How are we feeling about Subclassing?

Jaimeh

On the one hand it's exciting and creative--I know people say the PvE endgame meta will be just a couple of combos, but the theory-crafting for PvP and for solo content like IA, will be interesting and fun. It will be particularly helpful for solo players wanting to clear harder content on their own as well. I personally love playing with alt characters, and over the years played different DDs depending on meta, so for me it's cool to be able to use skills that I used to slot on other characters in different times. Sure, finding a proper rotation and getting used to it will take time, but it's also exciting. Aside from purely combat-related gameplay, it will also be creative for other stuff, like thieving, heists, speed/farming, and so on.

On the other hand, it will be a difficult and lengthy process to balance everything, and it will be especially OP for ball groups, which are already a big problem in Cyrodill and killing all the fun there. Also, on the technical side, I anticipate a lot of issues and bugs and I don't know if ZOS can clean these up before the update hits live. No matter how exciting a change is, if you can't actually play properly because of bugs, it doesn't matter.

Finally, another negative is the fact that class archetypes and what made their identity unique: the aesthetic, animations, colors, feel etc., are definitely gone now, and this is sad, because the game was made with them in mind, and I liked how players playing the same role on different classes (because they each liked their given class), could both make it work, while bringing something unique to the table at the same time. Now that unique flavour will be gone, and unless someone keeps their toons pure, no one will be a 'DK main' and so on, anymore. It's an end of an era, and a start of a different one. I only hope that ZOS is doing this change for the right reasons, ie., the health and future of the game, and because it fits in the ESO world both in combat mechanics and lore, and just not to mimic other MMOs that may be more popular and that have this feature.

Haulrik

I think it's great, but it should have been done day one, with no classes.

If they want to follow the traditional elder scroll way, fine, but having made class since day one and trying to retroactively change that like nothing happens is just bad game design.

CAB_Life

It’s obviously going to be an absolute disaster for months on end. We’ll see if they can fix it once the genie is out of the bottle.

barney2525

This is exactly what Archeage did. Pick your 3 skills. had about 120 specific names for the class depending on the combination. The vast majority of these classes were NEVER used. Every forum recommendation was the odd ones were just for playing around for RP and not competitive especially in PvP.

There will now be a handful of Metas that the vast majority will run.

Boring

Cerbolt

Neutral. We don't know how it'll truly affect things until it's live, the pts can only show us so much.

tauriel01

I don't like hybridization. Subclassing is just as close to NO classes, NO stam/mag, all just "DPS" as you can get without actually doing that. I'm assuming the classes and stam/mag are just too hard-baked into the code to remove them all together at this point. If you think there's little variation in DPS options at this point, subclassing is going to just double down on that. Everyone will just be slotting the same OP skill lines, regardless of class. Subclassing for me means pretty much the end of my raiding days, for sure, since I won't be subclassing (or buying it at all, if that's required), and I doubt I will get invited to a raid without it. If there was another MMORPG worth playing out there (and I have yet to find one), I'd have left ESO already

Ragnarok0130

"Jaimeh wrote: »

It will be particularly helpful for solo players wanting to clear harder content on their own as well.

Solo players completing content that was previously too difficult was the purpose of the Oakensoul ring so there is no reason to destroy a game’s identity and combat system to accomplish what already happened in U35.

FlipFlopFrog

I would've preferred a complete class revamp, new animations and redesigning and updating each classes abilities from the ground up over this subclass rubbish.

Destai

Having sat on it for a while, I'm less excited than I was after the announcement. Seeing a lot of the PTS feedback and theorycrafting doesn't bode well. Seems like build variety will take a hit, for content where builds matter. I was already not a fan of the skill point and experience point limitations, just seems like a compromised solution. Feel like they should've gone completely classless, but couldn't for technical reasons.

Cooperharley

Regardless of how you feel I think its obvious that its one of the most divisive, if not THE most divisive, decisions ZOS has made.

