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Explaining The ‘House Slot’ Problem And Why It Is Difficult To Solve.

  • Woefulmonkey
    Woefulmonkey
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    Removed,
    I decided it is better not to engage with an obvious toll.

    NOTE: I am referring to a single poster here not the response received in general.
    Edited by Woefulmonkey on July 16, 2018 3:52AM
  • Dragonnord
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    Besides, you frame rate wouldn't suddenly crash if you added over 700 items. It would drop slowly over time, as more and more items are added. I average 100+ FPS in my house. If you feel your FPS is getting uncomfortably low, you can stop adding furnishings. I'd be perfectly fine letting my 100+ FPS drop to 60 FPS with another 700 items.

    Exactly this. It's my house, even instanced (so it DOES NOT affect the outer world performance), and so it should be my decision if I want to have lower fps or not.

    I don't mind having a worst performance inside my residence in exchange to watch it completely finished as I want.

    Let us have our houses fully decorated, not half as they are now because we don't have enough slots to build/complete our original housing ideas.
     
    Edited by Dragonnord on July 4, 2018 3:28PM
    SERVER: NA | PLATFORM: PC | OS: Windows 10 | CLIENT: Steam | ESO PLUS: Yes
  • Woefulmonkey
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    @Dragonnord

    I would say you did not actually read the post or you would know we are not taking about a slight FPS drop.

    The problem is not that if they double your item counts your FPS will drop a few frames per second.

    What we are talking about is critical game failure cause persistent game crashes every time you try to load into your house, that can lock you out of your house due to bad object placement.

    Also 'YOU' may not care about that but making that change does not just affect 'YOU' it effects 'EVERYONE' who owns a house.

    So even if 'YOU' don't care that you 'could' do something bad that ends up making it so you can't enter the house you paid 100$ for, 'YOU" don't speak for 'EVERYONE'.

    I for one would not be 'OK' with that result.

    If you want to see what kind of 'issue' I am talking about here just try the test I specified earlier in the post. (At your own risk)

    If you are on PC just start an account on the Test server and then place 700 candles very close together in a pile so you can collide with as many of them as possible if you were to jump on the pile. Make sure to turn them all on.

    If you are able to even place the objects, the next step is you move you character on to the pile and start jumping on it.

    Then log our and back into the house while standing on the pile.

    If you are able to load back into the house in 2 seconds and have 60pfs the entire time then you are right Zos if full of crap and they can increase the slots in a significant way.

    Now, this is not something the average player would do but here are 2 explicit examples that Zos does not want to happen.


    1. ) A player paces too many shrubs to close to the entrance of their house and end up locking them selves out because they placed objects to many objects.
    2. ) A malicious player who has a falling out with one of their fiends who gave them permission to place objects decides to purposely move 700 candles to the entrance of the house and locks another player out of their home.

    I know that 'YOU' don't care about those issues but Zos has to because, believe it or not, they did not make this game just for 'YOU'.
    Edited by Woefulmonkey on July 4, 2018 6:55PM
  • Dragonnord
    Dragonnord
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    @Dragonnord

    I would say you did not actually read the post or you would know we are not taking about a slight FPS drop.

    The problem is not that if they double your item counts your FPS will drop a few frames per second.

    What we are talking about is critical game failure cause persistent game crashes every time you try to load into your house, that can lock you out of your house due to bad object placement.

    NOT TRUE - There are hundred of places around Tamriel, Summerset for example, where there are more than 700 items loading at the same time if you count buildings, lights, furniture, vendors, stands, items in stands, streets, grass, flowers, water, plants, birds, all the parts used to create just one building, building decoration, hidden lights, light effects, people running around, skills used, rapids, actions, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc. and game DOES NOT persistently crash.

    Same in trials or PvP for example, with zerg vs. zerg vs. zerg battling with hundreds of people, all using skills and actions, plus all the environment (grass, flowers, items, keeps, guards, flags, lights, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.) loading at the same time and the game DOES NOT persistently crash.

    Also 'YOU' may not care about that but making that change does not just affect 'YOU' it effects 'EVERYONE' who owns a house.

    IF IT AFFECTS them, then why putting more than 700 items in their houses if they see their computers cannot support it? Do you swim in deep water, even if the ocean is there and you can enter the water, if you don't know how to swim? Do you go to vet Asylum Sanctorium +2 if you are CP160 or your group stinks? If there are dumb players out there it's not ZOS fault.

    So even if 'YOU' don't care that you 'could' do something bad that ends up making it so you can't enter the house you paid 100$ for, 'YOU" don't speak for 'EVERYONE'.

    READ ABOVE - Houses are instanced. If other people don't want (or CAN'T) do it in their houses good for them. There are thousands and thousands of players that want and can bare more slots.

    I for one would not be 'OK' with that result.

    If you want to see what kind of 'issue' I am talking about here just try the test I specified earlier in the post. (At your own risk)

    If you are on PC just start an account on the Test server and then place 700 candles very close together in a pile so you can collide with as many of them as possible if you were to jump on the pile. Make sure to turn them all on.

    WHY IN THIS WORLD will someone put 700 candles very close together? There is really someone so stupid in this world? Why would anyone ever do something like that? It they do that, then they deserve to crash forever.

    If you are able to even place the objects, the next step is you move you character on to the pile and start jumping on it.

    Then log our and back into the house while standing on the pile.

    If you are able to load back into the house in 2 seconds and have 60pfs the entire time then you are right Zos if full of crap and they can increase the slots in a significant way.

    Now, this is not something the average player would do but here are 2 explicit examples that Zos does not want to happen.


    1. ) A player paces too many shrubs to close to the entrance of their house and end up locking them selves out because they placed objects to many objects.
    2. ) A malicious player who has a falling out with one of their fiends who gave them permission to place objects decides to purposely move 700 candles to the entrance of the house and locks another player out of their home.

