[UNPOPULAR OPINION] ZOS could increase items limit in housing

JiubLeRepenti

Hey folks,

I say this is an unpopular opinion because I often see people defending the developers' stance. Many people will disagree with me and it's fine.

But yes, even though I'm not a game developer, I’d bet anything that they could greatly improve the housing item limit.

Let me start with a fact: in housing, this item

has the same value as this one

.

You might already see where I’m going with this.

It means that in larger houses, you can place 700 iron forks or 700 animated moon gates. The fork is probably around 25cm long, while the gate is 10 meters wide and animated.

So here’s my question: if the developers can’t increase the number of items due to a technical limit, why don’t they let us add more small items and fewer larger ones?

For instance, why not allow us to place, instead of 700 items, 800 small, unanimated items and 200 larger ones? By “larger ones”, I don’t mean inert structures like walls and columns, but rather huge, floating, animated pieces.

Because as it stands, 700 forks have the same value as 700 moon gates...

Another (very, very, very) unpopular opinion of mine is that, since these older consoles are often cited as the main limitation, it’s time to stop maintaining the game on PS4/Xbox One. Or at the very least, release separate updates for these consoles and the newer ones. They are over ten years old and have the equivalent of an ATI HD 7770 (for the Xbox One). Why should new-gen console/PC players be limited by these machines?

Can’t wait to hear your thoughts on this!

Cheers,

Jiub

thorwyn

Maybe it is not about poly count, but data base limitations?
Either way, neither you nor I know the technical reasons and everything you said is coming directly from the realms of backseat coding.
If ZOS had a way to increase the item limit and monetize this upgrade, they would do that instantly.

Tandor

It's not an unpopular opinion, it's just that we know from ZOS that the reason it isn't implemented is because of performance limitations.

flizomica

I would wager this is the most popular housing opinion.

JiubLeRepenti

flizomica wrote: »

I would wager this is the most popular housing opinion.

When I say "unpopular opinion", it was not about the idea that it is what people want. Of course we all want more items.

It's about the idea that devs could do it but don't for different reasons. I feel like they keep hiding themselves behind the "not possible for technical reasons" argument, which lead them to not even try to find alternative options (I bet this part will be snipped lol).

Remember Skyrim? We all thought open cities were not possible, until a modder made it in his bedroom in a few days/weeks (maybe I'm not very clear, as English isn't my mothertongue).

And I also explained that it may be time to stop maintaining the game on old gens.

This is why I said this was an unpopular opinion. Because I'm saying devs could do more but don't (for reasons I don't get), and that we should take the game out of PS4/Xbox one.

If the "technical reasons" is gonna be the main argument for not improving the game in the next years on many requested fields (capes & cloaks, more items, graphic improvement, etc.), then maybe it's time to work on a change of game engine and change the game basic requirements (which would start, once again, by stopping maintaining it on PS4/Xbox one).

LunaFlora

they have talked about it as recently as May 2024:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/658726/follow-up-q-a-from-eso-10-year-celebration-event-community-roundtable/p1

Q: Will we ever get proper guild halls in ESO?


A: We love the idea of guild halls in ESO and recognize that our community has asked for them since the game launched. We have had many internal conversations about them over the years. The current challenge is the necessary caps. Much like the item limit caps in player housing, there is also a limit to how many characters can simultaneously be in a player home (it’s 25). As with items, these caps are in place to ensure that players on lower spec machines don’t encounter significant performance issues while in player homes.


they are unlikely to change it until they again increase hardware and software requirements for PC like they did with update 41 which increased it to Windows 10 and hardware about the same age as PS4 and XBox 1.



i am guessing that won't happen until probably something like 2027, because:

console eso anniversary is july 2025 and i doubt zos would zos would increase requirements so soon after that, same with merely a year after they just increased requirements for pc.

JiubLeRepenti

thorwyn wrote: »

Maybe it is not about poly count, but data base limitations?

To answer you, and I'm sorry for this, I'll need to share you a french-speaking video from a French youtuber who met the devs from TESO:



To quickly summarize it, Bob Lennon is one of the biggest french youtuber who made sponsored content for TESO. He has 2M subscribers and he met the devs in Zenimax offices in London.

At this timer (7:47), he explains that when he asked them when they would increase the items limit, the devs replied it was not possible because of... Old gen consoles.

So no, definitely not related to data base (if what he says in the video is true, which is since it's sponsored content).

I wish I could share a reliable source in English but I don't have any sadly.

