It is one of many decisions regarding the available houses that do not seem to make sense. Like having inaccessible balconies (DC manor) or invisible walls that prevent access to roofs (Twin Arches) or walkways (EP manor). No cellars / basements even under massive stone buildings etc.

Almost every house has at least one of these counterintuitive limitations.

Many are still hoping for a small patch that could easily fix these inconsistencies.

GrafDresche wrote: »

No cellars / basements even under massive stone buildings etc.

I agree - Forsaken Stronghold should have a basement/cellar as well. The proportions are completely off for not having a basement. Besides, who would build a stronghold like this without having a cellar??

most likely reason it does not have these is the daggerfalls overlook has both access to the tower and basement. in this case it seems you get what you pay for. DF overlook is more costly then forsaken stronghold.

and maybe that's why it is forsaken? no basement or access to the tower

You can build stairs up the wall, but then you run into another problem: the invisible wall at the outer edge of the instance runs right through the middle of the tower, so you can only use 1/2 the space and can't walk to the edge to look out.

I suspect it's a combination of issues. Firstly they re-used existing assets instead of designing new buildings (probably because most of their time was devoted to making Morrowind) so we got whatever they had. Which in general is fine but does add a few odd quirks like this. Whatever that tower was originally designed for no one needed to go inside, so it doesn't have a door.

Secondly they've actually gone out of their way to stop us seeing outside the instance most of the time by building high walls around them. Presumably because what's outside is a completely empty, lifeless version of the map - no players, no NPCs, not even gathering nodes or monsters. Even the two manors which come with towers only had them added because players complained that the view was advertised as a benefit of the property (Daggerfall Overlook implies you can look over Daggerfall and Ebonheart Chateau specifically mentions the volcano in the description) and then you couldn't see it.

The only exceptions are the Cyrodilic Jungle House which for some reason has railings instead of a wall, Strident Springs which had a tower right from the start and the ones built on a hillside or with a balcony where seeing over the wall was unavoidable.

And thirdly the whole design of both the houses and the furnishings we have suggests to me that they didn't expect quite as much 'out of the box' thinking as they've got from some people. Their expectation seems to be that if we're not provided a way to access an area then we shouldn't go there. It's the only reason I can think of why things like this tower and the roof of Twin Arches are closed off by invisible walls.

This is not true about the tower at I decorated it with vines around the turret so I can use it. It does give a very interesting view. One does wonder if there is an invisible wall just outside the tower. It would be interesting as falling from there would definitely make a nice splat.