Should ESO let you have all classes on one character like in Final Fantasy 14?

Ilsabet · April 2021

No

You're talking about two different systems that work well for their respective games, but that has as much to do with the ecosystems of the two games as the systems themselves. So a proper evaluation needs to include some context.

So, some XIV fun facts for those who aren't familiar with it:

Jobs (classes) are equated with a particular role. If you are a white mage, you are a healer. If you are a ninja, you are a melee DPS. If you want to play a different role, you have to swap to a job that corresponds to that role.
While you can make multiple characters as your sub allows, the game is relatively alt-unfriendly. There's no shared bank. Pretty much nothing is account-wide. Characters are designed and expected to be independent and self-sufficient.
There's really no such thing as build diversity. The gear and skills you use are dictated by your job and what you have access to based on level and job quest progression.
Stat attributes are tied to gear, not character, so your character can be just as effective on a strength-based job like monk as an intelligence-based job like black mage. Racial bonuses are negligible.
Game progression is extremely linear. You begin at the beginning of the main quest, and you progress through it until you catch up to the most recent content. There is side stuff you can do along the way, of course, but progressing through the main quest is very important because...
There's a whole lot of stuff that's gated behind main quest progression and/or (to a lesser extent) character/job level. Access to subsequent zones (and the accompanying material gathering, vendors, etc.) is the biggest example, but here are a few more:
- The ability to use a mount
- The ability to sell things on the player market
- Having a chocobo companion that fights with you in the overland
- Access to the equivalent of the outfit system
- Being able to buy a house or apartment
- Access to dungeons, trials, and raids
- Being able to participate in seasonal events
So take the complaining we do about having to grind Mages Guild/Psijic/Undaunted on alts, and then apply that to doing however much of the main quest you'd need to do in order to unlock what you want to get access to on those alts.

So... imagine wanting to do the new Rockgrove trial with your friends when Blackwood comes out. They need a healer to fill out the group, but you normally play DPS on your main character. No prob, you have a healer alt, but oh wait - you'd need to play through the entire game on that character before you could take it into the most recent trial.

XIV gets around the problems it creates for alts by letting you do (almost) everything on a single character. That actually creates a lot more convenience for people who are happy having only one character. You don't need to sit in loading screens to swap to a different role, you just click a button and equip gear and skillbars for a different job. You don't need to replay a bunch of stuff to try out a different playstyle, because you're using the same character who's already done all that stuff. You're not even locked in to any particular playstyle, regardless of what you choose when you create the character. So for the XIV ecosystem, the job-swapping system works, and might even be considered an integral part of the player experience.

But in ESO, where:

You can take a character anywhere and do anything, (mostly) regardless of level or quest progression.
Many things are account-based, including a shared bank, account-bound gear, CP, achievement dyes, collectibles, and outfit styles.
Battle-scaling equalizes things that might otherwise be level-dependent, such as combat effectiveness and access to gear or skills.
Many of the commonly-bemoaned skill grinds are arguably optional, since you can put together perfectly serviceable builds for most content without those skills.
There's no single linear main quest, and zones are relatively independent with their own questlines.
There's a massive amount of player choice when it comes to builds, and racial bonuses can be significant.
There is arguably more RP potential relative to character background, including race and class, and that may influence a player's experience with various content.
Things like stat attributes, skill points, and CP must be assigned for each character and help determine what that character can do and how effectively.
We don't have many of the infrastructure elements that would enable and enhance single-character class-swapping, such as build loadouts and a separate gear inventory.

It's both more feasible and arguably more attractive for players to make multiple characters, to enjoy the benefits of different playstyles and character concepts without the kind of content slog XIV would put you through. And people who prefer to stick with a single character still have a lot of flexibility to play different roles simply by changing up their builds. So I think that while a class-swapping system could be beneficial for diehard single-character players, the overall relative benefits are minimal compared to what the system brings to XIV.

For the record, as a general thing, these are both excellent games that do a lot of things differently that would appeal or not appeal to different people. And there are maybe things that they could each do better, but that doesn't necessarily mean shoehorning in systems that don't necessarily fit the rest of what the game has going for it.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

josiahva · April 2021

Other (Explain in comments)

I couldn't care less about all classes on one toon...but I DO firmly believe that you should be able to swap from one role to another with the click of a button. Don't need a tank for this fight? Great, the tank can become another DPS. Need more survivability for this fight? great, the DPS can lower their DPS and up their resistances for this fight...etc etc etc. Yes, dressing room is great for that type of thing....but it only lets you change gear and skills, and that is really only half of an actual role change.

