PS4 Owners Aren't Happy with the New Party System

I have been having a hard time connecting to the psn servers since I have downloaded the update . Its annoying :/

Get that changed back ASAP.

I always read stuff like this with mild bemusement. Then I realise I’m old and people without partners and families and who have a gamer group of friends actually do stuff like this.

This is such a glaring issue that I can’t believe it wasn’t picked up on in the beta.

Wow, who thought this was a good idea? How did no one take a step back and say "this doesn't work very well as a replacement."?
Sony needs to get on their A-game already. This is just too many mistakes in such a short period of time.

I actually find this update good. It works perfect for me as I don’t need to invite anyone anymore.
For people who play with loads of different people this is horrible

@AdamNovice I was in beta and noone liked the change, there was no feedback forum for this beta or anyway at all to report issues.

@nessisonett Allow me to explain something here that might help account for why it wasn't picked up. I was 1 of the people who received the beta but I didn't go for it, the reason being is because I would have had no way to talk with my friends during the beta.

I think just by looking at the fact that I didn't sign up due to that reason we can gauge that a lot of people offered the beta didn't go for it and the reason for that is the above.

@SaltSense That makes sense then and I’ve seen a few people who were in beta saying that it was terrible as well but they didn’t really have a way of feeding that back to Sony. Weird.

@AdamNovice To put it simply, players were locked out of being able to participate in their friends parties during the beta.

@Jagskill Bonkers. Surely that defeats the point of a beta

@Rob_230 We knew during it people were going to dislike it. I dont think sony had any intention of changing things hence why we couldn't report back. Majority I would imagine didnt use the party function through the beta as you couldn't actually use it with your friends unless they were in the beta.

Wait. I almost always talk in parties when my buddies are on. But that lineup of who's on constantly changes.

This means if I have a group of 4 buddies one night, I need to make a group? But then if one of those guys isn't on the night after, I'd need to make a new group for the other 3 guys? Just to send chat invites?

Am I understanding this correctly? This can't be real.

@MFTWrecks for that scenario just the same group is fine. Not everyone in your group needs to be on for the others to chat together. Think of it as poorly executed discord channel.

So is there no such thing as private party anymore? Anyone of my friends can just join?

It's just straight up awful. This has to be the worst update to a PlayStation console yet. Like, who did they have in the Beta? I literally can't do anything with the network right now either. All my licenses need refreshing and it won't let me do it. Update 8.00 have turned my PS4 into a brick. I'm impressed. Definitely looking forward to buying a PS5 now... Jesus... lol.

@MFTWrecks nah you got it wrong. You make one group for your 4 friends.

You can either message the group or make a party at any time from the group you make.

Once party made the other 3 can join or ignore it. There is no chat invites just a notification when someone starts the groups party chat.

I probably done a terrible job at explaining it here ha. But basically if you play with same people one group will do the job and never need to invite anyone again.

@LiamCroft Kudos for having the right background.

Noooo...it is mandatory update too.
From what I have been reading it sounds awful.

I had this update from June and didn't have any problems. All parties are private now which is very handy. No uninvited players would join and spoil your livestream. Some people were so dumb that they thought it's funny to join your party and make farting noises. Happened every second day. Now they can't. But those who are in the group are free to join whenever they want. Not sure what people are complaining about.

@Octane Lovely one, isn’t it?

@SaltSense Wait what's the point of a Beta if you aren't going to listen to the feedback, good or bad 😅 this doesn't affect me but I hope it's corrected for the people that it affects.

laughs in no friends

@Octane @LiamCroft
Very nice, which game is it from?

Also lets them record your voices in party chat for moderation? Which is more of a problem I think. Might be time to jump ship back to microsoft.

@LieutenantFatman The Last of Us: Part II

@scarecrowknife That message has been around since the PS4 came out, it’s just being resurfaced again as part of the update.

Im just annoyed that they're allowing people to record your party audio now. Watch what you say people cause if you upset someone in a party your chances of getting banned just went up.
Also if you wanna talk about anything really private I suggest you use your phone or something that isn't in the Playstation eco system cause something tells me your non game related actions could effect your account if they're now actively listening to you and allowing recordings to be taken.

@Henlak- next time I'm in a party I'm gonna test this out. Have the most toxic and offensive conversations possible. See if anything surfaces

@Henlak- "Im just annoyed that they're allowing people to record your party audio now. "

Surely this can't be true? That would violate laws in several states/countries without full authorized consent by all parties.

This update is trash. I can't see my friends lists at all...they just clock. Had to choose a text chat group to make a voice chat? Makes no sense. If someone is not in a text chat, can they not join or see that voice chat? Please revert. All you had to do was make the integration for ps5...you had one job...xbox gamers are prolly cracking up right now. What a joke.

@scarecrowknife @710King Go for it let me know how it goes. Im really trying to think of a practical reason why they would add this feature. There was already a way to record your voice over gameplay and if you're on a games console thats the only time you should need or want to hear your own voice.

