The new update to PSNP kills the functionality of third party services. Is this intended?

[TheYuriG]

EDIT: Yura and Cowbear were whitelisted and are now able to bypass the screening process, therefore capable of working just fine.

 

There are various services that rely on being able to make raw HTTP requests to PSN Profiles, now being unable to get the site's data to display it due to the DDoS screening implemented recently.

 

My own discord bot (Yura), Froopy's bot (Cowbear), the platinum mosaic website (https://psnplatinums.com/), and countless others that I can't remember now are part of this list.

 

Is it possible that we can get whitelisted from the DDoS check so we can continue providing our free services to the public or are we going to be forced to be terminated now after all these years?

If it's the worst possible scenario and our services get terminated, is the PSNP bot going to be available for all servers (in case it isn't) and provide an equivalent number of features to compensate?

Edited December 12, 2022 by TheYuriG
whitelisted information

[HaserPL]

2 minutes ago, TheYuriG said:

If it's the worst possible scenario and our services get terminated, is the PSNP bot going to be available for all servers (in case it isn't) and provide an equivalent number of features to compensate?

I mean, come on. You're a smart guy, you should know better than that. The change has definitely been made because Sly had to do it for some reason, not because he wanted to change something. He hasn't done anything useful for years to this website.

[TheYuriG]

 

1 minute ago, HaserPL said:

I mean, come on. You're a smart guy, you should know better than that. The change has definitely been made because Sly had to do it for some reason, not because he wanted to change something. He hasn't done anything useful for years to this website.

I'm pretty sure the PSN Profiles bot is done with Javascript, just like mine. At worst, I can just hand over my code so Yura can live on, since we provide a lot of information that I don't believe the PSN Profiles bot does. I literally learned how to code in 2019 solely to create that bot and while its death might be a painful experience, it's not an unexpected one at all. I'm more just wanting to know about what's gonna be from now on.

[HaserPL]

Just now, TheYuriG said:

 

I'm pretty sure the PSN Profiles bot is done with Javascript, just like mine. At worst, I can just hand over my code so Yura can live on, since we provide a lot of information that I don't believe the PSN Profiles bot does. I literally learned how to code in 2019 solely to create that bot and while its death might be a painful experience, it's not an unexpected one at all. I'm more just wanting to know about what's gonna be from now on.

Hopefully, you will get the answers you desire. It's a shame how the site's staff treats members that want to help out the community and improve others' experience.

[You]

8 minutes ago, HaserPL said:

I mean, come on. You're a smart guy, you should know better than that. The change has definitely been made because Sly had to do it for some reason, not because he wanted to change something. He hasn't done anything useful for years to this website.

 

WUT?!

 

He recently added the Shovelware filter, which was single-handedly the best feature the site has had in recent years.

 

Unless that feature was made by somebody else?

[HaserPL]

Just now, enaysoft said:

 

WUT?!

 

He recently added the Shovelware filter, which was single-handedly the best feature the site has had in recent years.

 

Unless that feature was made by somebody else?

How many people find that actually useful, compared to the entirety of the community though? Speaking from experience, there have been multiple suggestions and ideas formed over the years that went nowhere, as well as users just doing some of them on their own. Regular members of the site have more will and love for this site than it's owner and it isn't a secret.

[You]

5 hours ago, HaserPL said:

How many people find that actually useful, compared to the entirety of the community though? Speaking from experience, there have been multiple suggestions and ideas formed over the years that went nowhere, as well as users just doing some of them on their own. Regular members of the site have more will and love for this site than it's owner and it isn't a secret.

 

I beg to differ. Topics moaning about all the shite games spamming the front end of the site several times a day. I've lost count how much bickering and locked topics happened back in the day.

 

That all vanished completely within a few days when Sly added a fix.
 

Just because nobody praises the lord every single day because they don't have to see Shovelware anymore, that doesn't necessarily mean that nobody thinks it's a great feature.

 

It's likely that once something becomes the standard, nobody talks about it much anymore, newer users probably might not even know there was even a problem with Shovelware.

Edited December 12, 2022 by enaysoft

[TheYuriG]

Guys, I would appreciate if it was possible to NOT derail another thread into "Why Shovelware is the end of mankind as we know".

