Ratzkifal wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

Okay. So if you’re playing a Dragonknight, and swap out Earthen Heart for Winter’s Embrace, you should be inherently weaker than a traditional DK?

Yeah that’s a hard pass from me.

Okay. So if you're playing a Dragonknight, and swap out Earthen Heart for Winter's Embrace, you should be inherently stronger than a traditional DK?

Yeah that's a hard pass from me.

You’re not though. That’s the thing. Winter’s Embrace and Earthen Heart are both tanking skill lines.

Just because you Subclass, that doesn’t inherently make your build better than a “pure class.”

It’s only when you start mixing skill lines of the same category into the same build that you see power fluctuation.

Role A x1 Role B x1 Role C x1
Role A x3

Why would a class with a tank skill line, and a healer skill line, do more damage than a class with 3 damage skill lines or vice versa?

That’s why we’re getting our reworks to mix up skill lines and prevent this from happening…

The best idea I've heard so far is to give small weapon/spell damage buff for using two organic class skills and a slightly larger buff if using all three.

I say this from the perspective of quite enjoying subclassing and being leery of having subclassing weakened. I don't mind making pure classing more competitive but not to the point of making me feel penalized for using subclassing. And keeping things simple is important, I think.

I can say that up until about May this year, we had people waiting to join Skyrim Red Shirts. Since then, by kicking AFK players, many whom have very high CPs and just have stopped playing, and the difficulty in recruiting, our numbers are down to the low 400s. Retention is becoming more difficult, and replacements are even harder to get.

You only have to look at how many guild ads there are in zone chat to see that guilds are desperate to get their numbers back up. I can also report that the purchase price for traders has roughly halved since May. This shows guilds just don't have the income to spend ludicrous amounts on traders every week, and this must be due to declining sales and, therefore, less income. This has nothing to do with our guild as that has become busier with the events we hold, they are always over-subscribed, and our rewards and website, etc, have all massively improved over 2025.

So, whilst this is anecdotally my experience, it does fit the overall narrative seen in this thread. Something needs to be done. I can see that cross-play may well invigorate the game, and even though this is really difficult for the devs to do, they are pressing on with it because they have little choice. Their budget and workforce have been cut significantly as MS milks them for every last drop of profit. Don't forget what we see from them is about a year out of date, so they know what's coming, and they also know how it's likely to affect them.

I think they should drop the content pass idea, go back to chapters and reintroduce the last missing areas of Skyrim. This would make sense for 2026 as it's the 15th anniversary of that game. If they do all this, I would expect to see a resurgence in numbers, at least briefly, and if the content is good, they would help retention into 2027.

Subclassing. It's not really the first time that build diversity has been reduced, I remember in the past when Mag DPS would use LA and Staves, when Vigor was exclusively used by Stam builds, etc. It's quite different now after the hybridization/homogenization of skills/passives and other stuff like Scribing and well... Subclassing. The reason why Subclassing was a dealbreaker for me is because none of the previous changes invalidated my Class choice.

When I created my character and selected ''Necromancer'' it was because I wanted to play as a Necromancer, and right now the options are to Subclass and change 2/3 of my Class skill lines, becoming some sort of weird hybrid with zero visual cohesion and also completely ditching the whole Necromancer theme that I planned for this character OR to stay Pure Class and keep that identity, but also play with a massive disadvantage. Both options suck.

One would have expected this to be addressed with the U47 Patch, since players warned ZOS that this would happen literally the first day of the U46 PTS and because it's a number tweaking issue for the most part, yet here we are.

Really hope players answer these surveys fairly and not to spite either vengeance or grey host, to get one of them removed because they like the other one. As we can see many players do on these forums already.

Something I would have loved (and may have reduced some of the negative feelings about subclassing) was to have really made it about class identity. Classes have no real lore behind them which I'm sure is to provide some open territory for players to form their own backstory, but had we ever been given some class based quests that would have really helped make it easier to connect with them. Then subclassing could have either required those quests to learn a new skill line from another class or a have added a subclass specific series of quests to really "earn" those skills. As it stands, going to an NPC and saying "yeah, make me a God knight now" just feels unearned.

The added effort to really make us care about what the classes are is what helps players connect with the why we may choose one skill line or another. Then the obvious buffs to underperforming skill lines wouldn't obviously help prevent the same three lines from being used constantly

A lot of the bosses right before they heavy attack (with a 2h weapons) turn their back to you at the very last second after this update.

Very confusing for tanks, it makes you think you lost taunt.

They already do send out surveys to groups of players they want feedback from, or put them here on the forum.

Also standard reminder: the game is not divided into subscribers and free players. There is no free version of ESO and many people who choose not to subscribe do buy all the chapters (or the season passes now I guess), DLC and crowns. If the money from those purchases isn't going to pay the developers salaries as you assume that's an internal financial problem for ZOS to solve, not a reason to exclude players for paying for the game via the "wrong" format.

I'm not convinced subscribers are better informed either, considering how often we get topics about people afraid to stop subscribing because they don't understand what's included and so what would change, or who kept paying because they assumed free things like login rewards and golden pursuits are ESO+ exclusive. I know they're likely a minority of subscribers but I don't think allowing people who will blindly pay ZOS each month and assume it goes on stuff they want are the right people to make informed decisions on the future of the game.