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The unfairness of online trophies dependent on human opponents.


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The following is a lengthy read and it is not meant for everyone. My hope is that developers pay attention to sites like this when they consider their trophy systems and will consider the following.

 

Some people question the presence of online trophies for some platinums, especially when the single player component is the main part of the game: I do not and this argument is not about that. What I question are the type of online trophies completely dependent on human opponents.

 

Everyone knows that there are two basic types of trophies: Offline trophies and online trophies. In reality there are three types because there are two distinct types of online trophies:

 

1) Online trophies that depend on the quality of your human opponents.

 

e.g. Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood -- Abstergo Employee of the Month --

Get every single bonus at least once (Multiplayer Only).

 

2) Online trophies that do not depend on the quality of your human opponents.

 

e.g. Uncharted 2 -- Thrillseeker -- Complete one Competitive Multiplayer Game.

 

What I mean to say is that some online trophies are like offline trophies: trophies that require the same amount of effort or challenge every time everyone attempts the trophy: i.e. when you go for an offline trophy the challenge is determined by the programming and is always the same goal or AI for everyone. So spending a set number of matches playing a given mode, like the Thrillseeker trophy above, regardless of your success will be the same amount difficulty for everyone who attempts it. Most co-op trophies generally reflect the same amount of difficulty for everyone as well because rather than facing each other they are facing pre-programmed AI like you would offline.

 

On the other hand there are online trophies completely dependent on factors that cause the difficulty level to vary and it’s unlikely to ever be the same for any two people at different points in time. For instance if you get into an online game long after release, it is sure to be flooded with a strong high-level player base. Some games may end up with a lack of a player base and be forcing more players with distance lag to face one another. The point is that the difficulty level of the trophy’s challenge can vary significantly. In the Abstergo Employee of the Month trophy above you are required to get every possible bonus during competitive matches, which may seem easy enough until you note that you must also get an “extreme variety bonus” which is from getting a set number of unique bonuses within a single match. Some have found this easy and many have not, and it is not simply skill level that factors into it. I argued with some people that there was much luck in getting it because obtaining many of the bonuses were out of one’s control and depend on your opponents just happening to be in the right place at the right time: i.e. it depends on their play style. In online games it is often the case for many play styles to disappear and be replaced by ones that make getting certain trophies much more difficult.

 

The more a trophy depends on the results within a single competitive match the more the unfairness issue presents itself.

 

Not only can the difficulty vary between people for the same trophy, which is not fair in itself, but circumstances can arise that cause an added degree of unfairness for the people who are your opponents. Online competition between real people is tense enough. Low level players who are new to a game really do not want to face upper level players who have maxed out their prestige and mastered every nuance of the game. Now let’s look at what a trophy like the following means:

 

Red Dead Redemption -- The Quick and Everyone Else… -- Be the top scoring player in any three consecutive FFA games in public matches.

 

This trophy is insane, especially if you play against a full room of 15 other people. Let me translate what the developer wants you to do: “play against newbs so far below your skill level that you can easily walk all over them three times in a row.” It’s obvious that if you are playing against people close to your own skill level the odds of you winning three Free For All matches in a row are slim to none. Either they are letting you win (boosting) or they are so much weaker than you that they shouldn’t really be your opponents in the first place.

 

So personally I am against those online trophies that depend on the quality of your human opponents: it’s not fair that the difficulty will significantly vary between people who try to get a trophy and it is not fair to support the overpowered matches of upper level players against lower level players.

 

I understand the purpose of online trophies. Just as offline and co-op trophies, competitive match trophies are designed to get people to pay attention to all parts of a developer’s game. Now what developers need to realize is that they need to take the winning and losing aspect out of the human opponent parts of online play. They should focus on things that are less about who won or lost such as the following: play X number of full matches of such and such a mode, use such and such a weapon, booster or skill for X number of matches. If they want to show a difference in level between people they could say play 10 matches for bronze and 100 matches for a silver. When it comes to playing against real people in an environment that is constantly changing and unstable, such online trophies should be about equal effort put: it’s not about whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game...at least when it comes to player vs player competition.

