Reincarnation system instead of class change

BelmontDrakul · November 8

Zenimax claims it is hard to implement class changing mechanics so; I suggest alternative solution. I do not know if it is doable so; I am waiting at least one employee's answer.

I call it reincarnation system. When we open a new character with new class, race etc. we want; we can transfer other character's all skill lines (not class specific) and CP points to this new character but not completed quests, you have to start new journey with this "new" character. After that, our previous character "dies". And, our new character gains "Reincarnation of <erased_character_name>" permanent modifier in character screen. This modifier is just cosmetic, gives neither buffs nor debuffs. A character which is already a reincarnation cannot be reincarnated, again.

Would this system work? Let's discuss and brainstorm.

MorganaLaVey · November 9

It's ESO... ofcourse it wouldn't work

AlnilamE · November 9

Now with Account-Wide achievements, is that even necessary? Just make a character of each class. The skill lines don't take long to level enough to be functional, even if you don't go hard-core on it.

BelmontDrakul · November 9

AlnilamE wrote: »

Now with Account-Wide achievements, is that even necessary? Just make a character of each class. The skill lines don't take long to level enough to be functional, even if you don't go hard-core on it.

I beg to differ. Especially, maxing out Legerdemain, Mages' Guild and Undaunted skill lines was literal pain for me. I do not have access Summerset but; as I heard, Psijic Order's skill line is also painful so; I believe you can find a lot of people who disagree with your statement.

LunaFlora · November 9

we can already do that.
make a new character,
- copy all the relevant character creation slider choices from the original character.
you could screenshot them when creating the original character or use an Appearance Change Token to do it.

- copy whatever you chose for Champion abilities since Champion Points are account wide.

- purchase skill lines from the crown store, if you fully leveled them up on another character.
The only skill lines we can't purchase are the weapon, craft, and armour skill lines.
(they can take a while, but way less if you have existing crafters and stored research/xp scrolls)

And just like your suggestion all new characters already need to redo quests.
Which is precisely why some people want a Class Change token, so we can change our character's class and continue questing.

BelmontDrakul · November 9

LunaFlora wrote: »

we can already do that.
make a new character,
- copy all the relevant character creation slider choices from the original character.
you could screenshot them when creating the original character or use an Appearance Change Token to do it.

- copy whatever you chose for Champion abilities since Champion Points are account wide.

- purchase skill lines from the crown store, if you fully leveled them up on another character.
The only skill lines we can't purchase are the weapon and armour skill lines.

And just like your suggestion all new characters already need to redo quests.
Which is precisely why some people want a Class Change token, so we can change our character's class and continue questing.

Well, wouldn't it be better to buy all class lines together instead of dealing with them separately?

TaSheen · November 9

I don't see anything intrinsically wrong with either a class change token or a "reincarnation" system, or even a "job change" thing like FF does. I just would never use any of them, so I'd be a bit unhappy about using dev time for any of it.

Taril · November 9

AlnilamE wrote: »

Now with Account-Wide achievements, is that even necessary? Just make a character of each class. The skill lines don't take long to level enough to be functional, even if you don't go hard-core on it.

The idea is that people don't want to have to do things like regrind out tedious skill lines (Like Fighter's Guild, Vampire + Werewolf etc), don't want to repurchase all their Outfit slots, Amoury slots, relevel their crafting skill lines (Reacquire all their Crafting motifs), redo all the quests etc.

All for the purpose of swapping a "Main character". And they also don't want to simply buy all these things from the Crown store and instead want a much less expensive method of transferring all their stuff to a new character.

RonFSwanson wrote: »

Would this system work?

I can't comment with any certainty because I'm not privy to the details of the actual code.

But given that they allow ARAA to function with race change tokens (Which likely involves some level of creating a new character and transferring data across due to the nature of the Main Story and various side quests like the Thieves Guild intro and daily Fighter's/Mage's/Undaunted dailies revolving around faction specific locations) it seems like it might be similarly possible to do the same for a class.

Overall it feels to me less like a "This isn't technically possible in this engine" thing so much as a "Executives won't let us spend the time and resources to implement a thing for which the purpose is to explicitly detract from spending money"

Amottica · November 9

RonFSwanson wrote: »

-When we open a new character with new class, race etc. we want; we can transfer other character's all skill lines (not class specific) and CP points to this new character

That is interesting. The OP asked to be able to transfer CP, which I thought was account-wide for everyone. Is it only with ESO+ CP transfers?

