PS4 Community Action

There are recent rumors that the PlayStation 4 will be getting a new 3.5 update on March 3, 2016. I registered to be a beta tester for the new update last week. There are several features I am hoping will be included in the new update, but I am most interested in the Community system.

The PS4 Community feature was added in update 3.0 in late September of 2015. It seemed to be half baked. There were so many things missing that it made you wonder if Sony even tested it before they sent it out the door. It has frustrated so many users that they may never come back to it even if it gets fixed.

What did they get right with PS4 Communities? A few things. The idea is great. There needed to be a place for people who were passionate about certain games to get together inside the system to easily meet, share ideas and game together without just bloating the size of your friends list until it gets unmanageable. The ability to link to a specific game was perfect way to do this. You can find many Communities listed in the overview section in the game menu. The party and game session integration was one of coolest things about the system. If you create a party via the Community or start a game associated with it, parties and game sessions will be listed on the Community page for everyone to join.

There are a few things that are broken. First of all, a 10,000 user limit is really small. I have had a Helldivers Community that currently has 1200 members, lately due to the game being available for free on PS Plus, it has been growing by 50 members a day. I would like for it to get as large as possible. Also, I have a private Community. When someone requests to join the private community they are put into a list. The list only allows you to approve users, you can’t delete them. If you want to remove them from the list you have to approve them and then delete them from the Community. This workaround does work, but it is a bit annoying.

What’s missing? A ton of stuff!

• Search — There is no way to search for Communities. What? Yes, that’s right, there is no search feature. You can find some Communities listed under the game menu. You can also find them listed under a PSN user profile. It is baffling why this was left out and has to be the number one requested feature upgrade. Not only should you be able to search for Communities, but inside them as well for content that has already been discussed.
• Chat — Real time chat would be a great addition, especially for gamers to hook up and play together.
• Forum or Threaded Comments — There is not a good way to comment on posts, members sometimes use the Twitter @ reply to do it but it is not very efficient and can become confusing to follow a conversation.
• Genre Association — You can associate a Community to a game. However some Communities are about something else. It would be nice to associate a Community to a genre or topic. Like Twin Stick Shooters or Star Wars Games.
• Events — An events calendar would be fantastic. The ability of your Community to make timed announcements of a tournament or a game stream would be very helpful. Sony wouldn’t even have to build an infrastructure to it, just create an in Community viewable calendar that could link to a Google calendar.
• Web Links — Give moderators or trusted members the ability to post web links. I know the PS4 web browser is horrific but it could be somewhat useful.
• Integration with phone apps/web — The Community should be accessible from a web browser and via the PS4 Messenger app. This would make the Communities, THE place to be.
• Official Game Communities — You should be able to easily find an official Community for the game developers, it would make reporting issues or questions about the game so easy for users and developers.

I am hoping that Sony is able to address most of these issues in the future 3.5 update. They are on the right track, but they still have a ton to do to make the Community system fun and easy to use for everyone.