See you on the beach - the thread for Hideo Kojima's DEATH STRANDING

generally games that have real time synchronous online multiplayer will require the PS plus subscription. the big exception is free to play games like fortnite.

asynchronous online features like leaderboards, the stuff in death stranding, the stuff in persona etc generally don't require the subscription

I can’t remember, can you view your trophies and those of others online without psplus? That’d be kind of a dead giveaway that “offline” is fake

yeah pretty sure you can do all that social friendlist stuff without it

By "locked down" I mean that I don't keep a friends list or allow messages or any of that shit; locked down to other *players*, not to PS, who can of course push updates or whatever else they want to do.

I'm pretty sure I can view my own trophies, but I've not seen any sign of any other players, directly or indirectly, for as long as I have had the system.

For a lot (all?) real time synchronous online multiplayer games, they have a dedicated server, right? That I would be accessing via PS plus? Like, if I wanted to shoot other people in a shooting game, whether Fortnite or Doom, there is a waiting room, where other people "wait" to play one another on what is I assume a server, that - exceptions like Fortnite aside - I can only get to through PS plus? What I'm trying to figure out is how a game like Death Stranding must work (again, I haven't played it). If I "leave" something for someone, where am I leaving it so that another person can see it? Via a server I'm connected to, I assume, right? So playing the game, accepting the terms of service, means that I am connected to others whether I want to be or not, and they can leave me stuff in "my" game just as I can leave them stuff in theirs? But you're saying, by asynchronous, that this is not happening in real time, like a Dark Souls invasion, this is happening ... when? If I left something in Death Stranding, when can another person see that thing I left? And how many people can see it? And how much stuff can you leave? There must be a limit, so that these unpopulated landscapes are not suddenly cluttered with ladders and detritus. So then I've got to assume that anything I "leave" eventually disappears or expires or something, right?

Idk how Death Stranding works, but Dark Souls uses servers run by the software company for all the asynchronous stuff (messages, player ghosts, bloodstains, etc). Obviously there's some sort of algorithm for what you actually see, it's a limited subset rather than everyone playing all over the world. And it gets cached, not limited to when they're actually online.

For real-time interactions (invasions/summoning help), it's a direct peer-to-peer connection (mediated through PS+ presumably).

when you build something it gets recorded in a database of everything people have built, on some sony server somewhere

when you load up your game, after loading all your own constructions, it arbitrarily chooses some number of other people's constructions from that database and adds them to your game. you're not directly connected to other players

Does that mean it's possible to leave something useful for someone in a useful place, but that possibly no one would ever see it? Or, conversely, you could leave something totally not helpful in and unhelpful place and that might be pushed out? Also you've got to assume that these virtual things left to be randomly/algorithmically doled out refresh/delete themselves on some set schedule, to clear the virtual clutter? And if they are doled out randomly, that implies you can leave an identical helpful item right next to another helpful item, and that someone else would see your helpful item but not the item you initially saw, right? So you could be strategically helpful in a quest to juke "like" stats (assuming that helps you)?

Playing Dark Souls without PS+, I didn't even have access to asynchronous stuff (messages, player ghosts, bloodstains, etc)., beyond what the game had built in (like a few messages), right? And definitely didn't have access to any player generated messages.

yes to all those, though no one knows the exact mechanisms of how the death stranding sharing stuff works and there's no real reward for 'gaming' it anyway

Correct, I guess they could have done it so that you could see player messages without PS+ (but not summon/invade), but it's always been all or nothing.

You don't leave things *for* people. You can set up signs, bridges, etc. in the game and you see them. It seems to selectively show those in other games, and if they're "liked" by people, they seem to show up in more games.

There is no direct player-to-player "hey, I left you a waystation" metric. It trickles small amounts of content that has been liked by others into your game, and objects evaporate over time. If I build a bridge in a spot that is in an obvious path that lacks a bridge, chances are the few people who have it appear in their games may like it. So then it appears in more games, etc

There is a sort of reward, in that likes you accumulate add to one of the in-game metrics. But that same metric is added to by characters in the game.

there's no reason to juke the stats, as it were, as the things that get the most support from others are going to be the ones that are most useful to you

it could be the topic for an entire Playstation user privacy thread, but I was curious if PS profiles are inherently public when it comes to trophies, etc.

I probably missed a privacy setting or didn't give a crap, but in any case I found third-party fan site psnprofiles.com, stuck my username in the search without registering for anything, and it was able to retrieve my trophy info

I'm not sure I even know my username.

Could you go through this game liking stuff that is not useful?

sure, but all the really cool objects that have shown up for me have hundreds or even thousands of likes now that the game's been out a while

oh yeah, the other metric for those who haven't read about it:

there's a list in-game of players you've "interacted" with and you can set up "strand contacts" with them, leading to the game prioritizing their objects appearing in your instance. it shows a number next to them that is either the number of likes they've received, or is somehow related to that metric

I have seen a few players with tens of thousands of likes on that list, but some people have reported others with millions

But as of yet you're saying there is no real reward to that ranking, just ego?

again, likes can help influence one of five metrics in the game, but you max it out in-game on your own easily enough after a while

Death Stranding 2 should be 50 hours of explaining and demonstrating to the newly on-line how the chiral network works.

