Update 44 is now available for testing on the PTS! You can read the latest patch notes here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/categories/pts
Maintenance for the week of September 23:
• PC/Mac: No maintenance – September 23
• PC/Mac: No maintenance – September 23
Veteran Levels should unlock Specialization Progression
In order to make veteran levels be rewarding to all players for their time and effort, character progression cannot rely only on skyshards and tiers of crafting. Currently, most players feel underpowered against groups of veteran mobs as well as unrewarded for the extra challenge. This makes progressing through the other factions a tiresome factor in the game. Sadly, I don't think content can be dished out fast enough to make up for the relatively small amount of endgame (faction neutral) areas, so at least allow players feel compensated for this time sink.
While some builds are optimal and fare much better in the + and ++ zones, other builds that were perfectly fine up to level 50 have no place in veteran PVE.
This is certainly unintentional if you consider the design philosophy carefully constructed up to the point in the game in which you must respec out of necessity, as opposed to choice.
A possible solution to this would the implementation of veteran skill trees, which in itself provides many balancing challenges that may have unintended consequences, mostly in PvP. However, if you allow players to pick one of their class skill trees to enhance further by providing five additional morphs to existing spells and five more passive enhancements, perhaps you could, at the same time, give players that extra boost they need in PvE without greatly tipping the balance in PvP.
You also add an element of choice, meaning you can't specialize in all of your class skills, but must single out which one corresponds to your preferred playstyle. Further additions to the level cap may include more guild trees or world trees, but the actual specialization would take place between V1 and V10.
I'm aware of the current balancing problems already in the game (as I'm sure, so is ZoS), so this suggestion would only work if overpowered abilities were properly corrected before new ones were added on top of them.
While some builds are optimal and fare much better in the + and ++ zones, other builds that were perfectly fine up to level 50 have no place in veteran PVE.
This is certainly unintentional if you consider the design philosophy carefully constructed up to the point in the game in which you must respec out of necessity, as opposed to choice.
A possible solution to this would the implementation of veteran skill trees, which in itself provides many balancing challenges that may have unintended consequences, mostly in PvP. However, if you allow players to pick one of their class skill trees to enhance further by providing five additional morphs to existing spells and five more passive enhancements, perhaps you could, at the same time, give players that extra boost they need in PvE without greatly tipping the balance in PvP.
You also add an element of choice, meaning you can't specialize in all of your class skills, but must single out which one corresponds to your preferred playstyle. Further additions to the level cap may include more guild trees or world trees, but the actual specialization would take place between V1 and V10.
I'm aware of the current balancing problems already in the game (as I'm sure, so is ZoS), so this suggestion would only work if overpowered abilities were properly corrected before new ones were added on top of them.
1