As most people here know already, I am a long time Playstation fan. I've also owned every Nintendo handhelds (and Wii) and I'm a big fan of Fire Emblem and Advance Wars, but my lead platforms have always been PS home consoles since the first one. Also bought PSP, Vita, and recently upgraded from the PS4 to the Pro.
Anyway, I moved from France to Japan last year, I didn't play for several months, but I bought the PS4 Pro God of War bundle and started gaming pretty heavily again. One of the game I play the most is Uncharted 4 Multiplayer, and I think I'm a pretty good player (attained Master rank as a solo player back when the ranked games were team deathmatch). But since I started playing it again here, half of the games I did were terrible: almost impossible to hit a moving target, impossible to avoid grenades or mines, impossible to kill people on a cliff, and without trying to be too proud, it seemed like pretty heavy lag (killing a guy and being killed by him 2 seconds later felt weird).
I noticed that I was matched mostly with European players, sometimes even the same ones as last year in France, and I first thought that it was because too few people were playing in Asia. But when I bought Soul Calibur 6 and was also matched against European players only, with terrible connection (even with very high internet speed), something felt very wrong and I went online to confirm it. So yes, Playstation Network do not care about your actual location for matchmaking, only about the location affiliated to your PSN account. "Alright then, let's just use my JP account!" I thought. And all of a sudden, all my Uncharted 4 games went a lot smoother, no lag anymore, and I even found games more easily. One big problem though: I lost all of my unlocked content, even everything I bought for real money. Which I understand, because it's another account.
I've been very disappointed about the lack of local matchmaking and the loss of my progression, but decided that a way better gameplay was worth a few euros, and I bought 20 euros of MP coins to unlock the characters, weapons and skills I used (with coins left, I thought), because I don't want to do hundreds of games to unlock everything again. However, the coins never appeared on my Uncharted account. So I contacted Sony support to ask for help, and for a refund if it couldn't work. I looked on internet and found an answer from Naughty Dog, saying that "Unlockable content from a region can only be used with a game from this region, even physical". So, I can buy the coins but it can't be used in the game. Naughty Dog also advice to ask Sony for a refund in that case, which I did. Their answer has been clear: no, they won't refund me. If I want to play the games I bought in Europe in good conditions, even if I am willing to pay for in-game transactions, I have to buy every game again, or start everything from the beginning.
This is obviously very disappointing, and unacceptable from my point of view. They offer a lackluster service locked between countries, without even a local matchmaking option, and block any moves between region behind a "pay everything again" paywall. Between this and the recent news about heavy censorship (not a fan of ecchi games, but I can imagine a Nier Automata 2 with a censored character...), maybe this could be the right time to change my main platform. If I have to buy every MP game I own a second time or start them again from the beginning, I might as well put this money and time on another platform and new games. I didn't buy the Switch yet, but could be interested, or I could upgrade my PC.
Any thought on this? Advice? How are international transfers managed on other platforms?
Last edited by Faelco - on 03 November 2018
