Playstation Deals, PS Plus games, and Discussion

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psunami

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Thanks to Frisky for all of the hard work that he put in for the previous deals threads!

Feel free to post here about the newest Playstation deals, PS Plus games, and discussions about the previously mentioned items.

Official PlayStation™Store US

March 2024 games (available on March 5th):

PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium | Game Catalog

March 2024 games (available on March 19th):

PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium | Game Catalog
PlayStation Premium | Classics
 
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Freeze Time said:
I wish they actually were worth something like Microsofts achievements. MS pays you to play games on their system. I think Sony used to do kind of the same thing with Trophies but stopped. Damn shame.
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Yep, killing trophy passes, in fact gimping their reward's system entirely, was one of the many missteps by Sony in recent years.

 
Rumor also is that trophies are optional and up to the dev to add. So wouldn’t expect all of the retro games to have them.
 
awp said:
Rumor also is that trophies are optional and up to the dev to add. So wouldn’t expect all of the retro games to have them.
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If the intention is for first-party games to prioritize adding them, I would love for The Legend of Dragoon to get trophies.

 
awp said:
Rumor also is that trophies are optional and up to the dev to add. So wouldn’t expect all of the retro games to have them.
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They kind of have to be, right? The reason MS didn't add achievements to Original Xbox games is because you would need to reprogram them to track stuff like that.

 
I hate how the Mega Man X Legacy collections always go on sale for $10 each or $20 for both. I’ve been waiting for the combo to go to $15 but it refuses to. So I’ve been putting my GS monthly $5 rewards towards $10 psn credits to brute force them into a better sale. This is how I choose to rationalize it anyway. So from this sale I finally picked up MM X 1/2 and Zero/ZX for $20+ tax out of pocket
 
Tyrok said:
They kind of have to be, right? The reason MS didn't add achievements to Original Xbox games is because you would need to reprogram them to track stuff like that.
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You don't have to reprogram the games themselves exactly, but it does require additional work. It requires a software layer running that monitors code execution for certain events. When detected, it grants an associated achievement. Emulators like Retroarch have coded in these features under some circumstances. Check out: https://retroachievements.org/

It's pretty awesome.

I can give a technical example. When you die, this is what it looks like in FF7:
final-fantasy-vii-main-menu-ps1.900x.jpg


If they wanted to award an achievement for this in FF7, they would simply add in something to the software layer that looks for that image being loaded and reward the achievement when it is. It's just a matter of coming up with cases that are unique to the scenario you want to reward. It's not very hard to do and doesn't require you to tinker with source code.

 
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jsivley said:
I hate how the Mega Man X Legacy collections always go on sale for $10 each or $20 for both. I’ve been waiting for the combo to go to $15 but it refuses to. So I’ve been putting my GS monthly $5 rewards towards $10 psn credits to brute force them into a better sale. This is how I choose to rationalize it anyway. So from this sale I finally picked up MM X 1/2 and Zero/ZX for $20+ tax out of pocket
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I feel your pain. I've been waiting for Zero/ZX to go lower than $20 but it never does. On any platform.
 
Emulation systems like RetroArch have an achievement system built for it for a while bunch of different emulators. That requires no reprogramming at all so I'm sure Sony can figure it out too
 
ProfessorStotch said:
Emulation systems like RetroArch have an achievement system built for it for a while bunch of different emulators. That requires no reprogramming at all so I'm sure Sony can figure it out too
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It's not that simple. In order to make anything more than just generic achievements you have to do it custom, game by game, looking at the code. Many times the sorts of things that give achievements aren't even tracked in a game (like why would a dev keep track of how many times you petted the dog in Hades if you didn't have a payoff?). And the more complex the task, the more you have to keep track of. And store in save files - that's the big issue with emulation layer achievements, you can't store sub-achievement progress without altering the save file format or doing another solution.

