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The all new PlayStation Stars loyalty program (Stars are not NFTs)


The_Kopite

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14 hours ago, AJ_Radio said:


Sony went downhill once they moved their HQ to California. 
 

I think it’s worth mentioning that Big Tech will do everything it can to suck us out of every penny.
 

Until this “Loyalty Program” proves worthwhile, I’m going to remain skeptical about it. Videos like the one PlatinumBro7 (aka LewyWilko93) posted on his YouTube channel are wistful thinking. This benefits the people who just play shit games and not the people who’ve stuck with this hobby for a long time playing quality games. At the end of the day this is satisfying a dopamine rush, which goes right along with this shallow, materialistic culture we live in today. Hard work doesn’t equate to actual accomplishment anymore, and that infuriates me. 
 

Big Tech is no longer run by a bunch of computer geeks who know computer engineering and how physics and math work. If Big Tech was run by guys like John Carmack and John Romero in their prime, it would be fucking awesome. Unfortunately it’s run by algorithms and focus groups which explain the politicized nature of modern games. Google Search doesn’t even give you fucking decent results anymore, it just blurts out a bunch of advertisements and useless blog sites that are better labeled as spam. 

 

The amount of absolute trash entering the PS Store is a joke, but it’s simply a symptom of the modern social media landscape which makes the internet boring and miserable. I hope this system turns out to be more than I think it is, but given the treatment Sony has given us I’m not holding my breath at all. 

All you said is hitting the nail on the head. But, I will add on to this that not only is this how it has been for the last few years but Sony has not really gave a damn about their fans since the half way point of the ps3's life. As around then ps plus was for free games and gave extra things for you in some games and so on. They had respect around then but now it is more get money now then treat the customers good to get a long term lot of money over time.

 

I don't like how it has turned but that is how a lot of companies are nowadays. Greedy and don't give a shit about their customers or show any kind of respect. Yes, they are not your friends but showing respect and treating your customers was how and should be to get a profit.

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I loved those events a few months ago with rewards for earning trophies playing the psplus games for those months, even if they only gave us avatars for the playstation network. So if this can be a cool thing which make us play different games, have fun and earn prices doing trophyhunting as always, I'll stay optimistic until proved wrong in a few weeks/months ?

Edited by Kefka1986
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Sounds fun.  I wonder what the prizes will be.

 

It gives me a chance to start a new account with only pure EZPZ games.
I think I remember seeing somewhere on this site a thread dedicated to all the EZPZ games organized by category.
I think there could potentially be at least 10,000 trophies just from EZPZ games by now.
I'll have to look for it later and bookmark it.

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I read about this thing yesterday when they first announced it. I think it's a neat idea, but the first thought that came to mind was that loyalty program they had a few years ago which caused the EZPZ spam to grow massively because people were making money off it. Hoping that by limiting their trophy rewards to blockbuster titles, it should negate those types of games being used for it.

 

The other concern I had which I also posted about on their Facebook announcement post, was about the first platinum in a time zone thing. I've always wanted to try and be #1 at certain games when they release, but because of all the early earners via release copies/street dates being broken, it's near impossible for anyone else to get the first platinum. So hopefully Sony will have a way of policing this idea to make it fair for everyone and not just the people that get early access.

 

The last time I managed to get a #1 position was with Axiom Verge 2, and that was only because the game had a worldwide simultaneous launch with no early copies given out, thus giving everyone an even chance to get it done!

 

 

On 7/14/2022 at 6:44 AM, DaivRules said:

This sounds a lot like what Sony has been doing for decades with a program they used to call RLS and then later called On PlayStation, which is a sales associate training program for retailers selling PlayStation products.

 

 

I used to do tons of those quizzes/modules on the RLS Site when I worked for EB Games Canada a few years back!

Got so much cool stuff from them. And when I eventually quit working there, when I deactivated my account, they gave me a free copy of CoD WWII Deluxe Edition, MLB 16 , and a free year of PS Plus! Not bad! :D 

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On 7/14/2022 at 2:23 PM, Smashero said:

"As part of PlayStation Stars, the first player to reach platinum — completing all in-game achievements — in a blockbuster title in a local time zone will also receive a reward, precluding others from winning it.

 

That doesn't really sound fair. Some people get early access to games to do reviews of them and whatnot.

