Freeform, or make your own class.

Thevampirenight

Well champions online has this, it allows you to select what abilties you want, they could instead of adding the spellcrafting system add all abilties not added, to players, for use, They can add the abilty to name the class, to whatever you want like other elder scrolls games. This way people can have necromancy ice magic, nature magic, fire magic, illusion, shapeshifting. Etc

Basically, you can choose, 3 ultimates, 7 abilties, for three tiers, of abilties, and two or 4 passives. Or even just five abilties, and the same number of passives. This would give many what they want, without having to be forced into just premade class abilties!.
Now they would have to limit this, to make everything were theres no jabs, or certain abilties being used like that. With other good abilties, like very good spamable abitles, should not be added to be used but certain npc ones can be added and you can only have one of them. Fill free to add sugestions, in what should be done to make it fun and give everyone want.

lolo_01b16_ESO

Not sure if I get you right, but if you could freely combine all existing skills, there would be some combinations that I would consider to be too strong. (e.g. Overload + Battleroar, Streak + Cloak, surprise attack + take flight, ...)

Miszou

Didn't Morrowind have this?

dday3six

No

Here's the thing. It's just not very likely to happen. The game is simply very unlikely to get reworked on that massive of a scale. Multiple systems would need to be changed and/or reworked to support this. You're pretty much talking about a 'new' game from scratch.

People suggest these grandiose ideas all the time. However, they don't seem to think about if what they're suggesting is even feasible. If you're talking about a huge, time consuming, and most importantly expensive rework. The chances of it happening are slim.

Soneca798

No

It really wouldn't work... Just imagine a sorc with breath of life and cloak and you'd understand why.

Totalitarian

No

This would hold serious potential to fully skew the abilities. Last thing you want in PVP is someone spamming Puncturing Sweep only to get a Crystal Frags proc while using Daedric Curse, Aspect of Terror, and Mark Target, while keeping up a Hardened Ward, Surge, and keeping Breath of Life and Purify for heals. Oh, and Reflective Scales is active, alongside Magma Armor.

Essentially, what I'm trying to say is that it would make the less powerful abilities obsolete in PVP and PVE (for competitive players at least). It would make every character have incredibly strong strengths and minimal weaknesses. You can cite all of the balance issues in the game, but this would eliminate those, and just make everyone strong.

A create your own class, while it is a cool idea, it poses significant issues to balance.

RAGUNAnoOne

No

Too much FTM potential heck even being able to use any 3 skill trees instead of complete freedom could lead to monotony can you imagine shadow skills, templars healing, and storm calling overload/surge combo?

Thevampirenight

Yes

Well, this would deverse most of the population because, this is to add all spells not added to the game, as useable. They can add certain class abilties thats with the other classes but in a weaker form and more balanced state. Now for stealth, play they can give a much weaker form of invisablity, to the freeform, that does not benfit everyone but helps one hide, if need be with much weaker nerfed crit which makes it only usefull, for hidding from players or npcs.
They can come up with ways to make it work without giving people over advantige over other players.
Or do away with the class system, to begin with, and go freeform.

czar

Yes

i'd personally like this as i think it would help balance the game, but i can see how it would be problematic in pvp. maybe make all the class abilities open to everyone, but restrict them so you can't combine them in the ability bars? meaning you can essentially jump between classes instead of making your own class

Makkir

No

Elder Meta Online

Feisty_Khajiit128

Yes

It would be awesome, yes it would break the game, but it would be awesome. We could make Spambush do even more with every buff in the game...

Farorin

No

It would be awesome for a little while, but after the meta became a thing, there would be like no variation anymore, and things would become painfully boring.

TheShadowScout

No

Miszou wrote: »

Didn't Morrowind have this?

No, Morrowind had you had classes with "primary, secondary and tertiary" skills, either premade, or "pick your own" style.
You could technically raise each and every skill to max, though only the primary and secondary added to level progression as I dimly recall... and of course, that system worked because the spells back then were nowhere near the effectiveness as the class skills we have in ESO (more like... destro staff basic attacks).

In ESO, any "free form" or "make your own class" notion wouldn't work out well, since it would end up in deep "FotM" mire... everyone and their granny would be ending up unning clones of the same "super-effective" build. Which would be really boring in both PvP and group PvE - not an issue in single player games, but when everyone is the same... eh... there is a reason the faceless clones in star wars aren't the hero characters

For a freeform game setting to happen, the skills need to count for a lot less then they do in ESO. It could have been done like this, if they had done it like this from the start, but... you know... ship, sailed, sunk, long time.
Maybe next time.
Maybe when they might do a FallOut MMO in five years time or something.

Gilvoth

Yes

Miszou wrote: »

Didn't Morrowind have this?

yes morrowind had this and i loved it. morrowind also had classless ability. you could do anything in morrowind and everyone loved it. we still do.

