Sony should delete or forcibly change unobtainable trophies like Xbox

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I don't let broken or unobtainable plats stop me playing a game, however, it's a better experience when they work and are reasonably obtainable.

I don't think this is what happened. Xbox changed the achievements at the request of the developer. I doubt that they (or PlayStation) can just mess around with achievements/trophies without permission from the dev/publisher.

I believe (though I could be wrong) that it's up to the devs to fix the trophies or submit a request to the platform holder to change them. Most of them just couldn't be bothered to make the effort for the 0.01% of gamers who actually care about completions. Especially since gamers are an ungrateful bunch who will then just complain about something else.

Exactly my thoughts but you can clearly see they currently do not give a F about it. New management needed ASAP. There are some extreme dumbs dumbs sitting around over there.

To be fair, Xbox rarely does this. Once maybe twice, ever? I do wish Sony and Xbox would make this a habit.

They should add fines to companies that leave it. So, say it normally woyld take 'x' time to make a patch. Anything ovet that time is fined to the company until they fix it. Would force companies to care more, and if it goes over another milestone they have to refund gamers who bought it digitally partially.
Complicated but I like the idea anyway.
Or remove the game from sale until it's fixed.

SilentJay76_ said:Yeah, the XBox example is, likely, a one-off as most devs do not seem to care about achievements (or trophies, I guess) all that much.

A policy to do so would be grand...but I doubt either would do it on their own.

Richnj said:Not gonna lie...it does impact me. If I'm on the fence about a game, broken achievements/trophies are usually enough to dissuade.

Not just because of the achievements/trophies, but because it, to me, indicates some sloppiness on the developers part.

TheMikeSC said:Yeah, it definitely reflects on the Dev/pub.

And I'm inclined to pay less or a game that works less well than it should.

Agreeeeedd

I'd like a policy where Sony just removes the game from the store until it gets re-certified with a fix.

I couldn’t agree more! I won’t even think about playing a game if I know it has broken or unobtainable trophies. And that also includes games with ridiculous trophy requirements like Wolfenstein 2’s ‘Mein Leiben’. Bag that garbage!!

SilentJay76_ said:I am 99% sure you are 100% correct

Also, given Sony’s historical relationships with non first party dev’s, then it would be no surprise to see this happen less often on PS than on the xbox platform (I have seen it myself on two other xbox 360 games, where something like 990 or 980 GP was now regarded as being complete).
Unachievables on PlayStation affect trophy hunters harder, because there are no platinums on xbox.
Most gamers will not care, we trophy/achievement hunters and completionists are in a relatively tiny minority.

Yes yes yes or alternatively have them autopop. Some trophies that involve online servers that have since been shut down would probably be the easiest to detect and address. Looking at you Gran Turismo 5.

As a trophy (and former-achievement) completionist, if a perfect 1000G or Platinum is unobtainable, I will not play that game. As a result, I truly welcome deleting unobtainable achievements/trophies, especially when those are online ones with discontinued servers.

I have started games knowing they were unobtainable but man. If its server closure based, wish they either remove them completely or change the requirements to something single player based.

I think there is more nuance to this topic than most realize. I feel that removing (or auto-popping) trophies is viable ONLY for titles that have trophies that are, and always have been, unobtainable (ie: Dragon Fin Soup) for a long period of time (3+ years with no fixes or plans for fixes).

I don't like the idea of deleting trophies for games that have had server closures, as frustrating as that may sound for many. But what would actually happen if they did this? Would the players who already earned the deleted trophy have it deleted on them? An extreme extension of this: if unobtainable trophies were deleted, could entire games be deleted off ALL player's trophy lists when a fully online game's servers close?

If NOT deleted from players who earned that trophy, but STILL deleted from the game's baseline trophy list, you'd be in this weird space where a game's trophy list has a variable number of trophies based on the player's progress before the server closure. This solution is highly dependent on the system architecture, and I'd wager it carries a high degree of technical risk. The architecture adaptation would flow downstream to TT; imagine a game needing to show X max score pre server closure, and Y max score post server closure.

Auto-popping trophies affected by server closures would severely punish players that earned those trophies legitimately. You could bean dive into every live service game ever, earning one trophy, then return to each 3-10 years later to collect your free platinum. This would not be fair.

My heart is onboard with fines for buggy/unobtainable trophy lists, but my head knows this would lead to risk-averse devs shipping bland, uninspired, and easily-testable trophy lists that don't add to the game in the way that good trophy lists do. I'd hope there is a way to add more stringent trophy list verification into the certification process for releasing games.

Personally I can think of two games that would benefit from this fix, the 3rd skylanders game which has an unobtainable in a single player game because of a server shut off, and the still popular Call of duty Black Ops 2 because of its “Big Leauges” Trophy which stops people having a legit Platinum in one of the most popular games of its generation.

On a more personal note I wish there was a way of getting the multiplayer trophies in closed down games IE Assassins Creed Brotherhood for example

While we are living in dreamland, I would like to see a change to trophies in general and have a rule that they always have to be obtainable. I get they aren’t the be and all and end all in games but if you’re going to have a system, at least treat it with some care. Or alternatively bin the whole thing off.