Changes to Missing Timestamp Handling?

[Glaivewurm]

I got my PS Vita on the 25th of May last year and immediately booted up Soul Sacrifice.

 

I did this before setting up the internet connection on the device.

 

Thus, a small number of trophies that I have earned in that game are missing timestamps.

 

As it was the first game I played, the first trophy I earned was  Foreshadowing of Despair.

 

Up until now, PSNProfiles has detected it as my first trophy irrespective of its status as a trophy with missing timestamps.

 

However, my first trophy is now listed as  Taboos Should be Challenged.

 

This is not a change from missing timestamp to regular trophy, as Taboos Should be Challenged also has missing timestamps.

 

Nor is it a result of sorting, as when my Soul Sacrifice trophies are sorted by date it is not the first on the list or even the first with missing timestamps on the list.

 

Thus, I cannot fathom why the change has occurred.

 

I would be duly grateful for any explanation available as I much preferred Foreshadowing of Despair as my first trophy.

[TheVader66]

Well my theory is that it randomizes the trophies that don't have timestamps to become the first trophy since it has happened to me four times (my real first trophy is "War of the Last Alliance" but currently it says it is "TLAD: One Percenter")

[Ric]

My guess is that it's got something to do with the sorting by date. Since the dates are "missing timestamp", the site can't sort them by the actual trophy date (the site doesn't know the date). Resulting in a random sorting order of all timestamps with the same date (in this case "no timestamp"). The fact that they don't change order on every refresh is probably due to caching of the data. (The site has a memory which doesn't update unless told to, or the timer on it has expired).

 

A similar thing happens with games when you sort them by percentage on your profile. The games with the same amount of points get sorted randomly, regardless of title, number of trophies or types of trophies. For example: I have 2 platinums for Sly 4, but they don't always get listed together. Sometimes other games will be put in between them, with a different title and different trophy counts. The site doesn't look firther that just the amount of points to sort by.

[Glaivewurm]

Good points. But if the site can recognise that a trophy with a missing timestamp is my first trophy, rather than putting the first timestamped trophy in, why is any of this necessary? I don't understand exactly how the recognition of missing timestamp trophies works, but if it knows that one of the missing-timestamp trophies from Soul Sacrifice is my first, why shouldn't it be able to tell which one it is? Unless it can only tell that one of them is, in which case I propose that users be permitted to choose which one it was.

[vivan000]

Sorting of trophies without timestamps has been changed. I'm not sure how they were sorted before the update (I think it was same as now, but reversed). Now they are sorted by trophy id:

https://psnprofiles.com/trophy/1926-Soul-Sacrifice/2-Foreshadowing-of-Despair
https://psnprofiles.com/trophy/1926-Soul-Sacrifice/3-Unavoidable-Fate
https://psnprofiles.com/trophy/1926-Soul-Sacrifice/34-Forbidden-for-a-Reason
https://psnprofiles.com/trophy/1926-Soul-Sacrifice/54-Taboos-should-be-Challenged

2 < 3 < 34 < 54

I think the reason behind this is because platinum (which is always latest trophy) is always trophy number 1. So people that platinumed game before connecting to psn were getting platinum as their first trophy.

Btw, my first trophy before that update was for completing welcome park.

It's impossible to determine what trophy was your first. You were just lucky that with previous sorting order it guessed it right.

Edited June 10, 2014 by vivan000

[Ric]

Your trophy list gets updated every time you update your profile (presumably). I'm trying not to go to technical with this but the milestone trophies aren't "hard coded" into the website, but rather collected from your trophy list at update. During this update it will put any "no timestamp" trophies at the bottom of the list (so they're always achieved first. This happened to me. A "no timestamp" trophy replaced a PS3 trophy I had for a while as the first trophy in my list).

 

So your PSN trophy list will be sorted by date during the PSNProfiles update, putting all "no timestamp" trophies to the bottom of the list (bottom is first achieved). But since all their dates is exactly the same it will put those in whichever order the site gets to them, which could be different each update. From this sorted list it will grab your milestones and displays them into your profile page. And all of this during that few seconds it takes for your profiles to update

 

It is possible that they've changed the secondary order by trophy name as Vivian suggested.

Edited June 10, 2014 by Ric

[Glaivewurm]

This is all fantastic information to know.

 

So why on earth isn't there a feature for this? If it can't tell which order you got them in, shouldn't we be able to choose? Rather than have it basically picked out of a hat, if there's more than one candidate for something like this I think we should have the power to actually tell the site what it doesn't already know. There's no downside to this - trophy milestones aren't competitive. It would just be a nice feature to have for those people who enjoy the milestones feature, as I do.

[Ric]

This is all fantastic information to know.

 

So why on earth isn't there a feature for this? If it can't tell which order you got them in, shouldn't we be able to choose? Rather than have it basically picked out of a hat, if there's more than one candidate for something like this I think we should have the power to actually tell the site what it doesn't already know. There's no downside to this - trophy milestones aren't competitive. It would just be a nice feature to have for those people who enjoy the milestones feature, as I do.

 

True, I would suggest to sort them with the first trophy earned of the same game. If the entire game has no timestamps then just sort them to the start (as it is now), or even use the date they got synched to the site for the first time. Making it user defined takes away the feeling of milestone, it'll be more like the trophy cabinet then.

[Dragon-Archon]

Good points. But if the site can recognise that a trophy with a missing timestamp is my first trophy, rather than putting the first timestamped trophy in, why is any of this necessary? I don't understand exactly how the recognition of missing timestamp trophies works, but if it knows that one of the missing-timestamp trophies from Soul Sacrifice is my first, why shouldn't it be able to tell which one it is? Unless it can only tell that one of them is, in which case I propose that users be permitted to choose which one it was.

Trophies with missing timestamps get the date 1-1-1900, which makes them your first earned trophy if sorted by date achieved.

[Glaivewurm]

True, I would suggest to sort them with the first trophy earned of the same game. If the entire game has no timestamps then just sort them to the start (as it is now), or even use the date they got synched to the site for the first time. Making it user defined takes away the feeling of milestone, it'll be more like the trophy cabinet then.

 

The problem with this is that it can't detect which trophy of that game was earned first. It just wouldn't work, as far as I can tell now. That's the only reason I would suggest the user-defined first - with the addendum, of course, that you can only choose once. Otherwise your idea is preferable by far.