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Elder Scrolls Online: Skill Lines Profiled in New Developer Blog
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The Elder Scrolls Online site has been updated with a new developer blog that shines the spotlight on the design process behind skill lines and character progression. The blog discusses the challenge that making sure that Elder Scrolls Online feels like an Elder Scrolls game while, at the same time, gives players a sense of accomplishment while progressing throughout the game.
A question we often see is, “Why not go classless?” In the end, keeping class skill lines exclusive while opening many other skill lines to everyone worked best—choices stay important, but everyone has freedom to choose from a large pool of options. It helps us encourage diversity while still providing choices, and it allowed us to emphasize multiplayer strategy—members of the different classes have access to their own skill lines, which creates opportunities for you to work with your allies, coordinating your unique skills and adding depth and variety to team gameplay.
Your class is an important decision to make, but it doesn’t chain you to any one playstyle. Every class has three of its own skill lines, each with different skills that are thematically related to the class. Combine those three with the many, many other lines available to every character, and each member of a particular class can be wildly different from the next. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to spend a single point in your class lines. However, you’ll know when you see a Templar who has decided to focus on his or her class abilities.
Read more on the Elder Scrolls Online site.
Comments
"keeping class skill lines exclusive while opening many other skill lines to everyone worked best—choices stay important"
Yet another cop-out AND an insult to boot. Not the first time these DaoC developers have turned to doing this to justify what they are doing.
How are choices NOT important in a classless system? You still must choose which skills you want and invest in them. Just more BS excuses to keep the old way while having the NERVE to still say you can be the character you want to be like in ES games.
Every single person that played Asherons Call 1 and The Secret World was just told they made zero important choices with their characters...almost, but not quite as bad as having the nerve to tell people that they had FAKE pride in every game they played other than DaoC. Repugnant at best.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
Got to give them credit for trying to explain it though. But I do believe that class is a MASSIVE choice to make that greatly defines your character; Telling me that loads of other choices remain isn't changing that fact.
repugnant is your post, it shows you know nothing about the elder scrolls, period, and even less about AC, one of the best mmos ever.
skyrim was the first episode to go classless, and although great, any dolt can see potential problems if in a multiplayer environment.
oblivion , morrowind had classes still
over 20 years of mmorpg's and counting...
He explained why he feels the Elder Scrolls classless system does not fit in a multiplayer environment and he is correct.
Yet amazingly enough you could chose NOT to pick a class in Oblivion and Marrowind and even if you DID you could use ALL SPELLS AND ALL SKILLS IN THE ENTIRE GAME!
And don't talk to me about AC buddy because just like in TES games, you could go WITHOUT a class and pick any combination of skills you wished.
And juding by the posts on the video, there are 1000s that agree. Its flooded with people talking about the half-truths they have been telling to make this game sound like a TES multiplayer game instead of an MMO with the TES name.
Yet amazingly enough there are MMOs without them. So, he is incorrect. Another bold faced lie by the developers to mask their inept handling of the IP. Every single thing in the TES games have been done at some point in MMOs so there is no excuse not to be able to actually make a TES MMO. I mean there are even MMOs with FOUNDRIES that mimic player MODS and it doesn't even have THAT!
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
We understand, you don't like what they are doing with their game.
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i can talk AC all day, Know who BLOOD was?, ya, talk away sunshine. you sir, are a shining example of the mindless haters that flock to these boards, and use their limited brainpower to try to cast aspersions .
and there are mmos without classes, whats their names? heres the link
http://www.giantbomb.com/classless-mmo/3015-1729/games/
eve, i retired after 10 years, darkfall , played it /shrug, anything else great on that list? nope.
over 20 years of mmorpg's and counting...
Yeah I know who blood was, the chump that wrecked Darktide. Before Blood there as actual competition and then it just turned into one large guild camping out starter towns killing noobies and ganking anyone that wouldn't join.
