Payday! Plan/Investigation

[AceSoloMcCloud]

Some of you maybe aware of my investigations pre-patch for details of a patch, and post-patch my checklists, I feel a connection to the community and still feel I should be involved, despite completing the game and wanting to move onto mopping up my other game trophies, in time for the Christmas releases (of course if any DLC is released I'll be back on it).

Through my investigations and the official information I've managed to get for users, which in most cases confirmed our educated guesses, I feel the anquish of those still not able to unlock Payday.

True, there are others out there still having problems with Gozers, however since this was attainable pre-patch and others have attained it post-patch, it is probably one job/map missed somewhere.

For Payday, though many have been playing campaigns to completion and not unlocking the Trophy, this thread is for them if you're "wiping out" to speed things up, move along.

Firstly, let's confirm you're one of those affected, and not simply misunderstanding the requirements.

You must play RANKED Campaigns.

You have to meet the following requirements on each of the 4 different Campaigns (locations).

You must be the top earner in each Job (there are 3 random jobs per Campaign).
- Use the Start/Select button to check if you are the top earner in-game.

You must meet the "win" condition for each Job type, this is different to Gozer's and much easier.
- Containment: Team must catch at least 1 Ghost.
- Survival: Team must survive at least 1 wave.
- Destruction: Team must destroy at least 1 Relic.
- Thief: Team must save at least 1 relic at the end of the job.
- Protection: Team must raise all 3 PKE Towers to 100%

You must survive to either the time runs out, or you finish the game.
- With the exception of Survival, all players can pass out, AFTER the first wave.
- In Protection, you MUST raise all THREE PKE's to 100% to finish the game, or it doesn't count.

You must NOT have all players pass out and the game ends.
- Except in Survival, AFTER the first wave.
- Passing out and being revived by a Team Member is fine.

You must NOT cross the streams and cause all members to pass out.
- Better to not cross the streams at all, as soon as you notice they're crossing, cease firing!

You do NOT need to play every job type on every campaign.
- If the game gives you a campaign with protection in it, and you fail it, redo that campaign again, you might get the campaign without a protection job.


However, if anyone is interested in working together to further test this, some ideas I have:

1. Have you tried fully completing all jobs, with the specific exception of only making it to wave 9 on Survival, but doing everything else?

2. Modification on #1, but doing nearly all jobs to completion, but purposfully failing ONE per campaign (NOT Protection obviously).

3. Tried setting up a new blank account and attempting payday, will it unlock for you on a new blank account?

4. If 4 is unsuccessful, then give me the login details for your new "test" account and I shall try doing it on my console, which did unlock it for me.

5. If 4 works, you can either have me repeat it with your main account (you probably won't want to, but offer is there), or at least we've found a new variable, the console.

Previous ideas, such as the 3.00 firmware messing it up, are out the window as others have unlocked payday and platinum post 3.00 update.

Of course one possibility is that users have played campaign before the patch, met the conditions and now the game is unable to detect them meeting the conditions and unlocking it.

However, let's discuss tha point and experiences... all I can add is that I obviously played campaigns, at least one previous to the patch (to get "On the Payroll") however when playing post-patch I played each of the campaigns in turn and it unlocked after graveyard.

Therefore the game didn't count the previous completed campaign, or rather it didn't count it against it (it's likely it wasn't a graveyard campaign I played before), meaning there was no issue recording a "done" for each campaign in the eyes of the trophy.

What you also noticed through this and other games is that there are points in games where a "trophy check" is done. Quite often at the "end of a level", or "end of the final level", but also during games, such as whenever you catch a most wanted ghost, a trophy check for No Job Too Big is done. Afterall, you may (now) get Glutton slimer, but still have a ghost in the middle left to get.

