Subclassing Destroy player uniquness

Vulkunne

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

My Streak DK cares not for uniqueness, only for Streak. I love subclassing. Best change ever.

And I'd be a total and absolute liar if I never said, "why can't NB have streak" or you know, other things as well like certain DK passives. To be honest I felt really disenfranchised, it wasn't fair. But somewhere in there, you know, I started to realize that maybe the fact it wasn't fair is what interested me in continuing to play NB the most you know?

Comfort is good but character is generally built on the pain and the fight to get over a challenge. So yeah, there's that. But to me this kind of feels like, like let's say we have the following standing in a line-up:

1) Batman
2) The Joker
3) Wolverine
4) Cyclops
5) The Hulk

All of these superheroes are different in their own way because they have strengths and weaknesses, including their reasons for why they do the things that they do. Some are considered good, others bad, others are like moral grey. Now imagine, just imagine, taking any of the above characters and then you cut and paste. Batman uh sending people gimmicky bombs in the mail like the Joker might do for fun, ok these two are not the same thing. Imagine combining them. Cyclops and Wolverine and the Hulk combined? I mean it just sounds crazy and wouldn't make a whole lot of sense.

It doesn't just change the powers that each of them possesses, it changes their nature. Imagine the big hero Wolverine acting like a sadistic lunatic... you know... the fans would be the first to wonder where the person they knew has gone. And so, same here. You're not a Sorc just because you can streak and you're not a DK just because you can Leap, you're not an Arcanist just because you can Beam. If it were me, I'd seriously think about not just putting something together but maybe do a favor, if nothing else to yourself and find a place in lore for the monster you created. At least try. Otherwise, you'll never be happy with anything anyways because you'll have to keep making changes to stay meta.

ragnarok6644b14_ESO

Vulkunne wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

My Streak DK cares not for uniqueness, only for Streak. I love subclassing. Best change ever.

And I'd be a total and absolute liar if I never said, "why can't NB have streak" or you know, other things as well like certain DK passives. To be honest I felt really disenfranchised, it wasn't fair. But somewhere in the year, you know, I started to realize that maybe the fact it wasn't fair is what interested me in continuing to play NB the most you know?

Comfort is good but character is generally built on the pain and the fight to get over a challenge. So yeah, there's that. But to me this kind of feels like, like let's say we have the following standing in a line-up:

1) Batman
2) The Joker
3) Wolverine
4) Cyclops
5) The Hulk

All of these superheroes are different in their own way because they have strengths and weaknesses, including their reasons for why they do the things that they do. Some are considered good, others bad, others are like moral grey. Now imagine, just imagine, taking any of the above characters and then you cut and paste. Batman uh sending people gimmicky bombs in the mail like the Joker might do for fun, ok these two are not the same thing. Imagine combining them. Cyclops and Wolverine and the Hulk combined? I mean it just sounds crazy and wouldn't make a whole lot of sense.

It doesn't just change the powers that each of them possesses, it changes their nature. Imagine the big hero Wolverine acting like a sadistic lunatic... you know... the fans would be the first to wonder where the person they knew has gone. And so, same here. You're not a Sorc just because you can streak and you're not a DK just because you can Leap, you're not an Arcanist just because you can Beam. If it were me, I'd seriously think about not just putting something together but maybe do a favor, if nothing else to yourself and find a place in lore for the monster you created. At least try. Otherwise, you'll never be happy with anything anyways because you'll have to keep making changes to stay meta.

Making me sad talking about this.

Right, that's exactly right. From an *in-universe* behavior perspective, Batman, the Joker, etc. weren't different because some physical constraint reached in and said "thou art Batman, thou shalt not mail gimmick bombs" but rather because it was emergent from within the character.

From an out of universe perspective, of course the author was writing them to be that way.

The way I see it, we are the authors writing our characters - and the devs/game mechanics impose the laws of physics/reality on the world. If your character behaves a certain way, it should be because *you wrote them to behave that way as their author*, not because a law of that world's physics said 'sorry, magic lasers only belong to people who read Hermaeus Mora books' or 'Chameleon and Summon Skeleton are mutually exclusive'.

If an author wanted to write a story where batman DID mail gimmick bombs, they are empowered to do so - and the onus is on them to do so convincingly.

Vulkunne

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

Vulkunne wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

My Streak DK cares not for uniqueness, only for Streak. I love subclassing. Best change ever.

And I'd be a total and absolute liar if I never said, "why can't NB have streak" or you know, other things as well like certain DK passives. To be honest I felt really disenfranchised, it wasn't fair. But somewhere in the year, you know, I started to realize that maybe the fact it wasn't fair is what interested me in continuing to play NB the most you know?

Comfort is good but character is generally built on the pain and the fight to get over a challenge. So yeah, there's that. But to me this kind of feels like, like let's say we have the following standing in a line-up:

1) Batman
2) The Joker
3) Wolverine
4) Cyclops
5) The Hulk

All of these superheroes are different in their own way because they have strengths and weaknesses, including their reasons for why they do the things that they do. Some are considered good, others bad, others are like moral grey. Now imagine, just imagine, taking any of the above characters and then you cut and paste. Batman uh sending people gimmicky bombs in the mail like the Joker might do for fun, ok these two are not the same thing. Imagine combining them. Cyclops and Wolverine and the Hulk combined? I mean it just sounds crazy and wouldn't make a whole lot of sense.

It doesn't just change the powers that each of them possesses, it changes their nature. Imagine the big hero Wolverine acting like a sadistic lunatic... you know... the fans would be the first to wonder where the person they knew has gone. And so, same here. You're not a Sorc just because you can streak and you're not a DK just because you can Leap, you're not an Arcanist just because you can Beam. If it were me, I'd seriously think about not just putting something together but maybe do a favor, if nothing else to yourself and find a place in lore for the monster you created. At least try. Otherwise, you'll never be happy with anything anyways because you'll have to keep making changes to stay meta.

Making me sad talking about this.

Right, that's exactly right. From an *in-universe* behavior perspective, Batman, the Joker, etc. weren't different because some physical constraint reached in and said "thou art Batman, thou shalt not mail gimmick bombs" but rather because it was emergent from within the character.

