This fucking website has got to be the most insidious grift out there. Once it gets its hooks into you, it becomes impossible to enjoy any game without having some form of external reward. Fun stops being the priority, and instead you begin to see everything as checklists. But that's not the shitty part... No, what REALLY sucks is that it proves from an objective standpoint that most people are actually pretty terrible at games, or stick to the same few genres and refuse to branch out. It shows in a very cynical manner that gaming is way too broad of a hobby, and that you're probably the weird one for bothering to actually master games you like instead of just using them as accessories to your personality.

cool

>>715310969 (OP)
>Needs virtual head pats to enjoy a video game
Pathetic

>>715310969 (OP)
Hasn't happened to me THOUGH

I like it. If it weren't for cheevos I'd pirate every game.

Without using buzzwords: What's wrong with people having fun in a way that doesn't have any impact on other people

>>715310969 (OP)
Am I autistic if I think Retroachievements is really dumb while I have fun if official rereleases do it?

mental fucking illness man.

>>715311231
This. This is why I don't really play romhacks. You're not completing what the developers intention are, you're completing some asshats with too much free time achievements are.

>>715310969 (OP)
I would tell you not to reproduce, but that's likely to not happen anyway.

Okay.

>>715310969 (OP)
Every single shmup on that site is underscored.

>>715311652
>>>/vt/ranny

>>715310969 (OP)
>Anon finds out what we already knew in 2005
Holy fuck am I getting old or what?

>>715310969 (OP)
They're fun when you really like a game and want to be a "master" at it and display a badge on your profile because you genuinely love certain games

Otherwise its pointless. The total score system means nothing since it just means you can play hundreds of awful shovelware games to get the points from them. Same thing with official achievements like the people who played that awful Avatar the last airbender game on 360 because you could get all 1000 points in like 5 minutes.

tldr overall score means nothing but if you master a game you like it can be fun. some of the sets are retarded though so I usually just play with achivement notifications off and whatever I get I get

>>715311210
Because games exist to be mastered, learning their mechanics to the fullest extent. At the same time, few games can actually be "solved" and you can play them infinitely, getting better and better. But most people don't realize this, they put 1-10 hours MAXIMUM into a game and then never play it again. The idea of dedicating days if not weeks to fully engaging with a game until you've exhausted everything in it is incompatible with this current ADHD zeitgeist where games are not really games, but "content." You can't consume a game like you can a movie or comic book, the onus is on you specifically to learn and adapt and yet we're like two decades removed from the era where that mindset actually applied to the majority of released games.

>>715310969 (OP)
>beat X boss with no healing, no spells, no equipment, only use 1 character, dont use any special moves, dont be above level 10, also no pausing during the fight
people who make these ones should be kicked in the dick.

>>715311231
Nope, because those are the official achievements which have certain standards that everyone adheres to and are made by the actual devs or at least developers who actively had to work on the game in some official capacity.

RetroAchievements have no real standards outside of "Don't force the person to grind to an unreasonable degree" and even then they heavily bend that rule in some games. They also love to justify everything by saying "That's why it's called a 'mastery'" or "That's why they're called 'achievements'" completely missing the point of how games generally do these things and have done them for almost two decades at this point.
>They love to stick speedrunning achievements into everything sucking the fun out of tons of games.
>They love sticking exploits as achievements into certain games.
>Many lists have tons of missable achievements that aren't even because of challenges but because you're expected to fully 100% the game and always be using a guide 24/7 for everything.
>Many games outright require multiple playthroughs like the Castlevania GBA games requiring a playthrough for every single differently-named mode meaning at minimum something like Circle of the Moon is a minimum of 5 playthroughs with one of them just being a normal playthrough but with max drop rate.
>Many games require you to dedicate hundreds of hours into either mastering certain aspects of the game or abusing exploits and speedrunner tricks to clear it with no in between.
>RPG games may as well be permanent guide games where you back up your save every hour.
>They will sometimes retroactively create new achievements for the games you have already completed via revisions forcing you to do new stuff in a brand new playthrough.
Etc. Major brand games like Mario, Sonic, or Zelda are quite fairly reasonable, and they're starting to actually crack down and revise many of the old lists because they're beyond stupidly designed, but there's so much padding to justify "Mastery".

