[RUMOUR] Trophy Hunters to Reap Bigger Rewards?

[DangerousDaze]

The ancient and venerable Computer and Video Games (http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=199736) is reporting (sourced from an article in the US Official Playstation Magazine) that Sony may offer some kind of reward system for trophy who^H^H^Hcollectors at some point in the near future.
We doubt it'll be cash (or the equivalent), but we suspect it might be exclusive access to early betas and the like
It seems that PS3 trophies have much the same pulling power as achievements - Sony were late to the party but are they evolving quicker than the competition? Or is this just yet another useless time-sink?

[MalReynolds]

gay if people with more Trophys get into betas and such

[Goronmon]

Great, even more of an incentive to hack the system.

[Mike Kelehan]

If you come in late, you had BETTER evolve faster.

[Gorvi]

I've always thought Achievements should have done something like this, it would've given them some value. It'd be nice to see, but I have my doubts that it'll actually happen.

[Morangie]

Great, even more of an incentive to hack the system.

Even worse, a great incentive for developers to make any trophies in their games as easy as possible to get. After all, if your game has easy trophies and they translate into actual rewards then that might mean a few extra sales.

Terrible, terrible idea.

[Goronmon]

I've always thought Achievements should have done something like this, it would've given them some value.I think adding actual rewards to an Achievement style system just introducing way too many problems.

[violent]

The extent of something like this should be an unlockable within the particular game you played to reach the achievement. Something physical simply wouldn't work.

[Sl1pstream]

This could be a good thing.

Need people to beta test Call of Duty 6? Just look at who got what trophies in CoD5.

[Gorvi]

I think adding actual rewards to an Achievement style system just introducing way too many problems.
Actual rewards, yeah, but cool little extras that you can earn on a system level would be nice. Not stuff like access to betas, I don't like that idea, but just cool little things. And, of course, my brain is mush at the moment and I can't think of a single good example.

[Rogue_hunter]

I've always thought Achievements should have done something like this, it would've given them some value. It'd be nice to see, but I have my doubts that it'll actually happen.

When I was working games retail in the months leading up to the release of the 360, we were given talking points. When people asked about achievements, we were told that achievement points would be tied to a rewards type program. Our MS rep even heavily hinted that you would be able to trade in gamerpoints for MS points, though she never actually said it.

Still have yet to see this happen, so as far as I'm concerned, once it happens, I may or may not care.


This could be a good thing.

Need people to beta test Call of Duty 6? Just look at who got what trophies in CoD5.

Relic was doing something like this in the recent Company of Heroes balance playtest. 100 players would be selected to participate in an unannounced beta after the end of the most recent beta. Criteria included something along the lines of time played, wins/losses, and/or other factors that they did not disclose. Sounds like a pretty good idea, but that could also encourage the crazy multiplayer "Play X number of rounds" like Gears did.

I think adding actual rewards to an Achievement style system just introducing way too many problems.
Uncharted did this very well. Initially the in-game achievements gave you behind the scenes/making of videos, production designs, alternate character skins, infinite ammo weapons, video filters, and the ability to play the levels mirrored. Granted, this was just one system for one game, and devs would have to implement it for all their games. Devs implement achievements as they are pretty weak, either going fully hardcore, or making them super easy.

[cassiusregicide]

The extent of something like this should be an unlockable within the particular game you played to reach the achievement. Something physical simply wouldn't work.

Mass Effect is a great example of this. Alot of the achievements give in game bonuses after they are unlocked. Good stuff.

[violent]

Mass Effect is a great example of this. Alot of the achievements give in game bonuses after they are unlocked. Good stuff.

It's the only way I can come up with to actually reward those people who attempt to unlock everything yet very little incentive for those simply going for e-peen status. I think it's a good idea. I've always liked the concept of trophies/achievements yet always disliked the concept of the metascore. As long as this is independent to each game, it should be a winner.

[Wilkz07]

i've got 41k of achivements... where's my reward.

ps3 trophies are too little too late.

[Spigot]

I'm with Gorvi. I remember always thinking that you could spend the achievement points you earned in the marketplace (before I got a 360, of course). It was one of my biggest letdowns when I realized it didn't work that way.

I'm not saying Sony should go this route, but it'd be nice to see something besides the e-peen rating. If you had a shinier room in HOME or something, that'd be cool. Or access to developer diaries or things of that ilk.

[BlueBomber]

Wow, I'm going to have to disagree with almost everybody and say that I think this sounds pretty cool.

I think it would totally add entertainment value to the people trying to attain the trophies, and at the same time possibly give consumers more incentive to buy games. Hell, it might even help developers select the best possible candidates for their next beta based on gamers trophies and whatknot. Sort of a win/win. Sort of.

