Remove housing limit on PTS

Brandathorbel

The whole point of the pts to test things so why not remove the limit so we can actually test it to be honest I think the limit is more or less full of crap
So let us test it and see how many items we can put in our homes on the pts before it starts having an issue
A very very simple thing for you guys to do and that way you can actually prove it to us and maybe we'll shut up

VaranisArano

Do keep in mind that it's not just your system that ZOS cares about - its everyone who visits your houses including players with min spec systems. And players who play on console, who don't have access to PTS at all.

So your system might be able to handle more items, even high impact items, just fine. Its just that your system is far from the only variable ZOS is looking at, and so your proposed PTS test is insufficient to prove them wrong about the performance issues.

At best, the only thing its going to accomplish is making the PC housing folks who's systems can handle higher limits of the PTS feel more disgruntled about being held back by min spec PCs and consoles.

ixie

Although this sounds like a good idea I wouldn't risk testing it, I lost a graphics card and motherboard to the lighting patch in 2014

Brandathorbel

ixie wrote: »

Although this sounds like a good idea I wouldn't risk testing it, I lost a graphics card and motherboard to the lighting patch in 2014

i don't even know how that is possible

Sturmfaenger

If they would do this on PTS, without the intention on bringing it live in the following times, I could already hear the cries of outrage: "See, it works there, so why doesn't it work here?! It's just because you.... (insert rant)"

It would be a selfmade trouble generator.

Brandathorbel

Sturmfaenger wrote: »

If they would do this on PTS, without the intention on bringing it live in the following times, I could already here the cries of outrage: "See, it works there, so why doesn't it work here?!" It would be a selfmade trouble generator.

there is already cries, non stop cries.

and what if people with low end computers can actually run it at 800 or 900 without any issues? And, if not, then why not raise it to 800-900 and people with lower end computers just have to make the decision on items or performance. I would rather make the decision then for them to cripple everyone.

Its one thing to play to the lowest denominator for things like core content that one can't adjust personally, but for housing, there is no reason to cap everyone. People can come to the conclusion, ya, sucks i cant fill it to the rim, but i do have a crap computer so that is on me.

and if you are the one with the slow computer and you want everyone else to be capped so you can be happy, then how selfish are you.

putting on pts with ability for everyone to list their specs provides good metrics to look at. and who says that this patch today wont offer more headroom?

ixie

xbobx15 wrote: »

ixie wrote: »

Although this sounds like a good idea I wouldn't risk testing it, I lost a graphics card and motherboard to the lighting patch in 2014

i don't even know how that is possible

I was in cyrodiil, there were loads of aoes going off, my computer died

Kiyakotari

ixie wrote: »

Although this sounds like a good idea I wouldn't risk testing it, I lost a graphics card and motherboard to the lighting patch in 2014

ESO set a PSU on fire when I was playing in 2018. On the plus side, I now have an appropriately rated PSU for my system.

kind_hero

VaranisArano wrote: »

Do keep in mind that it's not just your system that ZOS cares about - its everyone who visits your houses including players with min spec systems. And players who play on console, who don't have access to PTS at all.

So your system might be able to handle more items, even high impact items, just fine. Its just that your system is far from the only variable ZOS is looking at, and so your proposed PTS test is insufficient to prove them wrong about the performance issues.

At best, the only thing its going to accomplish is making the PC housing folks who's systems can handle higher limits of the PTS feel more disgruntled about being held back by min spec PCs and consoles.

are you really buying into this?

Let's assume for the sake of this discussion that 700 is the maximum limit, and beyond that one could experience performance issues. Then why can't you have more slots in a medium house? 600 instead of 400? Or why can't you have let's say 60 items in a small room, like an inn? There is no reason for it, it is just a policy they do not want to change, because it does not benefit them financially, that's why. Same reason for which they keep releasing huge houses instead of smaller ones, like people want. There are enough whales that buy $100 houses.

You might say that well, you can't place so many items in a small cell, but you can very well place 700 items in Khunzar-ri's childhood shack, and I am sure there won't be any performance unless, yeah, you pile a lot of fx and very complex models on purpose. I doubt you will have any issues if you recreate a normal Khajiiti house with all the clutter.

You can also try this in one of the side rooms of the Psijic Villa.

These limits are just a business model that works, I haven't seen anything to support the claim that if you stack many items you will lose performance.

I am in a housing guild, so I tend to visit many houses. We have some extremely talented decorators. Some of their houses are transformations, the density of items is high. I play ESO on a 4 year old laptop, and I can say that I have never experienced any issues in places with high item density.

