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Grand Psijic Villa 700/700... and not 1/2 finished.

  • NupidStoob
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    Katahdin wrote: »
    SirAndy wrote: »
    Lazurynae wrote: »
    Can someone give me an legitimate answer as to why my castle has to be so barren?

    Money


    Because ZOS wants you to spend more crowns ($$$) on additional houses ...
    :neutral:

    No

    They have stated that they can not increase housing slots because of performance limitations on consoles and low end PCs. People would not be happy if the game crashed every time they tried the enter their house because it cant load 1000 intractable objects.

    Did ZoS actually say that? As far as I am aware it was only speculations from people on the forums.
  • SHADOW2KK
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    MornaBaine wrote: »
    Katahdin wrote: »
    Lazurynae wrote: »
    Katahdin wrote: »
    SirAndy wrote: »
    Lazurynae wrote: »
    Can someone give me an legitimate answer as to why my castle has to be so barren?

    Money


    Because ZOS wants you to spend more crowns ($$$) on additional houses ...
    :neutral:

    No

    They have stated that they can not increase housing slots because of performance limitations on consoles and low end PCs. People would not be happy if the game crashed every time they tried the enter their house because it cant load 1000 intractable objects.

    How about the vast majority of people who have paid good money for a computer that will handle a 1000 load limit? What about telling people right up front that if their system isnt up to par, they cant run this house? Or that they must turn off shading and grass, etc? Most people who play and pay for games like this have better than average computers to run it on. Or better yet, how about a section of the crown store where you need a better gaming system to purchase the better houses? lots of people would be willing to pay for that...

    They aren't going to have different limits for PC vs console. Consoles are stuck on whatever specs they are in and I suspect that console limits are the bigger issue here.

    There are published minimum specs and recomended specs for PC. Suddenly changing the game making parts of it need more than those minimum specs and causing people computers to crash is not something they are going to implement either. They are also not going to tell a portion of their customersthat they cant buy this or that house.

    Look back in the forum and see the rage that happened when they stopped supporting DX9 or 10 and you'll understand.

    Look I agree, this game is graphics intensive and people should have a non potato computer. My own computer is pretty high end. Unfortunately some people don't want to invest in or can't pay for newer machinery.

    ZoS may have data on the numbers and types of machines running the game. Until consoles get a new version that can handle more items and a greater portion of PCs are not potatoes, we will not see increases in housing slots unfortunately.

    And this is why the PC crowd hates it when money grubbing companies insist on TRYING to make their game run on multiple platforms. It ALWAYS dumbs down the PC version and places a ton of limitations that would not be there otherwise. And all because a company is too cheap to properly SEPARATELY develop 2 different versions of their game. Console players should understand that any game they play is NOT going to be he same as the PC version and it is their CHOICE to play on that platform. Quit punishing the PC players of your game ZOS! :neutral:

    QFT, well said.
    Once I was a lamb, playing in a green field. Then the wolves came. Now I am an eagle and I fly in a different universe.

    Been taking heads since TeS 3 Morrowind..

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    Been playing since Beta and Early Access

  • Commancho
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    NupidStoob wrote: »
    Did ZoS actually say that? As far as I am aware it was only speculations from people on the forums.

    IDK how about in ESO, but I have spent over 600h on building the bases in Fallout 4 and I can tell you that I had significant performance drops on high end PC after placing too many items. I can imagine that this could lead to crashes on low-med PCs and while you can load/save game in the single player, it could cause a headache for support in the online version.
  • DreamsUnderStars
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    SirAndy wrote: »
    Katahdin wrote: »
    SirAndy wrote: »
    Lazurynae wrote: »
    Can someone give me an legitimate answer as to why my castle has to be so barren?
    Money
    Because ZOS wants you to spend more crowns ($$$) on additional houses ...
    :neutral:
    No

    They have stated that they can not increase housing slots because of performance limitations on consoles and low end PCs. People would not be happy if the game crashed every time they tried the enter their house because it cant load 1000 intractable objects.
    No

    As a software developer coming up on my 40th year of doing this professionally and having spent many of those years in the gaming industry, i call BS on that excuse.
    type.gif

    Having played many games with housing that has better housing and just as good graphics, I call BS too. If it's not a money issue, then it's likely because their coding is terribly done.
  • Katahdin
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    NupidStoob wrote: »
    Katahdin wrote: »
    SirAndy wrote: »
    Lazurynae wrote: »
    Can someone give me an legitimate answer as to why my castle has to be so barren?

