Inventory Woes

by Kassadee Marie, HSM team writer

Would any Home user with a large inventory disagree that the current storage system for clothing items and the current storage system for furniture items are both terribly inadequate for our needs?

Even people with a medium-sized inventory are likely to have their complaints, also. A few years back, Sony added a secondary storage level which alleviated some of the problems for some of the people – some of the time. Since that time, people who shop regularly (or even semi-regularly, but love to purchase bundles) have seen their inventories grow so much that this is no longer an adequate solution. Many, many requests (and a few demands) have been made to Sony since then for a better storage situation. Without a solution, many people have chosen to lessen the amount of their purchases substantially and some people have even chosen to stop purchasing altogether. It only makes sense to believe that Sony wants to keep their Home customers happy (and shopping) so, why hasn’t anything else ever been done?

All Home items must identify the developer (Sony or whichever third party developer that produced the item) to allow not only sorting, but payment to the correct developer, when their items are purchased. This would certainly be a requirement when purchases can be made from more than one developer at a time, when such items are located under the “New and Featured” shopping tab. There are even tabs there and in the developers own stores for each of the item or clothing lines they produce. Items also must be identifiable by categories in order to be sorted into their respective folders in your inventory, such as “ornaments” or “lights” in furniture storage and such as “feet” or “accessories” in clothing storage.

ManWithQuestionMark

Although this identification could be done by name, these metadata identifiers are more than likely done as numbers, since item names would be awkward and difficult to deal with in most cases. (Just think of dealing with a name like this: LockwoodCucumberCouchSemi-CircularWhitewithRedTrim.) And of course, each item number must be unique, so there is probably a sequence number built in this identification system for the developers to use. You could imagine it all would look something like this: 1010 (identifies the developer), 205 (developer’s unique line) 008 (category),123456 (sequence number). This would allow the underlying Home software to identify each unique item and place them in the correct folders, when they’re for sale, or in when they’re in your personal inventory.

People have requested many times that Sony have more inventory folders for various types of items, such as separate hand and neck items in clothing or more ornament categories in furniture. However, if the numbering system outlined above is correct, each and every item would have to be re-coded to allow for more types of folders. Based on the number of active items that were re-coded to reduce their furniture slots count, the chances of Sony and the developers making this huge effort is approximately a million to one. After all, where is the proven cost effectiveness of this change? We may believe more people will shop and buy more items, but will that be certain to cover the expenses involved in re-coding thousands of items?

However, there may be another solution built into the item coding already.

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Since the items must likely be identified by specific developer, there’s a possibility of making new main folders for each developer – separated by gender for clothing as usual – and then the categories of items we have now. This means that when you open your “redecorate” tab or your “wardrobe” tab from your navigator, and then the “add” or “clothing” tab, respectively, the first thing you’d see is the tabs with the name of the developers for items that you have purchased. Or if it’s required that developers have a pre-existing tab, even if you haven’t made a purchase from them, it may be possible to combine some of the smaller developers into a miscellaneous folder. This would be in the same way that some developers have their own stores and some are sub-categorized under the “Mall” tab.

Is this a perfect solution to our storage woes? Well, probably not, but it may help quite a bit. At this point, almost anything would help, including a third “deep” storage level for items that we are very unlikely to want to ever use again. (Such as free t-shirts.) Will you remember which developer produced a certain item that you want? No, not every time. But if you want to place matching furniture items, they will all be found under that same developer tab, once you have located one of the items. And you may have a favorite developer that you purchase from, so a majority of your items will be located there.

Will this or something like this happen? It’s uncertain, but probably unlikely, as it would require a core change of uncertain magnitude. Core changes are becoming rare and the last one involved a re-design of the main navigator that seems to have never been finished, judging by the number of “other” spaces that still need to be re-located under their respective developers tabs. Still, one can dream and hope for a better Home in the future.

February 25th, 2014 by | 5 comments
Home is endlessly entertaining to this California girl. Kassadee has been in Home for about four years, and loves almost everything about it (with a few notable exceptions). She spends way too much money there, and perhaps too much time... Someday she will travel the world and write about the people she meets and the places she sees.

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5 Responses to “Inventory Woes”

  1. Burbie52 says:

    A new layer of storage would work the easiest. I want a deep six storage I can place unused furniture or clothing into it would help tremendously. Having no way to sort the things I don’t want or use at all has definitely influenced my buying choices and will continue to do so. I don’t even go for all the rewards anymore because I know they will just go into sotage in many cases.

  2. CameraCat says:

    Like many of you, I have had terrible inventory problems, particularly with the ornaments section of my furniture “storage” section. It has absolutely stopped me from buying bundles, no matter how good the deal, when I envision how many items will fly into storage, and become nearly impossible to locate again. I have several friends who have simply given up even looking for once-loved items, just because they cannot deal with the lag and time lost looking for items that are unexpectedly moved to storage when things like gifts or rewards are added.
    A “deep” storage option is the number-one preference, but at this point ANYTHING will help. Yes, absolutely I would be happy with items being categorized by developer… I am already pretty good at remembering where things were purchased.

  3. Gary160974 says:

    I stopped buying stuff that was no better than what I have, a long time ago due to inventory issues. Even just how slow it is to log into home after its verified my massive inventory. We need to either gift or delete stuff we don’t want. I don’t use a female avatar but still managed to obtain a very healthy female wardrobe without trying. All slows me down. Bundles are a pain, I don’t buy them and if the singular item is really expensive compared to bundle I don’t buy that either. To give you an idea ive got close to 100 spaces with very few furniture items duplicated in more than one space so my inventory is fairly large.

  4. Zero Secrets says:

    I buy far fewer items because of the size of my Inventories (clothing, furnishings). I hate having to wait for (seriously) 20 minutes for activation or whatever when I buy something new, hate waiting 9 or 10 minutes for PSH to ‘verify purchases’ every time I want to go onto Home, HATE how since 02/13 my inventories still randomly get the storage/faves/etc all mixed up (HATE THAT!), and I wish there was a permanent delete option (mainly for a lot of the t-shirts & nonsense that you get just for visiting a space).

  5. Dr_Do-Little says:

    I don’t buy much anymore and the wardrobe/furniture clogging is the main reason why. My inventorie (companion/LMO) was a mess even before the LMO came out (I love animals, surprising hey ;) )

    So imagine what it look like now!
    So many items I love already lost in storage I don’t use it’s pointless to buy more. Not mentionning loading time and verifying purchaed content…

    It remind me of the Y2K bug. How could they didn’t saw that one comming on first desing? beat me!

    For me the biggest “cut” is impulse purchase. Things you look at and say: “Hey this might be fun for a day or two”. And you don’t mind throwing a few bucks at it.

    It’s to a point I’m not even sure I want it fixed. I probably saved
    a few hundreds in the last year or so of items I’ll rarely use. I wouldn’t mind being able to easely use what I like and already own thou.

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