On one hand, from an RP or mainline elder scrolls player’s perspective this is amazing and will allow people to mess around with different class combos.

On the other hand, youre essentially forced into it regardless because vanilla classes are nerfed to accomodate the subclassing and the META is constricted MUCH more now, so youll likely see much more homogenization at a higher level. Especially for tanks and healers id imagine.

While it is divisive, I think the biggest issue is ZOS’s seemingly unwavering inability to do testing longer than 5 weeks and to make any sort of substantial player-driven changes to systems once introduced. Not meant to be rude, but they have to be one of the slowest companies / combat teams in the market when it comes to hotfixes and making positive changes.

We barely got anything changed in the patch notes overall compared to what needed to happen and unlike other companies who can make rolling changes throughout an update week by week, we likely wont see any substantial changes to the system whatsoever until update 47 in 3 months, so they introduce a largely underbaked, broken system and let it ride for 3 months. Its a very poor idea and a large part of why people end up leaving the game.

If youre new, it really wont matter much and may be cool, but its really just another thing pushing vet players out. I dont know if its a leadership issue (rich/matt), a communication issue, a combat issue (brian) or what, but more than likely its a combo effect as I havent seen really any changes culturally or mentality-wise from ZOS since 2015 ish.

Maggusemm

good idea, but needs some improvements to bring other dps skills than fatecarver to par.

Else there is only one possible build (arcanist + nightblade + templar)

Vulkunne

I'm not overly fond of the concept, I think a class token would have been alot easier and more appropriate, however I'd be totally lying if I didn't say that subclassing could help with many things.

Certain classes I think really not only tend to benefit from but also should have options that other classes already have. Subclassing saves on alot of the 'disparity' between classes and gameplay, which many of us have seen more and more frequently both here and in game over the years.

However, and again, it should be advised that subclassing is really making a custom class, or potentially a new class system from existing classes. Some will look at this lot and know immediately what needs to be done and others will want an explanation.

SaintJohnHM

It's weird that they would prematurely release something so divisive and force it on players when so many have said that multiclassing isn't ready yet, it's a good idea, but the current implementation is grossly unbalanced, introduces a huge power surge, but makes pure classes less powerful and less fun.

It will definitely be a lot less fun for me.

PDarkBHood

And remember, you don't need to use subclassing if you don't want to. And I am glad some of these classes are getting nerfed, as they were too powerful, and probably would have been nerfed down the road anyways. I'm just glad they are un-nerfing my Templar a bit! One more, a bit of a selfish pitch, but we need more Armory slots please for all the subclassing variants to store.

RealLoveBVB

PDarkBHood wrote: »

And remember, you don't need to use subclassing if you don't want to. And I am glad some of these classes are getting nerfed, as they were too powerful[...]

You made your first sentence with your 2nd sentence invalid already.
If pure classes are nerfed, as you said, then players can't ignore subclassing, as they will fall behind.
With class nerfes you are pretty much forced to play subclasses then.

ragnarok6644b14_ESO

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

PDarkBHood wrote: »

And remember, you don't need to use subclassing if you don't want to. And I am glad some of these classes are getting nerfed, as they were too powerful[...]

You made your first sentence with your 2nd sentence invalid already.
If pure classes are nerfed, as you said, then players can't ignore subclassing, as they will fall behind.
With class nerfes you are pretty much forced to play subclasses then.

"Fall behind" according to what? Is there a race?

Is day-to-day PVE disguised competitive PVP in some way I don't realize?

RealLoveBVB

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

PDarkBHood wrote: »

And remember, you don't need to use subclassing if you don't want to. And I am glad some of these classes are getting nerfed, as they were too powerful[...]

You made your first sentence with your 2nd sentence invalid already.
If pure classes are nerfed, as you said, then players can't ignore subclassing, as they will fall behind.
With class nerfes you are pretty much forced to play subclasses then.

