Suggestion: Allow hiding of spam games

[Ashande]

1 hour ago, amurnin100 said:

I suppose it’s cost of living.. people haven’t got money to shell out AAA titles and these cheap games are taking advantage of the current economy of gaming… sooner rather than later ,it will affect the amount of quality games we get…

 

I seriously doubt that anyone is sitting there, browsing the PS Store, saying to themselves “Gosh, I wish I could afford Lego Star Wars, or Death’s Door or Shantae. Guess I’ll buy The Jumping Taco TURBO instead.” Absolutely no one on the production of God of War: Ragnarok or Cult of the Lamb is saying to themselves “Well, folks, turns out people like The Tennis T. Better shut down production! Wrap it up!”

[BlindMango]

1 hour ago, HusKy said:

 

Good to see you are interested in this feature. Will wait for Sly's reply and depending on that might think about how this can be done within PSNP+ if needed.

 

If you were to implement it, I imagine you could use some kind of way to auto-filter some of the games based on the game's name (a lot of these games have a pattern with their name), or any game with 11 gold trophies, things like that. Otherwise it would have to do it manually

[Ashande]

7 minutes ago, MonaSaxPayne said:

artificial crybaby gate keeping aside, the proliferation of these games makes me wonder why Sony was so up in arms and removed 1000 top rated in the first place? wasn't it exactly because they didn't want games like that (sold specifically just for trophies) to be on the store?

 

1000 Top Rated was removed for the misleading title, which implied it had received some form of accolade and thus was a form of deceptive advertising. It came right on back once the name had been changed (to Slyde.)

[Ghost-Zeus514]

Great Fucking Idea

[LegendExeter]

19 minutes ago, BlindMango said:

 

If you were to implement it, I imagine you could use some kind of way to auto-filter some of the games based on the game's name (a lot of these games have a pattern with their name), or any game with 11 gold trophies, things like that. Otherwise it would have to do it manually

 

Can multi-region and multi-console not stack on the front page?  Is that something that can be coded to automate?

 

What the front page would look like if multi-region and multi-console were stacked, not great...but an improvement: probably 3 legit games there.

 

Roll The Cat

Sofiya and the Ancient Clan

After Wave: Downfall

Pickle Run

My Girlfriend is a Mermaid

The Jumping Noodles

On Sunday

Yars: Recharged

The Giraffe G

Snow Journey

Edited August 5, 2022 by LegendExeter

[visighost]

28 minutes ago, DrBloodmoney said:

…maybe if it were being done as part of PSNP+, the ideal thing to do would be to use a formula, but write a check against an “exclusion list” into it.

 

A manual list that could be maintained, where folks can add specific games that the formula would ignore, as they technically fall within its parameters, but are of a quality that they shouldn’t be considered in the same category.

 

(one such game I always think of is The Longest Road on Earth, which is less than 90 minutes long, and a guaranteed platinum… but is FANTASTIC!)

 

There are folks on this site ( @visighost, for example) who play a lot of more obscure stuff, and I suspect would be very knowledgeable about some smaller games that may be liable to be unfairly caught by such a formula, but shouldn’t be considered “spam”…

 

…surely that kind of knowledge could be harnessed, and those folks could just tell someone to add it to that exclusion list?

That’s a good idea, and I’d certainly be up to contributing (almost “curating”? :D).

 

At the same time, for many games (especially visual novels), the “how” you play it is an important factor. I certainly agree The Longest Road on Earth should be excluded, and it’s not a game you actually quickly skip to a platinum so it shiuld be safe to add. But on the other hand, Cross the Moon, a Ratalaika visual novel I just finished (and LOVED), took me 7 hours to complete, but is platinumed in 5 minutes by auto-skippers. Should it be exempt because of its quality when over 95% of its players have chosen to not even actually play it? It’s a tricky question for sure. The same would be true of most ChiliDog games, which often come with god mode codes that allow you to skip to the platinum (and which most people here make use of).