 
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defpally said:
It's not that simple. In order to make anything more than just generic achievements you have to do it custom, game by game, looking at the code. Many times the sorts of things that give achievements aren't even tracked in a game (like why would a dev keep track of how many times you petted the dog in Hades if you didn't have a payoff?). And the more complex the task, the more you have to keep track of. And store in save files - that's the big issue with emulation layer achievements, you can't store sub-achievement progress without altering the save file format or doing another solution.
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It will probably be real generic achievments like "You played the game for 5 minutes" or some nonsense. I guess it really does not matter in the end. I feel like achievments/trophy's are kind of pointless anymore. I don't have the time to spend tracking down what I need to do to 100% a game's "achiievements". I used to find it fun on the 360 back in the day. I spent a lot of time 100%ing the achievments in Borderlands and Borderlands 2. Now I only really go for them to get the daily 50 MS rewards points and weekly quests.

Having said all that I can see why some people still find it rewarding. Like I said there was a time I found it to be fun. I used to have a lot more time to play video games back in the early 2010's plus I was playing online with friends a lot back then. Now I am pretty much a solo video gamer.

 
Got the LEGO Tallneck set from Horizon Forbidden West as my first LEGO set I've paid for. I'm enjoying it so far after getting the first two bags done so far:

FTTOQFXXEAE1OG7.jpg

 
defpally said:
It's not that simple. In order to make anything more than just generic achievements you have to do it custom, game by game, looking at the code. Many times the sorts of things that give achievements aren't even tracked in a game (like why would a dev keep track of how many times you petted the dog in Hades if you didn't have a payoff?). And the more complex the task, the more you have to keep track of. And store in save files - that's the big issue with emulation layer achievements, you can't store sub-achievement progress without altering the save file format or doing another solution.
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I think you've made a little error here. Sure, the game itself could track that you've pat a dog 50 times, but you can just as easily track that in the achievement file itself (which exists to store whether or not you got them on Sony's server).

Let's say animation X is played every time you pat a dog; just increment a binary variable in the achievement file by 1 every time that animation appears. When it hits a certain value, you display that the achievement was attained.

This stuff is a lot easier than people think. You literally don't need to mess with the game's programming or save files to do it. Achivements are very simple to implement. They do have to be done game by game, but it's pretty easy to monitor what files a game is accessing while it's running and set up triggers to go off in certain moments. A single dev can probably implement that in a month--less if the game has good documentation.

 
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Das_Regal said:
I think you've made a little error here. Sure, the game itself could track that you've pat a dog 50 times, but you can just as easily track that in the achievement file itself (which exists to store whether or not you got them on Sony's server).

Let's say animation X is played every time you pat a dog; just increment a binary variable in the achievement file by 1 every time that animation appears. When it hits a certain value, you display that the achievement was attained.

This stuff is a lot easier than people think. You literally don't need to mess with the game's programming or save files to do it. Achivements are very simple to implement. They do have to be done game by game, but it's pretty easy to monitor what files a game is accessing while it's running and set up triggers to go off in certain moments. A single dev can probably implement that in a month--less if the game has good documentation.
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Even if you do trigger off file access, there is no generic file type that represents a specific animation. You have to know this file represents this activity. And even then, files are not that specific, you don't have one file per animation, so there is no way to know what specific animation is being used simply by file access. And knowing what part of what file is being used is a very specific thing per game. Then you add in files and data are often replicated to speed access times and loading. Just because you access X file with Y animation does not mean that is the only place it exists or is accessed. I think you are vastly underestimating the difficulty of adding interesting and desirable trophy support.

Even using your formula, a developer per game for a month is a very significant investment. I'll assure you that us developers are not cheap, particularly if you want someone to do the job right.

 
defpally said:
Even if you do trigger off file access, there is no generic file type that represents a specific animation. You have to know this file represents this activity. And even then, files are not that specific, you don't have one file per animation, so there is no way to know what specific animation is being used simply by file access. And knowing what part of what file is being used is a very specific thing per game. Then you add in files and data are often replicated to speed access times and loading. Just because you access X file with Y animation does not mean that is the only place it exists or is accessed. I think you are vastly underestimating the difficulty of adding interesting and desirable trophy support.

