ESO has always been a mashup of TES and MMO not quite being either. This blending makes for a weird and sometimes dysfunctional MMO, at least in the traditional sense. One Tamriel changed a lot about the game. The entire leveling system was redone. While the idea of 1T level anywhere in any order is good, the resulting leveling/champion system just isnt good. I don't think it was meant to be a permanent solution either. Rather it was meant to be an interim solution that would be solved at a later date but they needed to get the game on the road to success. That obviously paid off and now it is time to fix this broken class and leveling system.

I have been a lurker here for almost 4 years and an active member for 3 or so. In that time i see a lot of the same things and one that keeps coming up is the lack of real progression and the feeling that all classes are basically the same. The problem is that we use a system that is blended from both MMO and TES except it only allows the shortcoming of both systems to shine. We also have the 1T zone system which requires a unique handling of classes and leveling. This makes it really difficult to find a solution in this case, but the solution has already been found, we just didn't use it because it didn't work well with traditional zone leveling ESO started with.


So my solution to the class system, champion system, leveling system, and skill line system is... (drumroll) an improved modern version of the system already created by Bethesda for this franchise. Remove classes, champion points, and that terribly pointless skill system we have and instead implement an updated version of the famous leveling system from the franchise.

1) Any one can learn any skills. Some skill can be learned right away and others will require you to join guilds( mage's guild) or perhaps learn the basics of that skill ( Psijic skills) from a NPC teacher in order to start you on your journey or even progress past certain milestones.

2) Each skill gains XP based on you using that skill. This leads to level increases which leads to being slightly better at that skill. The more you use that skill the faster you level it. Now you do have to use it in a meaningful way. You cant just randomly shoot your bow and gain XP you actually have to be damaging stuff with it.

3) These base skill lines would unlock abilities as you leveled each skill. Each ability would have it own levels with use but would be less than base skill lines. So your bow skill might go to 100 and your Lethal Injection might go to 10 or 20. I would propose a soft cap on the skill lines so that their was no actual limit but if you spam the same ability over and over it increases beyond a "normal" range but because you are focusing so much on that skill, other similar skills are degrading as well. So you become a one trick pony so to speak.

4) Degrading skills: " It's like riding a bike". That phrase is actually not that true. You might remember how to do something but you no longer do it as well as you use too if you dont do it for a really long time. The same should hold true in game. If you have the skill Blood Altar and you had it skilled up some but started using something else more and it a lot less then it would start to degrade, as you used a similar skill in its place. The higher level in the skill the faster it degrades with not using it as you lose your ability to use it masterfully.

5) Upgrading VS degrading: If we use a 10 level "normal range" for abilities and say that 10 combat abilities are a reasonable number to master then to maintain an ability at level 10, you would need to use it 10% of the time that ability type is used( such as combat or offense of melee or whatever) in order to maintain that ability at the level. If you use it less often then it starts to degrade a bit in power until it finds an equilibrium with the amount its used.

As you lose levels, it takes less use to maintain that level. So you can be good at 20 combat skills or excellent at 10 combat skills for example. When you do main skill lines such as bow, if your main skill falls below the threshold needed to use an ability, then that ability becomes locked until you increase your skill again. That ability will also degrade as you are not using it either.

6) Classless Evolution: This allows for a classless evolution of characters. I might start out wanting to be a battle axe swinging barbarian but decide i like sniping later and move towards that then i might decide i want to try some fire spells and move to that as my character advances and i learn more about the game. In each case i constantly evolve rather than level up and pick classes and are restricted to those classes. Entire storyline can be made about a characters evolution from a young squire wanting to be a sword wielding warrior starting his training but falling on hardship and being reduced to petty thievery and then becoming guild thief, discovering the dark brotherhood and becoming one of the best assassins in Tamriel. The entire story evolves as the character evolves just like life.

7) Leveling and 1T: So how do we level then? The problem is this works well in a single player game because the NPCS always match your level. But how do we make it work in ESO without ending up with what we have now? Well we sort of have leveling zones as follows:

Note: New players mean brand new characters with very few skills and really bad gear.
A) Base Game( excludes Morrowind): All new characters will start in the base game. So many people feel like they were dropped in the middle of something when starting in the newest chapter instead of starting at the original starting point. The base game will have the same difficulty it does right now. It will include any DLCs( in terms of leveling) that were launched prior to Morrowind.

