The shift towards generalization (armor changes)

Saenic

1. the first step was the change of the racial passives. High Elves got weapon damage, Orcs got spell damage, etc...
2. the second step now will be the armor changes... Magickas wearing medium armor, Staminas wearing light armor.

These armor changes are not allowing Staminas to "wear what they want" but they are forced to wear certain pieces of light armor. But the sets do drop in medium. This is kinda stupid. I mean I do like the classic leather/cloth armor philosophy of RPGs... if it is different here it should have been in the game from the beginning and everything should be designed around it. Now this change just makes everything weird.

What will be next? I imagine something like:

3. "Hey I play Magicka Templar with Two handed. Why not change Momentum to also give Major Sorcery (20% more spell power)?"
4. "On my Stamplar my class passive buff is Minor Sorcery but I'd like some ego support, why not change it to also give Minor Brutality?"

You see where this is going? In the end all races, classes and specs will be very similar. I mean the general idea of the developers is "play what you want" but I think this goes too far. There will always be a meta. Instead of making all specs similar the devs should focus on the differences of each spec and improving on them.

DrSlaughtr

Imo the more stuff they do like this the more it becomes easier to cheese.

ealdwin

To be frank, I think you are being a tad bit alarmist with nothing really to be alarmed about. A few patches ago they added penalties and benefits to the armor weight in order to make the choice between them more impactful. But, with the way passives worked out, there was never really a choice of all the weights for different specs. Magicka's choice was only really between Light and Heavy and Stamina's choice was only really between Medium and Heavy. With Medium being set up as a "middle ground" between Light and Heavy, this meant that Magicka was always forced to choose one of two extremes, where Stamina did not have to make that choice. There really should be no reason that attribute allocation effectively locks a player from choice of armor weight, especially in an mmorpg which advertises itself with the phrase "play the way you want".

I do agree that there should be differences between the specs. But the problem is even without the hybrid passives, there really isn't. The differences are basically choices that are made for the player and come down to the most basic elements of a build: armor weight, weapon type, etc. Those choices should be the specific choices each player makes when determining how they want to play a spec, not the defining features of a spec. The differences between specs should come down to the combat level and how they alter in play-style. A Templar Mage should feel different to a Templar Warrior, but still play like a Templar. Just as a Templar Mage should feel different to a Sorcerer Mage, but still play like a Mage. That's my two cents at least.

DrSlaughtr

If they really want to do that this is what they should do.

Light armor passives provide the biggest boost to all damage and healing with no added survivability.

Heavy passives provides the biggest boost to armor and health but no damage.

Medium is middle of the road.

Stx

I agree.

Where do we draw the line with homogenization of skills, passives, gear stats?

Why even have stamina and magicka builds if all gear gives weapon AND spell damage. If warriors want light armor for the bonuses. If casters want greatswords for the spell damage.

I think at the end of the day, the goal is to increase build variety and support the "play how you want and be what you want" ESO philosophy. But in reality, the more you homogenize stats, skills, gear, etc, the less your choices matter, and the less build variety there will be for min/maxers.