Hence the mechanise to check for a trophy should always occur... but on the other hand, if a trophy has already been unlocked, you wouldn't want it to popup again, so I suppose as part of a trophy check is to ensure the user doesn't already have it. How does it know then the user has the trophy? Check the user's PSN? Slight problem with that as for the PSN (unlike live), it's done locally on the console and then "sync'd" upto Sony's servers. Therefore there's never the "offline/no date" effect you get on Live, however it also doesn't do a very good job of syncing, such as in the case for one poor sod who earned a load of trophies in GB (or any other PS3 Trophy enabled game), the console then died before being able to sync and has been replaced, the recent trophy activity lost.

Anyway, this builds upto another suggestion, somewhere on that system it records trophies unlocked. It could be kept in the single game data (I think people have already deleted this with no luck), or hidden on the PS3 system. Now there's already the suggestion above that I do it for you on my console, but if you have a second console or a mates, try that (be sure to sync, then remove your login from it afterwards, and not to save password), however if none of those options are available to you then:

6. Create a new "local" user, and apply your PSN ID to it, then try and get Payday again. This shouldn't have any detrimental effects to your PSN, as you can only be in as one local user at a time, and there's no DLC to worry about. Afterwards, SYNC your trophies information, maybe double check it (you'll maybe have to sync twice, once as the new user after you get the trophy, then again when you switch back to your original login), once double-checked (heck you could even look on the playstation website to be 100% sure, but expect a delay), delete the new temp account.

I encourage those wishing to share experiences, information and various "this didn't work", or even "this worked" to post in this thread and join me in my GB chat room CoOp-Partners.com - ghostbusters where we can narrow this strange trophy down.

It would also be interesting to know, just how many are affected, it "seems" to just a handful to me.

[catslayer11]

excellent idea i like that

i can try my best to help any way i can do but two problems

1 is i dont have the game
2 is there are not many ppl online as last night

so you may not have many ppl on to help ya but ill try to help when i rent the game again

[WBLman]

Originally Posted by AceSoloMcCloud

1. Have you tried fully completing all jobs, with the specific exception of only making it to wave 9 on Survival, but doing everything else?

2. Modification on #1, but doing nearly all jobs to completion, but purposfully failing ONE per campaign (NOT Protection obviously).

3. Tried setting up a new blank account and attempting payday, will it unlock for you on a new blank account?

4. If 4 is unsuccessful, then give me the login details for your new "test" account and I shall try doing it on my console, which did unlock it for me.

5. If 4 works, you can either have me repeat it with your main account (you probably won't want to, but offer is there), or at least we've found a new variable, the console.

6. Create a new "local" user, and apply your PSN ID to it, then try and get Payday again. This shouldn't have any detrimental effects to your PSN, as you can only be in as one local user at a time, and there's no DLC to worry about. Afterwards, SYNC your trophies information, maybe double check it (you'll maybe have to sync twice, once as the new user after you get the trophy, then again when you switch back to your original login), once double-checked (heck you could even look on the playstation website to be 100% sure, but expect a delay), delete the new temp account.

Ace, first of all thanks for going the extra mile with these suggestions. (It's nice to know a fellow gamer can give this much feedback...whereas Sony "delegated" this issue to Atari while Atari and Threewave have completely ignored my emails to date.)

1. I've done this with Raptormouse and Indy815 over and over. Typically, I'll fully complete everything (11-12 of 12 matches) then, if one was botched I pick up the botched campaign on a second try with full completion. In terms of a Gozer's Most Wanted-type arrangement (for full campaign completion in all possible variations): I'm fairly certain I've done everything but Library1 destruction. It takes 3-4 players to nail that one down and I almost always play with 2.

2. Through trial and error, I would say yes to this as well. (Naturally, when I play with strangers it's always protection that fails but occasionally a thief as well if they're really bad.)

3. OK, I'm going to try this one with a sub-account that's never played the game at all. I will let you know the results when I get them.

