ZOS still failing at player housing

Vanos444 · March 2020

MornaBaine wrote: »

The bottom line here is that ZO$ is still failing to address ALL the issues that make players dissatisfied with player housing.
To recap:
1. Insane real money pricing on the houses themselves and many of the crown store exclusive items. 1500 crowns for a single table I can't get any other way except to buy it in the cash shop? Get out.
2. Lack of sufficient item slots. We know this could be improved in any number of ways, probably the simplest being giving each space in a given house that is a separate instance its own individual item count. For instance the Daggerfall Overlook should have 700 item slots for the main castle interior, another 700 in the outside area, and the ocean area and tower area could easily have slightly lower individual item counts.
3. The horrible player caps. 24 is too low for ANY house, let alone the very largest ones. The largest ones should hold at least 100 players and the very smallest should host 12. And even that is "bad" compared to many other housing systems in other games. There are several 12 and 6 player homes I'd buy in an instant if the player caps weren't so horribly low.
4. The terrible drop rates of furnishing plans. This exists for NO other reason than to drive players into the cash shop. It's unacceptable. Stop it. Make house decoration an enjoyable pastime, not a mind numbing and frustrating grind far worse than any gear grind yet conceived of.
5. The ridiculous scarcity of style materials for all the newer furniture. This, too, is a painfully obvious ploy to drive players into the cash shop. It's insulting. Stop it.

If you like player housing, be vocal. Demand that ZOS do better.

Editing to ad a thing I forgot but another poster brought up:
6. Do away with the stupid "primary residence" and allow us to share any or all of our houses equally. The invaluable Port To Friends House add-on is great but should be completely unnecessary and it does prove that this functionality DOES work and CAN be implemented. ZOS should have done this from the beginning.

Lol! Housing is for whales that's love crown store goodies.
If that your problem then look elsewhere or try another game..

idk · March 2020

1. While I will not shovel out the $$ OP is extremely wrong that the price of houses in real money is insane. Zos is clearly happy with the revenues from the homes or they would lower the price. Same with furnishings. Smart businesses tend to lower prices when something is not selling very well.

2. Furnishing slots and max occupancy all comes down to server performance. Obviously, both go hand in hand when talking about performance. Zos has said as much recently. They also said that after they complete implementing the performance plan they will review housing to see if they can add more slots. So yes, it would be nice to have more slots but I do respect the issue concerning server performance. Zos should have been more concerned about the performance of the game years ago and not let it get to this point.

Personally, I would prefer to be able to ride a mount in the housing instance before more slots are added.

Arahallris · March 2020

The decor cap has always bugged me. If you're a hardcore housing fanatic, 350/700 items is barely anything to work with. Whenever I've built things in Wildstar(rip) I've easily hit the initial 2k cap and from there 5k once they updated it.

Even if it locks you to having only a handful of homes I'm good with that.

A community panel would be nice as well.

newtinmpls · March 2020

Minyassa wrote: »

This game has guilds. This game has player marriages via Pledges of Mara. Both situations suggest players cohabiting and demand shared decorating privileges.

Quoted because OP said it better than I could.

Tigerseye · March 2020

idk wrote: »

1. While I will not shovel out the $$ OP is extremely wrong that the price of houses in real money is insane. Zos is clearly happy with the revenues from the homes or they would lower the price. Same with furnishings. Smart businesses tend to lower prices when something is not selling very well.

They did lower the price of the Snow Globe Home (or, rather, they priced it lower than the other homes with that slot allowance) and they also upped the furnishing slots, for a home of that square footage.

That is, partly, what makes it one of the best homes in the game and the most fun (or least unfun!) to decorate.

It's close to being a baby bear, or Goldilocks, house, basically.

The only way it could be improved, in my opinion, is if it had a room in the upper floor of the tower (to match the windows outside) and a 700 slot limit.

Obviously, then, it would be priced a bit higher than it currently is.

2. Furnishing slots and max occupancy all comes down to server performance. Obviously, both go hand in hand when talking about performance. Zos has said as much recently. They also said that after they complete implementing the performance plan they will review housing to see if they can add more slots. So yes, it would be nice to have more slots but I do respect the issue concerning server performance. Zos should have been more concerned about the performance of the game years ago and not let it get to this point.

Personally, I would prefer to be able to ride a mount in the housing instance before more slots are added.

