Why isn’t auto popping trophies classed as cheating?

[Ich1994-1994]

I some online only games you cannot avoid it. Seems off to label something as cheating that some games force you to do. Also tbh if for you the fact that it’s a „free“ platinum is the problem..in a time with 5min platinums autopopping something that took you 40h to do the first time is not really a fast way to gain trophies

[DrBloodmoney]

I would also just add, that in an age where Breaththrough games release their games one level at a time, each with a five-minute platinum attached, and where a profile can "legitimately" be in the 600-700 platinum range within six month to a year, I think it would be rather disingenuous to start harassing people who decide to auto-pop a second version of their 30 hour A Plague Tale: Innocence or their 50 hour Final Fantasy Remake, or their 100 hour AC:Valhalla.

 

You can't get salty about folks helping themselves to a cheeky second helping of steak, when the entire buffet is stacked to the rafters with junk food for the taking.

They're hardly the ones that are going to eat themselves to death. ?

[sepheroithisgod]

I would be more concerned with games that actually only take 5 minutes to pop all the trophies. This is far more destructive than simply upgrading a version.

 

That said, I do think people have taken the PS4 to PS5 auto pop a little too far.

[Master_Mayhem_]

Gaming shouldn’t be about trophies but it does get a bit addictive once you get into it.

[mega-tallica]

28 minutes ago, Master_Mayhem_ said:

But you didn’t earn 2x platinum trophies. You put the effort in to complete one game but get the trophies for 2. This also devalues the auto popped trophies, meaning an ultra rare/rare trophy get devalued if less people play said and more pop the trophies

 

Why do you care so much about how others play games? It doesn't matter, it's trivial. It doesn't affect you, don't worry about it. Move on. You can use cheats in Uncharted 4 and LL without it disabling trophies which makes a mockery of the Crushing difficulty trophy. That's blatantly cheating, but it's allowed. Why aren't you making a big deal about that if you care so much about earning it the way it was intended? There's no way to know how people earned it unlike the auto-pop trophies so it's not cheating to you? You make no sense. 

 

31 minutes ago, Mori said:

 

Auto-popping just for the sake of auto-popping is stupid and only "artificially inflates" your trophy numbers (as well). People can do whatever they want, but I'll never understand when people buy (new) games just to auto-pop instead of enjoying the games with better graphics/performances. 

 

For example I wonder how many people actually did at least one playthrough of Uncharted 4 / Uncharted LL remaster.

 

That's ridiculous. The games that offer auto-pop have such minor graphical and performance improvements between the PS4 and PS5 version that that is hardly a reason to playthrough the whole game again to go 'oh look, the render distance is a slightly longer and the polygons are a little smoother'. Nobody plays games for that reason, the differences are completely negligible for every game I've played that has both a PS4 and PS5 version. Unnoticeable unless you do a side-by-side comparison. 

 

At the end of the day, I don't care about such trivialness either. Play games however you want to play them, don't worry about what other people think. It doesn't matter. I don't understand how this is even a thread topic. 

[HusKy]

22 minutes ago, willmill97 said:

Would a feature to remove auto-poopers from fastest achievers ever be able to be a thing? @HusKy

 

Is there a reliable way to detect auto popped trophies? I don't know about any.

[Deadly_Ha_Ha]

5 minutes ago, Master_Mayhem_ said:

Gaming shouldn’t be about trophies but it does get a bit addictive once you get into it.

That's because gaming and trophy hunting are not the same thing. They are two different hobbies and when people talk about how you should let people play how they want I feel like the point is kind of being missed. Not saying that's you here, I'm just speaking to a line of thinking I often see when talking about auto-pops and ezpz bullshit game stacking. And anyway, nobody is convincing anyone else to not autopop plats no matter what gets said in the forums so grandstanding about minding your own business isn't any more useful of a thing to say than saying autopopping is stupid and I wish it didn't exist.

[LewNazWar]

I think auto-popping is lame, as someone who's done it in the past (remember when Vita, PS3 and PS4 games would have separate lists and would allow you to upload saves across all 3 versions?) I don't think its something I'd like to do again as it feels cheap.

