In Search Of…
by FEMAELSTROM, HSM team writer
Back in the 70’s, Leonard Nimoy hosted a show that was created to help the viewer find answers behind some of the mysteries of the day. These mysteries were Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, Yeti, and the Bermuda triangle. In their day, these things boggled us viewers, and for some younger audience members, it was almost even scary — especially the UFO segments. They always creeped me out the most. I always saw the aliens as those creepy little grays, and they had that silent, big-eyed stare that would just send goosebumps up and down me…ugh.
In all the weird and odd things that Leonard Nimoy went in search of, there was one thing that even he could never in a billion years find: a piece of clothing in my Home wardrobe. He will never find Bigfoot, that elusive unpaired sock I lost a month ago and now, I know that despite Spock’s best attempts, he will not come across that t-shirt that I love so much — because it is buried deep in my wardrobe, never to be found again. This is the true Bermuda Shorts Triangle. Spock Nimoy, help me!
The other day, I was looking for an item in my Home wardrobe, and the mystery for me was multifold. The first mystery: where was the item I wanted? The second mystery: how did I lose it so far away? The last and biggest mystery: when an item is lost, how do I find it?
I thought about it long and hard, and came up a plan that would make Nimoy on Mount Ararat jealous.
Give us a search tool for our items, clothing and LMOs. The idea is simple: I know way too many people that have a lot of stuff, and sometimes it seems like they are almost penalized (though they are not) for having bought so much in Home. They end up spending a long time looking for that one item that will make a room or outfit really snap right, but when they enter their inventory, there is a long pause while the thumbnails load, and then the having to scroll through what can be an Everest of goods. Some friends of mine have even frozen and had to jump out of Home the hard way because of the bog down to the system.
Another t-shirt, but hey, this one is actually cool.
It would be such a relief to have a protocol in place that would allow the user to sort by a larger set of descriptions. Imagine asking the wardrobe to sort by maker or color. We do now have some choices, like sort by oldest or newest, and by rewards or purchases, but added criteria would just help so very much. Even if Home wasn’t originally designed to be the virtual mall it is today, infrastructure has to keep up with development, or we end up penalizing whales for monetizing.
I have a Mandarin suit that I just love, and I know it is by Granzella. So if I were able to sort by maker, it would take the Lockwood and JAM clothes out of the search results. There could be other ways to sort out the items too: we could sort by color and frequency of use, as well as the current options. If this system were modified, we could use any parameter desired.
Another option that would really help would be the ability that so many websites have: to be able to type in a keyword or phrase that could further refine our search. So, in the example of a search for the mentioned Mandarin suit, I could type in “Mandarin”, and get the results that would include my desired clothes. Sure, a few other items may appear that match the search, but it would vastly narrow down the results.
Another feature that would help: another level of sorting for our clothes — but this time user defined, with more choices available.
Here is the concept: imagine that we get another level of sort between the storage, where we have our countless free t-shirts, and items that we just lost touch with and the active and current clothes that we recently bought or put that little heart on. We could shuffle older things there, without them ending up in the Bermuda Triangle of storage, never to be seen again. In addition, we could have a user-defined folder that the user could title as they wanted — like “food and drink items”, for instance, or “plants” — and place the desired items there.
Hey who went into my Home inventory!?
One pet peeve I have about buying bundle packs is this: when I get a lot of items, the system automatically throws older stuff in the active storage in to the old storage. It would be a great help if we were either told what was being tossed out or even better, given the option of determining if it should or shouldn’t be tossed into storage.
The storage carries a funny penalty with it. The more you buy and gain in Home, the longer and more arduous the search for it will be, and it would be great if Home were to craft a way for the user to be more in control of what is kept where. My alternate account, which has very little except for free things, loads into Home very fast — and wardrobe changes and furniture searches run smooth and fast. The FEMAELSTROM account, on the other hand, plods slowly and makes me wait to see each and every little thumbnail load.
I guess in the end this is a wishlist article, so I will throw my coin into the fountain and make a mighty wish: please let Home improve its storage system, so those that have a lot don’t have so much of an issue. And let Nimoy find one of those things he was so adamantly looking for; Spock deserves at least one.
March 30th, 2014 by FEMAELSTROM | 11 comments
FEMAELSTROM came to Home in June 2011 and never wanted to leave, even at weekly maintenance when he usually gets booted. The sand box environment appeals to the explorer in him and often is out and about as he ‘geeks’ out dressed like some sort of sci-fi character, while he people watches in popular public spaces. An artist and writer, FEMAELSTROM loves making friends and meeting people. He loves sci-fi and decorating Home estates and loves to respond “here” when people ask “where are you from?” in public places.