Sounds like the guy should have made a movie or website or social network app or something. Since the game aspect seems sort of ancillary to his themes and/or goals.

the main task of the game is literally connecting disconnected people

it's like a goddamn imBEACHment hearing in here

yeah, I give up

so, those of us actually playing this, how you doing? what episode are you on?

This does seem like the type of thing that a phone app would be ideal for. Check in on likes and such for those structures you laid down earlier.

Last night I wrecked some MULE sites and grabbed a ton of road materials. Almost single handedly putting together a Route 66 across this piece.

I’m at... episode 8 or 9? With like 40 some hours of play time. I really enjoy this game and can’t seem to put it down.

i'm on episode 6, i plead toddler

if you're around 8, would highly recommend doing all the standard orders and world-building you can for a while

there's a moment I'm at where you can't for a while :/

i think i'm still on like..... 2? only get an hour or so every night or so

confused by criticism of these janked-out 22nd century vehicles that they're clumsy or handle strangely. i mean... of course they handle strangely, they're from a society that's been totally destroyed where the only roads were 3-d printed 20 minutes ago

lol, that’s canon now

Haha fair point actually. If I could ever imagine how a 3D printed vehicle would handle it would absolutely be just like this.

Kojima may have outdone himself when it comes to dumping 80% of the exposition during the endgame and credits this time!

i liked this:
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-11-15-together-alone-the-radical-promise-of-pathfinding-in-death-stranding

i'm still very early on but this is interesting to think about: "Death Stranding's drawback as a fable about the importance of reforging connections is that it never moves beyond that atmosphere of collective toil and deprivation."

i do sort of wish that there were a big narrative moment where your relationship with BRIDGES changes, that the carefully constructed material/building/recycling loops start to go haywire, that you override the weapons deactivations and discover just what the fuck is going on. it's a great game without that of course but it would have been pretty amazing.

afaict there’s only one truly bad person in the game! everything is very morally complex, or should I say... uncertain

finished. ruled

agreed

wish I’d done the pizza missions when they were available

i did the first one and received a very good email from the recipient later! i wonder what the subsequent ones were all about

check your messages, dude

or at least go to peter’s shelter

ya thats the email i mean. gonna drop by tonight.

last few hours of this game are like "oh you thought we were doing tarkovsky? psyche mf it's douglas sirk's evangelion"

Kojima hiding story twists behind other, more bizarre, story twists

There was one moment where I was actually stunned

I could’ve done with less exposition on top of exposition and then the exposition of that exposition. Kojima continues to be comically long winded. BUT... this was really great and I admire its fully dedicated swinging-for-the-fences-and-MEANING-IT heart. Felt entirely confident.

Also the game was just... really fun. Despite (or because of) its insistence on making you suffer through some of it, the core gameplay loop’s legitimately addictive and satisfying.

I’m gonna keep playing and collect some trophies I think. Still some zip line routes to complete.

Excited to see what else untethered Kojima will have coming in the future.

Can I just say how impressed I am that any of you folks can finish a game, any game, in just a few weeks?

I’ve only just started chapter three but i’m really enjoying this uniquely haunted stumbling simulator

it is super haunted

it’s all about shaky contact from the other side: of death, of the wire connecting you to the internet, of the “chiral network”. despite all this contact you are so, so alone.

I have a bunch of time off at the end of year, regularly procrastinate housework (and am suffering now) and have no kids and a lot of my social obligations exist but I can push them off a week or two

so, throwing fifty hours into a game in just over two weeks is probably not healthy but it was fun! I honestly only do this maybe once a year. don’t feel like you have to binge this sucker — it’s super fun in one to two hour increments and the plot is set up so that you can progress or do a number of tasks that fit in that amount of time

lol community
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-12-03-death-stranding-players-are-using-vehicles-for-griefing-and-kojima-productions-is-stepping-in

Just goes to show, if you make a game about connection and helping other people, someone is going to use that mechanic to be a dick. (see also: jump here, fake wall ahead, go left et al. in Dark Souls)

i just started chapter 3 and there's a holographic "watcher" from horizon zero dawn just hanging out on the outskirts of lake knot city?!?

is that the weird giraffe thing? there are a few giant holograms that weird me out but, hey, it’s a futuristic world with holograms

it's literally this: http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/horizonzerodawn/images/0/04/Watcher-Render.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/310?cb=20170228084356

huh would you look at that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAt2Oj8FPfo

Is that game any good? I guess it uses the same game engine.

nah it's like an ubisoft style big map boring tasks game imo, i played a few hours and never went back to it