PTS Feedback Thread for Skill Line Unlocking Changes

Unladenswallow

Did your currently-created characters have all of their skill lines intact? Everything seems good to go.

If you created a new character, how long did it take you to unlock all of the weapon/armor skill lines? Too long, I shouldnt have to unlock these.

Did you understand what it took? Immediatly no, but I have not had to fully look through all the natch potes either

Did you understand how to unlock new skill lines? Immediatly no, but I have not had to fully look through all the natch potes either

Do you have any other general feedback? See below,

There are already a plethora of unintuitive things in the game, constitution passive listed in Black Rose armor set for example, that are not readily apparent anywhere on the character screen, is this health? I see this question a lot regarding this set and this change will lead to more unneccessary confusion than there already is. In fact I asked it myself. I would not institute this change, it is cumbersome and not needed.

LexrayEmberrr

Did your currently-created characters have all of their skill lines intact?
So far as I can tell, yes.

If you created a new character, how long did it take you to unlock all of the weapon/armor skill lines?
A quick thieving trip through the marketplace would do the trick, but I have not unlocked all of the skill lines on a non-template low-level alt yet.

Did you understand what it took?
Did you understand how to unlock new skill lines?
The answer to both of these is the same. Having skimmed the patch notes, I knew the requirements. But...

Do you have any other general feedback?
...with that in mind, it really is somewhat unintuitive without the prior knowledge of how to do so. I feel that including a tooltip somewhere on the skills menu that mentions how to unlock new skill lines may help new players somewhat - at the very least, make it clear that there are more skill trees than just the class ones. Alternatively, change the requirements somewhat so that simply equipping a weapon or armour piece unlocks the appropriate skill tree.

Strider_Roshin

Darlon wrote: »

Better way would be to grey skill lines out before they're unlocked instead of just not showing them. That way a new player would see that they're there and what needs to be done to unlock it (tooltip maybe ?).

Don't really like the fact that you have to wear 3 armor pieces to unlock a certain line...

This all the way. They should be grayed out, and you should unlock the skill tree just by equipping a weapon or a single piece of armor.

Obsidian3

Did your currently-created characters have all of their skill lines intact?
So far as I can tell, yes.

If you created a new character, how long did it take you to unlock all of the weapon/armor skill lines?
It took me about 5 minutes in the tutorial, a little frantic searching at first, then I went down to the house where you have to pick the lock on the door and found the armor and staves I needed to equip for the build I wanted to play.

Did you understand what it took?
Did you understand how to unlock new skill lines?
I did, but only because I read the patch notes beforehand, so I knew what I needed to search for.

Do you have any other general feedback?
Being a 3 year player of course I do not like the change. I found the process to be slightly cumbersome as I was eager to get to playing the tutorial, but had to stop and pick up the correct gear/weapons for the specific build I wanted to level. However, as a new player, I probably would have found the experience fun in the spirit of discovering new skills etc. Moving forward when creating alts I think this process will become tiresome as it will be one more mundane act one will need to perform before starting to play a new character.

Colonel_Brandon

Sorry to say and playing as a ‘New’ character I did find it very confusing, it seemed odd to get a new skill point to then go to the skill ‘tree’ and find nothing there to allocate the point too.

As a ‘new’ player I purposefully did not read the patch notes and went in ‘blind’ just to get a real idea of what to expect, thus I did not realise until reading this thread you needed a certain number of items of armour to unlock a skill or had to use both the sword and shield to unlock another.

As others have already pointed out it would be better to have the tree greyed out with tooltips to suggest a course of action to open up that skill.

One main reason I second this is because if you have more than one point to allocate it can often be better to hang on to that point and allocate it to something you can use later but if you don’t know what skills you can open later how can you know what to keep the point for.

Enodoc

Enodoc wrote: »

This is a nice idea. Although I think it's a bit odd that your race's innate natural affinity doesn't exist for five levels.

After having played the tutorial, I must say that I no longer think it's a good idea. Not knowing where you may be able to put skill points, and not knowing the extent of the skill lines, means that there is no potential for forward planning. As others have said, hiding away all the skill lines means new players may have no idea that certain skill lines even exist, meaning they would not know what to do in order to unlock it. And getting skill-up notifications when that skill line doesn't exist yet is just weird. I got to Light Armor 4 and Medium Armor 6 without ever having either skill line, because I was wearing one piece of light and two of medium.