[the collector]

Incrediblec work! I will help if I can. I have the payday trophy already, as I have posted elsewhere. A strange variable to add to your possible list-when I got the trophy, it was Mayan campaign;protection was one of the jobs and completed to the fullest;here's the kickerne guy dropped out of the campaign midway thru AND I was overall winner BUT didn't earn top $ on all three maps-just two. Now I had already went through the campaigns post patch, so I will assume Mayan was one I hadn't done something right on. I'm not sure, but I thought all players had to stay in the entire campaign, and you had to win all three maps. I hope this doesn't add to the confusion, but maybe help us understand the possibility that there is still a glitch to this trophy. Now for Gozer's Most Wanted, well that's a whole other story........

[WBLman]

Thanks to help from raptormouse, I boosted four campaigns on a new account.

1 wave survival.
1 ghost containment.
3-4 relics in thief
(managed to avoid destruction completely)
3 protection towers (i.e. - Victory!)

and a Payday! in a pear tree.

Yep, that means my online stats/history have glitched me.

On a brand new account, I got Payday! on my very first try. There you have it.

[WBLman]

Originally Posted by WBLman

Thanks to help from raptormouse, I boosted four campaigns on a new account.

1 wave survival.
1 ghost containment.
3-4 relics in thief
(managed to avoid destruction completely)
3 protection towers (i.e. - Victory!)

and a Payday! in a pear tree.

Yep, that means my online stats/history have glitched me.

On a brand new account, I got Payday! on my very first try. There you have it.

So I did the exact same thing on my main account (no destructions even) and no Payday!. All I can do now is wait for:

a) another patch
b) a manual reset of my online stats & history (if that's even possible)



Atari and Threewave should be ashamed of themselves for making this even possible. It's no wonder they haven't even bothered with the X-Boxers.

[Indy815]

Originally Posted by WBLman

Thanks to help from raptormouse, I boosted four campaigns on a new account.

1 wave survival.
1 ghost containment.
3-4 relics in thief
(managed to avoid destruction completely)
3 protection towers (i.e. - Victory!)

and a Payday! in a pear tree.

Yep, that means my online stats/history have glitched me.

On a brand new account, I got Payday! on my very first try. There you have it.

Yeah, I had a feeling it was something like that. Have you tried #6 yet? I'm tempted to give it a go.

Originally Posted by AceSoloMcCloud

6. Create a new "local" user, and apply your PSN ID to it, then try and get Payday again. This shouldn't have any detrimental effects to your PSN, as you can only be in as one local user at a time, and there's no DLC to worry about. Afterwards, SYNC your trophies information, maybe double check it (you'll maybe have to sync twice, once as the new user after you get the trophy, then again when you switch back to your original login), once double-checked (heck you could even look on the playstation website to be 100% sure, but expect a delay), delete the new temp account.

[AceSoloMcCloud]

Afternoon guys, glad to see some progress here.

Thanks to WBLMAN we can now exclude a "console" being at fault, however as Indy said, it would be great if someone can attempt my #6 idea to see if we can workaround this bug.

At least now, we have further narrowed it down and show that it's 100% not user error, nor a firmware/console version issue.

Currently, I deduce that:

Something, somewhere has recorded you have met "payday requirements" for each of the campaigns, and a trophy check for awarding payday ONLY occurs after you have played a campaign and the game has set a marker that that campaign (1 out of 4) qualifies for payday.

Now.. you only need to complete each campaign once to payday standards, and this should be able to happen over multiple sessions. So it's saved somewhere (perhaps locally on the console or the remote MP servers, I highly doubt it's stored on Sony's servers as the way Sony Trophies operate is somewhat "offline" compared to Live's "online" style).

I'm guessing someone accidently coded the payday trophy check only to run after a campaign is tagged as "done to payday" standards, as apposed to after a campaign is done to payday standards. The difference being each campaign is tagged as done to payday standard once, why tag it again if it's already tagged.