"Fall behind" according to what? Is there a race?

Is day-to-day PVE disguised competitive PVP in some way I don't realize?

Talking about progress- and endgame content.
If you stay with a pure class, while everything is nerfed due to subclassing, then you are falling behind compared to those, who have a optimised subclass- combo.

But there is a poll currently going on, asking how often players are playing solo.
And as I noticed, that more than 80% are mainly playing solo and therefore not even knowing what a trial is, then i can understand the way the development goes and why some players give a damn about endgame content and it's players.

Soarora

Soarora wrote: »

For roleplay: awesome, I have some unused characters that would be perfect for this.

For group content: big worried about increased community friction with a more complicated meta and making existing characters subclass into classes they’d never normally be.

My update to this is that I don’t care anymore. This has killed my desire to progress in the game. I don’t care about those trial HMs I’m missing, I don’t care about speedrunning dungeons, I don’t care about being good. Because to be the best, you must subclass. Subclassing requires a lot of extra time leveling and getting skill points. It also means fundamentally changing my builds that I’ve come to enjoy. It also means much more complicated theorycrafting. And despite both the forums and endgame players in discords not being pleased with the current implementation, ZOS is moving forward with it.

ragnarok6644b14_ESO

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

PDarkBHood wrote: »

And remember, you don't need to use subclassing if you don't want to. And I am glad some of these classes are getting nerfed, as they were too powerful[...]

You made your first sentence with your 2nd sentence invalid already.
If pure classes are nerfed, as you said, then players can't ignore subclassing, as they will fall behind.
With class nerfes you are pretty much forced to play subclasses then.

"Fall behind" according to what? Is there a race?

Is day-to-day PVE disguised competitive PVP in some way I don't realize?

Talking about progress- and endgame content.
If you stay with a pure class, while everything is nerfed due to subclassing, then you are falling behind compared to those, who have a optimised subclass- combo.

But there is a poll currently going on, asking how often players are playing solo.
And as I noticed, that more than 80% are mainly playing solo and therefore not even knowing what a trial is, then i can understand the way the development goes and why some players give a damn about endgame content and it's players.

True, but this has been true subclassing or no.

People who play how they prefer to play instead of optimizing mechanics aren't going to be as optimal as people who optimize mechanics. This is true regardless of game, genre, developer, heck it's even true in tabletop games and board games and card games.

It's just how it is, and shall forever be. Claiming a mechanic is bad because it is this means you will never play any games at all, because all game mechanics invariably result in an unbalanced game (if there are any choices involved in playing at all, so maybe Chutes and Ladders is balanced).

Parasaurolophus

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

PDarkBHood wrote: »

And remember, you don't need to use subclassing if you don't want to. And I am glad some of these classes are getting nerfed, as they were too powerful[...]

You made your first sentence with your 2nd sentence invalid already.
If pure classes are nerfed, as you said, then players can't ignore subclassing, as they will fall behind.
With class nerfes you are pretty much forced to play subclasses then.

"Fall behind" according to what? Is there a race?

Is day-to-day PVE disguised competitive PVP in some way I don't realize?

It's very strange that many people, especially here on the forum, don't understand some simple things. You are responsible for your own effectiveness. There are a lot of people in the game for whom this matters.

ragnarok6644b14_ESO

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

PDarkBHood wrote: »

And remember, you don't need to use subclassing if you don't want to. And I am glad some of these classes are getting nerfed, as they were too powerful[...]

You made your first sentence with your 2nd sentence invalid already.
If pure classes are nerfed, as you said, then players can't ignore subclassing, as they will fall behind.
With class nerfes you are pretty much forced to play subclasses then.

"Fall behind" according to what? Is there a race?

Is day-to-day PVE disguised competitive PVP in some way I don't realize?

It's very strange that many people, especially here on the forum, don't understand some simple things. You are responsible for your own effectiveness. There are a lot of people in the game for whom this matters.

