Class change tokens?

dmnqwk

Class change tokens would reduce player input in the game.

There are many who will argue 'I will play less because I cannot change class' but, ultimately, the moment they allow you to transfer all the hard work of 1 character to multiple classes, is the moment you're not longer incentivized to play them.

In ESO, hitting level 50 isn't the end of the adventure. You have to farm skill points, unlock lines and level up the skills to be a complete character (not to mention horse riding). The minute that time sink is removed, you suddenly have players who run out of things to do with their character.

Not to mention the fact your character loses some identity if their class becomes whatever fotm you fancy being at the time. You'll also seem ZoS hit classes harder if they find people gravitate towards them - so if 5% of the population suddenly dropped sorc for warden, they would NOT buff sorc they would simply nerf warden.

I appreciate there are people on the opposite side of the fence going 'It would breathe new life into my char because I would want to play it again' but I don't think those people realise how quickly they would tire of the 'new' character. Outliers exist and on the forums you'll always see the people who go 'i'm an exception' but statistics do not lie in those scenarios.

Ultimately, I think it would cost ZoS more players than it would make money by allowing class change tokens. Getting to 50 is quick but getting a character complete takes a whole lot longer, and is a reason to play the game that if it vanished, would reduce too many players incentives to stick with it.

moleculardrugs

Dr_Con wrote: »

A class change shrine would be more appropriate, for gold.

A class change token would be scraping the bottom barrel for crowns.

An account-wide unlock for the ability to class change on any character at will would probably be a middle ground, but I would still prefer the gold option. Old SWG vibes.

I would take it a step further and make it so there is a class out there that can only be unlocked through a super rare occurrence. It created a lot of buzz for SWG when they did this, but then they screwed the whole system up in favor of a more simple one, like the one we currently have.

I really like the shrine idea a lot! I feel like I’m being scraped for gold whenever I think about changing my alliance on my old characters to the one I predominately PvP in now

Rageypoo

I agree, a class change shrine, or something unlockable after level 50 makes sense.

Amottica wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

"Never got the mentality of "I don't like it so its 100% wrong."

However, there must be a compelling business reason for doing so

I don't understand the reasoning, This is some strange thinking that money is the main motivation for improving a game.

fizzylu

Rageypoo wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

However, there must be a compelling business reason for doing so

I don't understand the reasoning, This is some strange thinking that money is the main motivation for improving a game.

Another thing that's standing out to me a lot about the arguments people are making against class change tokens; it sounds a lot like "people won't make characters, do the quests, progress, and experience the game unless they have to" and that's such a weird stance to me.... MMOs are supposed to have replayability in the sense of it being fun and people WANTING to go through the content again, not because they have no other choice. And most people who do level multiple characters don't even play through the actual content; they instead just mindlessly farm dolmens in Alik'r, go on skyshard treks, and buy the additional skill lines off the crown store. There already isn't an incentive to do the actual content and "complete a character" after you've done it once unless you actually WANT to and don't mind (maybe even enjoy) the process of doing so.

LatentBuzzard

Shadesofkin wrote: »

You can literally just roll up a new class, and within a few hours be at lvl 50 with access to all of your cp160 gear from another toon.

It's an extremely unnecessary option that I think would impact the game in toxic ways .

So you can max out riding speed, capacity and stamina on a new character in a few hours ? You can re-collect all your skill points on a new character in a few hours ? You can re-level all your skills on a new character in a few hours ? You can re-learn legerdemain, undaunted, mages guild, fighters guild, psijic, assault, support, dark brotherhood, thieves guild and class skill lines on a new character in a few hours ? You can re-level all your crafting levels on a new character in a few hours ? You can research all your previously known crafting traits on a new character in a few hours ? You can re-learn all your previously known motifs, recipes and blueprints on a new character in few hours ?

tonyblack

LatentBuzzard wrote: »

Shadesofkin wrote: »

You can literally just roll up a new class, and within a few hours be at lvl 50 with access to all of your cp160 gear from another toon.