In general, the answer to furnishing slot woes, while they feel they can't raise the limit, is for them to do the following:

1. Make more non max size (interior square footage) houses, but with max slot limits.
2. Combine more (smaller/simpler) items (like three potatoes, for example) into one group item.
3. Make slot-efficient filler items. Like rectangles of strewn straw/hay, to enable the slot-efficient filling of barns of any size.

Tigerseye · March 2020

Vanos444 wrote: »

MornaBaine wrote: »

The bottom line here is that ZO$ is still failing to address ALL the issues that make players dissatisfied with player housing.
To recap:
1. Insane real money pricing on the houses themselves and many of the crown store exclusive items. 1500 crowns for a single table I can't get any other way except to buy it in the cash shop? Get out.
2. Lack of sufficient item slots. We know this could be improved in any number of ways, probably the simplest being giving each space in a given house that is a separate instance its own individual item count. For instance the Daggerfall Overlook should have 700 item slots for the main castle interior, another 700 in the outside area, and the ocean area and tower area could easily have slightly lower individual item counts.
3. The horrible player caps. 24 is too low for ANY house, let alone the very largest ones. The largest ones should hold at least 100 players and the very smallest should host 12. And even that is "bad" compared to many other housing systems in other games. There are several 12 and 6 player homes I'd buy in an instant if the player caps weren't so horribly low.
4. The terrible drop rates of furnishing plans. This exists for NO other reason than to drive players into the cash shop. It's unacceptable. Stop it. Make house decoration an enjoyable pastime, not a mind numbing and frustrating grind far worse than any gear grind yet conceived of.
5. The ridiculous scarcity of style materials for all the newer furniture. This, too, is a painfully obvious ploy to drive players into the cash shop. It's insulting. Stop it.

If you like player housing, be vocal. Demand that ZOS do better.

Editing to ad a thing I forgot but another poster brought up:
6. Do away with the stupid "primary residence" and allow us to share any or all of our houses equally. The invaluable Port To Friends House add-on is great but should be completely unnecessary and it does prove that this functionality DOES work and CAN be implemented. ZOS should have done this from the beginning.

Lol! Housing is for whales that's love crown store goodies.
If that your problem then look elsewhere or try another game..

Actually, it isn't, necesarily.

You can buy most of the homes with gold and can decorate all of them up to a pretty high standard, without spending any money, at all, in the Crown Store.

You don't even need to have a ton of time to level crafting and grind patterns.

As almost all furnishings are sold, indvidually, in guild stores and in many cases, for lower than the initial cost of materials.

Yes, a few of the houses are Crown Store only and more so lately (which is a worrying trend) and yes, it's nice to have a few Crown Store-only items for your house.

However, if you have ESO+ you could limit yourself to only buying gold-purchased homes and reasonably priced Crown Store extras, like a few of the new bouquets, with your ESO+ Crowns, never spend an extra Crown on housing and still have some pretty nice houses.

Especially if you go with somewhere like Old Mistveil, which has a pretty generous slot limit for the house size.

Arunei · March 2020

@Vanos444
So what, your way of playing the game is more legitimate than anyone else's, and if they aren't happy with an aspect of the game they enjoy they should just leave? Well I guess all the people who only PvP but have to deal with Cyro issues or the people who only PvE but have that set of issues also shouldn't voice their concerns and either need to shut up and deal with it or play something else, huh?

Also tip: don't make rude sweeping assumptions about people just because that makes them easier for you to dismiss. Plenty of people who really care about housing aren't whales, such as myself and numerous people I know.

In response to the thread overall, here's a post of mine I made in the Housing Feedback thread this last round of PTS stuff for Harrowstorm:

Arunei wrote: »

I was going to make a separate thread for this stuff, but since general Housing feedback is being asked for here, I'll list a few things that would make Housing overall feel less restrictive and at times downright frustrating.

The biggest point is more furniture slots, as others have mentioned. As someone else pointed out and as I myself have complained about to numerous friends on multiple occasions over, we keep getting bigger and bigger houses that have more and more space, but not nearly enough furniture slots to fully decorate a place. 700 slots (which, let's remind everyone, you only get with ESO+, otherwise the max is 350) is not NEARLY enough to really and truly deck out larger homes like the Psijic Manor. As was, again previously mentioned, why do we have around 150-ish or so slots reserved for 'special' furniture like Trophies or Pets instead of lumping all of those slots under the 'general' ones and letting players decide how to make use of them? I almost never use the busts or trophies from dungeons, but I do use practically every other type of furniture. It's really annoying to technically have those furniture slots but not be able to make use of them because they're locked to a type of furniture I will NEVER use so many slots on.