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I think we should be able to gift what we dont want to our friends. I have a whole load of female clothes I’ll never wear that I could gift to someone for a start. Yes it might promote a black market that users could buy a bundle and swap one outfit from this bundle and you give an outfit from another bundle. Add a delete function as well then I could get my storage to a manageable level and probably fasten my logging on to home up. Fastening up a users home experience and being able to gift your stored items. I think users would spend more. look how much reskins on the gift machines sell for and if I knew it wasn’t going to take 20 minutes to get up and going in home for me and my massive storage id probably want to change outfits more
The idea you have about deleting and gifting has been around for ages, but as far as I know it can’t be done. The problem is that once linked to your account, items purchased or received can’t be given away because it would mess up the whole system and also there would be people complaining that they didn’t intend to delete that particular item. Just imagine the mess that would create.
A far simpler solution would be to create another layer of storage, a deep six locker where things you never use can be placed. But none of these suggestions is going to allow for a faster load time into Home. That is unfortunately the price you pay for owning too much in Home.
Furniture is a huge a problem as clothing is when it comes to storage too. We do need a better system all around, no question.
Good read as always Strom.
I will back Burbie’s point: chances are we will never see a gifting or deletion function employed into Home, given the limitations of the programming architecture. It isn’t a bad idea so much as the code simply won’t allow for it as is from what we can tell.
It is all the more reason we should focus on improving what we have with a search function instead. It won’t likely speed up logging into Home, but what are the odds we’ll stumble upon something that will better it? At the very least, a Davy Jone’s Locker for those items we deem unwearable and atrocious will speed up the loading of the other two levels.
Although now I’m curious how fast a speed function will be . . .
I have thought for some time about the deletion option.
What if we were able to log into our PlayStation account on a PC, and be able to delete straight from the account items purchased in Home.
Tis an idea. And it should work on load up. Though if you wanted that deleted item back, you would have to repurchase it.
What if some extra search options were available to PlayStation Plus user only?
Interesting. To be perfectly honest and I dont want to steer the topic, I have no problem with PS Plus perks, but this is something that if it were offered, should be made available to all, as many who are not Plus members may have a lot and it just seems that it should be perk for all users. My opinion.
It’s a great business philosophy that the more you buy the worse your experience gets. The reason why these ideas come up so often is there are several social MMOs that have gifting any item / deleting options. To say it’s impossible isn’t exactly right as ise hacks have been adding items to they saves for years so it’s not as far away as we think.
Without knowing which MMOs you refer to, I can only offer this theory in the meantime.
There are two possible reasons gifting and deletion are, to say the least, difficult for Home items. One is that you spend real money on an item on Home, even if it’s for tokens to purchase said items (as is the case with gift machines). When a system institutes a ‘no refund’ policy, who knows what side effects it may have on its capacity to delete an item -- nevermind the fact that there may be more people than not that would delete it thinking it means a refund’s coming, only to find out nope, it won’t.
The second is the concept of transferring ownership. Home may not, in its current state, be able to transfer ownership of an item to another person -- you either buy it for yourself or another person, if you’re lucky to find it in a gift machine. You can’t switch the owner after the fact. At least that’s my guess -- it would require a Home update and Sony knows that they have enough grief from users without having to worry about the Home stability issues from such an issue.
I mean, imagine it. Updates inevitably have some lag (if not bugs) before it settles, and if you can transfer one item to another -- we already have ISE hacks to worry about. This has the possibility of opening up an entirely different can of worms.
We know Sony can delete items, ie the Edo towels from granzella in Japan. We know we can add items. Ie buying, gifting inspecting etc. So these functions exist. The biggest issue for me is it would create a black market, rendering bundles obsolete because if two friends both buy a bundle of same items. The ability to gift means this week one buys the bundle and give part of the bundle to they friend. Next bundle bought is reversed. Or you get users trading items as currency. You get my that reward and I’ll give you this. I’m really just after a way to fasten up my home experience it’s taking too long to log on and things don’t load properly. It’s quicker to meet friends else where now.
we are getting close to it, as of this week a trash function is going to be added so you dont have to load your whole wardrobe when entering home. But you can get the items back out the trash when you want them.
sorry just kidding we are all on the April 1st bandwagon lol