just a tedious time sink that kills your K:D ratio, lowers your enjoyment, makes your overall team weaker, demotivates your comrades and makes the game overall worse.

On the other hand, Vanquish tactical challenge 6 is hard and relies on smart tactics / skill to win. This isn't something that you can do accidentally, nor is it something that relies on anything besides your own skill. These are what trophies are about, since it ultimately falls on you to make yourself successful, not hoping others will give you what you need.

[Sarobi]

Nopenopenopenopenopenope.
Multiplayer achievement/trophies are just too tedious. I don't want to spend another 40+ hours grinding specific amounts of kills, wins, and other statistical things.. it's simply a pain in the butt - it's even more of a pain if the multiplayer is DEAD.

[Evil_Abed]

Online achievements I don't mind. DLC Achievements robbing me of my "games completed" badge: ┌∩┐(๏_๏)┌∩┐

[saminseattle]

Can't stand it when developers incorporate this into their games. At least when the MP trophies get ridiculous. Like Battlefield: Bad Company '10002 kills'... Put hundreds of hours into the MP, had every other trophy in the game and never got that final one... wtf!?

[admiralvic]

Believe it or not, that isn't that ridiculous.

Rayman Legends - Requires no less than 21 days of online challenges, with the requirement being 100+ days if you don't spend the time to be in the top 1%.
Lost Planet 2 - There is a title for getting #1 on a leaderboard, which was one of 500 tasks required to platinum.
Fight Night - The person with the belt had to challenge you to a match and you had to win this match to platinum. (100% luck based)
Q Theory - You had to max out your online level, with a system that would give you negative score if you played too good. So if the game thought you could only earn 10,000 points in a match and you earned 10,001, then the game literally deducted 10,001 points from your overall score. This really does mean you would go from say 1,000,000 to 989,999, instead of 110,001.

At least with BC you just had to play. Tedious? Sure. Though it was something you could get without going out of your way.

[ColdNorway]

I wholeheartedly agree with you that such mp kills trophies are annoying and shouldn't be present thus robbing you of a plat trophy. Though in the case of BF:BC it didn't bother me that much as it was an amazing game and I never cared about trophies back in 2008. I put over 400 hours into that mp, more than I ever put into BF:BC2 and BF3 combined.

[jackanderson1985]

they should be mandatory as long as the online is supported... once support is cut off they should be either removed or automatically obtained.... it's fierce annoying when you have 980g or 18/20 trophies and can't get the last one cuz servers have been cut off before you've had the chance to obtain it

[DEATHxTHExKIDx]

The only time I do is for games I'm dedicated to. Like Gears of war 2 completed everything for that.

[-EvoAnubis-]

Lots of gamers seem to think that they're entitled to platinum trophies or something. That they should be able to play a game, play or not play whatever parts of it they see fit, and get a platinum trophy.

I don't see it that way. If you don't want to put in the work to get the online trophies, well then no platinum trophy for you. Deal with it. The platinum trophy is there for someone that plays all of the game. If a online trophy is too hard for you, then I guess you won't be getting the platinum in that game. You're not entitled to it.

[metsgaming]

Not only should MP trophies not count towards a trophy, it shouldnt count towards a 100%. There should be two sides the game and then online + DLC. Thats probably not gonna happen so yea dont have MP trophies count towards a platinum would be a start. Not having mp trophies period would be best though.

[LiQuiZoN]

I feel trophies are already implemented for multiplayer ala, Camo, Guns, Badges, Titles etc... The playstation trophies should really be dedicated to all offline experiences. This causes the player to invest more time into the game, while MP trophies simply change an online player's behavior to achieve said trophy.

- my 2 cents

[mydyingparadiselost]

If the game's good you don't need any trophies at all.

[Soldierone]

No I hate these, and I hate "play with your friends" trophies.