I consider the vast majority of Ratalaika games to be of good quality - it’s their platinum-without-having-to-complete-the-game mentality that is a bit more difficult to swallow. Transform their many precision platformers into 3-star on each level, full game platinums, and they will all become URs instead of 95% plats. But then again, you look at their games where effort is required (e.g. Klang 2 or Rise of the Slime) and the number of players plummets… 

 

23 minutes ago, lcrystal__ said:

Just would like to share that I have been working with the team here (specially Dreggit, thanks for our 160+ messages exchanged, 54 pages word document of updates lmao) and IGDB for a bit over a year, trying to add/ correct all the metadata on Playstation games. It has been an herculean job, which I gladly do, but for actual games not cash grabs.  I personally have no desire to work on Jumping Food / Animal Letter / Bible Games, but anyone can contribute to IGDB. *wink wink*

Nice! I’ve been contributing to howlongtobeat with completion times as calculated by Exophase, but I find that most new games I add never actually show up (I think they need to be individually approved and… they’re somehow not?). I’ll check out IGDB for sure. And thanks for your work here!

[DrBloodmoney]

Just now, visighost said:

he same time, for many games (especially visual novels), the “how” you play it is an important factor. I certainly agree The Longest Road on Earth should be excluded, and it’s not a game you actually quickly skip to a platinum so it shiuld be safe to add. But on the other hand, Cross the Moon, a Ratalaika visual novel I just finished (and LOVED), took me 7 hours to complete, but is platinumed in 5 minutes by auto-skippers. Should it be exempt because of its quality when over 95% of its players have chosen to not even actually play it? It’s a tricky question for sure. The same would be true of most ChiliDog games, which often come with god mode codes that allow you to skip to the platinum (and which most people here make use of).

 

I hear you - it's not on the level of visual novels, but as a Puzzle Game and Adventure Game fan, I feel some of the same issue - games that are stonkingly tough often have very fast completion times and very high completion rates, because simply following a step-by-step guide completely undercuts all challenge to them.

 

TBH, I would say even if most folks choose to ruin a good game, it should still be exempt from such a formula though.

The whole reason for this argument in the first place, is to separate the "real" games from the "nonsense" ones.

 

If someone choses to deliberately turn a "real" game into "nonsense"... well... that's on them, not the game itself. 

[SakiSakiSakiSakiSaki]

50 minutes ago, DrBloodmoney said:

There are folks on this site ( @visighost, for example) who play a lot of more obscure stuff, and I suspect would be very knowledgeable about some smaller games that may be liable to be unfairly caught by such a formula, but shouldn’t be considered “spam”…

Decent list, lots of niche stuff. Might use this as reference for games I wanna play. 

[DrBloodmoney]

Just now, SakiSakiSakiSakiSaki said:

Decent list, lots of niche stuff. Might use this as reference for games I wanna play. 

 

I already do, myself! ? 

 

Dude knows his stuff ??

[amurnin100]

36 minutes ago, Ashande said:

 

I seriously doubt that anyone is sitting there, browsing the PS Store, saying to themselves “Gosh, I wish I could afford Lego Star Wars, or Death’s Door or Shantae. Guess I’ll buy The Jumping Taco TURBO instead.” Absolutely no one on the production of God of War: Ragnarok or Cult of the Lamb is saying to themselves “Well, folks, turns out people like The Tennis T. Better shut down production! Wrap it up!”

I would still pay for those games , but parenting stops me from preordering all these at once ?

 

N.B I don’t buy shovel plats anymore , my bro buys the odd one now and again…

Edited August 5, 2022 by amurnin100

[BlindMango]

16 minutes ago, LegendExeter said:

Can multi-region and multi-console not stack on the front page?  Is that something that can be coded to automate?

 

What the front page would look like if multi-region and multi-console were stacked, not great...but an improvement: probably 3 legit games there.

 

Usually multiple regional stacks for the same console is a good sign that it's shovelware, however sometimes non-shovelware games somehow make this mistake too (Like Gran Turismo 7 on PS4) and would have to get unfiltered in that case

[ExHaseo]

This made me lol.

 

You want to hide games that other people play? That's insane. Just because you don't like a game doesn't mean it shouldn't exist on the site. It really doesn't mean that they should be hidden from people's profiles. Especially with such an arbitrary tag like "spam". I enjoy the occasional shoddily made shovelware game, because they remind me of flash games from the early 00s. Just a fun little waste of time. They're part of who I am as a gamer, and having them essentially removed from my profile just because someone decided they don't like that kind of game is just dumb. That would be like me saying that because I don't like GTAV it should be hidden from the site and all profiles. Which, once again, is insane.

[visighost]

22 minutes ago, SakiSakiSakiSakiSaki said:

Decent list, lots of niche stuff. Might use this as reference for games I wanna play. 

 

20 minutes ago, DrBloodmoney said:

 

I already do, myself!  