It's an extremely unnecessary option that I think would impact the game in toxic ways .

So you can max out riding speed, capacity and stamina on a new character in a few hours ? You can re-collect all your skill points on a new character in a few hours ? You can re-level all your skills on a new character in a few hours ? You can re-learn legerdemain, undaunted, mages guild, fighters guild, psijic, assault, support, dark brotherhood, thieves guild and class skill lines on a new character in a few hours ? You can re-level all your crafting levels on a new character in a few hours ? You can research all your previously known crafting traits on a new character in a few hours ? You can re-learn all your previously known motifs, recipes and blueprints on a new character in few hours ?

Funnily, to all that you mentioned crown store already offer the solutions in form of: riding lessons, autocomplete of skyshards, max level for guilds, pvp and world skill lines, research scrolls with no cooldown (unlike their in game variations) and even a lot of full books of in-game motifs. So yes, most of all you mentioned can be done in under the hour for new characters as long as you have it unlocked on original one and willing to spend that much money on something so optional. The only thing that can’t be done yet is recipes and blueprints, but there are no logical reasons to relearn them on additional characters.

Rageypoo

So i went ahead and calculated how much it would cost in crowns if I did all the lessons, found all the skyshards on another character and wanted to use them on a new character.

Change token cost = between 1000-3000 crowns (some tokens seem to vary in cost)
Riding lessons and all skyshards from the crown store cost = 43,650 crowns.

Current crown costs (not on sale) to fund this:

Change token = $10.99 to $24.99
Riding lessons + Skyshards = over $300


So for anyone saying that the crown store currently has a solution, yea sure it does, just fork over $300 which is insane. Hope this gives some perspective.

That premium DOES NOT include: wayshrines, skill line (core, vampire, werewolf, legerdemain, dark brotherhood, thieves guild, scrying, psijic order, fighters guild, mages guild, undaunted, soul magic, excavation, assault, support, weapons, armors) and all crafting. Oh yea lets not forget having to unlock the companions too.

They're already making you pay for extra slots (assuming you want 18) and if there are 10 races with 6 classes and 2 genders, you're gonna need to delete something to experience everything and do it all over again.

Are we having fun yet?

Amottica

Dr_Con wrote: »

A class change shrine would be more appropriate, for gold.

A class change token would be scraping the bottom barrel for crowns..

I see no reason to think this would happen. If Zenimax did offer a class change token it would clearly be sold in the crown store just like alliance and race change is handled. It is a matter of opinion if that is scraping the bottom of the barrel since it is rather expected.

TaSheen

Rageypoo wrote: »

So i went ahead and calculated how much it would cost in crowns if I did all the lessons, found all the skyshards on another character and wanted to use them on a new character.

Change token cost = between 1000-3000 crowns (some tokens seem to vary in cost)
Riding lessons and all skyshards from the crown store cost = 43,650 crowns.

Current crown costs (not on sale) to fund this:

Change token = $10.99 to $24.99
Riding lessons + Skyshards = over $300


So for anyone saying that the crown store currently has a solution, yea sure it does, just fork over $300 which is insane. Hope this gives some perspective.

That premium DOES NOT include: wayshrines, skill line (core, vampire, werewolf, legerdemain, dark brotherhood, thieves guild, scrying, psijic order, fighters guild, mages guild, undaunted, soul magic, excavation, assault, support, weapons, armors) and all crafting.

They're already making you pay for extra slots (assuming you want 18) and if there are 10 races with 6 classes and 2 genders, you're gonna need to delete something to experience everything and do it all over again.

Are we having fun yet?

Well then - most likely, if ZOS decides to come up with a class change option, it's going to be priced at least at $350 or more in crowns.

Six of one, half dozen of the other. They're no doubt not giving it away, as the options are available already - and they're highly unlikely to make it cheaper than those options already available.