And I do thank you for not going after the points made about MMOs doing it so TES not having it is no excuse and running with a distraction instead.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
ahh, that explains why you are so sad and angry then, you call it wrecked, we called it won.
relax, read the history of elder scrolls, beth isnt going to usurp their IP and longevity by copping out in a short lived MMORPG.
least im betting on that approach, ive loved the single played games and have replayed oblivion and skyrim/ addons too many times to count, and every new adventure was different, if the same basic one, if you know what i mean.
over 20 years of mmorpg's and counting...
The class system is still there underneath it all in Skyrim, every NPC adheres to it. The way TES's skill system works also adheres to the basics of TES's class system. At least where combat comes into play. Most of the free-form stuff is tied to non combat related things like Barter, Speech, Stealth, Thievery, alchemy, enchanting etc...
The gear ratings also tie into the class system. So in that regard they've chosen a system that resembles what lies underneath a TES games hood. TES games just give you a greater sense of choice on the surface.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Love it. I really hope the AvA benefits from this, and I think it will. That's such a huge thing to insert into the ES series and they are going about it very intelligently. Matt Firor is awesome.
One thing that stood out to me was the mention of less direct ways of finding skill lines. I really, really hope this means deep, dark Daedra worship. So many possibilities. Simply put, however, I want to be Azura's champion (pawn?) and learn some crazy dark magic while exploring the Daedric presence in Tamriel. Screw vampires and werewolves, I wanna get otherworldly up in this mother.
Probably expansion material. Heh.
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/PerfArt
For a given class there's 9 Skill lines (3 x 3 other classes) that can't be accessed (unless another character is rolled). That's not so insignificant if you ask me.
Even in SWG there were trade offs, that's really all I view this in comparison to. Your final build plans dictated which skills or professions you would possess.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
The assignment of class-based skills IS of consequence. If it weren't, there would be no reason to implement such a system. I am a big fan of what Zeni is doing here, as are many, but let's not defend our approval of this system by pretending that the restriction of these skill lines to classes doesn't really matter. It does, and it's supposed to.
A glance at the known class skills shows that there are very consequential abilities that have the potential to define playstyles. Yes, there are lots of other skills that anyone can learn, perhaps even to the point of broad flexibility.
But flexibility does not mean universal potentiality in regard to builds and roles in combat. That's a good thing to me, especially in RvR, but perhaps equally in PvE. ES players are used to being able to do everything because no one else is there to do it. This is a social game, and I am glad they are not shying away from that, solo instances notwithstanding.
Just playing devil's advocate here a little to say that suggesting that class-specific skill lines won't affect the game much or won't restrict builds in a way that matters is a bit disingenuous for the sake of de facto defense mode. It does matter, and despite the flexibility TESO offers above and beyond what other class-based systems offer, there is an underlying structure of role dynamics at play here.
Whether that's a good or bad thing comes down to preference. I think it's great and will lend some role dynamics to an otherwise broad, flexible system. It's a new way to experience Tamriel
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/PerfArt
Well, all the hope I had for them listening to the community on the classless request just flew out the window. I was hoping they would keep the classes, but as templates or suggestions that you could deviate from at anytime or not choose any of them and customize from the very beginning.
Would have been nice to have more freedom.
I think at some point some big name company is going to develop an MMO with a classes system and will probably be hugely a successful MMO.
The reason why a lot of the other classless MMOs are not popular is because they are based on to much freedom. Allowing players to kill other players anywhere and loot everything they have. That simply won't fly in the mainstream MMO market. The minute a big name company decides they are going classes and leaves all that other baggage behind is when they will have massive hit on their hands, just as long as they can explain it to the mainstream. We have all been handheld so much by specific classes that it will be hard to break that mindset.
Its more of a business decision. Having class systems appears to be more of a quality standard. Its going with the psychology of the genre. For some reason in the genre, having classes, pigeon holed without any actual choice in story, and gear grinds is what is considered quality. Quality for 1 month, then the locusts swarm somewhere else if there isnt enough of who knows what else these confused group like with their twisted perception of what is quality.
I prefer a classless system. Horizontal progression with challengjng content to unlock points, rewards, and skills.