Yes, and they will have to weigh how much they care about their own effectiveness versus how much they care about being on theme.

But they have always had and will always have to make that weighting in any game they play, so I am not so sure why subclassing specifically is catching so much flak.

tomofhyrule

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

PDarkBHood wrote: »

And remember, you don't need to use subclassing if you don't want to. And I am glad some of these classes are getting nerfed, as they were too powerful[...]

You made your first sentence with your 2nd sentence invalid already.
If pure classes are nerfed, as you said, then players can't ignore subclassing, as they will fall behind.
With class nerfes you are pretty much forced to play subclasses then.

"Fall behind" according to what? Is there a race?

Is day-to-day PVE disguised competitive PVP in some way I don't realize?

It's very strange that many people, especially here on the forum, don't understand some simple things. You are responsible for your own effectiveness. There are a lot of people in the game for whom this matters.

Yes, and they will have to weigh how much they care about their own effectiveness versus how much they care about being on theme.

But they have always had and will always have to make that weighting in any game they play, so I am not so sure why subclassing specifically is catching so much flak.

Because there's a lot more to Subclassing than just "yay, we can equip skills from other lines!"

1. Players' current builds are being nerfed on the potential that they could be combined with something else, even if they aren't. That means that some players (especially DKs and Sorcs) are getting hit with major pre-emptive nerfs, forcing them to Subclass even to get back to the level they are currently at
2. A game with good balance will mean that anything can be useful in the right hands. Sure, there will always be a 'best' option, but if the power delta between the best and worst is not insurmountable, then even someone who is well-practiced with the 'worst' setup can come out ahead of someone who's just okay with the 'best.' Subclassing, as it currently stands, is making for an absurd power delta, which means that players don't feel like they have the choice to take something that is not as good on the tier list but they're better at playing.
3. The attitude of the patch notes are very flippant on these lines as well. There are a lot of "if you don't like it, just subclass it off" kind of brush-off statements, which makes it feel like Subclassing is a bandaid fix to the balance question disguised as a way to add flexibility (and remember, true flexibility would mean no increased skill point cost, the ability to trade all three lines, and the ability to add more than one line of another class). There's an element of feeling almost gaslit, which rubs some people the wrong way.

Kamchuk

So far, I have built a Templar with the Sorc subclass. Every enemy in PVE is melted in seconds with my offensive abilities. I kill world bosses in a fraction of the time I normally would using a pure Templar build. But since I play PCNA Cyro almost exclusively, I haven't had a chance to REALLY test this build in Cyro. When the Subclassing goes LIVE, I will find out. But I will say that so far, subclassing is WAY OVERPOWERING for PVE.
.

ragnarok6644b14_ESO

tomofhyrule wrote: »

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

PDarkBHood wrote: »

And remember, you don't need to use subclassing if you don't want to. And I am glad some of these classes are getting nerfed, as they were too powerful[...]

You made your first sentence with your 2nd sentence invalid already.
If pure classes are nerfed, as you said, then players can't ignore subclassing, as they will fall behind.
With class nerfes you are pretty much forced to play subclasses then.

"Fall behind" according to what? Is there a race?

Is day-to-day PVE disguised competitive PVP in some way I don't realize?

It's very strange that many people, especially here on the forum, don't understand some simple things. You are responsible for your own effectiveness. There are a lot of people in the game for whom this matters.

Yes, and they will have to weigh how much they care about their own effectiveness versus how much they care about being on theme.

But they have always had and will always have to make that weighting in any game they play, so I am not so sure why subclassing specifically is catching so much flak.

Because there's a lot more to Subclassing than just "yay, we can equip skills from other lines!"

