Proudspire Manor, and ESO housing in general, just blows my mind. Staggeringly overpriced blandness

Dahveed

Yeah, I generally don't agree with the current generation's constant negativity surrounding gaming products. We are extremely spoiled with our entertainment products, and my philosophy has always generally been, "if you don't like it, vote with your wallet and shut your trap."

But ESO player housing. Their pricing is just egregious for something so incredibly underwhelming.

Proudspire Manor is literally just a few copy/pasted vanilla assets placed in the most bland, vanilla low-resolution way possible and I am simply shocked that they'd want the price equivalent of a full AAA game for it. It's just staggering.

I know I could buy this for in-game gold, but I think it costs like.... 1 million gold?

Personally I don't care about housing in games at all (even in Skyrim when mods are all free of charge and 20 times better than this garbage), but I truly cannot understand how people would pay full price for this terrible excuse for an asset flip. I am terrible at house building, and I could have made this in an afternoon of copy/pasting.

Shouldn't player housing be more... profound than this for the prices they want? Shouldn't I be able to populate my homes with pets, guards, functional schedules and such? (I'm thinking WoW garrisons, though not nearly as essential.)

Shouldn't there be unique assets, quests, actual *content* for something that costs upwards of 60, sometimes 120 dollars?


I apologize for the rant, I normally try not to post pure complain threads, but I am simply blown away by the stratospheric levels of mediocrity to be found in Proudspire Manor. It's shameful.

Hallothiel

Um, this is all new furniture? So not sure how copy & paste.

But if you don’t like it, don’t buy it. It’s not compulsory.

Uryel

Dahveed wrote: »

Proudspire Manor is literally just a few copy/pasted vanilla assets placed in the most bland, vanilla low-resolution way possible and I am simply shocked that they'd want the price equivalent of a full AAA game for it. It's just staggering.

Welcome to the year of Skyrim, where everything has to be kept on schedule just as Elsweyr was, which translates into half finished, hald botched stuff. Elsweyr had a non itemised, no containers to loot public dungeon, for instance..

And yeah, I agree, this home is extremely uninspiring. Furnitures are not bad, even though most are higher res reetextured existing pieces, but the home itself ? Meh.

Gotta give them that, though, at least it's not all about giant manor houses. Still, I don't understand why houses, of all things, are not all available at all time. I'm sure LOTS of people would get the Colossal Aldmeri Grotto or the Grand Topal Hideway or Hunter's Glade if they had the option. Instead, you get an uninspired, bland, boring vampire-themed house in Blackreach. Blackreach, of all places, should have had a Dwemer themed houses, but hey, vampires are cooler, right ? They do glitter in the sun, right ? Oh wait, wrong franchise. Same level of "I don't give a F..." though.

Dahveed

Hallothiel wrote: »

Um, this is all new furniture? So not sure how copy & paste.

But if you don’t like it, don’t buy it. It’s not compulsory.

Well if it's new furniture, it's very boring new furniture.

Nothing about this place feels "new".

Either way, my point still stands. What is the point of player housing in this game?

At least in Fallout 76 I can build my base in the world and it truly feels like my own original creation, and I can RP my character roughing it in the woods and bringing back supplies to my run-down shack in the wilderness.

In ESO it just feels... bland and useless.

But you're right, if you don't like it, don't buy it. I certainly won't.

[snip]

Like I said, I could make this for free in Skyrim Creation Kit, it would probably take me two or three afternoons. It's just crazy how Skyrim modders can create dazzling and inspiring houses free of chrage for the community, while a multi-billion dollar company produces this uninspired rubbish.

Oh well, I just needed to get this rant out of my system. [snip]

[Edited for Baiting]

Olauron

Dahveed wrote: »

Yeah, I generally don't agree with the current generation's constant negativity surrounding gaming products. We are extremely spoiled with our entertainment products, and my philosophy has always generally been, "if you don't like it, vote with your wallet and shut your trap."

But ESO player housing. Their pricing is just egregious for something so incredibly underwhelming.

Proudspire Manor is literally just a few copy/pasted vanilla assets placed in the most bland, vanilla low-resolution way possible and I am simply shocked that they'd want the price equivalent of a full AAA game for it. It's just staggering.

I know I could buy this for in-game gold, but I think it costs like.... 1 million gold?

Personally I don't care about housing in games at all (even in Skyrim when mods are all free of charge and 20 times better than this garbage), but I truly cannot understand how people would pay full price for this terrible excuse for an asset flip. I am terrible at house building, and I could have made this in an afternoon of copy/pasting.

