Power Button Podcast
Tip JarPS4 Trophies Calculate Rarity
November 12, 2013
After embracing the achievement trend last generation with the PlayStation 3, Sony is planning on enhancing the experience of earning trophies when playing the PlayStation 4. In addition to the familiar bronze, silver, gold, and platinum rankings for each trophy, the console can tell you how rare each of your prizes are compared to the total accomplishments of the gaming community. It's another neat metric for the competitive hothead in us all. Game Informer has the details.
The PlayStation 4 will offer a dynamic trophy-rarity system. On your trophy screen, you'll see a classification that identifies a trophy as common, uncommon, rare, and ultra rare, according to a Sony representative. We saw this yesterday morning during a user experience briefing here in New York City.
The rarity will shift over time depending on how many players have earned the trophy, and it's conceivable that any given one could go in either direction. All of your trophies are displayed in the same place now, too. You'll see everything you've earned on PS3, Vita, and PS4 on one screen.
I know that achievements and trophies are not supposed to matter, but I do enjoy earning them. As I say on the upcoming Episode 112 of the Power Button podcast, I find myself going out of my way to earn some of them just for the sake of trying the crazy idea suggested by the goal. String up a bad guy in Just Cause 2 and shoot him before he hits the ground? Sure! Trade color schemes in Street Fighter X Tekken? Why not? Glide across the bridge in Batman: Arkham Origins without touching the ground? Challenge accepted!
While not an official ranking list, there are rarity indexes for PS3 and PS Vita games out there. I like PSNProfiles.com which calculates its own rarity scores. It's a great online trophy tracker that can show you which trophies you've earned, which you still need, and other interesting statistics. By their math, for instance, the rarest trophy in my collection is a bronze award in Star Wars Pinball for earning a score of over 150 million on a table. Only 2.26% of the sample size has earned that trophy. The site also tracks trophy milestones such as my first trophy ever (Mirror's Edge) and my fastest earned platinum trophy (the first Sly Cooper adventure). I don't know how much of this extra data mining Sony plans to offer, but my inner statistics nerd loves this stuff. I'll take all of the fun side information I can get.
Here's my PSN Profiles trophy card for the full range of bragging rights. Lots of games, decent level of completion (I won't finish junk, nor do I seek out trophies that require incredible time or skill commitments for no other in-game payoff), and plenty of bronze. Sometimes the low-hanging fruit is the tastiest.
