I just log off after I see the download symbol and log back in again. It is quicker than waiting for the purchase. 3 to 4 mins instead of 15 to eternity.
By the time it takes to log on home change your clothes buy something and go to a public space you could be wasting close to an hour.
I never faced longer wait times than 6-7 minutes on my NA account (got some errors a few times and had to reboot though). In EU its always far faster for me, only between 30 - 90 seconds. Also my "Super Slim" with 12 GB ssd + 1TB sshd validates like in half of the time compared to my old "Slim" with standard 500GB hdd.
Upgrading the HDD speed on any device tends to speed up access times, yes. I have heard from friends who'd installed an SSD into the PS3 say that their Home experience has become considerably zippier. One thing that puzzles me is that Client Update 1.6x actually reduced my purchase validation time down to around 1:30s-1:45s. It had previously been about, idk, 3-4 minutes. After Update 1.75 however, the whole thing started to get completely unwieldy: I notice that the store time added a flat +6:00 minutes to my account and my test account. So now it requires about 7 min 35s just to purchase one freebie, for example. My wife's account is another story... about 15-17 minutes and maybe 12 min on a "good" day. Again, I'm not sure, but maybe the PS Plus Subscription purchases might also be gumming up the works on our accounts. How often have you done this previously and-- crossing my fingers and toes-- Would we really consider this a "safe" method of cutting down on purchase validation time? I've had my purchase interrupted, on two occasions, with a sudden power failure in my neighborhood grid. My store purchases came through fine, but it did make me wonder.
Just tried "purchasing" a free item from US x7 nightclub store with my Alt US acct.. took 3 min 21 s from close button till the verifying content released me back to the store front.. Also did some tries earlier with my EU and my US main, both Secrets Bunny costume purchases completed verifying purchased content just a few seconds after 2min passed. Was not totally realistic test tbt.. did my EU little past 8PM CET (busy) and before 4PM EST, US (quiet). All test were done on my "Super slim" with the SSD and a lot of spare space on the disk.
I have been doing this for a few weeks now and have never had an issue. The purchase is completed in seconds and the item is added to your account. The rest of the time is HOME verifying your purchases (ALL purchases) just like they do when you log in. My purchases hit my email account in seconds. For me it is just quicker. I have 4 years worth of stuff to verify on every purchase and I am not sure why they have to do this after every purchase. I can log on in 5 minutes and be ready to go while the verify after purchase can take about 5 times longer than that.
its sad to see that this validation virus has affected lots of us home users.Now it is affecting some users like you with a VOICE THAT CAN HEARD. i hate to see that its spreading instead of being controlled and soon it will affect all home users(SRRY 2 SAY) ps. good luck! i have been frozen for 3 weeks now with no hame!
On the EU & US support forums there is a thread where you can tell them your PSN ID and they will fix your account so you can get on Home again.
As to SSD/HDD combo drives helping the "system validation" issue.... I have one. Doesn't help a bit. Tried it again last night. Purchased ONE item from the store. Took 20 minutes. I strongly suspect that this problem is also tied to how much inventory you own. I have quite a bit. Others i know, who have smaller inventories, seem to get faster response times. So it would SEEM that this "validating purchases" function, that kicks in upon purchasing an item, is actually looking at your ENTIRE inventory. That would make no sense to me whatsoever, however, Sony has made some serious mistakes before so it wouldn't surprise me.
Here is what I think about how we got to this unfortunate place with 'validation'.. and what to do about it. Originally, all of our purchased items were stored on the HDD in our PS3. Then, some hacker figured a way to copy items from one HDD to another, thus getting items without paying for them. When Sony found out, they put in safeguards to block using items that were not purchased, with validation of the items on your HDD when you start up Home, and again if you bought anything. The validation is for every single thing that we bought, making the process longer and longer as we purchased more items. In effect, the best customers with the most stuff get the worst service. Recently, Sony moved all of our purchases from our HDD to their server. The whole design of stored items changed. However, we are still stuck with the validations of our items. This begs the question: Why does Sony still validate all of our purchases when everything in on their servers? I am clueless... They should be validating things when we are offline and stop all this validation of stuff that gives us these long delays when shopping or loading Home. Mods on the Forum claim that this validation at Home startup is to make everything available to us. Baloney. We all know that it does not work this way, the items are accessed when we open our menus, and even those are a delay. In fact, there are delays everywhere, at validations, at loading spaces, at changing clothes, everywhere. There are ghosts in public spaces for 5 minutes after arrival. Almost like the servers are overloaded and cannot keep up with the demands of Home. And, I am convinced that this unnecessary validation process consumes a large amount of the server's capacity, and is a cause of a lot of the slowdown in other areas. So, I pose a question to Sony.. why wont you change the validation process to a method that avoids giving your users a delay, and your best customers the worst service? It would probably speed up all the rest of Home.
