Developing a respectable profile full of platinums on the various PlayStation leaderboards requires a great deal of commitment. There are many qualities that can affect how other trophy hunters will view your achievements. Whether you want to improve your profile for your own satisfaction or to show off to others, we’ve got you covered. Below are the best tips for turning a decent trophy hunting profile into one you can be proud of.
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9. Increase your completion rate
One of the first things a seasoned trophy hunter will notice on your profile is what your completion rate is. This percentage represents how thoroughly you complete the games that you play and is calculated by taking the number of trophies you have obtained divided by all possible trophies from your games. Many websites also weight this calculation based on the difficulty of trophies and their rarity. If more difficult trophies elude you, your completion rate may appear lower than you may have expected as a result.
While your completion rate is certainly not the be-all-end-all of trophy hunting, a higher number is generally viewed more favorably. Players who get into trophy hunting after already having played games for years may be plagued by a seemingly huge backlog filled with many unearned trophies, resulting in a poor completion rate.
You might be surprised by how satisfying it is to clean up your backlog and see your completion rate go up. Depending on the number of games you have played, a good early goal might be reaching 50% completion. Setting a goal for 10% increments over time will provide you with a regular sense of accomplishment and make your profile look more appealing over time.
That said, a goal of 100% completion is lofty and unreasonable for most players. Many games come out with DLC trophies later on, which may be beyond a player’s budget. Other games may shut down their servers and lend themselves impossible to complete. For these reasons, trophy hunters should aim for as high of a completion rate as they can without obsessing over perfection. A completion rate above 80% is ideal as it provides a reasonable margin of error.
8. Play more varied genres
When someone views your trophy hunting profile, it can be a bit disappointing to see only one genre of game. This might be a player who only platinums Lego games or specializes solely in sports titles, for example. While there is nothing wrong with this so long as they are happy playing what they enjoy, it leaves a lot to be desired so far as their profile is concerned.
From an outsider’s perspective, it’s more fun to scroll through someone’s list of games when there are many genres. This also allows for different players to relate to your profile and find unexpected ways to connect with you. After all, one of the best ways to get a grasp on another trophy hunter is to compare your achievements with theirs and find common threads, especially when they are obscure.
You can compare your achievements with other trophy hunters on PSN Profiles very easily. All you need to do is make sure you’re logged in, go to the person’s profile in question, and click the “Compare” tab near the top right. Do you share many games with me?
If you find your profile to be one-note, try to branch out a bit and try new experiences. How many of the below genres do you have on your list?
- Sports
- Real-time tactics
- Japanese roleplaying game
- Visual novel
- Racing
- Virtual reality
- Horror
- Simulation
- Platformer
7. Commit to entire series
Another way you can boost your trophy hunting profile in other players’ eyes is by fully completing an entire series. Other fans of the series will have a deeper appreciation for your profile when they see that you have dedicated yourself to doing all there is to do in their favorite games. It is also a great way to show off titles that you personally adore.
God of War, Dark Souls, and Final Fantasy are easily among the most popular series for trophy hunters to complete. Less common ones might include:
- Yakuza series: Known for its high level of difficulty, particularly in its minigames;
- Tales Of series: Requires many playthroughs of its various titles and hundreds if not thousands of hours of playtime;
- Uncharted series: Tons of collectibles, high difficulty playthroughs, and online trophies.
If you complete any of these series, you will gain a lot of respect from those familiar with the requirements.
6. Go for DLC trophies
Many trophy hunters that err more on the casual side tend to be satisfied after completing the platinum trophy for a game regardless of what the completion rate on the title is. This can result in a string of platinums on a player’s profile followed by sub-100% completion percentages or lower rankings. For more dedicated hunters and completionists, this can be a bit of an eyesore that stands out on your profile.
If you are able and willing to do so, you should go for any DLC trophies you can. Doing so shows off your dedication to the game in question and also boosts your overall completion rate. A lot can be said about a player who attempts any challenge regardless of a shiny platinum reward. Games like Final Fantasy XV that have several big DLC trophy packs can leave you at sub-50% completion rate if stop with just the platinum trophy.
Games with free DLC trophies should be a priority if you want to keep your trophy hunting profile neat. For example, God of War Ragnarök had a free DLC release that came with 12 extra trophies.
