That is the one thing I've always wondered about when people explain how great xbox live is: what the EFF is the point of the gamerscore?
First of all, it says absolutely nothing about how good you are. The most accurade reading of it would be (1/gamerscore)*100 = percent of social life left.
I've seen people with gamerscores into the tenthousands being beaten by guys who had actual skills, yet zero-to-little achievements.
I mean ... are they really necessary? If getting achievement X is the only reason you're playing a game, then you just shouldn't be playing it at all. If the gameplay isn't compelling enough to keep you playing, what's the point of 'goals'?
I can understand that it's nice to just play and suddenly see a popup telling you you've unlocked this or that achievement. It's a certain sense of gratification, much like the announcer sounds in UT.
There's one difference though...scoring an ultrakill takes considerable skill (or at least a lot of luck
), so you are rewarded that for being good at the game.
Most achievements I've seen are filler. A game has to have the 1000 score, so there are achievements in the game that actually
stop you from playing the game, and instead make you whore 1 weapon, or camp, or do something else unproductive.
Prime example of this is BF2142(also criticized for it's rank/unlock system), where the existence of badges such as "50 knife kills in a match", "5 successive pistol kills", "10 hours in Assault Hoverjet" and other useless crap meant you regularly ran into people on the edge of the map, sitting there in their hoverjet, denying it to their team. Or the wonderful knife-only battles on Titan decks, where you'd usually be flamed and called a cheater/noob for mowing down all the idiots jumping around with knives. Mind you this was not an xbox game, but a PC game with a controversial unlocks system.
At least in BF you got actual, in-game rewards for your statpadding, like new gadgets, a custom knife, extra weapons, scope, etc.
So really ... in my opinion achievements, unlocks and the like ruin gameplay on a lot of servers, while being completely unnecessary unless tied to in-game rewards other than "My GS>Your GS" and a cute little pop-up.
So the choice between "achievements+paid online service" and "editor/mod content" for me is perfectly clear.