Achiever - 67%
Explorer - 33%
Griefer - 33%
Socializer - 67%
This mostly makes sense to me, but I’m surprised that my achiever rank is so high. I always assumed achiever was a trophy/achievement hunter, which I’m really not. I would think I’m more of an explorer. Pretty fun little quiz though
According to the poll:
Achiever: 53%
Explorer: 67%
Griefer: 40%
Socializer: 40%
A lot of people are surprised that certain categories are high, and I think that has to do with the question design. There was more than one question where I found myself thinking “Isn’t there a third option?” Those questions are obviously going to increase my score in a category that I don’t care as much about. For example, the “better to be feared or loved?” question… not really either, because the best is to be quietly anonymous doing my own thing.
I will not move on to the next area unless I have collected all the hi-pots. If your game forces me to move on, but gives me time to explore everywhere, I will restart as many times as needed. If there are no hi-pots, I do not need your game.
Didn’t see the poll before answering the question, but I chose Explorer. Someone once asked me, “How long does it take you to complete your favorite game, Super Mario Bros. 3?” and I couldn’t really give a satisfactory answer, because I don’t know the answer. But I do so love taking time to delve into all the secrets of it. In fact, I only recently learned about the hidden Tanooki suit in World 6-3.
I’m high on Explorer–I like doing all the quests, even if it means no rewards, simply to see everything.
I’m medium on Achiever–I like setting goals and doing them, but I’ve tired of goals defined by the game. I’ll set mine own, thank you very much.
I’m medium on Killer–I like PvP, both combat and non, but only when it doesn’t interfere with my questing or goals. And it needs to more than repetitive duels or NvN matches.
And low on Socializer. I like chatting with friends and small group teaming, but don’t like big events like dungeons or raids.
What’s a “hi-pot”?
What’s a hi-pot? Haven’t encountered that term before.
I’m definitely an explorer - but not quite as the link describes; I don’t want to find glitches or usually create my own maps.
However, I love vast open-world games; I took a few days off work when Fallout 4 came out to ensure I could get into it properly. I also love games like Roller Coaster Tycoon and the Civilisation series.
I do like to kill things in video games, but I’m really not that interested in playing online with other people (Notable exception at the moment: Overwatch). It’s OK sometimes, but I really dislike the constant push from games companies to make everything some sort of online multiplayer experience.
I’m a procrastinator.
I like open worlds with quests. So that there is something defined that I’m supposed to be doing but can procrastinate from doing it by obsessively exploring every cranny or killing every thing in the area or fishing a lake dry or whatever.
But as soon as I don’t have something I am procrastinating from I lose interest.
5th type: Joker
I don’t have the time to play games anymore, and while on my own I never did like playing at a newbie’s skill level. With other friends it is much more fun to play casually and “MST3K” it, poking fun at the game or sharing exciting moments or just goofing around, I guess you could say that I am a mix of a Spade explorer and Heart socializer; in that, just workng with the team to defeat a raid boss or work together in Team Fortress is ok for a time, but I do like light-hearted greifing and being a crab spy with my friends.
So now with my lack of time and sceduling conflicts with friends, I mostly watch Let’s Plays and funny game/glitch highlights on Youtube as those people talking over the game act like my friends and I did, and I get to have it in 10-30 min chunks ready to be picked up again whenever I want with nothing being lost.
Achiever-Explorer, with a touch of Social. Not at all a Killer.
I don’t like competing with real people, aside from occasionally having a match with a friend. Because randos are invariably assholes. Lose and they insult you for not being good enough, win and they insult you for being ‘cheap’.
I like hanging out with friends in MMOs, and talking with gamer friends about the games we have in common out of game…and in a lot of games, there’s at least one NPC I enjoy hanging out with (Moira in Fallout 3 is the first example that comes to mind…I love that loon). But that’s a minor consideration.
But Achieving and Exploring…yeah, that’s me. Before my computer crashed and I lost her, I had a Skyrim character who was somewhere past level 200, owned every unique item in the game that it was possible to own, owned every player house, and had explored every square inch of the province and Solstheim (and I’d probed for a glitch I’d heard about that let you leave and explore part of Cyrodiil - albeit, unpopulated). She didn’t have all the Dragon Shouts, though, due to one of the Greybeard quests glitching and becoming uncompleteable, and thus preventing further ones. I am currently working on one of the two achievements I haven’t yet achieved in that game, too.
Achiever: 33%
Explorer: 47%
Griefer: 93%
Socializer: 27%
I guess I’m kind of a dick.
There were also a lot of questions like “Do you want a sword that does twice as much damage as any other weapon in the game?”, which I think were aiming at Achiever. And I answered “no” to most of those, because possessing such a weapon is usually mostly just a matter of luck, and so doesn’t reflect any actual achievement at all. I’d rather have the “defeat a powerful opponent” option, even though I don’t care much about defeating opponents, because there’s at least a chance that my victory was through greater skill.
