Suggestion: allow to spend skill points on both morphs and add ability to swap morphs between combat

vingarmo

With growing number of skill points added in each update there is less and less options where to spend them. Without new skill trees in upcoming year there is little sense of progression in completing new dungeons and questlines.
The latest cp, racials and weapon skills changes open even more freedom to switch between magicka/stamina/hybrid builds. Yet the major reason of why it’s still a pain is because you have to remorph and/or relevel significant number of skills and then constantly pay gold for respecs every time you want to change a build for different situations.
While this change won’t completely eliminate the inconvenience of swapping mag/stamina, it certainly make it easier. However, more importantly it would make it less punishing to swap different morphs for different content (pve and pvp) and different roles (dd, healer, tank) for those players who invest time in their characters. And as a side bonus, it would be a great motivation to complete DLC content more than once on main character.

fred4

My stamblade would like to run Concealed Weapon on the back bar (for the speed boost) and Surprise Attack on the front bar. Hurray! You will make that happen, won't you? Won't you?

relentless_turnip

Way too broken in PvP.

Vevvev

So.... Nightblades now get a health scaling heal and can turn invisible, Wardens can regenerate stamina or magicka whenever they want, and Vampires can snap change from Elusive Mist to Blood Mist as examples.

Even if this becomes an out of combat only thing in PVP what's stopping a dead person from swapping things out, getting resurrected, and now countering you with different morphs? We already have that happening but it'll get even worse.

vingarmo

Vevvev wrote: »

So.... Nightblades now get a health scaling heal and can turn invisible, Wardens can regenerate stamina or magicka whenever they want, and Vampires can snap change from Elusive Mist to Blood Mist as examples.

Even if this becomes an out of combat only thing in PVP what's stopping a dead person from swapping things out, getting resurrected, and now countering you with different morphs? We already have that happening but it'll get even worse.

relentless_turnip wrote: »

Way too broken in PvP.

Broken how?
In a way the ability to respect in similar fashion already, exist in the game, but it’s crown store exclusive one time only scroll.
My suggestion implied that you could keep only one morph at a time, somewhat similar as using crown scroll. For example if you use Ritual of Retribution, which last 20 second and then decide to swap to Extended Ritual which again last 20 second you cancel the effect of previous morph if you casted it and lose all its effects (in that case damage changed to healing).
Swapping morphs may provide small advantage in dueling, but I really can’t think of any ability that would provide you opponent with significant edge, that couldn’t be obtained before by other means.

Krayl

you can go change morphs any time you want for an insignificant amount of gold in several major cities. While i agree some convenience would be nice, it's already in the game.

erio

Nty

vingarmo

Krayl wrote: »

you can go change morphs any time you want for an insignificant amount of gold in several major cities. While i agree some convenience would be nice, it's already in the game.

You kind of missed the point. Yes, I can constantly endure extra loading screens and pay anywhere 1500-3500 gold (more skill points = more gold which is stupid), but it feels more like a punishment for trying to play something different rather than sticking to same role and content. And more importantly there is rather limited character progression in this game already.
Personally, I level my characters skill lines, do all public and group dungeons, a few hours in cyrodill or battlegrounds to get basic rank, which all take me about a week or less and that’s it, I have more than enough skill points to spend on all relevant skills and passives. Why bother completing base game or DLC quests after that? Why bother leveling pvp ranks on my alts? Why doing delves? There is barely any sense of accomplishment for me personally. The ability to spend skill points on meaningful things would certainly motivate me to try different content/roles.

Zodiarkslayer

vingarmo wrote: »

With growing number of skill points added in each update there is less and less options where to spend them. Without new skill trees in upcoming year there is little sense of progression in completing new dungeons and questlines.
The latest cp, racials and weapon skills changes open even more freedom to switch between magicka/stamina/hybrid builds. Yet the major reason of why it’s still a pain is because you have to remorph and/or relevel significant number of skills and then constantly pay gold for respecs every time you want to change a build for different situations.
While this change won’t completely eliminate the inconvenience of swapping mag/stamina, it certainly make it easier. However, more importantly it would make it less punishing to swap different morphs for different content (pve and pvp) and different roles (dd, healer, tank) for those players who invest time in their characters. And as a side bonus, it would be a great motivation to complete DLC content more than once on main character.

