Houses-dungeons-Instances-WHYYYYY???

MajesticHaruki

So I was rearranging some furnitures in my house to clear some space for my storage chests while being in queue for the daily pledges. I get a matching group, enter the instance, finish the pledge and I land back in Grahtwood. So I have to get past the grahtwood loading screen and then teleport again back to my house to continue my house editing. Nothing NEW! This has always been the case but today I decided to ask WHY? Usually this happens with delves/public dungeons. You explore one and suddenly you find a group, complete the dungeon and teleport back to the world entrance of the specific delve or public dungeon. That's annoying! Ok for delves there might be a reason. I can't think of one, don't care that much. I mean, if you are in the middle of a delve daily quest and you finally find a group through the finder, you can always dismiss the queue and continue to complete the daily delve quest. But WHY should this happen with houses too? It's an extra loading screen and it kinda makes players look like guests or tresspassers to their own or friendly houses. Could you please rework the system and teleport us back to the house/guild hall/whatever you call it after we have finished or left a dungeon group?

Apache_Kid

Totally agree with this. It's the same when I queue in for Cyrodiil in my house and log out from Cyrdoiil. Instead of being at my house when I log In I'm back where I was when I traveled to my home earlier.

Waffennacht

I would love to stay within my house

Ermiq

Agree. Ten times agree. It's another one reason why I hate instanced housing so much.
I want to ask ZOS programmers why did they think that instanced houses would be fine? It's really bad game design decision. House in the game must be a place that feels like a home. I can't get this feeling as far as I have to go through all these loading screens every time. And when I'm getting kicked off of my house because I've been in a dungeon... Gosh... You know what? You make me feel like I shouldn't even bother to go to my house anymore. Every time every day the game reminds me that it's not the place where I can rest and feel comfortable. No, it's the place where I will have to look at loading screens all the time, again and again.

Woefulmonkey

I 'AM' a software developer, but I am not a 'Game' developer although I used to dabble in my youth.

So, I will attempt to explain what is happening here from a 'Technical' stand point.

Your 'house' is instanced meaning it is not running from the 'World Server' that is managed by EOS. It is almost certainly running from your own hardware, or from a temporary cheap server that is spun up for the duration of your session.

Dungeons are also 'Instanced', so they are also not running from the 'World Server' and most likely running for 'one' of the players hardware but which one is unknown.

The reason you return right back to your original positions in the main game world when you 'return' from a dungeon is that your 'position' is tracked on the 'World Server' along with most of your recent actions to ensure your 'data' is consistent and not lost. This requires a massive high cost server system probably made up of many actual server machines and costly database system that ensure data integrity and consistency. That is highly costly for ESO to maintain.

Your 'house' instance does not have those resources at it's disposal, and ESO is not going to invest in a 'World Server' solution for housing. So they 'cheat' and probably only store minimal data about your 'house' state and only do that when you 'leave' your home.

OK, So what the F does that mean right?

1. ) When you log off from your house, you have not 'left' therefore your house state including your position is still 'stored' on your system and when you log back in they load data from your local box to populate your home. Which is why you can 'log out' and then 'log back in' to your house without getting kicked back to the 'Game World'.
2. ) When you leave your house and go back to the 'Game World' your house state is uploaded to ESO but not your 'position' within the house. Which is why when you return to hour house from the 'Game World' you are loaded in at the default location 'the entrance'. Which seems normal so no one questions it.
3. ) When you leave your house by loading into a different 'Instance' your 'house' state is uploaded to ESO but not your positions within the house. (Because they would reused the existing code that use when you return to the game world). Since your 'House' state was uploaded it is assumed you 'left your house' when you exist you 'current instance' and returned to the 'Game World' (Not your home because it recorded that you left) your are returned to your characters last known position in the 'Game World'.

OK, So everything is possible in software, so why don't they fix this?

1.) Because the 'correct' behavior is not universally agreed upon or expensive to implement.
Ask yourself, what should happen if you leave your house and 'come back'?
Should you always respawn in the last location where you left?
What if you enter the house from the door?
What if you own 50 houses and travel from one to the other consecutively? (Does ESO now have to track your position in all 50 houses?)
2. ) The current solution reuses code which reduces developer maintenance costs.