 

Dude knows his stuff 

You’re too kind. :$

 

I usually try and do some research to avoid duds, but not everything I play is great… (looking at you, Hentai vs. Evil!) Feel free to drop me a message if you’re curious about a game and want to avoid a bad surprise. I also find that thexboxhub is a great ressource for obscure game reviews - they write detailed reviews and I usually find myself agreeing with their assessments.

[SakiSakiSakiSakiSaki]

5 minutes ago, ExHaseo said:

This made me lol.

 

You want to hide games that other people play? That's insane. Just because you don't like a game doesn't mean it shouldn't exist on the site. It really doesn't mean that they should be hidden from people's profiles. Especially with such an arbitrary tag like "spam". I enjoy the occasional shoddily made shovelware game, because they remind me of flash games from the early 00s. Just a fun little waste of time. They're part of who I am as a gamer, and having them essentially removed from my profile just because someone decided they don't like that kind of game is just dumb. That would be like me saying that because I don't like GTAV it should be hidden from the site and all profiles. Which, once again, is insane.

Have actually read through this thread? 
 

Nobody is asking for games to be removed from the site or from your list. People just want to hide it from their view, client side.

 

It’s reasonable to want to gauge someone’s true skill or experience from their profile, without shovelware padding it out. 

Just now, visighost said:

I usually try and do some research to avoid duds, but not everything I play is great

The more niche indie games you finish, the less you have left to play. It’s actually annoying having to research for interesting indie games that are also rewarding, but that’s what you gotta do to find gems that aren’t a little lame or flat. 
 

I’ve even resorted to looking for indie games made specifically in Japan by doujin groups. 

[LegendExeter]

If we filtered out games with the word "jumping" in the title, that would hide 88 shit games, and 2 games Ultimate Ski Jumping 2020(2 stacks) and something Jumping VR, it's worth it!

[visighost]

4 minutes ago, SakiSakiSakiSakiSaki said:

The more niche indie games you finish, the less you have left to play. It’s actually annoying having to research for interesting indie games that are also rewarding, but that’s what you gotta do to find gems that aren’t a little lame or flat. 
 

I’ve even resorted to looking for indie games made specifically in Japan by doujin groups. 

Wow, I wasn’t aware those existed! On the Playstation or pure PC?
 

I’ve bought quite a few itch.io bundles (BLM, Ukraine, etc.) and have THOUSANDS of über obscure games to play should I ever switch to be a PC gamer.  
 

And you know, whenever I think I’ve gone through most of the PS indie catalogue, a new sale pops up and I realize I don’t know half of the games…  

[Ich1994-1994]

I opened pretty much the same topic a few days ago. I think if you could hide everything that has a completion rate above 80% you should get a pretty good result. At least I cant really think of a game that takes more than 7h and hast a 80+ rarity

[HusKy]

57 minutes ago, BlindMango said:

 

If you were to implement it, I imagine you could use some kind of way to auto-filter some of the games based on the game's name (a lot of these games have a pattern with their name), or any game with 11 gold trophies, things like that. Otherwise it would have to do it manually

 

I'm not a big fan of filtering based on heuristics as that would most likely lead to some false positives. However, I think if there was someone willing to maintain a master list of shovelware, I could work with that.

[SakiSakiSakiSakiSaki]

Just now, visighost said:

Wow, I wasn’t aware those existed! On the Playstation or pure PC?
 

I’ve bought quite a few itch.io bundles (BLM, Ukraine, etc.) and have THOUSANDS of über obscure games to play should I ever switch to be a PC gamer.  
 

And you know, whenever I think I’ve gone through most of the PS indie catalogue, a new sale pops up and I realize I don’t know half of the games…  

Playstation. If I went for PC titles too, I’d be gaming until the 22nd century. There’s far too much niche high quality titles.
 

I think there’s a badge of honor of not only playing a good game nobody’s heard of, but doing the anomalous task of platting them too. I always visualize the platinum trophy as the beating physical heart of the game, and sometimes you wonder what the color and shape of these “alien” hearts look like versus your CODs and Assassin’s Creeds. 

2 minutes ago, HusKy said:

 

I'm not a big fan of filtering based on heuristics as that would most likely lead to some false positives. However, I think if there was someone willing to maintain a master list of shovelware, I could work with that.

If this was in public thread form like your unobtainable thread, expect mass chaos in that thread. 
 

I would not be surprised to see it get locked from all the eventual arguing of semantics and such. 

