Do you think ZOS would ever implement an easier spec swapping system?

Twilanthe

I play with two IRL friends who are both DPS, so when I joined them I decided to play a healer so we could run dungeons together. They really appreciate the (almost) instant groups, and I actually fell in love with healing. My healing spec does have some decent DPS, so I have no trouble at all with overland content. When my friend tried tanking, though she enjoyed it, she couldn't stand how awful it was for questing. She wasn't dying, but it was taking her forever to kill anything. She couldn't stand it and tried a couple hybrid builds before just giving in and going back to DPS.

As I said, I do love healing, and I do enough DPS that I handle quest content just fine, if a little slower than a pure DPS. But I also really enjoy a stamina DPS sneaky stabby build when questing. I would love it if I had the ability to swap between two specs, without having to spend 45 minutes and like 15,000 gold re-arranging my skills, attributes and champion points. I certainly don't mind that process when I just want to play around with a new build once every few weeks, but it's not feasible for someone who would really love to swap between specs on a daily basis when my friends and I run dungeons for a bit.

Changing things up a bit by swapping gear and using different skills works for most people I think, and I'm sure ZOS wants and has this gold/time sink to change builds for a reason. To encourage commitment to builds, or to encourage rolling new characters, etc. So I understand if this request goes against their vision for the game in some way. But as someone who really just plays a single character with no interest in alts, but still wants to engage in two really different playstyles on a daily basis, I would love some kind of spec swap system.

My Idea for it would be simple, something like the changing of outfits.
You get two slots, and you can assign skills, morphs, attribute points, champion points and maybe even gear to each, and swap at will.
When you change specs it will change over all those things automatically.
You still need to go to shrines and pay gold to edit those two specs, but once locked in you can switch at will.

It would likely just be limited to two
It could maybe cost some amount of gold, like an outfit station
It could maybe even require some kind of new station, which could potentially be another item for ZOS to add to furnishings, to purchase with crowns, etc. Or perhaps could become a feature of the transmute station and use transmute stones, or some other currency. I mean, I would ideally love it to be free, or maybe cost money/crowns to unlock but then free to swap, but I'm not too picky.

I'd love to hear other's thoughts, if they'd want something like this, or not. And if not, why.

Guyle

Unfortunately, this is a Catch 22 situation here. ZOS will never bother to take the extra time to implement what almost every other MMO out there has, like a minimap or loadouts built into the base UI, [snip] Then, when addons screw up the game, and make it practically unplayable, they will tell you they don't officially support the use of addons. Here, this is a copy paste of a message I received from Customer Service recently:

'In regards to you using addons, those are taken on at your own risk. We don't officially condone the use of addons in our game. Our system was not designed to be changed by the use of external mods, and as such we cannot take liability for the issues they cause.'

[snip] but they will also tell you they don't condone the use of them and that the game isn't meant to have addons when things inevitably go wrong. Personally, if not for addons I would have stopped playing the game after a few months. But its absolutely mind boggling that they never bothered to add the things that most players will agree are necessary to really play an MMO.

[Edited to remove Bashing]

Eifleber

Well admittedly for healers it's easier but if you get a tank some medium gear with +crit, Overland stuff isn' t that bad either.
Sure my DK tank has some CP invested in extra block, received healing and stuff but with say Toothrow, Leviathan and Selene monster set she does decent dps as well.

I read some guides and some advice you to put points in +health and not just in +stam (and get health from gear). DO NOT do that if you want you tank character to be able to do solo content as well.

Iccotak

Add-one already do it

Problem with that is sometimes having to wait for the add-on update.

ESO should implement a spec loader along with an optional mini map

vestahls

The Dressing Room addon does this, swapping gear and skills with one click - but obviously not CP and Attributes, as that would cost gold to respec anyway.

ZOS would probably implement something like this eventually, if they can monetise it

zvavi

vestahls wrote: »

ZOS would probably implement something like this eventually, if they can monetise it

They can. Easily. Add another slot in character select near the outfit called "soul slots"
It will work like this:
when you get a new soul slot you have all your skill points, attributes and champion points there on 0 and you can allocate them however you wish.
You can swap while out combat.
You can pay gold to reset it entirely and move it to another character.
You can bind equipment to a specific soul slot, auto equipping it if it is in your inventory when you swap to that soul slot.

