Housing Tour (U43) has good potential to become a source of community-based content [and more]!

Bo0137 · July 3

It got me thinking. It's actually a brilliant idea. Reason being: it enables players to make content for the game and not encumber the devs with it!

I can already dream of the roleplay lobbies, jumping puzzles, mazes, arenas, chat hubs...

Now, in order to make it truly great, I envision three needs: 1. Reward the content creators with crowns; 2. Reward players for spending time in these activities (maybe gold or exp); 3. Give the content creators more tools to use.

1. No other currency shall be expected. They spend real money and TIME to make stuff for Zenimax's customers to have fun. These costumers pay Zenimax. Share some crumbs of the profit with the top content creators - crowns is the best way to go.
There are very famous games that do that. I can cite Fortnite, Roblox and, specifically a MMO, MapleStory. Do you know a great franchise that also rewards the community with real money? Bethesda does! (With the new mod system)

2. Players NEED incentive to do these extra activities. I mean, sure, it's really fun socializing and completing these parkour challenges. But you reach the end and you receive nothing. So what happens is: you do it for a couple times; then you stop going to these hubs because you are forced to do something else in the game (like farming or grinding).
My biggest letdown with Tales of Tribute is it not being an alternative to mob leveling (IIRC the game doesn't even reward you with a single exp point!). I mean, I could spend hours over hours playing ToT. The game is really fun; but there is little to no incentive in playing matches! If I sink, let's say, 3 hours of my day into ToT, I feel like I am wasting potential instead of applying my time doing something more rewarding.
I can see myself spending hours in the tour system, but I will need some positive feedback to satisfy my addicted brain.

3. With both players and content creators having reasons to fiddle with this system, there will be need of more tools to use! I have in mind mob assets, trampolines, lava pools, drinkable furniture (make a pub, a coffee shop or a tavern), minigames (like mudball memento, but with scores). It will also be needed to raise the furniture and the player population cap (it's been heavily requested).
There is so much room for improvement. And there's a good opportunity for the housing tour to entertain the community even more than the official Zenimax content!

I know this is just the beginning for this system. But I had these cool thoughts and had the urge to share them. I wholeheartedly wish ESO to grow more and more while also being a good environment for the community. Yes, you can see. I'm excited

nihonseanb14_ESO · July 3

It's trash. Given everything the housing community has been asking for over the past several years this is what they come up with?

[snip]
[edited for bashing]

Tandor · July 3

I must say the idea of looking at other players' homes is of no interest to me at all, and I have even less interest in other players visiting my homes.

However, I recognise that there's a (surely pretty small) section of the home-owning playerbase that is interested in those things, and for them this may be as appealing as the Infinite Archive and Tales of Tribute systems are to the equally small sections of the playerbase who are interested in them. I'm pleased for them.

What I believe the rest of the playerbase hoped for today was something much more basic, like increased placement caps, a furnishings bag, and - rather over-optimistically perhaps but this was touted as a housing-centred update - the ability to display your other characters in your home.

For most players, therefore, I suspect that the housing element of this update will be a complete non-event.

Syldras · July 3

Bo0137 wrote: »

It got me thinking. It's actually a brilliant idea. Reason being: it enables players to make content for the game and not encumber the devs with it!

Yeah, it's super encumbering for a game developer to, well, develop games.

kind_hero · July 3

Can't say I dislike the new feature.

I don't like they haven't touched the topic of slots.

Also, I was expecting some new game mechanic regarding housing, like teleporting or interacting with more items to enable various games or improve functionality inside the house. DISAPPOINTING, really. To me it looks like the leads are out of ideas or just don't have the resources to do cool stuff.

The next thing needed with this system is to be able to sell the house for gold/crowns to other players. I have lots of houses that I don't use/need anymore, but would love to have more gold for other housing projects.

TaSheen · July 3

Not my thing at all, so *shrug*.

Aardappelboom · July 3

A lot of things in ESO have great potential, but most of the time it doesn't become what you hope it does.

I would love community build stories, locations, etc, like Skyrim has mods. But that's not what this is. It's just a way to share your home by using the current system. We've waited a long time for a housing update and this is what we got, probably for the next couple of years.

They should really start sharing their roadmap and ideas earlier. By the time they release info, there's almost no more room for any feedback. If it's a miss, they're stuck with it.

LikiLoki · July 3

Frankly speaking, I had high expectations from innovations. What we get is a good thing, but I expected more. Well, a broken shilling is better than a leaky pocket...

AllenaNightWood · July 3

ill list my house for people to visit but we needed QoL and more features even if slots were available for crowns or endeavours, i dont think this will be well used except for maybe full fledged housing guilds

Pelanora · July 3

Well thank goodness I didn't get up super early to watch the stream, if this is what it is! Tours! What are we, the National Trust?

I want companions to be able to sit down in my house! And let's talk about actually sleeping. And plots of empty land in every zone.... and... and... and....