From an out of universe perspective, of course the author was writing them to be that way.

The way I see it, we are the authors writing our characters - and the devs/game mechanics impose the laws of physics/reality on the world. If your character behaves a certain way, it should be because *you wrote them to behave that way as their author*, not because a law of that world's physics said 'sorry, magic lasers only belong to people who read Hermaeus Mora books' or 'Chameleon and Summon Skeleton are mutually exclusive'.

If an author wanted to write a story where batman DID mail gimmick bombs, they are empowered to do so - and the onus is on them to do so convincingly.

See, I'm not entirely convinced of that. Will some do things this way, absolutely.

But if it were possible, I'd like to propose a little experiment. Let's take out streak, leap, overload and um Arcanist beams. Gone.

Now write your story. ZOS already kissed and blessed subclassing anyways. But I do believe the first reaction from players would not be creative writing, they're going to want, "their powers" back. Powers they never had interchangeably before.

By now I have come to know people very well sadly and I think it's safe to attest most would not be able to finish writing their new story. Why is that? Because they had nothing to begin with and now taking what another class had, what someone else had, taking what talent had demonstrated was good, is what they want because they can't create anything to start with and neither could they adapt well.

Otherwise, we'd never need anything like subclassing. Maybe ZOS a little smarter than we realize. >:D

sans-culottes

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

sans-culottes wrote: »

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

Man, "anyone can be anything" is a fantasy I have always wanted, hahaha. It's hard to hear that that's a problem.

Maybe there's something fundamentally distinct in what we want from our fantasy worlds?

(The rest of it is really just the usual crooning about "there is a meta and therefore no one will do anything outside the meta" which is, again, not subclassing's problem).

The issue isn’t that “anyone can be anything.” It’s that when everyone can be everything, nothing means anything. Class identity isn’t about restriction. It’s about coherence. When visual, narrative, and mechanical consistency collapse, the world stops feeling like a world and starts feeling like a toybox.

You keep reducing criticism to preference—“some people don’t like freedom”—as if this were a flavor dispute. But what’s being critiqued is a systemic design shift that prioritizes flattening over distinction. And the consequences aren’t hypothetical. Just ask the Necromancer skill lines. Or what’s left of them. As you yourself noted, this patch has only deepened the class’s longstanding design failures.

See, I see it as a design shift that prioritizes verisimilitude of the world (the TES world) over game mechanics.

And I celebrate that, because in my opinion, game mechanics exist to serve the world/make the world something that can be engaged with, not as something ontologically primitive.

If, in your mind, it is a narrative collapse, then we have different worlds we are modeling; narratively, most people in TES have access to most types of spells or combat styles, in principle.

I agree there is a mechanical collapse. But mechanics are in the service of world-modeling, and can be fixed. I wish it were not broken, but I am not going to say "the world should be worse-modeled" in the pursuit of mechanical purity - especially given that, again, the mechanics can be repaired/fixed, because the bugs are not a consequence of the subclassing model *a priori* but rather were already a problem that subclassing made more pronounced. They SHOULD be repaired, and I have faith that (finally) they will be.

As for visual inconsistency, I hope you never encounter my characters in Oblivion or Skyrim, haha. They will use purple summoning/conjuration magic, white-rainbow Alteration magic, shimmering semitransparent wards and luminous gold from Restoration, and Shock and red Damage spells from Destruction among other colors.

I just consider that to be how the TES world works; different kinds of spells manifest in the world in different colors, and characters can manifest them freely. What you see as "inconsistency" I see as "verisimilitude".

You’re conflating two unrelated things: the visual permissiveness of single-player Elder Scrolls games and the structural demands of a class-based MMO system. Your Oblivion character using rainbow magic says nothing about whether subclassing in ESO preserves mechanical clarity or world cohesion.

You assert that subclassing enhances verisimilitude, but verisimilitude requires internal consistency. When a Necromancer can slot Templar jabs and Arcanist tentacles, the coherence of each class fantasy breaks down. The world no longer models distinct paths or identities. It models a vending machine.

Mechanics are not neutral wrappers for lore. They are part of the world-model. When the mechanics flatten, so does the world. You say they “can be fixed,” but subclassing is the fix, according to ZOS. The bugs and corpse limits are not incidental. They emerged directly from this change.

Calling a collapse of distinction “more immersive” only works if you treat immersion as a purely individual response. But game systems model shared realities. When everyone is everything, there is no frame of reference left for role, identity, or consequence. That’s not Elder Scrolls. That’s sandbox chaos wearing TES skin.

ragnarok6644b14_ESO

Vulkunne wrote: »

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

Vulkunne wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

My Streak DK cares not for uniqueness, only for Streak. I love subclassing. Best change ever.

And I'd be a total and absolute liar if I never said, "why can't NB have streak" or you know, other things as well like certain DK passives. To be honest I felt really disenfranchised, it wasn't fair. But somewhere in the year, you know, I started to realize that maybe the fact it wasn't fair is what interested me in continuing to play NB the most you know?

Comfort is good but character is generally built on the pain and the fight to get over a challenge. So yeah, there's that. But to me this kind of feels like, like let's say we have the following standing in a line-up:

1) Batman
2) The Joker
3) Wolverine
4) Cyclops
5) The Hulk

All of these superheroes are different in their own way because they have strengths and weaknesses, including their reasons for why they do the things that they do. Some are considered good, others bad, others are like moral grey. Now imagine, just imagine, taking any of the above characters and then you cut and paste. Batman uh sending people gimmicky bombs in the mail like the Joker might do for fun, ok these two are not the same thing. Imagine combining them. Cyclops and Wolverine and the Hulk combined? I mean it just sounds crazy and wouldn't make a whole lot of sense.

It doesn't just change the powers that each of them possesses, it changes their nature. Imagine the big hero Wolverine acting like a sadistic lunatic... you know... the fans would be the first to wonder where the person they knew has gone. And so, same here. You're not a Sorc just because you can streak and you're not a DK just because you can Leap, you're not an Arcanist just because you can Beam. If it were me, I'd seriously think about not just putting something together but maybe do a favor, if nothing else to yourself and find a place in lore for the monster you created. At least try. Otherwise, you'll never be happy with anything anyways because you'll have to keep making changes to stay meta.