1. Players' current builds are being nerfed on the potential that they could be combined with something else, even if they aren't. That means that some players (especially DKs and Sorcs) are getting hit with major pre-emptive nerfs, forcing them to Subclass even to get back to the level they are currently at
2. A game with good balance will mean that anything can be useful in the right hands. Sure, there will always be a 'best' option, but if the power delta between the best and worst is not insurmountable, then even someone who is well-practiced with the 'worst' setup can come out ahead of someone who's just okay with the 'best.' Subclassing, as it currently stands, is making for an absurd power delta, which means that players don't feel like they have the choice to take something that is not as good on the tier list but they're better at playing.
3. The attitude of the patch notes are very flippant on these lines as well. There are a lot of "if you don't like it, just subclass it off" kind of brush-off statements, which makes it feel like Subclassing is a bandaid fix to the balance question disguised as a way to add flexibility (and remember, true flexibility would mean no increased skill point cost, the ability to trade all three lines, and the ability to add more than one line of another class). There's an element of feeling almost gaslit, which rubs some people the wrong way.

All I can say is I 100% agree with you, but I would also agree with similar statements if they were releasing a new set and nerfing a different set, or releasing a new class and nerfing different classes, etc.

Any change that includes any nerfs at all will make some people "adapt to reach where they have been at". It's just the price of a living game - I still have a Templar wearing the Overwhelming+Deadly combo from the Covid era or whenever that is popular. She is certainly not where she was!

I don't know if a balanced game actually exists that has as much variety as ESO. I just don't. The way I would measure the success of balancing in ESO is 'the number of combos used in pvp or endgame is higher after the patch, than before' - because that means more things are inherently viable than were before. I think we will see more combinations of sets/skills/CP allocations/etc. after subclassing than we see currently.

As for how the devs are handling the changes, I agree, that kind of language is unnecessary. Don't tell people how to play! Including not forcing them into classes (or out of them)!

katanagirl1

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

PDarkBHood wrote: »

And remember, you don't need to use subclassing if you don't want to. And I am glad some of these classes are getting nerfed, as they were too powerful[...]

You made your first sentence with your 2nd sentence invalid already.
If pure classes are nerfed, as you said, then players can't ignore subclassing, as they will fall behind.
With class nerfes you are pretty much forced to play subclasses then.

"Fall behind" according to what? Is there a race?

Is day-to-day PVE disguised competitive PVP in some way I don't realize?

Talking about progress- and endgame content.
If you stay with a pure class, while everything is nerfed due to subclassing, then you are falling behind compared to those, who have a optimised subclass- combo.

But there is a poll currently going on, asking how often players are playing solo.
And as I noticed, that more than 80% are mainly playing solo and therefore not even knowing what a trial is, then i can understand the way the development goes and why some players give a damn about endgame content and it's players.

Even if you are mostly playing solo that doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t do trials. I am not currently doing any, but when I did it was 4 hours per week and I have considerably more free time than that.

moderatelyfatman

CAB_Life wrote: »

It’s obviously going to be an absolute disaster for months on end. We’ll see if they can fix it once the genie is out of the bottle.

The dev's solution to fixing unbalanced things is the nerf hammer, whether it was Oakensoul, Plaguebreak or hybridisation.
The problem is that once the nerf hammer is out, every non-multiclassed build will be irrelevant in harder content.

Maxitude

I am concerned with the change. I do think in the long run this will lead to a compression of the build choices rather than an increase. This will occur in part because of an important software design consideration (assumption at the moment): the choice of the main class skill has no effect on the subclass skills chosen and does not change the way the subclass skills play.

I think the math about the number of builds might be different from what ZOS has published, which is either because of corporate marketing desire for big numbers, or just plain bad math. If it's bad math it's an indication that ZOS hasn't thought this through well. (They need some solid data scientists helping them with these details.)

If we assume that the main class selected has NO effect on the behavior of the subclasses, then we have a pool of skill lines to choose from regardless of the main class. That pool is 7 classes times 3 skill lines equal 21 skill lines to choose from. Our goal is to choose 3 from that pool of 21.

