How would you prioritize which skills are given Skill Styles?

Erickson9610

Skill Styling allows players to customize the appearance of their active abilities, and at first glance, it seems like there may be new Skill Styles introduced frequently, if not every update. Update 42 introduced Skill Styles for the Support, Restoration Staff, Two Handed, Fighters Guild, Mages Guild, Destruction Staff, One Hand and Shield, Bow, Soul Magic, Assault, and Dual Wield skill lines. Update 43 is introducing Skill Styles for four of those above skill lines, as well as two for skill lines which haven't received Skill Styles yet — Light Armor and Werewolf. Here are the skills which have Skill Styles:

Skill Styles from Update 42:

Barrier, Blessing of Protection, Cleave, Dawnbreaker, Entropy, Expert Hunter, Force Shock, Grand Healing, Low Slash, Magelight, Meteor, Poison Arrow, Regeneration, Reverse Slash, Snipe, Soul Trap, Trap Beast, Vigor, Wall of Elements, Warhorn, Weakness to Elements, Whirlwind

Skill Styles from Update 43:

Annulment, Elemental Storm, Momentum, Roar, Silver Bolts, Twin Slashes

As we can see, Update 43 not only adds new Skill Styles to skill lines which already had Skill Styles, but also adds Skill Styles to some skill lines which didn't yet have any Skill Styles. However, no ability has multiple Skill Styles yet.

What do you all think of this precedent? How would you prioritize the introduction of new Skill Styles moving forward? Additionally, which abilities would you like Skill Styles for, and what would you like those Skill Styles to look like?

Bradyfjord

Other (please describe your thoughts)

I am expecting that there is a vision of what Scribing should be. That said, I want every active ability to get some attention eventually.

LunaFlora

Prioritize the Remaining Skill Lines (every skill line should have at least one Skill Style somewhere in them)

i would like to first get 1 skill style for each remaining skill line and then more for all of them.

but multiple styles for skills that already have styles would be good too.
Like green for each restoration staff skill

Estin

Other (please describe your thoughts)

I'm interested in what skill styling can become, even if it will be heavily monetized in the future with everything good locked behind the crown store. The current form of it just only being select recolors of skills is heavily underwhelming and part of the reason why I haven't gotten gold road. Some of the color choices are questionable, and there are no consistent theme between skills when there should be. Wall of Elements and Elemental Storm are purple, but force shock is black. Carve and Executioner are red, but momentum is yellow. Whirling blades is orange, but twin slashes is purple. It feels like the colors were chosen at random instead of having a thought of a consistent theme behind it.

Imho, skill styling in its current form should be a custom color picker to allow players to have a custom and consistent theme for their skills. If a color picker is not possible, then the current way needs to be redone. Instead of unlocking styling for a specific skill, it should instead unlock the color to be used for all current skills that be can stylized. What if I wanted black wall of elements, or purple whirling blades? Do I just have to wait 2 years from now until it's added for those skills? It will get even worse when class skills eventually get styling, such as DK. What if they make lava whip green and fiery breath blue? Sure, somebody is going to say it looks cool, but it's not going to look good at all with purple wall of elements, and that is the biggest problem I have with styling in its current form. I know (or rather hope) that when styling packs are introduced to the crown store, they will follow a theme and even change in animation, but the basic recolors should also be allowed to follow a consistent theme.

StihlReign

Make a skill style called toggle or clear. Let us apply it to ANY skill. If we have to start somewhere - start with Grim Focus. Toggle off red glow.

Erickson9610

StihlReign wrote: »

Make a skill style called toggle or clear. Let us apply it to ANY skill. If we have to start somewhere - start with Grim Focus. Toggle off red glow.

How about Skill Styles to change the color of the constant glowing of Grim Focus? Skill Styles aren't meant to turn off VFX, but rather change the color of VFX.

What color would people like to see of Grim Focus instead of red? Maybe a purple or dark glow, to make it appear more like shadow magic?

StihlReign

Erickson9610 wrote: »

StihlReign wrote: »

Make a skill style called toggle or clear. Let us apply it to ANY skill. If we have to start somewhere - start with Grim Focus. Toggle off red glow.

How about Skill Styles to change the color of the constant glowing of Grim Focus? Skill Styles aren't meant to turn off VFX, but rather change the color of VFX.

What color would people like to see of Grim Focus instead of red? Maybe a purple or dark glow, to make it appear more like shadow magic?

Clear. So we don't have to see the horrible glow and we can stop feeling like we threw our money away buying Crown Store armors. The red glow feels like we paid for a bug.

Erickson9610

StihlReign wrote: »

Make a skill style called toggle or clear. Let us apply it to ANY skill. If we have to start somewhere - start with Grim Focus. Toggle off red glow.

StihlReign wrote: »

Erickson9610 wrote: »

StihlReign wrote: »

Make a skill style called toggle or clear. Let us apply it to ANY skill. If we have to start somewhere - start with Grim Focus. Toggle off red glow.