4 minutes ago, Ich1994-1994 said:

I opened pretty much the same topic a few days ago. I think if you could hide everything that has a completion rate above 80% you should get a pretty good result. At least I cant really think of a game that takes more than 7h and hast a 80+ rarity

We bought up high quality VNs a while ago in this thread. Don’t want them to get caught. 

[PalaceOfLove706]

Today I learned that somebody ate 15 nuggets in a minute which set the world record. Wouldn’t have learned that without platting The Jumping Nuggets. Why would anyone want to filter out these educational trophy descriptions?

Edited August 5, 2022 by PalaceOfLove706

[HusKy]

21 minutes ago, SakiSakiSakiSakiSaki said:

If this was in public thread form like your unobtainable thread, expect mass chaos in that thread.

 

Not at all, this would work differently. Wanna see where this thread leads before I make a post in PSNP+ thread.

[amurnin100]

20 minutes ago, PalaceOfLove706 said:

Today I learned that somebody ate 15 nuggets in a minute which set the world record. Wouldn’t have learned that without platting The Jumping Nuggets. Why would anyone want to filter out these educational trophy descriptions?

Thank  you for such information, it’s little information like this that keeps us trophy hunters going …

[DrBloodmoney]

28 minutes ago, PalaceOfLove706 said:

Today I learned that somebody ate 15 nuggets in a minute which set the world record. Wouldn’t have learned that without platting The Jumping Nuggets. Why would anyone want to filter out these educational trophy descriptions?

So you got a fact, a trophy, and a joke of a game… throw in a party hat and that’s a full Christmas Cracker ?

[Beyondthegrave07]

5 hours ago, Ashande said:

 

I don’t disagree with the idea that standards for issuing a Platinum could stand better regulation and/or enforcement. That’s probably the only realistic way out, and would potentially solve the issue (if there’s no free Plat, less people buy it; if less people buy it, the developers make less money; if they make less money, maybe they throw in the towel), though if there’s any money to be made - and some people will still do it to boost completion percentage and total number of trophies, with or without a Platinum - it’s liable to linger on, if in a reduced form.

 

That being said, as a rule most people seem to advocate for the eradication of this sort of game rather than reform, and frequently seem to phrase it as “Sony needs to stop allowing these games on the store” and “Sony makes money off this so doesn’t care.” My post was merely to counter those arguments.

Fair enough. I hope you didn't read my take as something argumentive or combative towards you because I wasn't trying to be. I was just giving my perspective on your take thinking that "if hitting the nuke button on all these games isn't possible for Sony, what is?"

 

More just thinking out loud on a forum than anything. Haha.

[ExHaseo]

34 minutes ago, SakiSakiSakiSakiSaki said:

Have actually read through this thread? 
 

Nobody is asking for games to be removed from the site or from your list. People just want to hide it from their view, client side.

 

It’s reasonable to want to gauge someone’s true skill or experience from their profile, without shovelware padding it out. 

The more niche indie games you finish, the less you have left to play. It’s actually annoying having to research for interesting indie games that are also rewarding, but that’s what you gotta do to find gems that aren’t a little lame or flat. 
 

I’ve even resorted to looking for indie games made specifically in Japan by doujin groups. 

No, I haven't read through 6 pages. I have this crazy thing called a life outside of these forums, and don't have time to read every single post on every single thread. No one has time to actually read all of every single thread. I was responding to the OP, who said they want to hide the games. Hiding in this context is the same as removing. Either way, it's gone and is like it doesn't exist.

 

Someone's "true skill" can be determined by things like what their rarest plat or overall rarity is, if you really care about that. But honestly, you'll never convince me that anyone actually looks through a person's entire profile game by game trying to determine what a person's "true skill" is anyway. No one cares that much about random other people's profiles. People glance at the overall profile, maybe the statistics and/or a specific game or two, and then move on. No one is spending hours deeply analyzing the profile of a stranger.
Someone's experience includes all games they've played. If you want to see someone's full experience, that includes the games you don't like. Not everyone plays short or easy games to "pad out" their profile. I certainly don't. I play them because they look fun.

 

What's a good or a bad game is entirely subjective. What you deem as garbage shovelware, I could deem a hidden indie treasure, and vice versa. It can't be up to a site to determine what's good or bad because of that subjectivity.

Also, doujin games are literally just indie games. Being Japanese doesn't magically make them better or even different. A lot of what could be considered garbage shovelware was made by indie Japanese devs.