 

Note the following before posting: this is not a discussion about offline vs online trophies due to availability of internet access or server shut downs; nor does it have anything to do with how online trophies may impede platinums. This is about how the difficulty of obtaining certain online trophies varies due to the dynamic variability of human opponents and the impact it can have on those human opponents.

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There was a blog post, which I cant seem to find...

 

Anyways, the developer there stated the primary reason they like to include a trophy/achievement here and there that not only requires multiplayer, but require the multiplayer team to be good, was in hopes that sites like this, that foster grouping and such, help that games community.

 

If I recall correctly, the developer stated that multiplayer trophies/achievements that simply required taking part in said online mode still boiled down to a single player experience.

 

The trophies/achievements that actually required some teamwork were more of a multiplayer nature than just taking part.

 

My own personal stance on the whole online trophies thing is that they suck and are the worst kind of trophy...but I do understand where the developer is coming from.

 

So personally I am against those online trophies that depend on the quality of your human opponents: it’s not fair that the difficulty will significantly vary between people who try to get a trophy and it is not fair to support the overpowered matches of upper level players against lower level players.

 

I agree with this 100%, as in many cases it will require "boosting"...which I'm sure the developers dont consider the same as helping a games community.

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I agree with you on the most part of this. There are several reasons why I personally hate multiplayer trophies as well.

 

1) I don't like to rely on other people and being forced to boost with other people for trophies, especially after the crap I went through with AC Brotherhood.

 

2) If you decide to get the game like 2-3 months after it came out depending on what the online trophies are you are a lot more unlikely to get all of them without boosting because you are bound to run into a lot of players who have spent hours upon hours into the game and probably live in their parents basement as far as I know. So therefore you will consistently get your ass kicked a lot by players that are much better and have a lot more experience than you. That is especially applied to fighting games.

 

3) If you decide to get a game that is 1-2 years old it will be next to impossible to get the platinum for the game because by then the severers will be either shut down or the online will be a ghost town. But luckily i'm not into sports games so I don't really worry that much about the server shutting down part.

 

If a game does have multiplayer trophies that's fine as long as it's reasonable and not ridiculous to the point where you have to resort to boosting threads for help, especially considering that I don't like to rely on others for trophies like I said earlier.

Edited by blake307
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Just wanted to start off with a kudo's, as this is a thought-out case instead of a rant. When I saw the title, I thought rant right away (and I say that as someone who doesn't like online).

 

1) Online trophies that depend on the quality of your human opponents.

 

e.g. Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood -- Abstergo Employee of the Month --

Get every single bonus at least once (Multiplayer Only).

 

2) Online trophies that do not depend on the quality of your human opponents.

 

e.g. Uncharted 2 -- Thrillseeker -- Complete one Competitive Multiplayer Game.

 

What I mean to say is that some online trophies are like offline trophies: trophies that require the same amount of effort or challenge every time everyone attempts the trophy: i.e. when you go for an offline trophy the challenge is determined by the programming and is always the same goal or AI for everyone. So spending a set number of matches playing a given mode, like the Thrillseeker trophy above, regardless of your success will be the same amount difficulty for everyone who attempts it. Most co-op trophies generally reflect the same amount of difficulty for everyone as well because rather than facing each other they are facing pre-programmed AI like you would offline.

 

Out of curiousity - where would online cooperative trophies go? (examples: LBP2's 3x, 4x prize bubbles and where you need four sackboys in a chain; Burnout Paradise challenges, Wildcat stadium; Wipeout's Bling Brigade)

 

Where would grind trophies that are speeded up by skill, but don't require huge amounts of skill go? (examples: 10000kills, Dirt 2's level 30 (everyone gets some exp, but better players get more and level up faster)

 

...SNIP.....

The more a trophy depends on the results within a single competitive match the more the unfairness issue presents itself.