Give 1 free soul token per account for people to use.

But most importantly, before monetising it.... fix the game &£#&£&#&!!!

Oathunbound

There is really no reason outside of yet another gold sink to implement at least a second spec option for players. If you have all or almost all skill points its gets costly to respec, plus 3k for each time to redo cp. But it would open the floodgates for many more people willing to try support specs in pve and make it easyer for pvpers to swap from pvp to pve. This is the first mmo that i have seen/played that did not have the option to swap to a diffrent spec on the fly. But given that the servers would resemble a wobbly jenga tower heled up by faith adding anything new will more then likely topple it and we would suffer again

FierceSam

Great QoL idea.. would massively improve the game for more experienced players and would make it easier to develop and level non-dd characters...

Even enabling players to have a housing item that performed the same functions as the various shrines of attribute and skill changes (even for the same insane costs) would be an improvement.....

Has zero chance of selling boxes tho... so there’s no chance ZOS would put any effort into it. Which is a shame.

Vaoh

PC players already have this feature thanks to add-ons. Therefore ZOS won’t bother with this basic MMO QoL change just for console. Simple as that

xI_The_Owl_Ix

Absolutely.

I love tanking dungeons and trials but I stopped playing one because you get excluded pretty much from:
-Overland Content
-Questing
-PvPing
-Farming resources etc.

Which is like 80% of the game besides trials/dungeons. And being excluded from 80% of the game just because you play a tank is really counterproductive.

Twilanthe

Unfortunately the addon wont really help me. If it can't change attribute points, I'm assuming it can only swap gear and skills you have. But if I want to go from magicka healer to stamina DPS it wont change my attribute points, Champion Points or skill morphs to the stamina based morphs.

I do overland content fine by just swapping some skills because my healer build has some gear and set up for DPS, so my damage output is fine for questing. It's really just personal playstyle. I'd really like to play a sneaky rogue type when not healing dungeons, and my only way to do that is to either pay 15-20k gold to swap (and then again to swap back, likely twice on a daily basis) or make another character.

The latter is likely the route I will take, I may make and level a warden to just be my healbot, but to be honest I really don't want to go that route. I just have the one character right now, and I enjoy doing all content on that one character. If I did make an alt, any time I got on them to heal dungeons I'd really miss my main.

I would personally just really like a second spec I can swap between, and I see no real negative reason to implement it. It could easily be monetized and would be adding a quality of life improvement that most other MMOs have.

Fermian

I made a post about it before. With a game focused so much on having different builds its even stranger a feature like this is missing.

daemonios

Guyle wrote: »

Unfortunately, this is a Catch 22 situation here. ZOS will never bother to take the extra time to implement what almost every other MMO out there has, like a minimap or loadouts built into the base UI, [snip] Then, when addons screw up the game, and make it practically unplayable, they will tell you they don't officially support the use of addons. Here, this is a copy paste of a message I received from Customer Service recently:

'In regards to you using addons, those are taken on at your own risk. We don't officially condone the use of addons in our game. Our system was not designed to be changed by the use of external mods, and as such we cannot take liability for the issues they cause.'

[snip] but they will also tell you they don't condone the use of them and that the game isn't meant to have addons when things inevitably go wrong. Personally, if not for addons I would have stopped playing the game after a few months. But its absolutely mind boggling that they never bothered to add the things that most players will agree are necessary to really play an MMO.

[Edited to remove Bashing]

Oh, ffs... If they don't "officially condone the use of add-ons" and their "system was not designed to be changed by the use of external mods", why are their APIs documented and available for use by add-on developers? This is a shameful and disingenuous cop-out. Outsource part of the game development to people working for free AND blame them for any related issues (and some unrelated, as blaming add-ons for game performance is a popular fetish in ESO).

DigitalHype

Guyle wrote: »

Unfortunately, this is a Catch 22 situation here. ZOS will never bother to take the extra time to implement what almost every other MMO out there has, like a minimap or loadouts built into the base UI, [snip] Then, when addons screw up the game, and make it practically unplayable, they will tell you they don't officially support the use of addons. Here, this is a copy paste of a message I received from Customer Service recently:

'In regards to you using addons, those are taken on at your own risk. We don't officially condone the use of addons in our game. Our system was not designed to be changed by the use of external mods, and as such we cannot take liability for the issues they cause.'