[Shadiochao]

21 minutes ago, enaysoft said:

He recently added the Shovelware filter, which was single-handedly the best feature the site has had in recent years.

 

It's the only feature the site has had in years.

[BlindMango]

Discord bots... He hasn't told us why, but I really hope that's not the reason Sly had to implement this hardcore DDoS protection the past day...

 

Apparently PSN changed something on their end and caused some serious issues for all the trophy sites the other day and Sly still seems to be trying to sort all that out, and I imagine a large number of requests for certain things like profile updates from bots (if that's what they're for) aren't helping with that in the meantime. I'll try to ask him about it tomorrow, but hopefully he'll drop in and provide some info here before then 

 

Edited December 12, 2022 by BlindMango

[TheYuriG]

Just now, BlindMango said:

I imagine a large number of requests for certain things like profile updates from bots (if that's what they're for)

I don't know about froopy's Cowbear, but Yura doesn't make any requests to update profiles. At some point, I had a link that would redirect the users to the update page, but they had to manually click the link and then wait for the update, but I discontinued that nearly 16 months ago due to not being used often enough to justify it + reduce UI bloat.

[ArmoredSnowman]

1 hour ago, TheYuriG said:

while its death might be a painful experience, it's not an unexpected one at all.

tbf, your bot could always support pulling data from Exo/PSNTL/TrueTrophies, for users who don't have a PSNP account. 

[Froopy the Temmie]

19 minutes ago, BlindMango said:

profile updates from bots

 

 

16 minutes ago, TheYuriG said:

I don't know about froopy's Cowbear, but Yura doesn't make any requests to update profiles

That was something I figured was best left site side and never implemented that in Cowbear nor had any plans to.

[TheYuriG]

21 minutes ago, ArmoredSnowman said:

tbf, your bot could always support pulling data from Exo/PSNTL(*)/TrueTrophies, for users who don't have a PSNP account. 

Obviously, but I essentially have to start from scratch and remove a ton of features that are exclusive to PSNP, like Series, comparison page and a few others. At that point, it's a completely different bot.

 

I branched to other websites with little success as PSNP is the defacto website to check information. People just kept asking where was the rarity/adjusted leaderboard on PSNP when it was pulled from PSNTL and where was the game time when I pulled it from Exophase. The switch from messages to slash commands was already bad enough because people hate change, I dread to think what it's gonna be like if I change the data source.

 

(*) PSNTL also uses this same Cloudfare DDoS protection that PSNP is using now.

Edited December 12, 2022 by TheYuriG

[Rebourne07]

31 minutes ago, BlindMango said:

Discord bots... He hasn't told us why, but I really hope that's not the reason Sly had to implement this hardcore DDoS protection the past day...

 

Apparently PSN changed something on their end and caused some serious issues for all the trophy sites the other day and Sly still seems to be trying to sort all that out, and I imagine a large number of requests for certain things like profile updates from bots (if that's what they're for) aren't helping with that in the meantime. I'll try to ask him about it tomorrow, but hopefully he'll drop in and provide some info here before then 

 

So the site maintenance is due to a PSN change? Or a DDOS attack? I’m confused lol Or just discord bots? Sorry just curious lol 

[amurnin100]

1 hour ago, Rebourne07 said:

So the site maintenance is due to a PSN change? Or a DDOS attack? I’m confused lol Or just discord bots? Sorry just curious lol 

There is a lack of clarity in which we hope will be confirmed ASAP. At the moment , it’s all assumptions

[r4tb0-]

@TheYuriG you can use the psn api to get data from sonys servers directly, but you are limited to 300 requests per 15 minutes.

there is also a unoffical documention for the api, but its not complete. 

 

i did quite a bit of research (and decompiling the ps app android apk) and programmed a trophytracker for my livestreams.

 

[SzzMN]

Hopefully this gets resolved in terms of the bots that use it, the Yura and Cowbear bots are integral to the communities on discord that use it almost everyday, not to mention a lot of hard work basically going to waste and tbh a lot of people actually signed up to PSNP just to use the bots so they could have the information pulled. If anything the bots are a benefit to PSNP driving more traffic here.

