PTS Update 43 - Feedback Thread for Home Tours

Ariordin · July 11

Hello, generally speaking i like the new houses and the Tours idea. ---Not the features i imagined but whatevs. A few comments though:

The Five Companions House:

The courtyard is filled with benches as borders for planters, yet none of these benches are settable. This is weird! Please add sit spots on these
The outlooks look into Cyrodill and are beautiful, but from such a high point shouldn't you be able to see the white gold tower? You've gone to the point to be able to see it at a distance from a few imperial homes already. I would think one based on Cyrodills edge would have a good view of the tower therefor. Please add this!

General prompts provided:

The first four prompts i answer yes it worked great!
How do you plan to use Home Tours when they are available outside the PTS? Is there anything you'd like to see adjusted or improved?

I'm a moderate Home builder with a half dozen or so 'fits the theme' houses that my friends like to visit. The main reason to share them will be to give them easier access to the various houses.
Do you have any other general feedback?
It would be interesting to be able to see your houses statistics. How many people have visited? How many have favorited your house?

Also, other games have a 'tip' feature where a house or ship or mission ~whatever the game has that's playable by other players~ can send a SMALL tip if they appreciate the work you put into it. Not usually enough to make the owner in game wealthy, but an option to tip a 100 gold once a day or so might give people a little incentive to put their house out to tour without making it a system easy to abuse. Maybe also achievements for earning tips, favorites, or recommendations

CyberDiva · July 11

Bo0137 wrote: »

CyberDiva wrote: »

Bo0137 wrote: »

2. Players NEED incentive to do these extra activities. I mean, sure, it's really fun socializing and completing these parkour challenges. But you reach the end and you receive nothing. So what happens is: you do it for a couple times; then you stop going to these hubs because you are forced to do something else in the game (like farming or grinding).

I assure you, there are thousands of us housing aficionados, and maybe .00001% might feel as if they need incentive to make houses. I feel like if you need an incentive just to create a house in the game, then housing probably is not for you. Creating houses is a great form of creativity, and most of us in the housing community enjoy just making houses just to make them and for no other reason.

If you feel that you need incentive, perhaps you should try entering a housing contest in a guild. Often prizes such as gold and/or furnishings are given to the winners of those contests, and it challenges you to get better at it.

You envision Home Tours as a showcase of houses, which is a perfectly fine iteration. I envision Home Tours as a "game mode hub"; micro universes within the game, pocket realms if you will, for people to actually play the game in different ways.

I talk about arenas, jump puzzles, roleplay lounges. This would attract players from otuside the housing niche. People who don't mind housing at all but would enjoy partaking different, creative activities.

While touring houses is fun for the sake of touring houses, I feel it's a great opportunity to explore player-made content.

And this new form of content will have to reward players that are not interested in housing. Otherwise these people will not actually spend much time in it.

I myself don't spend time in houses, at all. But I was really hyped for this announcement because I saw opportunity for good quality content in a much faster cadency (driven by the community). And rewards like gold and exp would prevent me from thinking "right, this is cool; but I'm wasting time doing this activity instead of XXX or YYY"

People already make their houses into minigames such as jumping puzzles, mazes, etc. and have for years. They also already make their homes into RP hubs. They do it for no other reason than to bring other people enjoyment, the love of creating these things, or just because they feel like it. This is not likely to change anytime soon. At this time, however, EHT is the only way you can hear about such things on the Live server. So, if you do not use EHT the chance is likely you have no idea those houses are already out there and available to go through.

It sounds as if you would like to go through some of these houses yourself on the Live server. If that is the case, I will happily provide you with a list that you can use to check them out.

Sir Tanks a lot · July 12

It would be great if there were at least the option to see the house nickname as well? I ported to a house that happened to be a home tours house but I did not see the nickname anywhere.

