I don't know, that's not what I said.

well you said that The Witcher has a great story and should be played for that reason (which seems slightly totalitarian, i mean why should i not play it for its great slash/gore physics or because i love nudity in games ?).
The fact that "cheapens" the experience i leave up to people to be judged, but to me it doesn't.

And let me add a recent example with this.

Dear Esther was a game that initially did not have achievements.
Hell, even the devs didn't include achievements, just cause they feared they'd ruin the immersion (source for that is their own blog in the Chinese Room site. I think it was the article that talked about Far Cry 4 achievements etc).
And when i played it back in 2012 i had tears in my eyes (so you can say i was immersed or a faggot lol).

But here we are now, and they released Dear Esther : Landmark Edition.
It had achievements alright. And i was afraid that it might've ruined the immersion.
So you know what? I played it again. The result? I was touched again and i cried again. Even though i remembered the story after 4 years and therefore the first impact was not destined to be as huge.

So yeah, please let us have a version with achievements. It doesn't ruin the immersion for everyone, and don't tell us what we can feel and can't feel. Cheers!

Edit : To explain the "slightly totalitarian stuff". The general vibe of your post seemed kind of like that not just the "advice" to play the game for it's characters and story. "I only want to play this for the story, so everyone else should play it for it too. No diversions from the story and therefore no achievements". y'know

What? When? I am missing happenings, lately i don't stay inside here as long as i used to... :O

What? For a lot of people they can provide motivation to play the game again, possibly in a different way, or to focus on something else rather than just getting to the ending. That's replay value.

No they don't. Once you've got the achievements, you've got them, however you play the game. Playing again to get the same achievements is an exercise in idiocy.

So you're also saying that playing a game that has a great story, great lines, and great action is also stupid, since you generally remember the ending, and in the end you get nothing new from it?

Don't put words into my mouth. That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that it is not achievements that add to replay-ability. If a game is good people will replay it. If it's bad, they won't.

My misgivings with the game are actually less about the lack of cheevos and more about the lack of gamepad support. I ordinarily have no problem with sitting down in front of a monitor and playing with mouse & keyboard but given that I'm working a lot right now and my work involves sitting at a desk, concentrating hard with a mouse & keyboard, I'm not all that keen to be sat at a desk when I'm supposed to be relaxing, so I prefer to have the PC running on the TV with a controller in hand.

ok, sorry for that. But let me give another example.

The game is Duke Nukem 3D : Megaton Edition. So you all know it i guess. It was a good game and the main game (atomic Edition) had many Easter Eggs.
On the Megaton Edition there's an achievement to find certain Easter Eggs.
Now i finished the game back in the day, but having that achievement made me play some maps again and also had my laughs with the easter eggs.

Of course achievements do not only let you find such trivial stuff, but also make you understand and start using mechanics of the gameplay for a certain game.
For example i finished Double Dragon : Neon in normal difficulty, but didn't know of the actual magic skills that you can use. By finishing the achievements i was a Double Dragon pro and learned all the mechanics of the game.

Of course no one is inclined to become a pro, that's why you can just not care about achievements. They're optional aren't they?
Escpecially in GOG where you can either play on Galaxy or just download the exe installation file.

I used to hate achievements but over the years I've come to accept them for what they are - optional stuff to do in a video game. All games are pointless so doing something for an achievement is no more or less stupid than doing anything else in a game. It's all frivolous fun. But chievos can work kinda like side missions in an RPG in that they can give you extra stuff to do.

Not playing a game because it doesn't have chievos is kinda dumb but hating on people that wants some fun in games (and goes for the chievos) that are supposed to be fun is also dumb.

I just wish Steam would let you disable achievements like PSN does.

Which is exactly what I said: "they're there to artificially extend the perceived game length". Much like fetch quests.

And some people enjoy chasing them - thus they add value.

Not to 'the game' they don't. Put achievements into a really crap game and see if people will "chase them". The achievements themselves add nothing to the game, they only stoke certain obsessive behaviours.

Legitimate game mechanics / content versus "bad" game extenders, that's a false dichotomy right there.