I don't have a problem with Subclassing per se, and I'm happy that it allows people to make the characters they want. I was even considering it myself on a few of my alts, but I actually found some creative ways to combine their sets and Scribed skills to get me what I want without changing lines (because I do like the pure lines). Like my Sorc is an Elementalist monk with his three lines, but I've got his weapons, Scribed skills, and and sets to allow him to throw out fire, ice, lightning, rock, air, earth all at the same time, and that's without changing anything.

My big concern about Subclassing is balance. Sure, some people will be able to get vastly higher damage (damage levels that should honestly not be possible), but let's not pretend that everyone who Subclasses will get increased damage. You really do have to know the interplay between Class skills and passives to squeeze out that damage and what works and what can be sacrificed... which means the only people who will get the 50k extra DPS will be the sweaty tryhards already. More casual players will likely not see much damage increase because they're picking lines more based on appeal than min-maxing, and likely they'll see damage losses because of nerfs to individual lines because of aforementioned sweaty tryhards.

Essentially, anyone who thinks that Subclassing will be an easy ticket to trifectas (like the release of Arcanist and the release of Oakensoul and the release of Hybridization...) is not going to get that. The way that this is set up and being tested, you do need to be a min-maxer to get that insane damage, and if you're just picking your skills based on what looks fun or what someone told you to take, you're not going to be getting much out of it that you don't already have. However, the sweaty groups are going to min-max, which means their basic requirements are going to go up. As such, this is going to end up widening the gap between the casual players and the endgamers.

Another thing to watch out for: you do have to make sacrifices to add a Subclass line. The people doing 170k on PTS are doing so because they toss all of their survivability for raw damage. You can't do that in practice when you're soloing stuff. It's a pure glass cannon build. But... if they have that build in a trial or ballgroup where you have healers making you unkillable by feeding you heals and shields, then you get all the power with no drawbacks. This means that Subclassing will not really help people much who are already dying to mechanics or other things, but the well-coordinated groups will be able to do much much more. Again, this is serving to widen the gap between solo players and groups.

I do wish that ZOS would have planned this better before releasing it to PTS. We'll see a bunch of combat changes (read: major nerfs) next monday with the new patch, and that's again only going ot mean that if you choose not to Subclass that your effectiveness is going to be far less than what it is now - they already hit DKs hard with sustain nerfs (making it so they almost are required to run a heavy attack build to be able to cast any of their expensive skills) and straight up said No-Pet Sorcs are the wrong way to play ("Those who do not wish to interact with the pet gameplay can now replace this skill line as a whole").

We'll see what happens, but I'm not going to jump on the "oh, now everyone can do all the trifectas!" train. After all, Arcanist released and... that didn't happen. On-release Oakensoul... also make it easy for min-maxers to churn out IRs... and not the casuals.

all that being said, im also happy about subclassing but only if the majority of players benefit from the system (minus myself), but im not seeing how this is good for new players if someone can explain i would appreciate it

shadyjane62 wrote: »

I am excited to save so much money not buying the season thing and no longer subbing.

the reason my refund was denied was that i had played the pass for over 10k hours i thought there was no point in arguing as the pass does actually include content already played before the purchase like the 2 dungeons. like a dufus i had got it as soon as released like usual and for some reason thought i was getting a pre-purchase, and felt arguing the point that i played those before the purchase would go nowhere and that my reason for refund as not going to enjoy what is on the horizon was pointless

Phen0meenal wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

This will ruin my Characters' identities and I will not participate in it.

It was funny seeing people react this exact same way regarding account-wide achievements because they'd have titles they just.. didn't have to use.

*want to use (where as subclassing destroys toon id's within thier own accounts too) e'g thinking my nb can do exectly the same thing as my templar but better. or saying a big difference is choosing one class as the first class add 2 skill lines, then choosing a diffent class with the others skill lines and be prepared to believe they are different in some way. when infact the more option given actually means less identity

I am super excited for classes; I built my character identities as stories BEFORE picking their class, and at one point, had 4 different classes for one character because I couldn't decide which fit best!

You should see the hoop-jumping I had to do to get similar names...

fortunately, now they can manifest their identity more fully than they could ever before, thanks to subclassing! Very excited.

Phen0meenal wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

This will ruin my Characters' identities and I will not participate in it.

It was funny seeing people react this exact same way regarding account-wide achievements because they'd have titles they just.. didn't have to use.

Reductionist argument.

The problems people had with AWA was not “waa I don’t want that title on this character!!!1!1” It was “How can I track who did what anymore?”

The Achieves page used to also be the character history tracker (which is why the PubDun group events and Enchanting Rune Translations and Museum achievements are all still character-based, since the achieves is the only tracker. So yes, people *lost* something.

The other caution that people threw out was that those sweaty endgamers would be less inclined to repeat trifectas and bring new people along since they never got the dopamine hit of “achievement get!” when coming on a different role or class. As such, people cautioned that fewer people would bring new players into trifecta runs. Which is precisely what happened - fewer people are rerunning content, and then U35 got a lot of those endgamers to end their game completely.

