On the one hand it's exciting and creative--I know people say the PvE endgame meta will be just a couple of combos, but the theory-crafting for PvP and for solo content like IA, will be interesting and fun. It will be particularly helpful for solo players wanting to clear harder content on their own as well. I personally love playing with alt characters, and over the years played different DDs depending on meta, so for me it's cool to be able to use skills that I used to slot on other characters in different times. Sure, finding a proper rotation and getting used to it will take time, but it's also exciting. Aside from purely combat-related gameplay, it will also be creative for other stuff, like thieving, heists, speed/farming, and so on.

On the other hand, it will be a difficult and lengthy process to balance everything, and it will be especially OP for ball groups, which are already a big problem in Cyrodill and killing all the fun there. Also, on the technical side, I anticipate a lot of issues and bugs and I don't know if ZOS can clean these up before the update hits live. No matter how exciting a change is, if you can't actually play properly because of bugs, it doesn't matter.

Finally, another negative is the fact that class archetypes and what made their identity unique: the aesthetic, animations, colors, feel etc., are definitely gone now, and this is sad, because the game was made with them in mind, and I liked how players playing the same role on different classes (because they each liked their given class), could both make it work, while bringing something unique to the table at the same time. Now that unique flavour will be gone, and unless someone keeps their toons pure, no one will be a 'DK main' and so on, anymore. It's an end of an era, and a start of a different one. I only hope that ZOS is doing this change for the right reasons, ie., the health and future of the game, and because it fits in the ESO world both in combat mechanics and lore, and just not to mimic other MMOs that may be more popular and that have this feature.

It’s obviously going to be an absolute disaster for months on end. We’ll see if they can fix it once the genie is out of the bottle.

Neutral. We don't know how it'll truly affect things until it's live, the pts can only show us so much.

"Jaimeh wrote: »

It will be particularly helpful for solo players wanting to clear harder content on their own as well.

Solo players completing content that was previously too difficult was the purpose of the Oakensoul ring so there is no reason to destroy a game’s identity and combat system to accomplish what already happened in U35.

Having sat on it for a while, I'm less excited than I was after the announcement. Seeing a lot of the PTS feedback and theorycrafting doesn't bode well. Seems like build variety will take a hit, for content where builds matter. I was already not a fan of the skill point and experience point limitations, just seems like a compromised solution. Feel like they should've gone completely classless, but couldn't for technical reasons.

good idea, but needs some improvements to bring other dps skills than fatecarver to par.

Else there is only one possible build (arcanist + nightblade + templar)

It's weird that they would prematurely release something so divisive and force it on players when so many have said that multiclassing isn't ready yet, it's a good idea, but the current implementation is grossly unbalanced, introduces a huge power surge, but makes pure classes less powerful and less fun.

It will definitely be a lot less fun for me.

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

PDarkBHood wrote: »

And remember, you don't need to use subclassing if you don't want to. And I am glad some of these classes are getting nerfed, as they were too powerful[...]

You made your first sentence with your 2nd sentence invalid already.
If pure classes are nerfed, as you said, then players can't ignore subclassing, as they will fall behind.
With class nerfes you are pretty much forced to play subclasses then.

"Fall behind" according to what? Is there a race?

Is day-to-day PVE disguised competitive PVP in some way I don't realize?

Talking about progress- and endgame content.
If you stay with a pure class, while everything is nerfed due to subclassing, then you are falling behind compared to those, who have a optimised subclass- combo.

But there is a poll currently going on, asking how often players are playing solo.
And as I noticed, that more than 80% are mainly playing solo and therefore not even knowing what a trial is, then i can understand the way the development goes and why some players give a damn about endgame content and it's players.

True, but this has been true subclassing or no.

People who play how they prefer to play instead of optimizing mechanics aren't going to be as optimal as people who optimize mechanics. This is true regardless of game, genre, developer, heck it's even true in tabletop games and board games and card games.

It's just how it is, and shall forever be. Claiming a mechanic is bad because it is this means you will never play any games at all, because all game mechanics invariably result in an unbalanced game (if there are any choices involved in playing at all, so maybe Chutes and Ladders is balanced).

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

PDarkBHood wrote: »

And remember, you don't need to use subclassing if you don't want to. And I am glad some of these classes are getting nerfed, as they were too powerful[...]

You made your first sentence with your 2nd sentence invalid already.
If pure classes are nerfed, as you said, then players can't ignore subclassing, as they will fall behind.
With class nerfes you are pretty much forced to play subclasses then.

"Fall behind" according to what? Is there a race?

