No gamerscore, no achievements on PS3

I like Achievements, even though my gamerscore is still very low. For you people who say it just reveals who has no life, remember that there ARE professional gamers, and their lives are no more useless than professional athletes. They just get paid less. You'd think that at least the gaming community could overcome the stigma attached to being good at games.

Score another one for MS. God, Sony is dumb... Hell, the only thing Sony has going for them right now is that Blu-Ray cases look much, much cooler than the god-awful colored and oddly rounded HD-DVD cases. Not to mention that the Blu-Ray movie selection is better. In the realm of gaming, though, Sony just blows.

Great. Those scores are for high school kids who can actually afford to waste 8+ hr a day of their meaningless lives racking up points while robbing themselves to play new games. Well, actually what do I care? Rot on you wasteoids!

For some reason when I got Call of Duty 2 I saw the achievement set-up and I wanted to beat it on Veteran to get it ALL. I'm not crazy about weird achievements, like "Dying 5 times straight by my own grenade" or this supposed achievement in a later game for keeping a body in the air with a bazooka. But the idea of beating the game on the highest level and the whole world can see it, yeah I like that. The half a dozen people I know in the REAL world who have LIVE give me A LOT of credit for TWO of my achievemnets, 1000 points for COD2 and 200 points for Geo Wars...

Gamerscores and Gamercards aren't selling points, but they are instead advertisements for themselves. In just a few pictures an numbers in someone's forum signature, you can quickly determine what they are playing, what kind of player are they and how much they've played overall. I can also quickly see how similar any random person is to my own gaming preferences. They are part of what makes the Live community an actual community that crosses games and genres.

I personally don't like gamerscore. It's a crass method of making money off of gamers competitive instincts. I can take or leave achievements.

But regardless of my feelings on this, I think Sony had better get on replicating achievements and gamescore quickly. Even if I don't measure my dick against others using this stuff, I think Sony would be leaving money on the table if they don't give PS3 gamers the same opportunity to spend themselves stupid trying to be the king of the mountain.

Who cares what System X has over System Y, or who "wins" the media generated "console wars". Buy and play whatever makes you happy.

As for the achievement/entitlement thing, I never cared about it until I started earning Gamerscore points. It does give you extra incentive to play through games, and it does point out who the casual/hardcore gamers are online. Not really that big of a deal to me since I will never have an uber score, and could easily game without it.

Achievements are awesome. I don't even do them to try to best anyone else. They just make really good "sidegoals" to try to accomplish and extend the life of games.

In games like Saints Row I was driven to find every hidden item, and complete every facet of the game. Just because achievements presented a challenge to do so.

I have the lowest gamerscore of my friends, but I don't care. They are still really fun. It's also extremely cool to see where your friends are, or what they have beaten in the games you play.

XBLA is frickin awesome. Sony will never come close to that kind of next-gen online system. The voice chat is simply killer. I love talking to my friends on it while we play different games or the same games. Truly excellent online gaming. Looks like Sony just can't pull it off.

Tretton did suggest plans to incorporate a "pan-console" scoring system into first-party titles, but admitted that Sony had not decided on a name for this feature and that developers of first-party launch titles would likely pass on it."

Yeah no hurry guys. The PS3 launches in 2013 so feel free to take a hands off approach for a unified system that works no matter whose game you're playing.

This TOTALLY sucks. I love to compare my gamerscore with my friends (who doesn't love some friendly competition...and with gamerscore/achievements you can see exactly what your friend has!) and achievements are the best thing to happen to games for one reason alone - they are there to motivate you to play the game. If it wasn't for achievements, I wouldn't have played though games such as King Kong or most of the sports games - widening my exposure to various other genres.

This just goes to show you that Sony didn't have the time or the resources to implement "entitlements" into their system and without being a requirement out of the gate, it will be difficult to implement down the road.

Good, I don't like being spied upon, having my gaming habits tracked and displayed for anybody to see.

truth:
Sony has chat. Cross-game chat. When you're not in a game, it's video chat. Not sure why think Sony can't hack that.

