Feedback for the housing feature and update (poll)

Parasaurolophus

Yes

You guys want a lot from a simple and casual system for decorating a space. This is not the Sims or even Minecraft. I’m very excited and will visit houses from the list. Thanks ZoS.

Syldras

No

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

You guys want a lot from a simple and casual system for decorating a space. This is not the Sims or even Minecraft. I’m very excited and will visit houses from the list. Thanks ZoS.

You can't even search for a furniture piece's name at the crafting stations. I will never get why we don't have this yet, as it's certainly not more complex than the search bar in your inventory or at guild traders.

Spiritrush

I am not a housing enthusiast, but I do think Cardinal and the housing team are gifted and that the housing system is one of (if not) the best MMOs have to offer - but the clear feedback from housing enthusiasts here points to a series of real QoL requests (i.e. armor racks, crafting station improvements, etc.) that could/should have been at least partially addressed in one way or another, even if only notionally to acknowledge clear QoL requests. As someone who is not a housing enthusiast (but has admired the efforts of guildmates), I will use and enjoy this system.

I do like a number of the QoL updates such as mount viewing and gear curation (wasn't clear if this included Cyro monster set coffers). Looks like a decent expansion of IA as well.

What I found missing was the "bug fixes", where Matt had previously mentioned Q3 updates would focus on "quality of life" and "bug fixes" (referencing performance). To me, there remain a half-dozen long-standing bugs and performance issues that many players would love to hear about. Players I regularly interact with feel the same way. Examples:

• stuck in combat
• cannot effectively group queue for dungeons with tank or healer lead
• various dungeon bug fixes
• pvp server performance issues
• companion perk toggles

I didn't want to respond with another "No" as the stream was generally positive, but it did not quite scratch my ESO itch. That said, wishing the ESO team continued improvement and success with player communication and feedback, with each and every update. In this department, it appears ESO leadership still lags well behind the player feedback breakthroughs and corresponding support systems that eventually happened and have been more fully developed at FF14, POE, and WOW.

Some popular universal QoL requests still looking for include (even if some for ESO+ members only):

• ability to join more than 5 guilds
• ability to share pledge quests
• inventory expansion of any kind (housing chests, etc.), and
• universal survey storage/access in that elusive craft-bag side pocket Shalidor was working on...

P.S. I also thought Jessica did a good job of contributing to the stream at key moments, helping to keep an at times meandering stream on track.

Omegacron

No

SolidBeast wrote: »

The chat lit up with calls for a higher housing slots limit. They just ignored the longest-standing request ever. Extremely disappointing stream. But I would have been happy with any of the other ideas from chat: furnishing bag, mannequins in houses, putting alts as houseguests, having an option to have multiple builds for the same house, etc. etc. Literally anything other than this.

Ditto. The two new houses are nice, but those could've been added at any time. As for the big new feature, we were expecting something... I dunno... useful.

shadyjane62

No

It keeps occurring to me that this is the point I left WoW. And Rift and GW2 and Swtor ...

Gating things that should be available to casuals. Putting things people don't want to do in endeavors or locking it behind a dlc we don't have.

I looked today at all the things they have added in last 4 years and I do very little of them.

I don't chase leads for mythics or play that stupid card game in HI. I don't use companions and after doing the Scribing quest on two chars I don't think I'll use that skill much. I made one and all I experienced was regret at wasting the inks.

I succumbed to the hype and bought Gold Road against my better judgement.

I surely wished I had listened to myself as I fine most of Gold Road lacking substance.

MarioSMB

No

LOL no. Advertised as the most anticipated improvement to housing, and it has nothing to do with actual housing.

tastyleaf

Unsure yet

I'll start with the positive: Having a way to publicly list a home in a catalogue is a great idea, and I've used add-ons for that! The tagging system is essential to be able to see different styles. I like seeing what other people come up with. At least we are getting something new for Infinite Archive, which was starting to feel a bit repetitive.

HOWEVER, I have a huge issue with the ability to 'upvote' homes, especially considering you can see who visits your house. If I visit a house, and don't upvote it, now that player knows and could troll/false report/block me just for that. Or worse, if it's someone with a social media following, they can get their followers to go after people (even if it's unintentional on their part, fans can be crazy).

