Can we relegate threads about shovelware to some sort of sub-section?

[ThatMuttGuy]

8 minutes ago, dovah said:

 

 

?Because what we’re doing is going after game developers essentially for what we don’t like about what they pour their hearts and souls into - making games - and how they make a living.

 

‘The trophies are too easy, wahhh wah

The trophies are too hard (my personal favorite) wah wah

Too many glitches, too many iterations, too much grind, too many stacks, too many collectibles, on and on and on and on’

 

And on that note I don’t blame Bethesda for hightailing it outta playstation after all that’s been said here about their products. I mean, remember these game studios are run by HUMANS like you and me. 

 

It boils my blood to see how people think they can just bash and hate on companies, institutions, politicians, celebrities, leaderboard scalers, trophy hunters, topic creators... WHOEVER! As though they were not real and are not affected by the way they are treated by people on the internet.

 

This is not just talk. It has consequences.

 

Mate, no heart or soul was put into Breakthrough Gaming "games" at all. The sooner they quit making games, the better imo.

[Dr_Mayus]

20 hours ago, djb5f said:

 

I do think stacking, especially region stacking is fake and rather silly, but again harmless.  If you are leaderboard chasing in the first place, you are probably losing at life.  My 2 cents ?
 

 

Sort of harmless.

 

Horse DLC was harmless until DLC took over gaming. Microtransactions were harmless until they took over. Season Passes were harmless until they took over.

 

So people might not think cheap easy plats are harmful but just wait a bit and see if developers start to see this and mimic. It is already happening with trophy lists being made easier and easier for games (see the new ratchet game)

9 minutes ago, ThatMuttGuy said:

 

Mate, no heart or soul was put into Breakthrough Gaming "games" at all. The sooner they quit making games, the better imo.

I always think back to the XBLIG games that Supergreatfriend used to review. For the most part there was no heart and soul to these things. Just quick garbage put together for a quick buck. Now these developers can put trophies on their games to increase sales.

 

 

[Deadly_Ha_Ha]

46 minutes ago, dovah said:

 

 

This is not just talk. It has consequences.

They sell a product. If the product is bad then they hear about it. And anyway, Breakthrough seems to be doing just fine despite this heartless, soulless complaining. This is the internet by the way, and we're all #gamers so if you think any curbing of opinions is likely then you're out of your mind

[MD_91]

55 minutes ago, dovah said:

And on that note I don’t blame Bethesda for hightailing it outta playstation after all that’s been said here about their products. I mean, remember these game studios are run by HUMANS like you and me. 

 

Not sure if serious 

[Deadly_Ha_Ha]

Yeah was I successfully trolled or was that guy serious

[Thrillhelm]

4 hours ago, AJ_-_808 said:

 

How is it flawed?  Why should a trophy that more than half the people have obtained (thus, note being anything close to rare) be given value on a leaderboard that tracks rarity? 

 

You understand that as more and more people obtain said trophy, it becomes less and less valuable, right? Technically, you could think of it as having a value of .000000001, or pretty much 0.

 

In any case, it's far less flawed than a board that assigns the same value to a 1 minute platinum as it does to a 100 hour platinum.

 

 

In my opinion, region and platform autopops (including ps4 --> ps5 autopops, thanks Sony) have ruined the current leaderboard and one that has a scaling value would be more interesting.

Why making a cut at all? Besides that people could manipulate rarities by playing a game on one or more alternate accounts, getting one trophy, and that lowers the overall rarity or said games trophies.

 

And rarity doesnt mean a game is harder than the other. If it's on PS Plus the rarity gets significantly lower. If its an overall easy game but one trophy demands a long grind (like PS4's Grid for example), the platinum will be rare or ultra-rare. Great achievement there.

 

Then again rarity hunters go full elitism here and no matter how good a game is, it is valued by the trophy rarity. Why helping each other getting trophies when its raising the rarity?

[F1rstinFlight]

43 minutes ago, dovah said:

 

Well not normally, but now yeah, Mmm hmm

 

Bethesda in particular decided to come over from the PC where they began, to share their massive buggy genius masterpieces with consoles that were not so equipped to deal with them such as PS3 and eventually even the Switch.

 

Then they were endlessly mocked for their efforts and imperfections. Thats my take.

 

So they go back to their ‘country of origin’ for the bottom line lucrative offer, thinking, PS didn’t appreciate us anyway. Everybody’s happy, right? Well, not those of us who enjoyed playing their games on Playstation too... 

