To Delete Or Not To Delete
by Phoenix, HSM team writer
I know it’s a bit late in the game to start complaining about a delete option — or, more accurately, a lack thereof — in Home, but that’s just it: I’m not starting now. Like many others, I started years ago.
The problem has simply become overwhelming for long-term Home users at this point. Validating metadata entitlements means that load time — just to get into the application, let alone purchasing new content — has become a lengthy purgatory, lasting upwards of twenty minutes for some.
Content validation is the issue with Home that must be addressed, as it has now made the Home experience akin to trying to run through mud.
I can’t understand the lack of a delete feature for users. It makes no sense that this feature is missing. In practically every online application, there is a delete option to manage the overflow of content and to just rid yourself of unwanted content. No such option here.
Before we go deeper — yes, I’ve heard the counter-arguments about why there’s no delete feature. And some of them even have merit, in a backtesting retcon kinda way. But the fault here is that if there is no delete option, then some other feature must be implemented in order to mitigate the growing problem of metadata validation. That no such feature exists — that it doesn’t even appear to have been planned for — is just a flat-out design failure. Someone, either at a design level or business level, made a huge mistake in the earliest days of Home — and everyone today is paying the price for it.
The problem stems from the amount of inventory having to be verified; the more content metadata entitlements you have, the longer you wait while everything is checked and verified upon login or purchase. Compounding this problem: so many of the items in our inventory are things that were not asked for, not wanted, and never used (the ubiquitous reward T-shirt in its infinite varieties, for instance); yet we are stuck with them, with no way to rid ourselves of them in order to speed up performance, and utterly no feature implementation to mitigate this.
Answer this: do you dread opening up your wardrobe or furniture sub-menus? If you’re one of the small percentage of Home whales that actually does monetize quite heavily, I’ll guess the answer is yes. And it is these same whales who are now the most heavily penalized, which for long-term monetization is not good.
I can’t help but think that a delete button would help user retention with those all-important whales. The moment that Home starts to feel too much like a chore just to go through basic functionality, something’s wrong. Period.
I’ve decided, for this reason, to refrain from any further purchases while Home is still open, in effort to keep my abysmal load times where they are. On an average day, it takes me between seven to ten minutes to log into Home; if traffic is bad, it can be upwards of fifteen minutes. Would this even pass Sony’s own technical requirements today?
There are days that I just feel it isn’t worth the effort — especially when you can get bumped or freeze once you actually get into Home. Why on Earth was a delete feature not included with Home? If a delete button was too strong an option, then perhaps an accept/refuse function, or even a donate button that would have given the illusion of donating the item to a virtual charity spot. Something — anything — would have been better than being reduced to a virtual hoarder.
Feature request: how about a user-selected option to not run content validation checks on all metadata listed as storage for a specific period of time? The user wouldn’t have access to that content until that window expired (meaning that certain games might not function correctly if game-specific content is in storage), but it’s something to consider as a partial form of relief, at least.
I have wracked my brain trying to find reasons that this basic function was omitted. Perhaps Sony felt the users would misuse the button. Maybe they feared accidental deletions and subsequent complaints. Perhaps they suspected someone might complain that they accidentally deleted something they never actually owned, demanding its replacement (in this case, would not their purchase history have corrected this potential fraud?).
Personally, I haven’t been able to come up with a good reason why Home lacks a delete feature. And, given how long it takes me to sign into my beloved Home every time I want to enjoy it, I’ve had plenty of time to ponder this question. But frankly I’m getting tired of it.
September 5th, 2014 by Phoenix | 11 comments
Phoenix writes poetry and is a photography enthusiast, along with writing for HomeStation Magazine. She is currently studying for a BFA in Creative Writing and BA with concentration in Photography. psn ID phoenixstorm21
youtube.com/user/phoenixstorm21
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I am totally with you on this Phoenix. I have the same problem and though I won a lot of things I have friends whose catalog of items far out weighs my own. Many have stopped buying and coming into Home for this exact reason.The addition of a deep six storage should have been implemented years ago too to make it easier to dump the unwanted things (both furniture and clothing) somewhere to never see the light of day again.
If they are worried people would cause a fuss about accidentally deleting something a simple menu with “you sure you want to delete this?” would work quite well. It does in Final Fantasy 14. They wouldn’t be able to complain to much if they were warned.
So true Burbie,
that would have been be a great idea conformation before deletion.
ty for the read and comment.
*own* a lot of things.
The delete function gta5 uses for its online characters is you press delete and then have to write the word delete. Then you can’t make mistakes. Imvu uses a function that stops certainly items from showing up in your inventory. So you uncheck a t shirt then it doesn’t load until you recheck it. Meaning you never delete it. Second life leaves items in a compressed state until you unpack them, you can then compress them again if you don’t use them. I do like the imvu way myself.
Any of those would have been better then nothing at all in this case. Just thinking of how much worse it will get if you keep purchasing items while Home still lives, it’s just unreasonable.
In Final Fantasy 14 you can delete/discard anything but it alwyas asks you first if you are sure, especially if it is a unique item or reward for something.
Hey there, anyone remember me? I still use Home, but not even a fraction as much as I used to. Mainly because I’ve tired of the load times. I went to GTAO about a year ago and I’ve never looked back; an open world full of interaction with my friends that requires ONE (5min) load before I get to run around as much as I’d like for the rest of my session.
Sure, it’s not a patch on Home when it comes to proper socializing but with friends, it beats Home into the dust. I’ve despaired at the initial load times for Home when I go to do my “Home runs” aka The Challenges; it takes me around 20mins just to get access, then however many mins extra to move from space to space to do my daily challenges. Just doing a daily Hone run can take up to (or more than) an hour. One hour, to do 3 quick challenges. That’s just not acceptable, sorry.
I loved Home, and I still do; but it’s akin to talking with a geriatric now! It’s slow, drawn-out pace means I’m hardly even paying attention to it while it struggles to get me from A to B and once I’m done, I can’t get outta there quick enough. It’s like visiting that 100 year old relative that you have enough respect for that you’ll go, but you’re glad to be free of the whole thing once you get the opportunity to leave.
It’s a real shame, because Home still has all this potential, but was built on a foundation of questionable circumstance. Great read, I should come back here more often again.
Hey CrazyFace,
I hope if there is ever anything like Home in future this issue will be addressed, because you’re right there was so much potential lost to the simple omission of a delete button.
I’ve stopped buying items really and I certainly don’t want naff rewards all of which cause stupid loading times. For me to buy anything it has to be special, rewards are the same. Do developers and Sony realise or care that users have stopped purchasing as much due to these load times.
Going by the run of sales over in E.U at the moment, I’d say they might be seeing a drop in sales Gary. The first thing I’ve bought in Home in a YEAR was the nDreams personal space deal; 16 (maybe more) spaces for £8! I couldn’t turn that down! Other than that, I’ve stopped spending too…
I’m like you, I’ve spent my time on gta, the news home in Japan and Asia is closing, and the last dlc in gta was not my thing, I’ve just started to venture back into home before it’s too late, but it’s been nearly nine months of poor updates and I can’t really find anything I want.