Making me sad talking about this.

Right, that's exactly right. From an *in-universe* behavior perspective, Batman, the Joker, etc. weren't different because some physical constraint reached in and said "thou art Batman, thou shalt not mail gimmick bombs" but rather because it was emergent from within the character.

From an out of universe perspective, of course the author was writing them to be that way.

The way I see it, we are the authors writing our characters - and the devs/game mechanics impose the laws of physics/reality on the world. If your character behaves a certain way, it should be because *you wrote them to behave that way as their author*, not because a law of that world's physics said 'sorry, magic lasers only belong to people who read Hermaeus Mora books' or 'Chameleon and Summon Skeleton are mutually exclusive'.

If an author wanted to write a story where batman DID mail gimmick bombs, they are empowered to do so - and the onus is on them to do so convincingly.

See, I'm not entirely convinced of that. Will some do things this way, absolutely.

But if it were possible, I'd like to propose a little experiment. Let's take out streak, leap, overload and um Arcanist beams. Gone.

Now write your story. ZOS already kissed and blessed sbuclassing, so it won't matter what I think. But I do believe the first reaction from players would not be creative writing, they're going to want, "their powers" back. Powers they never had interchangeably before.

By now I have come to know people very well sadly and I think it's safe to attest most would not be able to finish writing their new story. Why is that? Because they had nothing to begin with and now taking what someone had, taking what talent had demonstrated was good, is what they want because they can't create anything to start with.

Otherwise, we'd never need anything like subclassing. Maybe ZOS a little smarter than we realize. >:D

I will try to engage with your thought experiment re: removing a set of spells: TESO has taken so much out of TES already in terms of the magic system. They're trying to put it back in, but compared to, say, Spellcrafting in Oblivion, Scribing is rather frail and paltry.

I recognize it must be that way - Spellcrafting was truly broken in fun and entertaining ways, and would not be appropriate for multiplayer - but I am able to use my imagination where required and to look past the gaps. It is how I have had to play with fully intact classing before, since my characters were always TES world-native, not anchored in the arbitrarily-imposed class structure. For a while, one of my characters existed as four copies because I couldn't figure out which class was the closest to her until-now unattainable lore/storyline/theme.

I think if people don't want to tell a story, they should be allowed to not tell it. But they shouldn't complain when an RPG makes decisions that makes RP *easier* - after all, you can RP in Call of Duty but, since that's not the game's purpose, it would be a bit silly to say "don't buff the XYZ gun, it would ruin my RP". But here in RPG-land, people would gladly say "make the RP part of RPG harder please".

xylena_lazarow

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

If streak worked as streak, but with a flame burst forward, flame trail and a cloud of smoke left behind, sure....but a lighting streak on a fire guy looks dumb. It's visually out of place.

The Ilambris monster set has been in the game for a decade, specifically does fire and lightning. There's precedent in game. Other mythologies link fire and lightning, they're both linked to energy flow, and both will burn you.

That said, I'd love it if we had spell dyes to make our characters more visually coherent.

xylena_lazarow

Vulkunne wrote: »

Otherwise, you'll never be happy with anything anyways because you'll have to keep making changes to stay meta.

Quite the opposite, subclassing makes more off-meta builds "viable" than ever.

sarahthes

What's meta right now seems to be changing every 30.seconds anyway.

Enjoy experimenting. Right now in casual PvE groups I'm actually seeing a 20% damage decrease compared to the end of U45 because the meta hasn't shaken out properly yet.

Vulkunne

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Vulkunne wrote: »

Otherwise, you'll never be happy with anything anyways because you'll have to keep making changes to stay meta.

Quite the opposite, subclassing makes more off-meta builds "viable" than ever.

Could already do that without subclass. In fact, if you liked playing any class that wasn't meta, then you was already there.

ragnarok6644b14_ESO

sans-culottes wrote: »

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

sans-culottes wrote: »

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

Man, "anyone can be anything" is a fantasy I have always wanted, hahaha. It's hard to hear that that's a problem.

Maybe there's something fundamentally distinct in what we want from our fantasy worlds?

(The rest of it is really just the usual crooning about "there is a meta and therefore no one will do anything outside the meta" which is, again, not subclassing's problem).

The issue isn’t that “anyone can be anything.” It’s that when everyone can be everything, nothing means anything. Class identity isn’t about restriction. It’s about coherence. When visual, narrative, and mechanical consistency collapse, the world stops feeling like a world and starts feeling like a toybox.

You keep reducing criticism to preference—“some people don’t like freedom”—as if this were a flavor dispute. But what’s being critiqued is a systemic design shift that prioritizes flattening over distinction. And the consequences aren’t hypothetical. Just ask the Necromancer skill lines. Or what’s left of them. As you yourself noted, this patch has only deepened the class’s longstanding design failures.

See, I see it as a design shift that prioritizes verisimilitude of the world (the TES world) over game mechanics.

And I celebrate that, because in my opinion, game mechanics exist to serve the world/make the world something that can be engaged with, not as something ontologically primitive.

If, in your mind, it is a narrative collapse, then we have different worlds we are modeling; narratively, most people in TES have access to most types of spells or combat styles, in principle.

I agree there is a mechanical collapse. But mechanics are in the service of world-modeling, and can be fixed. I wish it were not broken, but I am not going to say "the world should be worse-modeled" in the pursuit of mechanical purity - especially given that, again, the mechanics can be repaired/fixed, because the bugs are not a consequence of the subclassing model *a priori* but rather were already a problem that subclassing made more pronounced. They SHOULD be repaired, and I have faith that (finally) they will be.

As for visual inconsistency, I hope you never encounter my characters in Oblivion or Skyrim, haha. They will use purple summoning/conjuration magic, white-rainbow Alteration magic, shimmering semitransparent wards and luminous gold from Restoration, and Shock and red Damage spells from Destruction among other colors.

I just consider that to be how the TES world works; different kinds of spells manifest in the world in different colors, and characters can manifest them freely. What you see as "inconsistency" I see as "verisimilitude".