With that main class assumption we have a combinatorial math problem. If so, we have a 21!3 (21 choose 3) calculation, where order doesn't matter. The important point is that order doesn't matter. We don't care whether we start with a Templar skill and then choose an Arcanist skill followed by Warden skill, rather than starting with the Warden and then choose the same Templar and Arcanist skills. (If we find at release that ZOS has made the main class skill change the behavior of subclass skills, then the math will be different.)

You can calculate this math problem using any combinatorics calculator. The solution will give at most 21!3 = 1330 different skill combinations. (Less if we make some other assumptions.)

***

In the short run, possibly 6 months, there will be a lot fun testing of the new combinations. During this time theory-crafters will be looking closely at which builds of the new are best. However, I suspect that after the testing dust settles, we might find that there will be a new meta with possibly only a few best builds for each role and a lot of new meaningless builds.

As noted elsewhere, these new meta builds are likely to be better at doing the job of each role (tank, heals, dps) than other meta builds. This is conceptually plausible based on theory of optimization. Finding a meta build is directly analogous to solving a constrained optimization problem. We know that with fewer constraints on choosing a build, the more likely the new chosen meta build will be better than the old meta builds. Hence we will be back to a small number of choices that matter.

***

I hope the ZOS team has spent some time thinking this through further. In fact, I think this will be a lot of dev work to ultimately bring us back to a small meta. A side implication is that main classes no longer matter, so the days of people playing alts to enjoy the different class style will be gone. People will level up alts just enough to get a desired skill line and then set them aside because they only need them for the a single skill line for the meta. (I am already doing this with a necromancer, which I probably wont play later.)

Also, this puts new players behind the existing base of players. It likely makes more work (acquiring skill lines and skill points) for them to get close to playing the meta used by the current base. From a subscription revenue standpoint that might good in the near term, but it will cause frustration when new players can't become competitive quickly. This might be most impactful on people who want to play PVP competitively and further decrease the new blood coming into the game for PVP. To a certain extent this will also be true for high-end pvp. This is true because both player types demand minmax type of builds to be successful in their play. The longer it takes to obtain those minmax meta builds, the more frustrating it will be for the new players want to engage in those play styles.

I think ZOS needs to look closely at who they want bring into the game as new players, and who they want to retain over time. If it's moderately casual PVE players and those who don't PVP, then this might be a good thing. It will in fact gives those new players a lot of options (beyond the meta). However, if ZOS wants to build revenues in serious PVE players and/or competitive PVP players, then this might have an adverse effect on the source of revenues in the mid- to long-term.

Dojohoda

Kinda like this

ragnarok6644b14_ESO

Maxitude wrote: »

I am concerned with the change. I do think in the long run this will lead to a compression of the build choices rather than an increase. This will occur in part because of an important software design consideration (assumption at the moment): the choice of the main class skill has no effect on the subclass skills chosen and does not change the way the subclass skills play.

I think the math about the number of builds might be different from what ZOS has published, which is either because of corporate marketing desire for big numbers, or just plain bad math. If it's bad math it's an indication that ZOS hasn't thought this through well. (They need some solid data scientists helping them with these details.)

If we assume that the main class selected has NO effect on the behavior of the subclasses, then we have a pool of skill lines to choose from regardless of the main class. That pool is 7 classes times 3 skill lines equal 21 skill lines to choose from. Our goal is to choose 3 from that pool of 21.

With that main class assumption we have a combinatorial math problem. If so, we have a 21!3 (21 choose 3) calculation, where order doesn't matter. The important point is that order doesn't matter. We don't care whether we start with a Templar skill and then choose an Arcanist skill followed by Warden skill, rather than starting with the Warden and then choose the same Templar and Arcanist skills. (If we find at release that ZOS has made the main class skill change the behavior of subclass skills, then the math will be different.)

You can calculate this math problem using any combinatorics calculator. The solution will give at most 21!3 = 1330 different skill combinations. (Less if we make some other assumptions.)

