Invisible Walls in Homes: Three Years (and Some Change) Later

Zurixadai

In advance, I guess let me say that I'm not trying to come off as antagonistic. A lot of tone is lost in writing; I promise I'm just trying to be inquisitive at best, and constructive at worst. The truth is, I like the Housing system a lot, and I'm always excited to see it improve and expand. I just want to try to bring one last bit of attention to the invisible walls inside the first-generation, Homestead-era homes, all the way back from Update 13.

My main house and 'guildhall' is Hunding's Palatial Hall, and has been since the launch of Homestead. It's a house that is mostly free of invisible walls, which is one of the major reasons why I chose it. There are, obviously, invisible walls blocking me from the island out there, or from entering orbit straight above me--but those, I understand. You don't want me swimming all the way into the deep dark void of Oblivion all the way from Stros M'Kai. Cool, I get it.

It's the interiors, though, that kill me. The upper portions of the house, those 'wells' at the top, are all plagued with invisible walls cramping everything into first person and making it obnoxious to do anything there. Disappointing, and maybe a bit frustrating because there's no indication that these exist before buying the house, but ultimately, it wasn't (and isn't) the biggest issue facing the game and it was very little of the house's overall area, so, fine. And eventually, I built myself a loft bedroom or two up there anyway.

Fast forward a bit, though. I finally got my fiance into the game (hooray), and she took to Housing pretty quickly. When it came time to pick out a house for herself, though, she discovered the same thing I did. "Wow, you just can't build upward in this game, can you?" (I let her play around on PTS to help with the decision, because it's the only way to accurately gauge these interior invisible walls that the game otherwise never alerts you to until you've already spent the money). It's way more than just Hunding's; she likes a lot of the Breton style homes from Homestead, and a great many of them have the same problem: can't build upward. No loft bedrooms, no little storage attics, etc. She's disheartened, I'm apologetic, nobody wins.

Me, I like Redguard architecture (hence, Hunding's). And I've said since Homstead's release, "If they fix Twin Arches, I will instantly buy it." And every once in a while, I check online to see if anyone else has asked about it, and sure enough, Twin Arches still has the invisible walls, inside and outside, blocking off a solid and sizable portion of the house. Can't get to the roof on the outside, can't build up into that raised area on the inside, etc. I'm glad I check before buying, and I'm glad I know to check for her before buying, because otherwise, somebody has gotten their heart set on a loft-study-area and then wasted Crowns.

So, my question is: why leave them like this, and for so long? Is there any chance we can finally get a fix for them? We've seen firsthand that you have the power to edit the invisible walls after-the-fact--it was done with Potentate's Retreat, at the very least, to make the hidden cave a bit more explorable. These homes, by contrast, have spent nearly four years in a state that I have to warn friends about, if they're newcomers to the game. And I can't imagine that asking for a loft bedroom or a roof garden in Twin Arches, or an attic/raised storage area inside Gardner House, is some monumental request.

But then, hey, maybe it is, in which case, having that knowledge wouldn't be so bad. Maybe the Homestead-era houses were built by a different team, or older assets, or whatever, and editing them is just innately more difficult by virtue of that--I can't know, but knowing would absolutely be alright.

Again, thanks a ton for the all the work you guys do on the Housing system. I love it, it's great, I'm just trying to figure out why I keep bumping my head on invisible ceilings in older homes, and if, maybe, I can stop doing that. And it'd mean the world if the missus could avoid it entirely.

Cireous

There is a little attic area in Autumn's Gate that I am desperately trying to get up to, but I keep banging my head on an invisible wall. Not fair. I got ideas for that tiny crawl space

InaMoonlight

Point well made, and I wholeheartedly agree, ALL those little attic rooms we could have made breaks my heart, and there is more then one house I wont attempt to decorate again until its fixed, cause it was such a heartbreaker the first time around lol

Hearhear!

ZoS Please spend a little time on shaving the invis walls as much as possible off the existing houses, in particular up near the roof?

katanagirl1

That invisible wall on the east side of Earthtear that prevents accessing the nice platform area near the water could open up a nice useable area if removed.

anadandy

I wholeheartedly agree, especially about Twin Arches. Rooftop decor is a staple.of Redguard architecture, that low skybox kills me.

frompa

We need a serious QOL update to housing in general. Invisible walls are definitely in there.

Ellimist_Entreri

Invisible walls have been a plague in ESO since the start - open world spaces with invisible walls that force you to go around perfectly climbable rocks, walls or even just flat terrain - just to waste an extra 30 seconds of your time. I absolutely feel like I have been trolled every time I walk into one in the middle of a zone.