    AGAIN - If people are that dumb is not ZOS fault. There are many other stuff in the game that people can do to be banned and stuff is still there, however, 99% of players do not exploit it. You really want to lock a player/friend so then ZOS has to manually unlock him/her and then ban you for your extremely trolling action?

    I know that 'YOU' don't care about those issues but Zos has to because, believe it or not, they did not make this game just for 'YOU'.

    Why being disrespectful assuming I didn't read? I DID read and so I answered because you are full with wrong and incorrect statements, as I mark above in bold.

    If you don't want more slots is OK, but please let all the rest of players have them, it's not about "YOU", you know?
     
    Edited by Dragonnord on July 5, 2018 11:43AM
    SERVER: NA | PLATFORM: PC | OS: Windows 10 | CLIENT: Steam | ESO PLUS: Yes
  • Soella
    Soella
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    Dragonnord wrote: »
    Exactly this. It's my house, even instanced (so it DOES NOT affect the outer world performance), and so it should be my decision if I want to have lower fps or not.
     

    First of all, the fact that your house in instanced does not mean it does not affect other players. This instance is running on the same server with other houses (or delves, or BGs - depending on their architecture), and share CPU and memory resources with all those instances.

    It would be impossible (and unfair) to reserve as much resources for instance for sandbox for one player as it is reserved for place where hundred of players are acting.
  • MornaBaine
    MornaBaine
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    @MornaBaine

    Let me just say first I can't say for sure how Zos handles housing I am just going by my knowledge of software development in general and my black box observation.

    However, I am almost certain base my observations that houses are 'client' hosted.

    Here is why Zos would have done that

    1. ) Money would be the first reason. Not because they are cheap but because of the erratic nature of how houses instances need to be spun up for customer use. Thing like Dungeons are also instanced but likely instanced on Zos Virtual Machine hardware, because Zos can anticipate the average volume requirements for servicing Dudgeon instances and they have a queue system with wait times that ensures they don't run out of hardware. However, houses must be instanced immediately on request and their is no way to effectively know how much hardware would be need to support instance access for all users at all times. If they were to instance things on their end they would need a massive set of hardware that grows and shrinks with the number of users (active or inactive). But each user always has a client, and if they leverage the client they don't need to buy any hardware and they always have enough to support all user requests.
    2. ) Service availability. I basically just explained this in the 'money' section. If Zos supplied the hardware it would be very difficult to ensure users could load houses instantly on demand. It would require Zos to have tones of idle hardware just waiting for users or that the introduce a dudgeon like queue system to ensure they did not run out of instances for user requests. By using client hardware they ensure you can always load your house since your hardware is always available.

    There are more reasons to instance on client hardware for a service like this but these would have likely been the most compelling reasons.


    Now, as for way you can't have more people in a larger house. Well that is because the network traffic issues don't change with the size of the house. What matters is bandwidth and the ability of the client to process the message and upload data. Upload speed is the real 'limiter' when the client is used as the 'server'. Real Game Servers are using T3 and above network backbone connections because they have to have massive upload speeds to communicate with literally millions of users. Your home connection likely has an upload speed of 5mbps or less. Which is normally more than enough of almost all home users needs, but it not nearly enough to be a gamer server host for 100 users in 3d game.

    I actually wrote an post about the need for 'Guild Event' services a while back.

    Guilds need the ability to host large events at time, and houses are not providing that ability.


    So what I had suggested was basically isolating a 'town' on the actual game server then allowing guilds to 'schedule' times kind of like a chucky cheese party then only members of that guild would be allowed to access the town for a certain amount of time. This would allow guilds plan mass activities with hundreds of members because now they would be on the actual game server using Zos servers.
    @MornaBaine

    Let me just say first I can't say for sure how Zos handles housing I am just going by my knowledge of software development in general and my black box observation.

    However, I am almost certain base my observations that houses are 'client' hosted.

    Here is why Zos would have done that

    1. ) Money would be the first reason. Not because they are cheap but because of the erratic nature of how houses instances need to be spun up for customer use. Thing like Dungeons are also instanced but likely instanced on Zos Virtual Machine hardware, because Zos can anticipate the average volume requirements for servicing Dudgeon instances and they have a queue system with wait times that ensures they don't run out of hardware. However, houses must be instanced immediately on request and their is no way to effectively know how much hardware would be need to support instance access for all users at all times. If they were to instance things on their end they would need a massive set of hardware that grows and shrinks with the number of users (active or inactive). But each user always has a client, and if they leverage the client they don't need to buy any hardware and they always have enough to support all user requests.
    2. ) Service availability. I basically just explained this in the 'money' section. If Zos supplied the hardware it would be very difficult to ensure users could load houses instantly on demand. It would require Zos to have tones of idle hardware just waiting for users or that the introduce a dudgeon like queue system to ensure they did not run out of instances for user requests. By using client hardware they ensure you can always load your house since your hardware is always available.

    There are more reasons to instance on client hardware for a service like this but these would have likely been the most compelling reasons.


    Now, as for way you can't have more people in a larger house. Well that is because the network traffic issues don't change with the size of the house. What matters is bandwidth and the ability of the client to process the message and upload data. Upload speed is the real 'limiter' when the client is used as the 'server'. Real Game Servers are using T3 and above network backbone connections because they have to have massive upload speeds to communicate with literally millions of users. Your home connection likely has an upload speed of 5mbps or less. Which is normally more than enough of almost all home users needs, but it not nearly enough to be a gamer server host for 100 users in 3d game.

    I actually wrote an post about the need for 'Guild Event' services a while back.

    Guilds need the ability to host large events at time, and houses are not providing that ability.


    So what I had suggested was basically isolating a 'town' on the actual game server then allowing guilds to 'schedule' times kind of like a chucky cheese party then only members of that guild would be allowed to access the town for a certain amount of time. This would allow guilds plan mass activities with hundreds of members because now they would be on the actual game server using Zos servers.