TDVM · July 13

don't add that to the game

swankery · July 16

Did you list any homes for touring? If so, was the process clear?
Yes and yes, easy peasy.
Did you visit any homes through the Recommended or Browse Homes section of Home Tours? Yes

Were you able to find homes that matched your interests?
MMM Not exactly ...Housing Hub has a lovely gambit of titles or tags to find what we are looking to see and would love to see most of them added.

Did you use Tags when listing or searching for homes? Not really at first.
If so, did the current set of Tags work well? Somewhat-ish. mmm..idk.

Are there Tags that you would like to see added? Yes
*Tags for Guild houses
* the different styles like Reguard, Argonian, Dark elf etc
* Pop culture
* Modern
* Sci-fi
* Archetecture
* Art deco
* Cottage
* Coastal
* I could go on and on butt ...I'll leave some room

The descriptors are nice as one of 3 options to narrow search but often we are often looking for nouns like "Temples" or "Christmas" etc. A search bar could bypass *some* of the more specific tags. But it could mean sacrificing your name for your home to reflect exactly what it is if you want it found. "Lighthouse" instead of "Peggy's Cove" for example.

Did you Favorite or Recommend any homes? of course, so many amazing creators on here

How do you plan to use Home Tours when they are available outside the PTS? Yes ..and will still also use the Housing Hub addon for the added features.

Is there anything you'd like to see adjusted or improved? A few things.

*Just pressing "T" while in another player's home would be more intuitive than having to go into inspection mode. Isn't T for turing off surface drag? Does that interfere with others being able to decroate your home? (Did not test) Surface drag is a drag anyhow, won't mind if we loose it, personally, tbh.

* A small"X" box to reset filters would be lovely to have right beside the "Tags" dropdown box instead of digging in the settings menu to reset the filters.

* A search bar for player titles of homes would be amazing- that could help us find what we are looking for.

* To "Browse homes" means A LOT of scrolling, I expect thousands x thousands to scroll through. Could we expand the UI to 4 or more rows instead of two or compact the listings somehow to a list mode? (we dont need a picture of the home, imo, it's written right there what house it is already)

*Add "Sort by" dropdown with "Most Recent" and "Unvisited"

Do you have any other general feedback?

*Perhaps a vistior count only veiwable by the owner it would be nice to know people visited.
*A guestbook to sign with maybe with the option to send a nice mail to the owner would be so lovely.

Totes1 · July 17

Did you list any homes for touring? If so, was the process clear?
Yes, and the process was fairly straightforward.

Did you visit any homes through the Recommended or Browse Homes section of Home Tours? Were you able to find homes that matched your interests?
Yes, I visited a number of homes. The UI is a bit chunky and doesn’t have enough information against each listing. Considering the thousands of homes that will be listed, a UI similar to EHT Housing Hub’s browser might make it easier to navigate than is currently.

Did you use Tags when listing or searching for homes? If so, did the current set of Tags work well? Are there Tags that you would like to see added?
Yes, I used tags but I think they need improvement to capture the diversity of this creative community. Current tags don't reflect creations I see often such as homages to history, pop culture, sci-fi, surreal experiences, guild halls, intricate cave structures, crafting areas, and more. Consider adding tags like sci-fi, memorial, monuments, pop-culture, temples, architecture, guild hall, crafting, historical, abstract, and others. EHT’s Housing Hub already offers a comprehensive reference point for a wider array of categories that better reflect the diversity of creations ingame.

Did you Favorite or Recommend any homes
Yes - though not sure how I feel about the 'recommended' feature...

How do you plan to use Home Tours when they are available outside the PTS? Is there anything you'd like to see adjusted or improved?
For Home Tours to be useful to me, the minimum I'd like to see is a visitor count for my homes (a guest book would be ideal), a description field for homes, the date a home was listed, and information on whether I’ve previously visited a property. Unless there are significant improvements to Home Tours, I will continue relying heavily on EHT and hope it receives regular updates after Home Tours goes live.

