I can hear the crickets again

kind_hero · February 2020

After we got the unexpected post from @ZOS_CullenLee addressing some of our concerns, despite the disappointment of seeing the housing slots limits stay, I was glad to see some communication from the devs.

But time has passed and none of our other requests has been answered. I want to start by saying that I do not expect the devs to cater to my demands. However, I would expect some degree of communication, and some answers on the hot topics we keep discussing in this forum. Most of the housing enthusiasts active in this community pay subs and also spend a lot of money on houses and furnishings, which are probably the most costly part of the game in terms of real cash. So at least from this regard, some recurring topics should be answered from time to time.

In the past few weeks I read a lot of posts with great ideas, some new and original, like the ability to place portals in houses to allow players to travel to another house. There is no developer feedback, as usual, even though this is a great idea that might change how we use houses and make us forget about the item cap for a while.

I am a veteran player, so after completing most of the content and DLC's, housing is what keeps me interested in the game between chapters. I am sure many can relate to this. I just would like to know where this part of the game is heading to, if anywhere. Right now I see how the great talent of the dev team is poured into huge impractical manors which are less and less popular due to their high price and furnishings limit. The furnishings offered by the luxury vendor are on repeat, with only one new item added every week. The master writ vendors get just a few blueprints each DLC or chapter, items that are usually odd choices, despite a very long list of much requested items by the community.

May I ask why is there no communication regarding our furnishing requests, our increasing reliance on housing add-ons, lack of improvements, and why there was no event after 3 years of housing (this February)?

Is there any direction for housing? Any plans for the future? We get frequent updates on performance, events, dungeons, even on pvp, while housing is always neglected. We have no idea if we can expect new content, as in building items, furnishings, houses, new features, or if there is any development road map in this regard. At least this level of communication would be much appreciated. Are there any plans for housing besides releasing 14k+ crowns houses?

Thank you

TigressCreed · February 2020

Give massive homes a 1,000 furniture cap. Lighting alone and gardening decor eat up half the space

MacMurroughTheFirst · February 2020

kind_hero wrote: »

Most of the housing enthusiasts active in this community pay subs and also spend a lot of money on houses and furnishings, which are probably the most costly part of the game in terms of real cash.

You know, I've never thought about this until reading your post but it's gotta be true. Housing and furniture cosmetics can get pretty expensive; I'd just spent the last 5 or so minutes running around Lakemire being awed by such a great design before realizing how big it truly is and how I'd likely never get it furnished to my satisfaction. I was up in the air about it until I saw the price. I don't know the crown-to-cash conversion as well as others but 15000+ crowns for it unfurnished just seems like a lot, at least to my wallet, knowing what we know now about housing.

Cireous · February 2020

Even just a simple statement like, "We have some interesting new things we are currently working on for housing this year." could go a long way. I think a lot of us wonder if and when we will ever see anything new with housing outside of new houses and new furnishings.

Royaji · February 2020

You housing guys are really not that special. ZOS fails miserably in communication with their playerbase in general, not just with the housing community.

kind_hero · February 2020

Royaji wrote: »

You housing guys are really not that special. ZOS fails miserably in communication with their playerbase in general, not just with the housing community.

We are not special, but compared to other types of players, we pay subs and also purchase $100 houses, crowns exclusive furnishing packs, crown store furnishings, and last but not least, we produce content which is admired by the entire community, including developers. We are not entitled to anything, but some communication would be a nice courtesy to our dedication.

A PvP focused player can play for months without even paying a sub, or a casual player... but housing is very hard to enjoy without a subscribtion and also without investing a lot of time and resources in crafting.

In my case, I just want to know where this game is heading considering housing, because I don't see the point in supporting this game with my cash, if there is nothing to expect. We have just been told that the furnishing caps are set in stone, fine, so then people like me expect get answers to suggestions and requests in other aspects of housing. Things which don't seem hard to do, or useless. The interest is still here. People are still waiting.

Royaji · February 2020

kind_hero wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

You housing guys are really not that special. ZOS fails miserably in communication with their playerbase in general, not just with the housing community.

We are not special, but compared to other types of players, we pay subs and also purchase $100 houses, crowns exclusive furnishing packs, crown store furnishings, and last but not least, we produce content which is admired by the entire community, including developers. We are not entitled to anything, but some communication would be a nice courtesy to our dedication.