 

Not only can the difficulty vary between people for the same trophy, which is not fair in itself, but circumstances can arise that cause an added degree of unfairness for the people who are your opponents. Online competition between real people is tense enough. Low level players who are new to a game really do not want to face upper level players who have maxed out their prestige and mastered every nuance of the game. Now let’s look at what a trophy like the following means:

 

....SNIP.....

 

So personally I am against those online trophies that depend on the quality of your human opponents: it’s not fair that the difficulty will significantly vary between people who try to get a trophy and it is not fair to support the overpowered matches of upper level players against lower level players.

 

I understand the purpose of online trophies. Just as offline and co-op trophies, competitive match trophies are designed to get people to pay attention to all parts of a developer’s game. Now what developers need to realize is that they need to take the winning and losing aspect out of the human opponent parts of online play. They should focus on things that are less about who won or lost such as the following: play X number of full matches of such and such a mode, use such and such a weapon, booster or skill for X number of matches. If they want to show a difference in level between people they could say play 10 matches for bronze and 100 matches for a silver. When it comes to playing against real people in an environment that is constantly changing and unstable, such online trophies should be about equal effort put: it’s not about whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game...at least when it comes to player vs player competition.

 

Ultimately I think a good trophy set is reflective of the game. If online competition is designed to be part of the game, an online competition trophy makes sense. I don't enjoy it (even in the rare cases where I'm good at a game's online competition :p), but it makes sense. I'm not familiar with your examples, but they may just be isolated examples of bad trophy execution instead of a incorrect mindset. Your other suggestions are also a good way to get players to explore a game, but I don't see them as an alternative. More like complimentary - ie a good trophy set could have both online competition and use/play everything-type trophies.

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This is exactly one of the reasons why I don't like online trophies very much, despite being one of the players who is more likely to kick your ass than not. The problem is that some developers really don't think through skill based trophies - Bad Company 1 is a great example. Out of the 120 awards, a handful are almost impossible due to the speed at which a round is over. 52 kills in a round is all but impossible unless you fix a Gold Rush round or boost. Other awards rely on the competence of other players in a different way. For example, Strike (5 kills in 2 seconds) is doable if you hide behind the main enemy base and plant C4 on their helicopter and a few other vehicles, but your teammates will almost definitely spawn on you before you have enough enemies in place, and try to take over the base (or take the vehicles..)

 

I could easily come up with many more examples of why skill based trophies online are so flaw, and many more reasons against them (lag, cheats, hackers, ect), but at the end of the day I think skill based trophies should be left to the offline portion of the game.

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The ones I hate the most are ones like LBP and ModNation Racers where you need to create something and get enough people to play it, like it, download it, or whatever. In theory, the premise would be that you create something awesome and get rewarded for it with people's attention and the trophy. It is indeed a nice theory.

 

In practice though, it just causes spam. People pump out something quick and crappy and beg all over the internet for people to do whatever needs to be done with it. And the people who do spend lots of time making something great? Their creation gets lost in a sea of spammed crap and they get no attention either, meaning they also have to resort to begging people to check out their creations or signing up for H4H/D4D/P4P threads to get their stuff looked at just enough for the trophy. It's not really fair to people who want to create and want to play good creations. And let's face it: whenever you hear Media Molecule brag about how many millions of levels there are in LBP and LBP2, what's the first thought that pops into your mind? Mine is "Yeah, but how many of those are copied levels where each single level has been uploaded hundreds, if not thousands, of times by people hoping to get a trophy? How many are blank levels with the entrance glued to the scoreboard? How many are actually quality levels worth playing?"

 

Again, I get the intent of having trophies like that. And it's a really nice intent. It just doesn't work and probably never will work as long as people pump out bad levels and good levels get drowned in the bad ones. I say to Media Molecule, United Front Games, and any other developers making a similar style game out there: leave those trophies out of your games. All it does it hurt your user generated content section. You'll get less overall creations made, but a much higher percentage of creations will be higher quality if people have no reason to pump out lazy crap so they can get a trophy. And for those who do create well, let the plays, likes, favorites, downloads, and whatever else be their own reward.

