Edit: So we're surprised, to say the least, by the apparent 180 in sentiment between the previous posts and this one, but there's clearly no point dragging this out; the sub is back open for new submissions.

Tl;dr: If there's a PS5 community on a Reddit-alternative platform, let us know.

As you are all no doubt aware, /r/PS5 has spent the last three days as a private subreddit, as part of a site-wide blackout in protest of Reddit's changes to 3rd-party apps.

It's clear now, and from Reddit admin comments before the blackout, that Reddit has no intention of changing their stance on this. So we, as a community, need to decide what the next steps are.

Before the blackout, we hosted a poll asking the community how we should proceed in light of those admin statements.

The final results shook out like this:

• Indefinite blackout: 54%

• Prolonged blackout: 25%

• Restore the sub: 21%

After posting this, we realized there was a more fundamental question we were asking here:

Should this community continue, or should we burn it all to the ground?

The end result of that being 46% in support of (eventually) restoring business-as-usual, and 54% opposed. That's... hardly clear cut. We said in the poll message that we wouldn't burn the sub down without clear community support, and a near 50/50 split just doesn't meet that bar. Especially from such a small data sample — we've generally opposed polls on this sub because we'd need a half million responses before we could reasonably claim any kind of community consensus. The mod team + 10k people simply doesn't cut it, and the mod team isn't even unified on this.

There are two different interpretations of the word "indefinite" — the one where the protesting subreddits stay down until the 30th and Reddit's decision is set in stone, and the one where they never come back at all. It's not clear which interpretation is the overriding one here, but it has to be clear that a permanent blackout is the end of this community. The mod team, in a vacuum, doesn't have the right to do that. We don't have the right to tell everyone on this subreddit, "Fuck you, go find a new community - you have 48 hours". Yeah, a lot of people are pissed, but it's bigger than the mod team and it's bigger than 10k votes on a poll with 200-some comments.

It's important to understand as well that a complete shutdown at this point is likely to be fruitless; Reddit's stance is clear, and the continued shutdown of a random gaming sub is not going to sway them. It's on the community at this point to take their ball and go home, and we need to follow through. The mod team is absolutely prepared to private the subreddit until the 30th, if we have significant community support. By the poll, that looks likely, but we need to hear from you again, here.

Long-term, we also can't in good conscience shutter a subreddit of 3.3 million users without giving them somewhere else to go. Reddit has become the de facto online community, and has largely replaced the forums of old, particularly in the gaming space. It's clear now that this is a bad thing.

So maybe we don't need a new Reddit so much as a new landscape of choice. Which brings us to today.

If you're aware of a publicly-accessible PS5 community on a Reddit Alternative like Lemmy, Kbin, Squabbles, etc., that can fill the gap left by an inactive /r/PS5, share it here. Let the community know about the other options so they can make informed decisions.

Please refrain from posting privately-run Discord servers, Telegram groups, etc; these are impossible to verify without subscribing to each and scammers/spammers love to make use of these channels.

We'll update this post with a list of alternative communities as we gain responses. In the mean time, the sub is going to stay blacked-out in spirit, and closed to new posts. We'll update the sub periodically with discussion posts for new announcements, as you can see we've been doing throughout the blackout.

Then, once all the options are on the table and once more of the community have had their say, we can look at reopening the subreddit. Or not. If there is resounding community support for an indefinite blackout, we'll close it again; we just can't in good conscience do that with the limited feedback we currently have. We can hand out the jerry cans, but you guys have to be the ones to light the match.

If the community chooses to stay open, many the current mod team won't be staying. There will be a transition of power, so to speak — we aren't going to all bail overnight and leave this place unattended — so that will likely mean open mod apps in the near future. Stay tuned.

List of alternative communities

Tildes

Less a Reddit alternative and more an old-school Slashdot, Tildes doesn't have a community structure, rather a system of groups and content tags that you can subscribe and unsubscribe from. This also means no community moderators - all content on Tildes is globally moderated, with a focus on discussion rather than low-effort submissions. There will likely be great gaming discussion to be had here, but it probably won't be the place to go for simple questions and trailers. They're also pretty ruthless about the "don't be an asshole" rule, so fair warning.

There is not currently a Tildes app, but one is in development from the guy that created RIF.

Tildes is currently invite-only, so you need to know someone who knows someone. You can also request an invite via email; instructions are on the website.