 

Yes it’s the internet, yes we’re going to discuss our opinions, but we could tone it down and put ourselves in others’ shoes to consider the effects that our brilliant witty words are having. Thats all.

 

And God forbid that unskilled lowlifes like myself should be able to get ALL the trophies out of ANY of the fun games I actually have time to play.

You know I said I wasn't going to comment anymore but then you popped in here and I just couldn't help myself. I love the direction the thread has gone since I stopped posting and that's all I'll say on that matter before chiming in and bowing out again. But this comment is the single most ignorant thing anyone on this entire thread has said yet has nothing to do with our niche hobby of trophy hunting, it essentially equates to a conspiracy theory around acquisitions in the video game industry. You said you were being serious and I'm going to take you at your word (even though a troll would definitely say that too ?).

 

You obviously have no understanding of the scale of the video game industry, basic market economics, game development, publishing, or marketing. Actually, you probably know very little about the real world at all to honestly believe something like that. The trophy hunting community and even the larger PlayStation community complaining about Bethesda games and turning Todd Howard into a meme had absolutely no impact on this deal. Literally not even an unconscious consideration by a single person involved in the entire negotiation process. Beyond that, you obviously don't even understand that Todd Howard is the executive of Bethesda Game Studios, but this deal was between ZeniMax Media (which owns both Bethesda Game Studios and the publisher, Bethesda Softworks) and Microsoft. I highly doubt Todd Howard personally had any part in the negotiations other than maybe giving his thoughts to the president of ZeniMax Media in some sort of informal conversation. And Todd Howard harbors no ill-will toward the PlayStation community anyways.

 

I think the thing we should take away from this is that people on the internet should really try to at least read something on an issue to have some basic understanding of important facts before spouting their opinions on forums as something people should take seriously. I recently came across a quote from a little-known academic and I'll share it here: "conspiracy theories are especially useful for people who have trouble understanding complicated, multifaceted world events."

[Walt the Dog]

16 minutes ago, dovah said:

I make no claims to represent any facts in the gaming industry and made it clear that what I said was my take, only to prove a point.

If your claims are not based in reality, they prove nothing. By that logic, I could claim that the Zenimax acquisition occurred because PSNProfiles doesn't count all game owners for DLC trophy rarities and that this made Todd Howard sad because Skyrim DLC trophies aren't as rare as they could be, so PSNProfiles should count all game owners towards DLC trophy rarities ASAP before we see more companies fleeing to Microsoft over this grave mistake.

[AJ_-_808]

1 hour ago, Thrillhelm said:

Why making a cut at all? Besides that people could manipulate rarities by playing a game on one or more alternate accounts, getting one trophy, and that lowers the overall rarity or said games trophies.

 

And rarity doesnt mean a game is harder than the other. If it's on PS Plus the rarity gets significantly lower. If its an overall easy game but one trophy demands a long grind (like PS4's Grid for example), the platinum will be rare or ultra-rare. Great achievement there.

 

Why make a cut off point on a leaderboard with the goal of being a competition for rarity vs quantity?  At this point, I can only hazard a guess that you're purposely being obstinate. 

 

Define rare, and then kindly explain how something every one of two people has is rare.

 

No one is equating rare with difficult except for you, just now.  The proposed board has nothing to do with difficulty, it's just a way to build a separate competition away from the low reaching fruit.  

 

You balk at a trophy that's rare because it's grindy.  Obviously, the proposed board isnt for you.

 

"Great achievement there"

Same can be said of someone stacking the same drivel 3+ times, so I wouldn't try to be high and mighty over someone's grindy trophy.

 

Edited July 7, 2021 by AJ_-_808

[HoorayForTyler]

3 hours ago, ThatMuttGuy said:

Mate, no heart or soul was put into Breakthrough Gaming "games" at all. The sooner they quit making games, the better imo.

Couldn’t agree more. 

[Deadly_Ha_Ha]

5 minutes ago, dovah said:

Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnne

 

and btw, good luck with solving all your 'shovelware', rarity, and leaderboard problems. Cya!