As for the rest, Zenimax already provides the means to "transfer" sky shards and a variety of skill lines to a new character. They started offering this years ago. Yes, it comes at a cost, but a class change token would not be free either.

Malyore · November 9

That goes against a large reason for wanting a class change in the first place, which is wanting to not reset all of the progress and development your character has made through questlines.

Cooperharley · November 9

The point of a class change token, IMO, is to not HAVE to re-do all the quests, but when you want to experience the game from a fresh perspective with all of your completionist content done. I have the entire world done and all skill lines maxed on a DK for instance. Let's say I get bored and want to transfer all of that completionism to a sorcerer - I don't want to start over, otherwise I'd just make a new character like others are suggesting. The point is to skip that stuff.

katanagirl1 · November 9

My understanding is that the class is the framework on which the character is created. It’s the only thing we have when we create a new one. I think that is why creating a class change token is a problem for the devs.

I also can’t see how your suggestion is any different than a class change token. There is already the option to buy skill lines with crowns for one character that was already completed on another. I don’t see them giving up this method of monetization. For them, the preferred method would be level up one character with non-class skills and buy them for others if you don’t want to level them up again.

Hurbster · November 9

It is strange as it goes against the very premise of the Elder Scrolls games, playing how you want. The job system in FF14 would be ideal.

LunaFlora · November 9

RonFSwanson wrote: »

LunaFlora wrote: »

we can already do that.
make a new character,
- copy all the relevant character creation slider choices from the original character.
you could screenshot them when creating the original character or use an Appearance Change Token to do it.

- copy whatever you chose for Champion abilities since Champion Points are account wide.

- purchase skill lines from the crown store, if you fully leveled them up on another character.
The only skill lines we can't purchase are the weapon and armour skill lines.

And just like your suggestion all new characters already need to redo quests.
Which is precisely why some people want a Class Change token, so we can change our character's class and continue questing.

Well, wouldn't it be better to buy all class lines together instead of dealing with them separately?

yes and the post did not mention that at all so I'm confused by your asking me this.

TaSheen · November 9

My impression of the cost of either a class change token, or the ability to buy ALL the options already available to one's main....

.... is several hundred dollars US. If ZOS could do it, I'm sure they would in a hot minute. So....?

SeaGtGruff · November 9

Hurbster wrote: »

It is strange as it goes against the very premise of the Elder Scrolls games, playing how you want. The job system in FF14 would be ideal.

You can, just create a new character. Other Elder Scrolls games don't let you change your chosen class whenever you want.

Sarannah · November 9

No, it's just class change in disguise. Class change should never happen, just play the game. If you make a new character and just play the game, you will get everything you are missing at some point again. To me a class change is just skipping actually playing the game.

I like my actual rebirth idea better: At level 50 we can rebirth our character to level 1 and can choose to add any skillline from another class to our existing character(We keep all our character's progress and gear). We can rebirth as many times as we want to change our chosen skillline to another, but we can only rebirth at level 50. So if we pick a skillline and want to change it, we'd have to level to 50 again first. This does three things: 1: Gives players a reason to keep playing and leveling an existing character. 2: Allows for some crazy unlimited build freedom because everyone can be anything at any time. 3: Changes the way any class can play.
Note: As all these class skilllines already exist, ZOS would not have to add any new skills or new animations to the game for this idea to work. (would also increase the skillstyling options for players)

AlnilamE · November 17

BelmontDrakul wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

Now with Account-Wide achievements, is that even necessary? Just make a character of each class. The skill lines don't take long to level enough to be functional, even if you don't go hard-core on it.

I beg to differ. Especially, maxing out Legerdemain, Mages' Guild and Undaunted skill lines was literal pain for me. I do not have access Summerset but; as I heard, Psijic Order's skill line is also painful so; I believe you can find a lot of people who disagree with your statement.

I have 12 functional characters, so I definitely have a different perspective from yours.
Most of the skill lines I level through normal game play, but I do a bit of everything, including dungeons, so that takes care of Undaunted. Fighter's Guild levels every time you kill daedra or undead, and there's plenty of those around.

Psijic can be a big tedious on repeat, but do you need to have it on every character? All my characters have done the quest line far enough to see Psijic Portals, but other than that, I don't need the skills, so that'll happen when it does.