You do understand that this is exactly the problem? Despite ZOS providing no communication you all are still a reliable source of income for ZOS. If you were to stop spending money on ESO they would have no choice but to start doing something to keep housing players around/bring them back. But this is not the case.

You'll be waiting for a long time.

kind_hero · March 2020

I am not a whale... I might have bought a furniture pack once or twice in the 5 years I keep playing ESO. True, I bought a few houses, but maybe one a year.

However, as a paying customer it is natural to ask for improved communication. Even short answers would do. Yes, no, "no plans for". Lack of communication is almost rude.

Jaimeh · March 2020

kind_hero wrote: »

Is there any direction for housing? Any plans for the future? We get frequent updates on performance, events, dungeons, even on pvp, while housing is always neglected. We have no idea if we can expect new content, as in building items, furnishings, houses, new features, or if there is any development road map in this regard. At least this level of communication would be much appreciated. Are there any plans for housing besides releasing 14k+ crowns houses?

Thank you

When the greymoor chapter was announced in that special live stream event a while back, there was no mention of changes to housing whatsover, also, seeing the absolutely massive thieves oasis on the PTS, I guess we will have more of ridiculously sized and priced crown-only houses this year, and no actual pain points of the comminuty addressed.

Aendruu · March 2020

kind_hero wrote: »

In the past few weeks I read a lot of posts with great ideas, some new and original, like the ability to place portals in houses to allow players to travel to another house. <snipped>

@kind_hero I'm sorry to stray off-topic, but I think the addon Essential Housing Tools grants this ability (@R_K, please correct me if I'm wrong.)

kind_hero · March 2020

Rhypon wrote: »

kind_hero wrote: »

In the past few weeks I read a lot of posts with great ideas, some new and original, like the ability to place portals in houses to allow players to travel to another house. <snipped>

@kind_hero I'm sorry to stray off-topic, but I think the addon Essential Housing Tools grants this ability (@R_K, please correct me if I'm wrong.)

A part of my post is partially against the way housing relies to much on the housing community to compensate the lack of features or developments with addons.

While I appreciate alot the work done on the EHT addon (which I also use), I do not want that certain experiences within my houses to be restricted to those who use a certain addon. It happens that I invite many new players to my house, and most of the times they do not have addons. Visiting my houses they get an idea of what can be achieved with patience, and they get motivated to start on their own houses. Placing the cool stuff behind some addon would limit the experience such players have when visiting houses; this is why I do not use addon fx or other gimicks. It is ZOS' job to add new features, they get paid for that, not addon developers. Addons are great to help you with things like precision placing, saving your house locally, grouping, and so on.

I watched the "housing stream" on Valentine's day, and I found it quite lacking, the lead dev on housing was very brief and focused only on showing us the houses. I am glad that finally @ZOS_CullenLee came to present us anything, but I was expecting much more answers from such a rare event. Many PTS testers made videos about the new houses, so I was expecting other information from him (see my first post). People are asking alot about new furnishings, so I was interested in answers in this direction. Why does it take so long for them to add new items? Most of the information he provided was already known, or expected, such as the item cap. We figured out that item caps are here to stay, and also the direction towards large manors is clear for some time. He showed us two new Wrothgar models, a well and a new type of tree, while so many people are excited about possible wisteria trees or Alinor greenhouses. Can we expect those anytime soon?

Mysanne · March 2020

I agree with everything that has been said.
I play almost every day since the Beta (I have probably spent less than 15 cumulative days without logging in, since February 2014) and I have been an ESO + member from the start, without interruption.

Housing is what motivates me in this game. Without housing, it is certain that I would have stopped because I have a bad connection and the hard mode content is inaccessible to me.

I spent a lot of real money and millions of "in-game" money for houses or furniture.
Housing motivates me to do repetitive quests to obtain achievement furniture, to farm materials, to spend money in guild shops ... So yes, we, the Housing Community, make the game work.

I think the most essential things to add to the game are:

- smaller houses but with the maximum item limit (700).

- the possibility of turning the furniture 90 and 180 degrees. (I am forced to use an addon for this because the game is unable to do this and it is essential. But I'm French and EHT is too complicated for me: I use Homestead Item Mover.)

