Please do NOT include the vote/recommend aspect to Home Tours

Hugie

I hope some ESO famous person posts a Fair Winds house named "Boaty McBoatface" and gets all their lemming followers to recommend them to 10,000 recommends on day 1

katanagirl1

liliub17_ESO wrote: »

Nope. Taking an in-game activity - housing - and adding such a feature as a 'leaderboard' or 'vote up/down' makes NO SENSE. Why?

The FAR better, more positive, QoL change would be simply to allow people to openly visit or not - as allowed by the home's owner via permissions - without the need for a mod. Period. If it's competition the player wants, there are always fun ones hosted by the community they could enter. Heck, even I have dipped my toes in that pond!

There are some mind-blowing builds out there. There are also more humble builds which are just as spectacular, just less showy. My own builds fall on the humble end of things.

I would love to be able to see some of those mind-blowing houses of which I am not aware. I am not in any housing guilds because of an extremely unpleasant experience in the one I did join and quickly left. That is why I like this idea. If you’re not part of a housing guild then you have no visibility into what is being created.

I hope this system can work just with the game community involved in it. I guess I wish that someone from ZOS was also involved for impartiality. It would be cool to log in and see some featured houses in the announcements banner that could be visited. I haven’t seen anything about it other than what has been posted here but will see when it goes live.

EDIt: typo

katanagirl1

TheImperfect wrote: »

I feel like everyone should not take it to heart if their builds don't get voted. Not everyone builds/furnishes for the same reason or intent. For examply my own homes will not likely be to most peoples taste. They are not overly showy, don't have a lot of flashy stuff generally and I don't usually (open to it and may / possibly have) build over houses into something new or cobble a lot. I like traditional homes my characters can live in. Most people visiting want to be awestruck by something amazing and I get that and that maybe what I create isn't quite that. I also like to keep it ESO generally and don't like bringing real world stuff in like for example Harry Potter etc.

When there are so many amazing quality homes, a lot of people are going to be overlooked. It doesn't mean their homes aren't good or valuable to the housing community because everyone likes something different and resonates with different styles. Some homes are more naturally awe-worthy but there are other factors like how much time and energy a person has etc (sometimes money although most homes can be done with in game resources).
I've liked some homes others would consider mundane because they have character or were cosy in some way etc.

I at least feel it should not be public if you liked or did not like a persons home and the person can see how many favorites they have but not who favorited them. That gives people the ability not to be pressured into rating homes.

Overall I really like this update and feel it will enhance the housing community for the better.

This is me entirely. I work with the gold and crowns that I have, not pouring my life savings into a virtual house that will someday disappear. I enjoy the process and decorate to suit myself. I do enjoy seeing what some master housing people can do though and this will help I think.

liliub17_ESO

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I would love to be able to see some of those mind-blowing houses of which I am not aware. I am not in any housing guilds because of an extremely unpleasant experience in the one I did join and quickly left. That is why I like this idea. If you’re not part of a housing guild then you have no visibility into what is being created.*

I hope this system can work just with the game community involved in it. I guess I wish that someone from ZOS was also involved for impartiality. It would be cool to log in and see some featured houses in the announcements banner that could be visited. I haven’t seen anything about it other than what has been posted here but will see when it goes live.

EDIt: typo

*emphasis mine

This statement is flawed. There IS visibility - if you look for it. I'm not part of a housing guild. While I do have the EHT mod (actually, don't even use most of its functions), I find the house builds through these forums or through Discord.

katanagirl1

liliub17_ESO wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I would love to be able to see some of those mind-blowing houses of which I am not aware. I am not in any housing guilds because of an extremely unpleasant experience in the one I did join and quickly left. That is why I like this idea. If you’re not part of a housing guild then you have no visibility into what is being created.*

I hope this system can work just with the game community involved in it. I guess I wish that someone from ZOS was also involved for impartiality. It would be cool to log in and see some featured houses in the announcements banner that could be visited. I haven’t seen anything about it other than what has been posted here but will see when it goes live.

EDIt: typo

*emphasis mine

This statement is flawed. There IS visibility - if you look for it. I'm not part of a housing guild. While I do have the EHT mod (actually, don't even use most of its functions), I find the house builds through these forums or through Discord.

