What games have you seen that had great achievement systems? Along with the game's name, please specify if it is single-player or MMO, and RPG, FPS, or other. Also, does it have an interactive story, no story, or other?

(I'm personally looking for a single player RPG to play, ideally a fantasy one that is colorful and somewhat humorous, but I'm interested in other examples too.)

I haven't played too many games with achievement systems myself. Tokyo Jungle is probably the best; that's a single player arcade/brawler survival game where you play as an animal in post-apocalyptic Tokyo.

I liked the achievements in The Binding of Icaac.(single-player top-down 2d rogue-like, see this randomly selected "let's play" video). The game has minimal story -- there's a narrated story introduction, very short randomised "cut scenes" between levels, and brief non-narrated "endings" as you progress through different victory conditions.

The game contains a whopping 84 achievements, the majority of which unlock additional in-game items (which there are also a huge number of) or additional characters (there are 6). In this game item pick-ups can completely change the game-play, and the additional characters have different stats and starting items, giving the game pretty fantastic replayability.

I'm a huge fan of secrets, but not much of a fan of achievements. That said, I liked how Minecraft used them. Minecraft, being an open-world game, let's you go wherever and do whatever, but for people who aren't as familiar with open-world games, needing direction and goals, Minecraft has a tree of achievements that give immediate goals that can focus players and give them something to work towards.

They start real simple:

Taking Inventory - Press '[defaults to E]' to open your inventory.

Getting Wood - Attack a tree until a block of wood pops out

...and then ramp up in difficulty leading players to the final boss and such.

The End - Defeat the Ender Dragon

The achievements branch off in multiple paths, once you accomplish the pre-requisites.

Paper Mario: Sticker Star has an example of achievements I'm not personally a fan of:

Sticker Star had eight banners in a centrally located area, and each banner had an achievement on it, along with your current status leading up to the achievement. This presentation is fine, but the achievements were all stuff like, "Spend 100,000 gold in the item stores.", "Defeat over a bajillion enemies.", "Get 1000 perfect victories."

These grind-like achievements don't appeal to me. They just feel like work instead of accomplishments. I know I can achieve them, I just don't want to spend ten hours doing repetitive mindless tasks to do so.

Now, I'm perfectly fine with there being records of those kinds of numbers ("You've killed 2,743 enemies, and have collected over 57,420 gold"). Just not when they try to make you grind to get your numbers higher to artificially stretch out gameplay. That's not gameplay for completists, that's gameplay for masochists.

Paper Mario: Sticker Star also had a cool example of an achievement that's not really recognized in-game as an Xbox-style "achievement":

In the game, there is a secret "sticker museum" (the game uses stickers in combat, it's kinda its gimmick). Stickers are found in various areas and collected in various ways as part of the normal playing process - but many of them are also hidden in areas. By collecting each sticker, and adding them to the museum, you can fill up the various halls of the museum with your collection and you can see the stickers framed on the walls like paintings in an art gallery.

When completed, a monster-gallery of monsters and their stats get unlocked - somewhat of a letdown to me, personally. But the accomplishment itself was cool - kinda like filling out your Pokedex in Pokemon, I'd imagine (never filled my Pokedex out ).

That said, many of the stickers were very well hidden - I don't like knowing there is a secret somewhere that I don't know the location of. I prefer stumbling upon or finding secret locations. So instead having to hunt down the location of the last few stickers by going over every map of the game looking for them (i.e. "grinding"/"working"), I instead just checked gamefaqs for their locations.

Paper Mario: Sticker Star also missed an opportunity to recognize some cool achievements of players:

Bosses in Sticker Star are ridiculously overpowered in terms of HP. This is because Sticker Star expects you to use certain holographic stickers that have special effects on bosses instead of using your regular attack stickers. The special stickers not only do immense damage in their own right (1/10th of their HP or more), if you use the correct one based on the theme of the boss, you take out 50% of their health right off the bat.

This takes the battles from a long-drawn (>20 minute) fight to survive and outlast the boss that depletes all of your finite resources, to a ridiculously easy finished-in-five-minutes battle.

The game expects you to take the easy route, and continually reminds you of it. But when I took the outlast-and-survive route, it was really exhilarating when the boss finally died and I had just-barely survived. It was a struggle for victory. But the game didn't recognize that achievement at all.

Because the game didn't recognize my achievements, and I had depleted all my resources, I reset and beat it the "easy" way so I wouldn't have to grind to recollect more resources.

