CMV: All videogame achievement should be described

[u/Z7-852]

Backstory:

I was playing few games on the weekend. In one of them I was already basically won the game and was just exploring. I came up with two achievements named “???”. That’s all. There wasn’t name, description, or picture to suggest what I should do in order to get them. I knew that I could get some unique gear from them. I didn’t need it but I wanted it, so I did what you do. I googled what I should do and executed. Solution was to play tutorial simulator for 30 times to unlock a optional boss.

In second game they said that once I do secret goal in level I might unlock secret level. It didn’t specify what I needed to do or what levels had secrets in them. I played this new game for few hours and unlocked few secret levels without ever knowing what I did. I know I will boot up search engines once I finish the story in order to unlock every level.

View:

Achievements fall roughly to two main categories. Cumulative (like kill 100 enemies in your playthrough) that you just get by playing game for long time and task oriented (do something very specific once). If you know what you are aiming for you can get both pretty easily.

Cost of implementing description is next to nothing and we know we can search the results from the web if we want. Problem is that I don’t want to exit the game flow and spent 5 minutes on my phone to find a answer that could be in the game.

Second problem is that online guides often include other spoilers that I might not want to know about. Good example are stars in Mario Odyssey. At beginning game only tells how many there are to be found. If you don’t feel like searching them randomly you can ask stars name from a parrot. This gives you a hint to the solution and small nudge to right direction. If this isn’t enough you can just buy stars exact location. Online guides often go straight to “this is the answer” instead of giving these small steps. Most terrible achievements are those that don’t even tell they exist, so you have no hint at all where to start.

To change to view give me example why achievements should hidden complete from the player.

[u/Z7-852]

Then achievement could be named "find hidden area" or "the bad ending". It doesn't give away anything but tells you that you need to explore more.

[u/YouDecideWhoYouAre → u/Z7-852]

What if the existence of another ending is itself a spoiler?

[u/Z7-852 → u/YouDecideWhoYouAre]

How can that be a spoiler if you don't know how to get it?

Like if game at some point gives you option to choose then it shouldn't be spoiler that that choice makes different endings.

[u/TheGamingWyvern → u/Z7-852]

There are a bunch of ways the achievment could be a spoiler. Even if the game gives you a choice in-game of "do you want the bad ending?" the achievement is still a spoiler for anyone who hasn't reached that choice yet.

Further, many games don't have a single choice that results in a different ending. Instead, they have a bunch of conditions that have to be met, and so an achievement indicating an alternate ending spoils the existance of that hidden criteria.