Kiralyn2000 · April 2021

No

Dauntess13 wrote: »

I'm not sure what you mean. In FF14, you can save your gear and skill load out and then assign to your hotbar. I have all my classes on a hotbar and can swap through all 27 classes (crafting, gathering included) in a matter of seconds. .

Gah, that sounds awful/overwhelming.

I honestly prefer "limited action-bar" MMOs, because I have a hard time keeping track of all the abilities in games like WoW or STO (I was a clicker in WoW - I only managed to use hotkeys for abilities 1-7 or so, let alone all the alt-*/ctrl-*/etc-*). I don't try to use two bars in ESO because it'll be hard to remember which I'm on. When I switch to another alt, I have to think about the playstyle for a bit, so that I don't hit the wrong keys out of thinking it's a different class/loadout.

The idea of having your entire setup able to change into two dozen other ones, by the tap of a key? Makes me cringe. Thanks for adding another item to my "don't bother trying FF14" list.

PrimusTiberius · April 2021

No

No, you have the ability to have 18 different characters, have at it

Greystag · April 2021

Other (Explain in comments)

No, but it should have an accessible class-changing system.

Rasande_Robin · April 2021

Yes

Anything to avoid 1 more loading screen! In this case there is many!

Aertew · April 2021

PrimusTiberius wrote: »

No, you have the ability to have 18 different characters, have at it

yeah lemme just get them to level 50 and level up all their guild skill lines.

kryda · April 2021

Yes

Yes - This is ESO and you should be able to play how you want to play. At least that's what the devs keep saying.

Aertew · April 2021

kryda wrote: »

Yes - This is ESO and you should be able to play how you want to play. At least that's what the devs keep saying.

Exactly. I'm so suprised people argue against this but are fine with re-skinned class abilities, guild abilities being more useful than class abilities, crown crates and only getting 3 mounts with gold in the base game, all of them being horses by the way.

Oh but only needing one character for all the classes so you can have titles, dyes and more on 1 character? Too far.. Just too far.

Elsonso · April 2021

No

kryda wrote: »

Yes - This is ESO and you should be able to play how you want to play. At least that's what the devs keep saying.

That also seems to be what players consistently misinterpret. It was perhaps foolish for marketing to use that phrase, but it is obvious that there was never a carte blanche for the player to do as they please without restriction or penalty.

Anonx31st · April 2021

No

A hard no. I like the idea of having race and class identity tied to individual characters.

Athan1 · April 2021

Yes

Thanks for the tedx @Ilsabet , having played both games I quite enjoyed this comparison analysis

SilverBride · April 2021

No

👎

kargen27 · April 2021

No

Aertew wrote: »

PrimusTiberius wrote: »

No, you have the ability to have 18 different characters, have at it

yeah lemme just get them to level 50 and level up all their guild skill lines.

That is what we call playing the game.

And you would need to level the skills for each class separate anyway to use them. Level 50 takes very little time to reach and CP is account wide.

Leveling multiple characters extends the life of the game through players repeating existing content.

Agalloch · April 2021

Yes

Would be a nice feature to have Subclasses.

LanteanPegasus · April 2021

Sephyr wrote: »

Yes.

[...]
Edit: Also for people saying that 'FF14's model kills your alts' -- that's actually not true. Their sub model allows for you to make eight characters per world for the full Standard sub. If you're paying the 12.99 sub, you can make one character per world for a total of eight. Given they have world visits and soon data center visits, you can still make alts just fine. In ESO you can't even get a character transfer and your DLCs bought through the crown store isn't covered on the whole account so rebuilding on EU or, even worse, on a different platform because they don't have crossplay features.

So I'd have to pay... 155,88 a year to get those 8 character slots that in ESO are icluded for free?? I guess it does other things as well (it's probably mandatory anyway to play the game at all ?), it just is a lot more money than I'd spend on a single video game each year.
With ESO I buy the chapters, and depending on how much I like them I get either a few months of ESO+ or half a year per year (with Greymoor the chapter sounded so meh that I bought it later on discount instead of instantly, and so had more money left for ESO+). Then I use the ESO+ crowns for the content DLC.
So there's no way I'd have those 8 character slots all the time, which probably goes for quite a few ESO players who don't sub all year round.

JustACasualTemplar · April 2021

Yes

I am one of those very few people that play ESO and have only one character.

The reasons are multiple: lack of time due to RL, the fact that i would rather quit the game than creating a new character and grinding the XP and skill points i need for it etc.

So yes, i would love to have the option to change my class.