B ) Morrowind( and DLCs up to Summerset storyline): For a newer player under the new system, the regular NPCs in the zone would be like fighting elite NPCs at (current) level 10 (no CP) in all white gear. All other NPCs would scale up based on that so that the zone is very challenging to the low skilled and presents more of a challenge to players who want to come here at a lower level to fight harder mobs. Lower skilled characters will get increased rewards for doing this more challenging content early.

Dungeons and Trials will be skill level locked. You will need to have X amount of skill levels in combat and Y amount in armor for example in order to be considered skilled enough for that content. This will take the place of level locking and will apply to all future dungeons and trials with the bar being raised higher and higher with each new chapter/story arc.

C) Summerset and all DLCs up to Elsweyr storyline: Overland trash mobs will be equal, for a new player, to the first few bosses of Fungal Grotto 1 solo. Elites, Delve bosses, public dungeon bosses, world bosses all scale up using that as a base. Lower skilled characters will get increased rewards for doing this content early. The Psijic skill line may be locked until a higher level for some players because of the inability to do the storyline for it.

D) Elsweyr and all DLCS before Greymoor storyline: For new players this zones trash mobs will be like doing the last boss in one of the early base game dungeons solo. All other content released as part of this storyline will scale up based on that.

E) Greymoor storyline and DLCs: For new players this zones trash mobs will be like soloing the bosses of some of the earlier DLC dungeons. All other content will scale off that base.

F) Beyond Greymoor/notes: Each chapter arc will increase the difficult slightly of overland trash mobs. These will be used as a base for the difficulty of the rest of the content in the arc. You will have access to a single wayshrine in each chapter you have access to just like now. The default starting point of a new character will be the base game story line. You may go to any zone including chapters and DLCS on your first day and level. People can choose to play at a normal level or make it as hard as they want by playing chapters earlier in the game.

G) Harder content bonus: You will get weighted rewards based on the content you are doing. If you start out doing Morrowind you might get a 50% bonus to gold and skill XP on day 1. But this will be weighted based on your skills. So if you have been playing a bit but are still under skilled a little, you might get a 10% bonus instead. This would be something like: If 50 skill levels are needed to be considered properly leveled for morrowind and you have 10 skill levels then you would get a 40% bonus. At 30 skill levels you would get a 20% bonus. Etc. If you were to do Summerset right off and the skill level for it was 100 and you started right away, you would get a 90% bonus with 10 skill levels. So on and so forth. These would be considered your base xp for the purpose of XP buffs, so a 100% xp buff would give you a 380% leveling bonus in this example.

Grouping is solved by dividing the total skill levels of the group by the number of players( averaging) So if you had someone with skill levels: 140, 48, and 18 in a group then for the purposes of bonuses the groups skill level is 69. So in the above case this group would only get bonuses if they were in Summerset content or later and only those below this number would receive the bonus. So in summerset both the 48 and 18 would receive a 31% bonus, the 140 would receive regular rewards.

8) Gear: Gear will be based on skilled level. If you lose enough levels due to degradation you wont be able to wear that gear anymore.

9) Progression: As a player progresses they will hit certain milestones. If they do content that is two "chapters" behind the chapter that is level appropriate they will no longer gain skill XP in those zones. However they will still get full XP up to the maximum they progressed in that skill line. So they will have to do newer harder content( which shouldnt much harder when they get to it) to "grow" but can maintain their current skill level regardless of what it is in any zone.

Each chapter/arc will have a milestone to reach( this is skill level based so you can achieve it multiple ways). When you reach this milestone a permanent effect is applied to your character that slows skill degradation and/or increases skill xp gain at "level appropriate" content. So if you could maintain 10 level 100 combat skill in Summerset, by the end of Greymoor you might be able to maintain 11 combat skill at 100 or 8 skills at 100 and 2 at 110 or some such.


Final Thought: I know ZOS probably has something in the works but if we are going to have a levelless zone like classic TES games, i would like to have the leveling/skill progression that goes with it instead of some made up blended garbage that isn't good for an MMO or a TES game. I really either want defined classes or no class system not a little of both.

EDIT: All edits are because i went to public school in America and thus am inherently bad at English.