I'm a PS4 player wanting to do a 2 Player run. In the rules, it says tethering must be the maximum, and a dedicated server has to be used. The problem is, neither of us have a second PS4 to run the server on, and changing the tether distance isn't a possibility on consoles. What do I do about this?

I don't know a whole lot about console but I'd assume that tethering is still a thing on non-dedicated even if you can't change the distance? Like, it will still teleport the other player to the host if they get too far away or enter a cave?

Yes, precisely. I'm just curious if I can do the run without being able to change that due to console restrictions.

simple answer: you don't

detailed answer: you can't or better your ps4 would not be able to handle that. Tether means how far away you can go away from the host, every player has a render or better an action radius around himself (don't know how big the radius is and it's not important), everything outside that radius is in stasis, everything inside this radius is "active" dinos move, attack, spawn, die in that radius (all this stuff needs to be calculated from the host machine). So if you have another player on the map you have in worst case 2 circles (doubled the calculation). Tether reduces this by limiting the distance to the host (the "action"-area is increased but limited cause the 2 circles are overlapping). Normally you don't use these infinity Tether-Rates on non dedicated servers, cause it would melt your CPU. Keep in mind 2 players wouldn't be to bad for a console but if someone decides to create a nonded server with 10+ player and high tether rates. One more thing consoles ALWAYS have older hardware parts than PCs.

edit: "The problem is, neither of us have a second PS4 to run the server on..." - If you use a separate machine it's a dedicated server.

With that information, my question now is, am I allowed to do a 2 Player run? Are we allowed to do it on a non-dedicated session, or would that invalidate the run?

you can do 2 player runs if you use a dedicated server, for nonded tether must be infinity otherwise you can exploit the teleports.

other possible solutions:

• consoles get their own leaderboard separated from PCs
• if you get teleported by tether the run is instantly invalid (no fun for everyone, definitely not recommended by me)

I think a console-specific leaderboard would probably be best, since the tether range can't be changed on any consoles. And invalidating entire runs for accidental teleports would be irritating for everyone. I also think allowing people to exploit the teleporting would make for some very interesting strategies and runs.