Next up is furniture itself. As someone said, for general building things like walls and floors, we really need more than just a few racial styles of these things and definitely need them to come in ALL the Housing sizes ranging from Tiny to Large. It is EXTREMELY annoying how most houses aren't really houses, they're just buildings that are like one giant empty room, rather than having walls and doors like an actual house (and like certain places like the Psijic manor have). Yet trying to break up houses ourselves with the building furnishings we have now is one heck of a crapshoot, because nearly all the walls are for Large houses, which makes them super hard to work with for smaller houses or awkwardly-shaped spaces, and they also come in a very limited number of styles. Please either make walls/floors for EVERY racial style and make them each come in different sizes, or, an idea I like much better but would obviously be harder (if not impossible depending on the engine's limitations), would be being able to resize any piece of furniture so it actually fits wherever you'd like to put it.

PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING, MAKE THE PLACEMENT AND POSITIONING OF FURNITURE NOT BE TIED TO A CAMERA THAT FOLLOWS YOUR CHARACTER INSTEAD. On top of that, make furniture be locked into place when it's initially picked up! By far the most frustrating part of Housing for me is the furnishing itself. Trying to place larger items in smaller spaces is horrible most of the time because you can't control the camera independently from your character to see where something is relative to the space you're in. Regardless of where you're standing or where you grab an item from, you'll almost always pick it up near the bottom, and it's impossible most of the time to zoom out to see where you're place the item, since moving the camera to try and see where you're putting the item moves the item itself. Plus most of the time when you select an item to move, especially larger ones, the item will inexplicably jump to some location several inches from where it was placed, or at a different angle, and then you have to spend time correcting that before you can work on whatever positioning/placement it was you wanted to do originally. Having a secondary 'free range' camera we can move around and then lock into place (and the camera STAY locked into that position until unlocked) would be so much easier and less frustrating.

kind_hero · March 2020

So much of this old post is still valid today!

The lack of communication is probably the largest issue with housing!

Tigerseye · March 2020

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

todokete wrote: »

It's still better than other games like FFXIV where you can't get a house no matter what. Housing in ESO lets you have an instance per account which is very nice.

FFXIV's housing model is different and really can't be compared so easily with other games.
They have two types: Apartments, which you can hold even if you are not subscribed to play; and actual houses, which are part of *neighbourhoods*.

I believe part of the reason why it's hard to get a house is because they don't want people to end up in an empty neighbourhood. So if you are not subscribed (and who knows when you'll sub to play again) you lose your house so lots of un-subs don't depopulate a neighbourhood with houses that are owned but empty.
But that also means if you try to get a house from the limited pool, especially of a specific plot size or a specific instance, or even just a house from the limited pool, it can be stupid hard.

Their model of trying to maintain living neighbourhoods and a sense of community is interesting but clearly has drawbacks.

Sounds like that is more about keeping people subscribed, even if they aren't currently playing, as they don't want to lose their house.

Tigerseye · March 2020

Arunei wrote: »

PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING, MAKE THE PLACEMENT AND POSITIONING OF FURNITURE NOT BE TIED TO A CAMERA THAT FOLLOWS YOUR CHARACTER INSTEAD. On top of that, make furniture be locked into place when it's initially picked up! By far the most frustrating part of Housing for me is the furnishing itself. Trying to place larger items in smaller spaces is horrible most of the time because you can't control the camera independently from your character to see where something is relative to the space you're in. Regardless of where you're standing or where you grab an item from, you'll almost always pick it up near the bottom, and it's impossible most of the time to zoom out to see where you're place the item, since moving the camera to try and see where you're putting the item moves the item itself. Plus most of the time when you select an item to move, especially larger ones, the item will inexplicably jump to some location several inches from where it was placed, or at a different angle, and then you have to spend time correcting that before you can work on whatever positioning/placement it was you wanted to do originally. Having a secondary 'free range' camera we can move around and then lock into place (and the camera STAY locked into that position until unlocked) would be so much easier and less frustrating.