>>715310969 (OP)
i only got full complete achievements on dkc games. i didn't even try completing super mario world due to how bullshit some of those cheevos were

>>715310969 (OP)
>roulette event sounds fun, i'll do it to play a bunch of games I never heard of alongside other players
>mostly shitty games or megaman for the 5000 time
>half a year in I realize it's basically mmo/gacha kind of shit to keep you coming back far past the point of you not giving a shit anymore

>>715312390
Can you really say you've mastered a game if you haven't done everything in it though

>>715310969 (OP)
I play games because it fuels my imagination. Only a brainlet or someone with an inferiority complex seeks or finds challenges in games. It should be obvious to anyone who isn't a retard or a cripple that the only thing separating you from someone else who's good at something is the time investment required and the motivation to do so.

>Official achievements are fair and not grindy bullsh-

>>715310969 (OP)
>Once it gets its hooks into you
only a very specific segment of people are vulnerable to these "hooks"

>>715312390
>current ADHD zeitgeist
Nigga, even back in the 90s nobody played games like this. You buy/rent a game, you played it, you beat it, you moved on.

>>715312763
There comes a point where you have to realize people's time is being wasted to justify "Mastery". Basic example is every single Pokemon game on their site requiring you to fill out the Pokedex and get the certificate. Every single romhack also requires this even if there have been no changes to the Pokedex, fakemon, or anything. Digimon World requiring you to breed every single Digimon is another example.

It turns games from 20ish hour affairs to do basically everything else to 100% completion into 80+ hour affairs just to fill out that specific list. Heaven help you if you're into more modern Pokemon romhacks that backport modern generation Pokemon into older games because now you need to collect 900+ Pokemon every single romhack.

Then there's cases like Megaman Legends where, prior to 2023 or 2024's revision that shuffled them to a subset, required you to do stuff like beat the final boss with melee attacks while taking no damage on the highest difficulty (Pretty sure the fight is like 30 minutes long doing it that way) or complete the entire intro dungeon only kicking without damaging an enemy with your kicks at all (A 20+ minute affair heavily reliant on luck with the rope snake room).

>>715313249
If it was an RA achievement it would require you to hear every single line, not just 80% of them. Yes, you have things like Halo's LASO or multiplayer achievements that make you do things like go 30:0 in the smallest map of Lone Wolf, or Gears of War's "Seriously" achievements, but those achievements are constantly criticized by the people actively going for them because only a very small subset of people even like those achievements and the rest dread even trying to 100% the game because of them. Why do you think we've moved away from things like multiplayer achievements in general? Everyone hated them because once the servers were dead it's over and even if it's back by fans, sites like PSNProfiles ban you from the leaderboards for obtaining them.

Stop using it then? Never heard of this but use trueachievements for stats, if you're not having fun you are the one who should probably get a different hobby. Retards who say "grift" are incapable of making a single good post

>>715312390
>The idea of dedicating days if not weeks to fully engaging with a game until you've exhausted everything in it is incompatible with this current ADHD zeitgeist where games are not really games, but "content."
Nobody did this. All of my friends and people I knew when I was a kid just rented a game for a few days to play it and never touched it again

>>715312709
You say "they" like its a collective of the same people but its a thousand of different users who know how to program achievement triggers given leniency because they are providing for the site when otherwise no one else would give a shit about those non Mario, etc games to do so.
The fact they even give awards and track stats like this for the "developers" of the cheevos further pushes all these shit sets.

im just not gonna achieve is all

>>715310969 (OP)
This thing is nothing but a meme. Why on earth do I need achievements for some old ass games?

>>715313709
Pretty sure grift is the new word for "thing I don't like"

>>715313830
>You say "they" like its a collective of the same people
I understand it's tons of different developers, I'm speaking about the general way the site functions, how the guidelines lead people into making bad achievements due to the way it's written, how the admins and mods seem to perpetuate creating bad achievements, and how the forums are dicksucking awful achievements and being told "It's called 'mastery'" to justify their terrible achievements.

Not saying there aren't good sets because there are, many of which you'd genuinely see in a retail game if they had them, but then there's so many of them which seem to exist just to force you into the developer's little cage of knowledge and expectations for what a 100% is.

>namefag
Nobody here is your friend, are you really that desperate to be seen?

>>715310969 (OP)
I NEED virtual retard points to continue playing mega man x2, you don't get it

Can you cheat and unlock all achivements on RA like you can for Steam games? I remember you could just install a mod for Bethesda games and pop every achivement

>>715314476
why even bother? one way or the other who gives a shit

>>715314476
No. It's a system that is always online. You can't do achievements offline, you have to be online for it to even progress anything, and even if you could you'd need saves for every single trigger of every single achievement. The system relies on trust that you aren't sharing saves with others but they're fairly lenient on what they consider "cheating" because of how emulation works to begin with.

