U43 Home Tours - Visitor Permission Settings Need Updated As Well

Adnarim · July 5

While it is no secret that U43 has had a mixed response, I personally think it has potential to be a nice addition IF AND ONLY IF visitor permission settings are also updated and improved. Right now, our options are pretty limited as far as customization regarding who has access to our houses and what they can do there. I would love to interact with the new Home Tours feature coming with U43, however I will have extreme hesitation towards posting my own creations if I cannot tweak my visitor permission settings to a level that makes me feel comfortable. An influx of strangers into one of my houses, with the current state of these settings, sounds very unappealing. Here are my suggestions as to how visitor permission settings should look in accordance with the update.

1. First and perhaps MOST IMPORTANT is that we should have the option to disable the ‘F5’ key (housing inspection mode) from being used. Through addons (PC obviously), players can completely steal another’s build. Here is a link that thoroughly explains the issue https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/660440/creation-copying-without-permission-using-eht/p1. Rather than trying to work around an addon, it seems easiest to make this a toggleable setting. Maybe we could even specify who may use ‘F5’ – anyone, only guild mates, only friends, or nobody.

2. Secondly, it would be great to select exactly which type of furnishings a guest can interact with. For example, in most of my houses I don’t want people to mess with my lighting, but I want them to be able to use the doors I have placed. This could be as simple as adding a list containing each furniture category, and a box to check whether or not we want other players to interact with said item type.

3. Lastly, to go along with these additional settings, I think the currently existing visitor permission options (visitor, limited visitor, etc) should be separated. The basic / default visitor access choices should be regarding who may enter your house: anyone, only guild mates, only friends, or nobody. Then make the ‘decorator’ permissions another setting (again, with the choices being anyone, only guild mates, only friends, or nobody).

I really do think this update could add some liveliness to the housing scene, but I would hate to see visitor permission settings go untouched. It makes sense to me that if a feature is added to the game allowing tons of strangers to view and access our builds, we should be given more in-depth permission settings so we feel encouraged to actually interact with the feature rather than leaving all of our houses private and unlisted. Are there any additional settings that people think should be added to visitor permissions?

*summary for those who don’t want to read* split visitor permissions into 4 categories: who can visit your house, who can be a decorator in your house, who can use ‘F5’ (housing inspection mode) in your house, and what category of items people may interact with.

Amottica · July 5

1. I find it boring, to say the least, to copy (or steal, as stated in the OP) the way someone furnished their home. However, I am not arguing against this; I think it is dull outside of that.
2. The second point I do not think should happen. It requires to things. First, furnishings would need to be grouped (not by the player but by Zenimax), and then, a player can decide which groups of furnishings visitors can interact with. That much is a requirement since it would reduce the server load required to make this work. The second point is that all this information needs to be stored and controlled on the server side, which would increase the server load. I do not see this as having a level of importance to make this happen, let alone that many would even be interested in such a level of control.
3. The third request does not clearly state what is being asked. We can already set access levels for guilds and individuals. That covers all levels of access and how we would reasonably want to grant them. Granted, if Zenimax wanted to create a means to allow people to "steal" our decoration ideas, logically speaking, that would be part of the first suggestion.

Good luck, and thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Adding here.

The thread below disagrees with the first suggestion. I agree with their thoughts that this should be blocked from the available PC addons. As I said, I find it rather full or lame that people would outright copy someone else's creation and hard work with a mere few strokes of the keyboard.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/660440/creation-copying-without-permission-using-eht#latest

SeaGtGruff · July 5

If it's an addon which is allowing players to actual copy/"steal" someone else's "build," then why isn't it the addon's author's responsibility to remove that from their addon? Why isn't everybody who's upset about that raising the issue with them?

SpiritKitten · July 5

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

If it's an addon which is allowing players to actual copy/"steal" someone else's "build," then why isn't it the addon's author's responsibility to remove that from their addon? Why isn't everybody who's upset about that raising the issue with them?

That addon author is a ZOS employee.

Adnarim · July 5

Amottica wrote: »

2. The second point I do not think should happen. It requires to things. First, furnishings would need to be grouped (not by the player but by Zenimax), and then, a player can decide which groups of furnishings visitors can interact with. That much is a requirement since it would reduce the server load required to make this work. The second point is that all this information needs to be stored and controlled on the server side, which would increase the server load. I do not see this as having a level of importance to make this happen, let alone that many would even be interested in such a level of control.
3. The third request does not clearly state what is being asked. We can already set access levels for guilds and individuals. That covers all levels of access and how we would reasonably want to grant them.