Rampeal

Only if it cost like 14,000 Crowns and you can't change it for a year.

FelisCatus

The demand is ever increasing, eventually ZOS will have to add them. Not everyone likes alts. Not everyone wants to re-grind. AWA didn't solve everything it sure helped but I see of no reason as to why class change shouldn't be an option. Only thing I do see is alt-aholics try and force everyone to make alts instead of providing an alternative.

Amottica

FelisCatus wrote: »

The demand is ever increasing, eventually ZOS will have to add them. Not everyone likes alts. Not everyone wants to re-grind. AWA didn't solve everything it sure helped but I see of no reason as to why class change shouldn't be an option. Only thing I do see is alt-aholics try and force everyone to make alts instead of providing an alternative.

In my years of playing MMORPGs I have only known two players who played the same game for a while and never created an alt. It seems to be a large majority of long-term players do roll alts, and many of them.

Noting that Zenimax has added the ability to purchase many character slots and has only ceased due to server performance but has yet to offer a means to change one's class, it seems that what I have observed is very much the case here in ESO and that the demand for a class change token is not all that high.

Yniro

I'm waiting for when they add to make my main DD frgonian to a Healer.

I think it would be possible to add a cooldown for 7 days to the token, so that people would not abuse this function.

moleculardrugs

Yniro wrote: »

I'm waiting for when they add to make my main DD frgonian to a Healer.

I think it would be possible to add a cooldown for 7 days to the token, so that people would not abuse this function.

That’s a good idea! I didn’t think about a cool down to the token. Would that be per character or per account? I am trying to see the drawbacks if it were per character instead of per account, granted that’s more class changes but still.

Maybe the class change would also limit alliance changes as well? To slow things down a bit

moleculardrugs

Rageypoo wrote: »

So i went ahead and calculated how much it would cost in crowns if I did all the lessons, found all the skyshards on another character and wanted to use them on a new character.

Change token cost = between 1000-3000 crowns (some tokens seem to vary in cost)
Riding lessons and all skyshards from the crown store cost = 43,650 crowns.

Current crown costs (not on sale) to fund this:

Change token = $10.99 to $24.99
Riding lessons + Skyshards = over $300


So for anyone saying that the crown store currently has a solution, yea sure it does, just fork over $300 which is insane. Hope this gives some perspective.

That premium DOES NOT include: wayshrines, skill line (core, vampire, werewolf, legerdemain, dark brotherhood, thieves guild, scrying, psijic order, fighters guild, mages guild, undaunted, soul magic, excavation, assault, support, weapons, armors) and all crafting. Oh yea lets not forget having to unlock the companions too.

They're already making you pay for extra slots (assuming you want 18) and if there are 10 races with 6 classes and 2 genders, you're gonna need to delete something to experience everything and do it all over again.

Are we having fun yet?

All that just to relive an almost the same nightmare over and over again 😅 sounds like a place I’ve read about when I was younger

moleculardrugs

tonyblack wrote: »

LatentBuzzard wrote: »

Shadesofkin wrote: »

You can literally just roll up a new class, and within a few hours be at lvl 50 with access to all of your cp160 gear from another toon.

It's an extremely unnecessary option that I think would impact the game in toxic ways .

So you can max out riding speed, capacity and stamina on a new character in a few hours ? You can re-collect all your skill points on a new character in a few hours ? You can re-level all your skills on a new character in a few hours ? You can re-learn legerdemain, undaunted, mages guild, fighters guild, psijic, assault, support, dark brotherhood, thieves guild and class skill lines on a new character in a few hours ? You can re-level all your crafting levels on a new character in a few hours ? You can research all your previously known crafting traits on a new character in a few hours ? You can re-learn all your previously known motifs, recipes and blueprints on a new character in few hours ?

