Soul Trees, and why I love them

Alucardo

For those of you who have played RIFT, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. It was one of the most ingenious ideas I've ever seen in an MMO. It made customising your class possible, and builds weren't stagnant and same-ish.

For those of you who don't know, the Soul Tree was split into two main areas

Branches
This is where you unlock what could be considered passives in ESO. They made your abilities and character stronger. By unlocking specific branches, it would in turn unlock certain roots.

Roots
These are your core abilities. They are unlocked by selecting branches and spending the souls you've collected (by levelling, killing monsters, PvP).

You can have up to 3 soul trees where the branches and roots were determined by what class the soul tree was (ie: Cryomancer, Nightblade, Necromancer, Ranger). This means you can mix-and-match abilities from 3 classes to create your own customised build. If your Nightblade was lacking something, you could pull up another class in a different soul tree, spend some souls and get abilities to strengthen that weakness.

So ultimately, you don't really have a class, because you could utilise skills from every class in the game using soul trees. It is possible to spend all your points in the one tree if that's what you wished. The point is, it's the ultimate class crafting system ever.

Here's a quick shot of what it looks like, sharing skills from 3 different classes



With ESO's awesome combat and the Soul tree, my mind would be blown. It won't happen, but my god I would fund it from my own pocket.

Merlin13KAGL

Absolutely. It's something they did very well (Now if they'd just change the movement method )

Even the extrended skill lines, Majors, Minors, Lessers from the likes of Morrowind would allow so many more options.

(We won't get started in armor crafting options, enchants, and spellcrafting)

I'll kick in my $ for this option. It would be worth it simply to not have <20 FTOM builds that were viable.

Alucardo

Merlin13KAGL wrote: »

Absolutely. It's something they did very well (Now if they'd just change the movement method )

Even the extrended skill lines, Majors, Minors, Lessers from the likes of Morrowind would allow so many more options.

(We won't get started in armor crafting options, enchants, and spellcrafting)

I'll kick in my $ for this option. It would be worth it simply to not have <20 FTOM builds that were viable.

Lol yeah, the rest of the mechanics were poop, but their soul tree was the best thing ever. It just feels like in ESO you're pushed into a certain build because everything else is inefficient. With Soul trees it was so expansive, and there was so many different options I loved playing around with it to see what concoctions I could cook up. They really got this right, and it should have been the future for all MMOs instead of the generic class system.

Ixtyr

If RIFT were 1) action-combat based and 2) able to shake off its "WoW clone" stigma that they foolishly marketed themselves into back at launch, it'd be the best MMO on the market.

They do SO MANY THINGS right.

I agree, I'd love to see something like a "subclass" setup in ESO's classes - not the same sort of system, mind you, but have more trees and "elite specializations" (a la Guild Wars 2) to choose from to customize your character.

That, and an epic housing system, ability to build your own arenas/battlegrounds, wider array of options in the cash shop, better costume/transmogrify system, and better dynamic events....those would be an excellent recipe for ZOS to take notes from.

Give me full-on zone invasions, more than just stupid, fixed-location Dolmens on a timer. If we don't fight back the NPC Redguard invasion, they'll begin conquering Greenshade...things like that.

A guy can dream, right?

Alucardo

Ixtyr wrote: »

If RIFT were 1) action-combat based and 2) able to shake off its "WoW clone" stigma that they foolishly marketed themselves into back at launch, it'd be the best MMO on the market.

They do SO MANY THINGS right.

I can't help but agree so much on this.

Ixtyr wrote: »

That, and an epic housing system, ability to build your own arenas/battlegrounds, wider array of options in the cash shop, better costume/transmogrify system, and better dynamic events....those would be an excellent recipe for ZOS to take notes from.

Something nice for roleplayers and PvPers - I like this too.

Ixtyr wrote: »

A guy can dream, right?

It's the closest thing we'll get to seeing the changes we want in ESO, so go for it

Merlin13KAGL

Ixtyr wrote: »

If RIFT were 1) action-combat based and 2) able to shake off its "WoW clone" stigma that they foolishly marketed themselves into back at launch, it'd be the best MMO on the market.

They do SO MANY THINGS right.

Rifts...the original Dark Anchors. Actual random triggered events...*Sigh*

Give me full-on zone invasions, more than just stupid, fixed-location Dolmens on a timer. If we don't fight back the NPC Redguard invasion, they'll begin conquering Greenshade...things like that.

