Depends. I most definitely want a Bleep Bloop when I beat Destiny's main stroyline on Legendary or whatever. Same if I search out and find all the clues to whatever major story point. Achievements marking and recognizing that I accomplished something awesome are fine. I also tolerate achievements for doing things the first time. Like when Bungie made an achievement to uploading a video to your fileshare, that was good because it pointed people towards an amazing feature they might not look at otherwise.

The achievements I dislike are the ones that are "unnatural." "Kill 25 enemies in one Matchmaking game with the plasma pistol while surfing on the front of a Ghost on the DLC map that you'll never play because nobody else bought it"… Yeah, no. I'd do away with the "kill 80,000,000 Elites" or "Fire 63 million bullets from the Assault Rifle" or any other long term but mundane "you incremented the number high enough!" achievements too.

If I understand it the 180 will allow for achievements to be added much more easily on the fly. That's going to be good and bad. Bad because we'll surely see many more stupid achievements, but good because we'll see some good ones too. I don't think I ever got it, but I enjoyed when Bungie put in the achievement for killing someone with a flying traffic cone after the youtube video showing it happen totally on accident. Sure people tried and tried to do it right after that… but so what? Responding to awesome things the community does is fine.

I agree for the most part. Definitely not a fan of the high-tier achievements that encourage grinding. I can appreciate that the others serve a purpose and I'm sure most people don't mind. I've just always disliked Live achievements for whatever reason. It seems like an unnecessary layer between the player and the game world, especially if you leave notifications on.

Like visiting a foreign country and every time you go somewhere cool or do anything interesting some dorky guy from the travel agency jumps out of nowhere, yells CONGRATS! and posts about it on your Facebook...Or even worse, like wandering through a new town with your nose firmly stuck in the travel guide book.

Not really a big deal though since the system is easy enough to ignore. It was fun to have a whack at some of the more unique achievements after finishing the Halo games but it always felt better to just go exploring and trying things out on my own.

Incentives don't justify modes, they don't replace solid core gameplay. They're multipliers. Multiplying zero by anything still leaves you with zero.

They are divisors.

However when there is a reward involved, this alters the ability of the player to enjoy the moment to moment pleasure of the game, simply because now instead of focusing on the present, the player has to focus on future. If you are driven to play because of that reward, this shift prevents the player from merely enjoying the present moment on its own, since the expectation is now that the present moment carries later on a future reward. Obviously if you are not driven to play because of the reward, the reward is unnecessary. So by playing for a reward, you are undermining the inherent value of the game's moment to moment pleasures.

http://destiny.bungie.org/forum/index.php?id=6921

There is such a thing as context. The knowledge of a promising future doesn't necessarily diminish my enjoyment of the present unless my entire purpose is bent on the outcome. The knowledge of a reward doesn't necessarily demand that the moment to moment experience must suffer unless it is presented in such a way that the reward is all encompassing and all important. If the balance is right, a reward simply makes the journey that much sweeter.

Incentives don't justify modes, they don't replace solid core gameplay. They're multipliers. Multiplying zero by anything still leaves you with zero.

They are divisors.

Twisting analogies:

5 / 0.5 = 10

:D

However when there is a reward involved, this alters the ability of the player to enjoy the moment to moment pleasure of the game, simply because now instead of focusing on the present, the player has to focus on future.

If the game is sufficiently engaging or challenging in itself, a player will have to forget about the reward in order to focus on the task at hand.

Don't tell me every time you're doing your job you're only thinking about your pay packet at the end of it, all the time?

Eh. FTL has a ton of achievements! A lot of its replaying is to unlock the other ships and ship variants as well. Don't get me wrong, because FTL is a fantastic game (that needs to be on my iPad…) but it's not really a good example of a no achievement / no grind type game.

Yeah, it does have achievements, and new ships to unlock. I don't even have all of them yet. However, I don't care. Yes, the new ships do add value, in that their layouts and capabilities are different. But that's not the reason I keep replaying it. I almost always use the Kestrel anyway. I'm not sure the game would have lost anything had it not included extra ships (for me).

