Ability altering sets would be interesting. Kind of reminds me of some of the class specific armors of Diablo III. I had a lot of fun with those sets in that game.

Ooo, this is an awesome idea and could be a great avenue to take now that they've covered all the ability altering weapon sets. This is actually what I was hoping mythics could be, but they ended up less niche imo.

I'm thinking about how Borderlands handles class items that completely change how the classes function. It could be really cool to have an item that for example:

• Sorcerer: All shock damage has a 10% chance to bounce lightning to up to 4 nearby enemies for X shock damage, this effect can bounce to the original enemy. All physical damage has a 10% chance to crush an enemy taking X damage over 6 seconds, this effect can stack up to 3 times.

Class specific armor is a thing in WoW and would be good in ESO too, if they wouldn't allow it to be used as appearance customization by other classes, even at the outfitter.

I've always liked how classes could be distinguished by their armor in WoW. It gave another player more identity.

Runefang wrote: »

ESO has, since inception, never made class a factor in any part of the game. Nobody knows you're a warden, dragonknight etc. There are no items, no quests, no NPC comments related to your class at all.

I don't know why, but there it is and I doubt it'll change.

And I've asked for class ability altering gear for years.

This is exactly one of my petpeeves. Characters have close to no identity in ESO. You can see a character run around in a heavy armor appearance with a staff sheathed on their back not knowing if this is a sorcerer or either a tank, healer or dps. Heck, might as well be a dragon knight, a templar or any other class.
I leveled all classes and they pretty much look and play the same. Even Mag or Stam doesn't make much difference.
At least not enough to make playing all classes a challenge.

Leftover_Pizza wrote: »

This is exactly one of my petpeeves. Characters have close to no identity in ESO. You can see a character run around in a heavy armor appearance with a staff sheathed on their back not knowing if this is a sorcerer or either a tank, healer or dps. Heck, might as well be a dragon knight, a templar or any other class.
I leveled all classes and they pretty much look and play the same. Even Mag or Stam doesn't make much difference.
At least not enough to make playing all classes a challenge.

Which fits Elder Scrolls. Skills aren't really restricted in TES, everyone can learn to use fire based destruction magic, not only some "dragon knights". It's even a bit weird that they have seperated fire, shock and frost destruction magic to three different classes. A mage can use light, medium or heavy armour. Having the classes with restricted skills in ESO is new to the world of TES.

I definitely wouldn't want motifs limited to classes, because they should be available to all. Sets? Eh, we already have sets that are more useful for specific classes but I suppose I'm not against them. They would likely be nerfed to being useless anyway.

I don't care for it personally. I don't want someone deciding what my DK should look like, or Templar, etc. and it would annoy me to no end if the set looked better elsewhere and I couldn't use it there.

Now having some ability to customize the colors associated with your class is more interesting to me. Even if they just gave us a couple options instead of unlimited color choices to keep the theme of classes alive it could be cool.

I honestly don't see much point in it. Unless it offered serious buffs and bonuses to all your Class skills, you'd likely still be better off using normal sets. And if they DID give you such serious bonuses to use, then literally everyone would use them and there'd be 0 diversity. Unless it was locked behind hard content, which a lot of people wouldn't be able to complete, which...armor that would give such big boosts shouldn't be something only a smaller portion of the population could obtain, especially since those sorts of boosts would benefit a lot of people who could use them the most (people having a hard time with normal dungeons, or more likely normal DLC dungeons).

Varana wrote: »

Classes are a crutch. If possible, they should go away.

You see someone in heavy armour with a staff and can't tell whether they're sorceror or something else? Or what role they queue for?

Great!

That's how it should be.
You are what you do and what abilities you have. ESO lets you play all roles on all classes, almost equally as well, plus several mixed roles. That is a feature and should be strengthened. Tanking, healing, or dealing damage are roles on a spectrum, quick&dirty categories for easy groupfinding, not separate things.

Elder Scrolls games have started to move away from class-based systems since Daggerfall. ESO is an outlier in that regard, and classes shouldn't be emphasized any more.

I tend to agree with you when it comes to the legacy or original classes. The Warden and the Necromancer seem to have a much stronger class identity than the legacy classes. The legacy classes seem to be more dependent on other skill lines than the two expansion classes, the Warden and the Necromancer. If anything, the ESO devs are making classes more, not less important.

IMHO, the big difference between the legacy classes and the new classes is dependency on other skill lines or a lack thereof. The Warden and Necromancer are more self-sufficient, and have less dependency on other skill lines than the legacy classes are. For example, I can heal with all Warden abilities on my skill bar more effectively than by than I can with my Templar with all class abilities equipped. Expansion class abilities tend to be more versatile then legacy class abilities. For example Fungal Growth vs Healing Ritual. Enchanted Growth, the morph of Fungal Growth provides a 15% buff in magicka and stamina recovery where healing ritual provides a speed buff or a single target outside of range healed. In order to get a magicka and stamina regen buff and and a multi-target or ae heal, the templar must use Healing Ritual and Luminous Shards or Necrotic Orb. Try playing a Warden or Necromancer using only class abilities and see how it feels compared to one of the legacy classes. To me the legacy classes feel incomplete but the Warden and Necro feel complete in terms of synergy and rotation, they seem to play much more smoothly than the legacy classes.

