Would subclass system work in ESO?

stybbe17b16_ESO

Say at level 50 you get to pick a subclass of any of the existing classes to unlock one of their skill lines. Would it add a huge build variety or just ruin the game?

Mindcr0w

Sounds cool in theory.

Would be a balancing nightmare in practice.

SshadowSscale

Break the game..... Give shadow skill line to other classes and you have a nightblade 2.0 and even 3.0 in some cases..... Imagine a cloak spaming necro hitting with blast bones... Or a sorc that streaks once or twice and then cloak.... Not to mention the ganking potential magsorcs have if they had cloak..... Too many broken stuff will happen so no

Dusk_Coven

Totally open ended skill development is great only in non-competitive PvE where the monsters are really just there for you to play out your power fantasy of whatever combo you put together.

Once you introduce achievements or any sort, or PvP of any sort, it's just a mess. Just like it is now in ESO with so many combinations of skill lines and gear sets possible.

What you are asking for you can play in Aura Kingdom. At level 40 you can pick a secondary class AND you can change that secondary class with only the restriction of a time cool-down, AND you can use skills from it at any time. But they only have skills within classes, not a full array of other skill lines. So once you take attack skill cooldowns into account, there's actually very little reason to take a second class unless you want support skills. So that's what people end up choosing for their second class if they aren't already a support class.
It's probably just to save people from rerolling another toon in case they don't like their first class. And a lot of people end up choosing a support class for a second class, so the actual variety that players use is actually limited because of the pressures of simply being practical.

MaleAmazon

We have morphs. And magicka / stamina. That´s the 'subclass' - in theory. In practice, they messed it up a bit and it would now take a giant effort to untangle, which I doubt they want to do. As it is, the morphs are often 'this for stamina, this for magicka', which along with the design to make "magicka armor" like light armor, "magicka CP" (and vice versa for stamina), and the way damage scales with the respective stat means you get cookie cutter builds.

I hope we will get a CP revamp which allows you to branch out into subclasses.

As far as 'balancing nightmare' - I don´t think so. Many skills have been redone, basically the baseline for many ranged skills is 28 m range, same damage output, differentiated by the secondary effect. I see all classes in PvP, and Cyrodiil doesn´t have balanced numbers of players on each team, even.

As for the original question (I didn´t read it carefully the first time, sorry) - I mean, you´d wind up with the same cookie counter builds, just now it would be a subclass build. It would work (of sorts) but it would add nothing to the game for the most part, and it would quite frankly be stupid (but fun).

That is, assuming you mean actually getting the skillines from existing classes, which... I mean, it wouldn´t work, now that I think more about it. It would just be wrong.

"PvP is unbalanced" is more like a self-reinforcing notion among PvP players, though. I have never - as in never, ever, ever, ever - played a multiplayer game competitively where people didn´t complain that it was somehow unbalanced.

It is the PvP mindset - people are only complaining about what kills them. Anyone complain that Nightblade cloak is a completely useless skill in PvE for the most part (Thieves´ Guild and maybe something else nonewithstanding)? We have 'PvP morphs', 'skills useless for PvP' etc. ESO is not a very varied game in terms of builds.

Btw, in chess, the 'equal' game, white has an advantage. (No, don´t think racism! Don´t think racism!).

BRCOURTN

No i don't think it would. The whole game would have to be reworked system wise. What would people do with their 17 alts then?

stybbe17b16_ESO

BRCOURTN wrote: »

No i don't think it would. The whole game would have to be reworked system wise. What would people do with their 17 alts then?

Because you unlock one skill line in another class it neglect any type of diversity? I'd say you would want more alts because there would be more possible builds

Taleof2Cities

Mindcr0w wrote: »

Sounds cool in theory.

Would be a balancing nightmare in practice.

^This.^

Girl_Number8

They should restore class identity not blur it more

cnyanes

I'd rather have a "change class" option, the same way you can change you race or your name...

Red_Feather

Guild Wars 1 has a class system that was praised by critics.

I bought the game just from the reviews describing that class system!

Primary Class gets all the benefits. Secondary Class gets only select stuff from the class.
So a Mesmer/Necromancer gets access to necromancer stuff, but they don't get the necromancer passive and there are soul reaping skills they can only cast at level 0 and can't level up.

Ratzkifal

Honestly I think this idea has potential.