If you are on PC then you have more options. I am on PS.

Elvenheart

Sadly, and I’m just guessing here, I bet creating the part of this “feature” that ranks houses by popularity was one of the hardest parts of the feature to get right so it won’t be taken out. I too have concerns about it being abused, the exact same concerns that have been voiced in this topic already.

tsaescishoeshiner

If people's feelings are hurt over their house not being recommended that is 100% their problem. I don't mean to sound unsympathetic, but not everything is a competition or a sign of your worth.

Tours should still be designed for positive social interactions, of course. The fact that it looks like they hide Recommendations is a good sign.

On PTS, I found two awesome houses and I "Recommended" them both. They didn't appear in the Recommended houses section--it was empty on PTS, so it must take time to populate. You get 10 Recommends per week.

I'll use Housing Tours for discovery, not for evaluation.

As long as Housing Tours isn't exploited to the point of not giving me cool new houses to see, I don't mind if it advantages people who invite more people to visit. Just mentioning in a guild that your house is posted will get it more votes than an otherwise similar house.

It doesn't need to be a perfect judge of a house's aesthetic--that's highly subjective, anyway. Optimizing it to be completely fair and objective would be impossible.

I hope they've designed the social elements of it well.

SilverBride

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

If people's feelings are hurt over their house not being recommended that is 100% their problem. I don't mean to sound unsympathetic, but not everything is a competition or a sign of your worth.

Maybe players don't want others to cheat buy buying votes for their houses. Those are the players with the wrong attitude.

PeacefulAnarchy

For info on how it seems to work on pts. I did not do thorough digging so it's possible I missed something.

You must be in the house to recommend it.
You can only recommend 10 houses per day.
There does not seem to be a way to see what you've recommended.
There is no visible global count of recommendations.
You can see how many people have recommended your own houses, but not who.

tsaescishoeshiner

SilverBride wrote: »

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

If people's feelings are hurt over their house not being recommended that is 100% their problem. I don't mean to sound unsympathetic, but not everything is a competition or a sign of your worth.

Maybe players don't want others to cheat buy buying votes for their houses. Those are the players with the wrong attitude.

That would definitely be weird of someone to do, I totally agree, but it's not likely to make a dent. Because there's very little reward for being Recommended and you can't verify whether someone Recommended your house or not. (Without making them stream it for you, which no one is going get people to do at large scale lol.) So I think it's unlikely.

And even if someone did, it shouldn't feel like something's being taken away or denied. You can't cheat at something that's not a competition. That's like worrying about someone whose picture on social media got more Likes because they probably got people to Like it for them. Not being kind to yourself.

If someone told me personally that they didn't think my house was worth one of their Recommends, that might feel bad if I know them or if I value their taste in what I make. Randoms who I don't even meet, not so much. Some people like to see a dozen Volendrungs in a house--that's not my style lol.

But feeling rejected over thinking that a house that "deserved" to be in Recommended didn't make it because of vote-buying is not really the fault of the system, on top of being unlikely at large scale. It's way more likely that housing guild influencers are going to keep "reminding" everyone of their Housing Tour listings lol. Or reward people for raffles or whatever with mass-Recommends. It seems like there's a lot of social media mindset in some parts of the housing community.

SilverBride

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Maybe players don't want others to cheat buy buying votes for their houses. Those are the players with the wrong attitude.

That would definitely be weird of someone to do...

There have already been posts of players stating they intend to sell votes.

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

But feeling rejected over thinking that a house that "deserved" to be in Recommended didn't make it because of vote-buying is not really the fault of the system...

No one said anything about feeling rejected. I have 35 houses listed as Open Houses on the EHT Community and do not miss not being "recommended". I share because I like being part of the housing community, not for praise.

The system is easily abused and I will not take part in it.

tsaescishoeshiner

SilverBride wrote: »

No one said anything about feeling rejected. I have 35 houses listed as Open Houses on the EHT Community and do not miss not being "recommended". I share because I like being part of the housing community, not for praise.

The system is easily abused and I will not take part in it.

Of course, there's no reason you should use Tours if you prefer EHT. It makes no difference to me whether people use one or the other.