Shouldn't player housing be more... profound than this for the prices they want? Shouldn't I be able to populate my homes with pets, guards, functional schedules and such? (I'm thinking WoW garrisons, though not nearly as essential.)

Shouldn't there be unique assets, quests, actual *content* for something that costs upwards of 60, sometimes 120 dollars?


I apologize for the rant, I normally try not to post pure complain threads, but I am simply blown away by the stratospheric levels of mediocrity to be found in Proudspire Manor. It's shameful.

Have you seen other houses? 1 million gold is a standard price for such a house. Crown price is standard too. There is nothing new regarding pricing here.

AyeshaBelladonna

As a housing fanatic, I can agree that Proudspire is a bit lackluster compared to some of the others. It is not my personal cup of tea. That said, many of my housing guildmates love it. The stone work IS gorgeous in it, and houses are more about what we can do with the room sizes and the usefulness of the location that if they have any ‘special features’.

As far as housing in general though..... much like the Masterwrit system, it was designed with end-game mentality in mind. Some of it _is_ insanely high priced. It is also end game content for crafters. (Or parse fanatics/PvP enthusiasts with more money than patience which is why some of us hire out as decorators lol) That is why there are also dozens and dozens of cheaper homes too. A million gold to many of us is a week’s worth of work tops. Me, personally, I don’t get the parse folks. Who cares if you can cheese a 125k DPS parse on a Trial atro? But hey, to each their own. Some folks live in PvP, some chase the ever-shifting ‘meta’, some are alt-aholics.... and some of us do housing. 😁 I think it’s nice actually that housing is priced in such a way as to allow everyday questers to get into it AND has the more Lux side too that requires more money and more effort so it has more of an ‘elite’ feel.
If you don’t enjoy the housing aspect of the game it is probably not something you’ll ever really ‘get’. 🤷🏼‍♀️ (Btw, you CAN place pets, mounts, your personal npc’s etc in them. And in order to buy with gold they generally DO require you obtain a zone achievement to unlock most times)

Generally speaking though, I don’t have much of a problem with the prices. Heck, even the limited release homes can be bought For about 30% less if you’re patient enough to wait a year. Honestly those are my only real issue with housing in general. I don’t mind dropping $$$ on my houses if they are a limited release one....Mainly because all of those ARE much fancier, Usually featuring something unique about them. Those ones though, don’t become available for gold. I do take issue with them not including a special tier for slots with the costs involved. 350/700 is insane on a $150 home. Being lifer on the subscription though I don’t always look at it as $150. If I am only spending subscription crowns, I sub for other reasons... So crowns are just sitting there waiting for a use. I farm all my motifs... not much else to spend my crowns on once I get what I want from crates so houses and special furniture packs it is lol. The homes that come avail for gold are base game additions though (excepting the holiday coven cottage) Something you are supposed to have to grind towards affording, and are supposed to reflect the style of the area they are in but a rich version.

My only real complaint about Proudspire in particular actually is that the color or the stone doesn’t feel right for the style. Too ‘desert stone’ vibe rather than Nord. I actually had a bigger problem with the fact that every wooden wall in every house in Elsweyr had peeling paint. Drove me nuts lol. At least this stonework is in good shape and not a crumbling ruin like some hehehe.

Tandor

I haven't seen this particular house yet, but my hunch is that something that is a stratospheric level of mediocrity to someone who doesn't care about housing in games at all may be quite good to someone who loves housing in games.

markulrich1966

Hundings palatial hall is 2.4 mio, so 1 mio looks cheap in comparison. But Hundings also has a beach where you can build on the water...

wnights

That's interesting cause I actually love the new house.

It's simple and easy to decorate (all rooms are square and the rooms are easy to divide into smaller rooms if wanted)
But at the same time it's not too huge, which means it can be easily decorated with the 600 slot limit and not feel empty. I will take a gold-purchasable house over a crown-exclusive one anyday.
The only thing I wish for is a bigger garden area or something like a winter garden under a glass roof, that would make the house perfect for me.

Every crown-exclusive house is overpriced in my opinion. Yes they are beautiful and have amazing scenery usually, but they are enormous to the point where you will end up with a half empty area. I do have to say though that for people who love to build custom homes crown-exclusives are probably the only good option. So it of course all depends on what people want to do.

preevious

Why are you giving prices in gold? Are houses giftables, now?

Dahveed

Btw, you CAN place pets, mounts, your personal npc’s etc in them.