Worst suggestion I heard in a long time. It would break character system entirely by removing the need to decide.

Jayserix

vingarmo wrote: »

Krayl wrote: »

[...]more skill points = more gold which is stupid[...].

I'd love to see the reasoning behind such a statement

vingarmo

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

vingarmo wrote: »

With growing number of skill points added in each update there is less and less options where to spend them. Without new skill trees in upcoming year there is little sense of progression in completing new dungeons and questlines.
The latest cp, racials and weapon skills changes open even more freedom to switch between magicka/stamina/hybrid builds. Yet the major reason of why it’s still a pain is because you have to remorph and/or relevel significant number of skills and then constantly pay gold for respecs every time you want to change a build for different situations.
While this change won’t completely eliminate the inconvenience of swapping mag/stamina, it certainly make it easier. However, more importantly it would make it less punishing to swap different morphs for different content (pve and pvp) and different roles (dd, healer, tank) for those players who invest time in their characters. And as a side bonus, it would be a great motivation to complete DLC content more than once on main character.

Worst suggestion I heard in a long time. It would break character system entirely by removing the need to decide.

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

vingarmo wrote: »

With growing number of skill points added in each update there is less and less options where to spend them. Without new skill trees in upcoming year there is little sense of progression in completing new dungeons and questlines.
The latest cp, racials and weapon skills changes open even more freedom to switch between magicka/stamina/hybrid builds. Yet the major reason of why it’s still a pain is because you have to remorph and/or relevel significant number of skills and then constantly pay gold for respecs every time you want to change a build for different situations.
While this change won’t completely eliminate the inconvenience of swapping mag/stamina, it certainly make it easier. However, more importantly it would make it less punishing to swap different morphs for different content (pve and pvp) and different roles (dd, healer, tank) for those players who invest time in their characters. And as a side bonus, it would be a great motivation to complete DLC content more than once on main character.

Worst suggestion I heard in a long time. It would break character system entirely by removing the need to decide.

How would it break it though? You still need to decide which morph you need and which is useless, but you can invest additional skill point if both options appealing and compliment you playstyle in other content/role. I don’t see how more options or additional way of character progression could be harmful for the game.

vingarmo

Jayserix wrote: »

vingarmo wrote: »

Krayl wrote: »

[...]more skill points = more gold which is stupid[...].

I'd love to see the reasoning behind such a statement

It means the more time you invest in you character the more you have to pay to switch one morph. Vice versa would be more logical.

Brrrofski

Nah, you should have to make choices for your character based on what you want to achieve and not just have everything that easy.

the1andonlyskwex

If people can easily change morphs between fights, they will exploit it to clear content more quickly/easily. It's pure power creep, and it's not desirable. It also hurts the whole idea of character building, which requires the choices you make to actually matter.

Maggusemm

Good idea. Also for pvp. Because you need to go out of combat for it.

Merllow

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

vingarmo wrote: »

With growing number of skill points added in each update there is less and less options where to spend them. Without new skill trees in upcoming year there is little sense of progression in completing new dungeons and questlines.
The latest cp, racials and weapon skills changes open even more freedom to switch between magicka/stamina/hybrid builds. Yet the major reason of why it’s still a pain is because you have to remorph and/or relevel significant number of skills and then constantly pay gold for respecs every time you want to change a build for different situations.
While this change won’t completely eliminate the inconvenience of swapping mag/stamina, it certainly make it easier. However, more importantly it would make it less punishing to swap different morphs for different content (pve and pvp) and different roles (dd, healer, tank) for those players who invest time in their characters. And as a side bonus, it would be a great motivation to complete DLC content more than once on main character.

Worst suggestion I heard in a long time. It would break character system entirely by removing the need to decide.

I play as a healer and in order to take Rapid Regen in pvp I have to spend gold every time and this is not because I cannot make a decision. And I have extra skill points on my character, who is also a crafter

Merllow

You can also make a cooldown for the shift specifically for baguezers. For example, more than 3 times of changing the trait, the time penalty is 30 minutes.

vingarmo

Brrrofski wrote: »

Nah, you should have to make choices for your character based on what you want to achieve and not just have everything that easy.