Anyways, I heard this rumor a few days ago from a couple of different sites and they all had said that the 'rewards' would most likely tie in to Home somehow.

At this point - who knows :/.

[Dukefrukem]

yay. so i'm not that big of a whore anymore?

[Telefrog]

Relic was doing something like this in the recent Company of Heroes balance playtest. 100 players would be selected to participate in an unannounced beta after the end of the most recent beta. Criteria included something along the lines of time played, wins/losses, and/or other factors that they did not disclose. Sounds like a pretty good idea, but that could also encourage the crazy multiplayer "Play X number of rounds" like Gears did.

My problem with arrangements like this is that you will always wind up with the same set of hardcore players geting into the beta. On one hand it's a good reward for your primary audience, but on the other it's quite easy to become insular and blinded to gameplay issues and franchise traditions.

Take Civ IV: Colonization, for example. There are a host of balance issues that cropped up once the game went out to the general public. A big cause of that was because all the playtesters were Civ community "stars" from Apolyton and CivFanatics. Because they play Civ style games at a very high meta-game level, they tuned the gameplay to accomodate their inherent bias twoards advanced strategy. Newcomers to the game are immediately hit with unintuitive gameplay decisions and interface quirks that were not apparent to these superfans.

[Johan]

This is uninteresting to me, as are achievements. I find that the few times I've been interested in pursuing an achievement, that I enjoy the game LESS than I would just playing for fun, and it becomes work to me.

Achievements should be bypassable. There should be an "opt-out" system for people like myself who just plain don't like them at all.

[Zero]

When I was working games retail in the months leading up to the release of the 360, we were given talking points. When people asked about achievements, we were told that achievement points would be tied to a rewards type program. Our MS rep even heavily hinted that you would be able to trade in gamerpoints for MS points, though she never actually said it.
I'm with Gorvi. I remember always thinking that you could spend the achievement points you earned in the marketplace (before I got a 360, of course). It was one of my biggest letdowns when I realized it didn't work that way.

I'm a member of this threesome. I could have sworn that Achievement points = Microsoft points before the 360s launch.

[Orca]

Go with in-game bonuses only, like in Mass Effect. Making it 'real' means people will be even more annoying with their 'just let me get a kill streak' BS in multiplayer.

Sony should worry more about getting to the point where every game SHIPS with Trophy support first.

[agentgray]

I see this as just another form for the developers/publishers to make money.

You want in to the beta, get a demo, or get a chance to play another game early? Great. Just purchase our DLC that adds these new trophies. Get them and then you can play.

[agentgray]

Take Civ IV: Colonization, for example. There are a host of balance issues that cropped up once the game went out to the general public. A big cause of that was because all the playtesters were Civ community "stars" from Apolyton and CivFanatics. Because they play Civ style games at a very high meta-game level, they tuned the gameplay to accomodate their inherent bias twoards advanced strategy. Newcomers to the game are immediately hit with unintuitive gameplay decisions and interface quirks that were not apparent to these superfans.
Holy crap. I wondered why the game was giving me weird AI decisions. Do you have a supporting link?

Do you want to know more? Yes. Yes, I do.

[rein]

Exclusive gamer pics, themes and stuff like that would be cool, anything else is annoying.

[Telefrog]

Holy crap. I wondered why the game was giving me weird AI decisions. Do you have a supporting link?

Do you want to know more? Yes. Yes, I do.

The supporting links would be the general discussion on CivFanatics (http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=213) and Apolyton (http://apolyton.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?forumid=339). There's a few of the mods and longtime fans of the series that disclosed that they were the beta testers for the game. (Many of them did the beta test for Civ IV: Beyond The Sword as well.) A few of them have acknowledged that having nothing but uber players beta test may have been a mistake, but most have just toed the party line of "you need to learn to think outside the box" when it comes to the strategy of not generating Liberty Bells until the late game. (Which is completely unintuitve and against the general point of declaring Independence to win the game.)

This is the danger of having only hardcore players give feedback during development, and unfortunately I see it all the time. Ensemble was great about this. They routinely discussed how every game was beta tested by people that never played anything beyond Solitaire or Chess on the PC. This way, they got early non-gamer issues out of the way, and never forgot that tropes that fans of the series take for granted make no sense to newbies.

Tying beta codes to Achievements or Trophies ensures you will always have super hardcore testers which may take for granted things that will completely annoy or befuddle other players.

[Purple Santa]

yay. so i'm not that big of a whore anymore?

You still are. And the worse kind too. A trophy whore who is a Red Sox fan...ewwwww ;)