JiubLeRepenti

LunaFlora wrote: »

they have talked about it as recently as May 2024:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/658726/follow-up-q-a-from-eso-10-year-celebration-event-community-roundtable/p1

Q: Will we ever get proper guild halls in ESO?


A: We love the idea of guild halls in ESO and recognize that our community has asked for them since the game launched. We have had many internal conversations about them over the years. The current challenge is the necessary caps. Much like the item limit caps in player housing, there is also a limit to how many characters can simultaneously be in a player home (it’s 25). As with items, these caps are in place to ensure that players on lower spec machines don’t encounter significant performance issues while in player homes.


they are unlikely to change it until they again increase hardware and software requirements for PC like they did with update 41 which increased it to Windows 10 and hardware about the same age as PS4 and XBox 1.



i am guessing that won't happen until probably something like 2027, because:

console eso anniversary is july 2025 and i doubt zos would zos would increase requirements so soon after that, same with merely a year after they just increased requirements for pc.

Thanks for this, I'll definitely check it out!

MaisonNaevius

I agree. But I'm mostly for increasing the capacity of houseguests and mounts/pets.

Elsonso

Tandor wrote: »

It's not an unpopular opinion, it's just that we know from ZOS that the reason it isn't implemented is because of performance limitations.

Well, I think there are performance limitations. They are not lying. I am sure that some players on very low end hardware, perhaps including old hardware that is no longer formally support, could run into problems.

I do think the current housing limits are well below that for everyone else.

I think the current limits are set with more of a lean towards monetization than technical and performance limits.

Ph1p

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

Remember Skyrim? We all thought open cities were not possible, until a modder made it in his bedroom in a few days/weeks (maybe I'm not very clear, as English isn't my mothertongue).

As far as I understand, the cities in Skyrim were closed off to conserve memory on older consoles (XBox 360 and PS3). So this wasn't a matter of technical feasibility or devs hiding behind stuff, but a deliberate choice to ensure performance on older hardware. Sounds kinda familiar

JiubLeRepenti

Ph1p wrote: »

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

Remember Skyrim? We all thought open cities were not possible, until a modder made it in his bedroom in a few days/weeks (maybe I'm not very clear, as English isn't my mothertongue).

As far as I understand, the cities in Skyrim were closed off to conserve memory on older consoles (XBox 360 and PS3). So this wasn't a matter of technical feasibility or devs hiding behind stuff, but a deliberate choice to ensure performance on older hardware. Sounds kinda familiar

Yup indeed and this is where I wanted to go with this example. As you say it sounds familiar because I feel like the old gen is restricting ESO devs (even if I keep thinking they could find alternative options in the current situation)...

I mean... PS4/Xbox One have 10 years old. I fully understand it would be penalizing for players on these machines but, on the other hand, it's kinda frustrating to see/hear the whole technical part of the game is being limited due to these consoles.

DenverRalphy

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

Ph1p wrote: »

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

Remember Skyrim? We all thought open cities were not possible, until a modder made it in his bedroom in a few days/weeks (maybe I'm not very clear, as English isn't my mothertongue).

As far as I understand, the cities in Skyrim were closed off to conserve memory on older consoles (XBox 360 and PS3). So this wasn't a matter of technical feasibility or devs hiding behind stuff, but a deliberate choice to ensure performance on older hardware. Sounds kinda familiar

I mean... PS4/Xbox One have 10 years old. I fully understand it would be penalizing for players on these machines but, on the other hand, it's kinda frustrating to see/hear the whole technical part of the game is being limited due to these consoles.

Hate to break it to ya, but it's not just consoles. There is a significantly large number of PC players on older sub-standard machines as well.

JiubLeRepenti

DenverRalphy wrote: »

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

Ph1p wrote: »

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

Remember Skyrim? We all thought open cities were not possible, until a modder made it in his bedroom in a few days/weeks (maybe I'm not very clear, as English isn't my mothertongue).

As far as I understand, the cities in Skyrim were closed off to conserve memory on older consoles (XBox 360 and PS3). So this wasn't a matter of technical feasibility or devs hiding behind stuff, but a deliberate choice to ensure performance on older hardware. Sounds kinda familiar

I mean... PS4/Xbox One have 10 years old. I fully understand it would be penalizing for players on these machines but, on the other hand, it's kinda frustrating to see/hear the whole technical part of the game is being limited due to these consoles.

Hate to break it to ya, but it's not just consoles. There is a significantly large number of PC players on older sub-standard machines as well.

Yes of course, removing the game from older consoles would automatically imply that the global PC specs should be increased too. Both are related.

alternatelder

Ph1p wrote: »

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

Remember Skyrim? We all thought open cities were not possible, until a modder made it in his bedroom in a few days/weeks (maybe I'm not very clear, as English isn't my mothertongue).