The Warden and Necromancer would adapt especially well to class armor and weapons. The legacy classes frankly need a buff compared to the expansion classes . The legacy classes are not poorly designed just differently designed. Class armor and weapon buffs are one way to bring the legacy classes into parity with the Warden and Necromancer.

I find myself wanting to play my legacy class characters less and less and my expansion class characters more and more because of the stronger class identity of the expansion classes.

Runefang wrote: »

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

Leftover_Pizza wrote: »

This is exactly one of my petpeeves. Characters have close to no identity in ESO. You can see a character run around in a heavy armor appearance with a staff sheathed on their back not knowing if this is a sorcerer or either a tank, healer or dps. Heck, might as well be a dragon knight, a templar or any other class.
I leveled all classes and they pretty much look and play the same. Even Mag or Stam doesn't make much difference.
At least not enough to make playing all classes a challenge.

Which fits Elder Scrolls. Skills aren't really restricted in TES, everyone can learn to use fire based destruction magic, not only some "dragon knights". It's even a bit weird that they have seperated fire, shock and frost destruction magic to three different classes. A mage can use light, medium or heavy armour. Having the classes with restricted skills in ESO is new to the world of TES.

I definitely wouldn't want motifs limited to classes, because they should be available to all. Sets? Eh, we already have sets that are more useful for specific classes but I suppose I'm not against them. They would likely be nerfed to being useless anyway.

In TES you, the main character, learn everything you want to. The reality is no NPC knows everything, because like in real life, they have to specialise in a few things. This is what the class system is meant to represent for TESO, you have specialised in a few things. I don't see why they couldn't then link some quests or items to that specialisation and still not fit the lore of TES.

Yes, normal people in Tamriel rarely know every damn skilline, but they can learn whichever. Nothing stops a sneaky assassin to learn a bit of conjuration, or a priest of the divines to learn a little bit of destruction.
As @Varana said, classes are a crutch and ESO is the outlier with having them restricting characters.

It's why I'm strongly against when people want skillines that should be available to everyone added to some new class. Like unarmed to some monk, when unarmed should be available to every class.

So many abilities and sets in the game already have no distinct benefit. I don't see why we need another list of them. As it is, ZoS has clearly more than exhausted their ideas for mechanics in this game.

Leftover_Pizza wrote: »

Runefang wrote: »

ESO has, since inception, never made class a factor in any part of the game. Nobody knows you're a warden, dragonknight etc. There are no items, no quests, no NPC comments related to your class at all.

I don't know why, but there it is and I doubt it'll change.

And I've asked for class ability altering gear for years.

This is exactly one of my petpeeves. Characters have close to no identity in ESO. You can see a character run around in a heavy armor appearance with a staff sheathed on their back not knowing if this is a sorcerer or either a tank, healer or dps. Heck, might as well be a dragon knight, a templar or any other class.
I leveled all classes and they pretty much look and play the same. Even Mag or Stam doesn't make much difference.
At least not enough to make playing all classes a challenge.

Actually, I feel the opposite. I feel characters have more identity because I am allowed to dress them in whatever individual style pleases me and expresses their personality, rather than being forced into a steryotype by the developer that homogenizes the look of classes until they are all the same. The liberty ESO offers in terms of allowing characters to wear any motif in any weight is amazing and means I don't have to play in outfits I hate simply because the company thinks "this is what a mage should look like, this is what a tank should look like" ext.

When I hear people ask for class bound, class specific looks...all I can imagine is countless clones everywhere, like Mirri and Bastian, that totally rob people of the opportunity for choice and uniqueness. I don't want to know what class you play at a glance, and if people really feel the need to know, then maybe something unobtrusive like an icon added to the UI when you mouse over a character could be added.

ESO is incredibly unique in the regard that it does not force a specific appearance or gear on a specific role and that's a great thing. This makes it unique among its competitors. It doesn't need to be like other games that do this constantly.

I wouldn't mind unique cosmetics for each class. Like the sorc and wardens could have unique skins for their summons, or dragon knights could have some unique dragon wings skins. Or other costumes and adornments. Something that only someone from each class can wear to show off. It doesn't have to change anything for their abilities. But some class specific things in the game could be neat.

I am not advocating game-breaking changes. What I am advocating is mostly cosmetic in terms of motifs and effects. Class sets should be a side-grade or minimal upgrade from existing armor, jewelry and weapon sets.

We already have ability altering sets - arena weapons. Yes, they're not taking something away but add on top so technically it's not altering but adding. "But it's only for non class abilities" i hear you and you're right, i'm absolutely in for even more equip that can change abilities and not only weapons but armor and jewelry too.

Having only three choices for most skills to work (basic + 2x morph) is no longer that original, having sets giving us more options to this would be a big win. Plus they don't need to make new skill lines as they can simply modify old ones with ability-altering sets, i'm sold to that idea.