You got all the goals in Saints Row? Did you try playing the last remaining mission again after doing so? Did you find the game locking up when you do so rewarding? I sure didn't.

Aaron:
Live went for 3 years without achievements and then added them. Why do you think Sony can't add them later?

Developers see the benefit of achievments. I know many people who originally cared less about gamer points, but once you start playing games and see the acheivements are attainable, it gets addictive, you keep playing games you aren't interested in just to get the acheivements.

But overall, not a requirement. But I think you will see games available on both consoles sell better on 360 for that feature alone. If I have a choice of buying it for my PS3 or 360, they look about the same, but on one I get my acheivements to add to my gamerscore, give me the 360 version.

Online gaming is currently a huge element of the game industry. I doubt its somthing that'll fade away.

Its always been rocky to start becuase consoles were left out of the loop becuase their was no clear model on how to get people connected.

Now there difinatly is, and its XBOX live.

Sony may not 'need' to make a strong and unified online offereing. but theyre definatly overlooking the benefits of having one.

Any half decent game that goes multi-platform and features a strong or primary multiplayer mode is going to be picked up for the other consoles becuase of the better support, and ease of use it'll have there.

most people know that Gamerscore doesnt mean anything realisticly. but that doesnt make it any less fun.
Achievements on the other hand are somthing else. It's more or less a build on some of the things previous last gen titles offerd in-game. only now its not exclusive to the game.
its not so much as somthing you have to do because youre a "score whore," but more of somthing like the old days of gaming, where at recess you and your friends tell each other what level you reached and how etc, etc.
Achievments are a documented account of that. Lets face it, some of us still do that. Only now its the water cooler instead of the playground.

Sonys neglect probably wont do any direct harm.
people who want to buy the system will buy it no matter what. but when it comes to multiplayer enabled software, people are going to have to make a choice on the features they want.
and guranteed matchmaking, voice chat, and the rest of the standard Live features look damn good when compared "game by game basis" options.

have we even seen the sony headset and where it plugs in yet? is there one?

There's a lot of FUD here from people who obviously DON'T own a 360 and are just grasping at straws, assuming it must be a sad life to be "bothered" with Achievements/gamerscore.

Firstly, as was posted above - if you had a 360 you would realise how great Achievements are. Not for the "score" reasons (I really do not care about the gamerscore or even how I rank amongst friends really). No, the reason Achievements are great are for the first time a game can really be played thoroughly and you receive a tangiable reward for sticking with it. It's a great incentive actually for the "non uber nerds" who do have lots of other things to do in life and who may normally just scratch the surface of a game due to being too busy elsewhere. It's "addictive" in some ways to unlock an achievement, but it comes down to your outlook. Sure they are superficial and non essential but really, don't knock em till you try em because I've found they add a shit load to the fun and incentive of gaming, over and above the initial pull of the game.

Seriously, it's a win-win situation because if you REALLY don't like them you can just ignore them and play the game anyway.

As for "gamerscore" - pretty pointless in a competitive context because who wants to brag about having more points just because they bought more games and spent more time playing games?

Seperate Gamerscore from the Unlockable acheivements and then we have a fair discussion.

Wow, Sony really prepared an army of shills for this announcement. I've never seen such an overpowering pro Sony response to such obviously negative news. At least their spending their money well.

Burns,

You can set a preference to display only your gamerscore and not any of your played games or achievements, I believe.

Achievements are not just for showing off. I can see what games my friends are playing and vice verca. It is a very nice feature to have. You are not going to have cross game voice chat on PS3. I have to admit, I do not mind paying $50 for Live versus the cripled free version PS3 is offering. Love my 360 and you PS3 fanboys are going to make me $$ on ebay come Nov 17th.

Personally I think the gamerscore is a great idea, it has made me more likely to complete games through to the end and therefore I have had much more value from games than I once did.

As me old mum used to say
"Dont knock it until you have tried it"

All those people who are saying they don't care about gamerscore/achievements/XBLA are missing the point here...