How about Skill Styles to change the color of the constant glowing of Grim Focus? Skill Styles aren't meant to turn off VFX, but rather change the color of VFX.

What color would people like to see of Grim Focus instead of red? Maybe a purple or dark glow, to make it appear more like shadow magic?

Clear. So we don't have to see the horrible glow and we can stop feeling like we threw our money away buying Crown Store armors. The red glow feels like we paid for a bug.

Suppose there was a "Skill Style" that can be applied to any ability that would hide the VFX. Wouldn't you suppose that the lack of VFX for those abilities would make them appear to be bugged themselves? Imagine if skills like Elemental Susceptibility could be made to look completely invisible. This umbrella solution to fix the problems people have with Grim Focus would cause problems elsewhere.

There's a thread here (https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/641376/grim-focus-permaglow) for discussing that skill in particular. This thread is about Skill Styles, which recolor the VFX of abilities, rather than hide them.

Finedaible

Other (please describe your thoughts)

I don't know why customization is so user-hostile in this game.

If it were any other game they would give skills a style with proper dye channels for players to pick and choose colors from a picker as they see fit. The color achievements are already there, why not use them? Releasing 1 random color for a few random skills months/years apart seems pointless for a customization feature such as this.

tsaescishoeshiner

Other (please describe your thoughts)

I disagree that every skill line needing a skill style is enough of a guideline, because some skills aren't used or have less-visible effects.

Who's even using Expert Hunter and Magelight's active abilities, which for some reason both got skill styles instead of Flame Rune and Circle of Protection?

So I think 3 things should go into picking skill styles to make the most people happy:

• Skills which are most used on many builds (Wall of Elements, Poison Arrow, Necrotic Orb, Warhorn)
• Skills with the most noticeable visual effects (so not skills like Trap Beast, Puncture) (Bonus if it's a skill with persistent visuals, like Wall of Elements, Annulment, Stampede, Necrotic Orb)
• Skills with a fanbase that could use a bone (Roar, Mist Form, Snipe, Siege Shield)

On the other hand, maybe they didn't want to do all the coolest/most useful ones at once. But instead of having one style for Magelight and one for popular skills like Wall of Elements, I'd rather have 2 colors for Wall of Elements and 0 for Magelight. Having one for each skill doesn't make sense--they're not all equally used or equally visible.

StihlReign

Erickson9610 wrote: »

Suppose there was a "Skill Style" that can be applied to any ability that would hide the VFX. Wouldn't you suppose that the lack of VFX for those abilities would make them appear to be bugged themselves?

No.

Sarannah

Other (please describe your thoughts)

Even though I barely use skillstyles at the moment, as practically none of my in-use skills have skillstyles available for them. I do love the skillstyling system, and how ZOS set it up. As it is easy to use, practical, and quick to use.

Choose other, as I feel ZOS should introduce skillstyling for ALL existing skills first. And from there out create multiple skillstyles for each skill. Basically build a foundation, and build upon it.

Skillstyling itself is a 10/10 to me, the available skillstyles is a 1/10 at the moment. But I'm sure that will resolve itself quickly, so that doesn't bother me too much.

ToRelax

Introduce multiple Skill Styles per Ability (there would be multiple Skill Styles to choose from for certain abilities)

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

Who's even using Expert Hunter and Magelight's active abilities, which for some reason both got skill styles instead of Flame Rune and Circle of Protection?
[...] But instead of having one style for Magelight and one for popular skills like Wall of Elements, I'd rather have 2 colors for Wall of Elements and 0 for Magelight. Having one for each skill doesn't make sense--they're not all equally used or equally visible.

I very often use and see others use Magelight. Wall of Elements meanwhile is a pretty rare sight. Could it be there are different kinds of players being catered to?

Erickson9610

ToRelax wrote: »

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

Who's even using Expert Hunter and Magelight's active abilities, which for some reason both got skill styles instead of Flame Rune and Circle of Protection?
[...] But instead of having one style for Magelight and one for popular skills like Wall of Elements, I'd rather have 2 colors for Wall of Elements and 0 for Magelight. Having one for each skill doesn't make sense--they're not all equally used or equally visible.

I very often use and see others use Magelight. Wall of Elements meanwhile is a pretty rare sight. Could it be there are different kinds of players being catered to?

If statistics are the sole determining factor, then I wonder why Roar was selected first out of all of the Werewolf abilities. The majority of Werewolf players would have to frequently use that skill for it to be considered based on statistics.

Roar is generally not used in trial dummy parses, but it is very frequently used in PvP, in a variety of builds. Alternatively, maybe it was chosen first because its morphs determine whether you have a taunt? It is a very important ability for Solo Arenas and anywhere you need crowd control.

Muizer

Other (please describe your thoughts)

Indifferent. Not planning to get involved in this aspect of the game.