You’re conflating two unrelated things: the visual permissiveness of single-player Elder Scrolls games and the structural demands of a class-based MMO system. Your Oblivion character using rainbow magic says nothing about whether subclassing in ESO preserves mechanical clarity or world cohesion.

You assert that subclassing enhances verisimilitude, but verisimilitude requires internal consistency. When a Necromancer can slot Templar jabs and Arcanist tentacles, the coherence of each class fantasy breaks down. The world no longer models distinct paths or identities. It models a vending machine.

Mechanics are not neutral wrappers for lore. They are part of the world-model. When the mechanics flatten, so does the world. You say they “can be fixed,” but subclassing is the fix, according to ZOS. The bugs and corpse limits are not incidental. They emerged directly from this change.

Calling a collapse of distinction “more immersive” only works if you treat immersion as a purely individual response. But game systems model shared realities. When everyone is everything, there is no frame of reference left for role, identity, or consequence. That’s not Elder Scrolls. That’s sandbox chaos wearing TES skin.

I didn't see this reply earlier regrettably, but fundamentally, I disagree.

I find strict and strong classes to be a failure of verisimilitude, when all previous entries and the lore itself implied most magic and techniques was AVAILABLE to most people (even if not readily accessible). I fail to see how the mechanical implementation of a strongly restrictive class *helps* this issue.

And "a sandbox wearing TES skin" is exactly what the TES world *is*. A place, with rules, in which we can do as we wish with our characters, provided we stay "inside the lines" (i.e. you couldn't play like a Vulcan from star trek or something). Strongly restrictive classes are not normal to the universe - they feel unreasonable and worse, unnecessary. Subclassing fixes this.

It *should* be a sandbox. A roleplaying game is a world to live in - to build a house or play card games or become an antiquities historian or heck, all three! Or an adventurer, or soldier, or crafter...

To say "subclassing turns the game into a TES sandbox" is to perfectly demonstrate why I love it.

BahometZ

Unfortunately I think your imagination has limits. We can all see you favour treating eso like a singleplayer sandbox where anything is possible. That's fine. Some of us are complaining about other parts of the game that are impacted.
This is why I said that other opinions are right, its just that they're irrelevant.

There is no overland meta or quest meta. There is no performance expectation for doing a delve. The clash between class identity and class performance is irrelevant to most of the game. I and some others here are talking about the effects of multiclassing in more competitive/challenging areas, like veteran trials and pvp.

You keep throwing out word salads at people who are uneasy about multiclassing, with your position pretty much distilled down to "Well i feel great about it." I'd hope eso players would be more supportive.

I'll just add a lot of unease about multiclassing is predicated on an ongoing history of poor communication about game changes and a lack of follow through on balancing major game changes.

alpha_synuclein

LalMirchi wrote: »

Statements are made by people and we are all people, we stae what we mean.

Yes I'm critical of people wanting to remain in the status quo and think that rigidity is a feebler tactique rather than fluidity. It's what used to be called common sense.

My basic thesis is that we are are now subject to a "Force Majeure" I.E. The studio has decided on a major change, how one reacts to that is rather revealing. However I still think that not adapting to changes is not very effective in the long run.

You are equalizing people who don't like this change with people who don't like changes in general. That's pure bias.
The fact that some players don't share current design choices doesn't mean they want a stagnant game.

ragnarok6644b14_ESO

BahometZ wrote: »

Unfortunately I think your imagination has limits. We can all see you favour treating eso like a singleplayer sandbox where anything is possible. That's fine. Some of us are complaining about other parts of the game that are impacted.
This is why I said that other opinions are right, its just that they're irrelevant.

There is no overland meta or quest meta. There is no performance expectation for doing a delve. The clash between class identity and class performance is irrelevant to most of the game. I and some others here are talking about the effects of multiclassing in more competitive/challenging areas, like veteran trials and pvp.

You keep throwing out word salads at people who are uneasy about multiclassing, with your position pretty much distilled down to "Well i feel great about it." I'd hope eso players would be more supportive.

I'll just add a lot of unease about multiclassing is predicated on an ongoing history of poor communication about game changes and a lack of follow through on balancing major game changes.

My point isn't just "I like it", my point is 2-fold:
1) this change makes RP in and RPG easier
2) this change is attracting a lot of vitriol for some reason, and the vitriol doesn't actually have anything to do with the thing itself.

A lot of your explanation of why people are annoyed about subclassing could be thrown out about literally any change:
- [change] might impact other parts of the game
- [change] will affect the more detailed/niche content in endgame or pvp
- [change] causes unease because of poor dev communication and lack of follow-through
Those are all true, and they could be true about a set rebalancing, block mechanics changes, changing how resource consumption or Regen works, or literally any change at all that even slightly brushes combat.

Now I recognize that subclassing is a *big* change, but it is also, finally, amazingly a change that *makes RP easier in a game for RP*. To wish it weren't happening just seems insane to me.

It looks to me like the mere fact that it makes RP easier has attracted more vitriol and judgement than any number of other changes in the game's past that have also "caused unease due to dev communication issues" or "made endgame players have to rebuild their meta characters" or whatever the problem is.

sans-culottes

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

BahometZ wrote: »

Unfortunately I think your imagination has limits. We can all see you favour treating eso like a singleplayer sandbox where anything is possible. That's fine. Some of us are complaining about other parts of the game that are impacted.
This is why I said that other opinions are right, its just that they're irrelevant.

There is no overland meta or quest meta. There is no performance expectation for doing a delve. The clash between class identity and class performance is irrelevant to most of the game. I and some others here are talking about the effects of multiclassing in more competitive/challenging areas, like veteran trials and pvp.

You keep throwing out word salads at people who are uneasy about multiclassing, with your position pretty much distilled down to "Well i feel great about it." I'd hope eso players would be more supportive.

I'll just add a lot of unease about multiclassing is predicated on an ongoing history of poor communication about game changes and a lack of follow through on balancing major game changes.

My point isn't just "I like it", my point is 2-fold:
1) this change makes RP in and RPG easier
2) this change is attracting a lot of vitriol for some reason, and the vitriol doesn't actually have anything to do with the thing itself.