The run of the mill quality involves gear grinds of memorised rotations, in mostly likely studied combat scenarios due to bad use of combat mechanics which are not intuitive...so people cant figure it out due to money sinks of armor cost and time sinks with respawns. All these gear grinds and pigeon holing into not so challenging content so there are classes.
If it were classless, choice would have to be more important. Quests would have to be more epic. End game would have to be more important. Its a cop out to have classes and say it gives choice. Its just riding the trend, and thats what big money will finance, so at least eso exists, which looks like nice combat, but once the gear grind sinks in with the pigeon holing with a lot of everything feeling like a wow clone as in the world is static and choice in reality does not matter, i wont be motivated to play the end game with a terrible gear grind. Or roll an alt, but maybe rolling an alt is not as necessary, but most likely classes are an important foundation so it is expected people will roll alts and do gear grinds. Gear grinds, and alting pave the way for a great addition of a cash shop as well, hooray!
They should have gone completely classless, and becoming multiclass, but have class guilds. So the class guilds offer the same concept of a class story, or class oriented quest but open to any character that is allowed into the guild.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
So much wasted breath over a tiny difference: you either choose a set of skills over another to create your own class--hopefully in a not too dumb-ass way so that your choices synergize - or they give you 4 archetype builds already pre-synergized for you which you can then tweak as much as you want ... big frigging deal.
And AC....lol.... by level 5 you already had pegged yourself into a class of sorts by choosing some things over others...try picking swords at the beginning and then switching to unarmed once you realized that some mobs (e.g. golems) could only be hurt with blunt damage (or you could have waited until they patched that by giving us a blunt-damage sword... i kid you not.) It was a system that gave you the illusion of classlessness that I guess, fooled some. But since there was no re-specc (at least not when I played from release and for a couple of years) and there was a limited number of skills you could train, you basically just picked your own class by early choices.. and that could have been incredibly OPd if you got lucky (unarmed was the best melee skill by far, and Life magic allowed you to life drain mobs through walls lol) or gimped if you were not (see golems above.) This is the same illusion of classlessness that apparently fools some people who play the TES games. They're not classless: it's just that you get to invent your own. And also having no respecc (except with cheat mods) means that if you choose poorly, you'll gimp yourself. And funny how so many people end-up picking the same cookie cutter anyway... a lot of stealthy and backstabbing destruction mages playing the TES games it seems.... could be a coincidence I suppose.
Besides, unless you've already played this exact same system in another MMO and found it deficient (insert 1,000 word explanation here) all of this hate directed at something you're assuming will play a certain way is just biased BS based on some other imaginary butt-hurt that Zenimax inflicted on you when they didn't do something else exactly the way you dreamed-up....
The class system is one of the good things about this game but we still get the usual suspects - sometimes even recycled with brand-new accounts to compensate for their banned ones - saying the same shit they always say trying to derail every ESO thread into a hate fest: DAOC = bad... Matt Firor = incompetent & evil (as an aside...which is worse competent evil or incompetent?)... this ain't TES... they broke the lore...
Seems to me that there is something about the TES series - I don't know what - that attracts more than its fair share of crazies.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I understand and agree with how this is being done, for reasons stated above by other posters.
However, I do understand that this will not be enough for some. My prediction is that some point in time, through some quest line or for a very hefty amount of gold, you will be able to change your class entirely, unlerarning everything in those skill lines and refunding the points.
I'd have no problem with that - As long as it's not a "simple" process, because, as stated by the developers, it should be a choice you dont take lightly and have some consequence. When everyone is the same, no one is exceptional.
Odd that the same people complaining about CLASS skills aren't complaining bout RACIAL skills. If the problem is choice, I'm surprised they aren't making noise about that.. I mean in ES, you could always hit a console command and change that too..
There are no class quest in ESO and I haven't read anything to the effect that their would be any.
Anyone saying the class system in ESO brings real choices haven't played the game long enough. The races, weapons and armors selection are what is impacting your efficiency, role and playstyle, not classes.