For actual contests, if you had the ability for a guild to let people submit homes to a separate temporary list that might be okay. Still easy to abuse with social media/fans though. But in general I see the voting part being abused way too easily.

As it stands, as much as I love doing housing, unless they remove the 'upvoting' part, I am not willing to risk using it and being forced to upvote EVERY house I look at for fear of being mass false-reported. This was my favorite aspect of ESO, and now I feel like I can't share it anymore without risking my account.

Also, really sad that the new Alinor style house is only a Medium, when they said players were asking for medium homes I got the shocked pikachu face. Players (from what I have seen) want medium homes in terms of the actual in game area, but with the higher item limit. Instead they gave us the right sized home physically with the smaller item limit, which feels... bad. Especially because that home would have been a new favorite, but now with the 'upvoting' being implemented and the low item limit, I am feeling discouraged about where the housing system is headed. I've played games with housing voting systems, and I have yet to see one that didn't end up misused and players quitting over it.

Ayalockheart

No

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

You guys want a lot from a simple and casual system for decorating a space. This is not the Sims or even Minecraft. I’m very excited and will visit houses from the list. Thanks ZoS.

Considering that most other games with decoration features have significant limitations, requiring glitches and bugs to achieve desired results, ESO stands out with the most versatile and user-friendly housing and decorating system available. These aspects alone make it superior to Sims 4 in terms of decoration, creation, and freedom, although I don't think this is a fair comparison to make since, game-wise, they are two completely different approaches.

But this isn't the point of the discussion, is it? If they had said from the start that they would add a posting houses feature and not hyped it for a long time as if they were up to something really important and that we had never seen before, then we wouldn't be here. It seems that's exactly what they did for FO76, though.

What’s more troubling is the lack of transparency amidst all the hype and the reduced support for the game. Despite paying the same amount, we are now receiving significantly less substantial content. It feels as though the developers are more focused on generating hype rather than delivering meaningful improvements. The new tool, while potentially useful, appears poorly timed and confirms the community's concerns about dwindling support and content. Instead of investing resources in genuinely enhancing the game and creating new content, efforts seem to be diverted to marketing strategies and superficial features, such as re-skins and functionalities that addons already provide. It surely justifies why we feel neglected and so frustrated with it.

Dragonnord

No

It was advertised as a new system.

How is just posting your house in a search tab a system?
 

BetweenMidgets

Unsure yet

Ayalockheart wrote: »

The new tool, while potentially useful, appears poorly timed and confirms the community's concerns about dwindling support and content. Instead of investing resources in genuinely enhancing the game and creating new content, efforts seem to be diverted to marketing strategies and superficial features, such as re-skins and functionalities that addons already provide. It surely justifies why we feel neglected and so frustrated with it.

I think @Ayalockheart said it very well here.

As others have pointed out, this has been announced as a housing "feature," but it is really just a QOL update. And as far as the QOL update goes, it's primary focus are the housing enthusiasts on consoles. It is no surprise that those of us on PC (who have used Cardinal's awesome EHT addon for years at this point) are so let down.

I voted "unsure" because I am glad that the console players are getting to be able to have this "feature". But ultimately this doesn't feel like a win for the housing community, just the console housing community.

Very disappointed.

wullger

No

Telos_Tim wrote: »

wullger wrote: »

For a large chunk of the playerbase, I think we'd all really like to stop being held back by the console limitations, both in furnishing counts and the awful, awful base and early game textures.

^Misinformation and Bait, yet comments like these never seem to be taken down.

ESO is held back by its engine first and foremost. Games with thousands of explosions and map destruction with bullet tracing and fully customized characters can be played on an original Xbox One and they work perfectly fine. Zero crashing. Zero stuttering. Yet you can’t even walk around in a solo instance on ESO without your game dropping to 20-30fps on those consoles.

Funny enough, PCs of a lower spec than the oldest gen of consoles are still supported. If ZOS wanted to increase furnishing counts, or add better textures, they have both the tools and funding to do so… but they won’t.

