Homes of Tamriel: ESO Housing Issues

Housing was one of the most anticipated features of The Elder Scrolls Online for me and many of my friends in the game. It opened the door to a level of depth for many of us in the game. A feature that would allow us to embrace our inner decorator, a place where we could be creative and expressive, and display our achievements in the game. 

And for the most part, housing has not been a let down. We were allowed to own multiple houses and new houses have been getting released over time. But as awesome as housing has been, housing hasn't been without it's issues (more on those below) and I am going to talk a little bit about the issues and limitations of ESO Housing. 

Furnishing Limits

This is been an on again, off again debate. Some houses have more than enough available slots to design some really cool things, but for many houses, even after a larger house is filled up (700/700 slots used) the place looks and feels vacant. 

A recent addition to this vacuous homes list is the Princely Dawnlight Palace. To say this house is huge is a gross understatement. The courtyard is one of the biggest in the game, with two different water features, a wall that is accessible and multiple steps to the main house and landings. The courtyard also features a set of stairs that lead down to the water and beach which could house an incredibly detailed dock.

And then we can enter the palace's main structure. With the highest count of rooms of just about any house out there and a main hall that is just about as big as the entire Serenity Falls Estate there is so much room for creativity that the mind can blow an o-ring just thinking about it.

But then reality kicks in... You have all this space, space that is ripe for creatives minds to design and build in, and you get 700 furniture slots. Only 700 slots for both inside and outside, and that's only if you are an ESO Plus subscriber, without ESO Plus you are stuck with only 350 slots. 

700 slots could be used with just decorating the outside, easily, and still have room for more. And then while the outside is decorated to the nines, the inside is bare bones.

This is not unique to the Princely Dawnlight Palace; 

• Daggerfall Overlook with its secret door to a water area with a huge area that can be accessed, save for the slaughterfish; 
• Mathiisen Manor with its large courtyard and a reflecting pool, 
• Hundings Palatial Hall with its 360 degree courtyard, stables, lighthouse, roof access, and vast beach.
• Grand Topal Hideaway; a private island that is absolutely massive, the most massive in the game
• Hakkvild's High Hall with a massive courtyard, underground tunnel and a large multi-level house.
• Earthtear Cavern - One Big Giant Cave Dwelling
• Several other homes also have huge outdoor areas, like the Strident Springs house or the Cold Harbor house; the later of the two doesn't even include a structure for the 1,000,000g price tag. 

These places are ripe for decorating, but can never reach their full creative potential because of particularly low limits placed on their available furniture slots combined with their massive space availability.

Hey Zenimax, how about looking at increasing these limits. For the larger houses, you know the ones with the huge courtyards and large house structures, how about treating the outside and inside as its own loading zone, so the outside of these places could have 600 slots and the insides could have 600 slots? I know one limit of the housing is that too many items, especially large items, can take a long time to render and load. Sometimes, loading into my haunted house or my Ebonheart Manor can take a good 10 to 15 seconds to load in when it's at max capacity (700/700 slots). But treating each zone, interior and exterior, as it's own load zone could make the loading less problematic while still allowing more overall slots for the house. Just an idea.

Stolen Items

One of the biggest requests I hear from people, second only more furniture slots, is why the hell can't we place stolen furniture items in our homes? How are we supposed to have a true thieves den if we have launder our stolen furniture items before we can place them? 

Furthermore, outside of the fact that some of the items we steal, like Wooden Toys and Hair Creme, don't actually have a rendered object in the game (a tangible 3d model that can be displayed), why can't we use the other stuff we steal as decorating items; armor, weapons, etc, you know, stuff that does have a rendered object in the game.

Armor Stands

This has been requested for so long. We want to display our armor. We can make wonderful pieces of details armor, and stylize these pieces to the Nth degree, but we are not allowed to display them. 

One idea that has been floated in the community is Armor Stands, so that we can display our armor like the heavy armored Knights in British castles. The community would love this and it would add such a wonderful decorative design component, especially to large castle-like homes; Daggerfall Overlook, Earthtear, etc. 

Can you make this happen Zenimax?

Lights

This one is about to be fixed, but still needs to be addressed. When someone comes in and turns off all your lights, there is no master switch for the home owner to turn on all lights again. Sure you are finally giving us the Limited Visitors permission, a year and half after housing dropped, but some people, that are friends, are still pranksters, and if you have over 100 lights in your house finding them all can be a huge challenge. GIVE US OUR MASTER SWITCH ZENIMAX!

Decorating with light is a huge part of many designs in homes. Could you imagine turning off all your lights with one switch, having a bunch of people enter your home and once everything has loaded for them you can switch the lights back on for the big reveal? This is key, especially for lights you bury as part of your design. It'd be like Christmas Vacation when Clark finally gets the lights to work... that ah-ha moment. 

Priceless.


Multiple Houses: 

Zenimax was kind enough to allow us to own multiple houses throughout Tamriel, but, we can't visit all of the houses owned by our friends, except for their primary residence, without them being at the specific house to travel to. 

Why can't we have a primary, secondary, etc., or just have a visit primary residence followed by visit other residence option that we can then choose from a list to visit any of their houses? Many times I have been asked by someone to let them see one of my many themed homes; my wedding house, my Christmas house, my Halloween house, etc., but I am in a dungeon or in Cyrodiil and none of these are my primary home. This leaves the person asking to see my home waiting for me to be available to show it to them. Allowing anyone to see any home I own without me having to be there for a fast travel hitch would be outstanding. 

Zenimax has done some good things with housing like adding storage chests, but there is some refinement needed. We spend a lot of time and gold buying, building and decorating our homes in Tamriel. We need to have the options for decorating and availability of the homes to be accessible. 

Zenimax, please address this.