JD2013 wrote: »

Actually, he doesn't.

The balance would be much worse than it is now. Programming balance into a Single Player game is VASTLY different from programming balance in an mmo.

Also I wouldn't expect to see Spellcrafting at any time in the near future.

All ES titles sans Skyrim have had a class system. I hated for example that I was able to learn all spells and swords and bows and heavy armour and light armour and medium armour and do on and basically become an indestructible God in Skyrim. That's not how a game should be. Your character should not be *That* OP ever.

starkerealm wrote: »

JD2013 wrote: »

Actually, he doesn't.

The balance would be much worse than it is now. Programming balance into a Single Player game is VASTLY different from programming balance in an mmo.

Also I wouldn't expect to see Spellcrafting at any time in the near future.

All ES titles sans Skyrim have had a class system. I hated for example that I was able to learn all spells and swords and bows and heavy armour and light armour and medium armour and do on and basically become an indestructible God in Skyrim. That's not how a game should be. Your character should not be *That* OP ever.

To be fair, Elder Scrolls has always used the kind of Dark Souls approach to classes. It defines some of your starting tools and initial stats and lets you grow in whatever direction you want.

But, at the same time, the single player games have a very strong theme of apotheosis. In Morrowind you are literally transforming from a Jesus figure into some kind of fantasy superhero. And the Dragonborn are, quite literally, demigods, with all kinds of unusual perks and anomalies, where magic just doesn't work the same way around them. For example, being able to handle Keening without being reduced to ashes on the spot. Also, the ability to kill dragons and make it stick. That just does not happen in Tamriel.

It's less of the case with Oblivion, Arena, and Daggerfall. But the hilariously broken balance in Skryim and Morrowind is, weirdly enough, actually part of the theme.

We get tastes of that with the player characters in ESO, but it isn't nearly as pronounced, because inevitably we're going to use our godlike powers on one another.

I also have this weird suspicion that the classes are supposed to reflect affinities for various daedric princes in Elder Scrolls... and that in the process of being broken out you've been marked by one of them. Which would explain the downright strange behavior of our abilities. But, I've got no in game evidence of that, so, just speculation.

JD2013 wrote: »

Atarax wrote: »

There's a lot of misinformation and misinterpretation in this thread.

1. Prior Elder Scrolls games allowed you to select a class, but the class just helped you learn some skills faster than others, the classes did not restrict you from learning skills outside the class; in fact, most savvy players designed their own class and were able to master every skill and ability, and max all stats, fairly quickly. While the classes were there, they did not restrict you from doing anything, and by the time you maxed everything, classes were nothing more than a title.
2. Classless systems DO in fact work in MMOs, and quite well, better than class based systems in my experience; TSW is the prime example of this; every player can learn every ability, you pick which ones to use (7 active and 7 passive) and can swap them out freely, while some abilities are key for a given role, there is a huge variety of builds; I think I had something like 32 different builds that I'd switch between depending on the situation when I stopped playing; not only that, the flexibility of the system lets the developers build some pretty unique mechanics into fights, each of the NM dungeons plays quite a bit differently, and players have the flexibility to adapt, it's fantastic and is a system that promotes teamwork instead of dividing people into raging class monkeys; and before you say it, the only reason I don't play there anymore is because of the augment system which became a total grind and you had to run scenarios over and over instead of being able to earn them playing whatever content you want; but the classless system itself was awesome; and guess what, it worked in both PvP and PvE, and yeah, there were FOTM builds, that quickly got obliterated once someone figured out a way to beat them

I realize people who haven't played games like TSW, or who think that because Google says a game has classes (even though in reality the classes don't mean anything at the end of the day) that it must mean they work like WoW or LOTRO (both of which I also played for years), and that must be the way to go, "because that's the way we've always done it."

To them, I introduce:

http://academic.udayton.edu/richardghere/IGO NGO research/Argyris.pdf

Classes are fine to have as long as I'm not restricted from picking skills from any tree I want from any class. And in fact, if they were unrestricted, that would free the devs to make the various classes even more distinct without having to worry about balance.

