PTS Feedback Thread for Player Housing

UrQuan

I haven't had much of an opportunity to dig into housing yet, but initial impressions:

1. The initial housing quest: it's absolutely not obvious where to even go to start the quest. The only way to know is to read the patch notes or ask around, and we all know that most players don't read patch notes. With the DLC quests it was easier as you could start the quest directly from a menu.
2. I previewed a bunch of the homes from the crown store menu. It was very counter-intuitive that you switch between previewing the unfurnished & furnished versions by first using the "buy" option. The wording on the "buy" option should be changed to something like "buy/change preview mode"
3. Grand Topal Hideaway is amazing.

Vorkrunne

EDIT/DELETE: Someone already reported this strange phenomenon. Unrelated question: Can we not delete our own posts in these forums? Or have I missed a giant DELETE button somewhere?

Forsaken Stronghold has floating fire mid air.

It seems like the fire on top of a torch.

TerraDewBerry

I'm not sure if this is the right place to put this, but the attunable blacksmithing workstation does not seem to be able to make a copy of the Song of Lamae craft station in Malabal Tor on PC NA. The Clothier and Woodworking ones both worked just fine. I could make a copy of the clothier and woodworking workstations for my house, but the blacksmithing one kept telling me I needed to be near a blacksmithing station and I was standing right on it almost. I moved around to several places near and around the Song of Lamae blacksmithing station and nothing.

Elder_III

kip_silverwolf wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno
The 'Overlook Shore' trapdoor in Daggerfall Overlook Manor drops me right into the water! If I try to swim I get eaten by slaughterfish!

I wish I had that for the Adoring Fan from TES:IV...

Vidahr

When we Hover over an item or Grab it while in House Editor mode, can we get a tooltip somewhere that displays what the item actually is? Like, it would be great to have a name pop up somewhere on the screen when I hover over it, about to grab it.

Vidahr

leepalmer95 wrote: »

Wish i could get into pts... console problems

Can someone make a dueling arena? Get big statues with a flat bottom and place them upside down in the ground for a duel arena.

There are definitely enough unique pieces to make a variety of interesting dueling arenas.

I'll see if I can throw together one.

Betheny

Can think of some funny uses for those Slaughterfish pools.

Make a walled-off maze in house that only leads up to deathpool and build some platforms in the water leading to the banker and merchant that actually can't be reached without falling into the slaughterfish, then open up house to everyone and advertise it as a "fun maze".

Acrolas

StopDropAndBear

Grand Topal Hideaway is amazing, it's like the private cabana island from Wind Waker! But I think you guys know this already and that's why it's a crown-only house

Titansteele

So far, where I have not previewed every home I was a tad disappointed that I had seen it all before. What do I mean?
The open spaces around the homes are great and varied but whenever I venture inside the layout is all too familiar.

I was hoping to have unique building layouts, some variety to Tamriel but the interiors all looked the same as inn`s or houses I have visited 1000 time already. I am sure more houses will be added over time but I was hoping that they would be different from the start.

The features and the item placement system is powerful and provides a great basis.

JD2013

what is the "A friend in need" quest and where do you get it?

Edit: Realised that it is the initial quests from the bank.

Anyone found the story continuation that Rich said about yet??

solangesimondsen

Love the housing so far. Yes, free rooms are tiny, but that's OK with me. Even a penniless noob will get a place. I just ran into an issue with the free inn room, though.

1. I ran the quest on a EP toon first. Didn't take possession, logged and went to my DC toon on whom I completed the quest and got my room at the Rosy Lion. Played with it a little - set a stool down, picked it back up.

Logged back on to my EP toon, completed the quest, got my room at the Ebony Flask. So far, so good. When I left the room by the door, I was in the Rosy Lion Inn, not the Ebony Flask. Went back to the room in a few minutes and tried to place furniture. It brought up a popup window asking to give permissions. The only room listed in the drop down was the Rosy Lion.

2. When I tried to sit on the stool I purchased, my toon completed the sitting animation and immediately stood up again. I tried this several times, same result. Moved the stool to the middle of the room, thinking it might be a clipping issue. Same result. Also, the stool does not seem to control sit direction. At least once, as I tried to sit, I was facing in a different direction with my butt in mid-air. Didn't get a shot of it since, as before, I immediately stood.

