Were classes a mistake?

Firellight · January 2015

I follow the philosophy that MMORPG's are better off without predefined roles (it's kind of what TES is built off of). What do you think?

Shunravi · January 2015

I think classes were unequivocally a mistake.

LuxLunae · January 2015

As a TES game, classes were a big mistake. It is because they said that the classes were there to guide a player at the beginning and then they would be able to do things freely. Unfortunately classes took a higher role then intended.

Maybe that's why they decided to super nerf them? So that they are no more a deciding factor in ability?

It should have had all skills and let us choose which ones to level up with a finite number of points.

Celless · January 2015

I don't think Elder Scrolls had meaningful classes since Arena.

I would have preferred if classes were truly only a guided template to help players fulfill a certain role or playstyle rather than the way they are in 1.0 through 1.5.

e.g. a Knight is a sword and board and heavy armor unit with an emphasis abilities and passives that promote health, taunting, and mitigation. Picking spellsword might try to balance you between stamina and magicka abilities. Acrobat probably won't apply, but perhaps that could have mobility, positional, and break free related abilities, etc.

Draehl · January 2015

I would say yes because it paints people into corners. Reposting below my OP from another thread, but maybe if skills were designed without classes we would have a higher diversity of skills to choose from in developing our preferred playstyles. I'd love a long duration/throughput DoT, but this game simply doesn't offer one.

To start I must say I'm rather happy with the patch notes and the overall direction of the game, but specifically from my perspective as an attrition built NB caster I'm disappointed in the lack of DoT love...

Since beta I've tried to re-create my preferred playstyle I've played in all my past MMOs and even in pen n paper D&D- You can simply call it a generic "darkcaster" known more specifically as a Bloodmage (Vanguard), Afflicton Warlock/Shadowpriest (WoW), Necromancer (GW), Zealot/Rune Priest (Warhammer) etc. but I keep hitting a roadblock in ESO of the fact that being a burst nuker is simply so much more effective than the essentially non-existent sustained damage options ESO has to offer. The ability to play a lower DPS, but higher sustained pressure caster just isn't there. Don't get me wrong- Zenimax has offered great utility/debuffing/sustain effects to complement this style such as Shadow Image, Mass Hysteria, Funnel Health, Combat Prayer, etc. The problem is we're lacking the absolute bread and butter skill, the cornerstone of the playstyle: a strong damage-per-cast (but not necessarily high DPS) single target DoT. Crippling Grasp is the closest we get, and it only does ~2x a Funnel Health. That's not pressure. I thought for a while maybe I picked the wrong class, but all the DK skills are melee, Sorc has Daedric Curse, but that's little more than a slightly delayed nuke/I've never been a fan of pets. ESO just doesn't offer it and I'm rather disappointed.

I was looking forward to the patch notes and am ultimately pretty let down. I've listed some more specific thoughts below. Please feel free to disagree, but I'm getting pretty close to putting the game down, and not because of the F2P element, but that Zenimax isn't supporting a core playstyle to the genre...

6% buff to Cripple. Woo! Even still, its such a short duration if you buff it too much it starts treading into burst territory.

Debilitate. A great candidate for a longer duration pressure DoT morph, instead... mana cost refund? Mana cost. Really?

Entropy admittedly looks usable now, not because of the DoT, but in spite of it.

Agony I'm most disappointed in. No one uses hard CC in PvE. You either zerg it or it's immune. Useless in PvP for obvious reasons. Can we please turn this into something else? How about a decent DoT- unless the 50% duration also applies to the DoT, but I'm doubtful as the same treatment was given to Rune Prison for Sorcs.

Soul Trap. Nothing here, not that I was expecting it, but it would have made a great single target DoT that everyone has access to.

Rosveen · January 2015

I heard early beta had no classes, but it was too confusing for people. I wish I had seen how the game worked back then.

Spiritreaver_ESO · January 2015

Firellight wrote: »

I follow the philosophy that MMORPG's are better off without predefined roles (it's kind of what TES is built off of). What do you think?

Personally i think that the only draw back to having classes in TESO has been that the limited # of slots on the action bar tends to lock in just how much we players can customize classes the way we like. Yes, i know 'old argument is old', but i still think say Quickslot, 6 or 7 active abilities, and Ultimate would have been the way to go-but meh.

Also people like to forget that before TES V(Skyrim), set classes were a TES mainstay. For me the fun was picking a class that was close to what i wanted my character to be then growing it the way i liked. And then there was the choice to just build your own custom class from the jump.

Shifting a TES setting into a MMO dictates you must have some classes though. Kind of ironically, if a class wasn't forced at character creation, invariably players would prolly have decided on which skills were "optimal", and outside of playing solo, everyone would be forced to play certain builds or told to GTFO. Having the set classes as a sort of creative baseline ensures that most setups we players come up with will work to some degree.

Anyways, that just my brief-ish answer to your question.

AlexDougherty · January 2015

No, classes were not a mistake.

They added a theme to base a character on, they added a deel to these characters, and gave them a structure to build upon.

They also added replay value, something every game needs, without the classes there is no reason to create a new character, the differences in races is nice but not enough.

Again, No, the classes were not a mistake.