Bye

[scemopagliaccioh]

*Bear in mind, this message takes into consideration that the sites will re-activate *
I think the problem of trophy addiction is born out of centralised importance that the “normal” trophy values show, I can easily see someone buying a PSVR with the only desire to earn easy ultra rares, or in the case of psnt, who gives a very high value to DLCs, buying all kinds of DLCs, and said trophies would still remain rare, since the number of people doing this  would still be low, like the Rata/Break spammers, but if we remain  passive about it, nothing will change, hence I believe we shouldn’t stop at a rarity leaderboard, other sites already have other options, who I believe PSNP could implement much better.

Take the game series, for example, it shows you your progress or the progress of others in a very basic way,  red if you don’t have a single 100%, green for at least 1, blue if you have all of the 100% of a stage, that’s all well and good but, it doesn’t cover people that go for the platinum only, and what about people that are close to 100% it? They still are on par  with those that didn’t even start a single game.

TT circles around this, by giving every trophy a point value system based on their rarity, so the total score a user gets is based on every single trophy they earned, rather than only the 100%, making competition with others more vivid and also accessible.

Psnp could use the formula made in that god forsaken thread for the rarity board to base the point system, perhaps also toggle the option to  check the “original” point value system Sony gave it to us, to make naysayers happy.

We could also expand with a completionist leaderboard, which only counts the 100% in games, for those that love having high completion rates or… buying…  DLCs… perhaps also a ladder for Developers and/or publishers, one that does not take into account clones, be it region or system, several for types of game such as rpg, fps etc and so on.
Point being, we cannot put a gun  to an addict and stop him for doing this shit, but we can create several  types of competitions (whether by leaderboard or friend groups)   so that the brain doesn’t focus obsessively on a single type, bringing in devs that  see that, and want to abuse said situation.

Edited July 7, 2021 by scemopagliaccioh

[steel6burgh]

8 hours ago, AJ_-_808 said:

 

How is it flawed?  Why should a trophy that more than half the people have obtained (thus, note being anything close to rare) be given value on a leaderboard that tracks rarity? 

 

You understand that as more and more people obtain said trophy, it becomes less and less valuable, right? Technically, you could think of it as having a value of .000000001, or pretty much 0.

 

In any case, it's far less flawed than a board that assigns the same value to a 1 minute platinum as it does to a 100 hour platinum.

 

 

In my opinion, region and platform autopops (including ps4 --> ps5 autopops, thanks Sony) have ruined the current leaderboard and one that has a scaling value would be more interesting.

you made a excellent point here Its not even a comparison how flawed the current system is. like I say the current system is outdated it wasn't designed with ratalaka and breakthrough gaming in mind.

[AJ_Radio]

8 hours ago, sepheroithisgod said:

Since the thread has derailed, guess I'll share my own thoughts on this.

 

Let me start off by saying that EZPZ/Shovelware games are not necessarily bad games. Anytime I refer to them as trash, it's purely from a trophy perspective, on the flip side, having an extremely rare trophy list does not make it a good game, but there is one key difference:

 

One takes effort and the other doesn't. This is a fact.

 

Let's face it, we are here because in one way or another we all like trophies and there are plenty of ways to go about it. It's the same feeling as if a kid practiced every day for a sport, but doesn't get the position because another child's dad decided to sponsor the team.

 

One put effort and got cucked, while the other just got the spot due to money.

 

A rarity leaderboard fixes this problem for the people that feel like trophy hunting was about actually accomplishing a task. There is nothing special about a trophy that 99% achieve that give it a try. There is nothing special about a trophy where 50% of people that give it a try get it.

 

That said, Sony chose to call trophies in the 20-50% range "Uncommon," which is my understanding of why 50% was chosen as an arbitrary cut-off point.

 

Does this eliminate great games? Yes, but that's not the point of a rarity leader board. The point is to exclude those that don't take effort or anyone can achieve. In fact, there's an entire thread dedicated to the new Ratchet & Clank game because the plat is such a joke (still a great game).

 

Having multiple leaderboards just gives people more choice, if your not a fan of the filter, stick to the main one, there's no good argument against a rarity leaderboard.

 

More choice is always a good thing.

 

Probably the single best response in this entire thread. 
 

I honestly have no real words to say on this thread, since everyone has already said what I wanted to say. 
 

7 hours ago, turniplord said:

I hate the term "shovelware", people use it to describe games 'they' don't like these days, rather than the meaning it had a few generations ago.

