Well since this topic hasn't been touched for some time. I'm going to dig it up from the grave like the dirty/powerful necromancer that I am. I suppose since this is my first post I should introduce myself.
Hi! Real names Jake and I was one of those people who swore I would never be so nerdy as to join an internet forum but well here I am. I tried joining the PSXextreme forums a few times but for some reason it never worked and I realized joining a bunch of people who are going to agree with me on everything would be pointless so here I am. I found out about the escapist through a fateful stumble press to one of yahtzee's videos, if anyone cares.
So, onto my post. I like many PS3 users was very excited when Home became an open beta. But (like many PS3 owners) the joy quickly worn off when here simply wasn't much to do. The interactivity was low so I only stopped by every once in a while. I think the problem was what Sony always does with things, they tend to promise high and deliver lower. Not terribly low but not as much as they said in press releases.
But here we are, six months later and since my roomate ruined inFamous for me I've been wanting to play something but nothing too serious (maybe I have ADD). So I log into Home and low and behold I see MANY new spaces! EA has 5 now, one for inFamous, Resistance 2, Namco, Capcom, Buzz, ect. There are alot of them, meaning there are alot of things to do. Games to play, videos to watch, all great or at least good and all VERY welcome.
So since they have solved, or at least abated the problem "theres nothing to do in Home", everything should be good as gold right? No. The problem with Home is ironically, the community. Now before anyone gets on my tits about the PS3 community and claim this as a fanboy rant or whatever allow me to spew the bog-standard defense statement.
I own a PS3 ONLY, nothing against X-box but the games don't interest me as much (save Gears of War, Fable, and Mass Effect especially (you lucky bastards)). My PSN is GhosT8585 and if your not a prick, I would love to be your friend. There, better? Anyways.
From what I have experienced the past week is that 98% of Home users are 12 to 18 year old pervs or skanks (if they're even realy girls) and they really take the fun out of Home. For a service that is suppost to be about community cohesion and commnication, it does pretty much the opposite, for me anyways. Going back to my defence statement, my experience with XBL leads me to belive that it would be just as bad with that crowd if not worse.
It took me about 4 days to find some people who we're NOT annoying and since then it's been better but there are alot of things Sony needs to make happen to make Home as great as they sold it to be. Like-
-Trophy Rooms: I like getting trophies, and the room they showed before the open beta looked awesome....so where is it? It can't be THAT hard.
-Streaming Videos and Music in personal spaces: This would understandably be harder to do, but you said we could do it. Here is a good general rule Sony. Don't tell us about a feature unless you can also tell us when it will be available. If you're not sure, don't tell us about it. We just now got the ability to hang pictures from our hard drive in the spaces for others to see, and it works fine. I got to show the decent people I met pictures of my family and myself in my personal space, and its VERY welcome, so maybe the music will come next, who knows.
-Game Launching: For EVERY game. Killzone 2 especially. You would figure all the work they put into killzone.com and that KZ2 has a hearty multiplayer aspect this would be a given, but no such luck. Make a game space like Warhark has and add game-launching already! If they don't do that for MAG I will brown my boxers.
So there we go, while Home is better, it still needs work. But since its only been six months for a free service, I would say they have done a good job. The community is something Sony can't honestly control. But some of the key selling points need to be implemented soon, VERY soon. Wow, this turned out to be a very long post. But if you guys read it, I'll know I joined the right forum. Thank you for your time.