Is day-to-day PVE disguised competitive PVP in some way I don't realize?

It's very strange that many people, especially here on the forum, don't understand some simple things. You are responsible for your own effectiveness. There are a lot of people in the game for whom this matters.

Yes, and they will have to weigh how much they care about their own effectiveness versus how much they care about being on theme.

But they have always had and will always have to make that weighting in any game they play, so I am not so sure why subclassing specifically is catching so much flak.

So far, I have built a Templar with the Sorc subclass. Every enemy in PVE is melted in seconds with my offensive abilities. I kill world bosses in a fraction of the time I normally would using a pure Templar build. But since I play PCNA Cyro almost exclusively, I haven't had a chance to REALLY test this build in Cyro. When the Subclassing goes LIVE, I will find out. But I will say that so far, subclassing is WAY OVERPOWERING for PVE.
.

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

ragnarok6644b14_ESO wrote: »

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

PDarkBHood wrote: »

And remember, you don't need to use subclassing if you don't want to. And I am glad some of these classes are getting nerfed, as they were too powerful[...]

You made your first sentence with your 2nd sentence invalid already.
If pure classes are nerfed, as you said, then players can't ignore subclassing, as they will fall behind.
With class nerfes you are pretty much forced to play subclasses then.

"Fall behind" according to what? Is there a race?

Is day-to-day PVE disguised competitive PVP in some way I don't realize?

Talking about progress- and endgame content.
If you stay with a pure class, while everything is nerfed due to subclassing, then you are falling behind compared to those, who have a optimised subclass- combo.

But there is a poll currently going on, asking how often players are playing solo.
And as I noticed, that more than 80% are mainly playing solo and therefore not even knowing what a trial is, then i can understand the way the development goes and why some players give a damn about endgame content and it's players.

Even if you are mostly playing solo that doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t do trials. I am not currently doing any, but when I did it was 4 hours per week and I have considerably more free time than that.

I am concerned with the change. I do think in the long run this will lead to a compression of the build choices rather than an increase. This will occur in part because of an important software design consideration (assumption at the moment): the choice of the main class skill has no effect on the subclass skills chosen and does not change the way the subclass skills play.

I think the math about the number of builds might be different from what ZOS has published, which is either because of corporate marketing desire for big numbers, or just plain bad math. If it's bad math it's an indication that ZOS hasn't thought this through well. (They need some solid data scientists helping them with these details.)

If we assume that the main class selected has NO effect on the behavior of the subclasses, then we have a pool of skill lines to choose from regardless of the main class. That pool is 7 classes times 3 skill lines equal 21 skill lines to choose from. Our goal is to choose 3 from that pool of 21.

With that main class assumption we have a combinatorial math problem. If so, we have a 21!3 (21 choose 3) calculation, where order doesn't matter. The important point is that order doesn't matter. We don't care whether we start with a Templar skill and then choose an Arcanist skill followed by Warden skill, rather than starting with the Warden and then choose the same Templar and Arcanist skills. (If we find at release that ZOS has made the main class skill change the behavior of subclass skills, then the math will be different.)

You can calculate this math problem using any combinatorics calculator. The solution will give at most 21!3 = 1330 different skill combinations. (Less if we make some other assumptions.)

***

In the short run, possibly 6 months, there will be a lot fun testing of the new combinations. During this time theory-crafters will be looking closely at which builds of the new are best. However, I suspect that after the testing dust settles, we might find that there will be a new meta with possibly only a few best builds for each role and a lot of new meaningless builds.

As noted elsewhere, these new meta builds are likely to be better at doing the job of each role (tank, heals, dps) than other meta builds. This is conceptually plausible based on theory of optimization. Finding a meta build is directly analogous to solving a constrained optimization problem. We know that with fewer constraints on choosing a build, the more likely the new chosen meta build will be better than the old meta builds. Hence we will be back to a small number of choices that matter.

***

I hope the ZOS team has spent some time thinking this through further. In fact, I think this will be a lot of dev work to ultimately bring us back to a small meta. A side implication is that main classes no longer matter, so the days of people playing alts to enjoy the different class style will be gone. People will level up alts just enough to get a desired skill line and then set them aside because they only need them for the a single skill line for the meta. (I am already doing this with a necromancer, which I probably wont play later.)