This is frustrating, I know, but you can normally get around it, depending on the item, by backing up and grabbing the item in the centre.

Then dropping it and gently picking it up again, without moving your cursor, at all.

This should ensure that the item stays where it originally was and so, allows you to fine tune its distance from a wall (for example), without changing its overall positioning, or angle.

Or, perhaps, vice versa.

The exception is generally curtains, which you can't pick up in the centre, even following the above method, so have to resort to manoeuvring in a far more hit and hope type fashion (diagonally, basically).

There are a few other things that work like that, too.

ZOS should really make sure everything can be grabbed centrally.

You can also (and I'm sure you already know this, but someone else might not) make fine tuning easier, by putting your char on walk and crouching, for the particularly delicate stuff.

xenowarrior92eb17_ESO · March 2020

if zos gives me 1400 furniture slots for notable houses...il be a happy kitten :<

LadyDestiny · March 2020

MornaBaine wrote: »

The bottom line here is that ZO$ is still failing to address ALL the issues that make players dissatisfied with player housing.
To recap:
1. Insane real money pricing on the houses themselves and many of the crown store exclusive items. 1500 crowns for a single table I can't get any other way except to buy it in the cash shop? Get out.
2. Lack of sufficient item slots. We know this could be improved in any number of ways, probably the simplest being giving each space in a given house that is a separate instance its own individual item count. For instance the Daggerfall Overlook should have 700 item slots for the main castle interior, another 700 in the outside area, and the ocean area and tower area could easily have slightly lower individual item counts.
3. The horrible player caps. 24 is too low for ANY house, let alone the very largest ones. The largest ones should hold at least 100 players and the very smallest should host 12. And even that is "bad" compared to many other housing systems in other games. There are several 12 and 6 player homes I'd buy in an instant if the player caps weren't so horribly low.
4. The terrible drop rates of furnishing plans. This exists for NO other reason than to drive players into the cash shop. It's unacceptable. Stop it. Make house decoration an enjoyable pastime, not a mind numbing and frustrating grind far worse than any gear grind yet conceived of.
5. The ridiculous scarcity of style materials for all the newer furniture. This, too, is a painfully obvious ploy to drive players into the cash shop. It's insulting. Stop it.

If you like player housing, be vocal. Demand that ZOS do better.

Editing to ad a thing I forgot but another poster brought up:
6. Do away with the stupid "primary residence" and allow us to share any or all of our houses equally. The invaluable Port To Friends House add-on is great but should be completely unnecessary and it does prove that this functionality DOES work and CAN be implemented. ZOS should have done this from the beginning.

One thing that really bothers me is the fact that we have a home furnishing in each zone that have no home furnishings besides the few rocks, bricks, wood slats, a common table and chair with a few bushes and trees. I mean it's home furnishings not gardening. The achievement venders are mostly trophy items and statues. I feel we need a real vender that offers some nice things in each zone with that zones furniture styles. Blue, purple and gold qualities we can buy for in game gold. With the amount of furnishings in the crown store tab you can buy, zos can surely give up on some of those items or create new ones for a vender. The cost of a large home is very expensive and when you spend 100+ dollars on a house, it should come with some furnishings besides rocks, weeds and rubble. I also agree the drop rate on quality furnishing plans are a joke. I have spent countless hours with very little success pickpocketing and stealing from nobles and buildings. My odds are better at looting a gold motif book than a purple furnishing plan. It's been long enough now. It's time for a change to fix this system.

MornaBaine · March 2020

LadyDestiny wrote: »

MornaBaine wrote: »

The bottom line here is that ZO$ is still failing to address ALL the issues that make players dissatisfied with player housing.
To recap:
1. Insane real money pricing on the houses themselves and many of the crown store exclusive items. 1500 crowns for a single table I can't get any other way except to buy it in the cash shop? Get out.
2. Lack of sufficient item slots. We know this could be improved in any number of ways, probably the simplest being giving each space in a given house that is a separate instance its own individual item count. For instance the Daggerfall Overlook should have 700 item slots for the main castle interior, another 700 in the outside area, and the ocean area and tower area could easily have slightly lower individual item counts.
3. The horrible player caps. 24 is too low for ANY house, let alone the very largest ones. The largest ones should hold at least 100 players and the very smallest should host 12. And even that is "bad" compared to many other housing systems in other games. There are several 12 and 6 player homes I'd buy in an instant if the player caps weren't so horribly low.
4. The terrible drop rates of furnishing plans. This exists for NO other reason than to drive players into the cash shop. It's unacceptable. Stop it. Make house decoration an enjoyable pastime, not a mind numbing and frustrating grind far worse than any gear grind yet conceived of.
5. The ridiculous scarcity of style materials for all the newer furniture. This, too, is a painfully obvious ploy to drive players into the cash shop. It's insulting. Stop it.

