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).
― change display name (Jordan), Friday, 22 November 2019 15:57 (four years ago) link
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
― ciderpress, Friday, 22 November 2019 16:00 (four years ago) link
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.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 22 November 2019 16:06 (four years ago) link
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
― ciderpress, Friday, 22 November 2019 16:15 (four years ago) link
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.
― change display name (Jordan), Friday, 22 November 2019 16:49 (four years ago) link
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.
― mh, Friday, 22 November 2019 16:57 (four years ago) link
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
― mh, Friday, 22 November 2019 17:07 (four years ago) link
I'm not sure I even know my username.
Could you go through this game liking stuff that is not useful?
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 22 November 2019 17:16 (four years ago) link
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
― mh, Friday, 22 November 2019 17:18 (four years ago) link
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
― mh, Friday, 22 November 2019 17:20 (four years ago) link
But as of yet you're saying there is no real reward to that ranking, just ego?
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 22 November 2019 17:23 (four years ago) link
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
― mh, Friday, 22 November 2019 17:24 (four years ago) link
Death Stranding 2 should be 50 hours of explaining and demonstrating to the newly on-line how the chiral network works.
― circa1916, Friday, 22 November 2019 17:39 (four years ago) link
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.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 22 November 2019 17:44 (four years ago) link
the main task of the game is literally connecting disconnected people
― mh, Friday, 22 November 2019 17:46 (four years ago) link
it's like a goddamn imBEACHment hearing in here
― $1,000,000 or 1 bag of honeycrisp apples (Sufjan Grafton), Friday, 22 November 2019 17:58 (four years ago) link
yeah, I give up
so, those of us actually playing this, how you doing? what episode are you on?
― mh, Friday, 22 November 2019 18:02 (four years ago) link
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.
― circa1916, Friday, 22 November 2019 18:07 (four years ago) link
i'm on episode 6, i plead toddler
― adam, Friday, 22 November 2019 18:24 (four years ago) link
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 :/
― mh, Friday, 22 November 2019 18:40 (four years ago) link
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
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Friday, 22 November 2019 23:07 (four years ago) link
lol, that’s canon now
― mh, Saturday, 23 November 2019 01:11 (four years ago) link
Haha fair point actually. If I could ever imagine how a 3D printed vehicle would handle it would absolutely be just like this.
― circa1916, Saturday, 23 November 2019 11:30 (four years ago) link
Kojima may have outdone himself when it comes to dumping 80% of the exposition during the endgame and credits this time!
― mh, Saturday, 23 November 2019 15:19 (four years ago) link
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.
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Saturday, 23 November 2019 15:26 (four years ago) link
afaict there’s only one truly bad person in the game! everything is very morally complex, or should I say... uncertain
― mh, Saturday, 23 November 2019 15:31 (four years ago) link
finished. ruled
― adam, Sunday, 24 November 2019 21:26 (four years ago) link
agreedwish I’d done the pizza missions when they were available
― mh, Sunday, 24 November 2019 23:56 (four years ago) link
i did the first one and received a very good email from the recipient later! i wonder what the subsequent ones were all about
― adam, Monday, 25 November 2019 00:52 (four years ago) link
check your messages, dudeor at least go to peter’s shelter
― mh, Monday, 25 November 2019 03:17 (four years ago) link
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"
― adam, Monday, 25 November 2019 10:29 (four years ago) link
Kojima hiding story twists behind other, more bizarre, story twists
There was one moment where I was actually stunned
― mh, Monday, 25 November 2019 14:55 (four years ago) link
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.
― circa1916, Saturday, 30 November 2019 00:48 (four years ago) link
Can I just say how impressed I am that any of you folks can finish a game, any game, in just a few weeks?
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 1 December 2019 15:02 (four years ago) link
I’ve only just started chapter three but i’m really enjoying this uniquely haunted stumbling simulator
― A victim managed to capture evidence of the gimp (bizarro gazzara), Sunday, 1 December 2019 15:09 (four years ago) link
it is super hauntedit’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.
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Sunday, 1 December 2019 19:28 (four years ago) link
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 twoso, 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
― mh, Monday, 2 December 2019 00:24 (four years ago) link
lol communityhttps://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-12-03-death-stranding-players-are-using-vehicles-for-griefing-and-kojima-productions-is-stepping-in
― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 17:10 (four years ago) link
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)
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 17:34 (four years ago) link
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?!?
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 5 December 2019 01:41 (four years ago) link
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
― mh, Thursday, 5 December 2019 02:15 (four years ago) link
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
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 5 December 2019 07:57 (four years ago) link
huh would you look at that
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAt2Oj8FPfo
― "Big Joe Fuck and the Bogalusa Maniac" (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 5 December 2019 10:00 (four years ago) link
Is that game any good? I guess it uses the same game engine.
― mh, Thursday, 5 December 2019 15:00 (four years ago) link
nah it's like an ubisoft style big map boring tasks game imo, i played a few hours and never went back to it
― adam, Thursday, 5 December 2019 15:12 (four years ago) link
maybe like those EA LOTR mordor games are a better comparison. overstuffed with not-that-fun stuffing
― adam, Thursday, 5 December 2019 15:13 (four years ago) link
Horizon Zero Fun more like.(I haven’t played it, but that’s how a friend described it)
― circa1916, Thursday, 5 December 2019 15:19 (four years ago) link
i haven't played it but it looked like it had more "real" action gameplay than like the assassins creed contextual action stuff, is that the case
― ciderpress, Thursday, 5 December 2019 15:20 (four years ago) link
I’ve definitely worn out on that Ubi template so when I heard that was the set-up I avoided it from there.
― circa1916, Thursday, 5 December 2019 15:23 (four years ago) link