Funnily, to all that you mentioned crown store already offer the solutions in form of: riding lessons, autocomplete of skyshards, max level for guilds, pvp and world skill lines, research scrolls with no cooldown (unlike their in game variations) and even a lot of full books of in-game motifs. So yes, most of all you mentioned can be done in under the hour for new characters as long as you have it unlocked on original one and willing to spend that much money on something so optional. The only thing that can’t be done yet is recipes and blueprints, but there are no logical reasons to relearn them on additional characters.

The only thing it doesn’t offer from what I’ve seen is the antiquities skill-line. I don’t know why that’s not offered, unless it’ll somehow create further gold inflation

Nic727

RedBranch wrote: »

We’ve needed class change tokens for a long long time now. I’m a one character kind of player because that’s the time I have. I’ve played all classes but my main will never change. Even with account wide achievements there are many who will stay with their main for many reasons. I’m certain ESO would make A LOT of money from class change tokens.

Exactly.

I've been asking for a class change token for years.

I'm also someone who don't have much time to play and I only focus on one character. With all the changes made to ESO, I hate my character, but I'm so far in the story that I don't want to restart all again. Also, I had some exclusive stuffs to my character I don't want to lose. Or one solution could be that all quests are completed account wide, so you don't have to re-do them again, again and again.

TaSheen

Nic727 wrote: »

RedBranch wrote: »

We’ve needed class change tokens for a long long time now. I’m a one character kind of player because that’s the time I have. I’ve played all classes but my main will never change. Even with account wide achievements there are many who will stay with their main for many reasons. I’m certain ESO would make A LOT of money from class change tokens.

Exactly.

I've been asking for a class change token for years.

I'm also someone who don't have much time to play and I only focus on one character. With all the changes made to ESO, I hate my character, but I'm so far in the story that I don't want to restart all again. Also, I had some exclusive stuffs to my character I don't want to lose. Or one solution could be that all quests are completed account wide, so you don't have to re-do them again, again and again.

I don't want all quests completed account wide - I like redoing quests on all my characters; I have lots of alts for a reason.

Treeshka

I know many people would be opposing to this thing but here is my idea and thoughts on alts in this game. I will try to first comment about why one would be oppose to creating alts and then the things that are on our hands to make alt progression easy and one another example.

First of all creating alts in this game is like starting from zero, you have to train your mount, do all the quests if you really want all that skill points, and collect shards. You also do not have access to your learned housing recipes, provisioning recipes and motif pages for crafting. For a person that has habit of completionism, or someone who does not have much time on their hand this can turn into a nightmare.

One other thing is that some people play this game for long, and shape their main character as their life continues. Personally my only character has almost two years of play time recorded, and for some people it is really hard to create another character and play with it because of this reason.

On the other hand Crown Store offers skips for Skill Lines and Skyshards but even if you buy all these skips, one still need to do relearn all that motif pages, housing furnishing recipes and provisioning recipes. One still need to do all that quests and grind all those combat skills. These reasons are enough for many people not want to roll an alt.

Some people in the forum have said that allowing players to change class through a token might cut Crown Store revenue and we might not get this token because of this reason. We have Alliance Change Tokens now. In the past Alliance was stuck with the character and if you wanted to join a new guild that is running in another Alliance in Cyrodiil, you needed to roll an alt in another Alliance to be able to play them. Now if this same thing happens one can just change their Alliance and continue from where they left.

Because of this reasons we should have Class Change Tokens, and surely many people will just buy these to swap to meta classes in their fight in Cyrodiil or in their raid group or people will just try new class without leaving their main character.

Maybe in the future they add this to Armory System even. If they do surely i will buy five of these and save each class to one slot.

rootkitronin

My own take is that while making an alt was fun in the past - it's just not fun anymore, and it's a huge waste of my time.

I have a couple characters I really love to play with, these toons drive most of my play time and spending on the game, easily.