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

If people can easily change morphs between fights, they will exploit it to clear content more quickly/easily. It's pure power creep, and it's not desirable. It also hurts the whole idea of character building, which requires the choices you make to actually matter.

What ability could possibly offer you a significant combat advantage and will result in power creep if you change its morph? Moreover, how would it be different from currently on life?
For example, if I’m planning to go to do vma I would already have the correct morphs for that arena, I won’t even need to switch anything in the middle, because here you mostly need pve morphs of damage skills, sure I will swap some abilities/gear in dressing room, but not morphs. So the score runs will be unaffected or at least I don’t see what abilities can affect it more than use of dressing room/cp swap addons.
I can see the point easier, because if I would struggle on some boss I could swap some damage morph for healing one. But considering the fact that most pve content already was nerfed over the years wouldn’t providing the means for newer players to survive be better than nerfing mobs/bosses/mechanics even more?
Ok, let’s imagine that I’ve done vma on let’s say magicka sorcerer and my friend called me to heal vbrp. Here I have to switch my tormentor morph for matriarch and mystic orb for energy orb, and probably tweak some other skill or 2.
So after 2 hours of pve I want to do some battlegrounds, but again here I have to switch daedric prey, I used in vma, for haunting curse and crushing shock, I used in vbrp, for force pulse, tweaks to regeneration and shield morphs could be nice as well.
So just for one session, I would need to endure a few extra loading screens and waste 7k gold just to switch 4 or 6 morphs. Unnecessary inconvenience, which ideally wouldn’t even exist. And choices I made didn’t even matter because I can and have to swap them back and forth.

Nairinhe

I would love to be able to swap between invis and heal without respec. On the other hand, I use invis only in PVP, and I rarely PVP, so when they reset skill points, I guess, I'm picking heal again

tonyblack

I would really love to play my main nightblade healer as damage dealer in overland and solo content, but sadly QoL changes like this usually take years to implement.

the1andonlyskwex

vingarmo wrote: »

Brrrofski wrote: »

Nah, you should have to make choices for your character based on what you want to achieve and not just have everything that easy.

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

If people can easily change morphs between fights, they will exploit it to clear content more quickly/easily. It's pure power creep, and it's not desirable. It also hurts the whole idea of character building, which requires the choices you make to actually matter.

What ability could possibly offer you a significant combat advantage and will result in power creep if you change its morph? Moreover, how would it be different from currently on life?

I can think of a lot of cases where healers would benefit from switching between healing and damage morphs depending on how heal-intensive a specific fight is (including bosses vs trash). While there are quite a few class abilities that would be affected, the best example is probably Mystic Orb vs Energy Orb, where healers could/would always slot an Orb, but would only use Energy Orb in fights that require the extra healing.

There are also some skills with choices between single target and AoE morphs, or where the morphs trade AoE size vs something else (e.g. duration), which could be optimized for each fight, instead of forcing people to make a compromise.

Zodiarkslayer

vingarmo wrote: »

Brrrofski wrote: »

Nah, you should have to make choices for your character based on what you want to achieve and not just have everything that easy.

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

If people can easily change morphs between fights, they will exploit it to clear content more quickly/easily. It's pure power creep, and it's not desirable. It also hurts the whole idea of character building, which requires the choices you make to actually matter.