 

One final note: Online luck based trophies SUCK! I hate luck trophies in general, but at least with single player, you can keep trying to your heart's content. With online ones? Good luck. "In A Van Down By The River" from Red Dead Redemption is a perfect example of this kind of shitty trophy. Don't make trophies that rely on both getting lucky and finding people to play with long enough to get lucky.

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I'm going to use Assassin's Creed: Revelations as an example.

 

There are a number of multiplayer trophies to obtain in competitive modes in this game. The problem is that the rooms are filled with prestige level 50 players or players at level 20 or less. That is it.

 

You are trying to get these trophies playing against experienced players who play this game all the time and constantly spam smoke bomb which cannot be avoided. This incapacitates you and means you will die. They do this and nothing else. Then they ridicule you for having a mediocre Kill : Death ratio:mad:

 

I could have an awesome Kill : Death ratio too if I spammed smoke bomb over and over again too. But that isn't fun so I don't do it.

 

Resistance 2 is another. You have to try to get 10,000 kills against players who equip a wraith and kangaroo hop ALL THE TIME.

 

So in all it stems down to people always taking the path of least resistance in playing multiplayer. Which Makes these trophies a real pain to get.

 

I am in full agreement that online trophies are much better when they don't depend on other players.

 

Leave that stuff to COD where people can camp and hack/glitch to their hearts content.

Edited by Furious Gargoyle
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I feel you. One of my all-time trophy rage moments came from Killzone 2's Valor Grand Cross trophy. In order to get it, you had to be in the top 1% of players for an entire week's worth of online gaming. Comparing my position to the total players, I spent the entire week pouring countless regrettable hours into trying to snag this gold trophy for my own. However, after all of that work, a family incident kept me away from my PS3 for over a week. That way, when I logged into Killzone 2 again, a week had already passed and it had not given me my Valor Grand Cross for the previous week.

 

Hours and hours for nothing.

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Another thing that grinds my gears is when you're grinding for a specific trophy; in this case it is a level 50 type trophy and there is no match-making. I'm playing against a level 50 which has acquired skills I don't have from levelling up and I'm level 1 so it's an unbalanced and unfair match. If people want to play a unbalanced match then fine, so be it but atleast give me the option to match-make with people of similar levels.

 

That brings me to the sequenced combo-type trophies: Why do I have to get 300-odd online kills in a row? You have to be busting my balls to not think I'm going to mess-up even once. I'd thought 300 accumulative kills would be enough, yes, that's all I have to say here.

 

Side note: If developers are shutting down their servers atleast notify people 1 or 2 months in advance. It should give people enough time to clean-up the online trophies and people who are on the edge about buying the game will have probably made up their decision not to.

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The ones I hate the most are ones like LBP and ModNation Racers where you need to create something and get enough people to play it, like it, download it, or whatever. In theory, the premise would be that you create something awesome and get rewarded for it with people's attention and the trophy. It is indeed a nice theory.

 

In practice though, it just causes spam.

 

I don't even need to read the rest of this. It's 100% correct.

 

I had a vision that RPG Maker would be an awesome addition to this generation of gaming. The ability to craft RPGs and put them online for others to play seemed like a no-brainer, providing hours of entertainment in a setting that has been pretty neglected (i.e. traditional, turn-based RPGs).

 

Then, I remembered all of the spam in LBP, and having to fight through that crap would really ruin everything. Can you imagine if you played five hours of an RPG, only to find out that the creator didn't finish it? Ugh.

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Psikorps:

You bring up a good point about Free For All vs team based modes. I can’t say that I have seen many team orientated trophies in the games I’ve played even though there was plenty of opportunity for such team based awards. On the whole I actually like team based trophies. In Red Dead Redemption the one that counters the FFA one I mentioned was the team-based one where the team must win 4 games in a row. I found this immensely easier. Teamwork allows for the players to have much more control over a match than is the case with everyone for themselves.

 

Eric-B14:

LOL same here. When I finally got AEOM all I could say to myself was it was not my skill that earned it but luck, because it was not something I could reproduce if I tried.