    Thank you so very much for taking the time to explain all this... even knowing many will be ungrateful for your efforts. I, however, do very much appreciate them. I think I'm still a little unclear as to why a 12 player house could not actually hold 24 players though, assuming that 24 remains the hard limit.

    I'd be really curious to know the player caps of other games with player housing, especially games built on the same engine ESO is. I'm not sure how to go about researching that but if you have an idea please let me know!
    PAWS (Positively Against Wrip-off Stuff) - Say No to Crown Crates!

  • elijafire
    elijafire
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    Removed,
    I decided it is better not to engage with obvious tolls.

    So that's the new thing these days eh, anyone you disagree with or something you don't understand is considered a troll. Fascinating.
  • MLGProPlayer
    MLGProPlayer
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    MornaBaine wrote: »
    @MornaBaine

    Let me just say first I can't say for sure how Zos handles housing I am just going by my knowledge of software development in general and my black box observation.

    However, I am almost certain base my observations that houses are 'client' hosted.

    Here is why Zos would have done that

    1. ) Money would be the first reason. Not because they are cheap but because of the erratic nature of how houses instances need to be spun up for customer use. Thing like Dungeons are also instanced but likely instanced on Zos Virtual Machine hardware, because Zos can anticipate the average volume requirements for servicing Dudgeon instances and they have a queue system with wait times that ensures they don't run out of hardware. However, houses must be instanced immediately on request and their is no way to effectively know how much hardware would be need to support instance access for all users at all times. If they were to instance things on their end they would need a massive set of hardware that grows and shrinks with the number of users (active or inactive). But each user always has a client, and if they leverage the client they don't need to buy any hardware and they always have enough to support all user requests.
    2. ) Service availability. I basically just explained this in the 'money' section. If Zos supplied the hardware it would be very difficult to ensure users could load houses instantly on demand. It would require Zos to have tones of idle hardware just waiting for users or that the introduce a dudgeon like queue system to ensure they did not run out of instances for user requests. By using client hardware they ensure you can always load your house since your hardware is always available.

    There are more reasons to instance on client hardware for a service like this but these would have likely been the most compelling reasons.


    Now, as for way you can't have more people in a larger house. Well that is because the network traffic issues don't change with the size of the house. What matters is bandwidth and the ability of the client to process the message and upload data. Upload speed is the real 'limiter' when the client is used as the 'server'. Real Game Servers are using T3 and above network backbone connections because they have to have massive upload speeds to communicate with literally millions of users. Your home connection likely has an upload speed of 5mbps or less. Which is normally more than enough of almost all home users needs, but it not nearly enough to be a gamer server host for 100 users in 3d game.

    I actually wrote an post about the need for 'Guild Event' services a while back.

    Guilds need the ability to host large events at time, and houses are not providing that ability.


    So what I had suggested was basically isolating a 'town' on the actual game server then allowing guilds to 'schedule' times kind of like a chucky cheese party then only members of that guild would be allowed to access the town for a certain amount of time. This would allow guilds plan mass activities with hundreds of members because now they would be on the actual game server using Zos servers.
    @MornaBaine

    Let me just say first I can't say for sure how Zos handles housing I am just going by my knowledge of software development in general and my black box observation.

    However, I am almost certain base my observations that houses are 'client' hosted.

    Here is why Zos would have done that

    1. ) Money would be the first reason. Not because they are cheap but because of the erratic nature of how houses instances need to be spun up for customer use. Thing like Dungeons are also instanced but likely instanced on Zos Virtual Machine hardware, because Zos can anticipate the average volume requirements for servicing Dudgeon instances and they have a queue system with wait times that ensures they don't run out of hardware. However, houses must be instanced immediately on request and their is no way to effectively know how much hardware would be need to support instance access for all users at all times. If they were to instance things on their end they would need a massive set of hardware that grows and shrinks with the number of users (active or inactive). But each user always has a client, and if they leverage the client they don't need to buy any hardware and they always have enough to support all user requests.
    2. ) Service availability. I basically just explained this in the 'money' section. If Zos supplied the hardware it would be very difficult to ensure users could load houses instantly on demand. It would require Zos to have tones of idle hardware just waiting for users or that the introduce a dudgeon like queue system to ensure they did not run out of instances for user requests. By using client hardware they ensure you can always load your house since your hardware is always available.

    There are more reasons to instance on client hardware for a service like this but these would have likely been the most compelling reasons.


    Now, as for way you can't have more people in a larger house. Well that is because the network traffic issues don't change with the size of the house. What matters is bandwidth and the ability of the client to process the message and upload data. Upload speed is the real 'limiter' when the client is used as the 'server'. Real Game Servers are using T3 and above network backbone connections because they have to have massive upload speeds to communicate with literally millions of users. Your home connection likely has an upload speed of 5mbps or less. Which is normally more than enough of almost all home users needs, but it not nearly enough to be a gamer server host for 100 users in 3d game.

    I actually wrote an post about the need for 'Guild Event' services a while back.

    Guilds need the ability to host large events at time, and houses are not providing that ability.


    So what I had suggested was basically isolating a 'town' on the actual game server then allowing guilds to 'schedule' times kind of like a chucky cheese party then only members of that guild would be allowed to access the town for a certain amount of time. This would allow guilds plan mass activities with hundreds of members because now they would be on the actual game server using Zos servers.

    Thank you so very much for taking the time to explain all this... even knowing many will be ungrateful for your efforts. I, however, do very much appreciate them. I think I'm still a little unclear as to why a 12 player house could not actually hold 24 players though, assuming that 24 remains the hard limit.

    I'd be really curious to know the player caps of other games with player housing, especially games built on the same engine ESO is. I'm not sure how to go about researching that but if you have an idea please let me know!