But right now, I am fine with the number of slots (except maybe I would like to see a 10-15% increase for the smaller houses).
What I am hoping for are more furnishings and features.

Tatanko

kind_hero wrote: »

Let's assume for the sake of this discussion that 700 is the maximum limit, and beyond that one could experience performance issues. Then why can't you have more slots in a medium house? 600 instead of 400? Or why can't you have let's say 60 items in a small room, like an inn?

Because then people would complain that larger houses don't have a correspondingly larger item limit, and so and so forth. There will always be something to complain about and ZOS will never win.

Brandathorbel

Tatanko wrote: »

kind_hero wrote: »

Let's assume for the sake of this discussion that 700 is the maximum limit, and beyond that one could experience performance issues. Then why can't you have more slots in a medium house? 600 instead of 400? Or why can't you have let's say 60 items in a small room, like an inn?

Because then people would complain that larger houses don't have a correspondingly larger item limit, and so and so forth. There will always be something to complain about and ZOS will never win.

give it a rest

VaranisArano

kind_hero wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Do keep in mind that it's not just your system that ZOS cares about - its everyone who visits your houses including players with min spec systems. And players who play on console, who don't have access to PTS at all.

So your system might be able to handle more items, even high impact items, just fine. Its just that your system is far from the only variable ZOS is looking at, and so your proposed PTS test is insufficient to prove them wrong about the performance issues.

At best, the only thing its going to accomplish is making the PC housing folks who's systems can handle higher limits of the PTS feel more disgruntled about being held back by min spec PCs and consoles.

are you really buying into this?

Let's assume for the sake of this discussion that 700 is the maximum limit, and beyond that one could experience performance issues. Then why can't you have more slots in a medium house? 600 instead of 400? Or why can't you have let's say 60 items in a small room, like an inn? There is no reason for it, it is just a policy they do not want to change, because it does not benefit them financially, that's why. Same reason for which they keep releasing huge houses instead of smaller ones, like people want. There are enough whales that buy $100 houses.

You might say that well, you can't place so many items in a small cell, but you can very well place 700 items in Khunzar-ri's childhood shack, and I am sure there won't be any performance unless, yeah, you pile a lot of fx and very complex models on purpose. I doubt you will have any issues if you recreate a normal Khajiiti house with all the clutter.

You can also try this in one of the side rooms of the Psijic Villa.

These limits are just a business model that works, I haven't seen anything to support the claim that if you stack many items you will lose performance.

I am in a housing guild, so I tend to visit many houses. We have some extremely talented decorators. Some of their houses are transformations, the density of items is high. I play ESO on a 4 year old laptop, and I can say that I have never experienced any issues in places with high item density.

But right now, I am fine with the number of slots (except maybe I would like to see a 10-15% increase for the smaller houses).
What I am hoping for are more furnishings and features.

Sure, the limitations on smaller houses are pure marketing. Never said they weren't. We were talking about the maximum items allowed.

Not to mention that you wouldn't see performance impacts, even on an old system, because ZOS specifically sets the limits with min spec systems and consoles in mind. ZOS does in fact value your ability to visit high impact houses and not have performance issues. That's sort of the entire point of the limitation.

That being said, if we were to increase those limits, you yourself point out some of the edge cases that ZOS has to account for with high impact furnishings. Technically, there's nothing stopping me from taking as many lights or high impact furnishings as I want and stacking them right in front of the spawn point hoping to overwhelm some visitor's system by forcing it to render everything all at once. ZOS has to consider how housing works when players try to break it, not just when players decorate their houses normally.

As for whether or not I believe ZOS' bit about valuing community...
ZOS is demonstrating that they value everyone being able to visit every home over and above the profit they'd make from letting some people with better systems add more furnishing to their houses than some systems can handle.
Given how monetization-driven ZOS is, no, I don't actually think they are lying about their priority.

I've yet to see someone make a convincing argument that ZOS can increase item limits, increase the visitor cap, AND make it so everyone can still participate in the same way as they can now. ZOS says they can't do all three yet.

And it sort of boggles me that a number of people are willing to say some variation on the following:
"ZOS is lying, they totally CAN do all three for everyone, they just WON'T do it!"

You can disagree with their priorities as the OP does, since they are willing to exclude visiting players with min spec systems if they can't handle certain houses under the increased limits. Personally, I'm not willing to exclude players, nor do I prioritize more total item slots over the desire of players to have more visitor slots for guild or group events. But I've yet to see anyone make a convincing argument that ZOS is lying about being able to meet all three of their priorities right now.