For #2, I think it could work because furnishings actually are already grouped. Every furniture item is coded to have a tag with their category. You can see these categories in the menu when you craft furniture. For example, ‘conservatory’, ‘courtyard’, ‘dining’ and so on. We have gotten some new intractable furnishings lately that I think increase the need for this (such as the Apocrypha bridges that roll up).

For #3 I am basically saying that they should do away with the options of ‘decorator’ ‘visitor’ and ‘limited visitor’ and instead separate the functions. Yes we can already set individual access levels, which I really like, but if they were to add more permission settings it makes sense to divide these. It would be more clear for new players too because right now you have to view the ‘limited visitor’ tooltip to see what those limits are (I’m not saying it’s hard to view a tooltip lol but I can imagine a situation where it might be missed).

Adnarim · July 5

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

If it's an addon which is allowing players to actual copy/"steal" someone else's "build," then why isn't it the addon's author's responsibility to remove that from their addon? Why isn't everybody who's upset about that raising the issue with them?

A few points here. Mod / addon authors generally should eliminate exploits when they can, yes, but it’s not always that easy. They also cannot be held responsible because they aren’t paid. They might be too busy to troubleshoot the problem, as they likely have IRL jobs. Some might have stopped playing the game entirely (from personal experience, I am a mod author for other games and I am not going to spend my valuable free time updating those mods if I’m not currently playing the game myself). They also might lack access to certain elements of the internal code that make fixing the exploit easier. Game devs are the ones with the money and resources to fix issues like this. Also, if it is fixed via the game rather than via the addon, you get rid of the potential for a different addon in the future to bring back the exploit.

Further, I don’t want to see the ‘copy / paste’ function removed from the addon. For my own personal builds, it is a godsend. Especially when doing a structural build, it saves me so much time being able to build a portion of, say, a roof and then copying and pasting it to complete the rest of the roof. The problem was never present with this mod until the inspection mode was added to the game. Suddenly, people could use the copy / paste function that was already present in other people’s houses rather than just their own. The cleanest fix here seems to be giving us the option to disable inspection mode from being used in our houses if we want, hence my suggestion.

tsaescishoeshiner · July 5

I don't think it would be fair to remove the ability to inspect any house at any time from all players because some players are troubled by an addon that allows their builds to be copied.

Something should be done about the copying issue because it sounds like it's making people in the housing forum and discords feel very hostile and toxic towards other people--ragequitting the game, accusing people who disagree of not loving housing, comparing people to art plagiarizers, etc. I haven't heard of housing competitions canceling because of build copying, which has been in the game for a while now, but maybe it's happened?

Constructive ideas:

What if Limited Visitor only showed a list of furnishings in the house, but only their position (not their orientation)? Then it would make copying nearly impossible because you would have to spend like hours rotating furniture and it would definitely look off and incorrect. Or more extremely, it could only show the list of furnishings without position or orientation.

Alternatively, and I think this is least likely, what if people could optionally place a "Do Not Copy" tag on their house and be able to report people who copied? This would be hard to prove unless there's a build completion timestamp added. Also, I think it's unlikely because of the moderation involved.

Limited Visitor settings:

Totally, agree, I'd also like if visitor settings could enable doors and bridge usage but not lights or effects. I think implementing it could be tricky. I think an easier way to implement it would be to have "Limited Visitor" and "Limited Visitor--Doors and Structures Only". (Not that more detailed controls wouldn't be nice, just thinking about what's simplest.)

TeruKisuke · July 5

I agree that there needs to be more options than just Limited Visitor and Visitor. Namely, I want people to be able to open my doors, but I don't want them to touch my lights, because lights have a big impact on atmosphere and visibility. But it almost feels pointless to put a fancy door down if I'm going to keep them open all the time anyways. Doors and lights are two very different things and should be separate.

SeaGtGruff · July 5

SpiritKitten wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

If it's an addon which is allowing players to actual copy/"steal" someone else's "build," then why isn't it the addon's author's responsibility to remove that from their addon? Why isn't everybody who's upset about that raising the issue with them?

That addon author is a ZOS employee.

So that absolves them of any personal responsibility for the addon and its features? If they were an Epic employee who wrote the addon in their personal time, would it become Epic's responsibility to maintain it? Is your employer responsible for any of your personal programming or written or artistic projects that you've done on your personal time?

kargen27 · July 6

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

If it's an addon which is allowing players to actual copy/"steal" someone else's "build," then why isn't it the addon's author's responsibility to remove that from their addon? Why isn't everybody who's upset about that raising the issue with them?