Enemy-of-Coldharbour · July 3

Having other players rate your home won't be trolled at all...cough...cough...

Ravensilver · July 3

To be honest... we already have all that. Just join one of the *very* active housing guilds, like Tamriel Homes, and you will have people doing all that and more. Housing tours, mazes, stories, roleplay... it's all there.

What we *really* need - real QoL improvements for housing enthusiasts - has been ignored. Again.

LatentBuzzard · July 3

Bo0137 wrote: »

It got me thinking. It's actually a brilliant idea. Reason being: it enables players to make content for the game and not encumber the devs with it!

It doesn't enable players to make any more content than they already can. It might make it easier to stumble across a random person's home but other than that it doesn't change housing at all from its current state. Overall it's the wish.com version of housing updates.

MidniteOwl1913 · July 4

You can't paper over this smiles and well wishes.

Not what we asked for, not what we want, not anything we need.

Better to have not bothered because now instead of just hopeless, I'm hopeless and disappointed.

kargen27 · July 4

nihonseanb14_ESO wrote: »

It's trash. Given everything the housing community has been asking for over the past several years this is what they come up with?

[snip]

It isn't that they don't care. It is that players keep asking for things that at this time are not possible.

[edited to remove quote]

fizzylu · July 4

Aardappelboom wrote: »

They should really start sharing their roadmap and ideas earlier. By the time they release info, there's almost no more room for any feedback. If it's a miss, they're stuck with it.

Personally, I've always thought them choosing not to give details early on was intentional on their part so that they don't have to cater to or work around the actual playerbases requests/feedback and can just continue to do what they think is best....

kargen27 wrote: »

It isn't that they don't care. It is that players keep asking for things that at this time are not possible.

Also not accurate at all. Many people have asked for reasonable features for housing, they would just simply take more work than, idk.... taking a feature that already exists in game, expanding on it a teeny bit, and throwing together a UI panel for it under the Group & Activity Finder?

Hotdog_23 · July 4

Let down as far as I am concerned. Sure I might visit a few homes at first but sure it will quickly get old for me personally. For those that love housing I am happy for you. Just not my cup of tea.

Stay safe 🙂

Stafford197 · July 4

Basically Q3 is no content. So what will Q4 be for PvP? A few maps for something like 1v1s, 2v2s, etc?

ESO strayed away from massive yearly expansions (like other games) by instead pushing out smaller content releases every 3 months. But now those smaller content releases are being stretched out a lot….

SilverBride · July 4

PC has had an addon that does the same thing for a very long time now. It's nothing new to us and honestly I don't consider it a housing feature.

To me a feature would be something like

A furniture crafting table where we can craft all our furnishings in one place.
Subcategories in the crafting window, like there already is in the housing editor, that would divide categories such as Parlor into Subcategories like Carpets and Rugs, Tapestries, Tea Tables... As it is I have to scroll and scroll and scroll, then scroll some more when looking for the item I want to craft.
The ability to deconstruct furnishings, at least the ones we have crafted.
I personally am fine with the furnshing limit, but many are not, and even a small increase would be better than nothing.
An item to control the weather similar to the hourglass that controls the time.

fizzylu · July 4

@SilverBride
Seriously, I'd say master crafting stations were a bigger and a far better new housing "feature" than this....

Syldras · July 4

fizzylu wrote: »

Personally, I've always thought them choosing not to give details early on was intentional on their part so that they don't have to cater to or work around the actual playerbases requests/feedback and can just continue to do what they think is best....

Who knows. When I asked a mod about this year's companions after the chapter reveal stream (must be January or early February at latest) the statement I got was that they couldn't give information about that yet because they themselves don't have a fixed plan for it yet. Make of that what you will.

LunaFlora · July 4

Enemy-of-Coldharbour wrote: »

Having other players rate your home won't be trolled at all...cough...cough...

how exactly will it be trolled?
you can Favourite a listed home you can with your own collectibles and you can recommend listed homes which then show up in a recommend tab.
there seems to be nothing else to the ratings.

Tensar · July 4

This new is the proof that this game is just dying. We wanted something at least a bit usefull for our homes, this is just an insult to the community.

Bye TESO, will not play <snip>

<snipped for Bashing and Slanderous Comments>

JiubLeRepenti · July 4

This is lame.

This is the kind of thing a modder on Skyrim or Fallout would make alone, within a few weeks, in his bedroom, as an addon. You guys can't show this as a update "feature". Or you have very, very low-ambition targets.

I could easily make a 20+ list of things to improve current housing:

- stop maintaining the game on old gen (PS4/Xbox One) in order to increase the items limit for good;
- interaction with furnishings like beds ;
- possibility to slot its own character outfit on a dummy ;
- possibility to add wildlife without taking one collectible slot everytime ;
- add complete buildings for each race/culture (pretty useful for places like Moon-Sugar Meadow, etc.) ;
- possibility to change the music theme ;
- possibility to change the weather ;
- possibility to add missing tools (f.i. guild merchants) in order to be autonomous when you are home ;
- add a native tool like Immaculate Constructions addon in order to easily let ppl build coherent structures ;
- add a free camera feature when you want to make videos ;
- etc.