That the issue is so bad in housing is disheartening, though having only worked with the Antiquarian's Alpine Gallery it wasn't as noticeable an issue for me. It certainly doesn't make sense nor is it fair to the consumer to block off entire portions of a house that players pay for without any sort of visible warning that they wouldn't be able to access or use that space prior to purchase.

It seems the only redeeming part of this is that you can in theory test your builds on PTS prior to purchasing the location in the Live game, however that does nothing to remedy the ongoing issue of invisible walls where they should not be.

Zurixadai

Yeah, it does seem to affect the older houses more than the newer ones, which is what brought me here to begin with.

Like I said originally, it might be that the initial houses from Homestead were built by an older team, or older assets, or some such. Maybe they're just a bigger pain to edit, I've got no idea. I would just love a response, I suppose.

I'm not the first person to bring this up, at all, but I've never really seen it addressed from their end. Some kind of, "Hey, we've seen this and we're working on it," or "Sorry, it's just to difficult too edit," would be nice.

Again, not in an antagonistic way. Just trying to help and/or spend my money wisely.

Araneae6537

I am absolutely astonished to hear of invisible walls WITHIN a house!!! I would have demanded a refund if I’d run into that but I guess that so far I have been fortunate in my choices. I wish that the invisible walls around the Gornir Estate were moved back just a bit as there’s a nice ledge in the back that I’d love to build on and I can see no reason why an invisible wall is needed in the middle of the ledge rather than letting it be the cliff wall itself. But that is at least something at the edge of the property, a relatively small disappointment and not a deal breaker like a wall within the property itself as you describe would be! I really hope that ZOS can and will fix those invisible walls!

Ellimist_Entreri

Araneae6537 wrote: »

I am absolutely astonished to hear of invisible walls WITHIN a house!!! I would have demanded a refund if I’d run into that but I guess that so far I have been fortunate in my choices. I wish that the invisible walls around the Gornir Estate were moved back just a bit as there’s a nice ledge in the back that I’d love to build on and I can see no reason why an invisible wall is needed in the middle of the ledge rather than letting it be the cliff wall itself. But that is at least something at the edge of the property, a relatively small disappointment and not a deal breaker like a wall within the property itself as you describe would be! I really hope that ZOS can and will fix those invisible walls!

The case you mentioned sounds like an instance of a single large blocking volume having been placed over that entire edge of the zone which results in the noticeable cutoff you mentioned, rather that multiple individually placed and scaled blocking volumes at the cliff face itself which would keep the player within intended bounds while allowing for a more immersive experience overall.

Danikat

Zurixadai wrote: »

Yeah, it does seem to affect the older houses more than the newer ones, which is what brought me here to begin with.

Like I said originally, it might be that the initial houses from Homestead were built by an older team, or older assets, or some such. Maybe they're just a bigger pain to edit, I've got no idea. I would just love a response, I suppose.

I'm not the first person to bring this up, at all, but I've never really seen it addressed from their end. Some kind of, "Hey, we've seen this and we're working on it," or "Sorry, it's just to difficult too edit," would be nice.

Again, not in an antagonistic way. Just trying to help and/or spend my money wisely.

As far as I know they've never said anything about it, but I get the impression that originally ZOS had much more limited ideas for housing than some players and a lot of what we wanted to do caught them by surprise.

Originally we had a good selection of sizes, locations and racial themes for houses but they all looked like houses and the vast majority of furnishings were...well, furniture. When Homestead first launched we had no walls, floors, stairs, doors etc. and not much in the way of archways, pillars and things. Also several large furnishings were hollow on the bottom or otherwise didn't work turned upside down/backwards, again implying that was never intended.

I think they expected players to treat housing like having a rental place in real life - furnish and decorate it to make it look like somewhere your character would live but leave the structure unchanged. I don't think they expected anyone to try to make them look like anything other than houses, or to attempt major projects like making original buildings, ships, dragons, steampunk airships etc. or even to try relatively minor remodelling like adding additional floors or stairs.

I suspect the invisible walls are a result of the same thinking - you can't get to these areas without building a way up/across so ZOS probably thought it doesn't matter because they didn't expect anyone to do that.

Since Homestead was released they have gotten a lot better at accommodating what players want to do - adding more of a variety of 'homes' (caves, meadows, daedric pocket realms etc.), more furnishings that can be used for building original structures and adding things like house guests. But for some reason they haven't fixed the invisible walls in the original homes.

My best guess is either they still don't consider it important or the people who usually work on housing don't have the skills/software/permissions to do that so they'd have to convince management it's important enough to take someone from another team for a while to make the changes.

Zurixadai

@Danikat

That is sort of the impression I get, as well. As a community, we've got, uh, freer spirits than I think they anticipated. Haha.

That in mind, though, I think housing has come a long way. Precision editing, houseguests, everything; I love it. It's an infinitely better experience now, and I'm excited to see how far they'll take it.