Agreed, for the most part. There's nothing out of "modern gaming" that I want added to Assault on the Control Room. But I say that in the context of it being the single player, high walled, sorta kinda corridor of a level that it is. Like I said earlier in the thread (and I may be wrong / overly optimistic) Destiny seems like the kind of game that is so different from Halo 1 that there are cool things they could do with it that couldn't be done before. Things that wouldn't make sense in the case of one Spartan stranded on a strange ringworld, but make a ton of sense when the story is that hundreds of Guardians, including yourself, are out defending The City. Each person playing AotCR was walled off from the other because of Halo's single player nature and the nature of its one Spartan story, but in Destiny the things that one Guardian does could end up affecting what you are doing in neat ways. Incentive to replay could come in the form of doing things to help yourself and to help those around you.

Oh, I absolutely agree. Destiny looks to play quite a bit like Halo, in the moment to moment shooting mechanics. I could be wrong about that, but from what we've seen, it looks how it has the same feel to it's shooting. But just the nature of it being much more open means they can do very different, interesting things. But it still boils down to, if the game is enough fun, I'll replay it quite a bit, because of the game itself, rather than trying to find that loot drop or rare event or whatever it happens to be.

I think puzzle games operate a little differently. The challenges aren't really incentives, so much as new puzzles.

Plants vs Zombies: reward for completing a given level = a new plant. A new weapon in your armoury, which unlocks new gameplay strategies.

Any MMO: reward for levelling up = new abilities.

EVE Online: reward for learning skills = ability to fly new ships. Reward for reaching a given reputation level with an NPC faction = new missions or gameplay-affecting items.

It's not just puzzle games; the industry is replete with examples of intrinsic rewards that have gameplay benefits. They might not be to your taste, but they do exist, and they're often very successful.

I think puzzle games operate a little differently. The challenges aren't really incentives, so much as new puzzles. Ok, now beat this chamber using 6 or fewer portals. You have to think and solve a totally new puzzle. This is pretty different than giving rewards for tasks in game, since the whole point of a puzzle game is to solve puzzles, and the challenges are themselves new puzzles.

I'd agree there's a little bit of apples vs oranges when talking about puzzle games vs action games, but I do think it's a bit of a stretch to call Portal's challenge modes totally new puzzles. I felt I was being asked to solve the existing puzzles better. For me the challenges simply informed me the puzzles I had just solved were solvable differently and perhaps more elegantly - certainly it was the push I needed to sink many more (thoroughly enjoyable) hours into the levels I'd already completed.

I'd suggest you're keeping to too obvious a definition of a replay incentive. If you want an example that falls under perhaps a subtler definition, look at Trials. Friend leaderboards and ghost support are two things I'd say are great incentives to replay content - not integral to the second-to-second gameplay mechanics but wrappers around it that tease you to go again and again. That's replay incentives applied unobtrusively and to great effect.

Those Portal challenges that were so awesome? Those were "incentives" to replay the level (quickest time, fewest portals etc. - they encourage you to play the exact same content but in a different way).

Would you perhaps concede that (as is virtually always the case) implementation is king, and that Valve simply got it right where others sometimes get it wrong?

I think puzzle games operate a little differently. The challenges aren't really incentives, so much as new puzzles. Ok, now beat this chamber using 6 or fewer portals. You have to think and solve a totally new puzzle. This is pretty different than giving rewards for tasks in game, since the whole point of a puzzle game is to solve puzzles, and the challenges are themselves new puzzles.

What about an incentive you can only get by doing something like that?

I think we are on a different page, since the challenges in Portal do not have 'gameplay benefits'. They ARE the 'gameplay' - the equivalent of adding an extra level to play. By the way, as far as I remember, advanced chambers and challenges were available to play right from the start.