Do you have any other general feedback?
I'm delighted that Home Tours will provide greater access to housing for console users, those new to housing, and those who don’t use addons. However, as a long term avid houser who plays on PC, I'm a bit underwhelmed by the hype that surrounded update 43 - Home Tours doesn't significantly improve my housing experience (given EHT already caters to my needs and does it better), and is low on my wish list of desirable upgrades – with issues such as inventory management and others being of higher priority.

Thanks for reading 😊

SammiSakura · July 17

Heyo! Formally requesting a "Guild Hall" tag for the tours. Seems like a no-brainer really. having it under something like utility is a bit poo really. Dont forget about us

!

onyxorb · July 19

I consider myself an avid houser, and finally convinced myself to get over my fear of being banned again, and redownloaded PTS.

I normally go on to view new homes, and test new builds, and look at the new furnishings.
This time I had ZERO desire to do that, and also ZERO desire to test the new House Tours feature.

I strictly went there to test out some of the armor sets.

I absolutely LOVE EHT's Housing Hub and use it on both PC/NA and PC/EU, it's friggin Amazing.
However, I can't see myself using the Housing Tours feature at all, it is SO lacking compared to Housing Hub.

I've listed some Storage Homes to test the interface, mostly because I'm cranky over not having more storage.
I've also added a few other random houses just to get a better understanding of the interface and offer real feedback.

A definite PLUS is that it is very easy to list a house, even if you are not in it.

However, it felt 'lacking' when listing the house.
There is no BUILD Description, so I could not explain the reason for the build, or even explain if there are hidden areas to enjoy.

Also, the keywords are severely lacking.
I had to put the Santa build under 'Lore'.

I'm not sure how I feel about the Recommended list, but I'll leave that for others to address.

Also I would like to point out is that the 'House Category' filter uses the 'official' tags.
I'm not sure 'Classic', 'Notable', and 'Staple' are terms that many players will understand.
Maybe it would be better to use something like 'Large', 'Medium', 'Small'?

The 'Browse Homes' option lets us type in a @username and select a home.
It would be nice to actually add a 'GoTo' button on that screen to let us port to that house (assuming we have permissions).

No, I do not plan to use House Tours on live.

I love that Console and non addon users finally have this feature, but it's just not my cup of tea.

As for features I would like to see in the future?

I'd be happy with a 'personal furnishing bank' that is behaves like a 'personal guild bank that is restricted to furnishings'.
That's 500 stacks of furnishings I don't have to have stashed in dozens of houses taking up individual slots.
So that stack of 30 gingko trees, no longer fills up a corner of my house, taking up precious slots, and a house, but instead sits nice and comfy in 1 slot of my personal furnishing bank.

I compare it to a guild bank because it would NOT be tied to the housing editor in any way shape or form.
It could only be accessed via the main city banks, just like any other guild bank.
You pull items from the bank into your inventory, or vice versa.

The powers that be could even sell us a new assistant that plops into your home that only allows you to interact with this personal furnishing bank.

In theory, since there is no access to this storage via the housing editor, iI would 'assume' that it wouldn't add any additional strain to the system? I have no clue though, just putting this thought out there.

AllenaNightWood · July 22

can we please have furnishing deconstruction

Lilarna · July 28

- Did you list any homes for touring? If so, was the process clear?
Yes, I did, it was very straight forward.

- Did you visit any homes through the Recommended or Browse Homes section of Home Tours? Were you able to find homes that matched your interests?
I was able to visit houses through those sections. It was difficult to find houses that corresponded to certain themes.

- Did you use Tags when listing or searching for homes? If so, did the current set of Tags work well? Are there Tags that you would like to see added?
Yes, I tried out the tags. I think the current set of tags needs to be reworked. Some of them feel a little vague, as if any sort of house could be added under that tag, like Cozy, Conventional, Playful. Artwork feels like an odd tag, I would never use it because it would feel pretentious, and also feels too vague. Colorful also feels like it could be attributed to any house. I feel that the tags should be stronger in theme and better defined. Sacred could be turned into religious. A tag such as Dwemer and/or Clockwork could be added. Contemporary, or Modern, Science-fiction, Pop culture, Mazes, Memorials all feel like important tags to showcase the community's creations. I would really like to see a tag for Guild Halls, and one for Crafting homes. Sinister feels like an in between compromise, so Horror would feel more adequate, and why not also Spooky, distinguishing the two could be worth it. Also, tags for each ESO culture (Dunmer, Redguard, ...) feel mandatory to me.
Overall, having more tags feel like a better thing, and the way to go.