It could be with a crown store token or something that would allow me to make this change once or twice a year or bought with gold, don't really care, but YES, i would love to be able to change my class from time to time.

My two gold pieces.

Elsonso · April 2021

No

CristyRazvan wrote: »

I am one of those very few people that play ESO and have only one character.

Is there a pill, or something, for that?

I don't think you are alone in that, so I would not say "very few". That might be the case around here, but my impression is that a lot of people create the character they want and stick with it. They are not interested in others.

Me? I have a small army of in-game admirers.

Anonx31st wrote: »

A hard no. I like the idea of having race and class identity tied to individual characters.

I am against the race change token. I am much more accepting of changing classes than I am changing race. Changing class is like getting a new job. Changing race is... well... like nothing.

For the record, I am against the whole class system in ESO to start with. The idea that they created an Elder Scrolls game based on a half dozen magic-centric classes frosts my window. To make it worse, they brought in stamina classes as an afterthought using morphs. Everyone still plays a magic-centric class, but half way in you get to switch to stamina? All the people on the team with good ideas were on vacation that day.

If they had used a "Create Your Own Class" system, we would not be having this discussion.

Inaya · April 2021

Other (Explain in comments)

I always loved the sub job part of FFXI as well as the way the diferent crafts interacted with each other. FFXIV didn't do it as well imo but I do like the idea.

Not sure how they could work it into ESO tho

Erelah · April 2021

Amottica wrote: »

From what I have seen we can play all roles and that is more that sufficient.

Also, FF14 has a very different server design in that you are only permitted to have one character per server.

This is not true. Both Final Fantasy XI, and Final Fantasy XIV allows people to have more multiple characters per server.

Zulera301 · April 2021

Yes

I wouldn't want to level them from lv.1 like you do on FFXIV but I wouldn't mind having access to them all, and levelling up the skill lines the same way you would level any other skill line.

While I know it would cause an uproar on the ESO community, I also really like that the classes determine your role. Tank classes have skills to hold aggro and to withstand heavy blows, healers have ample buffs and heal abilities, and DPS are designed to lay waste to mobs and bosses alike.
Of course there's still player skill, but you never have to worry about fake tanks and fake healers screwing your queues. So yeah, I care a lot less about your useless "new and unique" build, and more about you doing your job right. (And yes I practice what I preach)

Danikat · April 2021

No

I voted no but I suppose it would be more accurate to say I wouldn't use this system if it was available, I'm not necessarily opposed to other people having the option.

In Guild Wars 2 I have different characters for different elite specialisations (kind of like skill lines in ESO, but they have more of an impact on how your character plays) because I can't be bothered switching everything over, even with templates, and my characters personalities and backstories are important to me and it doesn't necessarily make sense for the same character to use all the specialisations.

I wouldn't use the option in ESO for similar reasons, I'd rather have distinct characters with skills and equipment which suits them than one character with an inventory full of stuff that's constantly being switched around because they're just some pixels for me to direct. But if other people want to do that I suppose as long as there were no negative consequences for me (like all the limitations Final Fantasy has, detailed in other posts or balance issues resulting from people switching classes for each encounter) then it could be ok to have the option there.

Tandor · April 2021

No

Elsonso wrote: »

CristyRazvan wrote: »

I am one of those very few people that play ESO and have only one character.

Is there a pill, or something, for that?

I don't think you are alone in that, so I would not say "very few". That might be the case around here, but my impression is that a lot of people create the character they want and stick with it. They are not interested in others.

Me? I have a small army of in-game admirers.

Anonx31st wrote: »

A hard no. I like the idea of having race and class identity tied to individual characters.

I am against the race change token. I am much more accepting of changing classes than I am changing race. Changing class is like getting a new job. Changing race is... well... like nothing.

For the record, I am against the whole class system in ESO to start with. The idea that they created an Elder Scrolls game based on a half dozen magic-centric classes frosts my window. To make it worse, they brought in stamina classes as an afterthought using morphs. Everyone still plays a magic-centric class, but half way in you get to switch to stamina? All the people on the team with good ideas were on vacation that day.

If they had used a "Create Your Own Class" system, we would not be having this discussion.

No, we'd be having a wholly different discussion about which skills template made up the only "class" that would not result in a player being kicked from a group or guild, dying fast in Cyrodiil, or failing in the leaderboards, and moaning about how everyone was the same. While if we had class change tokens in the Crown Store we'd have yet another different discussion about how ZOS kept changing the class balancing every patch in order to sell more tokens. At the moment all we have is people complaining that in order to have the character they want they have to play the game rather than grinding to 50 in a couple of days and being given everything else

!