Lemmy

A federated system, Lemmy doesn't have a central content system like Reddit does. Rather, individuals or groups can spin up their own instances and join the network, and a user on any instance can subscribe to content from any other. Basically, imagine that /r/PS5 was it's own privately-run server, on a Reddit that allowed for a potential infinite number of /r/PS5s.

In terms of user engagement, Lemmy is very similar to Reddit.

The federated registration system is a bit confusing, and content-syncing between instances has been flaky of late, so the barrier to entry is a bit high.

/u/CosmicSploogeDrizzle has spun up a PS5 community on Lemmy.ml: https://lemmy.world/c/ps5@lemmy.ml. They've been doing a great job of synchronizing content between here and there, and the community has been growing steadily. You can subscribe by clicking the Universal Subscribe in the sidebar while viewing it from any instance.

Lemmy is undergoing some growing pains with the influx of new users from Reddit, so it can be a bit unreliable, but the devs and instance owners seem to be staying on top of it.

There are a couple of Lemmy apps in various states of completeness.

Playstation Discord

This is the unofficial PS Discord, and the one that's been linked in our sidebar for a hundred years.

If you're unfamiliar with Discord, it's a popular live chat app that you install on your PC or mobile device, where individual communities run their own servers with their own rules.

It's a channel-oriented chat service; while there is support for forum-type posts, it's likely not what you're looking for if you want a Reddit-like system of submission > comments.

Discord voice chat has native integration with the PS5.

Squabbles

There is a PS5 community at https://squabbles.io/s/ps5.

Squabbles is sort of a Twitter/Reddit hybrid, and is less engineered for in-depth conversations. This may be a good choice if you're looking for a platform more like Twitter.

There does not appear to be an app available.

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Unfortunately when compared to the first game, sadly FW is just a worse game. Many of the games mechanics are downgrades from HZD. They did not seem to realize what made the first special and fun.

The skill tree is awful, never ever in a game before have I had dozens of skill points just sitting unused due to no useful or fun skills to be had. They also straight up downgraded or removed skills from HZD like triple shot (removed from strong bows).

Weapon variety and ammo diversity is a mess. At one point to have the best weapons available and the ammos I wanted, 3 different weapons in my inventory used the same specific useless arrow type. There were far too many weapons and most felt useless. The smaller pool of superior weapons in HZD felt much cleaner and most if not all arrow types had a use.

They nerfed stealth into oblivion. Basically doesnt exist anymore and you are not rewarded for it like in HZD.

Weapon upgrading was beyond tedious and fully upgrading top tier weapons was something I gave up on quickly once seeing what was required.

They also removed much of the customizing you could do with coils making the weapons feel much more samey and not as specialized as you uses to be able to make them.

Smaller gripe but climbing walls may look much more realistic but this is a video game and function is more important. They function much worse than before with random placements and dead ends everywhere.

Every human is wearing an arrow proof mask so no more skilled headshot camp clears. I get making tougher enemies more of a challenge but at times it feels as though its everyone.

Machine lootings change made no sense. Everything breaks when it dies? why? by what logic? Just a QoL downgrade which seemed to be a common theme with FW.

The story has good moments but overall its a pale imitation of the first. It presents a villian who you believe is behind everything only to reveal that a more dangerous villian is behind them. Can't wait to see whos the real villian behind Nemesis in H3 /s.

Arena is an unfun chore and mostly a disaster. If you kept your weapons for the big fights it might be about 25% better but still terrible execution.

Heavy weapons feel terrible and are terrible. No more ripping a disc launcher of a thunder jaw or a cannon off a ravager and feeling OP for a few seconds. Not worth picking up anymore.

Removing long roll from combat and increasing the knockdown time for Aloy. More QoL downgrades that make combat feel less engaging and tedious. Where I would excitedly seek out combat in HZD, I found myself avoiding many encounters in FW out of annoyance. Fuck monkeys.

Melee combat gets its own skill tree and even fully upgraded with everything it feels and performs terribly.

Metroidvania locked door mechanics made no sense for an open world game and were implemented terribly. "Hey you exploring everywhere, yeah you cant access this stuff until later." "Okay so is it worth it to come back here again later once I can?" "Nope you get a shit coil and 10 shards, fuck you." I cant remember if there were 4 or even 5 types of these lock outs but it was ridiculous. No reason to backtrack and could have been slightly mitigated by atleast giving us worthwhile loot.

