Syy101 wrote: »

That would widen the gap between top players and common players even further, which is already huge atm.

I would support the idea if the passives are mostly for fun or roleplay, but I don't like it if they have some serious impact on end game content or pvp.

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

Grand Master Crafter = Unlock hide armor slots ... such as hide shoulders.

Currently only hide helm is available.

starkerealm wrote: »

TheGreatBlackBear wrote: »

It all depends on your priorities. You could (theoretically) equip Gryphon Heart for 1% more damage which you really and truly don't need if you have Gryphon Heart in the first place, or you could equip Master Thief for improved quality drops from fights or you could even equip Style Master for more motif drops at the last boss in a dungeon and the style mat from mobs. Or the Unchained to make breaking free cost a lot less. There's so much more potential here than just dealing more damage.

You have just, eloquently, described why this system would be an obnoxious, and tedious, time sink.

TheGreatBlackBear wrote: »

...or you could even equip Style Master for more motif drops at the last boss in a dungeon and the style mat from mobs.

This system would require constant micromanagement of a player's title. This is, of course, ignoring that you need 50 complete motifs to earn Style Master, meaning by that point you should have a pretty solid stock to start with, and the title's utility would be restricted to content they're still missing the motifs from.

There's an element of this idea that isn't terrible... in a different game. Where players pick a buff from an array of options, influenced by their activities in game or even build routes. I mean, if ESO was a class-less system, you could have players assign classes to themselves which provided various buffs With a player's available classes influenced by the skill lines they'd unlocked.

However, that's not the game that exists. ESO does not support this kind of a system at the front end, and trying to retrofit one on now would only result in increasing the imbalance between players. In your specific example, a player with style master would have access to more pages. They already got a bunch, but now they can get, and sell, even more. This would reasonably drive prices down (motif prices are heavily influenced by rarity), however players who had the perk would be able to acquire more motifs for sale than ones without, so while the individual price would dip, their net sales wouldn't be harmed. While anyone attempting to get there would be put at more of a disadvantage financially. Cheaper motifs, which sell at lower prices, but no more motifs. Those would be coming from the players with the increased drop tables.

While this is easy to track in extremes, it's also worth remembering that this stuff does apply even on very minor tweaks. A 1% or 2% drop rate wouldn't alter prices significantly, but motif sellers would still be pulling in less cash, while players who were getting the extra motifs would have significantly more to sell. In extreme cases, like a guaranteed drop off the boss, the supply would explode for people with the motif, the price would plummet, but they'd still be able to supply the demand, while players without the perk would be left begging for scraps.

As for combat modification, that's actually worse. Even if you say, "well, 1% isn't much damage," you would still see a lot of groups excluding potential players from the pool. "Want to run vCR+3? You need Gryphon Heart for the extra damage." You create a situation where a player needs to have completed the content in order to be able to have access to the content. You can say, "that doesn't make any sense," but there are plenty of elitist groups that would, pretty happily, slap requirements like that out there, because they honestly believed it was necessary.