@AdamNovice Wow, just wow. You, probably the most die-hard PlayStation fan who usually defends Sony to death and seem they can’t do no wrong (even when they are in the wrong), saying Sony’s on bad form 😮 Never did I expect to ever see the day you criticising Sony, even if was as little as saying bad form on their part.

I’m confident this will be resolved by the time I get a PS5 in the next couple of years. If enough people complain about it then Sony will have no choice but to listen and take action to solve the negativity on the issue.

🤣 Time to go back to my Xbox Live!

By the way, you could always record audio, but there was a way to opt out. Now it looks like they are recording as well, so I don't think there is an opt out feature.

@710King Theres literally an option allowing you to. As it does it it will bring up the notification saying: "Voice Chats may be recorded for moderation. By joining, you agree to be recorded"

@Horizon_Rover you're the type to ask the teacher for more homework

My ps4 friends list are not showing up friend its indicate number 4 to 5

@LiliumCobra I don't know about you but this doesn't sit right with me at all. I knew that you could record audio already but you could just hop on party settings and turn it off but like you said now that they've gone out of their way to moderate you themselves it looks like thats out the window.

I'd rather not have what I'm saying monitored on my own console in my own house with no way of saying no, and this is likely gonna be standard for PS5 now aswell.

@LiliumCobra @710King @scarecrowknife In summary: They've taken away private parties, screwed up the invite system, PSN is down for a lot of people and now they're monitoring our conversations without even giving us the option to opt out. Disastrous update.

@710King if true it violates laws in Sweden, UK and Germany to my knowledge.

@SirAngry It definitely violates California law, where I'm at. Their little "By joining, you agree to be recorded"" would be laughed away in court.

@710King pretty certain the European Courts would laugh it out as a defence, because you can't legally sign away your rights and protections under EU law, as Facebook have found out.

Okay so yeah I pretty much hate the new party system. As soon as you try to start a party it is made brutally clear that you can't start an invite only session anymore. I guess that means that any ***** can just join my party and troll me and my friends and there's nothing I can do about it. That's strike 1. Next when we actually do get a party started we HAVE to invite someone into our party in order to start the stupid thing. So no more starting a solo party anymore because you don't wish to hear a bunch of obnoxious people blasting music when you're trying to concentrate on a game. That's strike 2. And then we finally have the last main issue. When you start a party you then have to invite people into your party. Easy right? Well not exactly, because you see the ability to invite your friends to your party resembles starting a new messaging group with them instead, making it almost impossible to tell whether you're actually inviting anyone to your party or not. And that's strike 3. Sony, FIX THIS *****!!!!

I can't open friend list 😡😡

I'm extremely disappointed with this update. What they've done to the message/ party system is atrocious to say the least. I used to be able to boot up my PS4 pro, click on party, scroll down my friends list & invite multiple people at ONCE! Now it's just an extremely frustrating pain in the ASS plus I can't figure out how to make my parties private. There's nothing WORSE than being in the middle of a domination game with my buds only to be interrupted by the little british kids that my little brother enjoys playing Fortnite with lol. With ALL the absolutely incredible things Sony has done / created for the PlayStation community this update has made the ease of use not so easy anymore. Hopefully if enough people let Sony know how awful the experience is they will fix it or revert it back to it's previous state. Happy gaming my friends!

This update is horrible. Not only can you not easily get into a party but everygame i play says its unable to connect to psn. Needs to be fixed. Plz fix asap.

Actually, because of this humbuck I accidentally clicked Party icon for the first time on my console. 😂... it is fortunately empty... 👌last undiscovered icon is Events...

Bad move sony making it much harder to make parties on playstation now we're getting bugs on our systems with the friends list and also there's the error that we can't start the parties without a error poping up I don't think y'all sony ppl even tested it if it was going to work with out bugs coming out thank you very much for ruining that

I'm not a fan of this system.
Before the update I had the list system if I needed to make a party quickly from a set group of friends.
Also, that notification saying that I agree to have my voice chat recorded by using party chat feels wrong.

@AdamNovice I beg to differ, I removed the beta and gave Sony my clear feedback that it was a terrible user experience. This hinders socialization, not encourages it.

So i installed the update and yep friends list failed to load and error code blah,blah,blah...so installing yet another big warzone update (copying takes the biscuit) and then my friends list is now working perfectly so maybe it take a while to synch up? I dont know but its working now..

I dont do online multiplayer, people are in too big of a rush all of the time. Im fine with this update

No idea what Sony was thinking when they broke the party system... It didn't need fixing people. Put it back the way it was and fire the prat that messed it up..

Absolute nightmare. This is the worst I've ever known it. Worse still I've just given one of my PS4s to a friend to try and sway him from the dark side. As you can imagine he's well impressed. 🙄

The old way was already a hassle, shocked to hear it's now worse, guess sony really is focusing on singleplayer gaming

I'm confused. Can sony ban you for what you say, or is it players banning you with audio recordings?

@Xiovanni As I said, this has been a thing since the PS4 launched seven years ago.