As such, why should someone be allowed to deem a game as being trash, garbage, 'shovelware', or crap? A game you may think is pants could be fun for someone else. I personally enjoyed My Name is Mayo as it had a fun narrative, could be completed fairly fast and entertained me. Would I say it's 'shovelware'? No. Yet you might. 

Shovelware is a term that originated from Steam releasing a bunch of garbage starting back in 2012 - 2014 or so. It is absolute bottom of the barrel crap that I feel mocks video games more than it represents video games. 
 

Breakthrough Gaming Arcade is shovelware. It exists to sell easy trophies. There is no redeeming value with Breakthrough. 
 

For Ratalaika, there are a handful of fun retro style games. But they helped start the EZPZ platinum train with numerous stacks. 
 

You know what would be great? Putting back the statistic for average trophy rarity on the front page of people’s trophy profiles.

[agorazUHD]

6 minutes ago, AJ_Radio said:

You know what would be great? Putting back the statistic for average trophy rarity on the front page of people’s trophy profiles.

 

Absolutely. I forgot to mention this in my posts before, but you got it right on. Way back when, this website used to have the average rarity of a person's collection right next to their completion percentage on their main PSN profile page. Why did they change it? I think it's actually a better stat to have on there than the daily trophy average rate (which barely changes).

[zid2016]

5 minutes ago, agorazUHD said:

 

Absolutely. I forgot to mention this in my posts before, but you got it right on. Way back when, this website used to have the average rarity of a person's collection right next to their completion percentage on their main PSN profile page. Why did they change it? I think it's actually a better stat to have on there than the daily trophy average rate (which barely changes).

It's just one click away in the stats tab. Maybe give a option to users to include what percentages they want to display on the profile view.

[agorazUHD]

Just now, zid2016 said:

It's just one click away in the stats tab. Maybe give a option to users to include what percentages they want to display on the profile view.

 

I know it's in there, but what I'm saying is why did it change in the first place?

 

That is a good point though, a little customization of stats can go a long way for this site I would think.

[Thrillhelm]

2 hours ago, AJ_-_808 said:

 

Why make a cut off point on a leaderboard with the goal of being a competition for rarity vs quantity?  At this point, I can only hazard a guess that you're purposely being obstinate. 

 

Define rare, and then kindly explain how something every one of two people has is rare.

 

No one is equating rare with difficult except for you, just now.  The proposed board has nothing to do with difficulty, it's just a way to build a separate competition away from the low reaching fruit.  

 

You balk at a trophy that's rare because it's grindy.  Obviously, the proposed board isnt for you.

 

"Great achievement there"

Same can be said of someone stacking the same drivel 3+ times, so I wouldn't try to be high and mighty over someone's grindy trophy.

 

Well the rarity board would only go for the numbers, no matter how that rarity is achieved.

 

Really sucks that you have to use personal attacks and accusations against me.  I'm not against the rarity leaderboard (why should I, I am sure I would hold at least a rank in the 1000s with good chances to climb higher, pretty sure the gap between me and most people who stat shame me would be smaller) and I am defintely not obstinate.

 

A rarity leaderboard needs to have more thought put in and will always be victim to factors outside of the difficulty of the game. PS Plus release influences rarity, as well as number of owners, two things no user can influence.

 

Imagine a leaderboard where great games get ignored or not played because of their wrong trophy percentage, thats excluding tons of games where at least the current leaderboard manages to include all trophies to count. People want rarity leaderboards, fine. What a great leaderboard where Ghost of Tsushima adds nothing to it but Kung Fu Panda Showdown of Legends' artificial rarity does. 

[DeepEyes7]

3 minutes ago, Thrillhelm said:

Imagine a leaderboard where great games get ignored or not played because of their wrong trophy percentage, thats excluding tons of games where at least the current leaderboard manages to include all trophies to count. People want rarity leaderboards, fine. What a great leaderboard where Ghost of Tsushima adds nothing to it but Kung Fu Panda Showdown of Legends' artificial rarity does. 

 

If one game has easy trophies why should it appear on a leaderboard with the intention of reward rare trophies? That doesnt mean that GoT is a bad game, just that the LB isn't fit for that game TROPHIES (nothing else), what you say is that every LB should have some games just because it is a good game... Nobody will replace the actual LB, people is just asking for another one, the actual one will continue being the main one and that will never change because the trophy level system was build in that way, some people think that if someday a rarity LB appears then their hundreds of 5 minute plats will disappear, don't worry that will never happen...