Gilvoth

Yes

it would be soo awesome if there was no classes and we could make our own classes in eso. i would love it.
would be awesome

Mojmir

Yes

Farorin wrote: »

It would be awesome for a little while, but after the meta became a thing, there would be like no variation anymore, and things would become painfully boring.

oh you mean like how it is now?

Didgerion

Soneca798 wrote: »

It really wouldn't work... Just imagine a sorc with breath of life and cloak and you'd understand why.

It would work if done smart from the beginning.

There shouldn't be classes in ESO at all - just skill lines.

And it would be much easier to balance skills if they were unbounded from classes ...lets take your example.....the fix is simple: You cannot heal while cloaked - like mist form is.
They could balance skills around each other very effectively .
If a skill is too powerful they could just nerf it to the ground - and it wouldn't cripple a whole class but just one play style that is exploiting that skill.

The community was in rage when they announced that there will be classes in ESO - now good luck with balancing the classes.

AngryNord

No

we need less FoTM in this game, not more

Alorier

No

No no no no no no no no No no no no no no no no No no no no no no no no No no no no no no no no No no no no no no no no No no no no no no no no No no no no no no no no No no no no no no no no No no no no no no no no No no no no no no no no No no no no no no no no No no no no no no no no No no no no no no no no No no no no no no no no No no no no no
Why why do people feel that we have to change just about everything on here just leave alone

Asmael

Makkir wrote: »

Elder Meta Online

"The meta"

AFrostWolf

Yes

Free form would be awesome. Here is how I could see it working.

You have All Abilities listed with a skill point cost. Some skills should cost more than others.

A minimum Stat point Pre-Req. Make certain skills require different stats.
Example: Green's Dragon Blood. Requires 25 Points in health to learn as well as 1 skill points. By doing this you would force people to allocate their stats depending on what skill and builds they want to create.

Polar opposites to create build diversity and game balance. Example: Learning Soul Siphon would be incompatible with Breath of life. (Life steal/darkness archetype vs Healer/holy archetype.) Ect,Ect,Ect...


I don't see it happening because it would take a lot of work to balance and plan, and lets face it. ZOS can't get anything right.

Xellos77

No

Mojmir wrote: »

Farorin wrote: »

It would be awesome for a little while, but after the meta became a thing, there would be like no variation anymore, and things would become painfully boring.

oh you mean like how it is now?

*So boring it's been shelved

Thevampirenight

Yes

AFrostWolf wrote: »

Free form would be awesome. Here is how I could see it working.

You have All Abilities listed with a skill point cost. Some skills should cost more than others.

A minimum Stat point Pre-Req. Make certain skills require different stats.
Example: Green's Dragon Blood. Requires 25 Points in health to learn as well as 1 skill points. By doing this you would force people to allocate their stats depending on what skill and builds they want to create.

Polar opposites to create build diversity and game balance. Example: Learning Soul Siphon would be incompatible with Breath of life. (Life steal/darkness archetype vs Healer/holy archetype.) Ect,Ect,Ect...


I don't see it happening because it would take a lot of work to balance and plan, and lets face it. ZOS can't get anything right.

This would make it intersting and its a good idea, it would balance the game, if they forced requirements, for abilites.
If they added a freeform mode.

Xellos77

No

I don't care about mixing and matching skills. Three things are needed to make ESO great again (for PvE):

1) Addition of more classes (Really, ZOS? Only four?) for some variation.
2) Dungeons need to become viable. A "mark" type system needs to be implemented to spend gear on, which leads to...
3) Raids. Real raids, with entry-level tier dependent on gear obtained via the dungeon mark system.

For PvP.. ugh. It just needs an overhaul.

cazlonb16_ESO

Thevampirenight wrote: »

Well, this would deverse most of the population because, this is to add all spells not added to the game, as useable. They can add certain class abilties thats with the other classes but in a weaker form and more balanced state. Now for stealth, play they can give a much weaker form of invisablity, to the freeform, that does not benfit everyone but helps one hide, if need be with much weaker nerfed crit which makes it only usefull, for hidding from players or npcs.
They can come up with ways to make it work without giving people over advantige over other players.
Or do away with the class system, to begin with, and go freeform.

Experience tells me the exact opposite would happen. Free skill systems usually gravitate even more strongly towards optimal cookie cutter builds than restricted ones do.

Volkodav

Yes

Morrowind style.

Danikat

Yes

I would love this.

I never used the pre-made classes in Morrowind and Oblivion, I always preferred to make my own. They weren't super-OP perfect combinations, the opposite in fact, but they were a lot of fun to play.

The problem is as people have said many people would just wait for someone else to figure out an extremely powerful combination and copy it, then use it until ZOS had to nerf it to get some balance back, then move on to the next flavour of the month OP build.

But I still think it would be fun. I always prefer more variety in RPGs than being funnelled into a few options for the sake of simplicity. Admittedly this game is already better than many in that you can use any weapon and armor type on any class, but I still think there's room for improvement compared to past TES games.