So, when the 'right' thing is ambiguous and costly to implement developer usually opt for a solution that is cheaper even if it has a minimal impact on the players experience.

NOTE: When I say EXPENSIVE I means it requires more code, which means more code maintenance and more risk of bugs in the code.

Yieley

Woefulmonkey wrote: »

I 'AM' a software developer, but I am not a 'Game' developer although I used to dabble in my youth.

So, I will attempt to explain what is happening here from a 'Technical' stand point.

Your 'house' is instanced meaning it is not running from the 'World Server' that is managed by EOS. It is almost certainly running from your own hardware, or from a temporary cheap server that is spun up for the duration of your session.

Dungeons are also 'Instanced', so they are also not running from the 'World Server' and most likely running for 'one' of the players hardware but which one is unknown.

The reason you return right back to your original positions in the main game world when you 'return' from a dungeon is that your 'position' is tracked on the 'World Server' along with most of your recent actions to ensure your 'data' is consistent and not lost. This requires a massive high cost server system probably made up of many actual server machines and costly database system that ensure data integrity and consistency. That is highly costly for ESO to maintain.

Your 'house' instance does not have those resources at it's disposal, and ESO is not going to invest in a 'World Server' solution for housing. So they 'cheat' and probably only store minimal data about your 'house' state and only do that when you 'leave' your home.

OK, So what the F does that mean right?

1. ) When you log off from your house, you have not 'left' therefore your house state including your position is still 'stored' on your system and when you log back in they load data from your local box to populate your home. Which is why you can 'log out' and then 'log back in' to your house without getting kicked back to the 'Game World'.
2. ) When you leave your house and go back to the 'Game World' your house state is uploaded to ESO but not your 'position' within the house. Which is why when you return to hour house from the 'Game World' you are loaded in at the default location 'the entrance'. Which seems normal so no one questions it.
3. ) When you leave your house by loading into a different 'Instance' your 'house' state is uploaded to ESO but not your positions within the house. (Because they would reused the existing code that use when you return to the game world). Since your 'House' state was uploaded it is assumed you 'left your house' when you exist you 'current instance' and returned to the 'Game World' (Not your home because it recorded that you left) your are returned to your characters last known position in the 'Game World'.

OK, So everything is possible in software, so why don't they fix this?

1.) Because the 'correct' behavior is not universally agreed upon or expensive to implement.
Ask yourself, what should happen if you leave your house and 'come back'?
Should you always respawn in the last location where you left?
What if you enter the house from the door?
What if you own 50 houses and travel from one to the other consecutively? (Does ESO now have to track your position in all 50 houses?)
2. ) The current solution reuses code which reduces developer maintenance costs.

So, when the 'right' thing is ambiguous and costly to implement developer usually opt for a solution that is cheaper even if it has a minimal impact on the players experience.

NOTE: When I say EXPENSIVE I means it requires more code, which means more code maintenance and more risk of bugs in the code.

I can't click all three, this was insightful, I agree, and you're awesome for this.

SGT_Wolfe101st

Yieley wrote: »

Woefulmonkey wrote: »

I 'AM' a software developer, but I am not a 'Game' developer although I used to dabble in my youth.

So, I will attempt to explain what is happening here from a 'Technical' stand point.

Your 'house' is instanced meaning it is not running from the 'World Server' that is managed by EOS. It is almost certainly running from your own hardware, or from a temporary cheap server that is spun up for the duration of your session.

Dungeons are also 'Instanced', so they are also not running from the 'World Server' and most likely running for 'one' of the players hardware but which one is unknown.

The reason you return right back to your original positions in the main game world when you 'return' from a dungeon is that your 'position' is tracked on the 'World Server' along with most of your recent actions to ensure your 'data' is consistent and not lost. This requires a massive high cost server system probably made up of many actual server machines and costly database system that ensure data integrity and consistency. That is highly costly for ESO to maintain.

Your 'house' instance does not have those resources at it's disposal, and ESO is not going to invest in a 'World Server' solution for housing. So they 'cheat' and probably only store minimal data about your 'house' state and only do that when you 'leave' your home.

OK, So what the F does that mean right?