I now know why all day I have been getting notifications about a party getting started by a friend in our clan message group this is a stupid update

I agree. It's beyond dumb.

I’ve been in the beta for this update since it released what 2-3 months ago. I never liked it and I especially didn’t like the message that popped up when me and my friend logged into our party the first time during the beta and it said that our party chat audio could be monitored and recorded and we had to agree to having our audio recorded. Like what the hell is that. I want to talk in a party with him but we don’t want someone listening to our conversations on Sony’s servers.

Doesn't bode well for PS5, considering it's only a month away.

@Xiovanni

Thanks for double checking and clarifying! Honestly didn't know, but very interesting.

Jesus, how did Sony even let this slip through Beta?

@Horizon_Rover But parties could already be made private prior to 8.00. I don't understand why they felt the need to change a system that was completely fine the way it was.

I’m still a fan of the PS4 UI & looking forward to the PS5...but yeah, update 8.00 sucks. Revert it back & i’ll forget this little misstep ever happened

For a person whos been using this platform for years I can gladly say that this update is dog *****. I'm furious.

The communities were hit the hardest because you cant have a voice party now with the communite

My son has this friend in Ireland that he can barely play with online due to the time difference. Today is the only day of the week that they can actually play because my son has a half of day of school. They couldn't play today because of the update. Thank you sony for ruining this easy to use chat system that you had in place. The suck thing in all of this is that this was one of those forced updates too.

we dont even need an update and we dont want that crappy party setting s..t change it sony ffs if we need enything we need better servers

@UnlimitedSevens its a stupid update they could of done that to ps5 and told people no change will be made theres 2 facts about sony 1 we dint even need this update and 2 we need better servers ..

@rockhopper78 its not sony listening in...its whoever is in your chat group..just make sure that none of your friends are over sensitive illuminati affiliated stool pidgeons or work for the trump administration and you will be fine..

@Henlak-
I would never allow anyone to listen in on my conversations and record them. Im out.

This makes me glad that none of my friends want to play with me.

😂

🤔

😔

Just proves how out of touch Sony is with its users

@Beachacho If you are so smart please type your sentence in my language. I will check it for mistakes. Please use Russian.
Good luck.

P. S. : Yoda was my teacher

@Crimszon
You could set it private - but you would have manually invite every new party member whenever they would request to join. When you livestream directly from the console that would show a blue screen for your viewers every time you adding someone to the private party. Now - you have to create the party pool only once and those who are in the group are able to join whenever they want without your assistance. But it's still private. This update helps to protect people from idiots joining your parties, and effectively protects against paedophiles and other freaks.

Trying to party chat with a friend last night, my PS4 kept freezing. I had to restart the console 4 times. I gave up in the end.
Awful update. Let's hope they fix this quickly.

@Bad-MuthaAdebisi & it's still better than anything xbox has done.

Completely baffled. Even the harder Xbox games work better than this.

I have no problem with this because I don’t use the party system I’m a old school gamer I play single players mostly reason being I’m terrible at multiplayer and ones in a blue moon I get invited to a party I don’t join them anyway

I think it could be coll but right now, it kinda sucks.

Wow they are really pushing me to get the new xbox instead of PS5.

Might as well. Since they bought into Epic we most likely see Playstation exclusives also on Epic game store.

I'm primarily a pc gamer but I own all 3 consoles and when I do pvp gaming I do it on my xbox because pc has cheaters and I find xbl to be a better service.

That being said after hearing about what sony is doing in chats and even other things like wiping everyone's wishlist... It's weird and also insane. So I'm glad xbl just happened to matchmake better and have less issues...

If I was primarily a playstation gamer when you combine this with the old psn hack and also how juicy this new data would be for hackers it would give me serious pause on whether I planned on not only buying a ps5 but also on whether I would even keep ps4 as my go to machine...

It's kinda scary

Doesn't bother me so no not All ps4 owners WORLDWIDE some that like others not bothered

Honestly i never liked the private party feature. Just boot the person that joins your chat if you dont like them. Ive had so many times my friends would have a chat private from me just because they forgot to set it on public and id miss out on important discussions all because sony had to change the previous party chat functions.
While individual message party invites seem annoying im glad they changed the private party chats back to what it used to be. But is it true people that never joined your chat before can read a log of your past chat history? That seems pretty bad.

The system is just as bad on PS5. I don't even use the chat system on ps5. It is a mess.

Can no longer make a Private party with myself and no one else. i hate in-game chat and especially when that game has no option to mute others... so i make a private party and change it to prioritize Game audio... now i can not do that, i record videos for Youtube and Game Chat gets recorded.

my biggest issue with this new way of inviting EVERYONE to a party is that i cannot just have an open party. i have anxiety, i refuse to invite others to play let alone get on mic. the ONLY way i play with others is if they invite ME. NEVER the other way around. they better fix this. i havent played since they changed this system. not to mention you still cannot mute only one group. now that youre apart of 50+ groups, you have millions of messages all at once. the only way to stop getting notified? mute them all or leave the group. stupid ***** update. fix it.