A lot of your explanation of why people are annoyed about subclassing could be thrown out about literally any change:
- [change] might impact other parts of the game
- [change] will affect the more detailed/niche content in endgame or pvp
- [change] causes unease because of poor dev communication and lack of follow-through
Those are all true, and they could be true about a set rebalancing, block mechanics changes, changing how resource consumption or Regen works, or literally any change at all that even slightly brushes combat.

Now I recognize that subclassing is a *big* change, but it is also, finally, amazingly a change that *makes RP easier in a game for RP*. To wish it weren't happening just seems insane to me.

It looks to me like the mere fact that it makes RP easier has attracted more vitriol and judgement than any number of other changes in the game's past that have also "caused unease due to dev communication issues" or "made endgame players have to rebuild their meta characters" or whatever the problem is.

You keep framing subclassing as a liberation of roleplay, but nobody here is protesting your character’s backstory. The concern isn’t narrative creativity. It’s that subclassing decouples role and identity from any systemic foundation, creating a world where all distinctions are cosmetic. That’s not a sandbox. That’s a costume party.

You suggest that criticism is just “vitriol” irrationally directed at a pro-RP feature. But that’s an evasion. The issue isn’t that subclassing makes RP easier. It’s that it makes the world less coherent—mechanically, visually, narratively. It’s a systemic flattening that weakens the very world you claim to immerse yourself in.

Roleplay thrives in meaningful worlds with internal logic. When class identity collapses and every character can do everything, RP loses the friction that makes it feel real. If subclassing were purely additive, without gutting core classes like Necromancer, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

You keep saying, “This could be true of any change.” But the reason it is true here is because this is a foundational change. It’s not about discomfort with change. It’s about the consequences of this particular change, many of which are already manifest.

P.S. Let’s not forget what kind of game this is. The Elder Scrolls Online is an MMORPG. Role-playing is, of course, welcome. But it exists within a shared, rules-based world. This isn’t a single-player simulation where your imagination is the only metric that matters. In an MMO, consistency, roles, and balance aren’t optional; they’re the scaffolding that allows both competition and cooperation to function. Flattening those structures doesn’t deepen RP. It dilutes it for everyone.

Lystrad

While I disagree that this change destroys player identity on it's own, I can see the argument that it opens the door for players to destroy their own identities in the same way it opens the door for them to further reinforce them. To be honest though this is kind of a problem that has always existed. For years I saw people who wanted to build around a specific theme or identity be told they would have to choose between maintaining a cohesive aesthetic, and power. In my eyes subclassing just had two effects on this dichotomy

1. increased the power of characters build around a specific theme due to increased synergy, not to the level of meta builds, but definitely higher than they were before. As an example My frost arcanist gained something like a 33% damage increase just from being able to add the winter's embrace passives and skills to be more on theme.

2. Now pure classes suffer from the same identity vs power dichotomy that themed builds already did. Now I don't know if it's possible to entirely eliminate that divide but I think you could soften it with a combination of making weapon skills more appealing in general and adding stacking weapon passives to reward building towards a certain theme. For instance...

*Example destruction staff passive - You gain 1% increased damage for every magical damage ability on the current bar. This increased to 2% if that ability's damage type matches your staff.

*Example two-handed passive - You gain 1% increased damage for every martial damage ability on your current bar. This is increased to 2% for each ability from the two-handed skill line.

MISTFORMBZZZ

While im aware of the forum isnt representive for everyone but still its a indicator, im shocked how much the subclassing is ripping the community apart.

It simply shouldnt be like that, idk if anyone can disagree with that.

SolarRune

When the first rumours surfaced that it was going to be subclassing for this year's big feature it has split the community. With some overly excited about the amount of theory crafting, and others wondering why this part of the game was messed with. Everything I've seen/experienced has been about 45% for it 45% against it with about 10% just happy to play eso irrespective of the change.

Pixiepumpkin

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

sans-culottes wrote: »

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

Man, "anyone can be anything" is a fantasy I have always wanted, hahaha. It's hard to hear that that's a problem.

Maybe there's something fundamentally distinct in what we want from our fantasy worlds?

(The rest of it is really just the usual crooning about "there is a meta and therefore no one will do anything outside the meta" which is, again, not subclassing's problem).

The issue isn’t that “anyone can be anything.” It’s that when everyone can be everything, nothing means anything. Class identity isn’t about restriction. It’s about coherence. When visual, narrative, and mechanical consistency collapse, the world stops feeling like a world and starts feeling like a toybox.

You keep reducing criticism to preference—“some people don’t like freedom”—as if this were a flavor dispute. But what’s being critiqued is a systemic design shift that prioritizes flattening over distinction. And the consequences aren’t hypothetical. Just ask the Necromancer skill lines. Or what’s left of them. As you yourself noted, this patch has only deepened the class’s longstanding design failures.

See, I see it as a design shift that prioritizes verisimilitude of the world (the TES world) over game mechanics.

And I celebrate that, because in my opinion, game mechanics exist to serve the world/make the world something that can be engaged with, not as something ontologically primitive.

If, in your mind, it is a narrative collapse, then we have different worlds we are modeling; narratively, most people in TES have access to most types of spells or combat styles, in principle.

I agree there is a mechanical collapse. But mechanics are in the service of world-modeling, and can be fixed. I wish it were not broken, but I am not going to say "the world should be worse-modeled" in the pursuit of mechanical purity - especially given that, again, the mechanics can be repaired/fixed, because the bugs are not a consequence of the subclassing model *a priori* but rather were already a problem that subclassing made more pronounced. They SHOULD be repaired, and I have faith that (finally) they will be.

As for visual inconsistency, I hope you never encounter my characters in Oblivion or Skyrim, haha. They will use purple summoning/conjuration magic, white-rainbow Alteration magic, shimmering semitransparent wards and luminous gold from Restoration, and Shock and red Damage spells from Destruction among other colors.

I just consider that to be how the TES world works; different kinds of spells manifest in the world in different colors, and characters can manifest them freely. What you see as "inconsistency" I see as "verisimilitude".

Anyone *can* be anything in TES. And there always is a meta - in Skyrim, you can be a stealth archer, or you can be worse. Yet, I have many playthroughs that aren't stealth archery, and yet were buckets of fun! So it ever is with metas.

