When you get hyped about a new project... then this happens.

bayushi2005 · April 2020

Because one picture is worth a thousand words

Jaraal · April 2020

I feel your pain.

I’ve been working on the Thieves Oasis, and never before have I seen so many off kilter angles, mismatched walls, uneven surfaces, etc. It’s quite frustrating to try and line up things like walls and floors , when virtually nothing is symmetrical. I’m using up so many slots with unnecessary posts and plants to cover up alarmingly evident seams!

bayushi2005 · April 2020

@Jaraal the PTS houses look much better, but this was the last straw... I'll probably give up on playing with architecture in ESO entirely as covering things like this, over and over again, is no fun at all.

*sad panda*

Jaraal · April 2020

I mean, it'd be one thing if we were given flagstone or other oddly shaped pattern flooring, but these Alinor and Elsweyr floor blocks have square (Alinor) and rectangular (Elsweyr) repeating patterns that really accentuate immovable walls that are not set at 90 degrees to each other. You try to line them up perpendicular to one wall, and the crooked line against the other wall is blatantly obvious. Or those permanent floors that have some broken, raised tiles that when you go to put a rug on it, the tiles float through it? Yeah.

Frustrating to work with, for sure.

StabbityDoom · April 2020

Jaraal wrote: »

I mean, it'd be one thing if we were given flagstone or other oddly shaped pattern flooring, but these Alinor and Elsweyr floor blocks have square (Alinor) and rectangular (Elsweyr) repeating patterns that really accentuate immovable walls that are not set at 90 degrees to each other. You try to line them up perpendicular to one wall, and the crooked line against the other wall is blatantly obvious. Or those permanent floors that have some broken, raised tiles that when you go to put a rug on it, the tiles float through it? Yeah.

Frustrating to work with, for sure.

one side has a broken tile, if you flip it, the tiles aren't like that.

Bay, can you layer your flooring for that last row? won't that help? Or is the biggest problem the rock in the middle?

bayushi2005 · April 2020

@StabbityDoom its the misaligned columns, all of them, not just the two in the picture

covering them would take sh!@# ton of slots and i would have to make them very thick

StabbityDoom · April 2020

I was focusing on the floors and didn't even notice the columns at first.

Holy poop.

SidraWillowsky · April 2020

I'm getting pretty fed up with housing in this game. EVERYTHING has some sort of imperfection or nuance that makes it impossible to use outside of a few specific scenarios.

This is especially frustrating given the Coldharbour Surreal Estate and Earthtear Cavern, which are both designed to be "playgrounds" of sort. How the hell am I supposed to build anything interesting when they offer no windows or doors, a tiny selection of very limited (and oftentimes seriously flawed) building materials. There's no way to build anything big out of the blocks without taking up a huge number of item slots, and god help you if you want to build a peaked roof that's anything other than a 90 degree angle.

Just... why? I won't even get started on the oddly-shaped rooms in a lot of houses, or unmovable grass or rocks or whatever in courtyards. It's honestly kind of infuriating sometimes.

bayushi2005 · April 2020

@SidraWillowsky I feel ya. I literally got a tantrum after seeing this. It feels to me that people who are into structural builds are treated as an unwanted and neglected minority. I would have much more fun building stuff if I could bomb integral structures (i.e. unremovable rubble, roots, houses, columns, and crumbly walls...)

I dream about proper structural components

MrGhosty · April 2020

Have you tried using color to distract the eye? A container filled with bright flowers or something equally arresting can pull a viewers eye from point to point while distracting when things don't line up right. Is each row of pillars at least aligned with each other? If so you could skew the floor to split the difference so that the skew is less noticeable.

There are tiled Elsweyr blocks that are broken up, I got mine when I picked up moon sugar meadow but I think they can be acquired via guild traders/crown furniture tab. They're not a pristine surface and so might help hide crimes as well.

The pillars being misaligned is pretty bad as far as housing goes, but I've long assumed that ZOS never anticipated people would want to scratch build as much as they do. I believe that everything should be movable/removable in a housing instance but that would mean every item would require more code. I'm not sure what they do to "lock down" a build but I would imagine is done in such a way as to make the base objects load in with less strain, if they were to make every single object in a house interact-able it would drastically tax the already overburdened systems. The only solution I can think of is to make every version of the houses able to be switched to an "empty" state but that would mean the loss of buildings and such.

Jaraal · April 2020

StabbityDoom wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

I mean, it'd be one thing if we were given flagstone or other oddly shaped pattern flooring, but these Alinor and Elsweyr floor blocks have square (Alinor) and rectangular (Elsweyr) repeating patterns that really accentuate immovable walls that are not set at 90 degrees to each other. You try to line them up perpendicular to one wall, and the crooked line against the other wall is blatantly obvious. Or those permanent floors that have some broken, raised tiles that when you go to put a rug on it, the tiles float through it? Yeah.

