Home Connectivity Problems

Written by Cynella; PSHG Founder

For a few months now, Home has been experiencing some connectivity problems that I could overlook but since the last update before Christmas, Home’s connectivity problems have increased X100 and I can’t look the other way anymore.

I typically try to help people by explaining to them how they can fix the problems. Sometimes, it takes clearing your cache, restarting your PS3 or simply deleting Home to fix some of the problems we face as Home users. But these problems are different, there is no escaping them.

Before you give me a lecture about my router or my internet connection, let me assure you that in my case, these are not the problem. At some point during the Christmas update, Home generated a bug. It tends to happen from time to time, but it also tends to get fixed and I haven’t seen any solutions yet.

Below is a list of known problems that people are facing, there could be more than I know and feel free to add them in the comments.

• Stuck in Wardrobe- This has been an ongoing problem that seems to have been fixed to a point, but lately the problems have returned. The wardrobe won’t fully load and when it does, you select an item to wear and then you find yourself stuck. The only way to escape is by hitting Select and choosing to go to your default personal space. I have learned that its better to use a space that you normally wouldn’t go to for your default space, you will most likely not be in that space when something messes up so your chance of escaping is greater.
• Stuck in Decorating- This is a relatively new problem that I have noticed. I have recently began decorating my spaces and find that sometimes when you select an item to place out, it never loads. Well, this wouldn’t be too much of a problem if you could exit but instead you are stuck. Since Home thinks that you are still in your inventory, you are unable to type, talk, lock on to any item or even hit the start button. Again, the only method of escape is to hit the select button and go to your default space, hope you weren’t decorating your default space or you will have to quit home and endure the five minutes it takes to get to the navigator. (Remember when they promised loading would be faster? I swear it takes longer to load then it ever used to. They just give you advertisements to look at now, hoping they will keep you distracted.)
• Downloading a new Space- Is it just me or have you noticed you are having to re-download places that you have just been to  yesterday? Well, I could get over this fact if it weren’t for the spaces not wanting to load. I have to hit download-stop download-download-stop download… until it eventually decides to download. (Rinse, Wash, Repeat.) It gets old, it already takes a long time to download anything in Home and this turns a lot of people off but this is just insane.
• Downloading Furniture and Avatars- Once I have finally downloaded a space, sometimes the furniture, game and avatars just won’t load. So then it’s back to the personal space, to try again. Sometimes I just give up and talk to a ghost all night.
• Furniture Disappearing- Sometimes when you visit your spaces, you will find that some of your furniture is missing. It becomes extremely apparent, when you have floating lamps or when you go to feed your fish only to find that there is no aquarium.
• Network Errors (F13)- Usually, when everything seems to be working right in Home, F13 is lurking around the corner. Sometimes this can happen several times in a series of an hour.
• Ghost Servers- Sometimes when you jump to a friend you will find that they are not in the space, when you attempt to jump to them again it says that you are already at this location. On their end, they are still waiting for you to arrive and cannot see you either. This can be extremely frustrating.

I will say, these don’t happen all at one time, usually I will only experience one or two of these issues in a given night. Tonight however, I’ve experienced all of these and I’m just about at my breaking point.

This is how my Saturday night went and I’m sure some of you can relate.

It’s Saturday night and I’m sitting at home and ready to unwind. I login to home and jump to the Pet Shop to scour the store, debating wether or not I want to splurge on a bigger fish tank since I can’t manage to keep my free fish alive. While there, I notice that I’m wearing my pink ninja outfit and decide that I should change since I’m not in the mood to go fight at the Peakvox Lounge, although it’s a pretty fun game. While in my wardrobe, I select a new Head Item only to have my avatar turn to a ghost and never load. I’m helpless, I can’t back out of the wardrobe so I’m left with no option except for to hit the almighty select button and go to my default personal space, which is becoming quite the norm lately. Once there I decide not to risk changing again, the pink outfit might not fit my style but it could be worse, my poor avatar could be running around Home without a body.

Meanwhile, my friend invites me to his Jewel of the Skies space to see his fish tank. Unfortunately, the space will not load and I have to keep backing out and trying again. Eventually, the space loads after about 5 minutes or so. Upon arriving, nothing loads…  we chit-chat a little bit and then I decide to leave and come back in hopes that his furniture loads the next time. When I return, nothing loads again and he decides to try another space so I headed back to my Harbor Studio.

After a few minutes, I received the invite and tried to load the Arctic Yacht, again having to back out and restart the download process until it finally begins to download. Upon arriving, the furniture will not load again and I told him that I was just going to stand still until I loaded… which never happened. He didn’t respond to me so I messaged him on Facebook, only to learn that I wasn’t in his space, I was caught in the Twilight Zone. He sent me an invite and when I tried to accept it, it told me that I was already in the location, so I left and decided to invite him to my personal space.

While I was waiting, he messaged me on Facebook stating that nothing was loading for him. I told him, he wasn’t there! At my wit’s end, I decided to delete my cache to see if that would solve the problem. After the cache deleted it attempted to respawn me back into home, but unfortunately Home wouldn’t load so I quit and tried again… still nothing.

About ready to throw my PS3 out the front door, I deleted home and reinstalled it.  It began to load but couldn’t get past the loading screen, I retried three more times, screamed and deleted home again. I spent over an hour and a half just trying to load into home with no avail and that’s about how my Saturday night went.

Before you tell me that my PS3 is corrupt, upon waking on Sunday morning, I was able to sign into Home with no problems and had no problems downloading anything.

I think Home has grown so big that it can not handle the amount of people and games on the server at times, most of the problems come at night or on the weekends. This is unfortunate, because this is the time that the people who work tend to use Home. Not all of us have the luxury of being home all day.

To be honest, I’d rather see the Home moderation fix some of these issues before releasing new items. What good is new items when you can’t use them? The developers work hard on their items and it has to be very disheartening to know that people can’t use them do to Home connectivity issues.