Brandathorbel

the reason is because Zos has never actually proven it. And this would be an easy thing to do. We just have to take them on their word and sorry but their word is worthless.

also, there is no reason why medium and large homes cant instantly have their limits increase. Only reason there is, is too push large home sales in which is 90 percent of the homes they release.

If people could have 700 limit in their large home and fill it the way they want they might not buy the noble homes

VaranisArano

xbobx15 wrote: »

the reason is because Zos has never actually proven it. And this would be an easy thing to do. We just have to take them on their word and sorry but their word is worthless.

also, there is no reason why medium and large homes cant instantly have their limits increase. Only reason there is, is too push large home sales in which is 90 percent of the homes they release.

If people could have 700 limit in their large home and fill it the way they want they might not buy the noble homes

A. The proof you want is basically "Hey, ZOS, take a min spec computer or a console and push it until it breaks. And do it where I can see it. Cause if I don't see you do it, I don't believe a word of it."

Because its kind of a bad idea for a game company to be like "Sure, we'll open up our limits that we have in place to prevent this very problem so you stack items on your own computer until you break your system's ability to handle it. Use at your own risk. Have fun!"

B. Um. Sure. Duh. I thought we were arguing about increasing the overall maximum, not the obvious point that ZOS probably could instantly increase the item limits on all homes up to the maximum in terms of performance. They don't because of marketing. Tatanko already explained this.

Brandathorbel

they can do it on the pts easy enough. it is simple

VaranisArano

xbobx15 wrote: »

they can do it on the pts easy enough. it is simple

As I have pointed out...
A. PTS doesn't tell you anything about consoles. You've rather ignored that whole point and given no reason why ZOS should increase anything for PCs that isn't going to be available for consoles.
B. PTS generally isn't as populated as the Live server, so its going to be a lot harder to test edge cases like fully furnished, high impact homes with guild activities going on like raid DPS testing or dueling tournies with the new limits.
C. Apparently you are okay with ZOS going all "Sure, you can break your system if you want to, use at your own risk!" But that doesn't make it a good idea for ZOS to do so. Especially since with the increased limits, your own system might be fine while your house creates problems for a visitor's system.
D. Just because you are okay with implementing increased item limits that would exclude some players from being able to visit your homes, even on the PTS, doesn't mean that ZOS is. Quite the opposite, in fact.

There's no good reason for ZOS to add higher limits to the PTS when the only result is that players like you would wind up aggrieved that your personal system can handle higher limits, but ZOS won't let you exclude min spec players on the Live Servers or overtake what's possible on consoles.

But at this point, I'm cycling around to what I said in my first post and there's little point to repeating myself.

kind_hero

The flaw in your defence towards the housing limitation is that a house instance is limited to a few people. So it does not matter if the server is low populated, because in a large manor you can only have maximum of 12 players at once, which rarely happens even on live with guild castles. And the limit is lower for the smaller houses.

They can increase the limit to say 800 on the PTS, give it a go, and see how such houses perform.

They have their own consoles test enviroment, they can do these tests, especially regarding housing, which being a closed instance, is far easy to simulate, you do not need the population of a test or live server. So I doubt it is a big issue to test.

But OK... we have to admit they are not lying to us, you convinced me in this regard. It is also fair to consider this. However, these concerns still hold, people could test 800, 900 item manors on the PTS and see how it goes. The devs can test this as well, and I am sure they have the means and they did the tests. Why I am saying this is because tehnology evolves, so they will not be able to mentain these minimum specs for long if they want to keep this game in competition with other titles, especially for the sake of housing. It would be ridiculous to not to add new features in the game because the engine has to run houses for low end machines.

What you are saying that ZOS is trying to offer a seamless housing experience for everyone regardless of what items are placed inside sounds to me like PR. BTW, are you working in PR or communication? Because you are good at phrasing these things.
The devs can't know which kind of items you will place, if you are a decorator genuinely interested in housing or a griefer who tries to create problems or pranks for the unsuspecting visitor. There all kinds of stuff you can do on live to create a fps drop in a house, if you really want that. But that's working against what housing is, and those worst case scenarios shouldn't be taken in account so much. I am more interested in the people who want to build cool stuff, not exploiters or people who want to ruin your experience. I don't think ZOS can prevent such things only to a degree.

VaranisArano

kind_hero wrote: »

The flaw in your defence towards the housing limitation is that a house instance is limited to a few people. So it does not matter if the server is low populated, because in a large manor you can only have maximum of 12 players at once, which rarely happens even on live with guild castles. And the limit is lower for the smaller houses.

They can increase the limit to say 800 on the PTS, give it a go, and see how such houses perform.

