BloodRedHurricane wrote: »

Soarora wrote: »

Optionally, that’d be great. Not everyone would want it that way, though, as they might consider their characters to actually be multiple classes.

That said, it would be awesome if it wasn’t just a cosmetic change but also damage types. Lightning DK whip if you’re a sorc, frost fatecarver if you’re a warden, etc. Wouldn’t be great for elementalists but that’s one build that I’m not sure is even that viable currently?

Would this save the subclassing system lore-wise?

Lore wise, it doesn't make sense for people to be stuck in one class, imo

There isn't a lore problem with subclassing. It's never been the case that certain types of magic or other abilities are mutually exclusive and cannot be combined.

Even the classifications for different types of magic are somewhat arbitrary and subject to change based on the definitions used. There's mentions in ESO of some people in the Mages Guild starting to shift to using the definitions we see in other TES games where, for example, all the elemental damage types are grouped together as destruction magic, all the healing spells are restoration magic etc. and terms like shadow magic or earthen magic are not formally recognised. Under that system a Templar uses a mix of destruction, restoration and conjuration magic and a Dragon Knight is a Battlemage but people would find it very strange if they insist they can only use fire magic, not frost or lightning.

Neither of these is the one right (or wrong) way to classify skills, they're just different. (Same with other skills, like whether you group all one-handed weapons seperate from two-handed, or group all the bladed weapons, then all the blunt ones etc.)

But it does mean using frost and lightning skilks together is no more of a lore problem than using restoration and alteration together, or any other combination.

The problem is more to do with players personal themes for their characters clashing with currently popular builds, but that's always been the case, like wardens who want to tank but don't want to use Frost magic or sorcerers who don't want to summon daedra.

Being able to customise how all our skills look would go a long way towards helping with this, especially since it's something we're very slowly starting to get with skill styles, but it's a player customisation problem, not a lore problem.