Telemetry on Zelda: Breath of the Wild

https://zeldamods.org/wiki/Telemetry

by akyuu • 3 years ago

63 29 3 years ago

zeldamods.org

ShamelessC2• 3 years ago

It is currently unknown when or if these reports are actually sent.

rideontime• 3 years ago

Isn't that comment specific to the Wii U?

ShamelessC2• 3 years ago

Oh indeed it may be?

esperent2• 3 years ago

Doesn't basically every AAA game do this now?

I've seen recent posts giving extremely detailed statistics about the choices players made in Baldur's Gate 3 and Jedi Fallen Order. I was surprised that nobody seemed bothered by it.

Here's the Fallen Order one:

https://www.reddit.com/r/FallenOrder/comments/13xldf8/star_w...

lyu07282• 3 years ago

I assume the devs use it to prioritize bug fixes and to learn what game design works/doesn't. Knowing the % of players having difficulty with a dungeon etc. I don't see any harm in that, it could improve their next game. It's not like it's used or useful for targeted ads or something. You can opt out the analytics in the bg3 launcher btw.

autoexec• 3 years ago

It's only bad because you don't know where else that data is going. Are companies selling your gaming activities to others who will use it to determine dexterity, intelligence, memory, distractability, psychology, sexual preferences, etc.

Gaming offline as much as possible might be the best way to protect yourself, but is also pretty limiting since some games offer desirable online content

XCSme2• 3 years ago

Why would anyone be bothered by it?

esperent2• 3 years ago

Personally, I don't like the normalization of my every action being spied on by huge corporations.

If it was just going to be used by the devs to fix bugs, _and_ it was either opt in or very obvious opt out, I'd be ok with it. But fixing bugs is only one tiny aspect of why these corporations want to track you. And as far as I can see, there's no way to opt out at all short of blocking IP ranges with a PiHole.

danielheath2• 3 years ago

Because data is being collected about them without informed consent, and without any basis to believe the collectors interests align entirely with their own?

Am4TIfIsER0ppos• 3 years ago

Early in the BG3 beta the devs put out an article complaining that everyone was playing a white guy. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1086940/view/2896336... Now if you are required to play as some character that looks like yourself to feel "represented" is that surprising?

Don’t forget to read the EULA ;)

Perhaps the GOG release can run offline.

cassianoleal• 3 years ago

Now if you are required to play as some character that looks like yourself to feel "represented" is that surprising?

I'm not sure what that means. Isn't this an RPG? As in, Role Playing Game? You're supposed to play a role, not feel represented.

jncfhnb• 3 years ago

Imo it’s because the character creator is not so good. There’s very few face choices and each one feels real world ethnically specific.

The fantasy species racial options are very jarring. The halflings and gnomes are goofy. Note that none of the provided characters are gnomes or halflings. You know ahead of time that you’re going to be wandering around with a group of largely classically attractive tall humanoids.

The tieflings and Dragonborn look so jarring that it’s hard to imagine casually imagine picking them unless you specifically planned on it ahead of time.

If your planned headcanon is to look like someone that people take somewhat seriously it feels like your respectable looking options are drow and human.

ziml77• 3 years ago

That is a bizarre misrepresentation of what they were saying. They're just surprised that people are making themselves a generic person instead of using some of the options that add more fantasy elements to the character.

Though I'm not sure why that's surprising to them. If you look at WoW for example, the distribution of race selection was always heavily biased towards human (followed by the next closest to looking human, the various elves). I guess most people are looking to make their character a self-insert. I find that boring in a fantasy setting, but I'm not going to say people can't do as they please with their characters.

aceazzameen• 3 years ago

See, I don't mind the anonymous data being used to improve the game (mostly). It's what they take from the data and how they "improve the game" is where I get weary. My beef with analytics is I've worked at enough places where the data is used to min/max everything, which ultimately makes for a very bland product that loses its vision.

Let's use Larian's post as an example. Most people are making a generic white guy. Other companies see that and say, okay then let's only invest resources in allowing players play as a generic white guy. It's wasteful to do otherwise because "the data says so." But then you get a souless product that looks like everything else.

There's value in catering to the niches. It's more inclusive to the users who are looking for products with those niches (horns, tails, headphone jacks, whatever). But mostly having those niches makes it more appealing to everyone else, even if they won't interact with the niche, because now it stands out.

tacker2000• 3 years ago

Is there actually a way to get the AllPlayTime value? Funnily enough, it isnt shown anywhere in the normal menus is it?

gaudat• 3 years ago

It shows up in Ryujinx's debug console. Let's hope there's a way to copy your save to the emulator. And without Nintendo finding it out and banning your console.

extraduder_ire• 3 years ago

I'm sure it's kind of beyond their remit, but I hope the EU eventually mandates being able to get your data off of consoles.

Even if you can't put it back on there, it'd be a huge benefit.

If your switch is hackable (all are, but some new ones need a hardware mod) you can copy user and system (animal crossing only, ATM) saves off the console using lockpickrcm/tegraexplorer without even booting the device. I used this to get my saves off a corrupted SD card that had my emunand on it.

spiffytech2• 3 years ago

The Switch's user profile screen shows each game's play time in 5-hour increments.

rmilejczz• 3 years ago

I believe it only goes up to 200, at which point it just says 200+

pomatius• 3 years ago

Hence why I only play 90's games...you know, when the industry was actually good

Telemetry on Zelda: Breath of the Wild

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