The PTS thread for AWA did raise this issue, and even suggested that it end up working like the old “Account-wide achievements” addon, so you still had the points on all characters, but it would pop and show you got it a second (or third or fifth) time on this other character. They highlighted a post from Blizzard when WoW did it, and those devs specifically said

However, and this is important, you will still see the achievement toast (the pop-up notification) if a second or subsequent character completes the achievement. We think it’s still important to recognize milestones like reaching level 80, maxing out a profession, or killing a raid boss for the first time. It's fun to have everyone congratulate you when you get the toast.

That was the problem. Not just “waa but muh titles.”

I’ve had an addon since then to keep track of which delves my characters have done vs not so I can see what skyshards or quests I can still do at a glance. AWA has also still made the grow-giant-by-eating-the-WSkyrim-cheese a once-per-account thing and not expanded that. You also get the “why did you steal from me” from the basegame random encounters on everyone, even your wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly lawful good character.

But please don’t reduce legitimate complaints to strawmen just because you don’t play the same way someone else does.

It is kind of ironic how a lot of forum posts here, no mater the topic, end up about min/max end game balance, trifecta's, account wide achievements or OneTamriel.

We went from someone who expressed his excitement for subclassing to lists of complaints from updates more than 3 years ago that will never be undone. The next 5 years will probably be threads about the demons subclassing brought to some people. It's just a game...

Daoin wrote: »

its my belief ZOS are trying to attract a new generation of players to eso not worry about the current one with this change

They are. And it is kind of smart too. Like with Oblivion remastered a whole new young generation gets to play this. People who possibly never played an Elder Scrolls game. If they like it and finish it and would like more Elder Scrolls, chances are they take a look at ESO (cause ES6 is still years away).

They (the devs) said this in the Kinda Funny podcast, they want to be an Elder Scrolls game first and an MMO second. That is why they are doubling down on stuff like subclassing and scribing for the basegame.

Phen0meenal wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

This will ruin my Characters' identities and I will not participate in it.

It was funny seeing people react this exact same way regarding account-wide achievements because they'd have titles they just.. didn't have to use.

There is a huge difference between these. AWA changed how achievements were acquired and I don't like how it auto completes World Bosses and Delves and Dolmens etc. as we get close to them. But it didn't change who our characters are.

Subclassing completely breaks down the class system and alters how we actually play our characters. What is the point of my 7 Characters now that all have been developed to be their chosen class? If they can all just be carbon copies of each other then why even have alts?

This is by far the worst change I've seen in all my years of playing. This may be the deal breaker for me.

OldStygian wrote: »

Yeah I'm really looking forward to it, I've wanted more freedom with skill selection since I started playing. I'd actually stopped playing ESO a couple of months ago, moving on to another game. This has brought my interest back to ESO. Am looking forward to tinkering with it, playing around with toons that have basically had the same setups for years now.

Can't wait


.

I know some of my friends will finally be coming back to ESO to get in on the fun 😁

NoSoup wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

This will ruin my Characters' identities and I will not participate in it.

Well thats the great thing about it, you don't have to if you don't want to.....

That’s actually 100% false if you participate in end game group content where performance matters.

Quoted post has been removed

Classes aren't foreign to The Elder Scrolls games. Skyrim is the only TES game where players didn't have classes.

SilverBride wrote: »

Quoted post has been removed

This isn't a TES single player game. It is ESO and was released with a Class system and has been this way for 11 years now. It should not be pulled apart into something unrecognizable.

I don't think TESO will become unrecognizable just because of subclassing, nor do I think it should stay completely unchanged. If it had only been out for 9 years, would subclassing be bad? 5 years? 1 year? 6 months? "It's been this way since launch" isn't a great argument - after all, Oblivion had potato faces for 20 years - should they have left them in the Remaster?

Single player vs. multi-player is a non-sequitur unless you can connect it back to subclassing; there are class-less MMOs and class-ful single-player games.

DenverRalphy wrote: »

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Pure Classes should remain as they are and their skill lines should not be weakened to accommodate a playstyle many of us don't even want.

Pure classes should be destroyed because they represented a playstyle foreign to the Elder Scrolls that many of us TES fans don't want.

Classes aren't foreign to The Elder Scrolls games. Skyrim is the only TES game where players didn't have classes.

Purely restrictive classes are absolutely foreign. Did you know a Nightblade in Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim can summon daedra? Did you know a summoner could cloak? A holy knight summon a skeleton, or a necromancer use the Blazing Spear flame-damage spell? All classes do (and did) in Oblivion was let certain skills start higher and advance faster; the extra skill point costs for off-class skill lines in ESO is actually quite a good example of following that model.

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

Purely restrictive classes are absolutely foreign. Did you know a Nightblade in Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim can summon daedra? Did you know a summoner could cloak? A holy knight summon a skeleton, or a necromancer use the Blazing Spear flame-damage spell? All classes do (and did) in Oblivion was let certain skills start higher and advance faster; the extra skill point costs for off-class skill lines in ESO is actually quite a good example of following that model.

Foreign to who? Almost every MMO I've played had class systems.

And this is not Morrowind or Oblivion or Skyrim. It is ESO and has had classes since it's beginning. If they wanted it to emulate those other games it should have been established that way from the start, not 11 years later after we have invested a lot into developing our Characters with classes.