Other options are:

1) Remove classes
2) Give the guild trees better or equivalent abilities and prevent class passives from affecting non-class abilities

JD2013 wrote: »

WraithAzraiel wrote: »

Getting rid of classes wouldn't add more flexibility, it wouldn't balance the game. It would severely limit diversity. EVERYONE would be pigeonholed into using 1 specific skillbar set up if they wanted to be as effective as possible.


Just think, instead of a couple builds per each class that are the best for whatever roles, there would be 1 build, 1 batch of abilities, 1 this 1 that that works best for each role.

By limiting accessibility to abilities, you're forced to make more diverse decisions.

Also I can't think of a successful MMO that didn't have classes in it.

This isn't Skyrowblivion 42: The Wreckoning. It's not Skyrim 2 With Friends. It's an MMO set in the Elder Scrolls universe. Not an Elder Scrolls game with an MMO flavor.

This .... this guy gets it.

No..... actually.....

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Majic wrote: »

Balanced Imbalance

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Opening up all skill lines to all characters would completely destroy the balance of the game, and not just in the way that people could be snarky about it. In the way that people would stop playing because of how bad it was.

Giving all characters access to the same skills is inherently balanced, so this claim seems somewhat specious.

The only meaningful difference between a classless system and the current system is that some skill lines are partitioned off in the current regime, but since any player can choose to play any class, and all players have enough character slots to play two of each class, even that difference is arbitrary.

As things stand, there are already uber "FOTM" builds, and if we go with your assumption, we would expect there to be four of them, since each class would have that one "uber-build", yet you say "there's actually a lot of diversity in the game".

Or perhaps that's what you mean by "perceived" uber-builds?

It's not clear and seems self-contradictory, hence my questions.

That isn't actually what balance is. Granted, it would be "balanced" when everyone figured out exactly what skills they wanted to use, but that's not the same as having variety within a balance system.

And classes actually don't have "uber-builds" at this point, because the weapon and armor lines create that build diversity. That would be severely impacted if everyone had access to all skill lines, because those skills were balanced with class limitations in mind.

It's really not a good idea, which is why only a few people demand it every few months before it fades back into obscurity.

I don't agree with this. I think from a thematic point all characters in Elder Scrolls games start out with a Class or theme at the beginning. How you choose to develop from there usually grows and changes (but it doesn't need to). You say the game could not be balanced if they allowed an open class system, I disagree. TSW has done pretty well with such a system honestly. The real balance is in what powers and such that you have available at any given time. We have that exact same balance inherent to the gear we wear, the champion points we've spent, and the powers we have slotted in the tray. I highly expect us to get the 'removal' of classes in the form of the Spellcrafting system in the future. While I don't expect them to get rid of classes, I do think they will eventually open up the game with greater variety using the Spellcrafting system and I think that is great. The presumption of a lot of people in this thread against 'classless' seems to be that ZOS has utterly given up on the concept. I highly doubt that. I think instead they want to let the dust settle on the release of their console system, TU, and the release of Justice and Champion systems. They have a lot on their plate and they will need to put in a bit of energy making sure it goes along as smoothly as possible. I also suspect that Imperial City, Orcinium, and Black Marsh all are taking up a good deal of development time as well. I'd also like to add, that by opening up the options of what a player can put in the tray, it will actually help the Devs balance powers as a whole. If they find certain powers are vastly underperforming, they'll also see a lot of players moving away from them. I'm pretty sure they have people studying those metrics even now.

This is the guy who gets it.

Actually, he doesn't.

The balance would be much worse than it is now. Programming balance into a Single Player game is VASTLY different from programming balance in an mmo.

Also I wouldn't expect to see Spellcrafting at any time in the near future.

All ES titles sans Skyrim have had a class system. I hated for example that I was able to learn all spells and swords and bows and heavy armour and light armour and medium armour and so on and basically become an indestructible God in Skyrim. That's not how a game should be. Your character should not be *That* OP ever.

Atarax wrote: »

There's a lot of misinformation and misinterpretation in this thread.