 

Stork77:

Most co-operative trophies I am familiar with involve facing a challenge and AI that is always the same for any group that tries it. I don’t know about LBP but it would depend on if there were human, none AI opponents to face. I’m not familiar with these racing games either: I’m a GT5 guy and there are no online trophies.

 

As for grinding trophies: those online games where it takes every match you play cumulatively into account are different: everyone has to face the same whole of the internet. From most games I’ve played everyone generally progresses no matter their skill level; some will progress quicker or slower but that is more of a measure of their overall skill, similar to offline trophies where some people will defeat the hardest difficulty more readily than others. If you need 2000 kills for a trophy, some will get it quicker but everyone has to get the same number of kills. Essentially it does have the human opponent factor, but to a lesser much more diluted extent.

 

Mjc0961:

Very very insightful example!!! Thanks for noting it. I have not played LBP but I understand exactly what you are saying. Less quantity and more quality user-generated levels. Clearly the trophy here has caused unfair harm to the real artistic talent. Here the satisfaction of creating something should have been its one and only reward. Sometimes I wonder if developers ever consider the downsides of certain trophies in less than desirable circumstances. …And yes the poker trophies of RDR seriously bring a lot of luck into getting a trophy (I didn’t have much trouble here, but that’s because I play a lot of poker outside of the game).

 

Angry Gargoyle:

Alas…one of my favorite franchises has gone downhill and the predominance of smoke bomb just ruins the experience. Here is a place I would like to have seen a trophy like “Cure lung cancer: play 200 multiplayer matches without smoke bombs.” Some shooters could seriously use: “Lead feet: play 1000 matches without jumping around like a jack-ass that has just been branded.”

 

Mjfan97:

I hear you. I started playing RDR online a little while ago and found constant 5th or 6th prestige level players. In the menu I saw special rooms designed for level 50+ players with expert aiming and limited radar and wanted to play that mode because I don’t do the auto-lock on thing. I grinded all the way up to level 50 and then found out no one plays in the high-level rooms. So they made a high-level room to keep out low-levels but couldn’t be bothered to have low-level rooms to keep out high levels? Sometimes I think none of the developers have ever actually played many online games themselves. …Konami has given its MGO players 6 months notice just as they said they would in their terms of service. It has no online trophies, but it just goes to show you that some developers do have some common courtesy.

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The following is a lengthy read and it is not meant for everyone. My hope is that developers pay attention to sites like this when they consider their trophy systems and will consider the following.

 

Some people question the presence of online trophies for some platinums, especially when the single player component is the main part of the game: I do not and this argument is not about that. What I question are the type of online trophies completely dependent on human opponents.

 

Everyone knows that there are two basic types of trophies: Offline trophies and online trophies. In reality there are three types because there are two distinct types of online trophies:

 

1) Online trophies that depend on the quality of your human opponents.

 

e.g. Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood -- Abstergo Employee of the Month --

Get every single bonus at least once (Multiplayer Only).

 

2) Online trophies that do not depend on the quality of your human opponents.

 

e.g. Uncharted 2 -- Thrillseeker -- Complete one Competitive Multiplayer Game.

 

What I mean to say is that some online trophies are like offline trophies: trophies that require the same amount of effort or challenge every time everyone attempts the trophy: i.e. when you go for an offline trophy the challenge is determined by the programming and is always the same goal or AI for everyone. So spending a set number of matches playing a given mode, like the Thrillseeker trophy above, regardless of your success will be the same amount difficulty for everyone who attempts it. Most co-op trophies generally reflect the same amount of difficulty for everyone as well because rather than facing each other they are facing pre-programmed AI like you would offline.

