What Do You Mean It's Not Cosmetic?

It's a Video Game Reward. It looks like a Cosmetic Award, it's awarded like a Cosmetic Award, it gives points like a Cosmetic Award, except it is not cosmetic, it actually does something to affect gameplay.

Usually such achievements do not influence gameplay immediately and per se, but instead unlock content for later use.

See also Bragging Rights Reward, And Your Reward Is Clothes.

Examples of What Do You Mean It's Not Cosmetic? include:

• Bloodline Champions has achievements that give Blood Coins, the main in-game resource, that can be later used to unlock characters. Grinding the easiest ones is usually recommended for new players.
• Kongregate's main feature is an API that allows you get achievements for pre-existing flash games. Achievements are regularly selected for challenges that, if completed, give you a card for Kongai, the site's iconic CCG.
  • After they merged with Game Stop, this was intensified—now a random achievement each day gives you points for the customer loyalty program.
• Both of the Mass Effect games features a selection of Achievements (and later Trophies) with immediate and potent effects, such as increased XP-gain, boosted powers, access to new abilities, or any number of other benefits.
• In Fallout: New Vegas, there are challenges a player can do which are usually skill or weapon-based(kill enemies X times with a particular weapon, use a certain item x times, etc.). When these challenges are completed, you'll actually get minor perks.
  • And most of the Play Station 3 / 360 / Steam achievements are tied to either the above challenges or major quests, so when you hear that bleep, you're probably getting a big pile of Experience Points, too.
• World of Warcraft's achievement-gained mounts can qualify as this, as they prevent you from having to buy a fast mount if you haven't already, and the +310% speed ones prevent you from having to buy the last flying rank. The guild achievements also provide numerous perks, such as +EXP items to give to alts or convenient groupwide buff items.
• When Team Fortress 2 first released alternative weapons, the only way to get them was to complete various achievements for the class in question to unlock them (you can still do so, but since the items now Randomly Drops and you can now trade, craft, or just buy them it's somewhat redundant).
  • Hey, do you remember those Nice Hats? Well some of them fit with sets, and some of those sets, once completed, give you stat boosts.
• In Free Space completing secondary objectives and such not only awards you with points and medals, but also sometimes gives bonus ships.
• A very subtle example is found in the World in Conflict multiplayer mode. As you ramp up your scores, you will soon receive a Rank Up or ten. While your fancy online rank insignia are pretty much useless in hard gameplay terms, they give you an unexpected but significant "soft" bonus in the extremely teamwork-oriented online mode of the game: on public servers, random players are much more inclined to follow a Colonel or General's orders, giving your side a higher degree of coordination and team play which translates into a significant advantage over a largely disorganized opponent.
  • League of Legends has alternate champion models that can be unlocked for real cash. While having no impact on gameplay (except for a certain Annie skin that makes the "stun ready" particle hard to see), when you are on a team with zero skinned characters and the enemy team has three or four, you pretty much assume you will lose.
• Gotcha Force features palette swaps of various borgs. Being toys and all, different colors give different stats.Gold and Silver borgs in particular.
• Konami Man, Twin Bee and Vic Viper in Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin are gotten as rewards from beating the game on Hard difficulty with a level cap of 1, 25 and 50, respectively: their description only reads "5000 points", but each of them also gives a permanent 50 point bonus to STR, INT and LCK, respectively.
• Collecting Marks Of The Gods in Outland mainly unlocks some concept art for the game, but they also give you the ability to cling to walls longer, mark all treasure urns on your map and double the strenght of your melee attacks if you collect enough of them.
• LittleBigPlanet has collectible stickers, which need to be pasted on cardboard object in the levels to activate events.
• In I Miss the Sunrise, merits will grant slight bonuses to the Personal and Battle Trust (which affect damage and accuracy) of all allies, including ones not obtained yet.
• Many MMORPGs nowadays attach small stat bonuses to their Titles. Developers occasionally get carried away.
  • A special mention goes out to Vindictus, whose titles grant stat boosts whether they have been equipped or not. It might be worth going around and kicking 100 gnolls to death, if it will give you +1 STR.