@AyeshaBelladonna I didn't know this. Is this difficult to achieve? I currently have about two or three dozen non-combat pets and also mounts that I literally never use ever (don't want some critter following me around). Is it as simple as placing them or do you have to buy plans or something?

Elsonso

preevious wrote: »

Why are you giving prices in gold? Are houses giftables, now?

Proudspire can be purchased with gold. Apparently, 1 million gold.

Michae

1 million gold is not that much in this game you know. You can make it quite quickly. Writs + selling gold mats from surveys does wonders. Sure, it's not that easy for a newbie but it's not supposed to be. As for Proudspire manor it seems to be a carbon copy of the house from TESV which was pretty bland and boring too, so I'd say good job.

I agree that Crown pricing for houses is ridiculous tho. 13k Crowns for a big empty manors is silly, especially when whole dlcs cost like 2k each and anything really besides the housing doesn't cost more than 5k. Housing community gets really little new stuff obtainable in game, so if you want manors you just have to shell out quite some $$.

AyeshaBelladonna

Dahveed wrote: »

Btw, you CAN place pets, mounts, your personal npc’s etc in them.

@AyeshaBelladonna I didn't know this. Is this difficult to achieve? I currently have about two or three dozen non-combat pets and also mounts that I literally never use ever (don't want some critter following me around). Is it as simple as placing them or do you have to buy plans or something?

Mounts and pets you place them like you would furniture. Sadly they do not wander around the place, but the idle animations you see your pets do while you are standing around in game are the same ones they do while sitting in your house. How many you can place in a home depends on the home size. Which is also why there are varying sizes of houses. Also, every time you do a dungeon for the first time you get a trophy to hang on the wall and doing it on vet gives you a gold statue bust to place out. These also have their own category of furnishings and some collectibles like the trophies, busts, mounts, pets, banker, merchants, and certain quest related ones can be placed once in every house. Not just one time in one house. So like your augur of the obscure from Summerset, fan of false face, the singing wall in Elsweyr and the tapestry from southern Elsweyr and more are all placable collectible furnishings. No crafting required.

AyeshaBelladonna

preevious wrote: »

Why are you giving prices in gold? Are houses giftables, now?

Nearly All houses except limited release houses are available for gold if you have completed the required Achievement to unlock that option. You cannot buy furnished versions with gold and houses are nearly impossible to gift- though you can submit a special helpdesk request and have it granted under certain circumstances.

AyeshaBelladonna

Elsonso wrote: »

preevious wrote: »

Why are you giving prices in gold? Are houses giftables, now?

Proudspire can be purchased with gold. Apparently, 1 million gold.

House Pricing in a nutshell for those of you that have only seen limited release houses:

The vast majority of homes available in the game are purchasable with gold and the cost varies. 3k for an Inn Room, then 50/60k range, scaling into the hundreds of thousands then the millions. A large home, one size below the Notables generally go for 1.3mil give or take. Dozes are under the mil mark. Coldharbour is the only 1mil Notable though, the other three original Notables that have a title attached to them are roughly 3.5mil range but can also be bought for gold. Earthtear cavern is, I think, the only base game home addition that is crown only. (Haven’t looked at Hakkvild’s lately but I think that has a for gold option too) The exorcised coven cottage is the only limited edition house also available via achievement and gold. The rest of the limited release homes are crown only and aside from Lucky Cat Landing and Snow Globe are all a notable size homes.

CMDR_Un1k0rn

AyeshaBelladonna wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

preevious wrote: »

Why are you giving prices in gold? Are houses giftables, now?

Proudspire can be purchased with gold. Apparently, 1 million gold.

House Pricing in a nutshell for those of you that have only seen limited release houses:

The vast majority of homes available in the game are purchasable with gold and the cost varies. 3k for an Inn Room, then 50/60k range, scaling into the hundreds of thousands then the millions. A large home, one size below the Notables generally go for 1.3mil give or take. Dozes are under the mil mark. Coldharbour is the only 1mil Notable though, the other three original Notables that have a title attached to them are roughly 3.5mil range but can also be bought for gold. Earthtear cavern is, I think, the only base game home addition that is crown only. (Haven’t looked at Hakkvild’s lately but I think that has a for gold option too) The exorcised coven cottage is the only limited edition house also available via achievement and gold. The rest of the limited release homes are crown only and aside from Lucky Cat Landing and Snow Globe are all a notable size homes.

Hakkvild does indeed have a gold purchase option.