- Did you Favorite or Recommend any homes?
Yes, I did it to try out the system, it worked fine.

- How do you plan to use Home Tours when they are available outside the PTS? Is there anything you'd like to see adjusted or improved?
I will be listing all of my homes on both servers on the Home Tours, and I will be looking through the additions often, visiting and sharing around, that's for sure.

However, I think that there are several features that could make the Home Tours feature, which is a great addition, even better. I think that the number of houses that will be added is going to be really important. Based on the EHT addon, there are 6.4 k houses added on PC EU and 9.8 k on PC NA. Since only a fraction of players use addons, and even less of them use the EHT addon, we can expect thousands of homes to be listed. I think that the current UI is not handy for that. The icons are way too huge.

I also think that the possibility to list a short accompanying text, even 200 characters, would be wonderful.

- Do you have any other general feedback?

The "new housing feature" was really hyped a LOT over the last months on social media and on the various Bethesda Twitch streams. It is a great addition of course, but unfortunately it seems to have dissapointed people so much.

I've been reading strong opinions about it all around, on most Discords we housers spend time on.

A very strong issue that the housing community is facing is storage. And we're not talking about a little bit of an over-burdened inventory here. More like 3000 to 3500+ different types of items (I've exchanged with several different housers), and those items can come in large numbers. Stacks can stay in the character's inventory or the bank or the 8 coffers we have. But those storage solutions cover only 215+480+(60x4)+(30x4)=1055 stacks. That leaves 2400+ stacks of items to deal with for a lot of people...

If i'm evoking these numbers, it's to try and quantify the issue a bit. Also, it's to explain why a "new housing feature" that would have addressed this would have been a very appreciated one!

Solutions could be:

the additions of a "furnishing bag", that would function similarly to the way the crafting bag functions with materials, would be a great solution! It could rely on ESO+. Maybe it could have a smaller capacity without the subscription.

new storage chests. increasing the 60/30 capacities of the current ones would be nice since that way it wouldn't impact the number of collectibles you can place in a house. Or adding new ones that would be 240/120 that you could put instead, they could cost a lot more writ vouchers for example.

being able to deconstruct crafted furnishings in a way that would restore the expensive material, at least a good part of it, could be great as well, it would encourage people to be more flexible with what they store.

Since the housing system came out, the storage system that accompanies it has not upscaled to match the growth in the number of accessible furnishings.
We are given wonderful amounts of new furnishings several times per year, but we are not given any way to handle those exponential numbers.

The ESO players who enjoy housing are undergoing a constant struggle for inventory space...

All around the community, I see players that feel let down. Some of us, even dedicated and passionate housers, are dangerously discouraged.

CyberDiva · July 29

Lilarna wrote: »

- Do you have any other general feedback?

The "new housing feature" was really hyped a LOT over the last months on social media and on the various Bethesda Twitch streams. It is a great addition of course, but unfortunately it seems to have dissapointed people so much.

I've been reading strong opinions about it all around, on most Discords we housers spend time on.

A very strong issue that the housing community is facing is storage. And we're not talking about a little bit of an over-burdened inventory here. More like 3000 to 3500+ different types of items (I've exchanged with several different housers), and those items can come in large numbers. Stacks can stay in the character's inventory or the bank or the 8 coffers we have. But those storage solutions cover only 215+480+(60x4)+(30x4)=1055 stacks. That leaves 2400+ stacks of items to deal with for a lot of people...

If i'm evoking these numbers, it's to try and quantify the issue a bit. Also, it's to explain why a "new housing feature" that would have addressed this would have been a very appreciated one!