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22 minutes ago, Jerry_Appleby said:

I used to do tons of those quizzes/modules on the RLS Site when I worked for EB Games Canada a few years back!

Got so much cool stuff from them. And when I eventually quit working there, when I deactivated my account, they gave me a free copy of CoD WWII Deluxe Edition, MLB 16 , and a free year of PS Plus! Not bad! :D 

 

It was a great group of people running RLS and On PlayStation. Over all my time in retail, through RLS I got four Dualshock 3's, a PS3 Media Remote Control, four DS3 controller keyboards, two Move controllers, two Navigation controllers, a refurbished PS3 slim console, over 50 PSP games, a dozen PS2 games, around 30 PS3 games, around 20 PS4 games, and a bunch of t-shirts, and PS merch like a patapon figure, a PS3 phone handset, Sackboy bookends, and a bunch I'm forgetting.

 

 

Commentary on topic in general:

 

The last program was through the Sony Rewards program so a straight cash for trophy points. Nothing about this Loyalty Program has in any way indicated they'll be following that model, but we'll have to wait and see how it turns out. I'm very confident this Loyalty program will be less of the Trophy Reward and more like the RLS activities.

 

Of course so many people here are like infants when they learn how to say dog and then point at every single animal and say "doggie", and the parents eventually just shrug and wait it out. Hoping they don't have the kid that still calls every animal a dog by the time they enter grade school. 

 

Quote

you’ll earn rewards by completing a variety of campaigns and activities.

 

Sounds very much not like earning trophies to get cash/credit.

 

Quote

Our “Monthly Check-In” campaign simply requires you to play any game to receive a reward

 

Also sounds very much not like earning trophies to get cash/credit.

 

Quote

while other campaigns require you to win tournaments, earn specific trophies, or even be the first player to platinum a blockbuster title in your local time zone.

 

Tournaments = likely specific games

specific trophies = self explanatory

first player to platinum a "blockbuster title" = likely specific games, probably first party

All these to earn a reward, likely not just cash/credit.

Again, sounds very much not like earning trophies to get cash/credit.

 

Quote

All PlayStation Stars members will have opportunities to earn loyalty points. Points can be redeemed in a catalog that may include PSN wallet funds and select PlayStation Store products.

 

This is the closest possible aspect to the previous program, but I'm going to speculate that Loyalty Points will be for specific activities and not just earning trophies in "EZPZ" games.

 

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I’m a bit skeptical of the whole thing, but I’ll wait and see how it turns out.
 

In the past I’ve often advocated for the idea of Sony further embracing the trophy system and making it a more integral and central part of the PlayStation pitch, and adding incentives and community events like this could really be a step in that direction. In the best case scenario, it could even help grow the community and bring new hunters into the fold, and help some others reconnect with the real spirit of this hobby and the original reasons they fell in love with trophy hunting to begin with. If it brings more passion for trophy hunting to the community and helps incentivize people to focus on completing games they love and connecting with each other, I’m all for it.

 

But with how far downhill the trophy hunting scene has been sliding in the last few years, it’s hard not to feel cynical that this move is just more likely to further incentivize both the publishers & people playing the endless garbage shovelware that dominates the trophy hunting scene these days. People are even more likely to fall into that trap if they know they’re going to be getting paid for doing so. As a Canadian I wasn’t able to participate in the last trophy rewards program, but from what I understand this was a problem back then and helped contribute to the shovelware era we are now find ourselves neck deep in.

 

Cautiously optimistic, but prepared for the worst.

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6 hours ago, Lonemankane said:

All you said is hitting the nail on the head. But, I will add on to this that not only is this how it has been for the last few years but Sony has not really gave a damn about their fans since the half way point of the ps3's life. As around then ps plus was for free games and gave extra things for you in some games and so on. They had respect around then but now it is more get money now then treat the customers good to get a long term lot of money over time.

 

I don't like how it has turned but that is how a lot of companies are nowadays. Greedy and don't give a shit about their customers or show any kind of respect. Yes, they are not your friends but showing respect and treating your customers was how and should be to get a profit.


Agreed. 
 

Do you remember back in May 2011 when PSN was hacked? Sony was practically begging their customers to stick with them, as many had threatened to move to Microsoft due to online being unavailable. They ended up giving away free stuff, which I thought was nice of them at the time. 
 