1. ) When you log off from your house, you have not 'left' therefore your house state including your position is still 'stored' on your system and when you log back in they load data from your local box to populate your home. Which is why you can 'log out' and then 'log back in' to your house without getting kicked back to the 'Game World'.
2. ) When you leave your house and go back to the 'Game World' your house state is uploaded to ESO but not your 'position' within the house. Which is why when you return to hour house from the 'Game World' you are loaded in at the default location 'the entrance'. Which seems normal so no one questions it.
3. ) When you leave your house by loading into a different 'Instance' your 'house' state is uploaded to ESO but not your positions within the house. (Because they would reused the existing code that use when you return to the game world). Since your 'House' state was uploaded it is assumed you 'left your house' when you exist you 'current instance' and returned to the 'Game World' (Not your home because it recorded that you left) your are returned to your characters last known position in the 'Game World'.

OK, So everything is possible in software, so why don't they fix this?

1.) Because the 'correct' behavior is not universally agreed upon or expensive to implement.
Ask yourself, what should happen if you leave your house and 'come back'?
Should you always respawn in the last location where you left?
What if you enter the house from the door?
What if you own 50 houses and travel from one to the other consecutively? (Does ESO now have to track your position in all 50 houses?)
2. ) The current solution reuses code which reduces developer maintenance costs.

So, when the 'right' thing is ambiguous and costly to implement developer usually opt for a solution that is cheaper even if it has a minimal impact on the players experience.

NOTE: When I say EXPENSIVE I means it requires more code, which means more code maintenance and more risk of bugs in the code.

I can't click all three, this was insightful, I agree, and you're awesome for this.

I got the insightful for you. Not sure if this is accurate (not a dev, coder, or anything) but it sounded like it is spot on. If accurate I completely understand why it works the way it does.

Apache_Kid

Woefulmonkey wrote: »

I 'AM' a software developer, but I am not a 'Game' developer although I used to dabble in my youth.

So, I will attempt to explain what is happening here from a 'Technical' stand point.

Your 'house' is instanced meaning it is not running from the 'World Server' that is managed by EOS. It is almost certainly running from your own hardware, or from a temporary cheap server that is spun up for the duration of your session.

Dungeons are also 'Instanced', so they are also not running from the 'World Server' and most likely running for 'one' of the players hardware but which one is unknown.

The reason you return right back to your original positions in the main game world when you 'return' from a dungeon is that your 'position' is tracked on the 'World Server' along with most of your recent actions to ensure your 'data' is consistent and not lost. This requires a massive high cost server system probably made up of many actual server machines and costly database system that ensure data integrity and consistency. That is highly costly for ESO to maintain.

Your 'house' instance does not have those resources at it's disposal, and ESO is not going to invest in a 'World Server' solution for housing. So they 'cheat' and probably only store minimal data about your 'house' state and only do that when you 'leave' your home.

OK, So what the F does that mean right?

1. ) When you log off from your house, you have not 'left' therefore your house state including your position is still 'stored' on your system and when you log back in they load data from your local box to populate your home. Which is why you can 'log out' and then 'log back in' to your house without getting kicked back to the 'Game World'.
2. ) When you leave your house and go back to the 'Game World' your house state is uploaded to ESO but not your 'position' within the house. Which is why when you return to hour house from the 'Game World' you are loaded in at the default location 'the entrance'. Which seems normal so no one questions it.
3. ) When you leave your house by loading into a different 'Instance' your 'house' state is uploaded to ESO but not your positions within the house. (Because they would reused the existing code that use when you return to the game world). Since your 'House' state was uploaded it is assumed you 'left your house' when you exist you 'current instance' and returned to the 'Game World' (Not your home because it recorded that you left) your are returned to your characters last known position in the 'Game World'.

OK, So everything is possible in software, so why don't they fix this?

1.) Because the 'correct' behavior is not universally agreed upon or expensive to implement.
Ask yourself, what should happen if you leave your house and 'come back'?
Should you always respawn in the last location where you left?
What if you enter the house from the door?
What if you own 50 houses and travel from one to the other consecutively? (Does ESO now have to track your position in all 50 houses?)
2. ) The current solution reuses code which reduces developer maintenance costs.

So, when the 'right' thing is ambiguous and costly to implement developer usually opt for a solution that is cheaper even if it has a minimal impact on the players experience.

NOTE: When I say EXPENSIVE I means it requires more code, which means more code maintenance and more risk of bugs in the code.