Anonx31st · April 2021

No

Elsonso wrote: »

CristyRazvan wrote: »

I am one of those very few people that play ESO and have only one character.

Is there a pill, or something, for that?

I don't think you are alone in that, so I would not say "very few". That might be the case around here, but my impression is that a lot of people create the character they want and stick with it. They are not interested in others.

Me? I have a small army of in-game admirers.

Anonx31st wrote: »

A hard no. I like the idea of having race and class identity tied to individual characters.

I am against the race change token. I am much more accepting of changing classes than I am changing race. Changing class is like getting a new job. Changing race is... well... like nothing.

For the record, I am against the whole class system in ESO to start with. The idea that they created an Elder Scrolls game based on a half dozen magic-centric classes frosts my window. To make it worse, they brought in stamina classes as an afterthought using morphs. Everyone still plays a magic-centric class, but half way in you get to switch to stamina? All the people on the team with good ideas were on vacation that day.

If they had used a "Create Your Own Class" system, we would not be having this discussion.

A "Create Your Own Class" system isn't what Elder Scrolls was built upon. This game follows the tradition of Elder Scroll games which is why a huge portion of the player base plays it. Comparing this game to FF14 does this MMO a huge disservice. Just like FFXI (which I played extensively), the MMO's are totally different and shouldn't be compared to one another. They both offer great things.

Hal · April 2021

No

My characters are individuals - before they are components of a game.
Some of them purposefully cannot cook because that is a part of their personality.

Sometimes, I accidentally have a character learn something (which upsets me) ...

Instead of having an option to share all my characters motifs account wide, it'd be nice if there was an 'illiterate' toggle for characters in the settings menu. (So they don't use motifs/style pages/recipes/furnishings/etc.)
Much like the 'Don't steal random things that are laying around' toggle,
or the ' don't accidentally kill random npcs' toggle.
I'd like a 'Don't accidentally learn things via reading' toggle.

Since I do genuinely have a few GoldenBois/girls who don't murder-hobo it up, & some characters who naturally rolled a low INT score upon their (head-canon) character conception.

Malthorne · April 2021

Yes

I’d like to see this but I know it’s not gonna happen. However, I will settle for a class change token. Pls and ty

Sephyr · April 2021

Yes

LanteanPegasus wrote: »

Sephyr wrote: »

Yes.

[...]
Edit: Also for people saying that 'FF14's model kills your alts' -- that's actually not true. Their sub model allows for you to make eight characters per world for the full Standard sub. If you're paying the 12.99 sub, you can make one character per world for a total of eight. Given they have world visits and soon data center visits, you can still make alts just fine. In ESO you can't even get a character transfer and your DLCs bought through the crown store isn't covered on the whole account so rebuilding on EU or, even worse, on a different platform because they don't have crossplay features.

So I'd have to pay... 155,88 a year to get those 8 character slots that in ESO are icluded for free?? I guess it does other things as well (it's probably mandatory anyway to play the game at all ?), it just is a lot more money than I'd spend on a single video game each year.
With ESO I buy the chapters, and depending on how much I like them I get either a few months of ESO+ or half a year per year (with Greymoor the chapter sounded so meh that I bought it later on discount instead of instantly, and so had more money left for ESO+). Then I use the ESO+ crowns for the content DLC.
So there's no way I'd have those 8 character slots all the time, which probably goes for quite a few ESO players who don't sub all year round.

Final Fantasy 14 is a Sub to Play game. I'm not even going to bother with the rest of that misinformation.

Elsonso · April 2021

No

Anonx31st wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

CristyRazvan wrote: »

I am one of those very few people that play ESO and have only one character.

Is there a pill, or something, for that?

I don't think you are alone in that, so I would not say "very few". That might be the case around here, but my impression is that a lot of people create the character they want and stick with it. They are not interested in others.

Me? I have a small army of in-game admirers.

Anonx31st wrote: »

A hard no. I like the idea of having race and class identity tied to individual characters.

I am against the race change token. I am much more accepting of changing classes than I am changing race. Changing class is like getting a new job. Changing race is... well... like nothing.

For the record, I am against the whole class system in ESO to start with. The idea that they created an Elder Scrolls game based on a half dozen magic-centric classes frosts my window. To make it worse, they brought in stamina classes as an afterthought using morphs. Everyone still plays a magic-centric class, but half way in you get to switch to stamina? All the people on the team with good ideas were on vacation that day.