The problem? I was strictly a PC only gamer, so I missed out on all the free goodies. 
 

Today Sony is a different company. Don’t quote me on this but I believe they also changed hands with the indie game department after the move to California. 2014 and 2015 saw a lot of good indies such as Transistor with equally as good trophy lists. 2016 was when the floodgates opened. We suddenly got a bunch of EZPZs starting with Orc Slayer and eventually My Name is Mayo. 
 

There are still good indies, but they are so vastly outnumbered by the amount of EZPZs it’s literally difficult to find them unless you really know what you’re looking for. 
 

3 hours ago, dieselmanchild said:

But with how far downhill the trophy hunting scene has been sliding in the last few years, it’s hard not to feel cynical that this move is just more likely to further incentivize both the publishers & people playing the endless garbage shovelware that dominates the trophy hunting scene these days. People are even more likely to fall into that trap if they know they’re going to be getting paid for doing so. As a Canadian I wasn’t able to participate in the last trophy rewards program, but from what I understand this was a problem back then and helped contribute to the shovelware era we are now find ourselves neck deep in.

 

Cautiously optimistic, but prepared for the worst.


The Rewards System only benefitted people living in the United States, I don’t recall if an American PSN account was good enough. 
 

Regardless, the people stacking EZPZs got the most out of it. Sony realized what had happened and decided to discontinue it. 
 

Those people who like a challenge and whom do trophy hunting for the satisfaction and enjoyment are getting screwed.

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On 14-7-2022 at 3:30 PM, DrBloodmoney said:

 

Actually - some of us haven't been down this road before...

 

...I'm pretty sure the last system was US only, IIRC 1f602.png

 

 

Remains to be seen if this one is worldwide or not... and how well they manage to implement it.

 

I'm not going to cynically dismiss the idea - but I'm not holding my breath either...

My friend who is from the USA old me he got a message on his PS5 about this. Im in EU andi didnt so i'm skeptical.

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I'm very skeptical about this program, but there are a few things i don't yet see mentioned in this thread.

My biggest concern is entry, they talk about enrollment/enrolled players. What are their requirements for this? On the surface PS stars sounds nice, but a lot of the requirements are so absurd it makes me think this is for selected players. I fear you would need a certain tier of ps+ for example.

Some of the requirements for rewards have me thinking.

The nr.1 in a timezone would have to be heavily regulated with anything that physical as pointed out by others. If you have something like a digital game then of course there is a timer. But even then theres other factors like the publisher/ developers staff themselfs. small userbase but still. It just takes 1 person.
Also what about digital deluxe editions/pre order bonusses. Would be an unfair advantage in some aspects if it helps getting that platinum.
What about auto popping from ps4 titles? Like with GTAV for the PS5 for example. You can not beat that time to platinum on a fresh account.
They mention tournaments. Are we talking about irl esportts? or in-game? This seems somewhat exploitable if they make it an in-game thing as each game is different. If it goes by rank within a tournament and not a singular winner for example there might be ways to exploit this.

I'm also thinking the rewards system as a whole might only apply to certain games or certain studios. that would be a safe bet, boost their sales the most and eliminate all shovelware nonsense. But we have no information on that so its just speculation.

I consider the possibilitiy this is PS5 only, but only because it would be easier for them to do and again, help sales.

So in short, making this fair is gonna be really tough for Sony, rewards seem very hard to get in some cases.
We will have to see what happens before we really know more I supose.

 

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2 hours ago, mcnichoj said:

Anyone remember any of the last several times they did a rewards program?
Oh boy, not looking forward to this next shit show.

 

I remember the trophy point programs. There wasn't much going on other than getting points for trophies.

It wasn't much of a shit show outside of people buying cheap EZ plats for EZ points. If that is a shit show then this entire site is a shit show because people still buy EZ plats for EZ points, there's just no reward program for it. 

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2 hours ago, AJ_Radio said:

The Rewards System only benefitted people living in the United States, I don’t recall if an American PSN account was good enough. 
 

Regardless, the people stacking EZPZs got the most out of it. Sony realized what had happened and decided to discontinue it. 
 

Those people who like a challenge and whom do trophy hunting for the satisfaction and enjoyment are getting screwed.


Back then I was just starting my trophy hunting journey so when I found out about the rewards program I was super hyped for it, only to find it was only available in the U.S. when I went to sign up lol. Hopefully this time it’s far more expansive so people from all regions can participate. ?