Sydria

General Feedback

---

Unlocking the skill lines can make it easier for MMO beginners, but at it's current implementation seems to cause more confusion among veterans and beginners alike than actually helping them.

Problems:
- Skill lines are never found because they are hidden and the game does not tell you about them. For example a new PvE player may have no idea that a skill line for PvP exists and misses out on good skills early on.
- Gives new players the wrong idea about the games skill variety. They might think those few lines are the only ones available and be disappointed
- Unlocking is not always intuitive. Especially the armor skill lines are hard to find for a new player that has not read the patch notes.

Suggestion
To solve these problems I have two suggestions:

1. Let players choose at character creation if they need a skill line guidance or not (similar to how you skip the tutorial).
Veteran players can start of like they are used to right now while beginners unlock the skills over time.

2. Don't hide the skill lines! Make them appear grayed out and offer help on how to unlock this line. An additional description on what the line is good for may also be added here.

wimhwimladimf

Dear Devs please take in to consideration how changes made to unlocking skills and skill changes affect PvP. If current patch notes go through, 90% real pvpers will run in nearly full heavy armor, because of the changes to recovery. Basically Heavy armor sets are way too good and if you cant burst down the target in heavy armor, you wont be able to finish him, because you will run out of resource.

This will affect new 4vs4 mode quite a lot.

Thannazzar

This is really a play style modification similar to tutorials. It would work better as a toggle similar to tutorials.

By all means set it to on as default. But without a toggle most experienced players would immediately download a mod to circumvent it.

Latin

Racial skill line is not being unlocked properly for c630 templates.


For this change, it has the right intention, but wrong solution. Unlocking the armour, weapon and crafting skill lines is very un-intuitive; while I was able to acquire the equipment and work it out, there is no guarantee that new players can. For experienced players starting new characters, with the intention to level all/multiple skills this is also a potential and unwanted hurdle.

New players rarely walk into games 'blind' these days - with the abundance of information available, they would have some baseline knowledge of the game, read up on some guides or watched some videos and have some expectation on what sort of character they want to build (this is Elder Scrolls themed after all!). Locking and hiding the skill lines from the start may appear to ease confusion to the player, but only serves the opposite.

It is difficult to locate the right equipment in the early game, and land a killing blow using said equipment to unlock the weapon skill line. Getting the right pieces of armour to unlock armour skill line is even more difficult in the early game. So you end up with new players who have read up in advance, hyped and planned to do one thing, but being unable to, or stuck with another. Possibly getting frustrated or disinterested at the 'perceived' limitation and leave before giving the game another chance.

Being able to see most of the available skill lines also allows for planning in advance, so that players can work towards something by experimenting with different gear, knowing that they can utilise alternatives for different sorts of benefits (through passives or equipment-specific skills). Not showing these possibilities in-game will conflict with the publicly available information on the wider web, causing unnecessary confusion as to why certain skills are not visible.

I can understand and appreciate why some skill lines (c.f. Alliance War and guild/DLC-related) should be hidden until the players have made certain progress in game, but definitely not the rest of the skills. The change in its current form serves no function other than to exacerbate the potential problem it was designed to alleviate. The way skills are being unlocked (through equipping it and gaining xp to get to level 2, or through reading a skill book) in the live game is fine and should be retained.

If you wish to help new players and ease their confusion, perhaps you should consider making the tooltip UI more informative, addressing things like the current critical modifier, the meaning of critical rating (i.e. every 219 critical rating is 0.01 chance, or standardising the way it is displayed entirely), percentage of mitigation from armour/spell resistance stats, resistance values to specific damage types (e.g. flame, shock), clarifying the tooltip over damage ticks and time intervals for channelled skills and etc. These are things that new (anyone with less than 1-month of experience) players will want to know, because they are useful beyond the first 30 minutes of game play. Skill lines can be worked out using brute-force, but these things may remain obscured to players for a long time, hindering their ability to make good, informed decisions, until they figure out where to find resources that can consistently explain them.

Hiding these things, much like hiding skill lines (in the proposed change for Morrowind), is not beneficial to players (new and experienced alike) and should be avoided at all cost.

eso_nya

If you created a new character, how long did it take you to unlock all of the weapon/armor skill lines?
I found a 2-hander and a shield, some heavy and some light armor. The bag after the intro also granted a bow. i did not get far on "unlocking all".