    Money


    Because ZOS wants you to spend more crowns ($$$) on additional houses ...
    :neutral:

    No

    They have stated that they can not increase housing slots because of performance limitations on consoles and low end PCs. People would not be happy if the game crashed every time they tried the enter their house because it cant load 1000 intractable objects.

    Did ZoS actually say that? As far as I am aware it was only speculations from people on the forums.

    Yes It came staight out of the Devs mouths on ESO Live
    Beta tester November 2013
  • SirAndy
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    Nerouyn wrote: »
    When you visit a home your computer needs to ask the server for all of those locations and orientations. And if a player adds, removes or moves an object while other players are present, the server needs to communicate that to them.

    Let's assume it is your first visit to said home, fully furnished at 700:

    - x,y,z location of item on the map, 4 byte float for each = 12 bytes
    - pitch,yaw,roll rotation of item on the map, 4 byte float for each = 12 bytes
    - Unique ID identifier of the item, 4 byte integer = 4 bytes

    That's only 28 bytes for each item, multiply by 700 = 19600 bytes (19.6k) to transmit over the network to tell your client what items are where and at what rotation.
    (And one could probably figure out a way to compress that for transmission)

    If the client keeps a local cache of that data, any changes to items while you are there would only require a 28 byte update per item.

    Now granted the above is the absolute minimum of data needed and knowing the quality of ZOS programming, their implementation is probably 10x what i listed.

    But please, don't tell me that ~20k will result in "long loading times" when porting to someone's house.
    That argument has no base in reality.
    type.gif
  • Commancho
    Commancho
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    SirAndy wrote: »
    Nerouyn wrote: »
    When you visit a home your computer needs to ask the server for all of those locations and orientations. And if a player adds, removes or moves an object while other players are present, the server needs to communicate that to them.

    Let's assume it is your first visit to said home, fully furnished at 700:

    - x,y,z location of item on the map, 4 byte float for each = 12 bytes
    - pitch,yaw,roll rotation of item on the map, 4 byte float for each = 12 bytes
    - Unique ID identifier of the item, 4 byte integer = 4 bytes
    I'm not IT expert, but just by using common sense it's not working like that.
    For example, how would you save location of this item just by using X,Y,Z:
    8cqj1pkqnpr1.jpg
    Morover, limit doesn't see a diffrence between small/large item which need to be rendered by your graphic card.
    Alot of items are also possible to activate and have their own animation/sfx.
    Then we have shadows which are being rendered live etc etc.

    Removing 24 player limit would not affect the performance?
    Most of people complain about performance in 12 player trials...
  • SirAndy
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    Commancho wrote: »
    I'm not IT expert, but just by using common sense it's not working like that.
    For example, how would you save location of this item just by using X,Y,Z:

    Using 3 float variables. The whole tree is a single 3d model that has an origin (xyz).
    When placed in the game world, it's origin is set to whatever coordinates you chose (translated actually) and then a rotation matrix is applied using 3 more float variables to specify pitch, yaw and roll for the rotation.

    That is all that is needed to place any 3d model into a 3d world. It's that simple.

    All the vertices making up the model are described as an offset from the model's origin point, there is no need for you to manually specify the origin of each vertex in the model.

    One thing i forgot in my initial post is scale, they probably have another scale vector (also 3 float variables) but that is most likely on a per model basis (since they don't allow us to scale items we place) so that can be ignored for the data transmission over the network.

    If you are no familiar with how 3d models are arranged in a 3d scene, i suggest you do some googling on the subject.
    Your "common sense" does not apply ...
    shades.gif
  • Commancho
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    Ok, but this tree has animation (leafs are moving) & sounds, it's generating its own shadows which are being rendered live, it's reflecting in the water and it's reflecting the light itself and as majority of house furniture it has detailed textures/meshes opposite to items we see in the open world. Do you think that if I would place 700 trees like that in Psijic Villa it wouldn't have impact on performance? How about 10,000 trees? Still no impact? ;-)
    Edited by Commancho on October 22, 2018 11:58PM
  • SirAndy
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    Commancho wrote: »
    Ok, but this tree has animation (leafs are moving) & sounds, it's generating its own shadows which are being rendered live, it's reflecting in the water and it's reflecting the light itself and as majority of house furniture it has detailed textures/meshes opposite to items we see in the open world. Do you think that if I would place 700 trees like that in Psijic Villa it wouldn't have impact on performance? How about 10,000 trees? Still no impact? ;-)

    First of all, none of that has to be transmitted over the network when you enter someone's house. So that argument is bogus.