 

People are free to do as they please of course, but I like having the option to just redo game lists I enjoyed if I ever get the itch to play again.

 

(plus most of the games rereleased on ps5 atm aren't particularly hard anyway, and the ones i know that are don't even autopop like DMC5 lmao)

[ArtMontef]

Autopopping thing in my opinion was implemented in different thing in mind. 

 

It seems like many developers wanted this feature especially during when new gen came around so when you get PS5 you can load your ps4 save file and continue from then forward. And trophy hunters started using it to transfer complete save files.

 

So far I have autopopped one game- Plague Tale Innocence. When game has dual release I usually play PS5 version first and leave PS4 version for when I will want to replay that game in particular. 

 

As to if it should be treated as cheating- I'm with majority here- no. It's a feature provided officially, you already finished the game and put in effort once, which means you could do it second time, it's just the case of saving time ?‍♀️. Like, I platinumed Sackboy The Big Adventure on PS5 first, if I could autopop the last trophy for that last hard Knitted Knight challenge I would do it in a heartbeat (if it worked backwards from ps5 to ps4, but it almost never does).

[willmill97]

15 minutes ago, HusKy said:

 

Is there a reliable way to detect auto popped trophies? I don't know about any.

 

There could at least be a feature possibly where any platinum with a completion time of less than 1 hour just doesn't show up there. But attach it only to certain games where the platinum cannot be earned in that time, so Spiderman MM for example.

[Ich1994-1994]

6 minutes ago, willmill97 said:

 

There could at least be a feature possibly where any platinum with a completion time of less than 1 hour just doesn't show up there. But attach it only to certain games where the platinum cannot be earned in that time, so Spiderman MM for example.

Then people who care about that will leave 1 trophy unearned autopo the rest and wait for 1h with the last trophy to be fastest again with 1h and 1s completion time. And you are back in the same situation

[Sergen]

Autopopping elitists probably haven't found a game that they enjoy and want to upgrade to the newest version when they complain about the rules surrounding it. It's their loss if any game comes from PS4 to PS5 and has an unavoidable autopop but they decide to stick to the PS4 version due to "trophy integrity". However judging by how the elitists are treating other people's trophies there's no way they enjoy their own trophies or any other games outside of trophies. 

[willmill97]

31 minutes ago, Ich1994-1994 said:

Then people who care about that will leave 1 trophy unearned autopo the rest and wait for 1h with the last trophy to be fastest again with 1h and 1s completion time. And you are back in the same situation

 

Well then those petty people won't be invited to my birthday party.

[dieselmanchild]

37 minutes ago, willmill97 said:

 

There could at least be a feature possibly where any platinum with a completion time of less than 1 hour just doesn't show up there. But attach it only to certain games where the platinum cannot be earned in that time, so Spiderman MM for example.

The unfortunate truth is that this sounds like it would be too much work to implement and police, deciding which games are exempt and which aren’t etc.

 

It’s a shame though. I was never really bothered by the auto popping in the beginning because there weren’t that many games that supported it and people auto-popping a stack of a game they already put the effort into completing legitimately didn’t seem like a big deal compared to all the ezpz platinum stacks and other practices that make the leaderboards a joke. But as the PS5 life cycle gets deeper this auto-popping thing is becoming more widespread and it’s clear there are now unintended consequences like ruining the fastest achievers list on many games. 

 

I don’t think anything can be really be done about it though. We’ll just learn to live with it like all the other bs. ?

[JEDLander]

The way I see it, it just evens the score a little bit. I can spend hundreds of hours getting the trophies for Nioh, or Death Stranding or AC Valhalla. Some other guy could spend an afternoon on some 1/10 platinum. By making these bigger games’ trophies essentially worth double, it feels more worth it

[corder]

auto popping trophies is kinda like working smarter not harder. It's not cheating if you've done it once already. 

[JusttJD]

In the end, it's just to each their own.

Just like playing games that take you 1 minutes to platinum, or playing/choosing games purely because of easy trophies.