I shall just ask, has anyone tried putting more things into storage? I try to put a few things in... I find it... well, I don't go onto Home to do admin. But it might help. I have been on Home since 2011, I have a fair few items, only standard, cheapest internet, no hd upgrades to my playstations, I do have the problem of validating taking too long, but clearly others have worse than me. My only logical grasp as to the problem, the only, I mean, I do go on in the quieter hours, daytimes... or the middle of the night depending, it's rare for me to be on Home during peak time, ie: 5pm to 10 pm. Sony need to fix this.
Carla just installed an SSD drive (not a hybrid) in a ps3. Validation time still took over ten minutes. It wasn't accessing the SSD at all, just getting the "WWW" circle during the process. We know our inventory was moved to the cloud sometime ago. So if Sony is checking every single item in our inventory every single time we purchase something, they are doing it on THEIR OWN SERVERS. What does THAT tell you? Gilgamesh680 is probably right. There is no need for this now and it is probably slowing everything else down in Home. Home users need to complain LOUD and CLEAR to Sony that this is inexcusable behavior on their part and certainly no way to treat their best customers (the ones who suffer the most from this issue).
There is another way, which was an April fool's joke but it would help. Deleting, gifting or selling back items. A lot of MMOs have the ability to do one or more of the above because it keeps the item numbers down. IMVU you can go to your account and remove items from your list and bring them back if you want, second life has delete items function. GTA 5 only allows limited amounts of cars or personal spaces. If you go over that amount of items you get half your money back if you sell items back. These are all ideas that other successful MMOs use to help keep speed up and confusion down. Big difference they all have a universal currency that is purchased with real currency. Which means refunds hurt less because it goes back into the game Sent from my ST25i using Tapatalk 2
It usually does take up a lot of time. x7 is the worst place to buy purchased items, because they are in the middle of a long loading process of BGM, which makes the validation process up to 15-20 minutes. This also includes buying freebies. Sony needs to make a system that's much faster and less hassle for hardcore Home players.
I sent another e-mail to Kaz and I was LOUD and CLEAR about these issues, but......I never get any replies back for some reason. I can't find his phone number either, so that route is a no go too. Idk-it all makes me feel like such a nobody. Oh and I just happened to find this site as I was searching for who I might actually be able to get through to at the top of Sony management: Sony Online Entertainment - Sony may have created the definition of management Hierarchy. | Glassdoor The comments from former Sony employees offers some insight into what it's like to work for "The Empire".
I have bought 1/2 items, and taken up to 15+ minutes, and the more I purchase the longer the wait. I remember when all the data was stored on our systems, I was out in like 5 or less
Anyway, If the n00bs calling them self coders even had a half of a brain they might find a way to count a CRC of the things we own. Counting one even on a slow server would take up nanoseconds and comparing it to our local sum .. maybe 1 second?
Part of the reason why home has lasted as long as it has is because of the amount of stuff you can purchase. Most online games have limits on items because they don't want slow everything down. So GTA online will be made up of a load of reskinned clothes, 20 customized cars and 2 personal spaces. If you want to over them limits something has to be sold back for in game currency or deleted. A game starts off with everyone buying items to progress further, it then moves onto kudos items, then users may start trying to obtain rarer items and at the end we tend to buy items we just like not because they have kudos, help us or are rare. Home can go back over these phases. New games means new game related items, kudos items can be anything from gold suits to mansions all of which can be owned with no limits to how many, kudos is not just what you own it can be how much you own. Rare or limited items like acorn parks themed items, how many users have bought souvenirs of each theme, rewards that need purchases etc as well. This freedom is coming at a heavy cost to us home users. Home just can't handle it currently and no one seems to of thought beforehand that you can't fit 2 litres of liquid into a litre bottle. Meaning doesnt how good your equipment is, it will be a physical impossibility to get the levels of data required to move quick enough. But if anywhere in the chain the equipment isn't top notch then it's obviously worse. Home doesn't require home 2 to reinvigorate the brand like most AAA games because of this. Plus it could mean as long as it takes money it's shelf is endless. But they need to work this issue out Sent from my ST25i using Tapatalk 2