The problem being what prevents some other person from just creating another addon to make it possible again. Players have access to the data that allows the addons to provide this particular feature. THe only way to prevent it would be something from the games end of things.

Amottica · July 6

Adnarim wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

2. The second point I do not think should happen. It requires to things. First, furnishings would need to be grouped (not by the player but by Zenimax), and then, a player can decide which groups of furnishings visitors can interact with. That much is a requirement since it would reduce the server load required to make this work. The second point is that all this information needs to be stored and controlled on the server side, which would increase the server load. I do not see this as having a level of importance to make this happen, let alone that many would even be interested in such a level of control.
3. The third request does not clearly state what is being asked. We can already set access levels for guilds and individuals. That covers all levels of access and how we would reasonably want to grant them.

For #2, I think it could work because furnishings actually are already grouped. Every furniture item is coded to have a tag with their category. You can see these categories in the menu when you craft furniture. For example, ‘conservatory’, ‘courtyard’, ‘dining’ and so on. We have gotten some new intractable furnishings lately that I think increase the need for this (such as the Apocrypha bridges that roll up).

For #3 I am basically saying that they should do away with the options of ‘decorator’ ‘visitor’ and ‘limited visitor’ and instead separate the functions. Yes we can already set individual access levels, which I really like, but if they were to add more permission settings it makes sense to divide these. It would be more clear for new players too because right now you have to view the ‘limited visitor’ tooltip to see what those limits are (I’m not saying it’s hard to view a tooltip lol but I can imagine a situation where it might be missed).

2. Yes, there is a grouping, but I doubt it is as the OP would want.
3. The options should remain simple, and what we have works. Further, the more complex it is, the more challenging it is for newer players to pick up. This is evident by the huge margin between just the average player and the top player.

Amottica · July 6

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

If it's an addon which is allowing players to actual copy/"steal" someone else's "build," then why isn't it the addon's author's responsibility to remove that from their addon? Why isn't everybody who's upset about that raising the issue with them?

Zenimax is the gatekeeper on what is available in the API. Someone posted that a Zenimax employee authored the add-on, which I am not certain of. I would be surprised, as Zenimax would not be pleased if someone copied their work. Yes, I know how we furnish our homes cannot be copywritten, but I am speaking of the principle of it.

SpiritKitten · July 7

Amottica wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

If it's an addon which is allowing players to actual copy/"steal" someone else's "build," then why isn't it the addon's author's responsibility to remove that from their addon? Why isn't everybody who's upset about that raising the issue with them?

Zenimax is the gatekeeper on what is available in the API. Someone posted that a Zenimax employee authored the add-on, which I am not certain of. I would be surprised, as Zenimax would not be pleased if someone copied their work. Yes, I know how we furnish our homes cannot be copywritten, but I am speaking of the principle of it.

He was hired by ZOS after he wrote the addon, and because of it. He was in the bottom right corner in the last live stream.

SpiritKitten · July 7

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

SpiritKitten wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

If it's an addon which is allowing players to actual copy/"steal" someone else's "build," then why isn't it the addon's author's responsibility to remove that from their addon? Why isn't everybody who's upset about that raising the issue with them?

That addon author is a ZOS employee.

So that absolves them of any personal responsibility for the addon and its features? If they were an Epic employee who wrote the addon in their personal time, would it become Epic's responsibility to maintain it? Is your employer responsible for any of your personal programming or written or artistic projects that you've done on your personal time?

Hope you're not directing those questions at me. I was just informing you that the addon author must know about this issue, as he is a ZOS employee. He hasn't fixed it. Why? I don't have the answers. Ask him those questions, not me.

Amottica · July 7

SpiritKitten wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

If it's an addon which is allowing players to actual copy/"steal" someone else's "build," then why isn't it the addon's author's responsibility to remove that from their addon? Why isn't everybody who's upset about that raising the issue with them?

Zenimax is the gatekeeper on what is available in the API. Someone posted that a Zenimax employee authored the add-on, which I am not certain of. I would be surprised, as Zenimax would not be pleased if someone copied their work. Yes, I know how we furnish our homes cannot be copywritten, but I am speaking of the principle of it.

He was hired by ZOS after he wrote the addon, and because of it. He was in the bottom right corner in the last live stream.

Ok, they were not a Zenimax employee but became one. That clarification makes much more sense.

Zenimax is still the gatekeeper for this and has absolute control over access to the data. I doubt they would want people copying their work, so I will be surprised if they do not address this thing much of their creative player base.