Discussion Main / EffortlessAchievement

A second unmentioned use of these achievements: while the trope page focuses on cosmetic achievement systems aimed at outside-the-game viewing, some examples (such as Cookie Clicker) make their achievements serve an in-game function. In this case, many of these achievements are intended to be effortlessly acquired because their purpose is to make the player aware of entire categories of similar achievements to be earned.

There is another use of these achievements that hasn't been mentioned. If you look at a lot of games with these achievements, you'll see that for most of them, the percentage of players who have completed them is significantly less than 100%. This shows that many people who own the game never played it, or quit soon after starting, maybe even just launching the game at most. Such as a result, this achievements serve as the baseline for comparing the completion percentages on all the other achievements for a game. They are extremely useful when gathering statistics about games.