Very informative post so I thank you for that.

However just understanding where it is coming from doesn't subdue my frustrations and how the houses function as an instance.

Although knowing how they typically operate and now knowing what needs to be done to change it i think we can safely assume that nothing will change.

f047ys3v3n

I expect the reason that houses are classed as instanced dungeons is so that the +5% damage buff from the trials sets that requires you to be in an instanced dungeon works on the test dummies. It's an easy work around for the devs and they figured it would not really impact anything much.

On another note. I wonder if this is way we don't have a way to way-shrine out of our house. We need a way to way-shrine out. It would save us, and the servers, a load screen.

Ermiq

Woefulmonkey wrote: »

I 'AM' a software developer, but I am not a 'Game' developer although I used to dabble in my youth.

So, I will attempt to explain what is happening here from a 'Technical' stand point.

Your 'house' is instanced meaning it is not running from the 'World Server' that is managed by EOS. It is almost certainly running from your own hardware, or from a temporary cheap server that is spun up for the duration of your session.

Dungeons are also 'Instanced', so they are also not running from the 'World Server' and most likely running for 'one' of the players hardware but which one is unknown.

The reason you return right back to your original positions in the main game world when you 'return' from a dungeon is that your 'position' is tracked on the 'World Server' along with most of your recent actions to ensure your 'data' is consistent and not lost. This requires a massive high cost server system probably made up of many actual server machines and costly database system that ensure data integrity and consistency. That is highly costly for ESO to maintain.

Your 'house' instance does not have those resources at it's disposal, and ESO is not going to invest in a 'World Server' solution for housing. So they 'cheat' and probably only store minimal data about your 'house' state and only do that when you 'leave' your home.

OK, So what the F does that mean right?

1. ) When you log off from your house, you have not 'left' therefore your house state including your position is still 'stored' on your system and when you log back in they load data from your local box to populate your home. Which is why you can 'log out' and then 'log back in' to your house without getting kicked back to the 'Game World'.
2. ) When you leave your house and go back to the 'Game World' your house state is uploaded to ESO but not your 'position' within the house. Which is why when you return to hour house from the 'Game World' you are loaded in at the default location 'the entrance'. Which seems normal so no one questions it.
3. ) When you leave your house by loading into a different 'Instance' your 'house' state is uploaded to ESO but not your positions within the house. (Because they would reused the existing code that use when you return to the game world). Since your 'House' state was uploaded it is assumed you 'left your house' when you exist you 'current instance' and returned to the 'Game World' (Not your home because it recorded that you left) your are returned to your characters last known position in the 'Game World'.

OK, So everything is possible in software, so why don't they fix this?

1.) Because the 'correct' behavior is not universally agreed upon or expensive to implement.
Ask yourself, what should happen if you leave your house and 'come back'?
Should you always respawn in the last location where you left?
What if you enter the house from the door?
What if you own 50 houses and travel from one to the other consecutively? (Does ESO now have to track your position in all 50 houses?)
2. ) The current solution reuses code which reduces developer maintenance costs.

So, when the 'right' thing is ambiguous and costly to implement developer usually opt for a solution that is cheaper even if it has a minimal impact on the players experience.

NOTE: When I say EXPENSIVE I means it requires more code, which means more code maintenance and more risk of bugs in the code.

Ok, it probably makes sense. But...

//this runs when you enter an instance (dungeon)
//to save last character position before entering a dungeon
saveLastPosition (_zone, _xCoordinate, _yCoordinate) 
{
Character.LastPositionInGameWorld = GetLocation (_zone, _xCoordinate, _yCoordinate);
}

//and this runs when you exit a dungeon, to determine which zone the game should load
//and where your character was standing
loadLastPosition () 
{
Character.CurrentPosition = Character.LastPositionInGameWorld;
}

Why '_zone' couldn't be either a world zone (Deshaan/Vvardenfell/...) or a house zone (ForsakenStronghold/GorinirEstate/...)?
Putting the player in exactly the same position not needed for houses, the default 'entrance' position is quite enough:

Character.LastPositionInGameWorld =
GetLocation (ForsakenStronghold, defaultEntranceX, defaultEntranceY);

I have no experience with such a huge projects, so I might be naive, but I still believe that it's not that big deal.

