merpins wrote: »

Before you brandish your pitchforks for suggesting an outlandish idea, let me explain. Class identity right now is a problem in this game. Some have a strong identity. Some don't and just feel confused. Another problem is skill lines. Zos is showing this problem with the next update; they already made a new class last major update, so making another to add more skill lines to the game would be too much. Adding a new weapon skill line would cause a ton more work on the backend than adding the skill line itself due to the nature of having a long-running game with a lot of content, adding those weapons all throughout the game would prove more challenging than making the skill line.

So what does Zos do with all this in mind? Spellcrafting. Well, Scribing I guess. They add new skills to existing skill lines and make those skills variable so you, the player, can customize them how you want. You'll be stuck with the functionality of the skills you get, sure; can't make a backflip skill into a long range attack skill after all, but it kind of addresses the problems I mentioned above. They can add more to what's there, which circumvents the problem... But doesn't really address other problems. Like class identity, or class imbalance, or the fact that they can't really add new skill lines to the game without either a ton of back-end work, or being forced to make 3 at once.

So the suggestion in the title stands. Remove Classes. I've seen the suggestion before and over the last 6 months or so I've thought about it and really begun to felt it would bring a lot of life to the game. Here's the pitch: rather than picking a class when you make a new character, you instead pick 3 skill lines from the class themes. The current classes that exist are just the overarching themes for their skill lines. Nightblade is the theme for its current skill lines, Sorcerer for its skills, and so on. What this change would bring to the table for the developers is it would give Zos the ability to add more skill lines to the game without the restrictions that they had before. They could add a fourth skill line to every class in the game, and could do it one at a time rather than all at once, without making one class more powerful than another. Sorcerer doesn't have a dedicated healer skill line, but with themes, Zos could make one. Warden never got a good plant-based damage skill line. It could get that. It won't make one class stronger than another, you get three choices regardless of what those choices are. You could pick Assassin, Animal Companions from Warden, and Aedric Spear from Templar, or any combination of 3, allowing for a ton of class versatility. This allows you the player to choose your class identity like previous elder scrolls titles, rather than being forced one from the beginning.

Not only would Zos get the ability to make new skill lines for existing classes, but they'd be able to make new class themes without releasing 3 skill lines. Arcanist is great, don't get me wrong. But the fact that we need to wait 3-5 years between classes is a long wait, and it's a lot of development that Zos needs to put in to one theme. They could release a Monk class theme with one skill line available at first, and release more skill lines later. They could release new weapon skill lines under a weapon theme, allowing them to add new weapons without having to add those weapons to all content; sure, you'd have to pick this theme meaning it's not as versatile as actual weapon skill lines, but it would be possible. Additionally, they'd finally be able to add class change tokens to the cash shop, since it would make more sense with the change.

There are downsides here, of course. Balancing the whole thing would prove difficult I'm sure. But with the limit to the skills you can slot on your front and back bar, the fact that you only get 3 skill line choices, it probably wouldn't be too broken. And it's much easier to balance one skill line at a time than a whole class, considering the fact that class balances can kill a whole class. With themes, balance changes can't kill a class anymore. It would bring about a period of time where balance patches become common, and classes see a lot of changes throughout a year or two. More so than in recent memory. But once that initial period of balance changes ends, you'd have a system that's much easier to balance than the current system. Another downside would be the class change token. It would probably be locked behind the cash shop, but I mean... We've been asking for that in the cash shop for years already. I don't see it as much of a problem, so long as Zos allows one free change per character that you already have upon release of this system.

Nihilr wrote: »

People saying it would remove class identity even more:

But what makes class identity? Only being able to select certain skills/buffs accessible only to that class? And when those skills get identified as the best or meta, what then? EVERYONE STARTS TO PLAY THAT CLASS ONLY. Class variety gone. Everyone is ____ flavor this Chapter now.

It's such a lazy response. If people are only playing the game to be competitive, then yeah, there will always be the meta, and 85% of those players will figure it out and use it.



Now for the rest of us, we just want the game to be customizable as previous Elder Scrolls titles. If it "removes" class identity further, whatever. You are letting others dictate how to play then, so you can be "top tier". But most players in this game just enjoy the lore/stories/characters/maps/quests/aesthetics etc. Majority wins 🤷‍♀️