>>715312179
Can't even master the games you like anymore, since some random autistic dev will fill up the achievement list with damageless, dealthless, no "important gameplay mechanic" runs, and speedrun shit.

It's basically just a circlejerk for the twitch retro community at this point, the types that stream for 8+ hours a day for 7 days a week. LordBBH, sebmal, etc.

>>715310969 (OP)
>I'm such a fucking subhuman I need a bing boing glowie woeey or I can't enjoy my wahooeys.

>>715314476
You are on a site regulated by autismos, you will be untracked™ very quickly unless you make the times reasonable and you don't slip up on order of shit or whatever
You can be careful with save editing however to cheat, and they know it. It's why they want acheevos triggers to be done in a way where you can't just load up a 100% save to get everything and I know specifically pokemon games have some stuff to catch idiots just editing 99 masterballs in.

>>715315040
I've been watching a guy get all shiny Pokemon achievements at a blistering pace and I genuinely can't tell if he's using some external tool or is just speeding up his emulator 100x.

>>715314948
>"Mega Man Legends had a good list after the revamp, let's go look at what MML2 wants."
https://retroachievements.org/game/11262
>Beat every boss with no armor, no upgrades, Mega Buster only on the highest difficulty.
>Beat every boss without taking damage on the highest difficulty.
>Turns a fairly casual game into a no fun allowed mess that functionally makes doing anything to progress the game a chore because you are constantly having to revert saves, rewatch cutscenes, do 5+ minute boss battle attempts, and unequip everything every time you move an inch into the story and the only time you get any reprieve at all is running around aimlessly exploring.

>>715315137
You sure they're not just RNG manipulating? You can do that for every gen prior to gen 8 with very little effort.

>I love Smash Bros on the n64 I'm gonna master it
>a few weird ones but overall fun and you just mostly play the game as intended
>what they have smash remix on here too?
>awesome, let me check it out
Gooooooooooooooo fuck yourself

>>715310969 (OP)
I'm not a 100% completion autist so I don't even care
https://retroachievements.org/user/sandwichtaker

Not one thing 100% completed. I don't care and just use it as a neat thing to have pop up and record my progress. You guys might have OCD or something to go for them all. Maybe I would understand that its your favorite game ever to go for all of them though.

>>715315798
This is the exact opposite end of the spectrum where it's clear you don't even play that many games.

>>715310969 (OP)
just disable the popups bro
I use it as a recommendation engine and enjoy the events too, I like doing 100% for the games I really like but never let it become unfun and forced because that's entirely up to me and I have self-control.

>>715310969 (OP)
I hate achievements it makes my OCD worse. I CAN'T play games anymore purely have fun . If I start a game I have to finish it to completion and unlock every achievement otherwise I feel like I did something wrong

>>715314278
Virtual autism points is the only thing we have going on our lives though

>>715316094
Some games I play are retranslated so they dont really have achievements because of that when otherwise the original version does have achievements.

>>715316301
>I use it as a recommendation engine
This is honestly what the site's great at, especially with the Hub system.
The best way to interact with RA is to look at the achievement lists before you play them and if you feel like it's gonna be a chore or bad just turn RA off and play like normal unless you're the kind of person who doesn't mind their entire account being littered with barely completed games or games with 0 achievements unlocked skewing your account information. I know on things like Duckstation, PCSX2, and I believe Dolphin you can turn it off, and Batocera/Knulli lets you toggle RA on and off which is a feature I really like because it lets me play whatever I want in short bursts without caring about the lists or it showing up, I just wish everything else did. I don't know why in EmuDeck for example it's forced on for every system even if you have a frontend. Why can't you toggle it?

>>715312709
>the pokemon stadium cheevo that is nearly impossible to complete on a modern screen

>>715316094
>>715316541

Like for example I played this version of chrono trigger:

https://retrogametalk.com/repository/snes-rom/chrono-trigger-retranslation-hack/

Which couldn't activate the achievements. Sucks but makes sense to only have the original versions available for achievements in case of cheating.

>>715316904
Also love these collages of video games if anyone has anymore of them pls post more

>>715311231

Yes

>>715310969 (OP)

I don't have that problem. I still have fun setting ingame challenges for myself or just chilling out and playing normally.

>>715314948

Most sets aren't overly hard, just stop sucking at video games

>>715310969 (OP)
you could simply not care anon

>>715311415
sometimes the developers are retarded

Achievements are not different than accepting a random anon's quota for some game you play. They don't matter at all. To get hooked by something like this you have to be stupid.