You see, stamina players want more stamina morphs but every stamina morph that is added takes choice away from magicka specs. If we had subclasses, this whole problem could be circumvented.

Every class gets two subclasses - one for magicka and one for stamina, so that everyone has morphs to choose from. It could essentially function like a Tier 2 Morph after the initial morph that divides between stamina and magicka.

Of course this would be a balancing nightmare and probably take years to develop as the number of class skills would essentially double.

Azuramoonstar

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

Totally open ended skill development is great only in non-competitive PvE where the monsters are really just there for you to play out your power fantasy of whatever combo you put together.

Once you introduce achievements or any sort, or PvP of any sort, it's just a mess. Just like it is now in ESO with so many combinations of skill lines and gear sets possible.

What you are asking for you can play in Aura Kingdom. At level 40 you can pick a secondary class AND you can change that secondary class with only the restriction of a time cool-down, AND you can use skills from it at any time. But they only have skills within classes, not a full array of other skill lines. So once you take attack skill cooldowns into account, there's actually very little reason to take a second class unless you want support skills. So that's what people end up choosing for their second class if they aren't already a support class.
It's probably just to save people from rerolling another toon in case they don't like their first class. And a lot of people end up choosing a support class for a second class, so the actual variety that players use is actually limited because of the pressures of simply being practical.

should research before assuming. FF11 has a subclass system and is pretty similar in set up to ESO. just slower combat. Were there some hardcore meta combos, yup. But it added a cool layer to the game play to to diversify one player from another.

It be nice to see tbh like do you want to be a tank warden? you pick warden then one of the more tank oriented classes and use skills from both. want to be a necromancer healer? same concept. Elder scrolls always had this build as you want class system. And a sub job system if done well, and add to the gameplay.

Also i can test that ff11 none of the mobs were just there, joke in the community is: no mater what level you are, or how good your gear is. There is a bunny who can kill you.

Azuramoonstar

Girl_Number8 wrote: »

They should restore class identity not blur it more

they actually add more to class ID then take it away, just add more diversity to those who want to use it.

Tommy_The_Gun

SshadowSscale wrote: »

Break the game..... Give shadow skill line to other classes and you have a nightblade 2.0 and even 3.0 in some cases..... Imagine a cloak spaming necro hitting with blast bones... Or a sorc that streaks once or twice and then cloak.... Not to mention the ganking potential magsorcs have if they had cloak..... Too many broken stuff will happen so no

Well, they almost did that with vampire passives... sprint invisibility + sneak / invisibility / mist form weapon / spell damage buff... Almost, as it takes 3 seconds of sprint to trigger the passive.... If that was for example 1 second, then... well... yeah...

Wandering_Immigrant

I like the idea of sub-classes, not the way you describe though.

I think being able to take an entire skill-line from a class would be too identity stealing. Where would sorcerer be if any class had access to the summoning line? Same with Nightblade and the shadow skill-line.

What I would like to see is, whatever class you pick as your subclass, you would get the first ability from all three skill-lines. No ultimates, no passives, just a small-taste mashup from a secondary class.

This would be easier to balance as they could easily re-arange skill-lines to prevent abilities that are too unique or too powerful to be included, essentially tailoring it to how they want it to playout.

Using necro as an example, because I happen to be logged into one atm, you'd get a basic projectile attack that has both a Stam and mag morph, useful to a lot of builds but not game breaking. You'd get an aoe melee attack with a heal, basically on par with brawler so not gamebreaking and I wouldn't call the scythe 'class defining', so no problems so far.

The third and final ability would be the basic class self heal, this one causes some issue because one of the morphs on this heal will consume a corpse to heal a second player. There's two ways they could go about solving that. They could switch the scythe with the second ability in the bone tyrant skill line, bone armor, your basic major resolve ability, which leaves a corpse upon de-activation. This would give the player a corpse for their heal, but could border on identity stealing to some people. I don't think this single corpse combo heal would be too major of an infraction, and you want this system to offer some flavor from the chosen sub-class, so all in all not a bad option. The other option would be to simply swap the heal with the second ability in the living death line, which would be expunge, a health costing purge. I personally think the game could use more ways to purge so I would prefer this second option, but I would accept either way they decided to go with it.

You could do the same type of audit with every class and have a system that adds a little flavor and fills in some holes in you build without being over the top.