The Future of Class Skill Line Design Philosophy

FoolishOptimist

Since the introduction of the Warden, class skill lines have been designed around contributing to gameplay in one of three roles: Tank, Heal, Damage, to ensure that each class can play in any role. The Necromancer and Arcanist have been successful with this, while attempts to redesign the classic classes to fit the mould have been hit or miss. The classic Classes Skill Lines were designed with thematic identity in mind, over specific group function.

With the introduction of Subclassing, we no longer need to rely on the design concept of "any class accessing any role" and can instead focus on skill lines embracing thematic function, which would further evolve and enhance the concept of class identity. Winter's Embrace as a theme encapsulates Frost Destruction and protective Alteration style magic; mechanically it would no longer need to be designed around being the Warden's "Tank" Skill Line with health-based heals like Arctic Wind or Pulls like Frozen Gate, which could be adapted instead into the more class thematic Green Balance skills like Living Vines and Nature's Grasp.

This Poll aims to gather perspective and stimulate discussion on how you as players would like to see the future of class Skill Line Design in the context of Subclassing (with two possible Skill Lines being subclassed).

ADarklore

Focus designing Skill Lines with individual theme rather than group-specific function

I think you will find that the majority of players aren't 'group' players here in ESO... and obviously ZOS would have the data to know the content to which the majority of players spend their time.

Erickson9610

I think every Class going forward (that is, if we even get new Classes) should continue to have skill lines for damage dealing, tanking, and healing. I don't want to see "thematic" Classes which lack the essential tools for performing any role.

Turtle_Bot

Normally I would choose designing skill lines around the themes, but with how ZOS is implementing, I would rather the skill lines be designed around the 3 roles, tanking, healing and DPS.

We are seeing the issues with designing skill lines around themes with the current mess that sorcerer is in on the PTS. The class has DPS, healing and tanking abilities spread across all 3 lines, so trying to swap out any of the lines severely hinders sorcerer. Compare this to the other classes who can easily swap out (say on a tank build) the DPS skill line for another classes tanking skill line and not lose out on anything important, but become an even stronger tank (same with healer or DPS builds).

Either way they choose to go, they need to be consistent across ALL of the classes to prevent things from becoming huge messes.

ADarklore

Focus designing Skill Lines with individual theme rather than group-specific function

In ways I agree and see your points, I think any new classes should continue the trinity skill lines- because now with subclassing- it will allow players to play a dedicated dps, tank or healer using subclassing.

However, in reality, I think a lot of players aren't even using all their class trees currently because they don't align with how they play the game. Furthermore, only the last three classes received the 'trinity' trees- whereas the older classes were not designed this way and is a reason why they are a mess- as mentioned- Sorcerer trinity skills are spread out across all three lines- and this is because they weren't designed from the beginning to be a trinity in the class skill lines. I think the devs figured that the weapon trees and such would be where they could specialize- but when they got to designing new classes, decided to put go with the trinity lines.

QB1

Focus designing Skill Lines with individual theme rather than group-specific function

I’m all for designing skill lines around individual themes instead of rigidly sticking to the trinity framework, especially now that we have subclassing (and hopefully will move to a full classless system in the future).

It actually feels like we’re starting to see that shift already in the patch notes. The Daedric Summoning passives, for example, now fully embrace the pet theme instead of trying to cater to both pet and non-pet builds. With subclassing, if you’re not into pets, you can just swap the line out. Simple.

I’m loving these changes so far. It feels like ESO is finally leaning into its strengths, build freedom and customization, without being held back by old systems.

Yioth

Focus designing Skill Lines with individual theme rather than group-specific function

My hope is that in the future classes aren't really a thing anymore. A certain skill line can still be tailored towards one side of the trinity still. But, instead of a skill line being tank oriented because Arcanist needed a tank skill line we can have a skill line be tank oriented because they wanted to add an Alteration skill line. Or DPS oriented because they added a Destruction skill line.

FoolishOptimist

It seems the player base is fairly evenly split based on this small sample.

Rungar

i have my doubts there will be any new skill lines or classes to be honest. Subclasing was done because its efficient use of existing resources. Without a great bump in population/income truely new content will be very limited i would imagine. This is the working with what they have phase imo.

Freelancer_ESO

Maintain current design philosophy of Tanking, Healing and Damaging focused Skill Lines

I think you'd need to still have the role focused skill lines because not everyone is going to be choosing to subclass and not everyone is going to be able to subclass even if they wish to do so as they may not be level 50 yet.