Vorkrunne

[quote="UrQuan;3656247"I previewed a bunch of the homes from the crown store menu. It was very counter-intuitive that you switch between previewing the unfurnished & furnished versions by first using the "buy" option. The wording on the "buy" option should be changed to something like "buy/change preview mode"
[/list][/quote]


Completely agree.

Even after reading this, it took me a while to figure out that I simply close the window after selecting "Furnished" without hitting any other buttons if I simply wish to preview the home without buying it.

I would not have taken the risk of hitting the "Purchase" button if I weren't on PTS.

Vorkrunne

Please consider allowing us to return to our original location via a button located on our screen.

The doors stating we will be let out in front of the house/outdoors should properly lead to the area they say they are leading us to.

If I want to see what the homes look like from the outside, I have to travel to these locations.

Imagine an RP scenario where we simply want to walk over to the town nearby or an RP scenario where we are checking out a broken window from the outside. Instead of walking outside of the home easily, we must all take a break. Get everyone to port over, mount up, find the house, run up to it, etc.

Addition: This is so infuriating in Ravenhurst. One door leads to an outside patio. The other two doors lead to somewhere across the world, instead of the immediate surrounding area which the tooltip says we will be ported to.

This problem is depressing with Grymharth's Woe. We can't even use the second floor door.

Fyaal

Item placement for a few items has clipping issue when using the drag feature.


Also I am disappointed in the availability of things to craft. Master writs drop somewhat rarely (8 writs, 2 characters, no drops). On top of that, many of the master writs I got from making a template require legendary mats. LEGENDARY. Are you aware that tempering alloy are currently 10k a piece? That means a master crafting writ that require legendary mats cost up to 80k gold to complete. Absurd.

There are no basic crafting items, like a table, chair or anything that a max level woodworker should be able to make right off the bat without blueprints.

The cost of some items in terms of crowns is outrageous. 400 crowns for a well? Or 50 crowns for basic stone blocks? That's too much, I just want to separate the horses in my stable, and that costs 400 crowns for the stone blocks needed.

I'm happy with the lighting, all the street-posts that are crown purchasable are cool, but there are not enough wall lights (like the one in the nord home). Maybe these are craftable and I don't have the writs yet.

Taternater

In general settings I had it so no one not on my visitor list can enter. Then I added my guild to my visitor list. My guildies couldn't enter because they didn't have permission. I then switched general to visitor so anyone can enter as a visitor. She was able to enter. Setting guilds as visitors seems to be broken.

Fyaal

The preview screen for large items is completely broken and needs a zoom out feature. Walking back takes you out of the screen. For instance, does anyone know what this well looks like without purchasing and placing it first?

Pandorii

I played with housing a little and here is my initial reaction:

I actually liked it much more than I thought I would. Overall, I feel like it's too complex and too elaborate to not have some unique and fundamental practical features such as: gardening, fishing holes, and storage. I also found that I could make a dye station, but I could not interact with it. So, I'll add having a dye station that actually works to the list of fundamental features that housing could use.

It took me a while to figure out how to craft furniture, so for the sake of ease, I was buying them with crowns for atrocious costs of like 400 crowns for a purple quality chair. Apparently, it's from provisioning tables and alchemy tables, which really didn't make sense. Why would I make a wooden table anywhere other than the woodworking station?

From a crafter's perspective, it's a bit complicated. There are like 32 variants of chairs (I'm making up a number here) with very little difference between the styles. Crafting materials will pull from a lot of different pockets that have their own purpose, like aspect rune stones and style materials (made the dummy or something that took nickel). Not only will it be a bit of a pain to gather the recipes-like scrips that allow you to craft specific armors, but you will also have to gather all the unrelated mats. Then, you'll have to sell it in the guild trader - I can already picture the intense overload of new items on sale in guild traders on top of an already intense overloaded guild trader system that doesn't have filters or search features on console (without addons). The sales won't be that good because it'll be incredibly niche, the kind of people who would specifically want to ORC purple chair compared to the 30 other variants.

But fine. whatever. I'll deal. We'll probably have some super awesome person create an eso-fashion like website where you can preview everything in a way better than ZOS has provided so people can make strategic decisions about what furniture pieces they want to make. It would be just so much easier to deal though if housing came with fundamental features (storage and dye stations) and unique features (gardening and fishing).