Except that MMO's have different rules/requirments than single player games, especially regarding PVP or any kind of content where the player is to encounter another player. This is where your desire and logic fall apart when discussing ESO and its design direction because first and foremost its an MMORPG, not a single player game and there are specific requirements that must be met to facilitate a fair and balanced playspace. Sublcassing does away with this on multiple fronts.

This update, is a failure. Most of us can see this and subclassing is a sizable part of this.

Do you think it is impossible for subclassing to be balanced (not whether or not it *currently is*, but whether or not it *could ever be*)?

If not, why not?

If so, then your complaint isn't about subclassing or even modeling the world or anything like that; it's about balance.

For my own part, I agree things ought to be balanced as much as possible while staying within the world. But I do not believe subclassing is somehow completely incompatible with balance.

Coupled with my belief that balance is something inherently unattainable in the abstract (more akin to "perfection" than say, "20 dollars"), I am willing to tolerate some amount of imbalance.

Balance goes beyond DPS/Heal outputs or Tank mitigation.

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

sans-culottes wrote: »

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

Man, "anyone can be anything" is a fantasy I have always wanted, hahaha. It's hard to hear that that's a problem.

Maybe there's something fundamentally distinct in what we want from our fantasy worlds?

(The rest of it is really just the usual crooning about "there is a meta and therefore no one will do anything outside the meta" which is, again, not subclassing's problem).

The issue isn’t that “anyone can be anything.” It’s that when everyone can be everything, nothing means anything. Class identity isn’t about restriction. It’s about coherence. When visual, narrative, and mechanical consistency collapse, the world stops feeling like a world and starts feeling like a toybox.

You keep reducing criticism to preference—“some people don’t like freedom”—as if this were a flavor dispute. But what’s being critiqued is a systemic design shift that prioritizes flattening over distinction. And the consequences aren’t hypothetical. Just ask the Necromancer skill lines. Or what’s left of them. As you yourself noted, this patch has only deepened the class’s longstanding design failures.

See, I see it as a design shift that prioritizes verisimilitude of the world (the TES world) over game mechanics.

And I celebrate that, because in my opinion, game mechanics exist to serve the world/make the world something that can be engaged with, not as something ontologically primitive.

If, in your mind, it is a narrative collapse, then we have different worlds we are modeling; narratively, most people in TES have access to most types of spells or combat styles, in principle.

I agree there is a mechanical collapse. But mechanics are in the service of world-modeling, and can be fixed. I wish it were not broken, but I am not going to say "the world should be worse-modeled" in the pursuit of mechanical purity - especially given that, again, the mechanics can be repaired/fixed, because the bugs are not a consequence of the subclassing model *a priori* but rather were already a problem that subclassing made more pronounced. They SHOULD be repaired, and I have faith that (finally) they will be.

As for visual inconsistency, I hope you never encounter my characters in Oblivion or Skyrim, haha. They will use purple summoning/conjuration magic, white-rainbow Alteration magic, shimmering semitransparent wards and luminous gold from Restoration, and Shock and red Damage spells from Destruction among other colors.

I just consider that to be how the TES world works; different kinds of spells manifest in the world in different colors, and characters can manifest them freely. What you see as "inconsistency" I see as "verisimilitude".

Anyone *can* be anything in TES. And there always is a meta - in Skyrim, you can be a stealth archer, or you can be worse. Yet, I have many playthroughs that aren't stealth archery, and yet were buckets of fun! So it ever is with metas.

Except that MMO's have different rules/requirments than single player games, especially regarding PVP or any kind of content where the player is to encounter another player. This is where your desire and logic fall apart when discussing ESO and its design direction because first and foremost its an MMORPG, not a single player game and there are specific requirements that must be met to facilitate a fair and balanced playspace. Sublcassing does away with this on multiple fronts.

This update, is a failure. Most of us can see this and subclassing is a sizable part of this.

Do you think it is impossible for subclassing to be balanced (not whether or not it *currently is*, but whether or not it *could ever be*)?

If not, why not?

If so, then your complaint isn't about subclassing or even modeling the world or anything like that; it's about balance.

For my own part, I agree things ought to be balanced as much as possible while staying within the world. But I do not believe subclassing is somehow completely incompatible with balance.

Coupled with my belief that balance is something inherently unattainable in the abstract (more akin to "perfection" than say, "20 dollars"), I am willing to tolerate some amount of imbalance.

Balance goes beyond DPS/Heal outputs or Tank mitigation.

Yes! I agree!

I also think this statement is about as related to subclassing as the phrase "Input lag is the primary cause of player frustration" or any number of other perfectly reasonable statements I agree with.

And that is why you do not understand why subclassing is bad for the game. You think it's only about DPS combinations or whatever. You can't even see how changing the identity of a class into a non class affects the game (or whatever these frankenstine abominations are).

How does me saying "I agree balance is about more than those things" indicate to you that I believe it is only about those things?

Sorry, I feel like the statement was a non-sequitur and now I feel like this one is equally nonsensical. *We are in agreement that balance transcends pure quantization*.

Do you want me to say "and therefore subclassing is bad"? Because I am missing some logical leap, and I don't really know where to go from here if you keep just plopping non-sequiturs down.

Because you asserted that the idea of "Balancing goes beyond DPS..." is not related to subclassing. There are multiple aspects of "balancing" to subclassing, the obvious DPS/HEAL/Mitigation and the less obivous aspect of how subclassing destroys the framework of how a players emotion is connected to the world. Subclassing destroys structure to the game and structure is absoutely necessary in order to paint a cohesive picture of the word and the emotions extracted from the world.

Ah I thought you were talking about balance as being the "ease" with which a player can explain/achieve/replicate a certain DPS/Tank/Heal number, which is definitely unrelated.

That said, and on the topic of unrelated things, I wouldn't put "the player's emotion being connected to the world" or their ability to see a "cohesive picture of the world" as a balance issue, nor as something inherently different between multiplayer and singleplayer games.

Why is my emotional connection and understanding of the TES world hinging on the "multiplayerness" of the game?

Essentially, what you are saying is "because TESO is multiplayer, restrictive classes are required for emotional engagement and cohesion, but since Skyrim and Oblivion are single player, non-restrictive classes are sufficient for emotional engagement and cohesion."