They have their own consoles test enviroment, they can do these tests, especially regarding housing, which being a closed instance, is far easy to simulate, you do not need the population of a test or live server. So I doubt it is a big issue to test.

But OK... we have to admit they are not lying to us, you convinced me in this regard. It is also fair to consider this. However, these concerns still hold, people could test 800, 900 item manors on the PTS and see how it goes. The devs can test this as well, and I am sure they have the means and they did the tests. Why I am saying this is because tehnology evolves, so they will not be able to mentain these minimum specs for long if they want to keep this game in competition with other titles, especially for the sake of housing. It would be ridiculous to not to add new features in the game because the engine has to run houses for low end machines.

What you are saying that ZOS is trying to offer a seamless housing experience for everyone regardless of what items are placed inside sounds to me like PR. BTW, are you working in PR or communication? Because you are good at phrasing these things.
The devs can't know which kind of items you will place, if you are a decorator genuinely interested in housing or a griefer who tries to create problems or pranks for the unsuspecting visitor. There all kinds of stuff you can do on live to create a fps drop in a house, if you really want that. But that's working against what housing is, and those worst case scenarios shouldn't be taken in account so much. I am more interested in the people who want to build cool stuff, not exploiters or people who want to ruin your experience. I don't think ZOS can prevent such things only to a degree.

I'm a teacher, so clear communication is something I strive for. Thanks! In this case, I'm more or less describing what ZOS said in their PR statement: "While the core design philosophy behind housing is to give you the creative freedom to decorate the way you want to, we have to ensure that it is a stable experience for you and your visitors as well, regardless of anyone’s platform or hardware specifications." https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/512076/february-2020-furnishing-limit-status-update/p1. Its also more or less the same thing they said in the April 2019 ESO Live when they discussed housing limits, so it wasn't anything new for me.

You've got good points that I think really illustrate how ZOS has to have slightly different priorities than the playerbase. Ideally, we would be able to focus on the housing players who decorate as intended without having to worry so much about edge cases or trolls...but ZOS does because its their support system who's going to have to deal with any problems it causes.

Likewise, ZOS has to deal with the impact on the playerbase of what it means to change ESO's minimum specs on PC and they can't do anything at all about the specs on consoles. Certainly, I expect that they would reevaluate the housing limits IF they increased PC min specs and Consoles improve. However, that doesn't seem to be an immediate solution, especially given that consoles got the blame for the item limits when ZOS commented on them back when Summerset launched and nothing has really changed. My suspicion is that major changes like increasing the min specs would be driven by a multitude of advancements in the game, not just for the sake of housing, since it impacts plenty of players. And if console performance remains a sticking point, then even increasing PC min specs may not do a thing for housing unless ZOS is willing to hand out long-awaited improvements to only a third of ESO's platforms. They sound unwilling to do that and, from a business perspective, I can't blame them.

In the end, I think a lot of it comes down to ZOS' priorities.
They've chosen to prioritize that seamless housing experience for creators and visitors regardless of platform or hardware specs.
They've chosen to address the performance issues in the long term by overhauling ESO, which takes a disappointing amount of time, rather than embrace short term solutions that satisfy some players with good hardware at the expense of players with min specs or on console.

I think its fine for Housing players to disagree with those priorities. Certainly, plenty of players do. I personally think there's a lot of value to prioritizing that seamless experience for everyone, just as I think ZOS could do a lot to help with the current limits by instancing inner/outer areas and creating more grouped items, for example.

Alienoutlaw

PTS has a lower population so it may work there but without a full live stress test it would be hard to gauge its viability

Brandathorbel

Alienoutlaw wrote: »

PTS has a lower population so it may work there but without a full live stress test it would be hard to gauge its viability

don't think that would matter considering the housing or instances. Might be wrong though.

VaranisArano

xbobx15 wrote: »

Alienoutlaw wrote: »

PTS has a lower population so it may work there but without a full live stress test it would be hard to gauge its viability

don't think that would matter considering the housing or instances. Might be wrong though.

It might very well not matter. My thought was that the most stressful events involving players is likely to be guilds hanging out and doing combat, such as running DPS tests for raids or dueling. There's been times my PVP guild has had the full 24 players hanging out in the Craglorn house all messing with the training dummies, dueling or just spamming random skills at each other for the fun of it.

I'm just not sure how easy that would be for players to replicate or test on the PTS - it'd probably be easier for trials progression guilds than anyone else since they already have a reason for lots of players to be on at the same time. My guilds have never had more than a few people on the PTS at once, though of course YMMV.

I suspect its one where its easier for the Devs to test that on their own since they can monitor exactly what's happening as they add more players doing server-intensive activities at once.