1. Prior Elder Scrolls games allowed you to select a class, but the class just helped you learn some skills faster than others, the classes did not restrict you from learning skills outside the class; in fact, most savvy players designed their own class and were able to master every skill and ability, and max all stats, fairly quickly. While the classes were there, they did not restrict you from doing anything, and by the time you maxed everything, classes were nothing more than a title.
2. Classless systems DO in fact work in MMOs, and quite well, better than class based systems in my experience; TSW is the prime example of this; every player can learn every ability, you pick which ones to use (7 active and 7 passive) and can swap them out freely, while some abilities are key for a given role, there is a huge variety of builds; I think I had something like 32 different builds that I'd switch between depending on the situation when I stopped playing; not only that, the flexibility of the system lets the developers build some pretty unique mechanics into fights, each of the NM dungeons plays quite a bit differently, and players have the flexibility to adapt, it's fantastic and is a system that promotes teamwork instead of dividing people into raging class monkeys; and before you say it, the only reason I don't play there anymore is because of the augment system which became a total grind and you had to run scenarios over and over instead of being able to earn them playing whatever content you want; but the classless system itself was awesome; and guess what, it worked in both PvP and PvE, and yeah, there were FOTM builds, that quickly got obliterated once someone figured out a way to beat them

I realize people who haven't played games like TSW, or who think that because Google says a game has classes (even though in reality the classes don't mean anything at the end of the day) that it must mean they work like WoW or LOTRO (both of which I also played for years), and that must be the way to go, "because that's the way we've always done it."

To them, I introduce:

http://academic.udayton.edu/richardghere/IGO NGO research/Argyris.pdf

Classes are fine to have as long as I'm not restricted from picking skills from any tree I want from any class. And in fact, if they were unrestricted, that would free the devs to make the various classes even more distinct without having to worry about balance.

Other options are:

1) Remove classes
2) Give the guild trees better or equivalent abilities and prevent class passives from affecting non-class abilities

JD2013 wrote: »

WraithAzraiel wrote: »

Getting rid of classes wouldn't add more flexibility, it wouldn't balance the game. It would severely limit diversity. EVERYONE would be pigeonholed into using 1 specific skillbar set up if they wanted to be as effective as possible.


Just think, instead of a couple builds per each class that are the best for whatever roles, there would be 1 build, 1 batch of abilities, 1 this 1 that that works best for each role.

By limiting accessibility to abilities, you're forced to make more diverse decisions.

Also I can't think of a successful MMO that didn't have classes in it.

This isn't Skyrowblivion 42: The Wreckoning. It's not Skyrim 2 With Friends. It's an MMO set in the Elder Scrolls universe. Not an Elder Scrolls game with an MMO flavor.

This .... this guy gets it.

No..... actually.....

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Majic wrote: »

Balanced Imbalance

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Opening up all skill lines to all characters would completely destroy the balance of the game, and not just in the way that people could be snarky about it. In the way that people would stop playing because of how bad it was.

Giving all characters access to the same skills is inherently balanced, so this claim seems somewhat specious.

The only meaningful difference between a classless system and the current system is that some skill lines are partitioned off in the current regime, but since any player can choose to play any class, and all players have enough character slots to play two of each class, even that difference is arbitrary.

As things stand, there are already uber "FOTM" builds, and if we go with your assumption, we would expect there to be four of them, since each class would have that one "uber-build", yet you say "there's actually a lot of diversity in the game".

Or perhaps that's what you mean by "perceived" uber-builds?

It's not clear and seems self-contradictory, hence my questions.

That isn't actually what balance is. Granted, it would be "balanced" when everyone figured out exactly what skills they wanted to use, but that's not the same as having variety within a balance system.

And classes actually don't have "uber-builds" at this point, because the weapon and armor lines create that build diversity. That would be severely impacted if everyone had access to all skill lines, because those skills were balanced with class limitations in mind.

It's really not a good idea, which is why only a few people demand it every few months before it fades back into obscurity.