You can only be a Vampire OR a Werewolf, and neither skill line is hard to level. Once you have the achievements, you really only need it if you want that for a build/RP purposes. I have one Vampire and two Werewolves, and my main had maxed both skill lines (and got cured afterwards) for the achievement.

Since we have account-wide achievements, even if you want to not use your old main again, you can just continue the quest lines in the next zone over and it will be like it's the same person questing.

Cooperharley wrote: »

The point of a class change token, IMO, is to not HAVE to re-do all the quests, but when you want to experience the game from a fresh perspective with all of your completionist content done. I have the entire world done and all skill lines maxed on a DK for instance. Let's say I get bored and want to transfer all of that completionism to a sorcerer - I don't want to start over, otherwise I'd just make a new character like others are suggesting. The point is to skip that stuff.

Since the achievements that tell you that you completed all this stuff are account-wide, you can just create the sorc and keep going from where the DK stopped. No need to redo anything you don't want to.

Taril wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

Now with Account-Wide achievements, is that even necessary? Just make a character of each class. The skill lines don't take long to level enough to be functional, even if you don't go hard-core on it.

The idea is that people don't want to have to do things like regrind out tedious skill lines (Like Fighter's Guild, Vampire + Werewolf etc), don't want to repurchase all their Outfit slots, Amoury slots, relevel their crafting skill lines (Reacquire all their Crafting motifs), redo all the quests etc.

All for the purpose of swapping a "Main character". And they also don't want to simply buy all these things from the Crown store and instead want a much less expensive method of transferring all their stuff to a new character.

I can see the Outfit and Armory slots being an issue. I don't buy anything that's character-specific in the game, so I only have what the game gives you for free in those areas. But let's not assume that it would be cheaper to change class than the cost of the average number of outfit/armory slots that players buy.

As for motifs, unless you are deleting the 'old main' why would you need to relearn them? They are in your style library and you can always log into your old character to do master writs and such.

Taril · November 17

AlnilamE wrote: »

Psijic can be a big tedious on repeat, but do you need to have it on every character? All my characters have done the quest line far enough to see Psijic Portals, but other than that, I don't need the skills, so that'll happen when it does.

Since we have account-wide achievements, even if you want to not use your old main again, you can just continue the quest lines in the next zone over and it will be like it's the same person questing.

Some people like to be completionists and have everything done on their main character. So even if functionally it's redundant, they still put value in it.

AlnilamE wrote: »

As for motifs, unless you are deleting the 'old main' why would you need to relearn them? They are in your style library and you can always log into your old character to do master writs and such.

Again, it's the whole "Completionist" thing. People want to be able to do everything they did on their old main, on their new main.

AlnilamE wrote: »

But let's not assume that it would be cheaper to change class than the cost of the average number of outfit/armory slots that players buy.

Which is the overall reason why I don't see such a thing ever being implemented.

If such a thing would exist, it would have to be prohibitvely expensive, since it will have to cover the costs of lost outfit/armory slots as well as any potential lost revenue from purchased skill shards or skill lines (I'm not sure if anyone actually buys them but presumably they do otherwise they wouldn't bother to keep having them for sale)

Which would basically invalidate the main points about why someone can't just... Make a new character. Which usually comes down to "I don't want to have to purchase all this stuff again"

Stafford197 · November 18

Interesting idea! A “reincarnation system” would have a consider a handful of things when creating a new character based on the data of an old character:
1. Character Appearance: Easy… just copy from old character sliders
2. Skill Lines: Easy… just copy non-class skill line levels from old character. Also can copy individual skill levels. Reset all used skill points.
3. Inventory: Easy. Start with a purely empty inventory (no currency or items) to avoid all potential duplication exploits. It is your responsibility to remove all items from your old character and bank them to avoid losing them.
4. Armory Builds: Easy. Erase all used Armory slots to once again avoid issues with potential duplication glitches or class-based skill issues.
5. Achievements: Since we have account-wide achievements, all account wide achievements are automatically unlocked.
All finished per character achievements are unlocked, while all in-progress per character achievements have their progress completely reset. This way the deletion of your inventory can’t ruin your chances at questline such as the Wrothgar museum.
6. Quests. This is the hard part…. I’m not sure if the game can simply “complete” all of the quests that you’ve completed. If this is possible then great! All we need then is to reset progress on all currently in-progress quests. I feel that this part though is what would be the biggest issue.

Those are my thoughts on how it could be done but of course this is all speculation! Who knows if this kind of thing could really work.