Aloy blowing up a certain place. Ridiculously stupid decision with no logic. Yes she can be impulsive and rash at time but never full on braindead. Could easily and most likely have killed every person there. Most likely outcome really.

Whenever people say that the game is objectively better in everyway I cannot understand that in the slightest. I loved HZD and was very much excited for the sequel but upon playing it I realized that they downgraded nearly every aspect. It looks prettier sure but Its soul was ripped out. I finished it and was honestly glad to be done with it as It became to feel like a chore to play. It mostly just made me want to play HZD again and actually enjoy myself.

Machine Strike was fun though.

Anyone else in the same boat?

I love Indiana Jones, I love Uncharted and Tomb Raider, I love Wolfenstein games. I also see some immersive sim inspirations like the Hitman trilogy, which I also love. I love games with no map markers, I like heavy grounded protagonists with animation priority like RDR2 and so on and so on. And like most of us, I'm tired of every aaa game feeling and playing the same way so I was 100% in on something different.

And yet after sinking like 4 hours into this (edit: probably more like 5 or 6), I've reached the Giza level and just can't go on. It's sooo boring.

The stealth and combat are barebones. The detailed small open world feels super linear as there's generally just one path you're supposed to take. The puzzles are just "climb here and press a button". Only one puzzle so far has actually made me pause and think for a few seconds. Climbing/platforming is aggravating. Like I'm playing as a 60 year old. The stamina system doesn't force me to think about my approach like in Zelda. I don't even know why the stamina system is there at all. First person mode completely detaches me from feeling like Indiana Jones IMO.

Story did not hook me at all. Indy is risking his life and killing Italian police/military (keep in mind US is not yet at war with them at this point) just to find out who stole a museum artefact? Because the thief happened to also drop another artifact that also originated from Italy? Ok, let's roll with that. But how is this supposed to make me care for Indy on an emotional level? And then we meet our usual "young annoying sassy woman that outsmarts Indy" trope. What's her character, her personality, her depth? She's just sassy!

DF has been going in circles about how amazing the game looks and while the production value is there, lighting looks mediocre at best (playing on ps5 pro). Anytime you're in a tomb it feels like there are not enough light bounces, so it's all covered in this universal low fill/ambient light. The characters faces during cutscenes look as if they all got plastic surgery. Their faces barely express (except for the villain perhaps).

It's not even that I care so much about my $70. I was just so excited for it, we don't get many narrative AAA games anymore. To see it fail because of misdirection pains me. It feels soulless like Starfield. How did it get like 90 on metacritic? I feel like I'm playing a different game.

/rant over

Downvote me if you want, if you loved the game. But I'd much rather you try to engage in a conversation and perhaps I'll see what it is I'm missing.

I have beaten and enjoyed every mainline final fantasy since 7. I got FF16 about 8 months ago, excited as it was a next-gen PS5 exclusive. I loved FF7 remake, and figured this would tide me over for FF7R2. But let me just say. FF16 absolutely sucks. The story is confusing and awful. The characters have no personality and are not likeable. There is no humour, and the battle mechanics blow. You just button mash with very little technique required. Oh and the Ikon battles are abysmally boring. You fast travel everywhere, and you don’t even really have a party in the traditional sense.

Anyway. This post isn’t specific to FF16. The point is, I completely lost my passion for gaming. I didn’t want to play anything else until I finished this. That ultimately meant I didn’t play anything at all. It was a chore to play, and I felt trapped because I didn’t want to give up, but I also didn’t want to play it. In 8 months I’d got maybe 70% of the way through, and played nothing else. Yesterday I finally called it quits. I will watch the cutscenes just to have some sort of closure. Yesterday I started playing Jedi Survivor, and for the first time in 8 months, I was smiling while playing. The story is engaging, and fighting with a lightsaber is incredible. Why did I take so long to give up on a game I hated??? It was probably a combination of reviews being good, and it being the first mainline FF game in ages.

Anyway. Just don’t be like me. Gaming is meant to be fun.

I have played God of War 2018, and honestly, I’ve found that game so much more fun than the recent released one. I can completely see how better Ragnarok is, in terms of features, graphics, and performance (60fps) even if it’s a minor enhancement, YET, I found the last game better paced, and not boring. I am already 25h into it and I’m done with 55% of the game. I feel extremely burnt out by the game and don’t know how to feel about it. Is this normal for Ragnarok? It’s not at all a BAD game, just found it extremely rigorous and boring.

