#u43 home tours

[moonpile]

The Trouble with Home Tours - ESO U43

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/661795/ - U43 Home Tours - Preemptive Feedback

TL;DR: A description field alone would solve a lot of problems. With the other sub-features, it could've been great.

Intro:

I admire the project this is based on: EHT Housing Hub. Due to clues in datamines and because EHT's creator was hired to work for ZOS (he was on the reveal stream), some of us suspected for months that Home Tours would be the new feature in Update 43. It was not a surprise.

The disappointment is not about what it is. It's not that "we already have an addon" (the feature could've been better for all of us, PC and console alike).

It's that I hoped it would come with more utility and improvements on EHT's Housing Hub,

rather than being an extremely "lite" version. I actually don't use HH much due to UI and UX; official implementation could improve these.

For now, I’m not looking forward to Home Tours. I don’t want to share nor tour builds if there’s no way to share the description or POI.

Feedback:

1. Descriptions:

Anyone who's done housing events knows that descriptions are crucial, both for explaining the build's story and visitor tips/directions.

Two things make me want to visit a build:

Screenshots

Description

HT has neither; tags don't suffice. It will be a mess when there are thousands of listings.

Example from EHT Housing Hub: Hovering over a home in EHT shows the description. Home Tours could improve upon this UI and make it fit the game's aesthetics.

Also with EHT, players can put a custom book containing the house description. This would be a great sub-feature to bring in, keeping things in-game rather than in UI.

Example: custom books

I don't like to use EHT effects: they don't match the in-game aesthetics/UI, show through other objects, and not everyone has them enabled. Official implementation could improve this.

1.5 Weather Control:

Worth mentioning weather control again since it shows up a ton in descriptions: "Please visit in sunny weather or lights don't work!" etc. Dark, low-contrast rain & lightning flashing are physically painful and annoying as a builder, but it's bad for streamers or judges too: they don't have time to wait around for the right conditions or return when it's finally sunny again if they have 50 others to visit.

2. House Nicknames:

Disappointed that titles are not showcase-specific.

I use nicknames with BMU to organize my houses for easy travel. (I constantly change the numbers, so if I'm actively working on a house it might be 00 or 01.)

But I don't want my "Teahouse for Azandar" to show up as "04 ATHFA" for visitors... or worse thanks to the character limit:

3. Point of Interest markers:

Descriptions could be shorter if we could place graphical POI markers, with an option to add short flavor text that would show on interaction. (No slot wasting: these should not be furnishings. Should be able to show/hide so they don't clash with the visuals.)

Example, EHT's POI markers:

Again, style doesn't match and these show through walls and objects. Official implementation could improve upon EHT.

I started making graphics like this to help visitors. The above in-game features would be better.

Since I couldn't include a graphic in-game, and without descriptions (and because of the EHT copy-paste issue!) I’d rather not use the House Tours feature for now. Discord, Reddit, Youtube, etc. are all better ways to find housing inspiration and community.

I'm making my own housing directory, here.

...

From the outside, it appears like there may have been hurdles that tied devs' hands, preventing something more feature-rich.

I know others are disappointed it's not one of many other oft-requested features. But since this is what we got, I hope others will ask for these improvements as well, and that the devs can keep working and expanding on it.

[moonpile]

Wish I could save some messages forever! But screenshot will have to suffice.

Thanks Cardinal!!!!

(I really do hope Cardinal & team will be able to work on Home Tours more. The idea is cool, just wish it had more functionality.)

[moonpile]

Re: The Trouble with Home Tours - ESO U43

From today's article: Update 43 Preview—Home Tours

"We always start by asking ourselves what we want to accomplish, and by thinking about the people we're building the system for, ... Once we were happy with our list internally, we asked for community feedback on PTS, and incorporated that feedback. Once the community has had a chance to play further, we plan to continue to evaluate feedback and iterate as needed. Of course, this is only the beginning of what’s possible with Home Tours."

Great! I hope so :)

A lot of us in housing are not happy with the feature as-is. Above all, descriptions are missing.

We said so on the forums, PTS, Reddit, YouTube and elsewhere like this blog. Aside from a few tags changed, I don't know that anyone really feels our feedback was incorporated :/

To be fair, by the time anything hits PTS it seems like it's too late for significant changes. I wish they could do something like ask community reps well in advance.