Things are too colour gimmick focused. Sorcerers aren't users of conjuration or destruction, they are users of purple. Nightblades are users of red etc.

They all feel cliché and gimmicky, not very Elder Scrolls. Necromancers being an obvious case of this. Instead of getting Elder Scrolls necromancers who are pretty gross appearing with flies, rot, zombies, ghosts and wraiths etc, we got Hollywood Halloween necromancers with teal colour as choice, skeleton hands, graveyards oooOoo spooky, scythes and other nonsense.

Stamina versions of classes are too much weapon abilities focused with little class options.

In my opinion they try to mix in too many themes into the few classes which do exist, which ultimately thins out their identity.

Take Warden for example, one tree is basically "Beast Taming" except there aren't any actual beasts aside from the bumbling bear and it's simply a collection of spells which count as pets. Then there's the plant-based healing tree, and then there's... Ice Magic for some reason? At least the first two themes fit into the Y'ffre 'Druid/spinner' description somewhat but Ice magic seems the polar opposite of plant magic, and it's their tanking tree too, except now it kinda buffs ice damage. It's just cluttered together.

If they gave enough skills for each of the classes' trees and made passive trees - not generic buffs like the CP system but passives which actually change how you play the class - and allowed us to SPECIALIZE in some areas, then classes would already feel more distinct. Problem is, you need at least one or more skills from each tree to achieve a competent build and then they made guild and weapon skill lines so important for filling in the gaps that you gimp yourself if you stick with only class skills. With only a small skill bar at any one time, this severely limits your creativity and build. This 'play how you want' philosophy was poorly interpreted into homogenizing everything. What is even the point of choosing a class when you end up using the same stuff in the end?

Nightblade is about the only class that looks/feels the most distinct, which is probably because their theme is simple; Shadow Magic. It's a class of magic they never really gave players before and they were able to do some cool things with it. Unfortunately, a lot of the unique things Nightblades had sorta got taken away from them over the years and given to other classes for sake of balance and homogenization. I mean let's be real, reworked Bound Armaments is mechanically similar to Grim focus. Nightblades also had access to some unique debuffs which got so homogenized and redistributed to other classes and sets to the point the debuffs don't even have value (still waiting for a buff which makes Reaper's Mark relevant again when everyone is running Kinras's Wrath and other bs).

I'm sure that with another year in this direction they will have made classes even more boring than they are now.

Nice Feedback we have gathered here. I want to clarify that I did not want to limit identity to any content, visual or endgame or quest. In my honest opinion the class identity is present in visuals (if skills are viable in the content) and certain buffs they provide. But nonetheless there could be more options in the overall game, certain shortcuts could be present in quests and/or mechanics

Raideen wrote: »

Sylvermynx wrote: »

Raideen wrote: »

Man, I am at pulling part of the video. This really makes me miss my hunter in WOW (old school, not the current game).
I loved pulling mobs for the tank and CCing, or even off tanking with my PET.

I wish I could control my pets in ESO like I could in wow.

QFT.

It really annoys me how pets in ESO are a complete afterthought. There is no way to control them reliably, to keep them on the desired target, ESPECIALLY not in PVP where you can die in a global.

In wow I had macros (made in game with their macro window). I made an ATTACK macro and a PASSIVE macro

ATTACK
/petattack
/mendpet

PASSIVE
/petfollow
/petpassive
/mendpet

I bound those two one key on my mouse. Thumb button for attack, Shift modifer thumb button for pet passive/follow.

In 17 years of that game, I have never used pets on "auto" and it annoys the heck out of me on my sorc and warden. Hitting Y and LMB is too slow in fast paced combat.

I really wish we could use modifers in this game for keybinds. Its annoyed me since my first day in ESO 4+ years ago

The same can be said about the companions in ESO. We only have control over them being present and use of their ultimate. I cannot recall any other control we have over what they do.

Absolutely not. Anyone who has played Elder Scroll games know for a fact how limited class system is in ESO and your are forced to play a certain way and pigeon holed into certain builds.

It probably has the least class identity of any MMORPG I've played. Some of the reasons for that:

1 - The majority of skills in the game are available to every class (skills for world, guild, weapon, armour, alliance war, etc)

2 - Every class can use all the weapons and all armour weights.

3 - Every class can be any race.

4 - All classes can do all roles, albeit some are better at certain things than others. Plus there are only 3 roles, some games separate things like buffing/debuffing/CC into their own classes/ roles.

5 - Every class uses the same mechanics (stamina, magicka, etc)

Starlight_Knight wrote: »

No, classes have gradually had their identity taken away over time untill now they are all the same, if anyone asked me what class to play coming into ESO i would just ask what their favorate colour is.
Oh you like red, play a nightblade.