5. Get more challenging and rare platinums
One section of your profile that often gets the most eyes on it is the collection of your top rarest trophies. Long-time trophy hunters may develop an opinion about your skill and dedication to the hobby based on what they find in this table. Trophies with a rarity above 30% are quite common, and thus do not garner much respect from the community. Ideally, your rarest trophies should be at least below 10% rarity, if not 5%. Any trophies below 1% will generally get viewers to check twice and look more carefully at your profile.
Games like the Call of Duty series, Catherine, Stardew Valley, and The Evil Within all have platinums under 5% rarity and inspire lots of nice comments. Further, the more ultra rare trophies you have, the more positively your profile may be viewed by more hardcore hunters.
If you want to receive the collective respect of every single trophy hunter around the world, go for Crypt of the Necrodancer. This game is widely regarded as the most difficult game to complete the achievements, with a whopping 0.09% of players obtaining the platinum according to PSN Profiles. Check out our list of some of the most difficult platinum trophies if you’d like to up the ante.
4. Increase your trophy level
One easy way to improve the quality of your trophy hunting profile is simply… to get more trophies. Who’d have thought? Well, PlayStation now essentially rates players based on how many trophies they have acquired. These tiers match up to those of the trophies themselves, beginning with the bronze tier and going all the way up to the platinum tier. The below image from the PlayStation blog shows the new trophy level icons and the required level to obtain them.
It cannot be overstated just how difficult it would be to reach level 999 under the current system. Even reaching the early levels of Gold would likely require 200 or more platinum trophies, depending on the ratio of gold trophies compared to bronze trophies in your games. Frankly, reaching level 999 as it stands would require an obscene number of platinums, most likely with the aid of shovelware titles. For that reason, trophy hunters should make more reasonable goals based on their current level in the system. Reaching the silver or gold tiers for the first time are excellent objectives to aim for as you pump your numbers up.
3. Go for under-represented titles
Every trophy hunter is familiar with games like Spider-Man, Spyro the Dragon, or My Name is Mayo. These games can be quite enjoyable for the player and are definitely worth playing. However, their popularity means that they don’t really stand out on anyone’s list. Often other hunters will glaze over these parts of your trophy mosaic or profile—and if that is the entirety of your platinums—they’ll simply shrug and move on.
Showing off your trophy hunting profile to others is a lot more fun when there are games the other person may be less familiar with, especially if the rarity is higher than expected or the platinum image is intriguing. Often, more unique games on someone’s list mixed in with the highly respected or more popular titles can lead to other players looking through your list in more detail and engaging with it on a deeper level. You can even boost these games by showing them off in your trophy cabinet for all to see.
Some of the author’s favorite less common platinums include Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon, Omori, Crystar, and Void Terrarium.
2. Reach celebrated milestones on your trophy hunting profile
One great way to show off your profile is to reach specific numbers of platinums achieved. The most popular goals are 50 and 100, as well as each following 50 games going forward. Many trophy hunters like to save milestone targets for games they especially care about and would like to show off.
Players also generally like to share their profiles on the various forums when they reach perfect squares, such that their mosaic is even in its presentation and looks the most appealing. The most common nicely rounded numbers occur at 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, and 100 platinums achieved. Beyond that, the threshold for the next squared mosaic becomes more laborious, as they require dozens of games to be completed.
Each tier that a player manages to push past is essentially like karate belt rankings. Perhaps the highest echelons of the black belt, the Kyudan or Judan, would be the equivalent of someone with 1,000 platinums achieved.
1. Avoid shovelware
We saved the best tip for last. While all of the earlier entries are great ways to boost a trophy hunting profile, they can all fall short should a person’s profile be littered with low value platinums. If you want other trophy hunters to respect your list, you should avoid these “gimme” games that essentially boil down to paying for a platinum. Games where you press X a thousand times or play for less than 10 minutes don’t impress anyone. Getting high numbers of platinums means little when they didn’t require any effort on your behalf.
That said, this advice shouldn’t be taken as gospel to all trophy hunters. If your main goal is to climb the leaderboards where your competition is completing dozens of these games per day, then obviously you should do what you need to do. Trophy hunters that play with that in mind are in a different league altogether.
How many of these tips do you plan to implement? Does any other aspect of another player’s trophy hunting profile stand out to you? Let us know in the comments below.
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