As far as I understand, the cities in Skyrim were closed off to conserve memory on older consoles (XBox 360 and PS3). So this wasn't a matter of technical feasibility or devs hiding behind stuff, but a deliberate choice to ensure performance on older hardware. Sounds kinda familiar

PS4 was new 2 years after Skyrim released on (then current) hardware. This makes no sense.

alternatelder

DenverRalphy wrote: »

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

Ph1p wrote: »

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

Remember Skyrim? We all thought open cities were not possible, until a modder made it in his bedroom in a few days/weeks (maybe I'm not very clear, as English isn't my mothertongue).

As far as I understand, the cities in Skyrim were closed off to conserve memory on older consoles (XBox 360 and PS3). So this wasn't a matter of technical feasibility or devs hiding behind stuff, but a deliberate choice to ensure performance on older hardware. Sounds kinda familiar

I mean... PS4/Xbox One have 10 years old. I fully understand it would be penalizing for players on these machines but, on the other hand, it's kinda frustrating to see/hear the whole technical part of the game is being limited due to these consoles.

Hate to break it to ya, but it's not just consoles. There is a significantly large number of PC players on older sub-standard machines as well.

If I remember correctly, there was an interview where Zos basically said old gen actually isn't the reason for not having new systems, new class, etc. And that was proven because we got a new class, new skill lines and other stuff everyone claimed old gen was preventing from happening.

Ph1p

alternatelder wrote: »

Ph1p wrote: »

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

Remember Skyrim? We all thought open cities were not possible, until a modder made it in his bedroom in a few days/weeks (maybe I'm not very clear, as English isn't my mothertongue).

As far as I understand, the cities in Skyrim were closed off to conserve memory on older consoles (XBox 360 and PS3). So this wasn't a matter of technical feasibility or devs hiding behind stuff, but a deliberate choice to ensure performance on older hardware. Sounds kinda familiar

PS4 was new 2 years after Skyrim released on (then current) hardware. This makes no sense.

Not sure what doesn't make sense to you. I'm not talking about the PS4, but the XBox360 and PS3, which were 5-6 years old when Skyrim came out (that's why I called them "older", if that's the issue). By comparison, the PS4 and XBox One were less than 2 years old at the console release of ESO.

Kisakee

alternatelder wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

Ph1p wrote: »

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

Remember Skyrim? We all thought open cities were not possible, until a modder made it in his bedroom in a few days/weeks (maybe I'm not very clear, as English isn't my mothertongue).

As far as I understand, the cities in Skyrim were closed off to conserve memory on older consoles (XBox 360 and PS3). So this wasn't a matter of technical feasibility or devs hiding behind stuff, but a deliberate choice to ensure performance on older hardware. Sounds kinda familiar

I mean... PS4/Xbox One have 10 years old. I fully understand it would be penalizing for players on these machines but, on the other hand, it's kinda frustrating to see/hear the whole technical part of the game is being limited due to these consoles.

Hate to break it to ya, but it's not just consoles. There is a significantly large number of PC players on older sub-standard machines as well.

If I remember correctly, there was an interview where Zos basically said old gen actually isn't the reason for not having new systems, new class, etc. And that was proven because we got a new class, new skill lines and other stuff everyone claimed old gen was preventing from happening.

Yeah, the reason is money. They probably can make it work on older machines including consoles but at what price...

SaffronCitrusflower

Tandor wrote: »

It's not an unpopular opinion, it's just that we know from ZOS that the reason it isn't implemented is because of performance limitations.

Sounds like a good reason to not put any more houses into the game or even remove housing from ESO all together. That way ZOS could improve performance of the actual game. Maybe even raise the population caps in Cyrodiil back to something reasonable.

Bucky_13

Please stop calling popular opinions unpopular opinions.

JiubLeRepenti

Bucky_13 wrote: »

Please stop calling popular opinions unpopular opinions.

So you consider that asking for the removal of the game from old gen consoles and asking for a global increase of PC specs (which would be a problem for a big part of the players) is a popular opinion?

Once again, the "unpopular opinion" was not to say we want more items slots. The unpopular opinion is to say ZOS could do far better in the current situation but doesn't, that the "technical limit" is an easy excuse, and that the game should be removed from two old platforms for good.

Four_Fingers

I could go for less traditional furnishings and more special and collectable furnishings as I use my house to display my trophies, mounts and companions. In other words, balance what we have better.

alternatelder

Ph1p wrote: »

alternatelder wrote: »

Ph1p wrote: »

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

Remember Skyrim? We all thought open cities were not possible, until a modder made it in his bedroom in a few days/weeks (maybe I'm not very clear, as English isn't my mothertongue).