    ESO's engine sucks. The only other game made with it is SWTOR.
    Edited by MLGProPlayer on July 7, 2018 9:42AM
  • Woefulmonkey
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    @Dragonnord

    Sorry I am not meaning to be disrespectful and you are right saying 'you did not read the post' is a passive aggressive way of taking a dig a someone so I apologize for that.

    NOTE: I will try to keep this post more cordial as it is not my intent to shout someone down our just belittle an opinion.

    However, I still disagree with you and again I say to you that 'You' do not speak for 'Everyone'.

    I tried to keep this short, but failed, sorry again.

    I am not providing technical data is going to help in this conversation, because you appear to be disregarding it. I am not saying that as an insult, I say it because based on the 'tone' of your posts you do not appear to care about the technical issues at all regardless of their validity.

    Lets start by saying something I think we can both agree on.

    The 'item limits' ARE a problem. People are not able to decorate their house the way the want because of the current limits and that is not acceptable.


    This thread is about the 'difficulties' in extending item counts from a technical perspective not a claim that item limits are not restrictive and causing problems with housing especially for very large homes.

    The reason I said you had not read the post is because I try to make that very clear several times even in the post header. I even discuss possible solutions that 'can' extend house item limits. I just don't thinks those 'solutions' are 'good' for all users and that 'better Items' is a more viable universal solution.

    Now I am going to say some things that is going to sound like I am taking a shot at you but that is not my intent.

    You make a claim that 'I am just wrong'. Ok, I say several times in this thread I don't work for Zos and I don't know how they 'actually' implemented housing so I admit I could be wrong. Although based on my experience I doubt I am very far off.

    My claims are based on 20 years of software engineering experience and having personally built 3 complete game engines from the Direct X up. Meaning I did not use any 'purchased' game engines and design on top of someone else tools, I created the tools for collision detection and sliding algorithm as well at network communications for 3 separate games that involved 3d physics including a prototype of a massive multi-player game.

    I am not saying that to 'brag' or 'add weight' to my statement based on my 'unverifiable experience' claims, but I think it is important to understand I am not making these statements based on what I have read in a game magazine. It is up to the reader to determine if my statements make sense and at least sound plausible.

    Even with that experience I say, I could be wrong at least on some assumption I am making about Zos's designs.

    But if you want to 'test' my theories, why not try the test I have already posted several times. I am fairly certain you will hit significate performance issue well before you reach 700 items place if you place them the way I described. So, I would again suggest trying that test from the TEST server if you at on PC.

    Saying 'stupid users' get what they deserve if they place object poorly is a selfish and short sighted attitude.

    I don't say that to insult you, it is a simple truth. You are welcome to have that opinion, but no all players share it, and this game is not built just for you or just the set of players who agree with you.

    Believe it or not, I am actually on your side. I want to see the 'house decoration' issue addressed I just don't think introducing the potential for creating critical game play issues is a viable solution.

    Edited by Woefulmonkey on July 10, 2018 12:33AM
  • Woefulmonkey
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    @MornaBaine

    Some of Zos's limits are not 'technical' limitations but 'objective value' limitations.

    For instance housing slot limits are 'doubled' for subscribers. Meaning there is definitely no technical limitation to the 'allowed' slots in a 'Non-Subscriber' house. But Zos want to give subscriptions 'value' and one of they ways they do that is by giving subscribers 'more' furniture slots.

    Similarly smaller houses have less slots. Now this is both technical and value based. The technical limitation is that the smaller the house the more likely you are to perform 'bad object placements' that can lead to performance issue. However, these limits also give larger homes 'more value' in the eyes of players.

    Similarly they likely place some limits on the number of players allowed in smaller houses so that larger houses have more 'value' to players.

    As for games built on the same 'engine', well an 'engine' is really just a set of tools and even if 2 people use the same tools to build something similar they don't always produce the same quality result. Zos may have made some design tradeoffs that caused them to not be able to achieve maximum networking capabilities. Or they may just be artificially limiting to 12 players to they can up it to 24 some time in the future as an 'upgrade'. That would be another example of a value decision rather than a technical one. (Many recent games have kept 'already implemented' features held back so they can release them later as a 'value add' to their product later in the games life cycle.)
  • elijafire
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    MornaBaine wrote: »

    ESO's engine sucks. The only other game made with it is SWTOR.

    I have a sinking feeling this is the case, so unless it is easily portable to another engine I'm afraid we are SoL on a LOT of things.
  • Wreuntzylla
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    Setting the limit aside for the moment, there are a plethura of ways to lessen the impact of furnishing limits. Redrawing portions of a property as a single item (surface area tracing). Exchanging the huge number of craft stations into a single craft station with a drop down menu. Dynamically setting view distance for low end machines. Adding larger or size-customizable items to the game.

    As to griefing, every content patch adds griefing opportunities. Like anything else, once they become apparent, you patch it. Like preventing anyone from setting items at the entrance to lock you out.

    Edit: I was hopeful that the ballroom floor pieces would help, and it did, but for whatever reason, ZoS gave them unfinished edges that are complete eyesores. So a good portion of the benefit is wiped away.
    Edited by Wreuntzylla on July 11, 2018 4:51PM
  • Woefulmonkey
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    @Wreuntzylla

    Exactly, there many ways to address the 'furniture limit' issues that lead to players not being able to decorate they way they want and it does not 'have to' involve increasing that limit.

    All this post is trying to do is explain why doing the most obvious thing to 'fix' this issue is actually problematic from a technical stand point.

    The hope here was this post would help get people to describe the actual specific use cases that they are having problems with rather than just demanding that Zos implement a specific 'solution' they happened to believe will solve their issue.

    I had not considered just making some objects like 'attuneable stations' more efficient so you only need one table instead of 80. That is a great idea that should be promoted.

    I was also somewhat disappointed with the ball room floor because of the edges and the rough 'top' surface. However it did work for my needs because all edges are either embedded in geometry or covered by 'stairs'. So for me it did eliminate some items and allowed me to make a better looking area for my 'fence' to hang out.