Did you understand what it took?
For weaponlines, as i read it in the patchnotes. Before reading the other posts i was under the impression u need to equip 5 pieces of an armortype to get the skilltree...

Did you understand how to unlock new skill lines?
....im very easy to confuse/distract.
I guess u gain guildlines by joining the guilds and avaline by porting into cyrodiil, tho imo the bigger issue is not knowing of their existance in the first place.

Do you have any other general feedback?
The issue i see with the overwhelming skilltrees is, that esp. on a new char/as a new player:
U dont have enough skillpoints to try out stuff (and not enough gold to respec on a regular basis when try resulted in error).
Morphs dont seem to matter much "Does Damage and something funny" vs "Does dmg and has a cool name" aka "now scales with max stamina - so what?".
It always seemed more intuitive to me to go for passives cause they help with everything instead of unlocking skills in order to get them morphready.

The new tutorial is awesome, it teaches breakfree... iirr i played for ~one year w/o knowing thats a thing xD

rookit

Did your currently-created characters have all of their skill lines intact?
Yes.

If you created a new character, how long did it take you to unlock all of the weapon/armor skill lines?
I had to kill something to unlock sword/shield, and heavy armor. Took a few minutes to get one from the bags that are given from the template

Did you understand what it took?
I only knew from the patch notes I had to kill something. There might be a tip in game?

Did you understand how to unlock new skill lines?
Wouldn't know they existed if I was new.

Do you have any other general feedback?
Undo the change, it isn't very good. It is a very bad idea. Having no idea what skills there are really limits things. Everything should be shown to the player that they use.

Savinder

My feedback is that this is an attempt to fix something that isn't broken and it should be reverted back to how it is on live.

t3hdubzy

Why not create a toggle to show all available skill lines for those who dislike?

HereKittehKitteh

I like the idea for new players, but I wish there was a way to toggle on all skill trees so I can view them all, or just make it so if I equip a bow, or one piece of medium, one light and one medium I got access immediately to skill lines, instead of get a kill with bow, or equip three pieces of armour

Contraptions

Did your currently-created characters have all of their skill lines intact?
Yes.

If you created a new character, how long did it take you to unlock all of the weapon/armor skill lines?
Quite a bit. Once I get settled into a weapon I like I won't bother finding or equipping other types. Especially if I'm magicka. Unlocking skill lines just seems so... arbitrary? Like an artificial annoyance that's so trivial to overcome that I just wonder why they even put this hurdle there in the first place.

Did you understand what it took?
Sort of.

Did you understand how to unlock new skill lines?
Only by reading the patch notes. If I was new I would never know this was a thing.

Do you have any other general feedback?
I really don't know why this was implemented. Was there really such a big issue with new players getting overwhelmed with too many choices for skills? It seems to be solving a problem that never really existed.

I suggest making all class, weapon and armour skill lines available from the start. World, alliance war, craft and guild lines will be greyed out (visible but locked). Place a CONSPICUOUS mouseover tooltip that states "This line unlocks when completing the alliance war tutorial, joining the Mages guild etc." Having those former three available will give new players a chance to see various build choices and give them an adequate selection of skills to build their character initially, while allowing them the opportunity to expand their skill selection as they play through the guild/alliance war/main story quests.

majulook

Did your currently-created characters have all of their skill lines intact?
N/A

If you created a new character, how long did it take you to unlock all of the weapon/armor skill lines?
New character now at level 10. Skill lines for weapon/armor, still not unlocked.

Did you understand what it took?
No I thought at first they were missing due to PST issues

Did you understand how to unlock new skill lines?
Yes, thanks to the forums.

Do you have any other general feedback?
This is a horrible way for skill lines to be discovered. If I did not already know that skill lines existed, I would have probably given up on the game.

Aleraon

All we need if you insist on hiding skills is something like this:



personally I don't the hiding of skills 3 years after launch as its unnecessary. Personally I like seeing what skills are available to me so I have something to aim for in the skills department.

Al'Odin

Did your currently-created characters have all of their skill lines intact? No, only at level 7

If you created a new character, how long did it take you to unlock all of the weapon/armor skill lines? Still work in progress at level 7. Have 3 thus far

Did you understand what it took? Not immediately, but after I got my second weapon I realised what was goin on.

Did you understand how to unlock new skill lines? Yes, on second weapon equip and use.

