Breath of the Wild: getting all 900 or whatever Korok seeds. The reward is a golden Korok seed whose shape makes it very obvious that you've been cleaning up Korok poop this whole time. Pretty funny prank for Nintendo to pull tbh.

On the whole, achievements encourage players to do stuff that isn't fun. Sometimes they're funny or encourage good gameplay, but too often they're just busywork, mindless random drops, or insane investments in time/skill.

Hey, that's not fair. If you complete the original 150 Pokedex, you also get a little diploma you can print on your GameBoy Printer.

You can beat factorio with extremely inefficient gameplay, layout, etc. There are two achievements in that sort of "taught" me how to play better. First was the one that limited how many items you could handcraft, and second was the speedrun achievements. Both were doable but forced me to automate more and plan things out in advance, and I can't remember any other game's achievements that qualitatively changed how I played.

As someone who has in fact completed both the original Gen 1 and the full Gen 2 Pokedex (including Mew and MissingNo.), I genuinely can't imagine playing through a Pokemon game without at least completing the regional pokedex. Collecting the creatures is what I play those types of games for.

And the reward isn't the little completion diploma Oak gives you to print out. It's the self satisfaction that comes with finishing your goal. Like getting all the achievements in a game; I don't get anything whatsoever for that, but I still like to do it. Because I'm a completionist.

Most collecting achievements are just game filler really. The ones I find interesting are ones that, in a more free-form game, create an interesting goal to work towards.

For some of my favourites I've on occasion gone through the list and been like 'Yeah that sounds like an interesting objective.'

The key for decent ones is usually that they are an achievable goal for one playthrough that act as a 'guiding star'.

Beg to differ on the Pokemon example, but then again I am a completionist so that type of challenge gives me lots of self satisfaction (plus now I have achievements through RetroAchevements so a little bragging rights). Frankly, things like that should have internal motivation, so literally no reward is fine by me. I'm literally doing a professor oak challenge right now, which is significantly worse, lol.

Where I draw the line is mostly challenges that I just don't see myself being able to accomplish in a given lifetime. Like the Balatro golden chip on every joker is way too RNG and time consuming for me. I also generally prefer not to have to do a speed run, but that's mostly because I have kids now and setting something down without worrying about time is ideal.

Oh BTW I am currently waiting to complete a "challenge" (its an achievement) for a special game, with a special achievement. All I have to do is, not to play the game. No seriously, "The Stanley Parable" has a famous achievement, that you get if you don't launch the game for 5 years. The fun story is, I purchased the game just to get this achievement. Really. I purchased it and waited 5 years, then installed it and run it.

But wait, why don't I get the achievement? After an investigation I came to realize that the game has to run at least once, so the timer starts counting. Well, since then I played the game and wait another 5 years. I almost reached the fifth year. So to complete everything (which I did not honestly) you would need to do not to play the game. Is it worth it? I say absolutely!

Super-bosses that award ultimate weapons... like why am I going to use this weapon now that the biggest challenge is done?

I'll only answer the first one.

Achievement systems full stop. People who value completion through achievement systems are fucking uncreative persons who need to find a different hobby or reconsider why they enjoy theirs. From a dev standpoint it's just a way of lazily padding a game.

I'm not talking about completionists of actual game content like collecting all the stars in a Mario game, or catching the 151 pokemon, but moreso the "silver trophy" for killing 2000 grunts or whatever bs achievement ideas they decided to arbitrarily create. You're diluting the art form.

Regarding collectables-based challenges, in my experience, all collectables that don't unlock content or aren't some kind of upgrade are a waste of time.

I remember collecting all the figments in Psychonauts 1, how frustrating and time consuming it was and how it was near useless to the regression of the game. I love Psychonauts and I would like to play it again over and over, but I would not collect those pesky figments ever again.

Challenges in action games are worth completing most of the time because they're typically designed to either drive home the intended purpose of individual combat mechanics, or outright reveal mechanics too advanced to cover by basic tutorials—e.g. dodge counter in Hi-Fi Rush.

Megabonk has some "fun" challenges that probably counts towards both. I did the "AFK gaming" one, where your character isn't allowed to be moved by the player ( a huge handicap). It was kind of fun figuring out which character would be best, what pickups to prioritize etc.

I think something that makes a challenge worth it or not in a game is a combination of how fun it is and how much time it will take.

I recently got all the achievements in Another Crab's Treasure. Most of the achievements you get naturally from playing the game, and I only had to hunt down a handful once I completed the game. All I had to do was fight 1 optional boss that I missed, grind a little bit to buy shells from a store, and play a couple of hours into NG+. Hunting those down was worth it because the combat is fun, and it showed that things are different in NG+ (I had to fight a brand new boss that wasn't in the regular game), plus it didn't take more than 3-4 hours.

On the other hand, I also played Schedule 1 again (post cartel update, but before shrooms were added). I love the game. I love the process of starting small and doing everything myself, and eventually building up to buy other properties, hiring employees, and refining the process to be more efficient. But man, that achievement to get $10 million is fucking nuts. I had all the properties producing drugs, the dealers and I were overflowing with product and I still haven't gotten the $1 million achievement either. The game stopped being fun because everything was built up and I was basically there to restock the properties. Also actually getting to $10 million would have taken forever, so I gave up on it. I'll definitely go back and play the game again, but I think I'll wait until there's another update after the one that added shrooms.

Gosh, y'know, these days breathing gives you an achievement because gamers like to get achievements to have achievements. Why do gamers like to have achievements? Sense of pride and accomplishment, I suppose. And because I am very simple, I'm the same - I crave that dopamine of the li'l 🎶Di-Ding. And platinuming a game is of course more dopamine. It's just very useless in most games, it's nothing but a number somewhere in some statistics. Paradoxically, I think nobody needs achievements and I'm annoyed at how important they've become, and at the same time I'm disappointed if there are none.

Challenges that give me equipment that simply has some better stats are ... well, challenging. Especially when I don't get around to them until after I finish the story. That's when I care the least about increasing my ice damage by 2 points.

Make me explore the world to find things, that's my jam. Especially if the things I find add to the lore. ... No I can't think of any examples right now.

I didn't do all the optional bosses in expedition 33. I finished the plot and was so powered up the story bosses didn't even get a turn. But fighting the billion hp "dodge 13 hits in a row or die" just wasn't fun for me.

I 100% RDR and killing cougars with a knife still haunts me. It's exactly as it sounds. Go do melee combat with a gigantic pissed off cat that almost always comes in pairs, sometimes a trio.

I enjoy seeing the little achievement pop-ups, especially when it's a rare one, but I almost never go out of my way to get any. Don't see the point, tbh. I'm not interested in playing the game in a way that's less fun for me, just to check an utterly meaningless box. I guess you could reasonably argue that every goal in a game (quests, completion, exploration, what-have-you) is meaningless, but achievements have always struck me as particularly hollow.

I cleared all the question marks in Skellige in Witcher 3. I expected...something...anything?

Finishing a Dark Souls game.

And finishing a Dark Souls game.

Completing entire tech tree in minecraft modpacks. For those who dont know, many popular modpacks for minecraft has a questlines, usually its main progression chapters, explaining how to play the game, and many secondary queslines for specific stuff or mods. And many of this mods are optional for the main progression, so completing them or even using them at all is just useless extra work.

Any challenges from Ubisoft games.

Anything involving multi-player is just completely ignorable.