I remember how cool it was what the DK could use igneous weapons and eveyone had fire damage added to their attacks.
When the warden had a delay on cliff racer instead of an homogonised class spammable.
When the templar could use Sun Shield and be unique in its pvp play style
the list goes on,

Every class uses the same skills, the same gear the same rotation. if you want to run something different and embrace whats left of your class identity, you do so at a cost.

AGREE,

There is no any deep involvemnt into class route, most of the skills are similar between classes.

Distribute damage sort between classes, and only leaving few of them as generic(like poision, physical, magical)

Create damages like: holly, dark, undead, water, earth exclusive for classes

I think the best way to make this different is changing by costumization of the weapon skills

So even if there is the same weapon, there should be different skills/ way of use for different class


I think there should be created a special commision for this, discuse this and try to remake each class one by one think what they really want from each class, how they expect them how the community see it, if its match, if really a "NightBlade/Neceo/dk/etc" has role relation with the skills, what should mark difference,etc

ResidentContrarian wrote: »

Mainly because gear is playing the game now. Gear makes too much of an impact right now, and it has for a while.

This has bothered me for the longest time. It has always been about the sets you are wearing and not the class you are playing.

It would seem the dev team considers proc sets - or sets in general - to be the same as expanding your character' "skills" (or abilities, talents, whatever you want to call them). The reason why I think this, is the emphasis on new sets with each update. They never added anything directly combat related after Summerset if we don't count Necro class, but even Necro was subjected to the homogenization that killed off all other class identity. Psijic skill line only added one clunky offensive skill too which is literally only used in niche setups or if nothing better is available.

Kwoung wrote: »

My answer to the question...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXlSBJRwYAY

I've recently gone back to EQ, and even a 23 year old game is still leagues better than ESO.

Challenging overland that is accessible for all levels. Mobs that actually have unique tactics that you have to strategize for. Top notch class identity.

Ippokrates wrote: »

TES in general do not have as strong class identity as for example D&D. Sure, there were classes in pre-Skyrim games, but all of them use the same collection of skills, just in different mix.

I haven't played TES2:Daggerfall yet and so can't speak from experience about it, but classes in TES1:Arena seem to have a fair amount of identity, inasmuch as your class determines which types of armor you can wear, which types if weapons you can use, which types of shields you can use, whether or not you can cast spells on your own, and how your maximum spell power (a.k.a. "magicka") relates to your Intelligence-- plus, some classes have special abilities, such as Knights having the ability to repair their own armor, weapons, and shields.

Honestly, it's one of those "yes and no" answers.

If Identity is defined as clearly recognizable aesthetic through colors and visuals, then yes, there is strong identity. Templars are yellow, DKs are orange, Sorcs are Purple, and so on. And there are abilities that are unique to each class that clearly define that class as being different than the others. But that has decreased gradually as the standardization efforts have been made to classify skills within different categories.

Which comes to that "no" part. Once you start digging below the first several surface layers, the identity that each class has starts to feel more like a facade than anything significant in determining how one class plays versus the other. Every DPS, Stam, Mag, Hybrid, etc. lays down 1-3 ground AoE DoTs, applies 1-2 more dots, then hits their spammable 6-10 times in a row depending on duration of DoTs. PVP you have 3-ish abilities you time to hit at the same time or close to that. That's pretty much it. Sure, that's the partly the current meta, but even during Scalebreaker everyone more or less functioned the same way. Classes fall in and out of popularity and usefulness based on what nerfs were handed out and how well they appeal to the current meta.

Stamina suffers from identity crises because they were never part of the classes. The building blocks of a Warrior were kept as universal skill trees. The building blocks of a Mage, however, were chopped up and their parts divided up and mixed with more traditional MMO themes to create casseroles that became the classes.

Now, consider in Oblivion how classes were appropriate mixes of Warrior, Mage, and Thief skills based on the play-style of that class. They weren't restrictive, because openness is a feature of TES games, but they did prefer certain skills over the others.

What ESO should have done, IMO, is provided each of the Weapon abilities as Fighter's Guild skill trees, each of the Schools of Magic as Mage's Guild skill trees, and had an ample helping of Legerdemain skill trees rather than shoving Stealth, Lockpicking, Mercantile, and more into one singular skill tree. Then created classes that provided bonuses to some of those skill lines based on the classes from Oblivion (3, 4, 5?). Each class then could have then been given 1-unique "thematic" skill line that further created identity.

Sure, that method might have led to some classes being better at certain roles than others and other classes seemingly falling into more RP roles. But, each class would have had a stronger sense of identity. By sticking with bonuses and not locking skills to classes, the openness would have been left open so a Thief could still function as a DPS, but maybe not as effectively as a Warrior or a Mage.

After seeing how other games handle identity, nope.

Most classes are copy paste ideas with different animation skins.