    Now that we have that out of the way, the performance impact of 10,000 of those trees is completely dependent on your client hardware.
    ZOS could employ many tricks to speed up rendering performance, for example they could use reduced LOD distances when you're in a house zone. Same goes for shadows and light effects. Heck, they could even turn off tree animations at larger distances.

    In fact, if i was to program this, i would give each user the option to set what rendering quality they want just for homes.
    Add UI sliders where one can set the LOD distance/quality, the shadow quality, the texture quality etc. just for houses.

    That way, if you have an older PC, you can dial down the setting and then even 10,000 of those trees wouldn't be a problem for you.

    Like i said, i've been doing this sort of thing for many years, none of this is rocket science.
    All you need is a couple of capable developers.
    shades.gif
    Edited by SirAndy on October 23, 2018 12:13AM
  • Commancho
    Commancho
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    SirAndy wrote: »
    First of all, none of that has to be transmitted over the network when you enter someone's house. So that argument is bogus.

    That was someone's else point. My point is that it's not that simple like you are saying. The problem is not raw XYZ data, but a fact that your graphic card needs to render all these items before you can enter your house, so yes - removing item limit would definetly increase the loading times - and I can tell you this after my very long experience with building without limits in Fallout 4.
    SirAndy wrote: »
    Now that we have that out of the way, the performance impact of 10,000 of those trees is completely dependent on your client hardware.

    Yes it would and I can tell you right now that no MMORPG developer will adress his game to 1% of the population owning $5,000 PCs .
    SirAndy wrote: »
    ZOS could employ many tricks to speed up rendering performance, for example they could use reduced LOD distances when you're in a house zone. Same goes for shadows and light effects. Heck, they could even turn off tree animations at larger distances.

    LOD distance is not an issue here, but the high concetration of objects on relatively small area. Alot of players wouldn't also agree with lowering quality of graphics in the housing area. Why would you spent milions of gold & hundreds of hours on decorating your house if it's gonna look like a static "crap" because of low details and disabled animations?
    SirAndy wrote: »
    In fact, if i was to program this, i would give each user the option to set what rendering quality they want just for homes.
    Add UI sliders where one can set the LOD distance/quality, the shadow quality, the texture quality etc. just for houses.

    That way, if you have an older PC, you can dial down the setting and then even 10,000 of those trees wouldn't be a problem for you.

    Like i said, i've been doing this sort of thing for many years, none of this is rocket science.
    All you need is a couple of capable developers.
    shades.gif

    Great idea, but what will happend if I will have my settings on ultra and I will enter carelessly my friend's house with 10,000 decorations and my game will keep crashing there because my PC will be not able to handle with rendering so many items? I will be stuck there and unable to play the game. Bah, I can already see some toxic players who are exploiting this... Responsible developers are aware of this kind of issues and they are not trying to appeal a small percent of playerbase even if it would benefit them greatly because no limit = more furniture being sold.
  • Commancho
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    IMO the only way to increase the cap without significant performance drops or lowering their quality is re-working large houses and dividing housing areas on interiors/exteriors areas with separate limits and independent loading screens. Obviously it would increase loading times when you move between interiors/exteriors and some people would complain about that either, but heeey you can't have your cake and eat it too...
  • SirAndy
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    Commancho wrote: »
    ...

    - Rendering doesn't happen while you're loading a level. You only load the tree model *once*, even if you have 10,000 of them in your scene.

    - I built a gaming PC last xmas, it's purpose build for gaming, all the latest hardware and greatest. Cost me $2k.

    - LOD is very much the issue. It stands for "Level of Detail". Clearly, you aren't a gaming programmer.