    However, if Zos's plan is to address the item limit issue by providing better object, then they need to start doing a much better job in object design.

  • Wreuntzylla
    Wreuntzylla
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    @Wreuntzylla

    Exactly, there many ways to address the 'furniture limit' issues that lead to players not being able to decorate they way they want and it does not 'have to' involve increasing that limit.

    All this post is trying to do is explain why doing the most obvious thing to 'fix' this issue is actually problematic from a technical stand point.

    The hope here was this post would help get people to describe the actual specific use cases that they are having problems with rather than just demanding that Zos implement a specific 'solution' they happened to believe will solve their issue.

    I had not considered just making some objects like 'attuneable stations' more efficient so you only need one table instead of 80. That is a great idea that should be promoted.

    I was also somewhat disappointed with the ball room floor because of the edges and the rough 'top' surface. However it did work for my needs because all edges are either embedded in geometry or covered by 'stairs'. So for me it did eliminate some items and allowed me to make a better looking area for my 'fence' to hang out.

    However, if Zos's plan is to address the item limit issue by providing better object, then they need to start doing a much better job in object design.

    I think I'll start a thread on the ballroom pieces. The ugliness of the edges causing housing slot issues was entirely avoidable by ZoS.


  • MornaBaine
    MornaBaine
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    @MornaBaine

    Some of Zos's limits are not 'technical' limitations but 'objective value' limitations.

    For instance housing slot limits are 'doubled' for subscribers. Meaning there is definitely no technical limitation to the 'allowed' slots in a 'Non-Subscriber' house. But Zos want to give subscriptions 'value' and one of they ways they do that is by giving subscribers 'more' furniture slots.

    Similarly smaller houses have less slots. Now this is both technical and value based. The technical limitation is that the smaller the house the more likely you are to perform 'bad object placements' that can lead to performance issue. However, these limits also give larger homes 'more value' in the eyes of players.

    Similarly they likely place some limits on the number of players allowed in smaller houses so that larger houses have more 'value' to players.

    As for games built on the same 'engine', well an 'engine' is really just a set of tools and even if 2 people use the same tools to build something similar they don't always produce the same quality result. Zos may have made some design tradeoffs that caused them to not be able to achieve maximum networking capabilities. Or they may just be artificially limiting to 12 players to they can up it to 24 some time in the future as an 'upgrade'. That would be another example of a value decision rather than a technical one. (Many recent games have kept 'already implemented' features held back so they can release them later as a 'value add' to their product later in the games life cycle.)

    I subscribe and I don't mind subs getting more furniture slots. I DO resent ZOS' insistence on making these HUGE cavernous homes (See the new Summerset house on PTS) when they know darned good and well that even those of us who have 700 slots will NEVER be able to make them look reasonably lived in or filled. This just exacerbates player dissatisfaction.

    Personally though, I am FAR more upset by the player limits. And they have straight up said they KNOW 24 is "too low." So ethically they SHOULD increase the cap to the actual max on ALL the houses. And then get back to work on a solution that gives us MORE than 24.
    PAWS (Positively Against Wrip-off Stuff) - Say No to Crown Crates!

  • DanielMorra
    DanielMorra
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    @Woefulmonkey

    Ok, but what about the map outside the house? The space outside the garden walls? It often occupies much more space than needed for the view. And quite often it has the size of half a zone and have a lot of objects which players cannot see outside the house, including effects or even small objects for decoration (for example - view on Daggerfall). Shouldn't cropping the map and deleting spare objects be an option for bringing in new slots for furniture?
  • Woefulmonkey
    Woefulmonkey
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    @MornaBaine

    Just to be clear I am not saying I support 'objective value' limitation. However saying you don't care about a difference in the 'features' provided to subscribers VS non subscribers does not matter.

    It is not about weather or not you or I care about this one feature, it is about weather or not you or I or some other player is more likely to pay 15$ a month because doing so means one of the 'features' they get will be 'more slots'.

    Let me state this a different way. Would you still pay 15$ a month to Zos for a subscription if they gave you nothing?

    What if all they did was give you 15$ in crowns and that was it. Would you bother to pay for a subscription then?

    I know people like to crap on these developers and say they are lazy or stupid or greedy or some combination of all three. (To be clear I am not saying that you are saying that I am just saying that is a common belief)

    But here is the reality.

    They are not lazy or stupid or greedy.

    They are intelligent hard working developers who work crazy hours in an industry where their day to day employment is not guaranteed just so they can make about 70% of the money they would make working just about anywhere else.

    Yes these guys work for less money in a volatile industry basically because they 'love games', but they don't work for free.
    (Trust me a lot of these guys would work for just food an shelter, but they have families to support.)

    They don't just 'want you to pay for subscriptions and expansions the 'need' you to in order to say employed and for the game to servers to keep running.

    So they have to find ways to give users a reason to be willing to 'pay' for subscriptions.

    To do that the either have to put artificial limits on some 'features' or completely isolate some services so only subscribers have access to them.

    So, for things like houses they give 'all' users access but place some artificial limits on slots and player counts.

    For things like DLC they allow subscribers access but make non-subscribers have to pay to unlock each individual DLC item.

    As for getting more players into your house. There are ways to do that too, but again there are tradeoffs that most players would not like.

    For instance. Would you be ok with the idea that player could not only interact in your house via 'text chat' and you could not see their avatars. Basically each player could move around and see your house but they could not see each other and only could communicate an a 'house' text chat channel. They could probably allow 100+ player in a house at the same time if they did that, but the experience would not be very good.

    SIDE NOTE:

    Just as a point of interest there are some companies out there that are very fortunate and are not bound by 'money' concerns because they have other income streams that allow them to 'be creative' and make games without planning for how to produce a specific revenue stream.

