Thinking about it, does anybody else feel kinda dismayed that people will, once they've progressed a fair ways past max level, have unlocked all the abilities and skill-ups for all armor trees.

Now this seems like a good thing, and allows people to flexibly adapt their playstyle to the up-coming situation if they have the foresight to predict it...

But now I'm questioning the good of that. When I think of "fun" character progression, I think in terms of "every time I spend a point, it is meaningful". What do I mean by meaningful? Well, that it will have a long lasting and deep impact on how my character fares in the world. If I know that every point I spend is just a coin in a piggy bank, so to speak, I don't find meaning in that. In fact, it almost feels like I'm grinding a bit.

However if, for example, when each point I spend narrows the focus of my character potentially for the rest of the game, it adds heavy weight to each and every point you spend. With a system in place where we know we can eventually go back and get nearly every ability in the game over time, and have them at the same time, our choices will no longer bear heft weight in the back of our minds. It'll always be "Oh don't worry I can go back and fix that later", but never really the half-hour debate on how to spend those points that are gone once you do.

Now, I've got a little more than feelings to back this up. Not much, but something. In games where skill lines were locked in to your original decisions like this, min-maxing builds seem to have very little prevalence. In games where you can easily and quickly swap builds and abilities, one can go and essentially force people to follow a very strict composition of a team for PvP and PvE. However when the builds aren't locked in, not only does min/max'ing become less prominent, but people are much more hesitant to enforce it when its likely everybody will, by end-game, have some mathematical error or another. It makes groups focus on the skill of a player and how they work with what they have rather than telling them something like...

"This fight has a lot of magicka damage going out, swap to cloth. Oh, you didn't train your cloth tree? Well, guess we need somebody else for this fight. No, I don't care if you do more DPS with light armor, this fight has no enrage and high damage, and has to be DPS'ed slowly anyway."

I feel like the ES series, as one of the best RPG's of its day, really capitalizes on the importance of choosing something and having to stick with that decision. And in my opinion, character progression is one of the best places to push this kinda concept. They've shown that they're willing to let players adapt with limited hotbars and only letting them change pre-fight.

Basically there are two types of choices, long term and short term.

Right now long term choices are classes and races only.

Short term...everything else. Weapons, armor, guild, abilities. Heck even Lycanthropy/Vampyrism.

I'd just like a little more importance placed upon the choices that define our character, is all.

I'd be super pissed off with this skill system if I couldn't train every skill in the game.

Don't have a problem with their system. You could basically learn everything in the TES series.

My overall point is skill points, my compromise is to apply it to armor rather than all skills.

Elder scrolls never really had any long-term decisions in terms of character-making besides Race and gender. I like Long-term choices when it comes to sides or class. I hate it when a game allows you to change classes (like Switching from Dragonknight to Sorc) or choose a different side.

I hate that too which is why I put it into the perspective of what we know of ESO;

In most MMO's, classes define how you play and what builds are typically possible, And you can't switch yours.

In ESO classes...don't really define anything, only potentially add to potential builds. That's why I feel that since the long-term class feeling is diminished, there should be some additional long-term choices.

In ES, that is the point, to change tactics to whatever you want or play how you like. BTW, it is going to be very hard to max everything, so for most of the game, your choices in armor/weapon/skill distribution WILL matter.

You do realize that they have an active skill in them, right? And that the rest are passives, which are also contained in most/all of the other trees?

Sounds like your real issue is with passives, which is silly. Its another form of building stats and other passive mechanics outside of gear. Its a great thing.

I simply don't enjoy the concept of everybody having access to everything. It feels like it devalues choices each player personally makes. I never really enjoyed games that focused on a "completionist" sort of feeling, where with enough work you could do everything on one character.

Like I said, my problem is described in the scenario where a person can essentially change everything about them except for their race and class, which don't really affect all that much, before an encounter.

I wouldn't say that's the point in ES. Freedom? Yes, but to an extent.

Skyrim, for example, took it too far. A lack of definition fits solo play just fine, but for an MMO? I don't know, it feels wrong to me.

We'll always fight x boss with bows, and y boss with cloth armor, etc. End-game will require everybody to be essentially a copy-cat of everybody else, just like most other games where you can freely train everything.

For an example, look at Runescape PvE. There was almost never variety on boss fights, and in effect it was the most boring thing ever. There was no rotations to personally plot out, and the choices you made never influenced you as you could swap at any time. It ended up being "for this boss, do this to the letter."

I simply don't want to see that type of game play, it feels so meaningless to me.

MMOs and Elder Scrolls in general favor the completionist style. Just kind of how it goes. Games like Path of Exile (ARPGs in particular) lean more towards perma choice, there's a genre for every type of player, and this is the genre that leans more towards long term and open play.

I voted "I don't care" on the latter question, but not because I don't care, but because my opinion differs from case to case. For example I do think you shouldn't be able to be the master of every skill tree in the game as you could be in most TES games, but I also think you shouldn't be permanently locked into a skill tree once you start training in it. We should be allowed to train in different skill trees as we choose at that time, but we should also be able to leave that tree and train in another one when we choose to. But of course there should be a time-consuming penalty for such a change. Like starting a class from scratch, but without changing your character.

I also think you should be freely able to equip any type of armor on any part of your body as you see fit, but similar to Skyrim, there should be bonuses for investing more time in a certain type of armor.

As a RP'er I will pick a style and stick with it for my characters. So I will limit myself when it comes to progression. As in my nightblade will not be wearing heavy or light armour in combat. So it will be a fair while before I ever think about doing my OCD thing and max out all their skills.

I agree that homogeneity is the death knell for any MMO, especially in a fantasy universe like TES. And yes, going to the GW2 extreme, where everyone can heal themselves and dish out DPS, kills co-operation completely. I'm very confident though that the 10 skill mix and resource limitations will be sufficient to promote diversity. You simply can't do everything yourself.

EDIT: Holy crud, I just looked up GW2 for comparison: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combat

They have the hotbar sectioned up for everything. There's even an assigned self-healing slot. No *wonder* people complain about that game so much.

^ Whoa, I'm glad I never bothered playing GW2.