- More varied furniture (stop giving us tons of beds, tables, glasses that all look alike, like Dres and Redoran cups)

- Fewer houses only available in crowns. We are already paying a lot so it is unfair to pay a DLC or a chapter to have new houses and to have to pay again to get them!
Or you could add a variant in the purchases as it exists for the collector's editions: the version with dungeons or with houses or with both, for example! This way, it would no longer be necessary to pay twice to get what we want.

I would buy more houses with crowns if they weren't so expensive.

Jayne_Doe · March 2020

kind_hero wrote: »

Rhypon wrote: »

kind_hero wrote: »

In the past few weeks I read a lot of posts with great ideas, some new and original, like the ability to place portals in houses to allow players to travel to another house. <snipped>

@kind_hero I'm sorry to stray off-topic, but I think the addon Essential Housing Tools grants this ability (@R_K, please correct me if I'm wrong.)

A part of my post is partially against the way housing relies to much on the housing community to compensate the lack of features or developments with addons.

While I appreciate alot the work done on the EHT addon (which I also use), I do not want that certain experiences within my houses to be restricted to those who use a certain addon. It happens that I invite many new players to my house, and most of the times they do not have addons. Visiting my houses they get an idea of what can be achieved with patience, and they get motivated to start on their own houses. Placing the cool stuff behind some addon would limit the experience such players have when visiting houses; this is why I do not use addon fx or other gimicks. It is ZOS' job to add new features, they get paid for that, not addon developers. Addons are great to help you with things like precision placing, saving your house locally, grouping, and so on.

I watched the "housing stream" on Valentine's day, and I found it quite lacking, the lead dev on housing was very brief and focused only on showing us the houses. I am glad that finally @ZOS_CullenLee came to present us anything, but I was expecting much more answers from such a rare event. Many PTS testers made videos about the new houses, so I was expecting other information from him (see my first post). People are asking alot about new furnishings, so I was interested in answers in this direction. Why does it take so long for them to add new items? Most of the information he provided was already known, or expected, such as the item cap. We figured out that item caps are here to stay, and also the direction towards large manors is clear for some time. He showed us two new Wrothgar models, a well and a new type of tree, while so many people are excited about possible wisteria trees or Alinor greenhouses. Can we expect those anytime soon?

Also, let's not forget us console folks who don't have access to add-ons.

I, too, was rather disappointed with the housing segment on the latest ESO Live. We just got a preview of the homes; several comments by Gina about his post regarding item limits; a preview of the Heart's Day furnishing pack (CS plug); comments that the housing forum is just one of many voices and it doesn't matter where his ideas come from, as long as they're good; and a flippant comment that features like the lake at Forgemaster Falls are set pieces that don't require any further decoration - as if that made up for the fact that the houses were still too large to decorate.

He also made an interesting comment that the small homes usually come with larger DLC, but outside of Morrowind, the only other medium homes have been the holiday homes, and then Frostvault (which came out with a dungeon DLC) and Lucky Cat - the first to come out with a story DLC. I hope he meant this as an indication of what we can expect in the future, and not that he really has no idea about the sizes of the homes or when they've been released.

We got no information on anything they might be working on - in terms of features or our request for smaller homes overall or even new furnishings and why we've only had a paltry handful since Elsweyr. He just seemed content with his ideas for new homes and how they've been realized by whoever the designer is. No care or concern that they are overlarge, esp. in light of the fact that item caps are here to stay for the foreseeable future.

We are all frustrated by the housing caps, but most of us have/are coming to terms with it, and have even provided great suggestions on how they can alleviate that for us. We have shown that we are willing to work within those limits, provided we get the tools to do so. But all we get in response are more ginormous houses.

darthgummibear_ESO · March 2020

kind_hero wrote: »

I was glad to see some communication from the devs

I wasn't, because their reasoning was complete garbage. I'm currently decorating the lunar champion house, and have most of the 700 limit in that first room. Not a single person who has visited had any problems whatsoever.

Pinoh · March 2020

kind_hero wrote: »

In the past few weeks I read a lot of posts with great ideas, some new and original. There is no developer feedback, as usual, even though this is a great idea that might change how we use houses and make us forget about the item cap for a while.

Yep, can't argue with anything you've said really. Just wish you'd have made it in his thread though. Letting that thread die, sort of lets him off the hook. If people keep posting complaints and suggestions to his thread. He'll have them pushed in his face every time he looks at participated threads.