Nice house too.

malchior

Why bother coming here? These 2 paragraphs basically show that you have contradicted yourself. To voice such a stance via a forum thread in the Housing forums...come one whom are you kidding? Yourself really.

Dahveed wrote: »

Yeah, I generally don't agree with the current generation's constant negativity surrounding gaming products. We are extremely spoiled with our entertainment products, and my philosophy has always generally been, "if you don't like it, vote with your wallet and shut your trap."

*snip*

Personally I don't care about housing in games at all (even in Skyrim when mods are all free of charge and 20 times better than this garbage), but I truly cannot understand how people would pay full price for this terrible excuse for an asset flip. I am terrible at house building, and I could have made this in an afternoon of copy/pasting.

*snip*

TheImperfect

I understand everyone has their opinion but mine is that the house is great and made to be like the original home in Skyrim, with all new furnishings. I'm very happy it's avaialable both ways and I feel that the housing community has been listened to because of its limits and rooms. I personally love both types of houses, the notable places and smaller places for different reasons. I think more features will probably be added over time. I haven't tried WOW's garrisons because I stopped playing just prior but they didn't inspire me at the time but I'll look into them and maybe if there's good ideas to be had why not? I get the feeling it's a very differen't kind of home though.

Dahveed

malchior wrote: »

Why bother coming here? These 2 paragraphs basically show that you have contradicted yourself. To voice such a stance via a forum thread in the Housing forums...come one whom are you kidding? Yourself really.

Dahveed wrote: »

Yeah, I generally don't agree with the current generation's constant negativity surrounding gaming products. We are extremely spoiled with our entertainment products, and my philosophy has always generally been, "if you don't like it, vote with your wallet and shut your trap."

*snip*

Personally I don't care about housing in games at all (even in Skyrim when mods are all free of charge and 20 times better than this garbage), but I truly cannot understand how people would pay full price for this terrible excuse for an asset flip. I am terrible at house building, and I could have made this in an afternoon of copy/pasting.

*snip*

I posted this in the general forums and this got moved.

I was genuinely curious if this was considered the standard quality of houses by the player base and was acceptable, because housing is something that intrigues me in this game and I've always thought to myself, "one day I'll do it for realzies" after doing the intro quests way back in the day.

But every time a new house is on the market it is just absurdly overpriced and/or boring. No truly unique assets that you can't find elsewhere in the game, and IMO no real gaming systems implemented that can't already be found in the cities already (ie crafting and such).

I know it's just an RP thing, in my TES5 playthrough I roleplay with Helgen Keep as my base even though it doesn't confer gameplay advantages... But that mod (Helgen Reborn) has an amazing quest line with fantastic voice acting, its own lore and backstory, and a very interesting way to progress and customize the fort, and ends up giving you followers and new items etc. Not to mention the many things I'm probably forgetting, all done by some dude in his pyjamas, for free.

Then I contrast this with ESO's new house. Just regular assets, maybe some retextures (they all look bland to samey to me), no new gameplay elements, no quests, no dialogue, no lore or backstory (other than the description blurb), and all for the price of a fully developed AAA game that takes YEARS to make.

I'm truly wondering if the player base just accepts this and pays for it on a regular basis, because if that is the case, then I guess I can never really look forward to anything truly unique or interesting in terms of gameplay or questing... Just "here's another absurdly overpriced house that you can customize".

Again I'd be fine with this if it were more easily obtainable, or perhaps (even better) obtainable through a difficult/time consuming quest chain with voice acting and objectives, to make it feel like my character actually earned it, hence giving it real value and not just artificial monetary value.

I'll repeat that I'm not usually a negative person, I don't generally like complaining just for its own sake. But this aspect of the game is just so puzzling to me... how something so underwhelming can be so popular as to warrant its continuation in its current form.

Sixty. Dollars. For copy/pasted assets that are already in the game, with no quests, dialogue, gameplay features, advantages, lore, books, backstory, NOTHING, just a bunch of pixels. I find it baffling how housing enthusiasts are consistently ok with this.

Tigerseye

Well, if you don't like it...

Tigerseye

Seriously, though, it's not really $60 for most people, as most housing people have ESO+.

So, at least some of it is probably bought with the Crowns from that, if they buy it with Crowns at all and/or they buy Crowns on sale, when they do buy them.

Or they will buy with gold and 1m gold isn't really that much, once you have been playing a while.

It's not as good as the Alinor Townhouse, in terms of looks, space and layout, but it's not bad.

The details on the stonework are nice, for example.

The furniture and paintings are from the new chapter.