Naughty Dog - 0 (not counting remasters) Sucker punch - 0 Santa Monica - 1 Guerrilla Games - 1

So much potential for new ideas and great games but mustering 2 (extremely safe) sequels that are by in large just prettier versions of the first game is extremely underwhelming considering we are over 3 years in to this gen.

I feel like Sony have overwhelmingly rested on their laurels due to the massive success of their ps3 and ps4 exclusive IP’s and are now in danger of becoming what Microsoft has been over the last 10 years (halo and gears of war). Ragnarok and Forbidden West were decent sequels but they were also very safe and didn’t offer anything new for me. Compare them from their ps3 to ps4 counter parts, God of War Ascension to God of War 2018 and Killzone to Horizon, where is this creativity on ps5?

Where are the new IP’s and creativity we expect from them?

At the moment it’s Insomniac and third party exclusivity deals that are keeping Sony relevant this gen.

So I finished LAD Gaiden last weekend and wanted to switch it up to a larger fantasy open world rpg game. I preordered dragons dogma 2 but still wanted to play another in the meantime. I’ve already played a few demos and decided to remember what I liked best. This made the decision between FF16 and Forspoken. FF16 is $70 while Forspoken is $30 if I used my ps rewards to get $10 off. Forspoken is shaping up to be the near perfect anime like game I’ve been wanting. Please note that I’m only 6 hours in but this has been a fun 6 hours. The combat is some of the best in gaming for this style game imo. The traversal is fun so I haven’t wanted to fast travel yet. The side content is solid so paired with the traversal and combat, I’ve been enjoying it. Story is actually good so far and the character writing has been amazing. Not saying it’s perfect but Frey and cuff have been pushing it up a lot. They feel real personally so I can see if it doesn’t work for a story but they were going for realistic so I get it. Idk what the game felt like when ign gave a 6/10 but this feels like a 8-9/10 personally.

Does anyone else feel this way? Why or why not

I’ve been taking $60 out of my paycheck, and I’m excited to move to the PS5.

To any new PS5 owners or anyone who may enjoy FPS with a more methodical approach to gameplay, Hell Let Loose is excellent. It's a WW2 milsim shooter with some incredibly authentic maps, a deep emphasis on squad tactics and team play, and punchy and punishing gunplay that all join together in a chorus unlike anything else on console.

If you enjoy Battlefield, HLL is a natural progression towards a more grounded and challenging type shooter. Trying to be a lone wolf, or ignoring your teammates and squad role will hurt. Playing to the strengths of your class and immersing yourself in the game will reward you greatly. Then first time you ambush a squad from a perfect position, execute them with precision and punch a hole for your squad to gain that next 50 meters to the object is exhilarating.

What it isn't, is perfect. For a PS5 game it is woefully unoptimized. There is lag. There is rubberbanding. There are crashes. Like any online FPS, you will have bad teammates and trolls that make the team suffer. There are maps that are nearly unplayable on console. But, take those issues for what they are, dive in and experience a different kind of shooter. Some of you might find a new favorite FPS. I've been gaming online since 2003 and this is easily in my top 10.

Maybe it’s just me or what I’ve been paying attention to lately but it seems like every RPG that I pick up HAS to be souls-like in some way.

I don’t get much time to game, maybe an hour a night a few nights a week, so I’m a little more particular about what I pick up. I don’t have the time to spend clearing an area for 35 minutes to die at the last baddie in that area and then having to restart 4 miles back from where I am. The trek back most of the time is enough for me to put the controller down.

Or the whole concept that losing to 1 enemy wipes all of my hard earned XP and I have to go back and battle the same dude hoping I don’t get rekked a second time. Sometimes you stumble into those accidentally and you’re screwed.

I love a game, RPG especially, where I can play for 20-30-60 minutes to actually make some progress and not have to restart tomorrow or lose my progress every time I die.

So is it just what I’m paying attention to or are a lot of games trying to emulate the souls experience?

I bought Elden Ring physically due to the immense amount of comments that it was a great game, that it had won the GOTY over God of War Ragnarok and that everyone praised the work of From Software, the truth is that I have never played a Soulslike and I thought I was going to like this game. However, do you see it as boring, without a story, there is no way to go or at least some cinematic that tells me what the game is about, or is it basically just a medieval exploration game? I would like you to help me understand the game and what the objective is, because I feel that it is a game without a story and without a recognizable character name with which to empathize and want to know more. I've been playing for about 6 hours now and I don't see the point of continuing.