Firstly Sony PROMISED an equivalent, in 'Entitlements', and boasted that they would best the XBLA. Now they are leaving it up to developers, with their 'we don't care' attitude, which is a major disappointment.

What it essentially means, is that Sony are failing on a unified online system which is disastrous IMO. You'll get a lot of lamers, and cheaters which will just make the PS3 online experience undesirable, compromised and unorganised.

As some people have mentioned, Sony's blasaise attitude is concerning in light of its imminent release. It just feels like they don't care so much for what will soon be their community of gamers and followers, they are narrowing their incentives really for their own fans :-/

It would also add to the suspicions that Sony are using the PS3 just to front it's BLU-Ray technology in the format war, and its Cell CPU, which has already been said to be suited more to a server/business based environment for mass data number crunching, more than it is for gaming.

I agree with the other people who actually have 360s and have seen the fun to be had with achievements. After getting my gamer score to a modest number just by my normal gaming, I must say that the games I play on the PS2 these days feel like they're missing something when I hit a milestone in a game. Like some people here have said, for a lot of us, it's not about trying to get a high score for bragging rights - it's just fun to see what your friends have accomplished in the same games you've played.

499 US DOLLA*

*Featuring crappy PS2 quality online service.

So let me get this straight:
Online is the same as PS2 - total anarchy and not even in game messaging
No gamerscore and no achievements
No rumble on the controller
No HDMI cable in the box in fact no Hi Def component cables either
Bluray games will have incredibly slow load times like PSP
Incredibly scarce console at launch and will not launch in europe or Australia
The big overhyped game Resistance is only 720p with bland textures
The system will sell for $599
Very little exlcusive games for the system
Developers complaining about difficulty to program the system
Overheating PS3s in KIOSKS
Disposeable controllers where batteries are permanetly sealed in the joystick

I must be missing something... This is just silly. So what exactly does the PS3 have that the 360 doesnt? Seems like you pay more and get less. Nice..

Wait a minute here, Sony had a simple online feature last gen, apart from the initial lagging issues, it was fine, we had no Gamerscores, and we were absolutly fine, Sony isn't going to fail because of online or loose sales for that matter, a large majority of ppl don't have online anyway or don't want it, so what does it matter, I'm guessing that 1/3 of ppl who purchased the 360 dont have or dont want online, thats a lot of ppl.

Achievements and gamerscores may be cool for you ppl, but do not in anyway make it sound as if it is the selling point for a console, because if that were the case, PS2 would never have outsold Xbox last gen 5:1.

The online did what it needed to do, and that was all, it let people play online, we were fine with it, and if anything, it had more ppl playing on it over the competition despite how crappy people said it was.

Some of you are making it seem as though you can't live without achievements or gamerscores, god, I like the achievements, like I said before, I find gamerscores stupid, and quite frankly, even after seeing it in action, I wouldn't notice if either of them were not there as long as I can play with mates, but it would be nice to at least have achievements. This wasn't a bad move at all, did you really want Sony to copy the Xbox Live exactly? When it does, you complain, when it doensnt you still complain. I mean, what the...?

Steve2, you took the words right out of my mouth. I don't like gamerscore, et al., but Sony's probably missing out on a great opportunity to cash in.

Still, there's a problem here. I see the whole system as a lot like gambling. You have to invest a lot in order to get some reward to feel good about. But instead of money, you're investing time, and that's something very few people are going to take as lightly. It'll be a lot more frustrating and might turn people off of it entirely.

The competative factor will keep a lot of people interested, but there's there's also an issue of performance anxiety. Several people have said that you should just ignore it if you don't like it, but no one is completely rational. People are going to be worried that if they don't compete with the average lifeless highschool loser, then they're not a good gamer and gaming isn't for them. You really don't want to make consumers nervous when they see your product on the store shelves.

I think this is going to be less of a problem for MS. Their target market is fairly small and unlikely to grow beyond the hardcore Halo players that think they're FPS fans but don't play PC games, the small subset of people that play old arcade games, and the buys-anything-with-football/wrestler-on-it crowd.

