Topic: The Trophy Discussion Thread

I have a question for the trophy hunters here. I'm new to playstation. My ps5 I have for about 2 months now so I have no real experience with trophies yet. I've always been a pc mmo player and this generation I decided to buy an Xbox and later a playstation. On my Xbox I generally finish the story and on open world games the side activities as well.
I just got my first 2 trophies with horizon forbidden west and Ghost of Tsushima.
Now my question is, do you guys platinum every game you play and how do you go about it? Do you look the trophies up and see how hard they are in advance or do you play the game and sweep what you are missing afterwards?

@Lavalera I don't think there's a "right" way to do it. I usually just play a game the way I enjoy it and only look at trophy lists towards the end. I'll only go for platinums that seem fun and achievable in a time I'm still willing to spend on a game. In the end the trophies don't really mean much - to me they're just an incentive to explore a game a little more.

In case of SOPFFO, there's one trophy that's either bugged or (more likely in my opinion) has a mistranslated description. It says "Complete the game on Chaos difficulty" but it in fact pops when you complete any mission on Chaos difficulty (which makes way more sense considering how the Chaos difficulty actually works) - once I realized this, I knew I could do it

@Lavalera It differs. Mostly I just play the game and see what happens but sometimes it’s useful to google trophy guides to see how if there are missable ones (and some have a subjective overall difficulty rating too for the platinum).

Sometimes it’s nice to not worry about trophies and enjoy the game for what it is. Most of the time ones I do platinum are games I really enjoy playing as it’s a way of doing everything there is to do.

@colonelkilgore @RogerRoger Cheers guys although not sure a great deal of effort was required other that to keep the kids from arguing as we played 😀

@Voltan Nice work on your plat. Sounds like a challenging game and if I ever get into FF I might give it a go.

@Lavalera I’m pretty much the same as Voltan. If I really enjoy a game it gives me another reason to keep playing it and sometimes if I’ve left some trophies then it gives me a reason to go back. There’s a few games that I’ve really enjoyed but I’ve left the platinum because the trophy requirements were way too onerous, but you never know maybe one day I’ll go back to some of them.

@Voltan @render @Trillho awesome thanks guys. I see the general consensus is you get trophies for games you really like and which seem obtainable. That was also what I was leaning towards.

@Lavalera I’ve personally gone through various stages in regards to trophies. Initially I had no interest in them whatsoever, then when I played Bloodborne I was enjoying it so much that I just didn’t want to stop playing it, so I thought what the heck let’s try and bag my first platinum… and I really enjoyed the whole process a great deal.

After Bloodborne, I decided to try and platinum games that I just thoroughly enjoyed and that I didn’t want to end… but that eventually changed to me going for the plat on everything. What I tend to do is to check the first section of a trophy guide. For instance, this would include the difficulty of the platinum, the time the platinum would generally take, any missable trophies and how many playthroughs are required.

@Lavalera I think everyone has explained a good general approach to trophies, but I’ll drop my two cents.

I see trophies as a way to enhance games you enjoy, but also as part of a “meta-game” (sorry to use that term; I’m beginning to hate that term “meta”) where it becomes just a badge of honor for going above and beyond. Not unlike playing games that have scoreboards and chasing high scores for either comparison with friends or just to feel some personal satisfaction.

A lot of PS and XB gamers just ignore trophies and achievements. You can actually disable the trophy notification in the PS5’s settings and just pretend they don’t even exist. However, I think there is a real value to them as a record of your gaming history and credentials.

And unfortunately, there is a wide variation of the quality of the trophy lists. Some trophy lists are well crafted by the developer to really give a nice feeling of progression and reward for in-depth play. Whereas some trophy lists are basically just a catalogue of annoying time consuming content that may actually detract from the experience.

So I just glance at the trophies, like others have said and if the platinum looks obtainable then I try to focus on the trophies alongside the adventure. Playing TLoU2 now and I have noticed that I missed a few collectibles so far and so there’s no way I’m getting the platinum without substantial post-game grinding and replay, and so I’ll probably not go for it. But I’m still going to look for every collectible until the end because I enjoy the search in a game this beautiful.