Taternater

Regarding interacting with your dye station, if it's at an angle at all you can't use it. Or if something is too close to it. A few times I had to reposition crafting stations to be able to use them. That said, a visitor told me that she had the prompt to use the dye station from across the yard.

UrQuan

Oh, you know what housing really needs? An item in the crown store that you buy for free (like the New Life Festival scroll) that's called something like The Tamriel Guide To Home Ownership.

It would be a book that tells you where to go to get the initial quest (for immersion purposes it could be a scrap of paper slipped into the book by that NPC that's basically a want ad telling you to come and meet him at the appropriate location), and explains how homes can be purchased (in general terms - it can talk about how many homes can be bought for gold but you may have to build a reputation for yourself in the area for people to be willing to sell to you etc), how to make/buy furniture and stuff, and all of that. Basically like the home decorating guides and homesteader guides in Skyrim.

This could be a simple way to make it much easier for people to figure out how to get into it all without having to read the patch notes (which most players don't), or ask around in chat, or blindly wander around trying to figure it all out on their own.

Tandor

Initial impressions following only a short time checking a few places out in Glenumbra:-

Free Inn Room - ridiculously tiny, I know it's free but it still needs to be a reasonable starter room.

Small house (Captain Margaux's Place) - Just one room (albeit a decent-sized one) seems very modest for 56,000 gold. I've been playing since PC launch without using the guild trader system which I hate and that price is the maximum I can afford after all this time, whereas I feel that I've been in the world long enough to expect to be able to afford a house with more than one room!

Manor House (Daggerfall Overlook) - Very nice, if a main building layout that is clearly familiar as an existing layout. I particularly liked the approach to it from Daggerfall. However, at the proposed price in gold it will only ever be attainable either by those few traders who have made an absolute fortune or a few guilds whose members club together to turn it into a guild house whilst with only 25 characters allowed in it at a time it makes me wonder how many guilds will actually see any benefit in it.

It was clear from both my own experience and the questions being asked in zone chat that it is utterly impossible to know the first thing about the housing setup without reading the patch notes in considerable detail. Even then, finding the various houses was a major pain. Given that the first rule of MMOs is that most players don't even glance at the patch notes and I can see this being a major problem. Of course, in time people will get to know more about it and websites will publish guides, but first impressions count for a lot and on the day this goes live there will be a general sense of complete bewilderment.

Having followed some of the build-up to this update I was extremely optimistic as an avid fan of EQ2's housing setup that this was going to be pretty decent. Based on my initial foray, however, I'm left somewhat disappointed at what's available for the level of gold required, and I dread to think what the prices will be in Crowns.

I haven't explored all the achievements and crafting arrangements yet but can well believe that they will provide a major amount of content and enjoyment for many, myself included, and as such could represent both a time sink and gold sink as well as a significant revenue option for ZOS through the Crown Store. However, if the houses are generally too small and over-priced then people won't actually get to the stage of appreciating all the extra features that come with them. The house purchase itself needs to be seen almost as a loss-leader to draw the players into the extra time, gold, and Crown commitments that will be hugely advantageous to both them and ZOS. A very rough rule of thumb might be to double the size of the smaller properties and halve the price of the larger ones!

Philgo68

Played around with houses. Bought some, moved and place furnishings. Happened to have one in my inventory, and left to do the initial housing quest.

Progressed fine until I needed a piece of Furniture. First had to disable every addon I had, but then could buy from Rohzika in Daggerfall. But alas, the quest does not advance. I've purchased 8 different kinds of funtiture, and the quest is still sitting at 0/1.

Finally, I destroyed all the furniture I had in inventory and then bought another piece and the quest advanced.

--Philgo

Annalyse

I'm getting a lot of "instance full" messages when I try to preview smaller homes.

wiz12268b14_ESO

I mostly did the preview through the store. I only saw a few I liked. Some I didnt like at all. Way too confined. Floor plans were basic at best. Serenity Falls outside was the nicest I saw, other than of course the island. But the inside was sort of mundane. The Hundering Palatial looks to be the best 'value' as it has a decent courtyard and the inside is no worse than any of the others.

I looked at a few merchants and the prices are OK I suppose but on top of the house price its obvious this is going to be a massive gold sink. I havent looked at the crafting aspect yet but from what I saw in chat that looks extreme as well.

As for the quest. I am returning from quite some time off so a good example of a 'new' player I guess. But I probably got lucky since I simply returned to my home city and walked around until I saw a quest marker which turned out to be the one for housing. But it isnt obvious you should go to your home city.