    One such company is Valve. Many people point to them and say 'wow' they are a great company that is not beholden to anyone and gets to be creative. The problem with those companies are that they don't produce anything reliably. Valve goes decades between game iterations and many of their projects simply die because of in company squabbling or loss of interest. So games like Half Live 3 get started multiple times but never get finished. They good thing is they don't push out a bad game just to cash in, but the bad thing is they don't make a new game.

    Edited by Woefulmonkey on July 13, 2018 10:44PM
  • Woefulmonkey
    Woefulmonkey
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    @DanielMorra

    Let me see if I am understanding the question first.

    You are saying 'If object counts matter so much why is it I can see so many object outside my house?

    Here is a follow up. 'If object counts matter so much and my system always performs collision detection even in the 'main game', why is it in a Zone they have way more objects I can interact with?'

    I am assuming this is the question being asked, so let me know if I am not interpreting it correctly.

    Ok, let's tackle the 'thing you can see outside' issue first.

    That is a 'graphics' issue not a 'collision detection' issue.

    The issue that make object limits hard to solve is not what you can see it is what you can touch.

    Graphics issues are much easier to solve for several reason.

    1. ) Graphics operations are mostly non critical, you can disable many graphics services and the game remains playable (If you disable any aspect of collision detection the game would be unplayable)
    2. ) Graphics operations are more distributable, meaning you can do more things in parallel because order of operation is not critical for many aspects of rendering. (For collision detection order of operations is critical making it costly to distributed or run in parallel)
    3. ) Graphics operations in the end are about changing the color of a target pixel on your seen, there are tons of ways they have figured out of 40 years o so to simplify the calculations that determine what color a pixel should end up being. (In short there are way more options for 'cheating' when it comes to rendering then when it comes to collision detection)

    Ok, but there is still 'things' outside my house I can see, they are still objects right, so obviously they can have more objects in my house if they got rid of those object outside my house.

    Well, no. Because the issue is not how many object are being rendered the issue is how many object you can possibly collide with when you move inside your house. The objects outside your house don't matter because you can never collide with them.

    They don't let you go outside your house. There have been some 'bug' where people were able to get outside, but if you see what happens when they explore that outside area things get weird because you are not supposed to be there and the devs did not prepare for it.

    Now lets talk about the 'in game' objects.

    Alright but, when I am 'in game' there are thousands of objects in a zone I can see an interact with and I am 'allowed' to do so, so why can't I just do that in my house?

    Because again the issue is not how many objects exists in total it is how many objects can exists in a small location so that when you move you would collide with them.

    In the game you don't control where any objects are placed. The Dev's and Game Designers control all object placement and they make sure that objects are never place in a way that would lead to game play issue (or try anyway). They also have the ability to cheat in many ways to combine objects to reduce collision boxes.

    In your house, you control object placement. They Game designers can't 'control' what you will do, so they must 'limit' what you can do to try to avoid catastrophic game failures based on bad object placement behaviors. The limit of 700 objects is actually very high because even a relatively small number of objects placed too close together can lead to significant performance issues if you move close to them. 700 is likely an upper limit that they have tested with on low end hardware and ensured they can 'deal with' in some way even if a player happens to place objects in a 'very bad' way.
  • JJBoomer
    JJBoomer
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    there are people on PTS using up to 2800 items in the Psijic Villa right now. So whats the excuse for keeping it 700?
  • Woefulmonkey
    Woefulmonkey
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    @JJBoomer

    Are you saying the 'Test Server' has no slot limits? (I am not on PC so I don't know what they allow on the test server)

    As I have stated many times the issue is not how many object are on the map, it is hos close together those objects can get.

    The only thinks that limits how many objects that Zos allows is their tolerance for 'Risk' on the live servers.

    Test severs are for testing.

    Did they recently removed limits from the test server, or did they never exist on the test server?

    If they recently removed limits or raised them then that is a good sign that they are experimenting with allowing more items because they have decided to allow for more 'Risk', or at least they want to see what people do when they allow for that 'Risk'.

    If the limits have never been set or always been higher on the test server that may just indicate they are more 'risk' tolerant on a 'test' server because it is a 'Test' server and not a 'Live' server.

    However, I would definitely be interested in why Zos would have different rules on the test server for something like this unless they are trying to find a way to increase slots in some way.

    Again I never said it was impossible (It is actually easy since it is just a numeric cap). What I have said is that it adds risk and that the ways they can allow for this an still mitigate risk cause other issues that are not desirable.
  • Streega
    Streega
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    @Woefulmonkey
    I just wanted to say thank you for this excellent discussion, and the time you spent writing all of this - I really appreciate it and I wish I could add you to "Favourite" list as I have some of present here on my "Ignore". Please do not get discouraged or frustrated over the trolls and "me, me" crowd, pay them fishes no mind ;) Keep swimming!
    I understand the cause for house items limit, however the player limit is what annoys me the most, because in our quite spacious guild hall (Strident Springs) we can host only 12 players! Why not 24 at least? That would be more then enough for our small guild.
    As for the "better items" solution: I had to (well, not "had to", but ykwm) build a fireplace in our kitchen, which includes around 15 stone blocks, crammed in really tight place. Why can't I buy/craft designated fireplace, giving it exists in the game already?! I mean those nice, big fireplaces in the Riften, or those more elegant ones in Altmer houses, or even the small, round ones from the wyrd cottages. That's 15 slots wasted instead of one. And... it's 14 possible chances for earning some monies for ZOS lost, so...
    Anyway, thank you again for sharing your knowledge and time!
    ⊂( ̄(工) ̄)⊃ Don't-Care-Bear ⊂( ̄(工) ̄)⊃
    PC EU "House Tertia" - Friendly Guild for Mature Folks (housetertia.com)
    PC EU "Priests of Hircine" - Awesome Guild for Friendly Werewolves (free bites!)
    Member of "Guild Masters United"
    Master Angler
  • Woefulmonkey
    Woefulmonkey
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    @Streega

    My comment about 'trolls' was directed as a specific poster. For the most part the community has been much less toxic than I have experienced on other forums. However occasionally you get someone who clearly just want to 'taunt' someone into a name calling contents and I find it is best not to engage when them. If you don't feed the trolls they eventually move on.

