I was recently upset and sad that some Achievements in the game appear to be bugged.
In the loneliest and darkest hours of my sadness I experienced what may be described as a vision, dream, or out of body experience. A giant glowing angel who looked suspiciously like Jörg appeared to me and shared a revelation:
“Fear not” the angel said to me in a voice louder than an Airbus A330 Rolls Royce Trent 7000 Turbofan Engine “Achievements do not matter. It’s a simulator and you should make your own fun.”
Trembling and shielding my eyes from the light I asked the angel why Achievements are even in the game then and if Asobo had ever tested the efficacy of the Achievements prior to release or made updates to the code when the community complained in dozens of threads that Achievements simply don’t work in MSFS and are in dire need of repair.
“[BUG LOGGED]” the angel replied. “But it’s been almost two years and the monthly snapshot only shows 24 non-VR bugs at a time so I have no visibility into a possible timeframe for a fix.”
“Achievements are for Fortnite and COD!” the voiced boomed. “Why don’t you fly the instrument approach into VOR/DME Z Runway 15 into KMTN at night in zero visibility conditions? Now that’s an Achievement.”
Before I could answer the otherworldly being continued:
“Yes it’s been 12 weeks since SU5 and Xbox players haven’t had a chance to play a Weekly Activity (1 needed for Working for the Weekend, 10 needed for Decathlon and both needed for Completionist) because we haven’t been releasing Weekly Activities on a weekly basis, but this Reno Expansion isn’t going to release itself.”
“Bush trips are broken? Do you not know the airports? Just fly the route yourself from the world map.”
“Oh ye of little faith: My Way doesn’t pop when you fly from parking spot to parking spot starting cold and dark with True to Life settings to and from airports 300+ miles away and never missing an ATC instruction or closing any windows or ever moving to the external view? Well 0.07% of pilots have the Achievement unlocked…God works in mysterious ways. Have you tried praying for a miracle?”
It was in that moment that my mind was changed and I realized the true Achievements are the friends we make along the way.
Thanks for the morning smile, I like your style of writing.
On the topic:
I wonder what the achievements actually ARE and WHY they are so important? I know that every game today has these things and that people run after them. I get that in Red Dead Redemption Online you earn gold for achieving certain daily tasks. This gold can be used to purchase ingame content. The gold can also be purchased with real money.
In flightsim we simulate flight, hence the name. Neither do we tune our aircraft to get some boosters (I mean, there is no reason for that) nor do we get extra liveries, aircraft, cockpit layouts, etc. We can’t use any ingame currency to discount addon aircraft. What is the point of achievements in a flightsim? You either remember what you did and had fun or there is no need to remember or collect patches. Show the world who doesn’t care that you flew a 300nm trip on autopilot and walked the dog during that time?
Bushtrips: Well, I remember a mission (in FSX?) where you transported a rhino in Africa with a DC-3 and that beast freed itself and the plane was thrown around. While totally stupid and unrealistic it was at least a “challenge”. Or you took a Maule and had to do a SAR flight for a missing colleague. Or a Jet Ranger out to a burning oil platform to rescue some workers. Our bushtrips in the sim are no bush trips but some airport hopping across a country. The interesting part here is to find your way only with written notes and that’s the only difference to a “normally selected” flight.
I better don’t start on landing challenges, they are entirely stupid.
So I don’t get the complaints about buggy achievments either. A flightsim is there to simulate flight. There is no actual game content in it but the achievments pretend there was. If there WAS something to do (like some other developers add in form of AirHauler or Sky Park) it would kind of make sense to me. But here? Ingame? what for?!
Well said! I never understood the fascination about digital throphies just to decorate your gamer tag. It’s like the discussion about “No new planes”. There are enough planes and still coming more. More important is the quality of the Sim itself and a good flight behavior. This is not Forza Horizon.
But at the end of the day it seems we are still Hunters and Gatherers after all.
Are you sure about that?
Do you feel nothing when your flight log time goes to zero?
I don’t mind it so much because the count is still there in the Xbox app, but still, when I see that my Insim achievements are zero (not just flight log, but all of them including activity), I think it’s probably a bug and I wish it would sync properly.
You dont need a build in achievement logging system in a sim! That is for a game.
A sense of achievement on the other hand are core to a good simming experience, but you should set the goals yourself, not the ones the GAME developers are putting up.
Recently I am in the process of learning the g1000nxi, and there are considerable satisfaction in learning to master that.
If you look up the definition of a game it implies a set of agreed rules and objectives, whereas a simulation is (should be)devoid of that…only an attempt at recreating a particular real world scenario (flying, driving trains etc.)
Have enjoyed few games, only the ones where you can use them as a “sim” like driving arround in Mafia fx.
Absolutely hate career mode, campaigns etc where the rules and objectives are set for you.
Make your own objectives!