Raising the floor on the specs required to play would cut off far more ESO players on PC than console players.

What it really boils down to is an upper management decision, and whether they want to invest the resources to “Fortnite” ESO.

It's not bait, I'm inferring based on this post and prior discussions over the years:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/512076/february-2020-furnishing-limit-status-update

"One of the most frequent requests we receive in regards to housing is the desire to increase the furnishing cap. While we have touched on this before, we just wanted to reiterate that the upper-most furnishing limits are in place to avoid serious performance issues. 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.

That being said, improving performance is not a magic bullet solution for raising the furnishing cap in houses. “Performance” is a blanket term that encompasses frame rate, stability, memory usage, and other metrics related to how the game runs. Right now, setups that hit the minimum specifications can still struggle with homes that are fully decorated with relatively high impact furnishings."

There's no willful misinformation here, just drawing conclusions. Based on their specs and age, I assume (perhaps wrongly so) that the old gen consoles are holding things back. Age alone isn't enough to determine if a system can handle the load or not, but you have to figure the older APUs on a console, less overall RAM, and slower core speeds probably has quite an impact.

old_scopie1945

Unsure yet

As I enjoy housing it might be interesting, but it certainly isn't what I was hoping for. There is many more interesting and useful things that developer time could have been used on what folk wanted. It leaves me with the feeling that ZOS has dropped the ball yet again.

Vrienda

No

I don't like housing in MMO's at all personally. Gz for the housing folks but it's never been for me, kind of a dead update. At most I like to decorate a tiny inn room every now and then but the furnishing limits kinda kill that joy quick. What the heck is a 'special furnishing' anyway and why can I only have one or two?

Ulvich

No

I plan to turn this off and never look back.

Jimbru

No

wullger wrote: »

Telos_Tim wrote: »

wullger wrote: »

For a large chunk of the playerbase, I think we'd all really like to stop being held back by the console limitations, both in furnishing counts and the awful, awful base and early game textures.

^Misinformation and Bait, yet comments like these never seem to be taken down.

ESO is held back by its engine first and foremost. Games with thousands of explosions and map destruction with bullet tracing and fully customized characters can be played on an original Xbox One and they work perfectly fine. Zero crashing. Zero stuttering. Yet you can’t even walk around in a solo instance on ESO without your game dropping to 20-30fps on those consoles.

Funny enough, PCs of a lower spec than the oldest gen of consoles are still supported. If ZOS wanted to increase furnishing counts, or add better textures, they have both the tools and funding to do so… but they won’t.

Raising the floor on the specs required to play would cut off far more ESO players on PC than console players.

What it really boils down to is an upper management decision, and whether they want to invest the resources to “Fortnite” ESO.

It's not bait, I'm inferring based on this post and prior discussions over the years:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/512076/february-2020-furnishing-limit-status-update

"One of the most frequent requests we receive in regards to housing is the desire to increase the furnishing cap. While we have touched on this before, we just wanted to reiterate that the upper-most furnishing limits are in place to avoid serious performance issues. 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.

That being said, improving performance is not a magic bullet solution for raising the furnishing cap in houses. “Performance” is a blanket term that encompasses frame rate, stability, memory usage, and other metrics related to how the game runs. Right now, setups that hit the minimum specifications can still struggle with homes that are fully decorated with relatively high impact furnishings."

There's no willful misinformation here, just drawing conclusions. Based on their specs and age, I assume (perhaps wrongly so) that the old gen consoles are holding things back. Age alone isn't enough to determine if a system can handle the load or not, but you have to figure the older APUs on a console, less overall RAM, and slower core speeds probably has quite an impact.

I've played or tested most of the major MMOs and many minor ones over the years. I've seen too many times when a company said "We can't do that" with or without reasons, then turn around later and do exactly what they said they couldn't do, to believe that ZOS CAN'T change the furnishing limits. It's not that they can't; they just don't want to.