[snip] but they will also tell you they don't condone the use of them and that the game isn't meant to have addons when things inevitably go wrong. Personally, if not for addons I would have stopped playing the game after a few months. But its absolutely mind boggling that they never bothered to add the things that most players will agree are necessary to really play an MMO.

[Edited to remove Bashing]

No chance they will do this, unless they think it will be something they can work into a monetization scheme somehow. They can't even be bothered to add a feature to save our passwords at login (yes this can be done securely). Almost every other MMO or online game in existence has done this for years. Or even an option for a simple minimap. There are some stubborn people making decisions over there.

JinMori

I don't think he meant it like dressing room, i think he meant it like a spec system in wow, basically it would allow you to save morphs and change 2 setups on the fly, dressing room does not allow you to change morphs on the fly.

Twilanthe

DigitalHype wrote: »

No chance they will do this, unless they think it will be something they can work into a monetization scheme somehow. They can't even be bothered to add a feature to save our passwords at login (yes this can be done securely). Almost every other MMO or online game in existence has done this for years. Or even an option for a simple minimap. There are some stubborn people making decisions over there.

I think it would be extremely easy to monetize. It could be something you buy with gold and with a shortcut in the crown store. I'm sure people would be pissed at such a standard MMO feature being locked behind a paywall though. I certainly would (but it wouldn't stop me from using it and I'd be glad to finally have it).

Or they could give you one for free, and let you unlock another via crown store. Or make it a perk of ESO+ (again people would be pissed about that, and rightly so, but its still an option to monetize).

Also with people able to have more than one spec, they would probably be willing to experiment more. Maybe keep their main spec but often be testing out new specs with the second slot, which might increase the use of respect scrolls purchased from the crown store.

It would also help streamers/youtubers who do videos on builds to swap between builds they are testing in videos. And ZOS should have a vested interest in streamers/youtubers because they are generating free game publicity.

mikejezz

If they add it it would probably be like outfit slots. But an additional slot per character.

Tigerseye

Vaoh wrote: »

PC players already have this feature thanks to add-ons. Therefore ZOS won’t bother with this basic MMO QoL change just for console. Simple as that

We don't.

Yes, we can probably swap gear and the skills on our skill bar, instantly, wherever we are, with an addon.

However, we obviously can't change attributes, skill morphs, or CP points, like that and in the case of morphs, we then have to re-level them, as well.

Meaning the change is about as far from instant as it is possible to get.

Not only that, but how many specs you can potentially have learned is severely limited by skill points.

If you have a char that is a master crafter, in all crafts, for example and that has some other lines learned from DLCs, it is unlikely you will still have enough skill points left (if you are DPS) to also have the tanking and healing class lines fully learned.

The whole thing is a complicated mess and means most chars are baked-in to one spec, almost permanently, unless they pay quite a lot of gold to respec attributes, skills and CP and then take quite a lot of time to re-level skill morphs.

Even talking about it is overly complicated...

Blackwolfe5

daemonios wrote: »

Guyle wrote: »

Unfortunately, this is a Catch 22 situation here. ZOS will never bother to take the extra time to implement what almost every other MMO out there has, like a minimap or loadouts built into the base UI, [snip] Then, when addons screw up the game, and make it practically unplayable, they will tell you they don't officially support the use of addons. Here, this is a copy paste of a message I received from Customer Service recently:

'In regards to you using addons, those are taken on at your own risk. We don't officially condone the use of addons in our game. Our system was not designed to be changed by the use of external mods, and as such we cannot take liability for the issues they cause.'

[snip] but they will also tell you they don't condone the use of them and that the game isn't meant to have addons when things inevitably go wrong. Personally, if not for addons I would have stopped playing the game after a few months. But its absolutely mind boggling that they never bothered to add the things that most players will agree are necessary to really play an MMO.

[Edited to remove Bashing]

Oh, ffs... If they don't "officially condone the use of add-ons" and their "system was not designed to be changed by the use of external mods", why are their APIs documented and available for use by add-on developers? This is a shameful and disingenuous cop-out. Outsource part of the game development to people working for free AND blame them for any related issues (and some unrelated, as blaming add-ons for game performance is a popular fetish in ESO).