Even using your formula, a developer per game for a month is a very significant investment. I'll assure you that us developers are not cheap, particularly if you want someone to do the job right. It wouldn't surprise me if Bend is adding trophies to increase interest in returning to the franchise for an in development sequel for PS5.
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And with that news, I just remembered to redeem my 3 month PS Now code.   Let's hope it all works out when PS+ Chalupa Supreme kicks in

 
AoA said:
And with that news, I just remembered to redeem my 3 month PS Now code. Let's hope it all works out when PS+ Chalupa Supreme kicks in
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I have a 1 month code I will use around the 7th or so. It's like 4 years old so I am curious if it will even work. Doesn't say it expires anywhere though so I should be good.

 
I currently have plus, but not Now.  If I bought a month of Now, could I claim it now, or could I claim it after launch?  I want to make sure I completely understand before I purchase a month code.  Thanks a bunch guys!

 
Vindicated30.6 said:
I've heard good things about Wild Arms. I got a Playstation Classic at a pawn shop recenty and Wild Arms 3 was on there.
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wa1 is interesting but I couldn't figure out how to advance forward with the story on the girls route. I assume since they allow you to switch between the 3 protagonists that I needed to go further in the other 2 characters or something.

2 is more straight forward and minus navigating due to some sections of the world map being linear one way paths. The bomb collar guys specifically. I liked it the most out of the 3 since it had more characters than the others and I didn't find one I disliked. Also unlike 3 it doesn't use the shitty line group system that dq8, okage and other games do where you can't target all enemies for a target all spell or skill.

3 is super long, has really clunky 3d platforming like most older games. But for the most part it and the bad camera angles were negligible. Minus the rising and sinking platforms one. That was terrible and nearly made me quit the game. The biggest issue for me with 3 is how you have to waste turns to charge your gauge so you can attack early on. Since the starting amount is based on characters levels iirc. Its animation speed and turn length are also on the longer side than I would like. Virginia is overly preachy and it gets annoying listening to her constantly on her soap box the near entire game. She's similar to Illana Laluna from symbionic titan in that regard. Or Snow Villars going on about being a hero from ff13.

Character balance was also pretty poor in 3. since Virginias main uses are healing or using target all (doesn't always work since enemies are in groups so outside summons you can't always target all) items skill specific to her and her high speed. Gallows is your main mage since he's the only one with a target all version for magic. Like virginia it doesn't always work. Gallows is super slow though so that hurts him significantly. Clive is your main attacker since he has very high attack power. But he's super slow as well. Jet is the odd one out since he has high speed close to virginias and all his stats are otherwise balanced making him a jack of trades master of none.

3 suffers from the target all issue games like dq8 and okage have. Only a select few things actually have target all like summons in wild arms 3, overdrive buff thing from ari in okage, I think a boomerang attack in dq8. So it makes battles more tedious just because of that and how limited you are in doing so.

 
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I think the dream might be dead for me on the classic games. Awfully sparse PS1 selection to start with, and it's kind of lame that they're pushing a classic tier when most of the games are native PS4 ports that already existed.
 
SIX min WHISTLE said:
I think the dream might be dead for me on the classic games. Awfully sparse PS1 selection to start with, and it's kind of lame that they're pushing a classic tier when most of the games are native PS4 ports that already existed.
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Yeah, that’s one thing that bothers me from the Asia list is that there are a bunch of PS4 games like Borderlands Handsome Collection in the Premium tier. That is NOT what I want to pay more for when they’re claiming Premium is supposed to have retro classics.
 
awp said:
Ouch. Sites reporting that some of the PS1 games are the PAL versions and not NTSC.
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This could be a disaster, did they not see the biggest complaint about the PS1 Classic after the line up was the PAL ISOs?

I get that it's like due to the extra languages, but it seems the best solution would be to make both regions available. I assume they're already making NTSC-J versions for Japan at least.
 
SIX min WHISTLE said:
This could be a disaster, did they not see the biggest complaint about the PS1 Classic after the line up was the PAL ISOs?

I get that it's like due to the extra languages, but it seems the best solution would be to make both regions available. I assume they're already making NTSC-J versions for Japan at least.
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Sounds like there’s a mix of PAL and NTSC. But, yeah, I don’t know why they are bothering with any PAL after the PS Classic got reamed for it.

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2022/05/oh-no-some-ps1-games-on-ps5-ps4-look-to-be-pal-50hz-versions
 
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