The majority of my characters, I don't really touch all that much for a number of reasons, but essentially a lot of them feel stuck. A class change token would absolutely change that - this in turn would lead to more time playing, and most likely more money spent on the game.

Touching on Update 35 - prior to it, I had just reached CP with a templar (this was my first time trying the class, and the only class I had yet to try). I put a lot into this character - time, gold, crowns for a second outfit, roleplay and personal lore, furnishings, etc., and was loving it.

Then U35 hits, and I honestly just don't like playing the class anymore, it's just not fun for me (yeah, I can still hit decent numbers, but I no longer enjoy it - and yes, I'm tried many different builds and loadouts trying to make it work). I would love to change them to another class and take them in a new direction, continue the adventure, but I can't, so they're just going to sit there doing nothing until things change.

In reality though, each day that passes, I'm moving on, either by pooling more time or resources into other characters, or getting bored with the game and frustrated with feeling stuck that I'm stepping away from ESO more and more.

I doubt I'm alone in this regard. Seems like a pretty obtuse way to run a game/product, but definitely what I've come to expect from ZOS/ESO.

Tandor

Rageypoo wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

Class tokens takes away some player incentive for two of those three things. Quite a bit of the incentive to repeat content has been taken away why take even more?

I don't agree with this, if I was able to change my class on 2 characters I would have plenty of incentive to continue playing the game. Being forced into a new grind and abandoning characters isn't fun.

Who says you have to abandon characters?

DMuehlhausen

No.

You can make a new character and get them to max level and enough Skill Points in under 10 hours played tops.

Tandor

FelisCatus wrote: »

The demand is ever increasing, eventually ZOS will have to add them. Not everyone likes alts. Not everyone wants to re-grind. AWA didn't solve everything it sure helped but I see of no reason as to why class change shouldn't be an option. Only thing I do see is alt-aholics try and force everyone to make alts instead of providing an alternative.

Yet we were told it would solve everything, that AwA would enable some players to keep playing. Clearly in your view it didn't solve everything, and some players left precisely because of AwA and the effect on their alts. In my case, it meant dropping from 2 accounts to 1 account, from 2 chapters purchased to 1 chapter purchased. Trying to solve everything cost ZOS money and it failed - at least to the extent that players are still arguing for further changes that will solve everything. They won't.

Moreover, one of the most common responses to ZOS meeting the requests for account-wide skyshards (basically a euphemism for skill points) was criticism of the monetised way in which it was introduced. Does anyone seriously doubt that it would be any different with class change tokens? If people do end up getting their class change tokens I can pretty much guarantee that a good many of them won't like the way those tokens are introduced. They'll still come here and bemoan the fact that it is monetised in ESO while it is free in FFX14, the key difference of course being that it was designed that way from the start in FFX14 but not in ESO.

Dr_Con

Dr_Con wrote: »

A class change shrine would be more appropriate, for gold.

A class change token would be scraping the bottom barrel for crowns.

An account-wide unlock for the ability to class change on any character at will would probably be a middle ground, but I would still prefer the gold option. Old SWG vibes.

I would take it a step further and make it so there is a class out there that can only be unlocked through a super rare occurrence. It created a lot of buzz for SWG when they did this, but then they screwed the whole system up in favor of a more simple one, like the one we currently have.

I wanted to add-on to this some examples even though it's a couple weeks since the post.

An example of adding on a class would be like making Druid playable after getting all achievements, you wouldn't need a class token but you would need the DLC and for your character to achieve certain milestones before you can class swap to it. You would start out as a level 1 Druid but can still swap back to your level 50, through a shrine or the armory.

You can, in a similar manner, class swap from sorc to templar to dragon knight and have different levels and skills for each of the characters. Class abilities would of course have to be leveled, though guild/world/weapon abilities might need some more discussion as pre-leveled weapon abilities might give an unfair advantage to some in PVP for a number of levels (it would result in a meta shift for sub 50 cp gameplay, so class changers might also be part of the exclusion list unless they have to re-level all weapon/guild/world abilities from scratch).

