Subclassing and AwA destroyed my joy of having mutliple/making new characters and generally playing a game, there never was really a gear progression in ESO as it was easy, but the progression was in Achievements, skill lines etc. They took that away bits by bits.
Subclassing has destroyed my eso that I've loved for over 10 yrs. I've only ever had a couple of breaks from eso due to burnout but kept coming back. There are so many things I absolutely love about this game.
Recently I said how I'm embracing subclassing but after levelling several skill lines and making subclass builds I dont feel good about this at all.
I have no idea what I'm playing identity wise...just feel like a mut really.
I strongly feel that it was RUDE to change a system of play on us like that...it's like I'm paying a sub for a game i didnt sign up for. I dont want to abandon eso but I'm starting to feel like I'm sliding that way.it's a very slippery slope.
I would roll back the change where dots, hots and effects were allowed to stack in pvp. A long time ago because of PvE overlapping issues and limited build options people were upset at how their skills were being overwritten. With the vengeance PvP and PvE split something like this is actually possible to cut down on calculations.
Pros:
You could not have a group of people all running and stacking one BIS skill or morph. For instance the sloads soultrap meta would have never occured because only one sloads or soultrap could be on a target at a time. Leading to people diversifying.
Morph diversity was pushed because not everyone could run the same BIS morph of a hot or any skill. So you would see more unique concepts and ideas building around other morphs.
Anti proc mechanics would exist permanently preventing proc metas from occuring where a new set comes out and is abused easily.
Winning by numbers was limited. Inevitably if groups did not coordinate they lost efficiency. This is like a soft cap on how much output groups can do onto the server calculation wise.
Solo players did not lose because of suffocation mechanics and playstyles. In essence you would not be killed by a bunch of undodgeable unblockable uncounterable dots.....because they would nolonger stack.
Cons:
Players become inefficient due to overlaps being overwritten..........in reality this wouldn't happen alot in solo or smallman gameplay where it would be most noticeable or impactful. Then in large zerg fights it certainly wouldnt be noticeable since its like casting into a blackhole at that point. This is turning into a proc, but it just points out how this could help reduce mosh pit lag scenarios that are otherwise unnecessary.
Having to change morphs may be tedious, granted zos should let you remorph in menu like how cp lets you. Same with attributes. Having to leave cyrodil is bad enough since there are no shrines there.
Really the only counterargument Ive heard over the years suggesting this is people worrying that their poison may not stack with their other 40 guildies when they are attacking a group of 40 enemies ......like dude you cant even tell if your light attacks are hitting or not at that point, does the extra lag on the server really matter. Is that dot not stacking going to turn the tide of the battle or is it insignificant?
Interesting. I selected AwA because its implementation, by far, caused me to have the most negative experience with the game I've ever had. Not only did it ruin my playstyle and things I found "fun" in the game, but the way it was rolled out, with the whole "players asked for this" narrative, only to change it to "it had to be done for database size" with zero acknowledgement that what was implemented was not what many players wanted when they did ask for AwA, blatant disregard and lack of acknowledgement of the extremely long feedback chain, and ongoing (to this day) addition of meaningless achievements, or worse, new achievements referencing things older players have already done, thus continuing to add salt in the wound by putting achievement dates to accomplishments which are incorrect, after deleting historical per character accomplishments with accurate dates... my rollback choice/wish encompasses not only the functionality but the entire way it was handled. Not to mention the fact that map progress is still broken.
That said, I do think AwA, Hybridization, and Subclassing all contributed to the death of the fun of leveling and maintaining alts, while the new BGs are just a whole separate mess. Lately my decision-making progress for which character does what primarily has to do with if it has inventory space to carry around another set and if I have to buy an Armory slot or not... which is truly a sad state of affairs.
I also think that at least some of the pain points introduced by these different features could still be addressed, and I wish they would be. In most cases it wasn't the ideas that were problematic, but the execution.
My #1 wish for ESO Today: Decouple achievements from character progress and tracking.
Tales of Tribute. If I want to play a TCG, I'll break out my MTG cards. ToT is tedious. I don't want to get into a "minigame" that might require a time commitment of half an hour or more. Locking things like Captain Kaeleen (houseguest) and antiquities behind it is really lame, too.
Soul Reapers. Because they took something that wasn't broke and broke it. I don't think I have seen a single compliment on them. Which isn't true of anything else on this list.
Gotta be subclassing for me. Every man and his dog is running a warden in Cyrodiil with that godawful charm, assassination, animal companion and storm calling. So boring
I love account wide achievements, but I don't understand why they didn't let players OPT into it.
Options means everyone is happy.
For example, I'm sure there are players who enjoy having to read lore books on each character before that book furnishing can drop from Infinite Archive.
Personally, that list of lore books to read is way too long. Each character can take a day or two to complete. That's AFTER you figure out a good system and learn where every book on the long list is.
I'd prefer lore book reading to be account wide.
OR to opt into book furnishings dropping without us having to read them first.
Everyone can select how "hardmode" they want things like this. They don't affect combat at all so let us have options.
As for BGs, I simply had a lot of fun with 4x4x4. Even as a super casual player, I loved the dynamic of 3 teams. It's the one thing WoW doesn't have, which IMO made ESO BGs superior.
I don't like Subclassing either, but I've pretty much accepted it's part of the game now, however AwA was the first big thing that made me dissatisfied.
For the progression style PvE players, AwA played a massive part in reducing the replayability of the trial and dungeon content. Many people in the community back then enjoyed progressing these achievements across multiple classes/roles in order to get the titles on multiple characters. It was also useful to gauge experience level in a specific role, now most people just do the achievements once and don't do them again.
Not just the endgame though, for the people who RP/like to do specific quests on specific characters it also just made it really annoying to track progress.
I actually don't care about BGs, but my friends who do like BGs loathe the changes as much as I do the others, so for their sake I'll go with "all of the above."
"A probable impossibility is preferable to an improbable possibility." - Aristotle
I could have lived without subclassing and I only use 1 or 2 scribed skills, but I've adapted to both. Love AWA. Since I don't PVP I cannot say anything about BG.
I really like subclassing and I'm basically indifferent to every other choice here. I haven't really done any pvp in a while so I can't really speak on battlegrounds.
I guess if I had to pick one it's probably battlegrounds though since I do remember liking them when I played them last some point before the change.
Subclassing is by far the best thing that ever happened in ESO. Having strict class setup is outdated. I really love it that now we can truly create our own characters. I don't care about class identity or min maxing, All I need is a fun build that can do the content. You don't need that exact meta build to do dungeon trifectas and other challenges.
It is only sad to see how set in their ways ESO community is and some people seem to be against all new things and they want the game to stay the same as it was during the release.
I think what would be good for ESO is embracing esports like WOW and introduce dungeon+ system with ranking lists, I have wished for this a long time.
None, I actually like all of these. Especially account-wide achievements and subclassing. More freedom and getting closer to single-player TES games is always a plus for me.