Edited December 12, 2022 by SzzMN

[AJ_Radio]

3 hours ago, HaserPL said:

Hopefully, you will get the answers you desire. It's a shame how the site's staff treats members that want to help out the community and improve others' experience.

Unfortunately a lot of people seem to have given up trying to make other trophy communities outside of this one, which I feel has gone down the tubes these past few years. 
 

PST.org is riddled with atrocious ads trying to gain your personal information (AdBlock doesn’t necessarily remove them). PSNTL is okayish, it has an actual leaderboards but that’s pretty much it. 
 

Discord I only use for trophy boosting, most of the groups I used to be a part of were essentially a bunch of echo chambers. Facebook is pointless. Twitter is toxic. 
 

It’s why I’m still here after all this time. Can’t think of too many places that have an actual community. 
 

2 hours ago, TheYuriG said:

Obviously, but I essentially have to start from scratch and remove a ton of features that are exclusive to PSNP, like Series, comparison page and a few others. At that point, it's a completely different bot.

 

I branched to other websites with little success as PSNP is the defacto website to check information. People just kept asking where was the rarity/adjusted leaderboard on PSNP when it was pulled from PSNTL and where was the game time when I pulled it from Exophase. The switch from messages to slash commands was already bad enough because people hate change, I dread to think what it's gonna be like if I change the data source.

 

(*) PSNTL also uses this same Cloudfare DDoS protection that PSNP is using now.

 

I wish you the best of luck. Leave it to Sony to fuck something up. Hopefully we hear something soon.

[TheYuriG]

1 minute ago, r4tb0- said:

@TheYuriG you can use the psn api to get data from sonys servers directly

That won't give me any of the useful information that PSNP has like normalized trophy list names, stacks information, trophy hunter trophies rarity, recent players, and a whole lot more

 

I'll tap into Sony's actual data in the future with my side project with Mako, but I'll have to do the same data normalizing that all websites do regarding it. AFAIK Sony will return games as their database SKU code or something else equally humanly unreadable/useless.

[r4tb0-]

2 minutes ago, TheYuriG said:

stacks information, trophy hunter trophies rarity, recent players

thats a good point. in fact there is no flag in the sony database for the region, so the only way to find out is to predict which is which region based on players...pretty stupid. 

 

14 minutes ago, TheYuriG said:

AFAIK Sony will return games as their database SKU code or something else equally humanly unreadable/useless

since the api v2 you have to combine gamecodes with npcommunicationods to get all the data.

 

for example:

"NPWR20196_00":"CUSA25404_00",

"NPWR17626_00":"CUSA15271_00",

"NPWR12908_00":"CUSA06565_00"

 

if you didnt need the additional data like recent players, i would always use the api, because its realtime. 

this is my tracker / psn api client:

Spoiler

 

There is also a overview for missing trophies, which is updated automatically:

 

 

 

 

 

[TheYuriG]

3 minutes ago, r4tb0- said:

this is my tracker / psn api client:

  Hide contents

 

 

There is also a overview for missing trophies, which is updated automatically:

 

 

That's pretty cool man. It's always nice to see more people working on getting their clients to pull data so we can have a more decentralized experience. I hope to be somewhere close to where you stand by March next year, with a website up and everything.

[HaserPL]

29 minutes ago, AJ_Radio said:

It’s why I’m still here after all this time. Can’t think of too many places that have an actual community. 

Only reason why I'm still here is the visual side of things. If PSNP didn't stand out with it's a clear and minimalistic design I wouldn't have stayed here in the first place to be honest. 

[MidnightDragon]

@TheYuriG Was able to use your bot again unless you did something else

[TheYuriG]

18 minutes ago, MidnightDragon said:

@TheYuriG Was able to use your bot again unless you did something else

I didn't touch any code, no. Just tried it and it worked fine for me as well, gonna leave this thread up for a day or two and if continues working just fine, I'll lock it myself.

 

I assume the screening was removed not because of us, but because it was blocking the forums from working properly, as I wasn't getting notifications after staying idle for a number of minutes, something that didn't happen before. I'm thankful for it being removed either way.