And I didn't mean to make any assumptions about you individually, just taking a shot at what's so bad about the system being abused. Especially since I thought Housing Hubhas its own "trending" feature, and Housing Tours has a non-ranked Browse tab as well. Again, not that anyone has to like it.

SilverBride

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

...just taking a shot at what's so bad about the system being abused.

If the system is being openly abused then the recommendations are rendered invalid, so what is the point of even having them?

WitchyKiki

Looking forward to tours, i am not a part of sweaty housing guilds since they tend to be toxic, in my experience. This will give me another way to view other peoples work without having to rely on a guild roster.

meekmiko

Reminds me of the time a guild I was in had a Necromancer outfit/costume contest, with big gold prizes, shortly after the release of Elsweyr. There were only a handful of us that entered, but it didn't matter anyways. The guildmaster's girlfriend entered and the votes were rigged so that she would win. The guildmaster himself, all of her friends, and even her family all came outta the woodwork and voted for her and she won by an absolute landslide. I was a high ranking officer and still left that guild shortly after that contest because they all got extremely toxic, nasty, and petty after being called out on how unfair it was, lawl.

It'd be the same kind of thing with this housing recommendation thing. Friends, family, guild members, subscribers, followers, etc could just stuff the ballot box with votes for them. 🤷‍♀️

There's really no reason this feature is needed for the housing tours.

Rishikesa108

Currently in the EHT hub there is a column called "Trending".
This column, which I don't like at all, is almost the same thing as the future "recommendation". In fact, which houses end up in "Trending"? The ones just published... or the most visited and liked ones.
But do you know what some EHT users do? They incessantly continue to present their house as if it were just published, when in fact it is a years-old artwork, which perhaps I have already visited several months before, so as to continue to appear in this category. In fact I always see the same names inside.
When I publish a house in EHT... my name appears in Trending for a few hours... while some people stay there forever.
If this happens with a simple addon, I can imagine what will happen with the recommendations and ratings for housing introduced into the game itself!!!
Bad idea, in my humble opinion.

Hapexamendios

All I can say is that this is a feature I don't particularly care for and will not be participating in it.

JavaRen

Can somrone lay out an actual narrative of how this system could/would be (mis)used to hurt someone?

vsrs_au

JavaRen wrote: »

Can somrone lay out an actual narrative of how this system could/would be (ms)used to hurt someone?

Someone did... 2 posts above yours.

JavaRen

vsrs_au wrote: »

JavaRen wrote: »

Can somrone lay out an actual narrative of how this system could/would be (ms)used to hurt someone?

Someone did... 2 posts above yours.

I don't see an actual narrative, just vague worries.

SilverBride

JavaRen wrote: »

vsrs_au wrote: »

JavaRen wrote: »

Can somrone lay out an actual narrative of how this system could/would be (ms)used to hurt someone?

Someone did... 2 posts above yours.

I don't see an actual narrative, just vague worries.

Their post very clearly describes their concern.

There have been several posts in this thread describing how this system is very easily manipulated to falsely inflate someone's recommendations. And others are already planning to profit by selling their votes.

Does this actually hurt someone? If it prevents deserving players from receiving well earned recommendations, then yes it does. And it absolutely hurts the housing community as a whole.

Bo0137

When something has potential for trouble and amusement, don't break it; fix it.

I very much like the idea of scoring a house. If the owner wants to. It allows for better curation and improves the system in general.

Just make it so it won't undermine the houses/the players prestige.

You don't have to actually show the scores. But the algorithm has to know, in order to show players the good content.

Syldras

Every vote can be manipulated. I don't think anything can be done against it. There are no technical means against having people rally all their acquaintances, friends, partner, siblings, parents, grandparents and the family dog to vote for them - and I'm not sure if it would even be forbidden, because a vote is a vote, no matter for which reason. If you want to avoid that, the voting function had to be removed entirely.

If so, it would be useful to discuss how else the showcased homes could be selected. Randomly? Or should ZOS choose new ones each week? Should there be screenshot contests and the winners get their spot in the showcase?

Ph1p

Syldras wrote: »

Every vote can be manipulated. I don't think anything can be done against it. There are no technical means against having people rally all their acquaintances, friends, partner, siblings, parents, grandparents and the family dog to vote for them - and I'm not sure if it would even be forbidden, because a vote is a vote, no matter for which reason. If you want to avoid that, the voting function had to be removed entirely.