Edit: a good approach for you might be choose a game that you thoroughly enjoy or think you’ll enjoy, and try to go for the platinum. Ghost of Tsushima is actually a pretty good trophy list and I got the platinum fairly naturally by the end. If you like to play really compulsively and do all side quests then by the end you’ll be just a few trophies shy and you can mop them up with a guide. Then see how you liked the experience. You’ll know after your first platinum if you’re destined to be a trophy hunter. 😄

@colonelkilgore Thanks for your opinion and naming the possible disadvantage of going trophy hunting. I will certainly take that in consideration. My idea now is as you say to take a look in advance at the trophies and if i enjoy the game then ill go for it, if i really want to.
@Th3solution thanks for the advise. That was what i went for when i got the trophies for Horizon and the base Ghost of Tsushima game (still working on iki at the moment)
@Velio84 Thanks, i already finished that platinum. I started my playstation journey with Ratchet and clank (2016) and Horizon Zero dawn, but didnt platinum those yet, but i might go back to them to platinum then since i enjoyed them

I got some amazing advise from all of you. I think im going to go for more platinums, well as long as it isnt to grindy and if i like the game, that sounds the best thing for me as it is for most of you. Really appreciate all the feedback!

@Lavalera Welcome to the asylum! 😄

I stopped going after random Platinums so I could make a dent in my backlog and I've pretty successfully done that. So I got a few cheeky Platinums for Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2077, and Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut.

@johncalmc Awesome work, cheeky indeed. What was the platinum for Cyberpunk 2077 like? I might jump back into that after Elden Ring but if it's anything like the Witcher 3 then there were lots of missable things on that.

@render It's time consuming but not difficult. Took me 110 hours. But I do mess around. You can probably do it in like 90 or something. There's not really that much missable stuff I don't think. There's trophies you could technically miss, I suppose, for not finishing or failing certain questlines, but if you finish off all the sidequests you're okay. There's one super missable one towards the end, so without getting spoilery, I'd look up a trophy guide to see what you have to do. I would definitely have missed it if my girlfriend hadn't warned me.

95 attempts.
29525 enemies slain.
87 hours.
and Platinum # 116 achieved for Hades (PS5).

Excellent game, deserved of all the hype. Got a bit grindy towards the end. Started doing one run a day whenever I had some game time. Got a bit more into it in recent weeks and doing multiple runs when I knew the end was in site. Consequently have been playing it since December! Think it's gonna leave a gaming hole to be filled by whatever my next obsession is...

@Sorteddan Ooooh nice one! I actually never finished that, maybe I should go back 🤔

@Sorteddan Congrats on the Hades platinum. I really enjoyed getting that one myself although it did take me an absolute age, so probably similar to you in terms of the months I played it over. I'm not sure what my stats were in the end but my attempts were numerous 😀

Nice one @Sorteddan, as someone who is clearly a rogue-like/lite aficionado… how would you rate it on the rogue scale?

@colonelkilgore
I think I'd say I was more of an occasional fan of the genre than an aficionado (I can't even spell aficionado!) I wouldn't want to claim any kind of expert knowledge.

But good question though, of stuff I've played in the last couple of years it's probably in my top three - sandwiched snugly between Enter the Gungeon and Dead Cells maybe. Once it got its hooks into me I started waking up thinking about new possibilities of builds that could work!

@Sorteddan cheers for the info, I have all three of those actually… though I think that I’m gonna make Returnal my first rogue (though I know some people think its a massive outlier to the genre).

@colonelkilgore
So while not my genre favourite it is, however, my favourite SuperGiant Games game so far. Though Transistor is still in my to do list.

@Sorteddan I got Transistor coming up on the schedule real soon actually. I’ve only really played Bastion of the SuperGiant games thus far but Transistor was always the one I thought I’d connect with most (prior to Hades anyway). I’ll definitely tag you with some of my thoughts on the game once I’ve started it.