I don't agree with this. I think from a thematic point all characters in Elder Scrolls games start out with a Class or theme at the beginning. How you choose to develop from there usually grows and changes (but it doesn't need to). You say the game could not be balanced if they allowed an open class system, I disagree. TSW has done pretty well with such a system honestly. The real balance is in what powers and such that you have available at any given time. We have that exact same balance inherent to the gear we wear, the champion points we've spent, and the powers we have slotted in the tray. I highly expect us to get the 'removal' of classes in the form of the Spellcrafting system in the future. While I don't expect them to get rid of classes, I do think they will eventually open up the game with greater variety using the Spellcrafting system and I think that is great. The presumption of a lot of people in this thread against 'classless' seems to be that ZOS has utterly given up on the concept. I highly doubt that. I think instead they want to let the dust settle on the release of their console system, TU, and the release of Justice and Champion systems. They have a lot on their plate and they will need to put in a bit of energy making sure it goes along as smoothly as possible. I also suspect that Imperial City, Orcinium, and Black Marsh all are taking up a good deal of development time as well. I'd also like to add, that by opening up the options of what a player can put in the tray, it will actually help the Devs balance powers as a whole. If they find certain powers are vastly underperforming, they'll also see a lot of players moving away from them. I'm pretty sure they have people studying those metrics even now.

This is the guy who gets it.

WraithAzraiel wrote: »

Atarax wrote: »

There's a lot of misinformation and misinterpretation in this thread.

1. Prior Elder Scrolls games allowed you to select a class, but the class just helped you learn some skills faster than others, the classes did not restrict you from learning skills outside the class; in fact, most savvy players designed their own class and were able to master every skill and ability, and max all stats, fairly quickly. While the classes were there, they did not restrict you from doing anything, and by the time you maxed everything, classes were nothing more than a title.
2. Classless systems DO in fact work in MMOs, and quite well, better than class based systems in my experience; TSW is the prime example of this; every player can learn every ability, you pick which ones to use (7 active and 7 passive) and can swap them out freely, while some abilities are key for a given role, there is a huge variety of builds; I think I had something like 32 different builds that I'd switch between depending on the situation when I stopped playing; not only that, the flexibility of the system lets the developers build some pretty unique mechanics into fights, each of the NM dungeons plays quite a bit differently, and players have the flexibility to adapt, it's fantastic and is a system that promotes teamwork instead of dividing people into raging class monkeys; and before you say it, the only reason I don't play there anymore is because of the augment system which became a total grind and you had to run scenarios over and over instead of being able to earn them playing whatever content you want; but the classless system itself was awesome; and guess what, it worked in both PvP and PvE, and yeah, there were FOTM builds, that quickly got obliterated once someone figured out a way to beat them

I realize people who haven't played games like TSW, or who think that because Google says a game has classes (even though in reality the classes don't mean anything at the end of the day) that it must mean they work like WoW or LOTRO (both of which I also played for years), and that must be the way to go, "because that's the way we've always done it."

To them, I introduce:

http://academic.udayton.edu/richardghere/IGO NGO research/Argyris.pdf

Classes are fine to have as long as I'm not restricted from picking skills from any tree I want from any class. And in fact, if they were unrestricted, that would free the devs to make the various classes even more distinct without having to worry about balance.

Other options are:

1) Remove classes
2) Give the guild trees better or equivalent abilities and prevent class passives from affecting non-class abilities

JD2013 wrote: »

WraithAzraiel wrote: »

Getting rid of classes wouldn't add more flexibility, it wouldn't balance the game. It would severely limit diversity. EVERYONE would be pigeonholed into using 1 specific skillbar set up if they wanted to be as effective as possible.


Just think, instead of a couple builds per each class that are the best for whatever roles, there would be 1 build, 1 batch of abilities, 1 this 1 that that works best for each role.

By limiting accessibility to abilities, you're forced to make more diverse decisions.

Also I can't think of a successful MMO that didn't have classes in it.

This isn't Skyrowblivion 42: The Wreckoning. It's not Skyrim 2 With Friends. It's an MMO set in the Elder Scrolls universe. Not an Elder Scrolls game with an MMO flavor.

This .... this guy gets it.

No..... actually.....

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Majic wrote: »

Balanced Imbalance

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Opening up all skill lines to all characters would completely destroy the balance of the game, and not just in the way that people could be snarky about it. In the way that people would stop playing because of how bad it was.

Giving all characters access to the same skills is inherently balanced, so this claim seems somewhat specious.

The only meaningful difference between a classless system and the current system is that some skill lines are partitioned off in the current regime, but since any player can choose to play any class, and all players have enough character slots to play two of each class, even that difference is arbitrary.

As things stand, there are already uber "FOTM" builds, and if we go with your assumption, we would expect there to be four of them, since each class would have that one "uber-build", yet you say "there's actually a lot of diversity in the game".