If so, it would be useful to discuss how else the showcased homes could be selected. Randomly? Or should ZOS choose new ones each week? Should there be screenshot contests and the winners get their spot in the showcase?

Exactly this. If there is to be a housing gallery, then there needs to be rules on which houses are displayed there. Random or alphabetical can be an option, but if it’s the only one and people aren’t actually guided to nice houses, they will stop using this feature.

Recommendations aren’t perfect, but I haven’t seen viable alternatives proposed either. So far, the argument boils down to “let’s eliminate Google search rankings because SEO exists”.

spartaxoxo

I'm not convinced vote buying will be much of a thing. The ratings are already hidden and there is no reward for having a highly rated house.

I think "come see my friend's home" is a valid reason to recommend a home for viewing.

Necrotech_Master

i could care less about ratings systems lol

my current plan is to at a minimum list my main house, which will have a lot of functions (grandmaster tables, dummies, aetherial well, basin of loss, and almost all of the antiquity furnishings on display)

i set up my house that way so people could come preview antiquity furnishings in person before deciding which leads they wanted to focus on getting, but the house is normally only easily available to guilds/friends, or people your grouped with due to how the system works

i was actually potentially going to list all of my houses so people could use them for free fast travel if they wanted, even though some 95% of the houses are not decorated lol

JavaRen

So, I'll try to be more clear: I am interested in actual (well hypothetical) stories of how this can go wrong, not concerns and fears. For example: "Bob is in a housing guild,, the GM organizes an event to reccomend their GF's house. Bob doesn't want to (for pick a reason) and instead of quietly smipping it he says so. Given the toxic nature of said guild/GM Bob is ostracized or even booted." Or maybe "Kate is proud of her decorating and would like others to appreciate it to. But due to how others are unfairly buying (or coercing) recommendations her homes never show up on the highlight list, but instead are only seen by her friends and people who search by tags or names. This bums her out."

So, anyone have something more severe than these?

tindomiel4

JavaRen wrote: »

So, I'll try to be more clear: I am interested in actual (well hypothetical) stories of how this can go wrong, not concerns and fears. For example: "Bob is in a housing guild,, the GM organizes an event to reccomend their GF's house. Bob doesn't want to (for pick a reason) and instead of quietly smipping it he says so. Given the toxic nature of said guild/GM Bob is ostracized or even booted." Or maybe "Kate is proud of her decorating and would like others to appreciate it to. But due to how others are unfairly buying (or coercing) recommendations her homes never show up on the highlight list, but instead are only seen by her friends and people who search by tags or names. This bums her out."

So, anyone have something more severe than these?

I'm curious why those aren't "severe" enough. Plenty of people in this thread and elsewhere have described the joy they get from a collaborative, encouraging housing community, and how they foresee this new system disrupting or degrading that. Why don't you accept their reasoning as they've already presented it?

JavaRen

I do not mean to neglect or downplay anyone's concerns. I'm actually trying to better understand them by seeking specific examples, rather than abstracts, precisely because I am having trouble seeing the big deal and would rather understand than dismiss prematurely.

DenverRalphy

The biggest mistake too many people are making, is mistakenly falling under the assumption that there is any kind of "Voting", "Rating", or "Ranking". Because that's not what the structure is set up for.

There's just the ability to recommend a house you may have visited. You're limited to 10 votes a week. The listings can opt be sorted by recomendations, but it's in no way an indication of "best to worst". Houses can be featured, and those featured homes will include both long-term and short-term listings based solely on recommendations. Over time, homes with the most recommendtions will be more an indication of how long the home has been listed and was deemed to be worth viewing by other players, than any short term buying of recommendations could ever account for.

There are no "Votes" to be bought or sold, because the concept of buying a vote would be contingent upon a guarantee that that same player could not also cast a recommendation for other players houses as well. Only scammers or the gullible would sell or buy recommendations.

And too... there's zero incentive for anybody that is at all experienced with housing to actually want or need to buy recommendations. There are no prizes. There are no giveaways. Not so much as an Achievement. There's nothing to be gained.