Omg, exactly @RemanCyrodiil_I !!! Thanks for the other pictures too! (And I'm glad I'm not the only one lol).

Most of the time, yeah it's a 'minor' annoyance, and no it doesn't ruin houses completely, but it's really frustrating to see the same issue again and again.

Also, PTS feedback means nothing (unless it's a missing texture or gap or something like in the FoA houses). People have routinely left feedback about notmatching interiors-exteriors, ill-fitted house sections that have been attached shoddily, and about asymmetric pieces, but these are generally ignored. So really, there seems to be no chance to change these once they are made... so I hope the devs can think about symmetry before they make them so ill-aligned in the first place.

It's an issue with ESO housing, that I've ranted about in the past as well, and find it equally baffling.

As to why things are like they are? Well... Dunno. Unless the devs come out and tell us why, anything we might come up with as a reason for this phenomena is conjecture. It is annoying though, and it does beg the question, and it is something I've often though about. So take the following as such, my ruminations on why things are as they are.

Now I don't know what sort of level editor ESO has, but from having extensive knowledge on several of them, I find it fairly hard to believe that the tools used by ESO would not have the ability to align stuff. I mean ETH manages to do this, so the tools used by the devs should too, right?

So that leaves us with two possible explanations. The first is that they just don't care. That the "it's good enough, modders will sort it out" culture of Bethesda has infiltrated the way things are done down at ZOS,. Now that would be quite nuts if proven true, since this is an MMO and modders can't just go about fixing every sloppy thing the devs push out half-baked. I guess, it could also be due to them not caring about it from monetary point of view, that they allocate such limited deadlines on the implementation of these things, that no-one has time to do any quality control on this stuff.

Still... Knowing how these level editors usually work, I find that quite unlikely too. It does not take a whole lot longer to do things right, to make sure things are aligned, than not doing so. A crooked base will lead to a building standing askew. The time you spend on double checking the foundations are right, is stuff you save when you start adding detail on to it. So harsh deadlines does not sound like the reason either.

That leaves only one real explanation... It's a deliberate design choice.

Why you might ask, and rightful so too. Well, I think it has something to do with the fact that everything in Tamrilando as envisioned by ZOS is busted up, beaten and broken. Everything is dirty and grimy and unkempt. No one cares about house maintenance or even cleaning. Things are done in crude fashion because that is more "realistic" or something in the deluded mines of the devs. I mean look at the various piers around the game world - they all feature crude, unevenly cut planks haphazardly nailed to the beams. They look like something hastily bashed up together as temporary solution, not something made by an actual trained carpenter. I've walked on historical piers, with old wooden beams, and they are not each cut to a random length, and they are laid out so as to minimize any possible gaps, since things would get stuck in those gaps, and stuff would fall through them to the sea.

It's a fairly common trope infesting fantasy worlds envisioned by people of the modern world. They see things with a medieval vibe as something that needs to look like it was made by sloppy crafters because everything old is crummy and shoddy looking.

Thus the houses end up with wonky foundations and everything is placed only so-so and things are misaligned. The idea behind this is, I suppose, that it makes thing more real and believable and stuff like that.

The thing is though, that is flawed thinking. Virtual worlds are by their very nature unrealistic. Even in engines capable of rendering far more realistic environments than ESO is capable off, they still fail to meet the standards of actual reality. Some of the more modern and super heavy engines of today do occasionally provide that momentary feeling of something virtual being almost like real, but the illusion tends to shatter in the next moment as things move, or you change your point of perspective.

So, in the real world, yes, most buildings that look symmetrical aren't so. And if you go and look at older buildings you will notice, that with the lack of modern tools and measuring devices, they do often have elements off to one side or another. It's just the nature of reality itself, things are never perfectly aligned.

That does not, however, translate well into the artificial environments of computer games. Our eyes are far more precise and capable of perceiving these things than most people give them credit. And we see these imperfections, and we see them in juxtaposition with the otherwise cold and perfect and utterly mathematically precise nature of the 3d environment. The floors are absolutely level, the walls are completely smooth, and surfaces are perfectly uniform. Only imperfections that exist are those that are deliberately made by the developers of said environment, and we do see the artificial nature of those as well. We see the fact that each wooden beam is exactly the same, since it uses the exact same model and has the exact same texture. That every cushion on every chair is crumpled in the exact same manner since they are essentially - mathematically speaking that is - the exact same object. In such a world, deliberately askew elements of the underlying foundation stick out like a sore thumb, and things that would not bother us in the real world do jump on our faces and scream "look at me! I am totally "miss-aligned!!" and it gets annoying.

Now having said that, and people being people, there are bound to be those who find such details endearing. That there are people who like to see things be bit crooked. And I it's fine to take that stance, but such "features" do drive those of use, who do pay attention to such details, nuts. Especially in designs that are clearly meant to be symmetrical.

I wish ZOS would leave such imperfections to designs that are already asymmetrical in nature, where each little quirk adds to the whole, and stop using them in buildings that enunciate the otherwise mathematical perfection of virtual spaces - i.e. in symmetrical designs and let those things actually be symmetrical. Yeah, such precision is not "realistic" in our own real world, but in the fake mathematical world of a 3D spaces, anything else just looks "wrong."

My ocd is not happy I clicked on this thread.

Solution is for us to get housing 2.0 at some point, similar to Conan Exiles one, where we can build homes from zero.
Walls, stairs, entrances, corridors, ceilings, roofs... Everything
And ngl, Id gladly pay for that

What has been seen, cannot be unseen!

Can someone tell me why the dwarven elevator behind the waterfall in the south side of the main interior of Stone Eagle Aerie takes you out the front door of the house. Am I missing something? I would imagine it should take you out into Blackreach.

InaMoonlight wrote: »

Alphawolf01A wrote: »

Can someone tell me why the dwarven elevator behind the waterfall in the south side of the main interior of Stone Eagle Aerie takes you out the front door of the house. Am I missing something? I would imagine it should take you out into Blackreach.

It's supposed to take you directly into the outlaw's refuge

Ah, OK. Cool. Thanks.

Thanks for the other pictures, @Zurica !

And sorry to everyone who 'can't unsee' the issues now But perhaps seeing these details ahead of time will prevent people from buying am ocd-triggering house!

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Too bad we can’t use the precision editor on the house itself.

TwinLamps wrote: »

Solution is for us to get housing 2.0 at some point, where we can build homes from zero

Yeah, that would definitely be awesome!

Nairinhe wrote: »

Things like this make me all torn on ESO: on one hand I see devs who are clearly passionate about the game, on the other hand like half of the stuff in game seems to be made by someone who doesn't give a skeever's tail about quality.

Nicely put! On the one hand, we want to be grateful and appreciate the housing devs for producing content in ESO, but then you see stuff that makes you wonder if they even care about housing. Many of these products certainly don't seem like something someone would build for themselves, not like something they'd want to buy and decorate and stare at for eternity.

So, really, is housing made by people who don't actually play housing in this game? Like, I don't know, did the dev save time by placing the house parts mis-aligned, instead of taking an extra 1 second to align them properly? [snip] But these sort of mistakes don't seem like something a fan of housing would do over and over.

[Edited to remove Bashing]