Also, this puts new players behind the existing base of players. It likely makes more work (acquiring skill lines and skill points) for them to get close to playing the meta used by the current base. From a subscription revenue standpoint that might good in the near term, but it will cause frustration when new players can't become competitive quickly. This might be most impactful on people who want to play PVP competitively and further decrease the new blood coming into the game for PVP. To a certain extent this will also be true for high-end pvp. This is true because both player types demand minmax type of builds to be successful in their play. The longer it takes to obtain those minmax meta builds, the more frustrating it will be for the new players want to engage in those play styles.

I think ZOS needs to look closely at who they want bring into the game as new players, and who they want to retain over time. If it's moderately casual PVE players and those who don't PVP, then this might be a good thing. It will in fact gives those new players a lot of options (beyond the meta). However, if ZOS wants to build revenues in serious PVE players and/or competitive PVP players, then this might have an adverse effect on the source of revenues in the mid- to long-term.

Maxitude wrote: »

I am concerned with the change. I do think in the long run this will lead to a compression of the build choices rather than an increase. This will occur in part because of an important software design consideration (assumption at the moment): the choice of the main class skill has no effect on the subclass skills chosen and does not change the way the subclass skills play.

I think the math about the number of builds might be different from what ZOS has published, which is either because of corporate marketing desire for big numbers, or just plain bad math. If it's bad math it's an indication that ZOS hasn't thought this through well. (They need some solid data scientists helping them with these details.)

If we assume that the main class selected has NO effect on the behavior of the subclasses, then we have a pool of skill lines to choose from regardless of the main class. That pool is 7 classes times 3 skill lines equal 21 skill lines to choose from. Our goal is to choose 3 from that pool of 21.

With that main class assumption we have a combinatorial math problem. If so, we have a 21!3 (21 choose 3) calculation, where order doesn't matter. The important point is that order doesn't matter. We don't care whether we start with a Templar skill and then choose an Arcanist skill followed by Warden skill, rather than starting with the Warden and then choose the same Templar and Arcanist skills. (If we find at release that ZOS has made the main class skill change the behavior of subclass skills, then the math will be different.)

You can calculate this math problem using any combinatorics calculator. The solution will give at most 21!3 = 1330 different skill combinations. (Less if we make some other assumptions.)

***

In the short run, possibly 6 months, there will be a lot fun testing of the new combinations. During this time theory-crafters will be looking closely at which builds of the new are best. However, I suspect that after the testing dust settles, we might find that there will be a new meta with possibly only a few best builds for each role and a lot of new meaningless builds.

As noted elsewhere, these new meta builds are likely to be better at doing the job of each role (tank, heals, dps) than other meta builds. This is conceptually plausible based on theory of optimization. Finding a meta build is directly analogous to solving a constrained optimization problem. We know that with fewer constraints on choosing a build, the more likely the new chosen meta build will be better than the old meta builds. Hence we will be back to a small number of choices that matter.

***

I hope the ZOS team has spent some time thinking this through further. In fact, I think this will be a lot of dev work to ultimately bring us back to a small meta. A side implication is that main classes no longer matter, so the days of people playing alts to enjoy the different class style will be gone. People will level up alts just enough to get a desired skill line and then set them aside because they only need them for the a single skill line for the meta. (I am already doing this with a necromancer, which I probably wont play later.)

Also, this puts new players behind the existing base of players. It likely makes more work (acquiring skill lines and skill points) for them to get close to playing the meta used by the current base. From a subscription revenue standpoint that might good in the near term, but it will cause frustration when new players can't become competitive quickly. This might be most impactful on people who want to play PVP competitively and further decrease the new blood coming into the game for PVP. To a certain extent this will also be true for high-end pvp. This is true because both player types demand minmax type of builds to be successful in their play. The longer it takes to obtain those minmax meta builds, the more frustrating it will be for the new players want to engage in those play styles.

I think ZOS needs to look closely at who they want bring into the game as new players, and who they want to retain over time. If it's moderately casual PVE players and those who don't PVP, then this might be a good thing. It will in fact gives those new players a lot of options (beyond the meta). However, if ZOS wants to build revenues in serious PVE players and/or competitive PVP players, then this might have an adverse effect on the source of revenues in the mid- to long-term.

I am not sure that's that big of a burden...

there are currently 17 skill lines a player can mix and match across freely (including their 3 class lines, which are locked) that allow skills to be slotted, and 22 that allow skills and passives-only skill lines.

This is excluding crafting, antiquities, and werewolf. It also does not include scribing as I am not sure where that fits, but there's probably 8-20 individual skills you can make with scribing, but the passives come from existing lines.

Doubling the amount they have access to would be bad, but they're not really doing that - they are letting you swap out 2 skill lines for any other 2 skill lines, so you can't really just have them at the same time like you could the 17-22 above.