Once again, I fear I fail to understand - can you ELI5 me why multiplayer games require restrictive classes to achieve emotional engagement and cohesion while single player games do not?

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

And to put it bluntly, it looks ridiculous. I cringe at every promotional piece of art I have seen depicting sublcassed abilities on characters. Its visually incoherent with the feel of the game.

I don't know what to tell you. My oblivion remastered character is constantly covered by a purple sheen from Mysticism's Spell Absorption, while casting Damage Health and Shock spells that are bright red and blue lightning - or she casts an on-touch Absorb Health/Absorb Magicka spell that siphons orange-gold and light blue streaks from them in a tether (if I stay close enough).

It's how the series always has been, and I always found it really cool that illusion magic and conjuration magic could be used by the same character despite being obviously different Magicka employments.

I think that it's really cool that a character can fire a purple-pink wave of Detect Life magic to see through walls, so they can then use a green shimmer to fade into the background with a Chameleon spell before readying their massive frost AoE.

Ok. you are completely missing it.

As the title of the thread states "Subclassing destroys player uniqueness" and after messing around with subclassing, leveling about 8 lines to 50 and watching other people run around with green shields, yellow beams and fire whips....ya, player uniqueness is gone.

And player uniqueness is the "other balance" I am taliking about. There is no more emotional connection to my characters as being individual characters inside the universe. They are for all intents and purposes the same now, just like everyone else.

In Vanilla WOW you could have a 5 person dungeon party consising of a Warrior Tank, A Hunter DPS, Rogue DPS, Mage DPS, and Paladin healer.

Before a hard pull, the hunter could trap a mob, the mage could sheep a mob, the rouge could sap a mob. The hunter could the pull the remaining 2 mobs to the tank and feign death to lose aggro while the tank picked it up.

ESO, has never really had such a fun and cool playstyle, its really all just mindless zerging...but classes did have their special skills.

Now, not only does ESO NOT have the cool stuff wow did/does, it has even less because everyone can be the same.

There is no identity left in characters in game, this makes the game itself lose identity and frankly feels really lame now.



And lets go back for a moment. Do you know why fads happen and why people adopt them? Think back to high school. Its because fundamentally everyone wants to be special and accepted. So people adopt these fads hoping to fit in and be accepted.

There is nothing special now about the class anyone plays in ESO anymore. I don't feel special or unique, or have a "specialty" like I did in wow. There is no more draw for me to my characters. For the first time in months, I legitimately see no reason to log in and I dont say this as someone "who hated subclassing from day 1" (even though that is true) I say this as someone who gave subclassing a solid try and the result was.

It leaves me feeling empty. ESO now leaves me feeling empty.

And I am clearly not the only one as evidence of "Subclassing Destroy player uniquness" threads.

twisttop138

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

Diminish wrote: »

The problem isn't really the addition to "subclassing" it's that those who voice opinions about how "game breaking" it is thinking they make up 95% of the game's population when it is literally the complete opposite. Subclassing changes will affect the vocal MINORITY the most, whilst being a complete non-issue, and welcomed change to the MAJORITY. These topics pop up after every update. Something always 'breaks the game" yet here we are years later, still playing this "broken pos", and still complaining about it on the forums.

Subclassing is a big change, and a much needed one to shake things up again to draw interest back into the game. It's early, but I personally feel it's hit it's mark so far based on discussios with others. Could it have been handled differently? Sure? [snip] Did it still massively shake up what some like to refer to as viable build options? Absolutely.

I'm calling it now. You will see things like "Lfm, vSS KWTD 150K+ DPS min, link clear" in zone chats / Group Finder now just like there was when 100k was considered top tier, and before that, 80k, and 60k, etc. People seem to forget that lots of the same content was being cleared when 30-40k was considered "god tier". Moral of the story... meta builds are not a mandatory rule imposed by ZOS. People choose to chase them which is them problem, not a problem with the game.

That’s the crazy part about this community at endgame. You go meta or go home. It’s why I stepped away for nearly 2 years because raid groups were always shifting to whatever the new hotness was and expecting new clears, parses and gear sets within days of new patches dropping. It all became very tiring and sucked the fun right out of the game.

I came back 4 days ago and started questing again to recapture the magic and it feels good to play the game without all these unnecessary restrictions in place due to some ever shifting meta. I got on my main character today, a Khajiit Stamden still wearing pillar and Rele with a Zaan monster set and no mythics, also haven’t even unlocked scribing and went to my trial dummy just to see how rusty I was and managed to break 102K on my first parse.

Sadly I don’t think many trial groups would take a build in this “sorry” state because it’s more than 15% behind the meta in terms of damage.

Fortunately I’m only back in the game to see what content I’ve missed the last couple of years and with the addition of subclasses I can probably solo most of it.

Man you're playing with the wrong groups then. Awesome guilds and groups are out there. My vet trials guild requests 75k for all vet content. HM might be a bit different but I haven't gotten there so I didn't ask. When 46 drops on console he wants 110. Also he gave the supports a subclassed line he would like them to have but other then that nothing. Easy numbers to get. I'm an officer in a casual guild and we've been taking them into vet and clearing everything we do with absolutely zero requirements. We're out there man. Groups that will love to have you as long as you have the desire to learn and improve. I do meta stuff for my tank and my DPS but I want to, If I didn't I wouldn't and it would be fine. I do think people should do what's needed to contribute to the team.

As for this thread, it's another conversation that's devolved yet again into my group is better, my group is the only reason the game exists so shut up and get with the program. I got news for you. Every aspect of the game is played by tons of people that play multiple. I'm an end game raider who also quests, lives to do delves and run around with my wife and decorate our many houses. I sub and buy crowns and own all dlc. I do dungeons and run groups for my social guild to get skyshards or play hide and seek on game nights. We have solo players who are elderly who've come in and smashed vet trials. There's no one group and to tell people they should just submit to your so called majority is insulting and wrong. It's unfortunately amplified in the community by content creators. A gentleman named spopes made a community post telling endgame players to get out of his game. Then had to nerve to call others toxic. Let's all chill and play this awesome game together.