They can bypass all that rebalancing headache by having class swap to whatever level they had already. You would still have to level class skills and there wouldn't be as much of a "grind."

Really the only confounding element here is skyshards and skill points, but there are players who do only do everything on 1 character already. This would open up the game for them, and for those players out there with 3k+ cp and 18 master crafters with all skyshards and achievements, they could work on leveling up all the different classes on each character. I disagree with the notion that another poster said that this would decrease player input into the game- I am certain that the opposite is true.

Nic727

Or (just something I thought randomly) instead of a class change token, why not a 10$ purchase to have the possibility to link multiple characters together (in the same faction).

What I mean is that you want to play tank for a moment, you play your tank character. Want to switch for something more stealthy, get your bosmer character and start where you left in your previous session.

I think;

1. Each characters will have their own stats,
2. But for people who don’t have much time to play, they will be able to keep all achievements, motifs, research, etc.
3. So you don’t need to redo all quests and most of the grinding again.

The only thing that will be different is the inventory and lvl/stats.

The more I think about that, the more I think it could be the solution to this debate. Like people would be able to choose between having an alt character starting from scratch or having an alt who just continue your overall save.

My main problem is that I only play one character because I don’t have much time to play. However, now I wanted to try a different playstyle so I needed to choose a new character for a new class. However, doing all the quests and having to do everything again IS BORING AND ANNOYING. So if you can cut this boring part, that would be much better.

rootkitronin

DMuehlhausen wrote: »

No.

You can make a new character and get them to max level and enough Skill Points in under 10 hours played tops.

If you want to spend 10 hours grinding through the same content over and over, go wild. I don't, and neither do a lot of other people.

Regardless, the inclusion of a class change token wouldn't stop you from doing that if that's really what you wanted to do. It would however, give those who are sick of doing that, don't have the time, or what to preserve their current character and progress, an alternative option.

The only logical reason not to is so that each individual part of leveling a new character can be sold back to customer - from skill lines to skyshards, extra character slots, and more. While I think there may have been a logic to this at one point, I'd be willing to bet that at this stage of the game it's doing more harm than good.

AcadianPaladin

I have fully leveled 9 characters and that is enough. I'm not going to start any more. So the only options I will consider are to never start another character or to take one of my fully leveled retired experiments that didn't pan out after a full and fair trial and change them to another class.

I understand that some would choose to not avail themselves of the ability to class change and having class change tokens would certainly force no one to use them. Those of us who would like the ability to change class though should have it. Your characters, your choice. My characters, my choice. Is play how you want just a meaningless slogan? Why do some folks want to restrict the freedom and choice of others about how they might like to play their game?

BloodyStigmata

I think they should make it like FF14 and just let you open up your skill menu or something and switch your class on the fly. Just, you know, make your character have to level up the other class skills separately or something. Then we'd REALLY be playing any way we want.

Of course, if they did that, they'd have to find a new way to incentive having other characters outside of just crafting writs so they can sell us character slots and all that.

M0ntie

Getting one character to level 50 or 160 is hardly even scratching the surface of the game content. It really isn’t much work to level a new character, and if u look at the time scale of the game, even levelling their mount speed isn’t very long.
ZoS are always changing which class is best so I make (at least) one of each.
With a class change token you’d still have to level the new class skill lines.
With a new character you are redoing the easier content (eg low level dungeons in dungeon group finder), which is good to do with a class you aren’t familiar with. Before the Armourer I changed a warden from stam to mag and it sucked getting DLC dungeons on a random with unlevelled skills. It would have been better to start a new character and I think class change would be similar.
So this is a big NO from me for class change tokens.

SammyKhajit

Sammy wishes he can turn back the time and make his first alt, a Breton, into a magicka Templar or Dragonknight. A class change shrine would be just the ticket.