What ability could possibly offer you a significant combat advantage and will result in power creep if you change its morph? Moreover, how would it be different from currently on life?
For example, if I’m planning to go to do vma I would already have the correct morphs for that arena, I won’t even need to switch anything in the middle, because here you mostly need pve morphs of damage skills, sure I will swap some abilities/gear in dressing room, but not morphs. So the score runs will be unaffected or at least I don’t see what abilities can affect it more than use of dressing room/cp swap addons.
I can see the point easier, because if I would struggle on some boss I could swap some damage morph for healing one. But considering the fact that most pve content already was nerfed over the years wouldn’t providing the means for newer players to survive be better than nerfing mobs/bosses/mechanics even more?
Ok, let’s imagine that I’ve done vma on let’s say magicka sorcerer and my friend called me to heal vbrp. Here I have to switch my tormentor morph for matriarch and mystic orb for energy orb, and probably tweak some other skill or 2.
So after 2 hours of pve I want to do some battlegrounds, but again here I have to switch daedric prey, I used in vma, for haunting curse and crushing shock, I used in vbrp, for force pulse, tweaks to regeneration and shield morphs could be nice as well.
So just for one session, I would need to endure a few extra loading screens and waste 7k gold just to switch 4 or 6 morphs. Unnecessary inconvenience, which ideally wouldn’t even exist. And choices I made didn’t even matter because I can and have to swap them back and forth.

[snip] there is a change morphs only option at rededication shrines.
Only my main character has a price of over 1k gold to use it. All other have less than that.

[snip]

[Edited to remove Baiting]

vingarmo

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

vingarmo wrote: »

Brrrofski wrote: »

Nah, you should have to make choices for your character based on what you want to achieve and not just have everything that easy.

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

If people can easily change morphs between fights, they will exploit it to clear content more quickly/easily. It's pure power creep, and it's not desirable. It also hurts the whole idea of character building, which requires the choices you make to actually matter.

What ability could possibly offer you a significant combat advantage and will result in power creep if you change its morph? Moreover, how would it be different from currently on life?

I can think of a lot of cases where healers would benefit from switching between healing and damage morphs depending on how heal-intensive a specific fight is (including bosses vs trash). While there are quite a few class abilities that would be affected, the best example is probably Mystic Orb vs Energy Orb, where healers could/would always slot an Orb, but would only use Energy Orb in fights that require the extra healing.

There are also some skills with choices between single target and AoE morphs, or where the morphs trade AoE size vs something else (e.g. duration), which could be optimized for each fight, instead of forcing people to make a compromise.

There is benefits of course, but they are not as big as full gear and skill swap. Same thing with new CP, there is already addon for swapping them for different situations, but it’s hardly affect gameplay of anyone but score pushing groups. Even without the ability to swap morphs, there is already plenty of options for most scenarios (trash, aoe, st, melee, range, etc) which these groups can utilize. Someone will always find a way to benefit from new systems more than the others, but it doesn’t mean adding new ones or updating existing ones not needed.

vingarmo

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

vingarmo wrote: »

Brrrofski wrote: »

Nah, you should have to make choices for your character based on what you want to achieve and not just have everything that easy.

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

If people can easily change morphs between fights, they will exploit it to clear content more quickly/easily. It's pure power creep, and it's not desirable. It also hurts the whole idea of character building, which requires the choices you make to actually matter.

What ability could possibly offer you a significant combat advantage and will result in power creep if you change its morph? Moreover, how would it be different from currently on life?
For example, if I’m planning to go to do vma I would already have the correct morphs for that arena, I won’t even need to switch anything in the middle, because here you mostly need pve morphs of damage skills, sure I will swap some abilities/gear in dressing room, but not morphs. So the score runs will be unaffected or at least I don’t see what abilities can affect it more than use of dressing room/cp swap addons.
I can see the point easier, because if I would struggle on some boss I could swap some damage morph for healing one. But considering the fact that most pve content already was nerfed over the years wouldn’t providing the means for newer players to survive be better than nerfing mobs/bosses/mechanics even more?
Ok, let’s imagine that I’ve done vma on let’s say magicka sorcerer and my friend called me to heal vbrp. Here I have to switch my tormentor morph for matriarch and mystic orb for energy orb, and probably tweak some other skill or 2.
So after 2 hours of pve I want to do some battlegrounds, but again here I have to switch daedric prey, I used in vma, for haunting curse and crushing shock, I used in vbrp, for force pulse, tweaks to regeneration and shield morphs could be nice as well.
So just for one session, I would need to endure a few extra loading screens and waste 7k gold just to switch 4 or 6 morphs. Unnecessary inconvenience, which ideally wouldn’t even exist. And choices I made didn’t even matter because I can and have to swap them back and forth.

