Gamer score - Who cares and how its devalued since launch of Xbox 360.

Soldato
Joined
16 Jun 2005
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Back in the UK
Lastnight I finished of playing through the campaign of Battlefield: Hardline after getting it on EA access (glad i refunded my PC origin copy now) and finished of another Episode of Walking dead, EA access and Games with gold have been above the curve this month.

Anyway I get a Message from a friend on Xbox live calling me a point whore cause i'm showing up as 2nd on his league on the dashboard (something thankfully gone on NXOE).

Now i don't know about the rest of you but i don't even think about those "points" anymore, most recent games throw them at you and require very little effort to get them (walking dead is a perfect example).

The value of Effort vs "Reward" was always a little off requiring complete replays for 5GS or games like DOA requiring you to complete some godly feat of skill.

When the 360 came out i remember racing a friend to 1000GS and actually caring about it as a "meta" challenge. These days they are actually annoying in games like walking dead when they pop up and block you choices in a timed events.

So does anyone care anymore about theses? Are they still relevent and do they still serve a purpose?
 
Man of Honour
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17 Oct 2002
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Liverpool, UK
I actually stopped caring about them a long time ago, certainly the actual points. Some of the achievements can be fun to try to get in a game I enjoy, but I honestly don't even know or care what my Gamerscore is any more.
 
Soldato
Joined
14 Sep 2007
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West Yorkshire, England
It's same for PS trophies. Early stages I managed to get Plat on atleast 7 games. Worked hard through MP and SP to complete them. Now I just look at them and think "what's the point?".

Can't remember the last time I properly played a game to aim for the trophies.
 
Soldato
Joined
7 Aug 2013
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3,510
I never really cared about them at all.

They were rarely ever used in a manner that I thought was complementary to the game experience. They became arbitrary measures for a 'completion' of a game, which is ridiculous. Made little sense that most games I played through and beat only got me like 30-40% of the full points. The rest were a bunch of optional objectives, most of which were designed merely to keep you playing so you could 'achieve' their arbitrary stated goal, which were usually just things that involved time consuming aspects, like grinding or having to replay the game again. And of course there were all the idiotic ones like receiving an achievement for creating a character or whatever.

Very few games added achievements in a manner that promoted interesting play styles or proper skill-based rewards. Was often just a measure of how much time you were willing to put into the game to do these things.

It's never meant anything meaningful and I've never known anybody who has EVER cared about anybody else's gamerscore. Nobody is impressed by it. Congrats, you've put a buttload of hours doing meaningless things in tons of different games! I mean granted, if people enjoy doing it, then whatever, but I still get the feeling it's just preying into many people's completionist/OCD mentality and these sorts will derive satisfaction from checking off boxes like that, except they'd also be just fine if those checkboxes weren't there, probably with more time on their hands to play other games, or at the very least, play a game the way *they* want to instead of doing it how the devs have set it up for them to play through arbitrary achievement hunting.

Frankly, I think if you want people to do certain things in your game, then provide actual reward. If you want me to reach level 90, then give me a tangible reason for doing so. Give me a badass sword. Give me some new power. Hell, have it unlock some cosmetic item or skin or something. Dont just give me a little popup, which is nothing more than a pre-programmed digital pat on the back.
 
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Soldato
Joined
12 May 2005
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8,384
There are plenty of websites for trophy hunter's and even YouTube channels on how to earn them...

So seems gamerscores, achievements, trophies etc are for some still something many enjoy chasing down.. Each to their own I guess...
 
Soldato
Joined
13 Jan 2004
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South East
I enjoy going after some of them, they sometimes make me do things in games I might not have bothered doing otherwise. I'm not one to go after the grind type ones though, things like requiring you to pick up 200 objects around a city, for example.

If you don't like them I don't see what the problem is, a little notification isn't that big of a deal really.
 
Soldato
Joined
6 Dec 2007
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Dewsbury
Never cared about GamerScore or PS Trophies, or Steam score for that matter.

However, UPlay seems to be fairly good in that you can spend the points you earn to unlock in-game and game-related rewards.
 
Caporegime
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24 Oct 2012
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Godalming
I have never even looked at how many points myself or a friend has, it's just never bothered me. Granted if I'm online and a mate is busy doing something for a trophy I'd be more than happy to hop in and grab it as well but that's as far as it goes.

I'm from the old days when turning off a console meant effectively resetting all your progress ever. No saved games, no installs, nothing.
 
Soldato
Joined
30 Nov 2004
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3,754
Location
Oop North
I care not for the score, more the act of getting all of them in a game. Couple of years ago I was very much into playing all the easy games (some of which I actually enjoyed) but now it doesn't matter if it's a 1000gs game or 200gs game, I just like the 100%. This of course has led to some very long completions too (at least 4 games over the 100 hour mark).

Unfortunately, my want of 100% has caused me to avoid some games due to achievements being broken/unobtainable/discontinued/too many online, but these have never been games I desperately wanted, more was on the fence about (Titanfall being a case in point).
 
Soldato
Joined
15 Aug 2005
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22,977
Location
Glasgow
I've never really cared too much for them. I'll occasionally check my trophies to see what it is I've earned, but I don't go out of my way to get them.

Ultimately it all depends on how well they're implemented into the game. Some are earned just for playing the game how you would anyway, which largely seems pointless (and intrusive, at times). Some are quite interesting things to actually do or achieve in-game that you might not otherwise have known about, and some are just the standard scoreboard-type ones like "Kill 50 enemies with weapon XYZ" which are harmless I suppose, but get boring.
 
Soldato
Joined
6 Jun 2010
Posts
4,184
I don't mind them but I certainly won't go out of my way to obtain them. I'm not going to lie, I have a fair idea of my score but I'm not competing with anybody. I went for a few trophies on FIFA yesterday but it was more like completing some fun little challenges. Sometimes they can push you to try and play a game a little differently. If they got rid of them then the internet would have a meltdown. It was a clever move by MS to introduce them. Some people are locked to Xbox for that very reason.
 
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