 

On the other hand there are online trophies completely dependent on factors that cause the difficulty level to vary and it’s unlikely to ever be the same for any two people at different points in time. For instance if you get into an online game long after release, it is sure to be flooded with a strong high-level player base. Some games may end up with a lack of a player base and be forcing more players with distance lag to face one another. The point is that the difficulty level of the trophy’s challenge can vary significantly. In the Abstergo Employee of the Month trophy above you are required to get every possible bonus during competitive matches, which may seem easy enough until you note that you must also get an “extreme variety bonus” which is from getting a set number of unique bonuses within a single match. Some have found this easy and many have not, and it is not simply skill level that factors into it. I argued with some people that there was much luck in getting it because obtaining many of the bonuses were out of one’s control and depend on your opponents just happening to be in the right place at the right time: i.e. it depends on their play style. In online games it is often the case for many play styles to disappear and be replaced by ones that make getting certain trophies much more difficult.

 

The more a trophy depends on the results within a single competitive match the more the unfairness issue presents itself.

 

Not only can the difficulty vary between people for the same trophy, which is not fair in itself, but circumstances can arise that cause an added degree of unfairness for the people who are your opponents. Online competition between real people is tense enough. Low level players who are new to a game really do not want to face upper level players who have maxed out their prestige and mastered every nuance of the game. Now let’s look at what a trophy like the following means:

 

Red Dead Redemption -- The Quick and Everyone Else… -- Be the top scoring player in any three consecutive FFA games in public matches.

 

This trophy is insane, especially if you play against a full room of 15 other people. Let me translate what the developer wants you to do: “play against newbs so far below your skill level that you can easily walk all over them three times in a row.” It’s obvious that if you are playing against people close to your own skill level the odds of you winning three Free For All matches in a row are slim to none. Either they are letting you win (boosting) or they are so much weaker than you that they shouldn’t really be your opponents in the first place.

 

So personally I am against those online trophies that depend on the quality of your human opponents: it’s not fair that the difficulty will significantly vary between people who try to get a trophy and it is not fair to support the overpowered matches of upper level players against lower level players.

 

I understand the purpose of online trophies. Just as offline and co-op trophies, competitive match trophies are designed to get people to pay attention to all parts of a developer’s game. Now what developers need to realize is that they need to take the winning and losing aspect out of the human opponent parts of online play. They should focus on things that are less about who won or lost such as the following: play X number of full matches of such and such a mode, use such and such a weapon, booster or skill for X number of matches. If they want to show a difference in level between people they could say play 10 matches for bronze and 100 matches for a silver. When it comes to playing against real people in an environment that is constantly changing and unstable, such online trophies should be about equal effort put: it’s not about whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game...at least when it comes to player vs player competition.

 

Note the following before posting: this is not a discussion about offline vs online trophies due to availability of internet access or server shut downs; nor does it have anything to do with how online trophies may impede platinums. This is about how the difficulty of obtaining certain online trophies varies due to the dynamic variability of human opponents and the impact it can have on those human opponents.

 

Yea i agree with you. Games like (Zumba) are difficult to platinum, since no one plays it. Its unfair if the trophy is dependent on the humans, instead of the game component.

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…Konami has given its MGO players 6 months notice just as they said they would in their terms of service. It has no online trophies, but it just goes to show you that some developers do have some common courtesy.

 

Oh lord, don't go reminding people that Metal Gear Solid 4 has no trophies. :p

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Online trophies is general im fine with if they dont take ridiculous amounts of time. The ones I hate the most like said before are the ones that require you to create. LBP isnt so bad but Modnation Racers is like 10 times worse. Theres almost no point doing download for downlaod because it makes hardly any difference, you have to self boost it.

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Online trophies can stay right where they are. If you can't get them youself or without boosting you don't deserve the platinium.

 

And speaking of trophies who are easier for some people than it's for others. Isn't that the same fact in single player? Some people get the "beat the game on titan"-trophy in God Of War 3 a lot easier than others. Which is set by the players skills.

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Online trophies can stay right where they are. If you can't get them youself or without boosting you don't deserve the platinium.

 

And speaking of trophies who are easier for some people than it's for others. Isn't that the same fact in single player? Some people get the "beat the game on titan"-trophy in God Of War 3 a lot easier than others. Which is set by the players skills.

 

Point of this thread just flew right over your head, didn't it?

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Online trophies can stay right where they are. If you can't get them youself or without boosting you don't deserve the platinium.