Frustrating to work with, for sure.

one side has a broken tile, if you flip it, the tiles aren't like that.

Yes ma'am, I was referring to the floors we can't flip, such as the one in the House Of The Silent Magnifico. If you lay your carpet flat on the floor, tiles stick up through it. You have to float your rugs up in the air to make the rubble disappear, and then it looks like you are walking IN the carpet rather than on top of it.

Jaraal · April 2020

MrGhosty wrote: »

Have you tried using color to distract the eye? A container filled with bright flowers or something equally arresting can pull a viewers eye from point to point while distracting when things don't line up right.

The problem with this is that every time I see the bouquet of flowers it reminds me of the fact that I put it there to trick the eye of others, when I shouldn't have had to do that in the first place.

As much as we enjoy showing off our houses to others, the fact of the matter is we build these things primarily for our own satisfaction. It would be nice if everything were moveable, and we could adjust the base structure and furnishings that come with the house, but we can't. And then you get people who get frustrated with the process of trying to build around the (often deliberately incorporated) flaws and just move on to something else.

bayushi2005 · April 2020

@MrGhosty , I am absolutely with @Jaraal here. I usually don't build a house. I build a very particular house within specific aesthetics. I choose a theme and have a general idea about forms, colours and patterns BEFORE I place the first item.
Mishaps like that are not an issue if you want to build something, but they become one if you want to build something what you've already imagined.

MrGhosty · April 2020

bayushi2005 wrote: »

@MrGhosty , I am absolutely with @Jaraal here. I usually don't build a house. I build a very particular house within specific aesthetics. I choose a theme and have a general idea about forms, colours and patterns BEFORE I place the first item.
Mishaps like that are not an issue if you want to build something, but they become one if you want to build something what you've already imagined.

I completely understand, though I tend to take a slightly different approach when I do a project in that I build into the space rather than trying to place an already "built" project into the space. Just so I'm clear here, I don't see either approach as right or wrong. I've just given up on ZOS tweaking housing to fix stuff like you shared, so I've changed up my approach. Sad to say that anymore when I really want to build something very specific I just go to a different game that gives me more control. I still have projects in ESO housing, but they're far less ambitious than they once were because of all the rather severe limitations.

For the price they ask for these houses, they really ought to be immaculate. It's unfortunate really.

bayushi2005 · April 2020

@MrGhostly, I understand, we all sacrifice. The question is how much of your build are you willing to sacrifice in order to "push" it into a particular house. Sometimes, in order to accomodate your build, you need to change it beyond recognition. I take the orignal layout into account, but hell, can't fix all the mishaps and misalignments... and I find this inability to be the most frustrating.

I absolutely agree that the price tag should get a reflection in design. Wouldn't recommend

Jaraal · April 2020

MrGhosty wrote: »

For the price they ask for these houses, they really ought to be immaculate. It's unfortunate really.

Exactly.

I don't see the value in broken walls and floors and immovable rubble everywhere that cost precious housing slots to cover up and disguise. Why not sell the pristine houses most people want, and let fans of detritus and decay add their own?

Minyassa · April 2020

Oh my gods. What the ew. Where is that?!!

bayushi2005 · April 2020

@Minyassa It's Earthtear Cavern

ghastley · April 2020

That particular flooring makes the problem as bad as it can get, as it has elements for symmetry on the 45 degree axes as well. It does make me think they should provide a "crazy paving" style with no apparent pattern for situations like this. I don't recall seeing one in-game, but it would make their own job easier.

Minyassa · April 2020

Oh, that's awful. Earthtear Cavern is the one I've been holding off on buying until they add more functionality to shared decorating privileges, and I just keep hearing more to put me off wanting to get it at all. But they've fixed broken or bad housing stuff before. Maybe they will notice it now.

bayushi2005 · April 2020

ghastley wrote: »

That particular flooring makes the problem as bad as it can get, as it has elements for symmetry on the 45 degree axes as well. It does make me think they should provide a "crazy paving" style with no apparent pattern for situations like this. I don't recall seeing one in-game, but it would make their own job easier.

I don't think that ZOS should be droping the columns down randomly in the first place. Especially in a crown-only house.
Ruined or not, I bet Yokudans built their stuff properly.
Crazy paving is not a solution I would usually go for. It is not that I can't find a walkaround for the columns, I rather can't find a walkaround which is entirely satisfying considering the build I wanted to proceed with. Lotsa straight lines, alinor flooring or not

@Minyassa I hope they will as this is not a minor flaw.

