PSN ID Change

[Byte]

Sony confirmed PSN ID change is coming;
https://blog.us.playstation.com/201...re-entering-playstation-preview-program-soon/

Can [MENTION=1214]Tom[/MENTION]Devaney or someone else at Farsight discuss how this affects TPA and SPA on PS4, and the PS3/VITA versions please? I know the latter aren't supported anymore, but it would be nice to know if changing your ID will stop you from playing the PS3/VITA versions (yes I still do).

 

[smbhax]

Oh sweet! Finally!!! : D

 

[Captain Caveman]

Sony confirmed PSN ID change is coming;
https://blog.us.playstation.com/201...re-entering-playstation-preview-program-soon/

Can [MENTION=1214]Tom[/MENTION]Devaney or someone else at Farsight discuss how this affects TPA and SPA on PS4, and the PS3/VITA versions please? I know the latter aren't supported anymore, but it would be nice to know if changing your ID will stop you from playing the PS3/VITA versions (yes I still do).

Well it does say any games before April 2018 will likely have issues and I don't see Farsight wasting any time on PS3/Vita anymore.. I doubt it'll stop working but it'll probably have you starting from scratch with regards to leaderboards..

I doubt any PS3/Vita games will even bother with the issues.. probably suggest you don't change your name.

 

[smbhax]

Well, if it really couldn't recognize your PSN ID anymore, you wouldn't be able to post to the leaderboards, and eh I suppose maybe you wouldn't be able to access your old DLC tables. That's all speculation, mind you, but that *would* rather put a crimp on things.

Although the article does say that

when this feature officially launches, a list of compatible games published before April 1, 2018, will be provided on PlayStation.com for reference before you make a change

so at least users of older games (not clear if they'll include a compatibility list for PS3/PSP games though) will have some warning before they try it.

A little disappointing that Sony can't work in some failsafe for older games, where they could fall back on your original ID or something.

But yeah hopefully FarSight will make sure the game has rename support. : o

 

[Captain Caveman]

Well, if it really couldn't recognize your PSN ID anymore, you wouldn't be able to post to the leaderboards, and eh I suppose maybe you wouldn't be able to access your old DLC tables. That's all speculation, mind you, but that *would* rather put a crimp on things.

Although the article does say that



so at least users of older games (not clear if they'll include a compatibility list for PS3/PSP games though) will have some warning before they try it.

A little disappointing that Sony can't work in some failsafe for older games, where they could fall back on your original ID or something.

But yeah hopefully FarSight will make sure the game has rename support. : o

Well I do know that TPA for the PS3 isn't using the most up to date software development Kit (SDK) and that Tom said if he was to start compiling it with the latest Kit it would break the game.

Any Game that is to support the name change would probably have to use the latest SDK.

I wonder if its the same with the PS4 version... I never asked Tom how current the SDK they are using to compile on the PS4 as my issue was with the PS3.

 

[Rayder]

The simplest solution is to let someone else be a guinea pig and avoid getting burned out of any of your digital purchases just by changing your PSN ID until we truly learn how far the "incompatibilities" go. Or, resign yourself to being forced to keep your poorly chosen PSN name by reverting back to it once you determine how much stuff you risk losing/ruining. I'm 100% digital with PS4 and Vita (and roughly 50% on PS3) and won't risk messing up or losing any of my digital purchases by even considering to change my PSN ID.

Luckily, I'm fine with my PSN name and have no intentions of changing it, but I'm sure you get my point. Especially when you consider around half of what made TPA great is no longer purchasable, do you really want to risk losing that?

All I'm saying is think hard about the potential consequences before making a decision you may regret more than just a bad PSN name.

 

[smbhax]

All I'm saying is think hard about the potential consequences before making a decision you may regret more than just a bad PSN name.

The article *does* say

If for any reason you experience issues after changing your ID, you can revert back to your original ID for free at any time (you will only be able to revert once during the preview program). Reverting back to an old ID will resolve most issues caused by the ID change.

so, at least, there's that. But man what's with this irony that Sony finally rolls up with the ID change and I may not even be able to use it. I think they need to work a little harder on this feature. ; P

...