I also don't like it when you encounter some puzzle in some side-room somewhere, or find some secret area, and you solve the puzzle or go through the secret area to reach someplace new, and you're all excited because of your accomplishment... and then you get a key-item and know that the game would've eventually led you here anyway, because visiting this area is required to beat the game. It takes your "achievement", makes you feel good about it, and then spits in your face and says, "Joke's on you chump, everyone who plays this game reaches this point - there's nothing special about it."

So the common threads for me personally are:

• Achievements are useful when they can be used to direct and guide players
• Achievements are enjoyable when they recognize a real accomplishment for a player.
• Achievements are NOT fun when they make you do repetitive tasks to reach some arbitrary number.
• Secrets are cool when you find them by observation or by dumb luck but didn't previously know they existed.
• Secrets are NOT cool when you already know they exist somewhere, but can't find them.
• Secrets are NOT cool when you're required to find them to progress forward in the game.

Here endeth the lesson.

Cookie Clicker has a good achievement system in that each achievement feeds directly back into the core mechanic of increasing the cookies you generate per second. They also unlock new upgrades which further increase your cookie production.

Alpha Protocol the tactical espionage rpg from a few years ago had interesting achievement system as well in that each achievement provided some in game bonus. Watching a full news broadcast on a tv playing in a breakroom gave you 5% discount on middle east intel. Getting on the good side of a gun smuggler and ensuring they get away alive gives you access to more weapons.

With secrets the old super mario world and wario world they did secrets best I think. In that on the map some levels are indicated with red dots instead of yellow. The game doesn't tell you what that means but eventually you discover that the red dots indicate that there is secret exit from the level. Some of the exits were really tricky to find. Such as one where you had jump under the main exit and keep running to another.

The achievement system is one of the most important aspect of a game. My favorite achievement system was from Star Wars Galaxies (Pre-Combat Upgrade). This MMO had a very neat way, in my personal opinion, to persuade users to explore the different planets and all of the little quirks that the game had to offer.

For example, a player would be able to gain levels in the skills that they were advancing and show off their title, such as “Master Architect”, “Novice Artisan”, “Intermediate Brawler”, “Swordsman”, “Smuggler”, etc. Each of these different titles implicitly showed the achievements that a player had also mastered all of the skills 'below' that skill, in a tier based system, to get to where they were currently. Another thing this system was designed to do, was besides the titles of a player, a player could also get badges by achieving certain goals within the game. For example, each time a player ‘mastered’ a skill, such as within the list aforementioned, he or she would gain a permanent badge that any user could see simply by 'Inspecting' you. There were also badges for mastering multiple skills, etc. Players also gained badges for completing certain goals such as visiting the Krayt Graveyard on Lok, Obi Wan Kenobi's House on Tattooine, and many other waypoints.

Unfortunately, the official version of Star Wars Galaxies is dead and gone. However, there is the SWGEmu Project. The SWGEmu Project is one dedicated to creating an emulation and restoring the original version of the game before they destroyed it with the Combat Upgrade, and then ultimately taking it down. It is getting very close to the original version, and I’d suggest giving it a try. Let me know what you think!

This tutorial covers creating a fairly basic achievement system, and having a texture scroll in whenever the player accomplishes a goal.

http://cgcookie.com/unity/2011/12/16...vement-system/

I like games where achievements have gameplay implications (making you stronger or more versatile in some way).

Sadly no examples off the top of my head as I write this, but I know some games have that.

For me the best kind of achievement is something that has actual value instead of just being a colourful badge or trophy.

Example 1: The Disney's Treasure Planet games, for the PSX and PS2. They are 3D platform action games, based on the film of the same name.
These games had awards in the form of rare, special items hidden throughought the levels. When you collected one, you would unlock an entry in the "Gallery" screen.
The Gallery screen is a place in the game where you can view character concept art and backgrounds used in the film. You can only see the entries that you unlocked by collecting the items corresponding to them.
This was one of the few times that I felt motivated to collect all those items, especially when I would consider this as a frivolous way of earning an award (collecting a certain type of item). The prize would compensate for the practice.

Example 2: Super Smash Bros. for the N64. 3D multiplayer fighting game.
When you played the game in a certain way (without dying; with a certain character etc.), you would unlock extra characters and levels.

So if one comes to this thread to decide which achievement system to use, instead of just giving the player a trophy or medal, think of something more substantial such as revealing making-of material (video clips, concept art) and bonus gameplay (extra characters, new levels) etc.