If they had used a "Create Your Own Class" system, we would not be having this discussion.

A "Create Your Own Class" system isn't what Elder Scrolls was built upon. This game follows the tradition of Elder Scroll games which is why a huge portion of the player base plays it. Comparing this game to FF14 does this MMO a huge disservice. Just like FFXI (which I played extensively), the MMO's are totally different and shouldn't be compared to one another. They both offer great things.

Create-your-own-class is very much a part of Elder Scrolls, at least from Daggerfall forward. Classes in the Elder Scrolls RPG games tend to be just skill templates. Except for Redguard, I think that ESO is the first mainstream Elder Scrolls RPG game since Arena to _not_ have create-your-own-class.

Edit: The larger point being that in this game, a skill-based create-your-own-class would have it's problems, but one of them would not be locking the player into a specific class. Respec would allow the character to freely change skills at any time.

Athan1 · April 2021

Yes

CristyRazvan wrote: »

I am one of those very few people that play ESO and have only one character.

The reasons are multiple: lack of time due to RL, the fact that i would rather quit the game than creating a new character and grinding the XP and skill points i need for it etc.

So yes, i would love to have the option to change my class.

It could be with a crown store token or something that would allow me to make this change once or twice a year or bought with gold, don't really care, but YES, i would love to be able to change my class from time to time.

My two gold pieces.

I fully agree, I just can't get into alts, and I basically treat my character as an alt, i.e. when I want a make-over I just change my race/appearance/name/spec/sets. Pricy but quite fun, and I still have my horse, research, skyshards, quests.

Anumaril · April 2021

Yes

In short, yes, though it would not be easy.

My current hiatus from the game is actually prompted from a feeling of constraint with the game. Part of what makes the Elder Scrolls so fascinating is the freedom available to the player in being able to be whatever you want to be. Even in the earlier games when there were 'classes', you could still decide to do whatever you wanted.

I like magic, and play a necromancer, but I also like daedric magic and summoning minions. I feel so constrained that I cannot do these two things with the same character in an Elder Scrolls game, especially since in the lore those two interests are under conjuration, a single school of magic.

The case of necromancy/daedric summoning is perhaps an obvious case where the player should be allowed to do both, but I'll give another example specific to myself: stealth. While I love magic, I also find stealth gameplay insanely fun, and in past ES games have routinely jumped between the two mid-character. If I'm feeling stealth-y I put on my thief outfit and assassinate, sneaking my way around with the stealth abilities I've gathered, and if I'm feeling magic-y I put on my robes and destroy my enemies with daedra, fire, frost, illusions, etc. This is simply not possible in ESO, and it's the reason why I feel so constrained with the game.

I was surprised to find that ZOS decided to take ESO in the same vanilla MMO direction of having classes, as classic MMO classes are so far from what the Elder Scrolls series has employed up until now. True, ESO has been much better at giving players freedom in their playstyles, though the foundations are still there, and the foundations are the problem from my perspective. That's why I think the game would be improved if classes were eliminated, and players could choose what abilities/branches to dabble with on their own, without the constraint of class lines.

I'm aware that this would make balancing a nightmare, but I also know that nothing is impossible, and with the proper amount of effort it could be done. For years I've told myself "don't worry, once spellcrafting is added you can play a necromancer and just create some sorcerer-looking abilities, or daedra summoning abilities, or stealth abilities, and play what you want that way". While there is truth in this, it is a bandage to a problem that doesn't need to be there to begin with, and more importantly we don't even know when/if spellcrafting will be added.

I'll also address the impending "just make an alt" response. To put it simply: ESO is not a very alt-friendly game. All sorts of things are restricted behind characters, rather than behind accounts. There is also a great deal of hassle involved in always having to switch between characters whenever you want to do different activities. When I am waiting in the 100-person long Cyrodiil queue on my PvP character, I don't have anything to do because I am not on my world content/PvE character, so questing is irrelevant. I'm just sitting there bored out of my mind. If I were to try to join Cyro on my world content/PvE character, the wait would be enjoyable, but I would be too weak in Cyro to contribute to my group or have any degree of fun. Splitting things up unnecessarily between characters is not something we should celebrate.

Alts shouldn't be the only solution to a problem like this that doesn't need to exist in the first place. It's a clunky solution that interrupts gameplay. If I want to play a stealth necromancer/dark arts user, I should be able to. I was able to in ESV: Skyrim, I was also able to in ESIV: Oblivion, and also in ESIII: Morrowind. I don't see why I am suddenly being restricted in ES: Online, other than because "it's an MMO, and MMOs have classes".