A guy can dream, right?

Ah yes...an actual dynamic world. They are missing so many opportunities for localized and roaming bosses/events, etc. Things that would really get people wanting to explore new and old places in search for these things, with the chance that you might come upon one.

There is much more potential than starting fires, saving strangers and summoners, and running into the occasional and very localized M'aiq.

Of course, to do this, they'd have to remove the artificial borders and likely lose the zone 'limit' They'd also have to improve the AI tremendously.

But yes, @Ixtyr , dream you may. Perhaps someday they will make it the living, breathing, untethered world it deserves to be.

Eocosa

That sounds a bit like how you made your toon in Star Wars galaxies. You got, I believe it was 250 "skill points" at the start and that was all you or anyone else got. Each starter "class" would take 15 points and would unlock several branches that requires exp using a certain skill (such as shooting with a pistol, using a melee weapon, healing, crafting, "entertaining") that would raise your passive abilities in that line and/or granted new abilities. By raising these skill lines you would unlock advanced classes (such as rifleman or Doctor) or hybrid classes (bioengineer, bounty hunter, commando, etc).

This allowed you to REALLY fine tune who you wanted to play as. You want to be a martial artist who also plays in a band on the cantina for some side cash, go for it. You want to be an explorer who crafter, go for it. It was really amazing how well you could really make your toon feel like it was precisely what you wanted. I always thought it would be awesome if ESO did classes like that in a way. Admittedly this was near impossible to balance (particularly with their health, action, mind trees) which was why they attempted to change it several times, but I would think it would be awesome to implement in some way here (granted this game is Waaaay closer then many other MMOs which makes me happy).

Alucardo

Eocosa wrote: »

That sounds a bit like how you made your toon in Star Wars galaxies. You got, I believe it was 250 "skill points" at the start and that was all you or anyone else got. Each starter "class" would take 15 points and would unlock several branches that requires exp using a certain skill (such as shooting with a pistol, using a melee weapon, healing, crafting, "entertaining") that would raise your passive abilities in that line and/or granted new abilities. By raising these skill lines you would unlock advanced classes (such as rifleman or Doctor) or hybrid classes (bioengineer, bounty hunter, commando, etc).

This allowed you to REALLY fine tune who you wanted to play as. You want to be a martial artist who also plays in a band on the cantina for some side cash, go for it. You want to be an explorer who crafter, go for it. It was really amazing how well you could really make your toon feel like it was precisely what you wanted. I always thought it would be awesome if ESO did classes like that in a way. Admittedly this was near impossible to balance (particularly with their health, action, mind trees) which was why they attempted to change it several times, but I would think it would be awesome to implement in some way here (granted this game is Waaaay closer then many other MMOs which makes me happy).

The star wars idea sounds pretty cool. While it works a bit differently than soul trees, the goal sounds exactly the same; being able to build your own class exactly the way you want it.
I imagine it would be hard to balance, but the outcome would be worth it. ESO with the Soul Tree concept is a match made in heaven. Many MMO gamers generally loved the soul trees from RIFT, so if they found out we had it too it might even help pick up some more numbers

UltimaJoe777

If Zenimax wanted to instill this into ESO they would've. It's not like other MMORPGs have not used these types of skill trees as well.

"Nightblade" though... Makes me think they tried to copy off The Elder Scrolls series too.

NoMoreChillies

this could easily be added with spellcrafting.

SorataArisugawa

This system so nice it sounds have its flaws as well. I played RIFT 4 years ago and I think, I have more possiblities here in TESO.

I had to use a lot of skills, which were combinded by macros. You had to use some key abilities so you had to take a sertain amount of points in the soul to get it. And than you were restricted in the other souls. At the end, they made a lot of "Max-Points"-speccs a must have(because the couldn't balance it not without that). It was extremly restricted and no real fun.

Here I could build my Sorc-DMG setup for example and slot a very strong shield with it. Or I take a port, or some nice mines or if I want caltrops. I am just restriced to my waepon and my class. Not to just 3 out of 9 souls. I could use a different weaponset and lots of Skills have others who are a little bit the same. But in the RIFT system, you don't get the nice core functionalities together.

The core to a better, more intersting system for TESO is the spellcrafting and a martail training as well. This two combinded with the current system of 2 Weapons with 5 Skills, 1 Ulti will make the system extremly variant. I hope they add Spellcrafting soon (not the Zenimax meaning of the word )