Do you have any other general feedback? I felt a bit cheated as I wasted skill points into the first weapon I used, only to later prefer the 3rd weapon I now had.

Enodoc

I would propose that eating an alchemy reagent should unlock the Alchemy skill line.

ofSunhold

I created a new character.

I understood what it took (and I knew the skill lines I couldn't see existed) because I read the forum and have played the game. If I was really a new player: no, it's not at all clear. Also, unless you're planning to give them one of each weapon and a shield in the Wailing Prison, you're keeping important information from them by hiding the weapon skill lines. I think this is a mistake.

On the other hand, I did like the crafting skills unlocking the first time I approached the relevant crafting station. Only provisioning might be a little non-intuitive there for a brand-new player. The guilds unlocking when you first interact with them has always been fine too imo.

Don't really care for this feature overall. I don't think simply being able to see (locked!) skill lines is going to overwhelm anybody with too much information - if what you're really trying to do is make sure they immediately unlock their class skill lines, maybe you could just tell them that's a good idea.

f047ys3v3n

Docmandu wrote: »

Really don't like this system. Think it makes it more obscure / difficult for new players. I get what the idea behind it is, just think the implementation is too confusing.

Maybe at least show all the skill lines, but show a tooltip on how to unlock them. As it currently is, I can already imagine some people playing to Level 50 CP630 without knowing there's more skill lines.

Bingo, this it right on. Even I couldn't say it better.

Walan

My 2 cents:
Did your currently-created characters have all of their skill lines intact?
EU player, so for now I don't know about my current live characters.


If you created a new character, how long did it take you to unlock all of the weapon/armor skill lines?
About 10-15 minutes during the new tutorial for the 3 armor lines. And knowing what I was doing.
I didn't unlock all the weapon lines for now. I found a weapon of each type during the tutorial, but I was too busy to follow the quest and looking everywhere in the area (like a new player will probably do) ...
Trying to equip each type of weapon to kill a mob with it and unlock the corresponding line is not exactly something you do when you just jump into a new game (or new character).


Did you understand what it took?
Did you understand how to unlock new skill lines?
Only because I read the patch notes.


Do you have any other general feedback?
As others, I think this change is counter-intuitive and will not help new players.
Whatever the RPG or the MMORPG, I love to see all the possibilities of evolution of my character, to look at the different skill lines or future skills I will unlock. And seeing all the possibilities in ESO is a strong part of its attractivity, like "wow, I can do that ? And that ! And I will be able to unlock this !"
Maybe it can be a bit confusing at the begininning, but it's confusing in a "good way": it's because there is a lot of freedom ... and you sell the game for that (play as you want, what you want, etc).

With my new character on PTS, when I open the skills tab with only 3 lines, it was kind of depressing. "Only that ?".

It is unclear, even with the (very) easily missed tooltips, to know how to unlock a skill line. And not really intuitive too.

I think at least weapon, armor and racial skills line should be displayed at the very beginning.
If not, weapon and racial should unlock as soon as one item of the type is equiped, not 3 pieces of armor, not with a kill blow.
If I equip a bow, I expect to see right now what I can do whit it, not to looking for a killable mob, kill it and look at my skills tab.

Wayshuba

Disclosure: I haven't played on the PTS.

Other Disclosure: My entire guild just joined game about 2.5 months ago.

As a fairly new player to ESO (but also very experienced with MMOs in general), I disagree with having hidden skill trees based on our experience as new players in the game. It is helpful, right from the beginning, to know which trees are available in game and how to get them. Currently, we had to use outside sources to learn about skill trees and how to obtain them. It is hard to plan a character build when you do not know what skills are available from the beginning.

My suggestion for skill tree changes is to have them COMPLETELY visible but locked from the get go. Then have them translucent with text over the middle of it telling you how to open the tree. For example, have the one hand and shield ghosted with text over it that states "Equip a one handed weapon and shield to unlock this skill tree"

Personally, as a fairly new player, I think you are going in the opposite direction with this for helping new players than you should be.

Anyway, my two cents.

Zieryk

I understand the system now but I find it extremely non-intuitive.