Solutions could be:
the additions of a "furnishing bag", that would function similarly to the way the crafting bag functions with materials, would be a great solution! It could rely on ESO+. Maybe it could have a smaller capacity without the subscription.

new storage chests. increasing the 60/30 capacities of the current ones would be nice since that way it wouldn't impact the number of collectibles you can place in a house. Or adding new ones that would be 240/120 that you could put instead, they could cost a lot more writ vouchers for example.

being able to deconstruct crafted furnishings in a way that would restore the expensive material, at least a good part of it, could be great as well, it would encourage people to be more flexible with what they store.

Since the housing system came out, the storage system that accompanies it has not upscaled to match the growth in the number of accessible furnishings.
We are given wonderful amounts of new furnishings several times per year, but we are not given any way to handle those exponential numbers.

The ESO players who enjoy housing are undergoing a constant struggle for inventory space...

All around the community, I see players that feel let down. Some of us, even dedicated and passionate housers, are dangerously discouraged.

@ZOS_GinaBruno,

Lilarna is correct. Of everyone that I have spoken to about the new housing feature, I hear a hells of a lot of disappointment. Honestly... I am also disappointed. While we all agree that it is very nice that non-add-on users and console players can now list open houses, many of us feel that ZOS is not listening to the community and has not for years. That yet again the new "feature" is just another add-on partially placed into the game, and in a way that is sub-par to the add-on it tries to mimic (Essential Housing Tools). Yes, there are limitations to the game code, but if an add-on can alter your game UI.... I shall leave the rest for you to fill in.

Out of curiosity I did a poll before the new housing feature came out, asking everyone what they were hoping to see as the new feature. Housing tours was not considered, not even by the non-add-on users who wanted to be able to do house tours. The top of the list? Water Sheets (sheets of water we can use to build rivers, pools, and other fun things). Resizing Furniture. Furniture Bag. Weather control (that random rain in houses can be frustrating when trying to build). Housing slots (although we all already know that one is not going to happen due to server strain).

Additionally, many of us housing addicts feel that feedback is not being passed along to the developers that actually consider new ideas and potential problems. There are problems that need to be addressed (such as furniture inventory issues) that have not been touched on or even mentioned by the dev team. Asking around recently, I found out that people now feel discouraged to the point that they do not want to even bother leaving feedback on housing tours or anything else. Most of them feel that it would just be ignored and not even addressed in the least with an "I am sorry, I know you want this but we cannot do that because....."

I am not attempting to turn this thread into a complaint-fest. I do not want that at all. I do feel, however, that this really needed to be said. I hope that this gets to the right people. Thank you for your time.

MoonPile · July 29

My feedback post about House Tours, with pictures:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/661795/

I hope those EHT Hub sub-features can get an official treatment someday. For now, at the very least, a short description field would help.

Sadly, the closer we get to U43's launch, the more I'm actually dreading it. I don't want to feel pressured to interact with this system to participate in the housing community, nor answer "why can't I find your house in the HT menu?" (guess I'll just link that post).

EDIT:
Answering some of the Qs here too:

Did you list any homes for touring? If so, was the process clear?
Yes, but title field is too short & interferes with current travel systems (see link above)

Did you visit any homes through the Recommended or Browse Homes section of Home Tours? Were you able to find homes that matched your interests?
Yes. Not really; I've sent this via /bug on PTS – there are 2 things that make me want to visit a build:

Screenshots
Description

Since HT has neither, it will be a mess when there are thousands of listings. I will continue to use 3rd party systems to find builds I want to visit.

Did you use Tags when listing or searching for homes? If so, did the current set of Tags work well? Are there Tags that you would like to see added?
Yes; the tags are nice but not a good sub for a short description.

How do you plan to use Home Tours when they are available outside the PTS? Is there anything you'd like to see adjusted or improved?
I don't want to use it. Yes – see main link above. + Other features that are more a priority for me.