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.

I do challenges for the fun of doing them, not for the reward.

Dark Souls at level 1 is absolutely worth doing if you're replaying the game. It's a lot of fun, and much easier than you'd think during your first time playthrough.

Surprisingly enough, playing Getting Over It 50 times over for the achievement is one of the most fun experiences I've ever had. The skill curve is just awesome to experience, my time dropped from 18h all the way down to 10 minutes.

Challenge not worth doing : all achievements on Rayman Legends. The game itself is amazing, but to get the last achievement you need to play daily procedural levels for MONTHS unless you're a god at the game (and I'm pretty sure the top times are always cheated anyway, so you're never getting the highest point reward anytime ever)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Any challenges from Ubisoft games.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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'.

Finishing a Dark Souls game.

And finishing a Dark Souls game.

Filling out your arsenal with adversary weapons in warframe gets easier the more you do, and a lot of them are really worth while... but maxing them out? Hell no, that's 5 forma a pop, and the valence bonus is NOT worth re-grinding out. I'm glad DE has made the Infested Adversaries easier to deal with, so the valence bonus is easier to max out but good god. that's too much forma.

I 100%'ed Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2. That was pretty fun with secret characters and levels to unlock.

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.

Not worth it getting all the Korok seeds in BotW

I draw the line at whether it's something that can be done naturally, as a result of playing the game and enjoying it enough to put in that much time. I'll entertain trying to 100% a game that has an achievement to farm 1000 of some herb, if it's something that I'll just come across in due time by making full use of all the game mechanics, and presumably see some form of in-game payoff for my efforts. I'll instantly become content with just seeing the credits if an achievement to get a similar quantity of something is just an excuse to pad play time by making me grind some monster drops just for the sake of getting that last achievement.

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?"