They look old, as that is the style.

You can always use other furnishings, instead.

Although I would also like more functionality, I wouldn't like ESO housing to be like WoW garrisons.

Which, the last time I played anyway (in WoD), were only about functionality and were not like real homes, at all.

Chryseia

If you don't like the houses they provide, you can always make your own custom structures or fully reskin existing structures. It would make it unique. Plus cobbling is fun.

^^all are either full custom builds or full reskins that entirely transform the original property. None of them actually show the original homes actually, except some of the mud in the treehouse shot is the exterior walls of the original house.

and if you dont like the furniture, well, you can make your own as well:

^^is not a decor in the game, but 14 decors and 2 undaunted busts put together to make one piano. You can do this for pretty much anything you want to make - its a lot of fun.

So... no, I am not disappointed generally with the housing options, so long as I am given a sufficient ceiling height to work with. I'm just going to put my own stamp on it anyways.

illutian

Eh, overall, ESO's housing is pretty...pathetic. Mostly because of the cost.

If I was them, I'd throw in some crates. To the tune of ~50% of the house's cost is "covered" by crates. So Proudspire is something like 6k Crowns; I'd also give those purchasing via the Crown Store, 8 Gloomspore Crates [or what ever crate is current].

Historically, humans are more prone to buy something if they think they're getting a deal: Buy One, Get One; Buy One, Get X-amount off Another.


And just to remind everyone, Crowns work out to be about $0.01 USD each. So...$60 for a house.

Elsonso

I was touring the furnished version of Proudspire. I admit that I am not a housing person on here, but is it normal for the chairs and benches to be just for looks, no option to sit?

Tigerseye

Elsonso wrote: »

I was touring the furnished version of Proudspire. I admit that I am not a housing person on here, but is it normal for the chairs and benches to be just for looks, no option to sit?

Once you own the house you can sit on the chairs/benches.

You can't sleep in the beds unless you do the /sleep emote, though and you can't even do that on the canopy style beds.

MornaBaine

I actually like the style of Proudspire but completely agree about the [Snip] asset copy/pasta that is the hallmark of virtually ALL housing in this game. And the vampire manor? Yeah those rooms are pretty but the floorplan/layout was obviously done by someone who has never looked at a single architectural floorplan/layout in their entire life. [Snip]

[Edited for bashing/inappropriate content]

Dojohoda

It is on the bland side, but it has a nice layout and doesn't have dirt, decay, or rubble; I like it. I'm glad it can be purchased with gold, which is what I used to buy it.

Elsonso wrote: »

I was touring the furnished version of Proudspire. I admit that I am not a housing person on here, but is it normal for the chairs and benches to be just for looks, no option to sit?

In Preview one cannot sit on chairs or benches. You can sit in it once you buy it.

TheStarfighter

Personaly my house (psijic villa I got free from an event) is like a museum of my achievements with my main.

I kept the books that I like from the different zone, I 've got the main story furniture and the achievement zone furniture, and with the new antiquities a lot of knick knack around my favorite subject in the lore.

For me like ni real life when you enter my home you know what I've done in my life here in my playtime since 2015.

My Psijic Villa is full of memory and adventure

For the price of the furniture or the house when you are in a Trade guild and play the game to have things to sell it's not so complicate but yes you have to play a certain time to have something to sell. it's not a project (decorating a house fully) that you can do in 1 day, I collect and place everything since i have this house and it's always changing a bit, and evolving.

xaraan

My only issue with copy/paste method of building homes is that there are so many locked homes in the world. If you are going to use this method to build houses, then there shouldn't be any reason to lock off homes from access in the world.


As for player homes, I love proudspire and it brings me back to owning the home in Skyrim. I don't have a 1:1 comparison of it in my head b/c it's been a few years, but if there are things off about it, I didn't really notice it.

Tigerseye

With the whistling wind soundtrack and the stone walls, it's quite a struggle to decorate, with the provided (or not provided, in some cases!) furniture, without it looking (and feeling) quite cold and bleak.

You really need to ditch the greyish blue rugs and the silver framed paintings (the latter of which look great on the ground floor of the Alinor townhouse, by the way) and instead, add some warmer, softer and/or gentler colours.

Meaning, in my case at least, the middle floor is is going to end up looking suspiciously like a cross between my Alinor Townhouse and Hew's Bane Palace, with Khajiit sofas, yet again.

We really could have done with some warm and cozy-looking, neutral coloured, curtains, tapestries, rugs and upholstered sofas.