Okay given that I can't even log into the article's comments to voice my paranoid fears

This page isn’t working
blog.us.playstation.com redirected you too many times

I am feeling less and less confident about this. : /

But they're really planning to introduce a customer support feature that will break a lot of games? That is just absurd. It doesn't sound like they've thought this through.

...

Sony's spammed-to-heck support forum has a thread about this

https://community.playstation.com/c...neral.topic.html/_info_psn_onlineid-KmGD.html

that says

What happens when you try to use a game or application that does not support the Online ID change feature?
At minimum, your old Online ID may be continue to be displayed. In some other cases however, users may occasionally encounter issues or errors.

so I guess they do have the obvious fallback solution, and they still think even that might not be enough. Oh dear.

 

[jrolson]

Reading the risks, changing your ID isn't worth it...

 

[Captain Caveman]

Sony Just updated MLB The Show 17 for the first time in more than a year with support for changing PSN Names.. so 100% all games will require to be compiled with the newest SDK.

 

[Tann]

I'm 100% digital with PS4 and Vita (and roughly 50% on PS3) and won't risk messing up or losing any of my digital purchases by even considering to change my PSN ID.

Luckily, I'm fine with my PSN name and have no intentions of changing it, but I'm sure you get my point. Especially when you consider around half of what made TPA great is no longer purchasable, do you really want to risk losing that?

All I'm saying is think hard about the potential consequences before making a decision you may regret more than just a bad PSN name.

Agreed.

I'm 80% digital on PS3 (60 games, only 12 physical) and the risk is wayyyyy too big (moreover on PS3, which is no more supported, except for the annual anti-hack system update )
I would have liked to shorten my PSN ID, but possibly break everything (purchases, online login) for removing a few less letters in my ID... well, no.

I found an interesting post on the PS blog about the Sony's possible workaround to finally allow the ID change. It seems a bit clunky, but there was a bad online architecture design right from the beginning (make the online ID the primary key is a pure nonsense), so we can not expect something very clean.

----------------------------
"From what I’m gathering, it appears that the way the Playstation network was originally architected back when PS3 was announced, they failed to tie the PSN ID to a unique identifier on the back end.

If you were to look at the backend server, you would see a folder structure consisting of PSN ID’s instead of numberic identifiers. For example, if your name was “SniperWolf”, your folder on the server would simply be named as /sniperwolf/trophies or /sniperwolf/cloud-data. Sony has been trying to figure out how they can rename/replace the server SQL data for years without people losing any of their information. Bad design IMO.

What I believe they are doing now as a “workaround” to allow PSN ID changes, is they are essentially building an Active Directory tree, and adding whatever new PSN ID as an “alias” of your original. So therefore the core structure of their services stays the same, your data is still located in the folder /sniperwolf/trophies, however you have an alias that “points” to that folder structure and pulls all info relevant to your account."
----------------------------

Makes sense. The games older (or without an update) than the PSN ID change feature, won't know where to look if the PSN ID is modified.

 

[smbhax]

Makes sense. The games older (or without an update) than the PSN ID change feature, won't know where to look if the PSN ID is modified.

I doubt that's the case. Anything Sony server-side, like a directory lookup, they can control; having a directory lookup re-route to a different directory is a very basic function that any server op can do, and could be easily automated.

Seems more likely to me that where games would run into problems would be cases where the game is making a call--that the OS can't recognize and convert for whatever reason, maybe because it was programmed in a non-standard way--to use the player's PSN ID for some client-side function--or, as someone somewhere pointed out, where the game is making custom calls to stuff stored or organized by PSN ID in the developer/publisher's own servers, like where a PSN ID has been tied to a login in the publisher's own server system.

But eh I don't really know. : P

Anyway I am totally gonna use the name change feature as soon as it is available! So if I forget, feel free to email me smbhax@gmail.com and remind me to check Pinball Arcade and see if stuff still works, and I'll come back and post my results in this thread. : D

 

[Tann]

[MENTION=396]smbhax[/MENTION]

I would strongly advise you to remove your e-mail adress from your last post... unless you like spams!

 

[smbhax]

[MENTION=396]smbhax[/MENTION]

I would strongly advise you to remove your e-mail adress from your last post... unless you like spams!

It's okay, gmail's pretty good at filtering. I have my address on my web site 24/7. : )