But all of that brings me back around to, "I would love to understand why the original homes can't be five percent better."

michelmephit

You still have invisible walls (or kill levels) in the damnest of places. There's the valley below Hunter's Glade that you cannot build in because if you go too low, you instantly die. Why do they block that off? It makes no sense to me.

Starbridge84

I would have to agree. If we buy a house and we have a room with a large vaulted ceiling, let us use that space or don't give it to us at all. Ebonheart Chateau, on the top level had a nice roomy space where you can only use maybe 1/3 of the space above your head. Once you place an item past the invisible wall/ceiling, you can't grab it/use it. Kinda of annoying since I wanted to build a small ramp up to it and use it for storage.

TeruKisuke

PSA: You can probe for invisible walls with a staff or bow. If the arrow stops, or the staff projectile animation is abruptly cut off without a little explodey flourish, it's likely you have a surface. So you can use this to check houses before you buy them as long as what you want to check is in reach.

With that said, the right platform in Earthtear is heartbreaking, but honestly what breaks my heart more is the view of the water and platform+tower just past the invisible wall divider. I want to run around outside there and build things.

Edit: Also, the tops of waterfalls. Why are they always inaccessible? I want to build overlooking one, not under one, but this has plagued new homes too.

katanagirl1

I agree about Earthtear @TeruKisuke and have mentioned it previously. It would be great to be able to use that platform area.

Maya_Nur

I'm going to buy an Agony's Ascent and it has two borders slicing plateaus at the sides of the bridge, and it is supposed to be an inner space of the fortress... Home is nearly perfect, and if not having this it could be a masterpiece!

NotaDaedraWorshipper

I find it extra dumb when these invisible walls are in an interior. Like the Hammerdeath Bungalow you will hit a wall before reaching the ceiling! I wanted to make some storage there.

TelvanniWizard

Tel Galen´s main room has lots of very inconvenient and obnoxious invisible walls too!

Araneae6537

TelvanniWizard wrote: »

Tel Galen´s main room has lots of very inconvenient and obnoxious invisible walls too!

Argh! Why can’t they move these back to match the architecture, cliff wall, etc. as appropriate??? It doesn’t remove any feature for anyone who’s already bought the property! I was very glad that they fixed the less-than-solid floor in one part of Varlaisvea after I bought it! It had really bothered me and I was wasting furnishing slots to “fix” it myself.

Zurixadai

Whoa, this thread sort of came back. Hey, everyone. Not sure what we're all doing back here a year-ish later, but I'm cool with it.

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

I find it extra dumb when these invisible walls are in an interior. Like the Hammerdeath Bungalow you will hit a wall before reaching the ceiling! I wanted to make some storage there.

This basically nails it. For anyone that's curious, the Missus just ended up using the Antiquarian home, because it has good collision. It wasn't the scale she wanted (she wanted one of the smaller ones), but all of her initial choices had weird invisible walls/ceilings on the interior.

To reiterate myself from a year ago: they've shown that they can edit houses post-launch, but tend to avoid the early houses that first came out with Homestead. I guess I'd just like to see that addressed, to know if something like the inaccessible upper portion of Twin Arches is what they'd consider "working as intended."

Araneae6537

Zurixadai wrote: »

Whoa, this thread sort of came back. Hey, everyone. Not sure what we're all doing back here a year-ish later, but I'm cool with it.

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

I find it extra dumb when these invisible walls are in an interior. Like the Hammerdeath Bungalow you will hit a wall before reaching the ceiling! I wanted to make some storage there.

This basically nails it. For anyone that's curious, the Missus just ended up using the Antiquarian home, because it has good collision. It wasn't the scale she wanted (she wanted one of the smaller ones), but all of her initial choices had weird invisible walls/ceilings on the interior.

To reiterate myself from a year ago: they've shown that they can edit houses post-launch, but tend to avoid the early houses that first came out with Homestead. I guess I'd just like to see that addressed, to know if something like the inaccessible upper portion of Twin Arches is what they'd consider "working as intended."

Yes, well, it’s past time it was addressed! I think ZOS has really stepped up their housing game and that’s great! I wouldn’t request textures or layouts in old houses be changed, however they look and regardless of mismatches between exterior and interior, because of course players got the houses as they are now. But fixing these misplaced invisible walls would hurt no one and give everyone more options! As much as I love the new houses, there are many older ones that are great but could be sooo much better with just this change! Let us build those lofts, please, ZOS! 🥺

ZOS_Icy

Greetings,

We have closed this topic as it was originally created in October 2020. In many cases, it's better to create a new thread on a topic that you want to discuss as opposed to bumping one that is rather old.

Thank you for your understanding