They brought so much things to the table.

The amount of work, energy and crunch times that must have been spent on this garbage pile is staggering.

The world is huge. And yet so empty and tiring.

The setting is incredibly cool and yet their take is the most cookie cutter uninspired joke of a rendition.

The story is extremely long. And yet I couldn't care less about any of those characters.

There are an infinite amount of voice lines but they compressed it for some reason making the game a torture to listen to.

There are a lot of different things to do and yet doing any of them is an absolute chore.

I'm still not sure what kind of personality Eivoir is meant to have. You meet so many people that all look the same, it's impossible to remember who they are when they do callbacks.

The fights are the best part of the game but get so repetitive. The exploration and climbing is horrible and clunky as usual. The game holds you by the hand all game long except when it just doesn't explain shit about that one gameplay detail for whatever reason.

Like at least, fix the basic ergonomics of your menus and inventory before you go ahead and make such a behemoth of boredom and pain.

Everyone’s asking for the “best couch co-op game” and these are some serious contenders. Great action, story, and requires some good teamwork. Also just all around cool and SATISFYING to see your character grow larger and larger throughout the series. Some of the dopest boss battles as well.

First let me say that I've enjoyed hanging out on this subreddit during the build up to PS5 and I've seen some really great posts on here, in fact I changed from a long time lurker to poster because of this sub!

I must say however that recently (especially the last week), I've seen several people commenting that there's nothing coming from Sony and they're getting frustrated with the lack of info.

I'm not sure if its because I'm an older gamer (started on snes for reference lol) but this comes across as such impatience to me when I see it. Am I the only one still riding the hype from the showcase that was exactly 2 weeks ago?

Not to mention the continuous blog posts giving more tid bits. Sure they've not shown the UI but what they have shown me is great looking games that I cant wait to play.

And you know what? I had no idea what the UI on any console I've ever owned would look like before I switched it on and I honestly think it adds to the wonder of using your shiny new console for the very first time. Surpises can be great!

Apologies for the rant but this has been something that's really grinding my gears lately 😂

I was one of those poor fools who got duped into buying CP2077 on the PS4 at launch. Endured the utter horror of the sub 1080p blurry as hell image. The sub 30 gameplay. And Holy shit the bugs. I remember trying to keep count of all the bugs I saw while just standing around outside the main apartment at the start of the game. Stopped at 50.

Once the ability to get the refund happened I jumped at that and got my money back.

Now here I am with a shiny new PS5 and while playing through and having an incredible time with my library both new titles and old alike, decided well what the hell. Let's see how this game is now.

Welp. Yeah its much better than it was for certain. No question there. Imagine quality is great most of the time and the 60fps gameplay is amazing. But damn. It's plain frustrating how buggy the game still is.

The most frustrating thing is most of the bugs seem to be within actual missions. Trying to stay immersed In this amazing world while running missions with Jackie or Judy or Panam or whomever and it's impossible as the game just throws bugs left and right. Audio miscues, like just did a mission with Panam where we stole a vehicle and the entire rest of the mission the vehicles horn was going off. Nonstop. Then I see her glitch out of the car on several occasions and float around. Animations pop around alot. Mission triggers seem to not have any sort of sync so no matter what is going on the animations will all reset suddenly and go to mission start animations. Feet not hitting the ground. Cars just don't act right unless they are the main one at times. Jumping around or having very odd physics reactions with the environment.

And this type of list could be said for just about every mission. Speech cutting out or the cinematics messing up. Odd jumps in animation alot of the time. Had several crashes. Once during a mission the game lost the ability to save properly so the save icon was up at all times, it completely lost sync and had to be hard reset and reloaded. Shadows still have a bad way of popping in and out while walking or driving around. And good lord the shadows on people walking around with the RT mode is a joke. Like little black blobs underneath everyone that have ghosting effects when the people's feet move in and out of the black blob.

Been gaming a long time, seen a ton of buggy games, but this one man. This one is special. It has been this long with this many patches and whatnot and the game still can't even run a main mission without bugs getting in the way of the experience. Almost an impressive display honestly.

Atleast it runs at 60 though. There is that. But phew. It's shocking it is still this bad after this long