Minyassa · May 2020

bayushi2005 wrote: »

ghastley wrote: »

That particular flooring makes the problem as bad as it can get, as it has elements for symmetry on the 45 degree axes as well. It does make me think they should provide a "crazy paving" style with no apparent pattern for situations like this. I don't recall seeing one in-game, but it would make their own job easier.

I don't think that ZOS should be droping the columns down randomly in the first place. Especially in a crown-only house.
Ruined or not, I bet Yokudans built their stuff properly.
Crazy paving is not a solution I would usually go for. It is not that I can't find a walkaround for the columns, I rather can't find a walkaround which is entirely satisfying considering the build I wanted to proceed with. Lotsa straight lines, alinor flooring or not

@Minyassa I hope they will as this is not a minor flaw.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom
@ZOS_GinaBruno

Jaraal · May 2020

Minyassa wrote: »

Oh, that's awful. Earthtear Cavern is the one I've been holding off on buying until they add more functionality to shared decorating privileges, and I just keep hearing more to put me off wanting to get it at all. But they've fixed broken or bad housing stuff before. Maybe they will notice it now.

They already made changes to Earthtear Cavern after people had decorated it, and they went berserk:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/350308/zos-nerf-earthtear-cavern-changes-noooooooooo/p1

katanagirl1 · May 2020

Earthtear is my primary residence, I don’t want any changes other than for ZOS to finally stop the rain inside and hopefully open up the invisible wall onto the raised area on the east side.

EDIT: typo

bayushi2005 · May 2020

Jaraal wrote: »

Minyassa wrote: »

Oh, that's awful. Earthtear Cavern is the one I've been holding off on buying until they add more functionality to shared decorating privileges, and I just keep hearing more to put me off wanting to get it at all. But they've fixed broken or bad housing stuff before. Maybe they will notice it now.

They already made changes to Earthtear Cavern after people had decorated it, and they went berserk:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/350308/zos-nerf-earthtear-cavern-changes-noooooooooo/p1

That's why it should be important to a) design the houses properly b) fix stuff before it hits live or very shortly after. I tend to report issues on PTS but I've seen only one change being made before the house involved became available for purchase.
I only wonder why is the QA team's job pushed onto the players...

Jaraal · May 2020

bayushi2005 wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Minyassa wrote: »

Oh, that's awful. Earthtear Cavern is the one I've been holding off on buying until they add more functionality to shared decorating privileges, and I just keep hearing more to put me off wanting to get it at all. But they've fixed broken or bad housing stuff before. Maybe they will notice it now.

They already made changes to Earthtear Cavern after people had decorated it, and they went berserk:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/350308/zos-nerf-earthtear-cavern-changes-noooooooooo/p1

That's why it should be important to a) design the houses properly

I agree with you, however the housing devs' idea of proper design apparently doesn't always mirror the players' idea of proper design. I doubt that many players, if tasked with designing a property from scratch, would deliberately make things non symmetrical or broken, since we are the ones who have experience with having to try and cover such things up.

You know, that might not be a bad idea. Perhaps ZOS could host a blank zone competition, where players could be given the same tools and assets devs use to create these crown store homes. Let the actual consumers design something, based upon our experience with trying to make ZOS's creations work within the 700 item limits. Then take the best two or three and sell them to the rest of the players, as gold or crown exclusive houses. I bet the housing enthusiasts would buy up the pristine, symmetrical, non-gigantic, and easily buildable creations in a heartbeat.

bayushi2005 · May 2020

Jaraal wrote: »

bayushi2005 wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Minyassa wrote: »

Oh, that's awful. Earthtear Cavern is the one I've been holding off on buying until they add more functionality to shared decorating privileges, and I just keep hearing more to put me off wanting to get it at all. But they've fixed broken or bad housing stuff before. Maybe they will notice it now.

They already made changes to Earthtear Cavern after people had decorated it, and they went berserk:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/350308/zos-nerf-earthtear-cavern-changes-noooooooooo/p1

That's why it should be important to a) design the houses properly

I agree with you, however the housing devs' idea of proper design apparently doesn't always mirror the players' idea of proper design. I doubt that many players, if tasked with designing a property from scratch, would deliberately make things non symmetrical or broken, since we are the ones who have experience with having to try and cover such things up.

You know, that might not be a bad idea. Perhaps ZOS could host a blank zone competition, where players could be given the same tools and assets devs use to create these crown store homes. Let the actual consumers design something, based upon our experience with trying to make ZOS's creations work within the 700 item limits. Then take the best two or three and sell them to the rest of the players, as gold or crown exclusive houses. I bet the housing enthusiasts would buy up the pristine, symmetrical, non-gigantic, and easily buildable creations in a heartbeat.

@Jaraal Omg, what a brilliant idea! I would love to see player-created houses!

@ZOS_GinaBruno maybe it's time for a new housing contest?