Or perhaps that's what you mean by "perceived" uber-builds?

It's not clear and seems self-contradictory, hence my questions.

That isn't actually what balance is. Granted, it would be "balanced" when everyone figured out exactly what skills they wanted to use, but that's not the same as having variety within a balance system.

And classes actually don't have "uber-builds" at this point, because the weapon and armor lines create that build diversity. That would be severely impacted if everyone had access to all skill lines, because those skills were balanced with class limitations in mind.

It's really not a good idea, which is why only a few people demand it every few months before it fades back into obscurity.

I don't agree with this. I think from a thematic point all characters in Elder Scrolls games start out with a Class or theme at the beginning. How you choose to develop from there usually grows and changes (but it doesn't need to). You say the game could not be balanced if they allowed an open class system, I disagree. TSW has done pretty well with such a system honestly. The real balance is in what powers and such that you have available at any given time. We have that exact same balance inherent to the gear we wear, the champion points we've spent, and the powers we have slotted in the tray. I highly expect us to get the 'removal' of classes in the form of the Spellcrafting system in the future. While I don't expect them to get rid of classes, I do think they will eventually open up the game with greater variety using the Spellcrafting system and I think that is great. The presumption of a lot of people in this thread against 'classless' seems to be that ZOS has utterly given up on the concept. I highly doubt that. I think instead they want to let the dust settle on the release of their console system, TU, and the release of Justice and Champion systems. They have a lot on their plate and they will need to put in a bit of energy making sure it goes along as smoothly as possible. I also suspect that Imperial City, Orcinium, and Black Marsh all are taking up a good deal of development time as well. I'd also like to add, that by opening up the options of what a player can put in the tray, it will actually help the Devs balance powers as a whole. If they find certain powers are vastly underperforming, they'll also see a lot of players moving away from them. I'm pretty sure they have people studying those metrics even now.

This is the guy who gets it.

I want to see a working system. That's all I want, I don't care if it's classes or classless, Doesn't matter.

At this current point in time, there is NO WAY in Hell that they would find a way to properly implement the removal of classes. There's just no way. They haven't even removed Veteran Ranks yet.

Spellcrafting got shelved because it was trumped in priority with console launch and B2P. BUT likely in it's current incarnation is broken as hell.

I'm sure there's a small team (probably like 1 dude) that was working on it prior to it's announcement at QuakeCon. I'm sure some of it's already been QA'd and I bet ZOS is worried about releasing something that could possibly break the game.

So it's going to stay shelved until they can release it without fear of it being abused by the same bunch of knuckleheads that abused the lack of a Cap on Ultimate Cost Reduction.


Mind you this is all pure conjecture, but I firmly believe that if done right (AND MAN DO I HOPE IT'S DONE RIGHT) Spellcrafting will remove the need for the removal of classes.


All we gotta do is be patient and keep hounding ZOS.

Regardless of what happens, as the consumer base we're in this together.

starkerealm wrote: »

Atarax wrote: »

Nice post mate. Awesome for you. We are in this together and we all want a better game. I am hopeful that Spellcrafting will allow us to recreate any class ability outside the class, or at least something equally effective. The problem is, you'd still have the class passives affecting non-class abilities, so they'd need to address that. Then we'd have a balanced system.

I think there was a mention of passives in the spell school skill lines, though that could be power of suggestion.

Frawr wrote: »

1, game more Elder Scrolls'y'
2, easier to balance
3, 'play as you want'
4, endless replayability
5, meaningful choices because fewer skillpoints relative to skills available.

In summary; a better game.

seanvwolf wrote: »

People make self-justified, quicker and better decisions with less in front of them, not more. Classes are fine, just need tweaking.

dharbert wrote: »

There are a few things you are just going to have to come to terms with in ESO. There will always be classes. There will never be open world, no holds barred, whether you want to or not, PvP. There will never be more than 5 + 1 skill buttons. There will always be grinders. There will never be children. These are just a few of the topics that come up all the time that are pointless because it won't change anything.

b_archaonpreeb18_ESO wrote: »

-Choose ONE daedric prince, get his skill line. Or choose ONE of the eight divines.