[snip] I also feel, as an endgame player with 6.000+ hours on ESO, that there is a HUGE lack of ambition about the new features.

Many ppl won't agree, many will say that this is a frustrated comment... Well idc. I've defended this game for a very long time, but now I have to admit there is no ambition on ZOS side. Keep it like this. Keep ignoring your community calls. And then, be sure the game will slowly but surely die.

[snip] You can be sure I'll stop my yearly subscription in November. I'm not inciting other ppl to do the same (don't want my comment to get moderated). You simply don't deserve it.

[edited for bashing & profanity bypass]

WolfCombatPet · July 4

Hotdog_23 wrote: »

For those that love housing I am happy for you. Just not my cup of tea.

Housing is the only reason I play ESO, and this update was a huge disappointment.

This is NOT something the housing community asked for.

This should have been a small footnote in some random patch that said console players will be receiving a bare-bones version of a PC addon.

The voting/recommending houses is a huge problem and something I hope does NOT make it live.

I love touring homes NOW in ESO. When update 43 happens, I will no longer be house touring. House tours will become stressful.
Drama and tensions will arise. I'll have to explain myself every time I don't upvote a friend's house. Cliques will form.

Houses will be upvoted as advertisement for dungeon runs.

The MAIN thing housing enthusiasts want is item increase limit, but now with update 43 the servers will be strained with players using homes as teleport points.
So much unnecessary furniture loading. Imagine the strain on the servers.

You can say goodbye to any hopes of furniture item limit increase with update 43.

SilverBride · July 4

WolfCombatPet wrote: »

This is NOT something the housing community asked for.

Actually it is. It's not been a very common request but there have been threads in the past asking for ways to visit all of a player's houses, not just the primary.

WolfCombatPet · July 4

SilverBride wrote: »

WolfCombatPet wrote: »

This is NOT something the housing community asked for.

Actually it is. It's not been a very common request but there have been threads in the past asking for ways to visit all of a player's houses, not just the primary.

There have been threads about that. And devs already delivered on that!
We got links to homes. That was VERY well received. I love that feature.

That is not update 43 AKA popularity voting on homes.

Alinhbo_Tyaka · July 4

SilverBride wrote: »

PC has had an addon that does the same thing for a very long time now. It's nothing new to us and honestly I don't consider it a housing feature.

To me a feature would be something like
A furniture crafting table where we can craft all our furnishings in one place.

Subcategories in the crafting window, like there already is in the housing editor, that would divide categories such as Parlor into Subcategories like Carpets and Rugs, Tapestries, Tea Tables... As it is I have to scroll and scroll and scroll, then scroll some more when looking for the item I want to craft.

The ability to deconstruct furnishings, at least the ones we have crafted.

I personally am fine with the furnshing limit, but many are not, and even a small increase would be better than nothing.

An item to control the weather similar to the hourglass that controls the time.

Essentially what we are seeing is EHT being incrementally add to the base game. While of minimal consequence to PC players it is a major change for console players. My only question is why ZOS is releasing it in dribs and drabs rather than as a true major housing feature? All I can figure is they are trying to milk it for new feature counts on an executive chart somewhere.

spartaxoxo · July 4

WolfCombatPet wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

WolfCombatPet wrote: »

This is NOT something the housing community asked for.

Actually it is. It's not been a very common request but there have been threads in the past asking for ways to visit all of a player's houses, not just the primary.

There have been threads about that. And devs already delivered on that!
We got links to homes. That was VERY well received. I love that feature.

That is not update 43 AKA popularity voting on homes.

People asked for the ability to more easily share homes, even outside of the links. They asked for it to be similar to what is in the add-on. And that's what we are getting. It was mostly console users because we don't have access to add-ons.

TDVM · July 4

bruh

NoticeMeArkay · July 4

I'm happy for the console players, even more so if this is truly something this part of our community was asking for.

But yes, I'd have preferred something that brought something new and innovative, or a highly requested feature by both side, to both sides of the game.

I fear the tags won't receive a whitelist, therefore gold and run sellers are going to flood the listing with inn rooms to advertise their "service". I already spotted the usual nutcases ingame discussing how profitable selling listing votes would be. What the heck is even up with people at this point?

I think integrating one of the most downloaded addons on PC into the game is a great idea, but the hype Zos created around it didn't match the reveal. I'm absolutely down to believe that it has cost a lot of work overtime shifts to get this squeezed into the game and I respect that. - I just hope this wasn't the last major housing update we'll receive.

And I hope Sony will one day convince it's customers to move their PS account to PC when it comes to ESO.
Not force, as they tried with Helldivers. But at least make the offer if it hasn't been done yet.