    - The game won't crash because you have too high settings. If it does, it means the developers are even more clueless than we thought.

    shades.gif
    Edited by SirAndy on October 23, 2018 2:12AM
  • Commancho
    Commancho
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    SirAndy wrote: »
    Commancho wrote: »
    ...

    - Rendering doesn't happen while you're loading a level. You only load the tree model *once*, even if you have 10,000 of them in your scene.

    - I built a gaming PC last xmas, it's purpose build for gaming, all the latest hardware and greatest. Cost me $2k.

    - LOD is very much the issue. It stands for "Level of Detail". Clearly, you aren't a gaming programmer.

    - The game won't crash because you have too high settings. If it does, it means the developers are even more clueless than we thought.

    shades.gif

    Yes, it would affect loading screens, because before your game can render assets (which will also take awhile and it will cause stuttering), it will need to first load them from your HDD & server to your RAM memory and changing LOD would not help much if you would deploy all items around the entrance. LOD is way around for open world maps, not for interiors...

    You might apply for a job in Bethesda, if you are so competent!
    I'm sure that they will be happy to hire you and it seems that you have alot of free time.
  • OmniDo
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    @Commancho , the point that @SirAndy is attempting to convey is one involving reality, not practicality for Z0$.

    The question isnt "Can a vehicle accelerate to 230mph on a strait road?", the question is: "Are you driving a stock McLaren F1 or a stock Ford Focus?"
    The former is often mistakenly presumed to be the case because we as consumers will always expect the most optimal result for our investment.

    However, Z0$'s infrastructure is not known to us because its proprietary by design. Its obfuscated intentionally to maintain a competitive market advantage against other companies trying to obtain our business. What @SirAndy refers to is their own anecdotal experience (which is quite extensive for four decades) in the field of software engineering, stating that in principle, bandwidth shouldnt be an issue or concern.
    It would have been a huge concern say, 20 years ago when we were all still using 56k modems, but if implemented optimally, should be a non-issue with todays modern technology.

    That the public scapegoat Z0$ representatives have told us: "<x> is the reason why we havent/cant/wont do <y>", has nothing to do with reality, which is the point.

    Much the way politicians attempt to deceive both the public and each other with spin, you can't easily fool the educated.
    Trying to tell me that the moon is made of cheese or the earth is flat just so you can sell more cheese or flat-earth merchandise will never change the reality that neither is the earth flat, nor the moon made of cheese.
    All it will do is make those who engage in that behavior look incompetent, inept, or both.
    Not exactly someone I'd want to invest in...
    Edited by OmniDo on October 23, 2018 3:10PM
  • notimetocare
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    Galarthor wrote: »
    SirAndy wrote: »
    Katahdin wrote: »
    SirAndy wrote: »
    Lazurynae wrote: »
    Can someone give me an legitimate answer as to why my castle has to be so barren?
    Money
    Because ZOS wants you to spend more crowns ($$$) on additional houses ...
    :neutral:
    No

    They have stated that they can not increase housing slots because of performance limitations on consoles and low end PCs. People would not be happy if the game crashed every time they tried the enter their house because it cant load 1000 intractable objects.
    No

    As a software developer coming up on my 40th year of doing this professionally and having spent many of those years in the gaming industry, i call BS on that excuse.
    type.gif

    This.
    I am pretty sure when I load any zone (which the houses essentially are) there are more than 700 objects in them.
    And if it doesn't work on the consols, then sorry but screw consols and just increase the cap for PCs. As for the segregation part: there is always segregation in the PC community. I can't ask to play a contemporary game on my 20 year old PC.

    The vast majority of open world items are static and cannot be interacted with. The number of interactable object loaded at one time are much lower than housing
  • Mavor
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    Console limitations should never affect a PC version. Period, end of story. If they fear console players feeling gipped, sorry but thats life, you chose a lesser platform, deal with it.

    People who have lesser computers - well, you turn down your gfx options and if you still cannot handle a fully loaded house - time to upgrade that toaster.

    Wildstar started us off with a fairly low item count per house - which eventually went up to something over 2000 if I recall - and there the pre-built house architecture was often eschewed in favor of building your own setting from the ground up. Never heard any complaints about their housing system melting anyone's system. Granted I'm sure their texture/shader/light systems were perhaps simpler to some degree, but still.

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