There is nothing wrong with that, just someone's personal preference and how far they are willing to go for trophies.

 

Personally, I've never liked doing that.

I completed all Borderlands games on the PS3 and PS4, but actually played it from 0% to 100%.

 

But, plenty of people that just want to get as many easy trophies as possible, in as a short time as possible.

Nothing wrong with that. And if that makes people happy and proud, then go for it.

Just as it's someone own choice to not to do it.

 

As far as it corrupting the leaderbords and scores.

That ship has sailed by quite some time ago with all those 1 Minute platinum games.

 

Chasing the leaderbords is fun. Wanting to be the best is also fun.
But doing what you enjoy and chasing your own goals is even more fun.

 

Live and let live.

 

Edited February 1, 2022 by JusttJD

[djb5f]

It’s not cheating but it is another tactic with unintended side effects (messing up trophy and platinum rarities for PS5 titles as well as completion times.

 

Then again, there are so many practices encouraged in the trophy community (online boosting, using exploits or glitches to your favor, even guides to trick the game and dumb down trophy difficulty, etc.) that probably fall in the same category.  Not “cheating” but…

 

Just what it is.  People are thirsty for that ping! ?

[Djevnn]

You must be that one kid in class that reminds teachers that there's a homework

[kdogg_gamer_]

2 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said:

Because there's a difference between sleazy and outright illegal.

 

Auto-popping can't be considered cheating, as it's unavoidable in some games (Hitman 3 for example, but I'm sure there are others,) and it's not obfuscating Sony-implimented policies, it's just using them for an unintended, but still acceptable secondary purpose.

 

There are plenty of things that are not 'standard' practice for earning trophies that are still acceptable within the community - having foreign accounts to get multiple region stacks / playing on "alt" accounts to preserve completion percentages / boosting / share-play...hell, even using guides is not technically "in the spirit" of gaming achievement... but none of those could be considered "cheating".

 

In the end, if you don't like Auto-popping, just don't do it - (personally, I tend to avoid it where I can, though I'm not extremist about it, and didn't get troubled when Hitman 3 decided it was gonna do it for me!) - but outside of this site's specific rules, you can't expect others to be beholden to your own standards.

All you can do is adhere to them yourself, and be happy with that.

 

 

This I totally agree with - I'm always baffled by folks that have a PS5, but would rather play the PS4 version, so they can get double trophies out of it, than play the best version of the game - but then, I don't really see the trophies as the goal, just as the tangential effect. It's the game experience that matters most to me - the trophies are just a record of it 

I do this but I don't autopop. For me its buying a PS4 version but getting two copies which is a great value (usually)! Thus playing both legitimately. 

[DrBloodmoney]

9 minutes ago, kdogg_gamer_ said:

I do this but I don't autopop. For me its buying a PS4 version but getting two copies which is a great value (usually)! Thus playing both legitimately. 

 

oh absolutely - I didn't mean to imply folks shouldn't play both versions if they fancy - after all, some games are so good you want to do them twice, and getting double the trophies is a great bonus for that ☺️

Hell - I'll be firing up the Life is Strange Remaster tonight, and that's a game I already played like 4 times, but I just love it, and getting new trophies will be a nice bonus to this playthrough ?

 

I was referring more to the practice of specifically only playing the PS4 version of multi-console games, then auto popping the PS5 one, thus never actually playing the best version of the game - that always felt odd to me, as you are missing whatever the PS5 benefits are, in favour of a lesser version, just to get a quick double-up.

 

To be honest, I would think there's more joy to be had in just playing the PS5 version, then doing some Breakthrough game to get a second fast plat right afterwards - after all, you're getting the same amount of trophies, but at least the "real" game you are playing gets to be the best version of itself!

Edited February 1, 2022 by DrBloodmoney

[djb5f]

2 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said:

Because there's a difference between sleazy and outright illegal.

 

Auto-popping can't be considered cheating, as it's unavoidable in some games (Hitman 3 for example, but I'm sure there are others,) and it's not obfuscating Sony-implimented policies, it's just using them for an unintended, but still acceptable secondary purpose.