    Some posters are just angry (which I get) and some just really don't care about understanding the issue since they know what would work for them and it 'seems' easy so they don't want to hear anything that contradicts that view. To be clear they are entitled to have that attitude, I just don't agree with it. I still try to respond to those posts, because sometimes they will actually read a direct response and I try to make it clear I am not saying that item limits are not an issue that needs to be addressed in some way.


    Other posters actually want to try to understand what kind of issues developers actually face and often ask additional questions which I try answer to the best of my ability. Keeping in mind that although I am a software engineer I am not a game developer, so a lot my answers are still just educated guesses.


    Now as to your questions about player limits in houses. I have actually given a more detailed answer to another user who had a similar question a littlie while back so I will try to rehash that answer here in a shorter format.

    The most likely cause of the 12/24 player limit is that houses are instanced on 'player' hardware rather than the full game servers. I can't say with 100% certainty they implemented house instances this way but I am about 98% certain based on things I have observed about house behavior and the following 2 design considerations that would likely be why Zos would choose to go that rout.

    1. ) By using a peer to peer client instances system for houses Zos does not have to buy new hardware to support 'houses' since players always supply the hardware.
    2. ) If players provide the hardware then hardware is always available. If Zos were to supply the hardware they would have to have some kind of 'limited' pool of machine and they would have to manage allotments. If they did things that way you would likely have to wait in a queue to load your house and they would likely have to set a limit for how much time you could spend in your house per day before they reclaimed the hardware to ensure all player had 'equal' access to homes.

    So, with the assumption that they are instancing houses on player hardware we can start to see why network limits occur.

    The main game servers are not just running at someone house of a basic office. These machine have to manage literally millions of user connection across all game servers every day. So they are going to be attached to a 'internet backbone' giving them massive 'Upload' and 'Download' bandwidth.

    However 'client' machines are running from peoples houses and even if they have an expensive cable network service that is giving them 500+ Gbits download speeds they are almost always limited to no more than 10 Gbits upload speeds or less.

    Imagine that the Game Server's upload conduit is a massive pipe so large a man can walk though it standing up, where as a 'client' machines upload conduit is one of the tiny red straws they will give you with a cup of coffee.

    The trade off here is availability VS capability.

    Houses must be 'highly' available and they felt the 'capability' limitations when running on client hardware were acceptable, and in most situations they are right.

    However this is definitely and issue for 'guilds' as it severely limits them when it comes to organizing player activities especially when they allow guilds to have 500+ members.

    That is a real problem. I have actually posted some ways I think they could address that like creating an 'isolated town' on the actual Game Server that guilds can 'reserve' for major events. While reserved only members of the target guild would be allowed into the town, but once in all members would be interacting on the actual Game Server with all its capabilities.

    NOTE: Zos did include a 'fireplace' in their last 'basic' furniture update. This is the stuff you can buy directly from the crown store at any time when decorating your house. They only provided 1 and it is in the 'high elf' style so it may not suite you, but they are starting to provide items like that. Although I think they could do much better if that is going to be their plan for dealing with the 'slot limit' issue.
  • Hotdog_23
    Hotdog_23
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    After reading this thread I have nothing intelligent to add but a question.

    Is there a reason they cannot add a wayshire in a home so we can choose where we jump to instead of simply walking out the door. This is the main thing I would love to see added to homes.

    Thanks
  • NovaMarx
    NovaMarx
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    Very insightful post - with a lot of thought given to the subject at hand.

    It is sad t see (although predictable) that most people get hung up on semantics or their personal preferences and wishes, instead of actually reading and understanding what this is about.

    We all want more slots and better furnishings - this is a no brainer, because more wants more. We are greedy humans, and the more we can hoard the happier we are :lol: No one is denying this fact, or saying that anyone who wants more slots is "wrong" or "shouldn't have this opinion". This post is clearly an attempt to address the slotting issue from a more technical stand, rather than a more pathos stand (emotion/personal preference stand). And at the same time opening up the discussion for how the technical issues can be fixed so as to satisfy the masses.

    I also see some people saying "just add a disclaimer that more items equals more lag/crashes", or "if people do stupid stuff that's their problem". These people obviously have never had to deal with customers or been on the receiving end of customer based issues and complaints. Again, we are greedy (and not always the smartest) creatures, and the problems and complaints in a "no limit scenario" would be horrendous. It would really only be substituting one problem with another.

    So in conclusion: Do we all want more slots and/or more detailed items? Yes, of course. BUT it needs to be done in a smart way, so that as many people as possible will be satisfied. :wink:
    "Feet are for walking. Hands are for hitting. Or shaking. Or waving. Sometimes for clapping."
    - M'aiq the Liar
  • NovaMarx
    NovaMarx
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    Hotdog_23 wrote: »
    After reading this thread I have nothing intelligent to add but a question.

    Is there a reason they cannot add a wayshire in a home so we can choose where we jump to instead of simply walking out the door. This is the main thing I would love to see added to homes.

    Thanks

    I am not an expert, but I can imagine there may be some issues with adding a wayshrine as a workable and place-able item.

    That being said, I think the real issue is that we can travel freely to our homes, but then wanting to travel FROM our homes suddenly becomes a huge expense (for some) - forcing you to have to leave your home AND THEN go to the nearest wayshrine (which can be quite a bit away for some), which adds the inconvenience of loading screen, monotonous travel, and then another loading screen.