This boils down to 4 chances for the system to unlock and award payday, this can therefore explain why some played campaigns before the 1.03 patch and have still been able to unlock it, they didn't meet the payday condition for at least one of the four campaigns, once remained untagged. Once they did it, it was tagged, the trophy check run, they got it.

For users like Indy and WBLman, they met the payday conditions for all four campaigns pre-1.03 patch and all four have been tagged, since payday was glitched back then, it wasn't awarded. Now, whenever they do a campaign to payday standard, that campaign is not tagged as done to payday standard (because it already is) and hence a payday trophy check not intiated.

That's my educated guess anyway.

What this boils down to, is two possible fixes... correct the trophy check mechanism to run whenever a campaign is completed to payday standard, not just when a campaign is "ticked off" and not if it's been ticked off before, or... we need to get around the markers that it's been done. This information has to be stored somewhere.

It's possible since MP is an online-only aspect, this information on stored on remote servers, and in Single player games it's stored in the user save data (as I'm pretty sure you can still access your trophy collection offline? I'm not at my console to check right now, could be interesting). However, it's still worth a shot trying a different local user account (but same PSN ID obviously) incase this information is stored locally and specific to local accounts. We do know that local accounts have some security to them, transferring data between such as save data (and perhaps DLC too?) is specific to them on a console, so it's not too crazy to consider.

If that doesn't work, it maybe it's console specific (a hidden area on the console that records trophy completion information per PSN ID), again this is just a guess, but anyone who is able to, should try using another console they didn't use with Ghostbusters pre-1.03 patch.

After that, then this information MUST be stored on the GB multiplayer server(s), and only a reset of this information, or a new patch to correct the trophy unlocking mechanism for payday will correct it. Hopefully not, as this means either getting them to reset your stats, that is if they will (or reset the "payday" condition perhaps), or waiting for another patch (feel that those hearts drop through the floor).

I've already emailed Threewave with what we've learned so far, they didn't respond to my last email, perhaps I shouldn't have asked if they got Gozer's Most Wanted/No Job Too Big mixed up.

Here's hoping for a response.

We could try to log this as a new issue with Sony, but you'd have to insist on speaking to a network specialist, and make sure they understand the technicalities of trophy unlocking (or not as in this case).

I would advise Indy and WBLMan to do this (after doing all my previous suggestions) as you have the accounts that don't have payday. They might be able to track and trace the accounts, who knows, maybe this information IS stored by Sony servers.

[Airon]

Ace you forgot about me too. I'm too at 98% with just payday left. I phoned to Sony and call center answered me that they cant do nothing and to talk with producer of the game. I mailed Atari and they answered that this a problem that goes over technical problems and they cant do nothing and told me to go to check gamefaqs.com........I mailed threewave too and didnt get answer yet. I this while i was thinking about to delete all in my ps3 formatting hard disk,then retrying,i dont know if this can help in someway.

[AceSoloMcCloud]

Originally Posted by Airon

Ace you forgot about me too. I'm too at 98% with just payday left. I phoned to Sony and call center answered me that they cant do nothing and to talk with producer of the game. I mailed Atari and they answered that this a problem that goes over technical problems and they cant do nothing and told me to go to check gamefaqs.com........I mailed threewave too and didnt get answer yet. I this while i was thinking about to delete all in my ps3 formatting hard disk,then retrying,i dont know if this can help in someway.

Oops, sorry Airon.
Sounds like you got a bright spark at Sony frontline customer support.
Atari probably just thought you didn't know what to do to unlock it.
Threewave are in Canada, so takes a while, plus they'll want to look into it before replying, but I do hope they reply to us.

Some have already erased their local GB data and it's not helped.

I'm waiting for someone to report back after trying #6.

Oh and saw you poped into the chat room, sadly at midnight (my local time when you went in) I was in bed asleep for work the next day. I check it every now and then while at work.

UPDATE: Good news, got a response from Threewave, they're checking with Sony and Atari and will get back to me.