Sony might have a good audience for achievements in RPGs, but if they're hoping to reach a large fraction of those 100 million PS2 owners then they might tread on thin ice.

Nintendo I think has little to gain from anything Gamerscore-esque, but some achievementy type things for online-centric games might not go amiss.

It pisses me off SOOOOO MUCH when two competing products have different feature sets.

I am SO MAD that the PS3 and the 360 aren't exactly the same in every way.

As someone who rarely, if ever, replayed games previously...achievements make me want to play stuff again (on a harder difficulty or whatever to get as many points as possible). As far as "gamerscore," most people here talking about how useless it is are missing the point - I don't care about my gamerscore either in comparison to other people, but doing what it takes to get the actual achievements is fun and adds something to the game.

So as far as Sony's online service not having this, and not having several other XBox Live features...you get what you pay for.

And to add to my eariler comments, an example of where Achievements are great is Dead Rising. Riding a certain distance over zombies heads gives and achievement (which I got) which is just one tiny, tiny example of how a game "comes alive" with this strict feedback on your progress. It compells you and rewards you. To say "they don't matter" is like saying "the score in game don't matter" or "Unlocking the next level don't matter" They are all incentive/reward systems, just that Achievements are cleverly integrated into your profile.

And no one is saying it is a "selling point", that you should buy a 360 and not a PS3 purely because the Box has acheivments. We are saying that they do actually work and are great fun and makes games feel better in some ways, this is a FACT. They will be missed on PS3, but the sony boys won't miss them because they never had them. So fellow 360 players like myself should stop trying to convince the stubborn minded brain washed folks about how games can be fun and just let them keep making excuse after excuse for why the PS3 is "still going to be the best". It's not about who's best it's about what games are fun, on either system.

And as for the HALO fanboy remark, never played it and never had an Xbox 1. Mainly a PC gamer myself and will typically play any FPS (multiformat) on the PC rather than the box (I prefer mouse). To be so narrow minded about the output of the 360 is stupid. I love racing games, the 360 is the perfect machine for that (the contoller is sublime, it has rumble and well placed triggers), and third person games (dead rising, gears of war etc) are perfect on the 360 compared to the PC.

So each machine has games it's excells at but in the case of "typical console games" the 360 is easily a great contender, combined with the topic of this thread AND the brilliant online service it's an all rounder. PS3 is unproven, we know the controller is nerfed already (and anyone who says rumble has never mattered to them are lying). These little things add up to make something better and where the 360 is giving these small things the ps3 is taking things away purely to save cash to trojan horse it's unsuitable processor and it's overkill disc drive.

Considering the premium they are asking for the PS3 you should expect everything the 360 has and more yet it has FAR less in real gaming terms, however, if the bragging rights of owning a next gen film delivery player wrapped up in a console is worth the money then knock yourselves out.

Can't we all just get along!? I thought the Genesis vs SNES Wars were bad.. but now its just getting out of hand. It's obvious that half of these people just got into the gaming scene in the past generation and have no idea how far we have gotten with gaming/technology. Hello people! scores have always been around and people have always tried to "achieve" the high score but this generation you can actually post them online etc. As for sony not having it on their system its not exaclty a deal breaker but it would have been a nice added bonus for those who want it (and yes.. there are a lot of ppl out there who do, not just the upper echelon of gamers)

Pulse- You don't sound like a rabid fanboy, but I think you are missing the point entirely about the achievements. They are pure value added. Ignore gamerscore for a moment. The achievements are like the side missions in GTA. They give you a reason to play the game in a different way. The dead rising achievement list is a perfect example of this. (http://www.achieve360points.com/game/deadrising/) some match the progress of the game (kill so many zombies, get the true ending) others not so much (eat all types of food available in the mall, defeat 1000 zombies barehanded). Not only do they give you something extra to do in the game (read add more value and replayability), but since they are connected to your gamertag and the xbox.com site, they allow you to prove it, so the next time someone says "I was awesome at ..." you can actually see their score and achievements in the game.