Of course they support addons, [Snip]. Still, it's not like support can help you with a broken addon (like the scrying bug that happened with previous versions of votans/fyralkins minimap).

[Edited for rude content]

Hexi

Overland content is so laughably easy that you don't need to respec for it.

Elwendryll

I think they will implement that eventually but it's not one of their priority at all.
I frequently play DD and Tank at endgame level, and with addons it's quite fast to swap, but I do that very often, and it requires me to move to grahtwood if I need an other morph, and to my house to change mundus, I would also play healer if this sytem was implemented. Right now, it's quite annoying to swap everything, and you definitely need to be comfortable when it comes to gold, not even talking about twice-born stars. Just make me pay crowns to unlock new setups and swap everything instantly for free. And disable that in PvE instances so you can't use it to optimize trial/arena runs. You'd still need to pay gold to edit these setups, but at least, you could easily change between a PvE and PvP setup, it could only improve the participation in all content, and make people less reluctant to play tank.

Bradyfjord

If implemented, it will probably be something that they sell in the crown store.

Iccotak

Hexi wrote: »

Overland content is so laughably easy that you don't need to respec for it.

Yeah you only need to change gear and skills
As a tank I have to use two different builds which is why I use the add-on to make the switch easier.

Twilanthe

Iccotak wrote: »

Hexi wrote: »

Overland content is so laughably easy that you don't need to respec for it.

Yeah you only need to change gear and skills
As a tank I have to use two different builds which is why I use the add-on to make the switch easier.

That is true, my complaint isn't about overland being too hard as a healer, though that was my friend's issue. Mine was that I want to play two completely different play-styles in dungeons vs overland. That is not as easily accomplished when one is Magicka and the other is Stamina.

richo262

zvavi wrote: »

vestahls wrote: »

ZOS would probably implement something like this eventually, if they can monetise it

They can. Easily. Add another slot in character select near the outfit called "soul slots"
It will work like this:
when you get a new soul slot you have all your skill points, attributes and champion points there on 0 and you can allocate them however you wish.
You can swap while out combat.
You can pay gold to reset it entirely and move it to another character.
You can bind equipment to a specific soul slot, auto equipping it if it is in your inventory when you swap to that soul slot.

Give 1 free soul token per account for people to use.

But most importantly, before monetising it.... fix the game &£#&£&#&!!!

The only draw back they may have with a 'soul' token, is for every slot you add diminishes the value of a character slot, because alt characters are merely just builds really.

What they could do is make it possible to merge 2 characters. IE a DK Nord and a DK Orc merge, you pick the primary and the secondary merges, achievements, skill points, lore books, XP in trees, quests (primary takes precedence if there is a decision conflict in a quest). This could also introduce funerals for RP or for people attached to the character they chose to sacrifice. The player loses a character slot (but if they delete the character they are left with they get 2 slots back).

The end result is
1 Character with
2 sets of racials to choose from
2 sets of attributes
2 sets of skills (morphs are now swappable on the fly)
2 sets of CP
2 equipped inventory load outs
Increased inventory space (to make up for losing an entire character inventory)

As there are 18 slots and 6 classes, that is 3 slots per class, so you should be able to add a 3rd character to increase that to 3.

Furthermore, outfit slots can now be useful, outfit slots are renamed to loadout slots. You can configure a loadout slot to simply change the appearance (what we have already) or simply change the loadout or change both appearance and loadout.

If this was the case, I would buy all character slots, and I'd buy a lot of 'loadout' slots. I'd then reduce my character list to 6 characters and proceed to make a Stam build, Mag build, Heal build, Tank build, Overworld build PVP build and possibly a vMA build on all 6 of my characters. I would aim for quality over quantity. I have 10 characters and 4 are mostly mules.

The only drawback I could see ZOS having with this would be it reduces the importance of research and horse feeding if people just make an alt to merge it with their main, so perhaps have a requirement that 1 of the characters needs to have completed all research and horse feed, and what you are left with is whatever the other character needed to do.