>>715316904
>Sucks but makes sense to only have the original versions available for achievements in case of cheating.
That's not why they do it. Retranslations, undubs, and other basic change hacks require the dev of the set to do a once-over of the entire game to make sure stuff unlocks properly on their end before they're allowed to hash it. Sometimes the addresses change on how achievements unlock and they manually have to fix it which is a lot of effort. Tons and tons of games have retranslation patches and undubs hashed while some games don't even change the hash when ubdubbed (Like on PS1 and PS2) so they don't even need to be hashed. You pretty much have to ask in the forums for them to link it, and it takes years in some cases to ever see a version hashed unless it's a really popular game.

Also, the prepatched roms from sites like CDR/RGT are not 1:1 the correct hashes a lot of the time which is why you're constantly told to patch stuff yourself. In Chrono Trigger's case that patch is hashed, the one on RGT just isn't correctly patched.

>>715310969 (OP)
>turn on RA
>play game like normal
>sometimes a little pop up happens telling me I did a good job
>somehow this ruins gaming for some "people"
You guys are dumb I think.

>>715314948
Force all the achievement devs to master their own game before the set is allowed public.
If they are forced to do the bullshit they are asking players to do they might easily reconsider, except the most autistic of autismos I'm sure.

>>715317493
Pretty sure they actually are forced to do it while devving because they don't have in-between saves to trigger everything they're devving. So what you're seeing are the actual autist-cleared achievements.

>>715310969 (OP)
Works on my machine.

>don't turn on RA
>play game like normal
>no retarded popups patting my head for being a good boy for playing a 30 year old game
Feels good desu

A lot of the achievements make otherwise enjoyable games really awful. Especially for what should be the most popular games there are a lot like this.
- complete twitch minigame perfectly in turn based rpg
- grind 15 hours for weapon drop that isn't even useful
- scan every enemy in the game even though there is nothing in the game actually keeping track of this or letting you see things you scanned
- collect every item even though they are disposable trash (FFX is particularly awful for this, involves talking to every npc in the game and obscure nonsense like not touching a ball)
- spend longer than the entire game grinding to max level after you are already done

They also have no problem deleting entire sets so you have to start over.

Harder games just aren't worth doing again for fake internet points. Do I really want to do Gran Turismo licences yet again? Fuck no.

>>715317669
Absolutely fucking not. For example when are testing no hit achievements devs are allowed to do that with a one shot the enemy cheat on or whatever. It's specifically to see if the trigger itself works.

>>715317864
I thought they're allowed to save state but otherwise required to play through the game. That's beyond stupid.

>>715311231
No. I'm the same way. I used to be a big cheevo/trophy hunter, not so much nowadays but even I have zero interest in fan made 3rd party achievements. If it's not official it doesn't count.

>>715310969 (OP)
What kind of fucking loser cares about this shit?

>>715318029
I think the same way. Maybe if RA was on Steam. Maybe.

>>715317948
Sometimes devs will out themselves on this if you send in tickets.
>Oh I didn't catch that because when I tested it I was doing X unexpected thing to save time
Especially do not trust every single achievement to have been tested either in terms of Pokemon collecting or fighting games with various characters, just change the id and assume it works until someone complains.

>>715311397
This.
I have never had a Ouija board in my house, and I NEVER WILL. There are just some things you should never mess with.

>>715310969 (OP)
>It shows in a very cynical manner that gaming is way too broad of a hobby, and that you're probably the weird one for bothering to actually master games you like instead of just using them as accessories to your personality.
Oh fuck off cunt.

>>715310969 (OP)
I've never given a single fuck about achievements. We didn't have them back in the day, there were no 'trophies' on ps2. Sony never should've copied M$ on that. It's a bad idea and a gay waste of time to make you do inane shit for no reason as a way to cheap out on providing actual content to gamers for their money. Only a corp as jewish and kikro$oft could come up with it.

>>715318615
I feel like paid online, achievements and DLC/MTX would've happened anyway but Microsoft one hundred percent accelerated it
if not for them then we would've probably only been semi-recently experiencing the initial paid DLC age

>>715310969 (OP)
I'd be more into it if I could any emulator I wanted, otherwise I don't really care.

>>715310969 (OP)
I like it. I dont feel like playing anything in particular, and achievements provide a nice incentive to play actual video games, instead of just play some ass live service/multiplayer/battle royale game.

Like I wouldnt play a SNES game for fun, but I would play one that looks interesting for achievements.