    A simple work-around of this issue would be to make it "free" to travel from your home to a wayshrine.
    "Feet are for walking. Hands are for hitting. Or shaking. Or waving. Sometimes for clapping."
    - M'aiq the Liar
  • Merlin13KAGL
    Merlin13KAGL
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    You do realize every engine worth its salt can set items to Static, meaning all interactions and gravity effects are promptly ignored by the physics engine?

    Engines also have method to disregard items outside current scope by loading/unloading and placing 'to sleep' on items not in the current area of interest?

    Houses are instanced. The number of items placed in a house is never going to come anywhere near even the number of items in your average small solo instance, and many of the housing items have certain checks and effects disabled by default.

    Beyond that, much of this could be done client side. The only time updates really need to take place is during status change (light on/off , player movement). It's the same reason animation frames do not have to be the same from one client to another - desyncs don't matter for basic stuff, as it only needs to present the desired illusion client side.

    Yes, resources go up with more items, but there should be more than enough availavble server resources to handle it.

    If it's a restriction, it's a restriction due to the initial object design and coding, not due to the server being unable to handle an effectively static instance with an absolute cap of 24 people at any given time.
    Just because you don't like the way something is doesn't necessarily make it wrong...

    Earn it.

    IRL'ing for a while for assorted reasons, in forum, and in game.
    I am neither warm, nor fuzzy...
    Probably has checkbox on Customer Service profile that say High Aggro, 99% immunity to BS
  • Woefulmonkey
    Woefulmonkey
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    @Hotdog_23

    From what I have observed there should be no significant technical barrier to providing a 'wayshrine' in homes.

    I says that because you can 'teleport' out of your house using the map which is basically the same interface and feature as a 'wayshrine' it just 'charges' you for doing so.

    I assume they don't provide that feature on purpose because anyone who buys a house would be able to teleport for free by using 2 hops once they owned a home (since you can already teleport to your house for free).

    That is a 'policy' decision and one I disagree with. I don't necessarily think they should allow 'free' travel from your home by default, but I do think they should allow you to acquire a wayshrine furniture service items similar to the 'banker' or 'merchant' that allows for free travel.
  • Valagash
    Valagash
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    JJBoomer wrote: »
    there are people on PTS using up to 2800 items in the Psijic Villa right now. So whats the excuse for keeping it 700?

    I was on the PTS right now to try this, but you can t place more than 700 items in the Psijic Villa. Where do you have this info?
  • Woefulmonkey
    Woefulmonkey
    ✭✭✭
    @Merlin13KAGL

    So I hate saying this because people seem to get upset when I question if the actually read the thread.

    But, did you read even my original post?

    I specifically describe 'static' objects in the and how they are used to reduce calculation requirement as well as many other techniques to even get close to an ability to handle object collision detection in a real time game of any kind.

    Eliminating the need to calculate for gravity for every object is actually the first improvement I describe.

    So yes, I do understand that as well as the many other ways that you address movement and collision in the game to 'cheat physics'.

    I am not going to re-explain the entire original post here, however here are the key take always.

    Even after you take all those reductions into account the 'best' you can do is reduce the number of calculations required for collision detection to N where the number of objects you can possibly interact with in a single move fame. If you do anything less that that you cannot determine proper object movement and sliding and you 'will' have major game play issue.


    If, N is the number of causation you must perform in movement cycle, you then need to know what the maximum time you have to perform calculation in 1 cycle. Well in order to have smooth fluid movement you need to be able to do 10 move calculations per second (This is not the same as FPS, you can still render at 60 FPS but your moves are likely only calculated at 10 Moves Per Second).

    So, if you have to calculate all collisions in every Move how many object can you support if it take only 5 milliseconds in order to have no performance issue?

    N = Max Frame Time / Calculation Time

    Which is

    N = 100 millsec / 5 millsec = 20

    So, what does that mean?

    It means that as soon as you start going over 20 object very close together that you player can possibly collide with in one move frame you start having performance issues.

    Now just because you have 40 objects does not mean performance goes to crap.


    However I guarantee you will start to notice the 'slow down' as soon as you get to 100 object if you are an observant player and even if you are a unobservant player you will notice when the count gets to 200.


    If you manage to get up to 600 poorly placed objects you are talking to each move frame taking 3 seconds to complete. The game may still function at that point but it will be very hard to play and you will start to have risks of catastrophic game failure occurring.

    I have posted a 'test' you can perform several times on this thread if you don't believe these calculations and want to see what I am talking about in a 'real' scenario.



    As for 'instancing' I also speak about that in length in the original post and you are right house are instanced.


    They are almost certainly instanced on 'Your' hardware not any Zos game servers. Again I have explain the reasons I believe that to be true in many placed on this thread if you are interested in more background.


    However, even if they were instanced on Zos hardware that does not matter.


    The problem lies in how close objects are placed to one another not how many objects are on the map in total.

    The problem with houses is that 'you' control where objects are place not Zos. For the game and dungeons Zos controls all object placement and they ensure that objects are not placed in a way that least to catastrophic game failure.


    When 'you' control object placement it means you can cause such a failure. So Zos has to limit what you can do so they can limit that risk (Notice I say limit not eliminate).


    You can already do bad things they just try to ensure odds of you doing such bad things is small and that even if you do they can handle them without causing catastrophic failures.

  • Hotdog_23
    Hotdog_23
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    ✭✭
    @Hotdog_23

    From what I have observed there should be no significant technical barrier to providing a 'wayshrine' in homes.

    I says that because you can 'teleport' out of your house using the map which is basically the same interface and feature as a 'wayshrine' it just 'charges' you for doing so.

    I assume they don't provide that feature on purpose because anyone who buys a house would be able to teleport for free by using 2 hops once they owned a home (since you can already teleport to your house for free).

    That is a 'policy' decision and one I disagree with. I don't necessarily think they should allow 'free' travel from your home by default, but I do think they should allow you to acquire a wayshrine furniture service items similar to the 'banker' or 'merchant' that allows for free travel.

    Thanks for responding. I too think it is a "policy' decision"
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