For instance if Main has 60/60/60 on horse feed, but the alt has 30/60/20 the end result merged character would be on 30/60/20 and need to complete to 60/60/60 if they wanted to add a 3rd, which would also reset it to whatever the 3rd is.

Downside for the player is, having 18 crafter makes a lot of $$, having only 6 makes less. So, firstly this process should only be optional, but also if you merge 2 characters you have a 50% chance of a double drop on daily writs, having 3 merged character results in a double drop on writs. That is still the crafting of 6 = 12, still less than 18, but it isn't so penalizing.

So potential for monetisation for ZOS
Character slots
Outfit (Loadout) slots
Horse feed
Research timers

Given gold/crown gifting is a thing, I'm perfectly fine with that. The rest is just time. It also isn't that daunting because people that want to do it will just make all there characters at once and just start feeding and researching immediately, or buy feed. You could say, I'm undaunted.

Guyle

daemonios wrote: »

Oh, ffs... If they don't "officially condone the use of add-ons" and their "system was not designed to be changed by the use of external mods", why are their APIs documented and available for use by add-on developers? This is a shameful and disingenuous cop-out. Outsource part of the game development to people working for free AND blame them for any related issues (and some unrelated, as blaming add-ons for game performance is a popular fetish in ESO).

You hit the nail on the head there. It's a way for them to essentially get free labor and a scapegoat at the same time. Not much incentive then to do the work to add features most of us would agree are necessary. And it is shameful.

Guyle

Blackwolfe5 wrote: »

Of course they support addons, [Snip]. Still, it's not like support can help you with a broken addon (like the scrying bug that happened with previous versions of votans/fyralkins minimap).
[Edited for rude content]

[Snip] Ive repeatedly had issues in several games where it was clear that CS knew absolutely nothing about the game, as they would have had a very different response to an issue if they did - but I doubt they would say 'We don't officially condone the use of addons,' if in fact the written policy was they officially condone them. Ultimately thats just legal jargon, so they can allow addons, but never have to deal with the consequences when they mess other things up.

[Edited for removed content]

iris56

This would make me so much more likely to pvp or do different content. I'm on pc, I have the addons to switch, but its still a pain. Plus, my main is a tank so I have to visit a shrine to reset attribute points, visit a guildhall to get a new mundus, and pay to reset cp every single time. I wiuld argue 2 specs isn't ideal. I'd love to have 3 for my main: tank, pve dps, and pvp build. I have 18 max cp level alts on my main account, but its not the same. I want achievements on my main and respecing all of the time is a major barrier to that.

Bradyfjord

It might be interesting if they gave us respecification scrolls like the one you get around level 40 near the end of the daily long in rewards. It might help alleviate the pain for some of us. I too need to respec based on what kind of content I play (tank/dps/pvp/etc.).

Kwoung

Twilanthe wrote: »

Unfortunately the addon wont really help me. If it can't change attribute points, I'm assuming it can only swap gear and skills you have. But if I want to go from magicka healer to stamina DPS it wont change my attribute points, Champion Points or skill morphs to the stamina based morphs.

There is an addon that does most of what you want, it is AlphaGear, it will swap your Champ points as well as skills/gear.

https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1812-AlphaGear2.html

I do not think any addon swaps your morphs or attributes, which would get very expensive on a daily basis regardless as you pointed out. Depending on how you set your attributes though, you could easily not have to swap them by just setting your gear sets up correctly with the right glyphs, which would be more than good enough for just playing with friends and cost less in the long run than daily trips to the shrines.

Personally, numerous of my characters swap sets to change from DPS to tank or healing. My tank of course, doesn't do extreme DPS, but is fine for situations when full on tanking is not necessary. Also, choose majika or stamina and build around it for whatever role you want to play if you want to be really effective and not have to spend 10's of thousands a day swapping attributes and morphs. My DK depending on gear, is actually a MagDK when he is wearing Leeching/Winters Respite/Grothdar and a StamDK with Red Mountain/Unfathomable Darkness/Grothdarr. He is pretty much unkillable and can taunt/chain forever in MagDK mode with 24k magika and 1551 regen, and does decent enough damage in DPS mode, as well as it being hella fun with the lava bombs, murders of crows and lava pools constantly going off!

Kwoung

Forgot to mention, all his points are in health, as a tanks should be.