[edited to remove quote]

AZ_Taco

People saying that subclassing will allow you to play what ever you want are technically correct. You can definitely to play a build that sounds cool but doesn't do nearly as much damage as a real meta build. So if you want to play a sucky build and never join a real PvE guild for endgame trails, then sure you can play whatever you want.

Realistically, with subclassing, there are maybe like 1-2 real builds per PvE role now (Healer, Tank, DPS). So we went from each class having a viable build for each PvE role. To around 4-8 competitive builds in the whole game.

Since there are 7 classes in the game:
No subclassing = 7 Tanks, 7 Healers, 7 Mag DPS, 7 Stam DPS = Around 28 viable builds

People will choose what is best from the classes:
With Subclassing = 1-2 Tanks, 1-2 Healers, 1-2 Mag DPS, 1-2 Stam DPS = 4 to 8 builds that are viable in the whole game.

ragnarok6644b14_ESO

AZ_Taco wrote: »

People saying that subclassing will allow you to play what ever you want are technically correct. You can definitely to play a build that sounds cool but doesn't do nearly as much damage as a real meta build. So if you want to play a sucky build and never join a real PvE guild for endgame trails, then sure you can play whatever you want.

Realistically, with subclassing, there are maybe like 1-2 real builds per PvE role now (Healer, Tank, DPS). So we went from each class having a viable build for each PvE role. To around 4-8 competitive builds in the whole game.

Since there are 7 classes in the game:
No subclassing = 7 Tanks, 7 Healers, 7 Mag DPS, 7 Stam DPS = Around 28 viable builds

People will choose what is best from the classes:
With Subclassing = 1-2 Tanks, 1-2 Healers, 1-2 Mag DPS, 1-2 Stam DPS = 4 to 8 builds that are viable in the whole game.

Another post that goes from "the endgame meta might (!) settle on a few builds" to "only a few builds are viable in the whole game" in the span of about 10 seconds.

(And tbh I wouldn't class the same build on 7 classes that mostly ignores class skills to be "7 builds")

MISTFORMBZZZ

AZ_Taco wrote: »

People saying that subclassing will allow you to play what ever you want are technically correct. You can definitely to play a build that sounds cool but doesn't do nearly as much damage as a real meta build. So if you want to play a sucky build and never join a real PvE guild for endgame trails, then sure you can play whatever you want.

Realistically, with subclassing, there are maybe like 1-2 real builds per PvE role now (Healer, Tank, DPS). So we went from each class having a viable build for each PvE role. To around 4-8 competitive builds in the whole game.

Since there are 7 classes in the game:
No subclassing = 7 Tanks, 7 Healers, 7 Mag DPS, 7 Stam DPS = Around 28 viable builds

People will choose what is best from the classes:
With Subclassing = 1-2 Tanks, 1-2 Healers, 1-2 Mag DPS, 1-2 Stam DPS = 4 to 8 builds that are viable in the whole game.

Completely right but people seem to not realise the ''play how you like'' will mean your build is gonna be bad in 90% of the cases.

But if thats fine for the rp ´ers why not. The rest will chose meta so there will be no uniqueness.

Thysbe

I always had a number of RP builds besides my meta for group content. Even pre Hybridisation (though there was less need since there was something like identity then). I get the appeal and enjoy it myself not all of my chars are Meta, only the ones in grp PVE as I want to pull my weight in a grp.

If you knew your character and the possibilities ESO gives you, you could do a lot RP-wise way before subclassing. People had Frost Mages, Pet Armadas, Deadly Alchemists and Sword Saints before.

I really dont see the need for this massive move besides giving the players something to do, not taking into account the sever consequences this is going to have at every player interaction. In PVP it ruines the whole playing at your enemies weaknesses, in PVE it introduces a massive power creep that annihilates the appeal of most of the existing content (and imo it was a big benefit of ESO that older content was still interesting). The game already was too much of a "just burn it hard enough" before and now it´s even worse.

here is a short example of RP-Effects I used over the years - it´s by far not complete

Fire: Flame Blossom (super fun imho and you could count that as pet set too), Shadow of the red mountain, Valkyn Skoria
Ice/Water: Winterborn, Depths, Iceheart (still one of my fav), Icy Conjuror (pet effect too)
Shock/Air: Ilambris, Mad Tinkerer (Pet too), Overwhelming Surge
Poison: Defiler (Pet too), Syvarras Scales
Blood/Bleeding: Pestilent Host, Macabre Vintage
Void/Shadow: Unfathomable Darkness (I love the crows though they are a tad annyoing when adding everything), Grace of Gloom Set, Azureblight
Stone/Earth: Pillar of Nirn, Morihaus
Other Summons: Morkuldin (Shehai Sword), Coldharbour's Favorite (Honor!), Aegis Caller (Living Armor), Engine Guardian (Heal Clockwork pet)

In addition there are plenty of non class Weapon, World or Guild Skill lines you get matching visuals from.

I have hardly seen players using these options, what you met overland was HA one bar Pet sorcs (50%) and Arcanists (30%). Ok, that might be a little bit of exaggeration but in the end its not completely wrong. So if there was such a big need for "play as you want" why have you hardly seen anything of that before.

francesinhalover

player "uniqueness"

It was amazing for most classes to have 2-4 class abilities on bar and the rest being scribling,fighters,Alliance war,mages skills to keep the rest of the bar usable
With awfull rotations were all the timers don't match eaxh others.

It was só unique, hundreds of post about class identity were made at the time because all classes were the same.

Jaimeh

I think another unintended consequence of power creep introduced with new systems like subclassing, is how not only certain mechanics become bypassed, but also objectives can be accidentally bypassed. I was running vetBC2 HM with my tank the other day, in a group with two arc/nb/plars, and noticed how the Daedroth mechanic, which was originally put there to press the damage dealers to do more damage (so the tank wouldn't have to juggle a bunch of adds), now forces the DDs to just wait and light attack, since the boss's health is decreasing too fast, until enough Daedroths come out. We were just waiting around, doing nothing for a few minutes, lest we killed the boss before the objective was fulfilled. It's not just a change to the cadence of the fight, it's a change in the mechanic's intention. It's a fight that has been made trivial for years now, but I've never seen it to this extent.