[steel6burgh]

21 minutes ago, Thrillhelm said:

Well the rarity board would only go for the numbers, no matter how that rarity is achieved.

 

Really sucks that you have to use personal attacks and accusations against me.  I'm not against the rarity leaderboard (why should I, I am sure I would hold at least a rank in the 1000s with good chances to climb higher, pretty sure the gap between me and most people who stat shame me would be smaller) and I am defintely not obstinate.

 

A rarity leaderboard needs to have more thought put in and will always be victim to factors outside of the difficulty of the game. PS Plus release influences rarity, as well as number of owners, two things no user can influence.

 

Imagine a leaderboard where great games get ignored or not played because of their wrong trophy percentage, thats excluding tons of games where at least the current leaderboard manages to include all trophies to count. People want rarity leaderboards, fine. What a great leaderboard where Ghost of Tsushima adds nothing to it but Kung Fu Panda Showdown of Legends' artificial rarity does. 

Like people keep telling you the current system is flawed beyond belief awarding the same trophy point for a game that takes 5 minutes versus a game that takes 100 hour or even 300 hours.  Why is it the rarity leaderboard has to be so perfect for you but you don't seem to complain about the current one??? I'm very curious why that is?

 

Also you would absolutely have a decent ranking in the rarity leaderboard i wouldn't deny that you have some good games on your list.  

Edited July 7, 2021 by steel6burgh

[Thrillhelm]

1 minute ago, steel6burgh said:

Like people keep telling you the current system is flawed beyond belief awarding the same trophy point for a game that takes 5 minutes versus a game that takes 100 hour or even 300 hours.  Why is it the rarity leaderboard has to be so perfect for you but you don't seem to complain about the current one??? I'm very curious why that is?

Never said the current one is perfect. But thanks for putting words in my mouth. Just because I got used to the current leaderboard and make the best for me out of it (even when its held against me for no good reason) doesnt mean I say its perfect. 

[mackenzie129]

I'm pro Rarity if it makes the masses happy I personally DGAF about it along with the current one because I won't/dont want to be #1, I just wanted to input that whether we talk about it till the cows come home or not at the end of the day it doesn't really matter they're little PNGs I enjoy getting the ones I like and avoid the ones I don't care for. 

Breakthrough on the other hand is releasing letteral garbage onto the market, there was flash games in the early 2000s that had more heart and soul in them compared to the entire Breakthrough catalog, ET on the Atari had more heart and soul, There's got to be a way for Sony to readjust their standards while still allowing small indie companies to participate in the market. 

[ThatMuttGuy]

1 hour ago, AJ_Radio said:

Shovelware is a term that originated from Steam releasing a bunch of garbage starting back in 2012 - 2014 or so. It is absolute bottom of the barrel crap that I feel mocks video games more than it represents video games. 
 

Breakthrough Gaming Arcade is shovelware. It exists to sell easy trophies. There is no redeeming value with Breakthrough. 
 

For Ratalaika, there are a handful of fun retro style games. But they helped start the EZPZ platinum train with numerous stacks. 
 

You know what would be great? Putting back the statistic for average trophy rarity on the front page of people’s trophy profiles.

 

Not disagreeing with you on the Steam part, but Shovelware as a term goes back further than that. I remember it prominently during the Wii era where a lot of games on the Wii were considered shovelware (games that were trash but still made money due to the huge user base). But it was even around during the PS2 days, and possibly even before then as well.

[DaivRules]

6 minutes ago, ThatMuttGuy said:

 

Not disagreeing with you on the Steam part, but Shovelware as a term goes back further than that. I remember it prominently during the Wii era where a lot of games on the Wii were considered shovelware (games that were trash but still made money due to the huge user base). But it was even around during the PS2 days, and possibly even before then as well.

I first heard shovelware in the mid/end of NES days when there was just an absurd amount of games being produced that had no substance at all. But I’m not even confident that is where it started because I’m fairly certain Atari games right before the video game crash were being called by the same label. 

Any system hangs around long enough and has a low enough barrier to entry is going to experience the same thing.

 

 

[B1rvine]

8 hours ago, ThatMuttGuy said:

Mate, no heart or soul was put into Breakthrough Gaming "games" at all. The sooner they quit making games, the better imo.

 

I dunno man.

 

Aren't these games about teaching the work of the Lord? I'm sure they know the passage of Colossians 3:23 and follow the word when making these games.