I think the jump rope and volleyball moons in Mario Odyssey were pretty bad. They didn't really connect to the gameplay and just felt tedious to get.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Any challenges from Ubisoft games.

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 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.

Finishing a Dark Souls game.

And finishing a Dark Souls game.

I'm at 99% of RDR2 for like 2 years now because I can't be bothered to do the dominoes part of the gambling challenge.

Beating Dark Souls 2 without dying or using a bonfire rewards you with a ring that makes your right hand weapon completely invisible.

It isn't worth it at fucking all, since there is a spell that does the same thing and is way easier to obtain (even in 2025 despite being a multiplayer rank reward). The spell and ring also have ZERO effect on PvE and it rarely matters in PvP when the animations of your body instantly reflect the size of your weapon to a good enough player. Like, I don't need to see your Ultragreatsword to know that's what you are swinging when your arm starts hefting the weight.

I got one character to lvl 60 in Classic WoW Hardcore. When I got that last level up, I cried a bit. Very emotional journey.

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'.

When I finish a game naturally I look at the list of stuff I didn't do yet, and think "how much time will this take? Will I even remember doing completionist stuff in 5 years or would it be better to start a new game?"

Factorio: lazy bastard is not worth getting but there is no spoon is absolutely worth getting. People over estimate how much is required pre rocket and get bogged down in these over engineered designs. After finishing thre is no spoon you realise how little is actually required and its best to just go build something than try design the perfect system that lasts into the megabase era.

Not worth it getting all the Korok seeds in BotW

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.

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.