As far as I understand, the cities in Skyrim were closed off to conserve memory on older consoles (XBox 360 and PS3). So this wasn't a matter of technical feasibility or devs hiding behind stuff, but a deliberate choice to ensure performance on older hardware. Sounds kinda familiar

PS4 was new 2 years after Skyrim released on (then current) hardware. This makes no sense.

Not sure what doesn't make sense to you. I'm not talking about the PS4, but the XBox360 and PS3, which were 5-6 years old when Skyrim came out (that's why I called them "older", if that's the issue). By comparison, the PS4 and XBox One were less than 2 years old at the console release of ESO.

Skyrim was developed for PS3, not future gen. Saying they were old gen when it was coded for that current system makes no sense.

zaria

Ph1p wrote: »

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

Remember Skyrim? We all thought open cities were not possible, until a modder made it in his bedroom in a few days/weeks (maybe I'm not very clear, as English isn't my mothertongue).

As far as I understand, the cities in Skyrim were closed off to conserve memory on older consoles (XBox 360 and PS3). So this wasn't a matter of technical feasibility or devs hiding behind stuff, but a deliberate choice to ensure performance on older hardware. Sounds kinda familiar

Who is correct, remember PS3 and 360 only had 512 MB memory including graphic memory, this was very low for pc then released.
----
But ESO has already increased the minimum requirements for PC before like dropping 32 bit support.
Remember playing ESO after launch on an crappy office laptop on a vacation. Game looked crappy but I just wanted horse training and research but it worked for questing, did some in Greenshade.

And getting problems in another house is not an critical problem.
At least let us have more pets and house guest active that limit is ridiculous low.

Elsonso

alternatelder wrote: »

If I remember correctly, there was an interview where Zos basically said old gen actually isn't the reason for not having new systems, new class, etc. And that was proven because we got a new class, new skill lines and other stuff everyone claimed old gen was preventing from happening.

Matt Firor: We’ll definitely do more classes. The question is when and there are some technical reasons why we can’t just keep adding new classes. We still very much support the original consoles we launched on, and they are a little more limited in memory.

Whenever you add a new class, you add massive amounts of animations and new effects, which take a lot of memory. However, we have done a lot of work over the last year and a half to refine our memory usage in the game so we freed enough memory for the Arcanist, and we’re trying to see if we can do that for the next new class. Don’t know when that will come out, but in that way, we can keep running on the old platforms.

alternatelder

Elsonso wrote: »

alternatelder wrote: »

If I remember correctly, there was an interview where Zos basically said old gen actually isn't the reason for not having new systems, new class, etc. And that was proven because we got a new class, new skill lines and other stuff everyone claimed old gen was preventing from happening.

Matt Firor: We’ll definitely do more classes. The question is when and there are some technical reasons why we can’t just keep adding new classes. We still very much support the original consoles we launched on, and they are a little more limited in memory.

Whenever you add a new class, you add massive amounts of animations and new effects, which take a lot of memory. However, we have done a lot of work over the last year and a half to refine our memory usage in the game so we freed enough memory for the Arcanist, and we’re trying to see if we can do that for the next new class. Don’t know when that will come out, but in that way, we can keep running on the old platforms.

Ditto.

Vaqual

Sad to see that the game development is held back by weak hardware limitations and possibly contractual obligations. If they had crossplay figured out in a feasible way they could decide to run a legacy server and just move on with the game. There will be fewer and fewer players with older hardware as time goes on, and it will be an increasingly heavier burden to make a profitable game catering to that minority. I think it is in the best interest of the game and all the work that has been done so far to make a cut at a certain point.

Alternatively, maybe they can offer some kind of trimmed down opt-in (as in you can untick the option and accept longer loads or laggier gameplay) eco version, where certain animations and assets look the same to reduce load. Example: Arc Runeblades and Necro Skull look like the same generic class ranged spammable in the eco version, but diversified on full game version. Same would go for furnishing assets, e.g., Daedric chair and Breton chair display as placeholder chair.
These are of course technical examples, I don't expect them to retroactively deteriorate anything that is already in the game. This would keep the game playable in state that is better than it was whenever the person bought the game for their respective hardware, but would still gently nudge players on the weakest hardware to upgrade.
Realistically, any new game they would sell would not be held back by these shackles and I think ESO can still have a long and profitable future if they finally decide to free themselves of needlessly low hardware limitations.