The challenges and advanced chambers have you replaying some of the standard levels, with (shockingly enough) more challenge, which is something you like, and even without that you said you liked the challenges and advanced chambers ("Those things were awesome."), making them incentives. Also you remember wrong, you have to beat, for example, TC 15 to be able to do challenges on TC 15 and play TC 15 Advanced.

I'm sure a minority of people use forge, yet if it were taken out that'd be a huge problem. Most people probably never used films in Campaign, but they are gone now and tons of people miss it.

That's very true, and does underscore why Bungie has many times-- not always-- gone above and beyond for something they think is cool, even if they know not everyone appreciates it.

Forge is a special case, too: its inclusion benefits people who have no interest in creating stuff with it themselves since the minority who do enrich the experience for everyone. It can't be looked at in a vacuum.

I'd say the same for films, too, to a degree. Films make a variety of fan-created content much easier, which enriches the experience for everyone, and extends the life of the franchise by generating interest in it long after game launch dates.

My biggest two complaints about Halo 4 were the lack of films and the horrible web interface through which 343 delivered stats, both of which made it impossible (for me) or difficult to do things I could do with ease before, which I like to think built community and interest.

Old data.

http://news.xbox.com/2013/07/games-halo-4-top-seller

I'm suspicious of this press release. It doesn't give any numbers, and the wording is very careful to mention “for sales during each respective launch year” and “in the U.S. market”. Reading between the lines, I'd say it suggests:

1. It's not the top-selling MGS game ever, worldwide
2. Outside of the fiscal year it was released in, it's no longer the top-selling Halo title. Particularly comparing it to Halo 3 (which remains a long-term multiplayer favourite years after release) it might not have had the staying power.

Speculative, naturally, but in the absence of a less ambiguous press release it's only natural to be suspicious.

Halo 4 is the biggest seller of the Halo series appealing to the most people, but is it the best? I think we all know the answer to that.

Umm, what?

No, it isn't.

http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name=halo

Perhaps it reached some particular milestone faster than all others, but it hasn't been out long enough to even surpass Halo 2. So far it has only outsold ODST, the original, and Halo Wars.

Old data. Halo 4 is at 8.37 Million.

Um... I hung around on GAF long enough to learn that VGChartz can be wrong sometimes... but that's actually precisely the number it gives for Halo 4, globally. How is that old data?

http://news.xbox.com/2013/07/games-halo-4-top-seller

There are no numbers in that article, and they're talking about number of copies sold in a product's launch year - a relatively meaningless statistic when you're looking at products that have been on the market for 10+ years. It sold FASTER than anything else out of the gate (in the US, at least) - but only time will tell if that rate means anything about the continued sales down the road.

Halo 4 is the biggest seller of the Halo series appealing to the most people, but is it the best? I think we all know the answer to that.

Umm, what?

No, it isn't.

http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name=halo

Perhaps it reached some particular milestone faster than all others, but it hasn't been out long enough to even surpass Halo 2. So far it has only outsold ODST, the original, and Halo Wars.

Old data.

Really? VGChartz says the data is as of June 29, 2013.

Halo 4 is at 8.37 Million.

That is the SAME number cited by VGChartz worldwide. (Halo 3 is over 11 million worldwide, but only 7.7 million in North America.

Worldwide or US? Also, where did you get that number? The xbox.com page does not actually list one, it just cites "Microsoft sell-through data".

Are you, or MS, seriously suggesting that Halo 4 outsold Halo 3's entire five-year run in only nine months, and then expecting people to believe it without figures?

http://news.xbox.com/2013/07/games-halo-4-top-seller

The one thing I'm worried about with Destiny is that the original Halo games had a very well-constructed sandbox, with each weapon being very unique and built for a specific role. Games with a larger quantity or that add randomization to items tend to be lacking the level of quality that comes with more thoughtful design, Borderlands being the most obvious example.

One thing I remember Bungie saying quite clearly is that all of their weapons have been hand balanced, as opposed to Borderlands' procedural generation. That should help a lot.