I just started the quest and I like how it has you go to random spots in what used to be the starter maps, but I am only at Rivenspire part so not sure where it goes from there.

On the inside I like how you can move things on every access, sort of. As a person who is used to Rift it is similar but still not quite there. I would also suggest some more tools with angles and off sets and rotations you can input. I am sure if it isnt put in there will br an add on for it, assuming that portion is open.

So all in all first impression is mostly "meh' not impressed but not disappointed either. Other than the massive amounts of currency (of some sort) it will take to do housing with any sort of depth or imagination.

NewBlacksmurf

Annalyse wrote: »

I'm getting a lot of "instance full" messages when I try to preview smaller homes.

@Annalyse
I saw a Dev comment earlier that suggested something like this occurs when the instance is full.

So it seems on top of the player count in your home, as more and more players use houses the instance fills up.

I hope I'm interpreting it correctly. If not sorry but keep trying to get in until it stops saying full

milkbox

Fyaal wrote: »

The preview screen for large items is completely broken and needs a zoom out feature. Walking back takes you out of the screen. For instance, does anyone know what this well looks like without purchasing and placing it first?

I came here to report this, too.

Seems I'm much more interested in the exterior spaces than the interiors, and I think I've settled on Mourmoth as my starter home (Sleek Creek was in the running, but there's no dirt for trees).

Overall, I think the editor works well and is easy to understand, but the preview system stinks.

Most of what I could see of the trees was trunk. No tops to light posts. Tents and stalls were sometimes just a large texture in front of my eyes. If this was live, I would not have purchased anything I couldn't see in its entirety.

Also, I'm curious to know if there is a way to obtain plants and trees in-game, or if they are only available via crown store. Anybody know?

Rheknir

Seems i made a double post by mistake, reedited this one to make page shorter. Deleting this post would be great!

Rheknir

- The initial quest seemed straightforward at first, i thought that maybe adding a hint to quest text about boatswains might be good for newer players in order to get them to Shadowfen easier. After i got the deed i had a choice telling the housing broker to [lie] about having no intetions to decorate the place or telling him that i have no intentions to decorate it. (perhaps work in progress text?)
Not selecting the lie option lead to next step in quest to acquire decorations which could not progress when either crafting it, or buying from decoration merchant.
*Update* After i changed zones and entered a house i noticed it was fixed and i was able to finish the quest

- Previewing houses works fine and it is easy to turn between the furnished and non-furnished options. I bought it using crowns as it needed the quest achievement otherwise.

- Furnishing items were easy enough to figure out and i got enough from both crafting and buying it, seemed to work fine. Didn't try to do undaunted bosses yet.

- As i have only template to play with i had no complete shalidor collections so i could not try that. Light sources were very easy to understand, as were chairs yet sometimes my character, after sitting down, changed to face the direction of camera instead of facing in the direction of proper chair sitting.

- I did not try to test some of the multiple player features yet.

- Housing achievements seem fine, count will be a very prestigeous title

- My favorite home is Stay-moist Mansion because of the Argonian architecture, Strident Spring demesne is a close second.

- I think the prices are fine as they are, it gives people something to strive forward and i do believe that the biggest houses shouldn't be owned by just about anyone.

- I used to be ESO Plus subscriber but i unsubed to save some money over the Holidays, I will resubscribe when Homestead comes to live.

Another Feedback
- The world map is oversaturated with houses that are not yet owned. There are lots of houses players will preview but not buy. It would not be a problem if there would be a map filter to disable seeing unowned houses on world map for those players that may wish to not see those icons.
- There seems to be some "fighting textures" with multiple texture spaces occupying same spots in orcish style houses, usually at staircases.
- When crafting furniture there doesn't seem to be any sound when "finishing the item". Seems a little unsatisfying compared to other crafting.
- There seems to be a lot of UI errors when interacting with furniture crafting.

Attached DxDiag just incase its needed

Vorkrunne

I tried to make a dock to remedy the problem of exiting directly INTO water.

However, characters simply end up stuck inside the furniture.

Would you consider making a dock for this area? A simple wooden square or rectangular surface would be lovely. We can design our own docks after we have the initial landing space.

Vorkrunne

In Daggerfall Overlook:

One of the benches is interactive. The other is not.