Now, if I manage to get twice the damage of anyone else due to a clever combination of obscure skills that most people aren’t aware of (as happened in Diablo 2), that I’m happy about. Doubly so, if the combo is one I came up with myself. Even if that came at the cost of so much defensive ability that the resulting character is useless in a practical fight.
Put it this way: In Diablo 2, there was a special super-boss they introduced, a much harder version of Diablo himself. At the time he first appeared, he was a grueling fight for a typical full party of level 80-something characters (max level was 99, but few got past the mid 80s). I made a character who could solo him… which wasn’t all that special in itself; plenty of people with good gear could do so. But the character I made could do it at level 50, using only gear I found myself from the first and second of the three tiers of quality. Now, if that isn’t the mark of an Achiever, then I’m not sure what would be… but on that character, I specifically did not want more levels or better loot. The whole point was that I did it without that.
Achiever: 47%
Explorer: 73%
Griefer: 60%
Socializer: 20%
I’d say that’s fairly accurate. I like to explore and see the world that the devs have made, but I also really really like killing other people. 
Achiever: 47%
Explorer: 80%
Griefer: 7%
Socializer: 67%
Kind of surprised that Socializer is that high. I’d figure that Socializer and Achiever would be roughly flipped in values. But the other two are pretty spot on.
I suggest that the list is lacking although I have difficulty defining the missing category(ies). Playing a game can be a lot like meditation; If you go into meditation wanting to rack up the most meditation points or out-meditate those around you, you’re really not doing it right.
I usually play games for the same reasons that people may meditate, build a sand mandala, pet a cat/dog, listen to music, dance, swim, have sex, go for a walk/run in the woods. When I plan and execute a mission in Kerbal Space Program or Door Kickers, when I do a deadly dance in Hotline Miami or Doom, I’m not after socializing, I’m not after getting some sense of achievement, I don’t aim to out-compete other people and there may not be much sense of exploration.
I’d love to know in more detail what falls into that 5th category and how it operates. It may involve a decrease in default mode network activity and increase in task-positive network activity. I remember Aristotle and JS Mill both saying something to the effect that pleasure has a lot to do with the use of one’s faculties.
It’s short for High Potion, specifically from SquareEnix days when they had five character limits on strings in games. I use it as a generic term for something found in hidden corners of games, and not important in any way to the storyline.
I’m definitely an explorer, with a strong side of anti-authoritarianism. I will spend 20 minutes trying to find some path that will allow me to sneak up the side of a mountain, rather than taking the 30 seconds to go around to the pass that the devs clearly want you to go through. I also spend a lot of time looking for what would be considered exploits I suppose because the puzzle of achieving x in a way that was never intended is totally irresistible, and so much more satisfying than achieving it in the expected, and usually much easier, method.
I do not see how getting achievements is exploring the limits of the game. The limits of the game are in what you are and are not able to do.
Sure, maybe there are some achievements you get by exploring, but you get a lot of them just by performing predefined tasks. And I don’t see how the achievement helps with theorycrafting–I’d think you’d just need to do the same thing slightly differently over and over to get quantifiable data.
(Theorycrafting doesn’t mean crafting a theory about the world, as the name might seem to imply. It means figuring out the game mechanics and theory. Minmaxing is a type of theorycrafting. And it’s used a lot in speedrunning.)
I guess I would have to call myself an achiever, but I’m not into extra challenges so much. I just want to finish things. I like the sense of accomplishment of having beaten a game–even though I’ve really beaten a few. And I don’t like to go back and play a game once I’m finished with it, generally.
Achievements just seem hollow, and handicapping yourself never seemed fun to me. I’m gonna get frustrated, and then just want to move on. Frustration is a game killer for me, to the point that I’m more likely to switch to easy mode than keep trying a challenging aspect. It’s just about finishing.
Sure, in theory I’ll go back and try again, but I never really do. The only reason I might is if it’s been a long time since I’ve played and I want nostalgia. Then I’ll give it a shot–until it frustrates me.
All the people I would see as achievers seem to have no problem with frustration, though. So it’s hard for me.
What I do know is that exploring is no fun to me unless it’s part of a progression, and while I love being able to talk about games, I don’t really like being social within games. And the idea of being a “Killer” seems horrible to me. So, since I sorta fit achievers, and don’t fit the others, I went with that one.
I did not like that test at all. Since it gave only two answers, I mostly kept finding myself either flipping a coin or picking the least worst option. Or coming up with complex ideas that would get it to fit.
It gave me Achiever: 33% Explorer: 73% Griefer: 27% Socializer: 67%, but that really does not fit me.
I really don’t get how a test like that with only two answers could give you a real score worth anything.
Right, I’m exploring what I can and cannot do. Like, say, what achievements I can and cannot accomplish.
And it’s not that achievements help with theorycrafting*, but that theorycrafting helps with achievements: If I know the inner workings of the game’s calculations, then I can figure out how to accomplish a seemingly-impossible task.
*well, usually not, at least. Sometimes an achievement will give you a progress counter of something that’s otherwise difficult to measure, which can be a help in theorycrafting.