 

There are plenty of things that are not 'standard' practice for earning trophies that are still acceptable within the community - having foreign accounts to get multiple region stacks / playing on "alt" accounts to preserve completion percentages / boosting / share-play...hell, even using guides is not technically "in the spirit" of gaming achievement... but none of those could be considered "cheating".

 

In the end, if you don't like Auto-popping, just don't do it - (personally, I tend to avoid it where I can, though I'm not extremist about it, and didn't get troubled when Hitman 3 decided it was gonna do it for me!) - but outside of this site's specific rules, you can't expect others to be beholden to your own standards.

All you can do is adhere to them yourself, and be happy with that.

 

 

This I totally agree with - I'm always baffled by folks that have a PS5, but would rather play the PS4 version, so they can get double trophies out of it, than play the best version of the game - but then, I don't really see the trophies as the goal, just as the tangential effect. It's the game experience that matters most to me - the trophies are just a record of it 

just saw your post and fully agree, I have the same thoughts.

 

100% agree on your last point.  Those buying games now on PS4 now to only play the inferior version so they can auto-pop is absolutely crazy to me.  

[kdogg_gamer_]

10 minutes ago, DrBloodmoney said:

 

oh absolutely - I didn't mean to imply folks shouldn't play both versions if they fancy - after all, some games are so good you want to do them twice, and getting double the trophies is a great bonus for that 

Hell - I'll be firing up the Life is Strange Remaster tonight, and that's a game I already played like 4 times, but I just love it, and getting new trophies will be a nice bonus to this playthrough 

 

I was referring more to the practice of specifically only playing the PS4 version of multi-console games, then auto popping the PS5 one, thus never actually playing the best version of the game - that always felt odd to me, as you are missing whatever the PS5 benefits are, in favour of a lesser version, just to get a quick double-up.

 

To be honest, I would think there's more joy to be had in just playing the PS5 version, then doing some Breakthrough game to get a second fast plat right afterwards - after all, you're getting the same amount of trophies, but at least the "real" game you are playing gets to be the best version of itself!

Ah! I understand now and I completely agree. People who autopop Uncharted 4 and Lost Legacy are doing themselves a disservice or really any game worth playing once. 

[FawltyPowers]

What a mess this has all turned into.

• Auto-popping trophies
• 6 stacks of one game
• 800 platinums in a year
• Fastest platinum in 17 seconds from autopopping
• Slyde - Fastest platinum in 1 second
• etc, etc......

 

Seriously, I'm past caring now about anything other than my own profile. I really wouldn't waste any energy on it either.

Edited February 1, 2022 by FawltyPowers

[Lonemankane]

I can see it as bad but at the same time it is not. As I autopopped a lot of trophies on games such as borderlands 2 but I still play the game past the plat/ trophies only stopping after I felt it is enough playing such as dead island riptide love the game and still play it. Personally I feel you should trophy hunt the way you like I mean if there is cheats in the game like jak 2 and 3 go for it use them who cares as there is a lot of ways to enjoy trophy hunting as the way I view it is.

 

If your enjoying trophy hunting as a fun hobbie go for it doing it as a kind of job or doing it when the fun is sucked out it is a waste of time then. It is why I refuse to do bad company 1 boosts anymore as I got tried of the grinding over and over again to be too much for me.

 

Edit: I forgot to add that cheating could be seen as bad in earning trophies like using a bug in the game to earn trophies and so on but I feel who cares, only should care if you use cheat software/ hacks to get trophies in unfair ways bugs and cheats in games is fine in my book. I mean some bugs I used to earn wolf 2's mein laben I don't think I could handle doing it from the start to finish without the glitches I used.

 

However I know how it feels with people being burnt with it as I done all of evil within 2 before the update that had the cheat menu unlocked from the start and so on and can be used on classic mode.

 

It burnt abit me as I done it the normal way but if it was there when I played I might of used it myself and felt nothing about it. it is a tricky subject and is more or less down to you at the end of it.

Edited February 1, 2022 by Lonemankane