If you like player housing, be vocal. Demand that ZOS do better.

Editing to ad a thing I forgot but another poster brought up:
6. Do away with the stupid "primary residence" and allow us to share any or all of our houses equally. The invaluable Port To Friends House add-on is great but should be completely unnecessary and it does prove that this functionality DOES work and CAN be implemented. ZOS should have done this from the beginning.

One thing that really bothers me is the fact that we have a home furnishing in each zone that have no home furnishings besides the few rocks, bricks, wood slats, a common table and chair with a few bushes and trees. I mean it's home furnishings not gardening. The achievement venders are mostly trophy items and statues. I feel we need a real vender that offers some nice things in each zone with that zones furniture styles. Blue, purple and gold qualities we can buy for in game gold. With the amount of furnishings in the crown store tab you can buy, zos can surely give up on some of those items or create new ones for a vender. The cost of a large home is very expensive and when you spend 100+ dollars on a house, it should come with some furnishings besides rocks, weeds and rubble. I also agree the drop rate on quality furnishing plans are a joke. I have spent countless hours with very little success pickpocketing and stealing from nobles and buildings. My odds are better at looting a gold motif book than a purple furnishing plan. It's been long enough now. It's time for a change to fix this system.

You're absolutely right of course. And my feeling is that if ZOS is not going to step up to the plate and address the issues that have plagued housing since its introduction, then they jolly well need to make furnishing these places a LOT easier and more enjoyable than it is. Especially when they houses themselves remain as expensive as they are. I'm taking a pass on the next TWO houses, the one currently in the store with the kick arse forge and the truly awesome Redguard town that's coming up. I was all over them on PTS. I WANT them. But I'm absolutely not going to buy them for the prices asked KNOWING I'm just going to be utterly dissatisfied. If they give me an awesome 24 player castle with the new chapter in May I'll probably buckle. But I'll keep passing on things like the Dawnlight Palace (which I absolutely adore) and other large "special" homes that I'd seriously consider, even at current asking prices if I could JUST have a day/night toggle AND ease of furnishing without endless grinding for mats and/or gold...and finding things I want that can ONLY be obtained for real money in the cash shop. They really need to QUIT sitting on all those Summerset trees and greenhouse (I personally expect them to come out as yet another spendy furnishing "pack" around Summerset anniversary time) and the MANY other things that have been datamined that we know are ready to go. And yes, I want furnishing plans for things like trees and rocks. OR put them ALL on the furnishing vendors in their appropriate zones for in game gold. Make a gardener furnishing vendor for pete's sake! But ENOUGH of telling me I have to play flippin' real money for a TREE! LOL Seriously though, it's ridiculous.

Grianasteri · March 2020

Yes, very much yes.

The biggest gripe is the item cap, which more or less stopped me spending time (and money) on housing, because whats the point?

I mean I can only put a fraction of my pets and mounts out, ridiculous. Still no increase in storage boxes either, how much as the game expanded in sets and gear now?

The 2nd biggest gripe is the price of these houses, that alone is scandalous.

3rd and final, why cant we populate our houses with NPCs, even if they were non interactable, we need to be able to hire a stable hand, a cook, a bar tender, guards! Let us place these just like we place furniture. And while I am here, let us place our own characters, with the character you are playing simply disappearing upon load in, how immersive and enjoyable it would be to see all your hard work stationed in your base of operations.

There are absolutely loads of improvements possible, too many to mention, but these are the main issues holding back what could be a genre leading incredible experience.

RD065 · March 2020

I remember when I received the Psijic house my first walk-through I kept telling myself "no way I'm filling this, not with the low cap." Which is why I generally stay away from those big homes outside of travel.

I decorated 2 places, Grymharth Woe because at 240 pieces of furniture it feels full (I love this home btw). And the apartment in Alik'r Desert, easy to furnish.