Expanding Class Skill Lines?

Arcaver

Please tell me you guys plan on doing this. There's so much potential for expanding the class Skill Lines, I'd hate to see them wasted. Like a mage that can conjure blades to fight for them, or a Nightblade to teleport using shadows or even taking control of enemy players using their shadows. Something along that, you catch my drift. Anyway, are you guys planning on expanding the class skill lines or are you guys going to just create new classes?

Robo_Hobo

Idk if theres any information on if they will or won't, but I imagine thatd be difficult to do unless they allowed a one-time class change option or something. Even tweaks to existing class abilities make people call a class trash and quit, so adding new abilities all together might exasperate that.

Of course, they could just do it regardless.

Spellcrafting might offer a lot of things you would imagine for sorcerer though, so you could look into that. If its still being worked on, I hear the guy designing it quit or something.

Lord_Wrath

Robo_Hobo wrote: »

Spellcrafting might offer a lot of things you would imagine for sorcerer though, so you could look into that. If its still being worked on, I hear the guy designing it quit or something.

Nicholas Konkle left in April and Paul Sage quit weeks after console release to join gearbox.

After how the justice system failed (remember how we were supposed to get more installments on that system?) I do not take anything seriously they try to 'sneak peak' to us. I remember hearing about spellcrafting so long ago, but ever since esoTU release I feel the quality of the game is going down, and many many things have been forgotten about like the road ahead articles we used to get. They cant even add things like a barber or shield dying, so im just assuming all we have to look forward to are group/solo zones, load screens and more crown store trash.

Van_0S

I think adding new weapons with its skill is far more better than adding new abilities of class and weapons. I hope they add spear or poleaxe(Scythe),kunckle fist (for material arts) and necromancer staff.

TheShadowScout

Arcaver wrote: »

...or a Nightblade to teleport using shadows or even taking control of enemy players using their shadows.

Nightshades can sort of already teleport using their shade, if they morph the ability that way.
The latter... might not be such a good idea, I expect the licenseholders of the Naruto franchise have lawers too, you know...

Arcaver wrote: »

Anyway, are you guys planning on expanding the class skill lines or are you guys going to just create new classes?

New classes... would be troublesome. I for one would much rather have... (yes, you guessed it) some sort of class morphs, as I usually repost when the topic comes up.

So... I'll just leave this here... once more...

Personally I would think the best way to add more "classes" is to give each class, say, three different "class morphs", each with its own new skill/passives line. Perhaps becoming available after completing cadwells silver/gold... to reward people who do play through that - a variation of the idea was to let them do the class morph after silver, and let them pick a cross-class skill line (basic class skills only) after gold...

Some possibilities:

Dragonknight
• Gladiator (offensive self buffs & warcries; color: red/orange)
• Pyromancer (flame resist and even more fire; color: yellow/blue - gas flame!)
• Warlord (defensive group buffs, AoE standards, color: purple/gold)

Nightblade
• Illusionist (illusion summoning, mind magic; color: red/black - NPC illusionist)
• Monk (melee support & assorted “matrial arts” magic; color: blue/purple)
• Ranger (animal summoning and nature magic; color: brown/green)

Sorceror
• Cryomancer (ice magic, color: white/clear - NPC cryomancer)
• Necromancer (death magic and undead summoning; color: cyan - NPC coldfire)
• Spellsword (melee support & buff magic; color: yellow/orange)

Templar
• Shaman (nature magic, totems, summons; color: green/brown)
• Crusader (melee support and aura-style buff magic; color: white/gold)
• Witch-hunter (counterspells, spell resistance/shields, silencing; color: purple/red)


Another possible idea was to not only have an added skill line with its own flavor of visual effects, but maybe even morph the existing effects to match.
So for example if a sorceror goes necromancer, their spells might be color-shifted to necromancer “coldfire” cyan, and if they turn cryomancer, their dark magic crystals will turn ice-ish in effects, spells will get color-shifted to white-blue or white-purple, or a nightblade going ranger would have their reddish effects recolored to something nature-ish green & brown... that sort of stuff. For more visual goodieness and varietee between classes.
Perhaps even morph the spell effects to some degree... like, for summoned armor might look daedric on normal sorc, worm cult / lich on necromancer, and ice armor on cryomancer, etc.
That idea might perhaps take a bit too much coding to be viable though... I'd be happy with pure color shifts.

...of course, all those quick ideas are just very rough concepts, without much consideration but character fluff. I merely tried to give some options, and went for three instead of just two "magica-specialization / stamina specialization" - It's supposed to be more for added character diversity then anything else after all.

Thus for example with nightblades, there might be one magica-caster based with "illusionist", one stamina melee based with "monk" (Yes, a nod at the old D&D class of the name, the first “martial arts” powered class I remember in fantasy gaming) and one pet based as "ranger" since nightblades mesh very well with bow, and giving them woodland creatures for the "hunter" playstyle would seem applicable.

Similar thoughts for the sorceror - spellsword for stamina sorcerors, cryomancer since ice staves have no matching skill line yet (while fire and lightning staves sort of have), and necromancer because all too many people really, really want that...

Templar... the druid/shaman is a very natural idea, between breton wyressess, argonian treeminders and bosmer spinners, nature magic meshes very well with Templar healing and sunlight-powered spells; paladin is for stamina templars and a nod at the old D&D class of the same name (possibly subject to TES-ification change), and my "witch-hunter" idea is kinda inspired by the spanish inquisition (Yes, I know noone expected that ), its "warhammer" imperial counterpart and also "Dragon Age", I admit it... seems logical to set up the aedric-flavored templars as natural enemies of the more deadric-flavored sorcerors...

Dragonknight I had the fewest ideas, since I kinda dislike that class. More fire magic for dragonknight magica-casters with pyromancer is a natural first thought... so then I went with "leader-style group play support" and "berserker-style single combatant" flavors, though there may be better ideas then those...

In any case, since more diversity is always something I would love to see... much more fun having more choices in realizing your “perfect” character, especially since the limited number of skills one can actually use at any one time (5+U) makes people having to think and choose anyhow, so adding more active skills only increases a characters choices, not exactly their power...

And yes, spellcrafting might be able to cover some of those... but spellcrafting won't give you passives, which these skill lines should.

UltimaJoe777

Arcaver wrote: »

Please tell me you guys plan on doing this. There's so much potential for expanding the class Skill Lines, I'd hate to see them wasted. Like a mage that can conjure blades to fight for them, or a Nightblade to teleport using shadows or even taking control of enemy players using their shadows. Something along that, you catch my drift. Anyway, are you guys planning on expanding the class skill lines or are you guys going to just create new classes?

It's not the most reliable mechanic but one of Summon Shade's morphs when activated spawns an archer shade and activating it again anytime while it's active teleports you to your shade's location.

LameoveR

Current skills isn't balanced well and you want more imbalanced skills?