What's really cool about the whole thing is that when you are bored at work, you can go onto xbox.com and lookup your friend's achievements so when you get home from work, you can say something to effect of "wow I just saw you survived 1,000,000 points in geometry wars today. How the hell did you manage to pull that off? I've been trying that for weeks!"

I sound like a damn Microsoft PR guy. But that is the truth about the achievement system. The achievement system is only good thing. It has nothing but the ability to add value to the games you play. I guarantee that if you had(or if you do have) an xbox360 there would be at least once(even if only for a minute) where an achievement would influence how you play the game. Could you then convince me that is a bad thing??

I'm really dissapointed to hear this. I think the Achievement system is a great video game innovation and I was hoping that it would be adopted by all the console manufacturers.

I don’t get the rage toward achievement scores. It is just a fun addition to the game. People who get in a fury over it look kinda pathetic to me. Sony would be better served to have some kind of a system that adds fun to the overall experience for players and their friends – such as good chat and the ability to compare their place in a game.

There is no detriment to having a bad score nor is there any bonus in a good one. Nobody sent me a waffle iron for my score. You enjoy it for the satisfaction of getting a pat on the back once in a while, and that’s it. Who cares if losers stat pad and if people can’t get the achievements because they don’t try.

The people who complain about the system making them feel like second class players are really just feeling that way on their own. I haven't been playing with someone and thought low of them because of their scores. You just are upset about the idea of people possibly judging you. Who cares how someone judges you on a console game anyway? Really, are you guys so insecure? If you don’t like the achievements then you don’t try to get them, if you like the system then it may drive you to play your games more or more methodical. Either way, it doesn’t hurt to have such a system for some to enjoy.

#2 - I am a casual gamer with consoles, and I think the achievements are fun.

#27 - right on.

This has nothing to do with controllers or HDMI, or what the PS3 has or doesnt have, its about whether the PS3 would be better off with or without the Gamerscore, while this benefits Xbox gamers (and obviuosly they are going to say they love it due to the fact they are defending thier console) what, I'm saying is as much as I would like to see achievements, I have no need on Earth (and I'm not just saying this) for Gamerscore, all I want to do is bloody play online with my mates, is that too much to ask.

Why do I need to have an overall score for what I've done each game, what purpose is there to that, who said I want to play other genres? If I wanted to, I'd test it out for myself, besides how can you lot say that it temps you to play other genres, when you love FPS games so much and tend to dispise RPGs as apparently they are too long?

Yes, the PS online would be missing something without Gamerscores, but its not a big issue, we won't die without it, I wouldn't miss Gamerscores at all, it would be nice (like achievements) to see how ppl have done in games and thier percentage of completion. But apart from braging and spending money on loads of games to get a high score, someone somewhere please answer my question, what is the point of gamerscores?

"while this benefits Xbox gamers (and obviuosly they are going to say they love it due to the fact they are defending thier console)"

Thats pretty funny bro. So if I say I like the cupholders in my car, it isn't because they work well - its just because I am defending my car maker? Come on! Also, hate to burst your bubble, but a lot of us who have a 360 also have Nintendo and PS2, so how are we such a different breed of people.

People say they like the achievements and thats why they say what they do. Trashing the achievements is more of an act to defend the system that wont be using it. I think you have it quite backwards.

"obviuosly they are going to say they love it due to the fact they are defending thier console"

I say I love the achievement system because I genuinely do. It's fun to see what you've done in games that friends did differently. I'm not a MS fanboy; I'll definitely be getting a PS3 next year when they actually launch (the quantities make the official launch more of a teaser). However, as #82 said, any game that comes out for both systems I will purchase for the 360 so that I can unlock achievements. Not to show off, not because I hate Sony or love MS. Because I like it and it's fun to approach the game in different ways to unlock achievements.

"A leaderboard in the games I play is all I need, all I need to find out how good Frank is at Halo, all I need to find out how many matches George has lost in Fifa, all I need to find out if lee really is as good as he says he is at Gears Of War. The gamerscore tells me little or nothing at first sight except the higher it is, the sadder the person must be, lol."


And that leaderboard you want tells you the exact same damn thing. The higher it is, the sadder the person must be.