 

And speaking of trophies who are easier for some people than it's for others. Isn't that the same fact in single player? Some people get the "beat the game on titan"-trophy in God Of War 3 a lot easier than others. Which is set by the players skills.

 

I'll try to put my argument in a different way:

 

Offline trophy: e.g. Beat game mode on hardest difficulty.

 

Player A beats it in 7 hours.

Player B beats it in 30 hours.

 

The difference in why it was easier for player A is because player A is more skilled than player B, because the difficulty in beating the game is constant, i.e. always the same, for each player (the AI is not going to play smarter/dumber against certain people).

 

Online trophy: e.g. Perform 10 different types of kills during a single 5 minute multiplayer match.

 

Player A tries for 150 hours and still does not have it.

Player B completes the challenge in 5 hours.

If Player A and Player B faced each other, player A would win 95% of the time...and Player B would likely abort before the match is over :whistle:.

 

The difference in why Player B got the challenge complete and Player A did not is not because he is more skilled than Player A; It is because the difficulty level of the human opponents was different in the matches. Player B got lucky one night and played against a three newbs during a slow hour, where one of them had even fallen alseep, while Player A who has a job can only play during hours where he is constantly matched against 15 high-level players at his own skill level. The difficulty of the challenge was different for the players. If Player B had only faced the same matches that Player A did, he too would never have obtained the trophy either. He simply got lucky when he obtained just the right human opponents to make the challenge easier for him to accomplish. An online trophy is not necessarily a measure of one's own skill, but a measure of how easy one's human opponents were.

 

So while offline trophies can be "easier" for some than others: offline trophies are only based on the players' skills, which is the way it should be. Online trophies, unlike offline trophies, can be determined by the opponents' skills rather than the actual player's skill, which is unfair to those with actual skill.

Edited by Hastatus
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I totally agree with you. I recently got the platinum for DBZ: Ultimate Tenkaichi, and there was this trophy called Title King (get 30 or more titles online) that was a pain in the rear end. Most people playing online are either uber-skilled using their custom chars with 70k+ energy or they use cheap methods to win. Bottomline, you get frustrated after 30mins or so.

 

Also, the FFA Red Dead Redemption trophies were quite difficult. Most of the players there are really skilled, above average, and it's almost impossible to win 3 rounds in a row.

 

So online trophies that depend on other players are unfair most of the time.

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@Hastatus: you know, a trophy really loses its value if it's easy obtainable. I really don't see any point in getting a trophy which everyone can get. While skill is indeed necessary in obtaining hard trophy, I find that it's still not enough of an obstacle for trophy hunter. Then there is time consuming factor, but it's still not enough. Take me for example, it took me a year of playing on and off, but I finally got my Star Ocean plat. Hence I became a believer in randomness. But still, randomness in offline mode is still easy. That's why I support online trophy that is long, hard, and random. It's really satisfy if I can achieve such a trophy. In short, my opinion is that if you don't have skill and luck (and maybe time) you don't deserve the trophy.

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@Hastatus: you know, a trophy really loses its value if it's easy obtainable. I really don't see any point in getting a trophy which everyone can get. While skill is indeed necessary in obtaining hard trophy, I find that it's still not enough of an obstacle for trophy hunter. Then there is time consuming factor, but it's still not enough. Take me for example, it took me a year of playing on and off, but I finally got my Star Ocean plat. Hence I became a believer in randomness. But still, randomness in offline mode is still easy. That's why I support online trophy that is long, hard, and random. It's really satisfy if I can achieve such a trophy. In short, my opinion is that if you don't have skill and luck (and maybe time) you don't deserve the trophy.

 

Trophies should NEVER come down to luck. Base them on skill, base them on time investment, base them on both, but NEVER luck. Luck is bullshit. You could get it first try, or you could spend the rest of your life trying and never get it.

 

Plus, luck based trophies have absolutely no value at all. A luck based trophy is nothing to be proud of because you didn't earn it. You can't earn something luck based. You just get a free trophy from the game because it feels like being nice that day. "Press start to play" trophies are worth more than luck trophies.

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