Woefulmonkey

So, just to be clear I can't confirm with 100% certainty how ESO actually implemented houses or instancing code. At least not without cracking open the assemblies and looking at the compiled code, which is usually hard to read because it ins not the same as pre-compiled code which is meant to be human readable.

I can tell you that I am about 90% certain about how it is implemented based on my observations and what I know about coding in general.

In terms of 'fixing' the issue I am also 100% sure they 'could' make it so you always spawned into hour home in a realistic way regardless if weather or not you traveled between 'instances'. However that code would be more complex and conditional which in turn makes it more costly to maintain and more prone to bugs.

So, they are unlikely to make such a change unless there is a significant 'monetary' reason to do so or they run out of any other 'priority' work so that they have literally nothing better to do.

Dev's work on features and bug burn down lists in a priority order, and ESO appears to have a massive backlog of new features they are working on as well as numerous bugs that 'have' to address.

That work will take priority over a request like this as long as it is seen as a 'nice to have' feature. The key here is 'priority', if we could see their priority list you would probably 'agree' with it.

I often work on projects where I know there are features I would love to implement but they just keep getting pushed to the bottom of a 'to do' list because there are just so many 'new' and 'more valuable' features to be worked on. So month after month they just don't get done because their are never enough hours in the day.

Woefulmonkey

@Apache_Kid

I understand your frustration, but try to understand that ESO has a limited number of Dev's working on this game. They can't do everything everyone wants instantly.

Dev's work on features and bug burn down lists in a priority order, and ESO appears to have a massive backlog of new features they are working on as well as numerous bugs that 'have' to address.

That work will take priority over a request like this as long as it is seen as a 'nice to have' feature. The key here is 'priority', if we could see their priority list you would probably 'agree' with it..

The best way to try to get this work done is to find a way to show it would improve revenues or bring in new revenues.

Woefulmonkey

@f047ys3v3n

So, Wayshrines are a different story.

You have all the 'Tools' you need to perform Wayshrine traveling from your instanced home. The map interface exists and you can select travel points and perform fast travel actions. They just don't allow it for free.

Which means that this is on purpose and part of ESO's plan for housing.

My only guess here is that they want to encourage you to buy multiple homes by allowing you to travel 'Free' between homes you own, but not to any location.

Once I realized I could 'always' travel to 'my house' for free I made sure to get all the 'Free' houses I previously though were useless and then purchased a few of the very small cheep homes with in game gold.

Personally I think ESO should provide wayshrine furniture for homes.

However, to convince them to do so they would need to be seen as being at least as profitable as encouraging player to buy other homes.

Which means they would probably have to be 'crown' store only items and cost like 10,000 crowns.

Would you be willing to pay that?

Apache_Kid

Woefulmonkey wrote: »

@Apache_Kid

I understand your frustration, but try to understand that ESO has a limited number of Dev's working on this game. They can't do everything everyone wants instantly.

Dev's work on features and bug burn down lists in a priority order, and ESO appears to have a massive backlog of new features they are working on as well as numerous bugs that 'have' to address.

That work will take priority over a request like this as long as it is seen as a 'nice to have' feature. The key here is 'priority', if we could see their priority list you would probably 'agree' with it..

The best way to try to get this work done is to find a way to show it would improve revenues or bring in new revenues.

See here's the thing, I would accept this if i felt that they were fixing bugs and issues at a reasonable rate but it doesn't seem like it. Bugs that were reported over 3 months ago when clockwork city dropped were not listed as fixed in patch notes until Dragon Bones. It feels as if new content creation for sale in crown store takes precedents over fixing bugs and QoL improvements like this.

Sounds like a classic example of understaffing for a project of this size if you ask me.

GrimClaw

Because they guy who is calling the shots preferes features over polishing. If devs can decide themselves, then they need more UML and less code

Ermiq

So, well... umm... I've made this very simple add-on (my very first add-on, I never made add-ons for games).
It returns you back in your house after a dungeon or BG automatically (if you were in a house when Group Tool pulled you in). Can't return you back in your friend's house though, but at least now I can queue for dungeons in my house and I don't have to run/teleport/loadscreening to get back in a house every time. Here's a link: http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1920-ComingBackHome.html