***

In the short run, possibly 6 months, there will be a lot fun testing of the new combinations. During this time theory-crafters will be looking closely at which builds of the new are best. However, I suspect that after the testing dust settles, we might find that there will be a new meta with possibly only a few best builds for each role and a lot of new meaningless builds.

As noted elsewhere, these new meta builds are likely to be better at doing the job of each role (tank, heals, dps) than other meta builds. This is conceptually plausible based on theory of optimization. Finding a meta build is directly analogous to solving a constrained optimization problem. We know that with fewer constraints on choosing a build, the more likely the new chosen meta build will be better than the old meta builds. Hence we will be back to a small number of choices that matter.

***

I hope the ZOS team has spent some time thinking this through further. In fact, I think this will be a lot of dev work to ultimately bring us back to a small meta. A side implication is that main classes no longer matter, so the days of people playing alts to enjoy the different class style will be gone. People will level up alts just enough to get a desired skill line and then set them aside because they only need them for the a single skill line for the meta. (I am already doing this with a necromancer, which I probably wont play later.)

Also, this puts new players behind the existing base of players. It likely makes more work (acquiring skill lines and skill points) for them to get close to playing the meta used by the current base. From a subscription revenue standpoint that might good in the near term, but it will cause frustration when new players can't become competitive quickly. This might be most impactful on people who want to play PVP competitively and further decrease the new blood coming into the game for PVP. To a certain extent this will also be true for high-end pvp. This is true because both player types demand minmax type of builds to be successful in their play. The longer it takes to obtain those minmax meta builds, the more frustrating it will be for the new players want to engage in those play styles.

I think ZOS needs to look closely at who they want bring into the game as new players, and who they want to retain over time. If it's moderately casual PVE players and those who don't PVP, then this might be a good thing. It will in fact gives those new players a lot of options (beyond the meta). However, if ZOS wants to build revenues in serious PVE players and/or competitive PVP players, then this might have an adverse effect on the source of revenues in the mid- to long-term.

I am not sure that's that big of a burden...

there are currently 17 skill lines a player can mix and match across freely (including their 3 class lines, which are locked) that allow skills to be slotted, and 22 that allow skills and passives-only skill lines.

This is excluding crafting, antiquities, and werewolf. It also does not include scribing as I am not sure where that fits, but there's probably 8-20 individual skills you can make with scribing, but the passives come from existing lines.

Doubling the amount they have access to would be bad, but they're not really doing that - they are letting you swap out 2 skill lines for any other 2 skill lines, so you can't really just have them at the same time like you could the 17-22 above.

BXR_Lonestar

I know a lot of people are excited about the subclassing changes that are coming, but I'm honestly far more concerned that they're going to break something in a way that the game will not be able to be fixed if they do this. I see this as being power creep on steroids, and while that will be very fun and exciting in the short-term, in the longterm, unchecked powercreep or exponential leaps in power creep only leads to two things: 1) big nerfs coming down the road, and/or 2) content that is impossibly difficult from a mechanics perspective (and I am a player that loves mechanics!).

Nerfs will be problematic though because it's not the skill lines themselves that will be overpowerd, but certain combinations of skills that will be overpowered, which means nerfs aimed at decreasing the power of certain skill line/skill combs are only going to severely disadvantage those players who chose not to use a subclass skill line.

To me, this seems like a cheap gimmick they're trying in order to generate a short-term sense of excitement about the game, similar to scribing. But when scribing skills became "too strong" (a notion I disagreed with to begin with), they nerfed those good scribing skills into the ground so that there is far less incentive to use them, so what was even the point? I have a feeling subclassing will be much the same, except when they start nerfing stuff for subclassing's sake, it is going to be a severe detriment to the game. Nerfs to scribing didn't hurt the game as much because you don't NEED to use them, but when you start nerfing certain skill lines because they become way too powerful when combined with others, that is definitely going to do harm to those who don't even want to use the subclassing feature.