As for the cloud, once everything’s there the only thing that’s keeping Home from running on a PC or the PS4 is network access and a controller. I’ve speculated in the past that Home could move to the PS4 in its current form like this.

I don’t care for the plus thing, I feel that kind of cheapens the whole thing by introducing a class system, but that’s just my feeling.

Are long-time, high-spending Home users typically subscribers of the Plus service? How many of these Home whales will add a Plus subscription to their already substantial Home budgets? And should they be expected to do so in order to obtain access to new “core” features?

Count me out.

It started at launch, when the servers were so overwhelmed that no one could even log in. I expect similar problems during the massive data migration next week.

It continued during the hacking incident, when Sony released no meaningful information to its customers for a month.

It happens every Thursday, when promised items are missing from the store and performance issues dog new spaces and games.

With that history, and I’m just highlighting bits of it, it should be completely understandable that the community would react with suspicion and concern to a change that affects basic functionality.

To be fair, there should be a performance improvement with the new patch, but it only impacts personal spaces. Since the old model involved uploads directly from a player’s hard drive, and since upload speeds are typically slower than download speeds, loading a personal space will be faster, because we’ll only be downloading from a Sony server.

Other elements of this update raise some real questions. Users have lost the ability to have multiple avatar saves on USB, but they can now buy an extra 24 slots with PlayStation+. That’s not going to sit well with people. Multiple furniture layouts are gone completely. There is no indication of how and when our save data will be backed up, which really ought to be the first thing any cloud storage service communicates to its customers.

I fully understand Sony’s need to end ISE and xPloder exploits. People have been stealing content and sharing merges that are damaging to the service, and they’re well within their rights to store data in any way that they want. But at a certain point, their data storage practices may directly impact the ability of customers to access the content that they have purchased, or to use their content in a manner that they find acceptable. Sony loses a bit of their out in blaming Internet connections or corrupted hard drives when Home stops working, as the burden of data preservation has shifted from the end user to them.

Personally, I want to know that I’ll be able to access what I’ve paid for in the ways that I’m accustomed to using it. That means content doesn’t disappear, game progress isn’t suddenly lost, personal spaces aren’t locked out and furniture layouts don’t vanish without warning. Cloud storage gives me a few more things to worry about with Home that I didn’t need to worry about before. Good customer service would address those concerns now and let people like me know what to expect and what our remedies will be should something go wrong.

The official statement is still that it will “improve performance” Exactly the same way they once “improved furniture targeting”…
The difference is no one taking the bait this time. You don’t need a master in computer science to understand moving data from a local HDD to an obscure network will never “improve performance”

And thats my problem. Not only are we kept in the dark without any customer services. But when they do release some info it’s sugar coated with lies.

What happened last week-end is what we call in french. “The drop that overflow the vase (bowl?)”

First the annoucement (Sony’s lie) by Glass_Wall.
Second, he add this will only be a problem for a minority of users. Should I need to explain the market value of whales in this business? I think we had it explained in detail before here.
Third: His innapropriate reply to Julie_Love. A long time Home lover who created the Welcome commitee.

But wait, there’s more…

Saturday morning we found out our club furnitures layout didn’t showed up. Sorrow created a thread on the subjet and we were discussing the issue. We we’re worried yes, but agreed this will probably be fixed up monday. Then moderation strikes, moved the thread to support. We see that a lot now.
That reminded me of the F13 problem. Thread at first were quickly locked and deleted. Why they never said at the time they were switching Home to new server still baffle me.

But wait, there’s more…

I don’t expect the management team to log on on w-e. But G_W did. Did he post something like “Oh crap, sorry about that people, I will get you some answers as soon as I can Monday”? No. He kudoed a post about himself…

Sure we had our usual whiner with apocalyptic scheme. But Jersquall too couldn’t hise his concer about home missing a dedicated management. HearitWoW complained about the “no customer services” business model. We saw new faces with articulated arguments. Old veterans coming out the shadows.

Misinformation. Control of information. Absence of accountabilty. Silence when communication is needed. I spent a good part of my life and so much energy to fight that against school boards, company and governement. Moraly, I simply can’t go on like everything is good. I know Home is not a democracy, it’s a business. I’ll take my business elswere.

When it comes to stuff like the PS4 their silence is akin to a knowing parent smiling knowingly at their child when they ask about birthday presents. But not here. Not with Home. With Home their silence is more like a policeman at a reception desk who’s blatantly ignoring you because you’re nothing more than a waste of time who doesn’t deserve even an acknowledgment. Least, that’s how it feels.

There are so many unanswered questions about the technicalities of what this patch even means for the end user and ALL of them remain unanswered regardless of the forums being full of questions. Worried isn’t quite the right word, it’s more like I’m in a state of petrified silence.

Of course, having been banned from the network, I’ll just have to sit back and watch the rest of the Homelings deal with any problems that might arise from the changes in the next week or so…