At the very least, let's talk inn rooms, the house that every player has. I find that I can usually fit all the major furnishings and enough detail to make it cozy within 30 items, at least in the normal sized rooms. But I'm always left feeling like I wish I had just a few more items to make it really complete. It shouldn't be that big a deal to take inn rooms from 15/30 to 20/40 items, or even 30/60. Especially since the inn rooms in Necrom and Gold Road are bigger than some of the 100-item staple houses and it's hard to visually fill them with only 30 items.

ajkb78

No

No. Thoroughly underwhelming. I mean, it's a nice-to-have, and I'm not sorry it's being added, but... That's it?! There are so many great suggestions that have been made in regard to housing over the years, on this very forum, and the most exciting thing that gets added for an entire quarterly update the major focus of which is supposedly housing and QOL is... house tours? Especially given we already have the ability to share links to non-primary houses this feels like it should have been almost trivial to add.

If it was a bonus feature alongside a story zone or a couple of dungeons, it would be fine. As one of the significant selling points... Ugh.

What about furnishing limits? What about alts as house guests? What about adding emotes for house guests? What about allowing grouped interactables to toggle each other so we can actually use those clockwork switches? What about an equivalent to the time of day control but for weather, so we can set whether it's raining or sunny? Improvements to house storage? What about the ability to have housing outfit slots so you can decorate the same house multiple ways? Possibility to add (rarely-spawning) harvesting nodes in housing, for a bit of ambience? I could go on. Pretty much all these have been suggested on the forum, many repeatedly. Even (here's a thought for the future) a scribing altar furnishing would have been better.

Yes, perhaps some of these things are a bit harder to code than a glorified list of URLs, but any of them would have been better, and a few of them bundled together would have felt actually worthwhile.

Elvenheart

Unsure yet

hiyde wrote: »

To quote that car insurance commercial, that's not how any of this works.

This is so funny. I loved that commercial too! Thank you for the voice of reason 😂

TaSheen

No

Ulvich wrote: »

I plan to turn this off and never look back.

Yep.

Dojohoda

Unsure yet

The home list for visiting seems especially nice for console housing enthusiasts. I don't know how it works though.

The Five Companions house is lovely. I think the structure needs a back door.

The new arenas for the infinite archive looks good and there are more class sets added. I haven't looked at those yet.

For some unknown reason I thought we might get an interactive ladder.

Araneae6537

Unsure yet

WolfCombatPet wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

Not my thing, inviting even the people I know to my houses. CERTAINLY NOT opening them up to randos. And the rating "feature" is just going to be griefing in a different direction.

I played Rift.

Rating houses was never fun for anyone.

Players would invite others to tour their house and then EXPECT an upvote.

Do ESO devs know how much drama happened in Rift because voting brought forth a bunch of tension/drama to its players???

Why would they add a feature that players HATED in another MMO to ESO?

But is it implemented similarly in ESO to cause concern? From what I’ve been hearing, players won’t be able to tell if or who someone upvoted their house.

I hear the concerns, but let’s judge how it’s actually implemented in ESO now that it’s up on the PTS.

Araneae6537

Unsure yet

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

You guys want a lot from a simple and casual system for decorating a space. This is not the Sims or even Minecraft. I’m very excited and will visit houses from the list. Thanks ZoS.

Well why not? I’m not interested in the type of housing that be built in those games even if I otherwise liked them (so not for me).

My opinion on this feature has been shifting, trying to see all the perspectives as much as I can. It is a good additional feature, like the armory, but wasn’t that added at the same time as a DLC? I think it reasonable to expect more substantial QoL updates and/or new features when it’s taking the place of two new dungeons. I didn’t have unrealistic hopes of furnishing slots or furnishing bags, as awesome as either would be, but something more… it could have paired well with weather control or setting the point of entry to your house and those set up the scene, the mood, the story you want to tell.

As far s expectations, interestingly, another MMORPG is introducing housing on their newest extension in August. To be fair, it looks like it will not have (at least not yet) many great features of ESO housing, including lot of plot to choose from or collect and own, but it will include features like displaying your weapons and armor (replicas I think, more to show off your collections and accomplishments than storage), the ability to resize furnishings, interact with mounts, and place up to thirty of your alts in your home instance.