[snip] there is a change morphs only option at rededication shrines.
Only my main character has a price of over 1k gold to use it. All other have less than that.

[snip]

[Edited to remove Baiting]

I don’t know exact formula, but from what I experienced every skill point increase amount of gold you need to pay for full respect or for just changing morphs. For my main it’s 3550 for morphs, 22300 for skills reset, a bit lower for my alts but it’s still around 2000 or something.
However, it’s not so much about costs or travel inconvenience, but the abundance of available skill points the number of which increased with every update and the lack of character progression it creates. Adding new ways to spend them on would add replayability to new and old content and increase the number of available playstyles, which can’t be a bad thing in my opinion.

Gilvoth

this a pretty cool idea.
i hope happens.

vingarmo

MaxWacksem wrote: »

So you want to do things you already can do, just easier and for free.

Yes, I would call it an improvement over old system, which is long overdue.

MaxWacksem wrote: »

[Quoted post was removed]

Tbh, I’m surprised so many people keep bringing argument, that switching morphs is too op and completely breaks game balance, while in reality doing so will provide marginal increase in dps or survivability at best. Be it pvp or pve, you would have much more edge by just switching builds in dressing room rather than morphs. I mean this was in game for years and I don’t see complains about it. For pvp specifically there is already quite a few busted class/sets/skills combinations, which provide close to no counterplay and you won’t get any advantage by changing variation of your skill for a rematch if you fail, unless you build is wrong from the beginning.

Gurthug

This is an amazing idea! I'm so sick of having to re-morph echoing vigor to resolving vigor to have a hope in PVP as a stamDK and back again to do the harder solo content.

I enjoy popping into BG for a daily game of PVP and then going adventuring in PVE and it's so annoying having the wrong morphs one way or the other.

Even if they're not changable in a PVP zone or dungeon it would still be huge!

El_Borracho

I don't understand the ire people have with this idea. Its not to have both morphs active at the same time, its to have the ability to switch from one to the other without having to go through the current process of visiting a shrine, manually respeccing, etc. With the way the game is set up when doing a skill loadout, I don't think if its even possible to run the same skill with 2 different morphs across two bars.

For instance, you could run Flawless Dawnbreaker when in PVE and switch to Smiting in PVP without going to the shrine, in addition to changing CP and armor. Or, with the constant changes in PVE and PVP combat, when a patch changes the skills needed, you can simply switch to that skill.

And, as a player who enjoys running PVE group content like trials and dungeons, I constantly see PVPers who need to farm DLC dungeons for monster helms. They could switch to useful PVE skills. Most players have already accepted its extraordinarily difficult to switch out PVP CP and armor sets before entering a place like vMOS (whereas its SUPER easy to do those things when going from PVE to PVP), but this would be nice. You know, to help the group. Or increase your burn. Or stop aggroing bosses. Or stop dropping useless snares and cc's on an immune boss. Or stop bow spamming. Or stop dying. Constantly. This would be great. At the very least, it might stop the group from kicking a player like this.

rbfrgsp

Morphs are there to be an either/or choice for a reason - they split up skills that would be game-breaking if they were able to overlap. Not always, but in enough cases that they would need to sit down and redesign virtually every skill in order to implement your idea.

Vermintide

Personally I really hate how there are sometimes the clear PVE and PVP morphs of a skill, or one which is damage and one which is utility; the way the game realistically functions is you're nearly always going to go with the damage morph so you don't handicap yourself.

I would love to be able to choose morphs at any time when you slot your abilities. Wouldn't cause any harm as long as it was restricted to outside of combat, exactly the same way we all use Dressing Room between different content already.

Starbridge84

I love the idea and thought about how nice that would be but it would completely defeat the purpose of making the choice as to which morph to take.

Like @Vermintide side, a lot of the morphs are a no-brainer.

Arrow Volley being a prime example.
Morph 1 - increased duration
Morph 2 - increased range AND damage

I know I've never used the first. I might consider if...

Morph 1 - increased duration and slows enemies x%
Morph 2 - increased range AND damage



The increase duration on it is weak anyway. Make it last for an extra 5-7 sec and it's at least closer to balanced with the other option.