I like completing games but not mastering because that shit is always fucking gay

>>715317493
How do any of these so-called 'devs' have any legitimacy or authority to say anything?

>>715323690
They're the ones willing to learn how to code the achievements in the first place so unless you do it yourself or make a revision that is voted to be better that is sort of how it works. If a set is released in poor quality that's instantly addressed because so many people hate it and I believe someone higher up intervenes to clamp down on it.

>>715310969 (OP)
>grift
Isn't it free? I miss when words had meaning.

>>715310969 (OP)
I just don't use it because it periodically logs me out automatically on retroarch even if I have it set to keep me logged in. Modern "security" on the web is such a hindrance and makes technology such a chore to use. Nuke California.

>>715322695
I like beating games but I rarely complete them, even if I like them a lot I don't want the grind to ruin the game for me.

I'll complete a game if it's easy to though.

How the fuck could this even work? Can't you just cheat the fuck out of it with frame skips / save state/ rewind/ slow motion etc.

>>715326371
all that stuff is disabled but you can fast forward so it makes JRPG achievements easier.

>>715326371
>Can't you just cheat the fuck out of it with frame skips / save state/ rewind/ slow motion etc.
Nope. The only allowed feature is fast forward since it just removes padding/grinding/time wasting.
Achievements are split into softcore and hardcore. You decide if you want to enable hardcore or not via settings through the emulator. Softcore allows save stating, hardcore doesn't, the emulator straight up disables the features. Hardcore also refuses to let you rewind or slow down, I don't think Softcore allows slow down.

>>715326479
*in the only mode that matters which is hardcore
There's a softcore mode with that shit enabled.

>>715310969 (OP)
You say this but you'll still buy on Steam instead of GoG or Epic because you want your friends to see a checklist of games you own

Nothing wrong with wanting to do everything in a game. pic related just 100%ed crash 1

>>715310969 (OP)
>Once it gets its hooks into you, it becomes impossible to enjoy any game without having some form of external reward. Fun stops being the priority, and instead you begin to see everything as checklists.
Or don't. You know, because you decide not to. Are people actually this susceptible to shit?

>>715326793
>he has yet to realize most of the world revolves around protecting idiots from themselves and from being exploited by smarter people

>>715326793
This has been a thing even before trophies. In the PS2 era people would 100% games to unlock and see the extras menu, concept art, insomniac museum, etc or simply to see it fully finished on the memory card.
There is quite literally nothing wrong the site. It's just another way people tend to play games in the same fashion you have exclusively sportslop enjoyers, VN players or live service cattle

>>715310969 (OP)
>no, I NEED achievements
Bro, cmon

I have done self imposed challenges since 90s and I'll keep doing them until I die. achievements are for losers without faustian spirit.

>>715327007
Also outside of video games you see the same behavior in books, movies and TV series where people obsessively write down anywhere from short summaries and reviews to full blown novels and compile them into a list. See letterboxd.
This is human nature and there's nothing you can do about it

>>715310969 (OP)
Yeah, I don't get it either. Old games usually rewarded you with OP weapons or gear when you accomplished great feats of skill in challenges already so why would you need this kind of thing?

>>715327143
Because it adds another list of things to do on top of the existing 100% requirements which occasionally has you finding easter eggs or doing some neat things you didn't know were possible. It also helps keep track of going for 100% requirements via progression achievements or trackers.
Achievements aren't for everyone, clearly, but they serve a purpose and for people who like to 100% games it's a nice extra addition to the games when they're done within reason.

>>715310969 (OP)
get a job

>>715310969 (OP)
Fuck off nigger

>>715310969 (OP)
It's a symptom of achievement bullshit in general, not the cause. If you're so brainrotted you'd consider using this, then you've been way gone for a while.

>>715312709
The rpg/metroidvania achievments are extremely retarded and soul sucking
The ones from action games like Contra are ok, since those are based on just being good at the game.

>>715317493
I don't think you understand the autism required to create the achievements.

>>715310969 (OP)
I like to track when I played games the first time (usually there isn't a second). Achievements are good for that

No hit on Illusion of Gaia is surprisingly doable. Bosses and stages are seperate.

>>715318615
Star Ocean 3 had achievements. Completing a certain percentage unlocked harder modes, outfit swaps, sound test etc. Star Ocean 2 had a similar thing but it unlocked by hearing voice samples, so you had to use every character in different ways and get bosses to use their attacks.

>>715316904
A lot of rom hacks do have achivements which is nice. Seems translations have less support.