 

If they do decide to have some kind of PSN credit rewards system again like their blog post suggests, it will be interesting to see how they handle it. There are large numbers of players who exclusively play shovelware junk and some are quite literally earning a couple hundred platinums per month these days, which would really game the system if the earnings were even remotely similar to what they were before. They would have to drastically reduce the rates to curtail these people, which would make the earnings program pretty worthless for the rest of us I’d imagine.

 

Hopefully we get more details soon.

 

 

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3 hours ago, TJ_Solo said:

 

I remember the trophy point programs. There wasn't much going on other than getting points for trophies.

It wasn't much of a shit show outside of people buying cheap EZ plats for EZ points. If that is a shit show then this entire site is a shit show because people still buy EZ plats for EZ points, there's just no reward program for it. 

I actually forgot about that and that's because that actually went fairly well for what it was. Probably the reason they discontinued it.

I was thinking more like the one where you used your trophies to bid on PlayStation stuff and they allowed trophy hackers to participate. Or that one program they ran right before PSN got hacked and taken down for a month back in the PS3 days.

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On 14/07/2022 at 2:11 PM, The_Kopite said:

https://blog.playstation.com/2022/07/14/introducing-playstation-stars-an-all-new-loyalty-program/

 

Sounds good in theory:

Reward points for purchases. 

General rewards for playing

Specific objectives like tournaments

Free to join

 

I just wonder about those 'digital collectibles' though - potentially Sony's form of NFT's?

 

We will see. What are your thoughts on this announcement?

Sounds interesting. I do really like free credit for doing stuff and i like collectibles (Not nfts though) and it’s free. Definitely joining when it launches….. if it launches in the Europe that is 

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Another thing they could do is guage rewards based on playtime(granted with a daily cap or a hard limit that varies from game to game to limit people afking thier system like a crypto miner without buying hundreds of games) or give points based trophy rarity so that a breakthrough arcade plat only gives 2 points, uncharted 4 plat 50, or super meat boy gives 500 or so(assuming 1 point is 1 cent). They have ways to detect how long you play certain games even when playing offline if you later go online(i did neo twewy and panzer dragoon remake offline in the time i had no internet for almost 3 months last year and both still shown up on my top 5 games in the yearly roundup) so a system like that shouldnt be too hard to implement.

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3 minutes ago, enuemun said:

Since I haven't seen a thread recently, I'm posting it here.

 

Excited for the Pipo Monkey and Toro/Kuro ones. I just hope they aren't too obnoxious to earn. Apparently the first challenge will be to launch games that correspond to a clue. That's not looking too good for my completion percentage ?

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2 hours ago, enuemun said:

Since I haven't seen a thread recently, I'm posting it here.

 

 

I am looking forward to these since it seems to basically be Trophies 2.0, but I also expect it to just become advertising for any odd game that's coming out. I also wanna know how the statue-esque design will handle other art styles like cel-shading or pixel art.

Edited by breakingthegreen
wrong word used.
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Just like Ps Plus Extra, it's a copy of Microsoft rewards plain and simple. And I highly doubt Sony will give 30 quid a month to gamers for just playing games and doing searches like Xbox gives me. If all they give is some worthless digitally trinkets it wouldn't surprise me. Modern Sony is all about money not gamers, hence why my ps3s see more use than my ps5

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4 minutes ago, ResiGamer_28 said:

Just like Ps Plus Extra, it's a copy of Microsoft rewards plain and simple. And I highly doubt Sony will give 30 quid a month to gamers for just playing games and doing searches like Xbox gives me. If all they give is some worthless digitally trinkets it wouldn't surprise me. Modern Sony is all about money not gamers, hence why my ps3s see more use than my ps5

Such a ridiculous statement.  Microsoft has so much more money than Sony they could buy Sony 30x over again.  Sony can't afford to give you $30 a month to do some searches, along with everybody else. You think for one minute Microsoft doesn't have a little scheme or two going on to make some money?  If Microsoft was half the gaming company as Sony they would have already put Sony out of business.  Microsoft is one of the trillion $ market cap companies or close to it that reeks of greed.  If and when they become the monopoly in gaming you will see the industry go to shit real fast.   I don't need a top streaming service to get value I'd rather own my games than pay Microsoft to let me have access to them.

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