First of all having all the weapon skills hidden would be ok I guess if:
1) The tutorial covered this
2) We went back to early version of the Wailing Prison where you could select your starting weapon from the table as opposed to everyone getting a 2h

Second having to equip 3 pieces of gear to unlock each armor skill line is pretty confusing especially when you can gain levels in the skill line before its been unlocked. My suggestions are:
Have armor skills not level up until the skill line has been unlocked (I hate this option but at least it would be more intuitive)
-or-
Have the skill line unlock when you gain a level in the skill rather than when 3 pieces are equipped

Personally I feel racial passives should never be hidden. For the other skills it kind of makes sense (why show them if you don't use them) but you're race won't change through normal gameplay and even if your race doesn't directly help your play style its not like it will hurt to have them.

I do like this system in that it reminds me of the early days where no one knew about Vampirism and Lycanthropy and they were just rumors. Having this system leaves room to have little hidden skill lines (although in this day its hard to keep anything truly secret). That being said I am extremely hesitant in having this system in place for default skill lines that everyone should know exists.

MacMurroughTheFirst

there has to be a disconnect somewhere because I still think this change makes perfect sense.


Did your currently-created characters have all of their skill lines intact?
yeah, they had them all.


If you created a new character, how long did it take you to unlock all of the weapon/armor skill lines?
Not very. but I really do think the kill requirement should be removed from weapons. Coming across them or specifically having to seek them out should be enough imo.


Did you understand what it took?
Did you understand how to unlock new skill lines?
I did but because I also read the patch notes before logging in.


Do you have any other general feedback?
I think taking away the 100+ items a new player has to read through is a great idea. All of this mostly affects the first 10-15 levels anyway where any truly new player will pick up on these mechanics because, to them, it's just the way the game is being played. Honestly, I think the only thing required, outside of considering the removal of the kill requirement, is just proper notifications. New players, for example, will catch on to how equipping armor works with some guidance and some of us older players will accept that you don't have to wait until something is "broken" to try and make it work better.

Also, ZoS, if you guys are doing this because you want to make room for future additional skill lines, like new weapons or World skill lines, you don't have to say anything... just blink twice...

the'Doctor

i like what i have played so far

OMA

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for the changes to skill line unlocking. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

• Did your currently-created characters have all of their skill lines intact?
• If you created a new character, how long did it take you to unlock all of the weapon/armor skill lines?
  • Did you understand what it took?
  • Did you understand how to unlock new skill lines?
• Do you have any other general feedback?

1. Yes my most experienced character had everything she ever knew which is everything.
2. It took me a while, it was not clear at first because there was no tutorial for them other than people in zone chat explaining it millions of times to everyone.
3. After the first couple of weapons lines unlocked I understood it and just picked up various weapons to hit something with and the skill unlocked. I was confused about where my racial passive was until level 5, it might be nice to still be able to see this because if you create a new character, see the passive and realize you don't like it, better to delete it at level 1.
4. Like I said, I understood how to unlock new skill lines. HOWEVER, as an experienced player I knew already that I was missing the fighter and mage guilds. However finally when I did find the fighter and mage guilds and talked to someone I got the skill lines opened. But by then I already had done several new character quests where intimidation or persuasion was an option that I did not have yet due to the lack of the mage or fighter's guild skills. So I don't know...if having all these things invisible, maybe better to have them in the open with a hint that tells you how to unlock it? At least with world, character and guild skills which require a bit more to unlock than simply picking up something and whacking a creature with it.
5. Nope think I've said everything.

[Edit to remove Morrowind spoilers]

Frenkthevile

potirondb16_ESO wrote: »

I hated it !

Unlocking skill... ain't working for me, and wouldn't have been if I had been a new player, the fact that you can't see what's out there isn't helping you choose your path, I didn't like it.

What would have been ok is that we had the base option and the message about how to unlock specific skill line... that might have work but otherwise I feel like it's good from an RP perspective but as far as an MMO player would care this is shady...

I don't think that system is a good idea, I already see half a thousand player asking how to unlock this or that skill line and some who won't even know such skill line exist... that would end up badly ! lol

Yeah, its terrible from a new player point of view. One thing i loved back in 2014 was the greatness, the variety, of skills that the game showed me
Change back, it was better.

CaptFuse

Current character had all her skills

Created new character:it did not take long to find skills.
Mix feelings on this. Most people have been playing already, and know the possible skill lines. So understand what it takes.
The skill line can all be found on the internet, so it is not a hindrance to those who want to map out their skills ahead of time.
Would have been better if implement from beginning (hindsight)
May a mix, keep racial skills free to see from beginning, and maybe in even class skills.
Hide weapons, armor, guild, and crafting.