However impactful that is in the end is of course beyond my understanding, but I have no interested in financing a game that has its focus on making sure that I don't place too many furnishings to keep the guy playing on PS1 stutter-free. I am paying for a convincing product and if it stops being convincing I stop paying.

Sure I would like to place 10 small items instead of 1 large item, but if that change would mean I can not place 700 large items anymore, that would be a compromise that will mess stuff up for some people.

I_killed_Vivec

I have explained one possible reason for this before...

The database probably stores instances of generic objects. The attributes of the instances will be things like the location, orientation, scaling, colour, and type of object. These will be the same for all objects, whether spoons or moon gates.

[Some objects, in particular animated ones, will have additional properties to keep track of the state - e.g. a light switched on or off. I wouldn't be surprised if to keep things generic even a spoon has a state, even though it's never used.]

The code, and all the graphical detail, for each object only needs to be provided once for all objects of a given type, no matter where they are or who owns them. This code will be used to determine how the object instance is rendered when you look at it in your house. But the size of the object is irrelevant to the storage overhead.

However, when you go into your house, the graphics system has to determine from your location which of the objects you can see, and how to present them. Clearly the more objects in your house's database the longer this will take as it has to go through each item to determine whether it should be rendered. Again, the overhead in processing each item just to determine whether you should be able to see it will be the same regardless of the size of the object.

In fact processing 700 moon gates will probably be faster than 700 spoons because you might be able to see only 3 moon gates at a time, but all 700 spoons in one go.

TL:DR I'm sure the devs aren't lying when they say there are reasons for the limits!

Kappachi

LunaFlora wrote: »

they have talked about it as recently as May 2024:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/658726/follow-up-q-a-from-eso-10-year-celebration-event-community-roundtable/p1

Q: Will we ever get proper guild halls in ESO?


A: We love the idea of guild halls in ESO and recognize that our community has asked for them since the game launched. We have had many internal conversations about them over the years. The current challenge is the necessary caps. Much like the item limit caps in player housing, there is also a limit to how many characters can simultaneously be in a player home (it’s 25). As with items, these caps are in place to ensure that players on lower spec machines don’t encounter significant performance issues while in player homes.


they are unlikely to change it until they again increase hardware and software requirements for PC like they did with update 41 which increased it to Windows 10 and hardware about the same age as PS4 and XBox 1.



i am guessing that won't happen until probably something like 2027, because:

console eso anniversary is july 2025 and i doubt zos would zos would increase requirements so soon after that, same with merely a year after they just increased requirements for pc.

The solution is always to knock off older consoles and force them to newer ones. The console is always the limiting factor, I doubt many people actively playing on PC with any kind of "gaming PC" struggle running ESO, aside from ESO's own optimization issues (why can't a 3090 be 100% utilized for instance?), a small bump in requirements wouldn't do much to the playerbase I think, we need to drop the old console gens so we can have more animations and new classes & such too.

Dahveed

People here pointing out (and supporting) the dev argument about technical limitations are completely ignoring the very valid and honestly quite staggering fact the OP brought up:

Why does a damn fork have the same budget AS A FRICKEN MOONGATE for crying out loud?

One of the OP's suggestions is quite valid IMO: Change the budget of certain items, perhaps even recode the economy (this would require more work).

For example, a new housing "currency" could be implemented over something like roomspace, size etc.

I.e. a fork would only cost you 1 of these "points" whereas a moongate requires 10 "points". Instead of having 600 item limit on your settlement, you would have a limit of 2000 "points" (or whatever you'd want to call this currency).

So go ahead and make Forkland Castle with 2000 forks if you want.... Or you could make a crazy Moongate Haven Resort and Spa with 200 Moongates.

ESO_player123

Dahveed wrote: »

People here pointing out (and supporting) the dev argument about technical limitations are completely ignoring the very valid and honestly quite staggering fact the OP brought up:

Why does a damn fork have the same budget AS A FRICKEN MOONGATE for crying out loud?

One of the OP's suggestions is quite valid IMO: Change the budget of certain items, perhaps even recode the economy (this would require more work).

For example, a new housing "currency" could be implemented over something like roomspace, size etc.

I.e. a fork would only cost you 1 of these "points" whereas a moongate requires 10 "points". Instead of having 600 item limit on your settlement, you would have a limit of 2000 "points" (or whatever you'd want to call this currency).

So go ahead and make Forkland Castle with 2000 forks if you want.... Or you could make a crazy Moongate Haven Resort and Spa with 200 Moongates.

Why not? You can read the post that is two above yours for a possible explanation (it talks about forks and Moongates)