I don't really mind classes, but they said that from the sound of things, there will only be like 5. I liked being able to choose from about 18 in the previous games. Hopefully you can customize your character enough so that it doesn't matter that much.

Darkfall did this....it was a macro-grinding auto-swim against a wall NIGHTMARE

One major reason:

If everyone has to monitor everyone else's health, who is monitoring the fighting?

If I have to constantly be watching my own Health, as well as everyone else in my party, I'm not concentrating on the other role(s) I am supposed to be doing.

That's a rather huge reason why there are classes, so that people can be focused on certain tasks. If, as a "Warrior" I have to pause my damage combo to cast Heal on another Warrior, I'm not doing damage. Not to mention what if I go to heal you, while John237898 also goes to heal you, that's two people dropped off from playing another role.

Eh, Star Wars Galaxies did alright without classes.

As soon as they added them, that game took a dive.

Star Wars Galaxies had professions, which are classes, and had them since the game came out.

I laid it out in detail the way I would do it in another thread, but basically, I would do things like so:

1) Have the Major and Minor skill categories from Morrowind, with everything else being very slow to level

2) Cap Major skills at 100, Minor skills at 75, and Misc skills at 50.

3) Also have a level cap after which no skills can be raised. For the sake of convenience and OCD, allow deleveling of skills down to the previous number divisible by 5. No more than that, since raising skills is more like leveling than getting talents.

4) Implement the perk system from Skyrim for more build focused customization. Include group oriented perks. Allow for respecs.

5) Hold a lengthy large scale beta to balance content towards various player builds(and there will be cookie cutter builds, even in a skill based system)

6) Now this one is fairly important. Do not design around exponential, geometric, or even linear power growth. Higher level characters should be more powerful. I'd even say they should be able to easily overpower a player of significantly lower character skill. But a large number of players should be a credible threat to a significantly smaller group regardless of level. This isn't just a PvP issue. I feel that this is highly important to retain the go anywhere, do anything feel in a game where characters exist in a large range. A single powerful character could travel through the untamed wilds and find a manageable challenge, while a group of mid-level characters could do the same. Mind you, an army of low level characters could probably pass through, but not without casualties.

I started typing some more stuff before I realized I was going way beyond balancing characters.

You still haven't answered the question.

How do you propose team dynamics could work? Remember, in Skyrim and TES in general its is very easily possible to be good at multiple things. TES is not Final Fantasy Tactics or Final Fantasy XI where your "sub job" strength was cut in half, in TES and Skyrim I can be both a very powerful Destruction Mage and a very powerful Warrior, especially if I have any sort of ability to abuse/exploit or even have just have access to a decent crafting system.

How are you going to handle the balancing of the PvE, not to mention the PvP, if I can make Destruction, One-Handed and Heavy Armor Major Skills? How are you going to handle balancing PvE, not to mention PvP, when a group of those types of builds are formed?

If you can handle said super group, you realize that it can completely screw the balance off for those people who spec as more specific classes/archetypes. If every monster is balanced to handle the super group, what the hell kind of chance does a group of strict basic Warrior/Healer/Tank going to have?

Also, how are you going to get these people together? Are you going to have them search for other players based on Major Skills? Minor Skills? How are they going to be able to sift through the players that have One-Handed and Block as Major skills when they are looking for players with One-Handed and Archery as Major Skills? You could have a wickedly cluttered and complicated searching interface.

A set class system (with some divergence) is simply easier to handle all around. That's why it's done so often.

My impression is that you like the developers are not willing to try out something new and are entrenched in how you want it to go based off what has worked.

I see your argument as coming down to whether balance is achieved in game design (a priori) or whether it is struck in game play (a posteriori). I think the balance that most early MMOs had was actually something that occurred later after much trial and error of what was implemented. These concepts become codified and then the blueprint for what comes later and experimentation and something new is thrown out in favor of what works now with a new gloss or veneer.

But if you really are going to stamp your feet and insist that your defense against all these critiques is that sound then how about this. Let the skill use as leveling stand (but obviously gimp it like most mods do for this series) then if after certain benchmarks are met for skills, perks, attributes, whatever then you can qualify for classifications - that exist only for the purpose of online dating (er uh whatever it is that MMO people do). These classes then do not have to be limitations from the start.

I always play these solo games modded and leveling and class type stuff is always top in the mods I use, so yeah I admit that vanilla wise most of them are broken as far as leveling goes. So gimp the leveling to be not so easy and sure you can implement choices and consequences of if you go into this skill too much you just can't do these as much (skyrim has this with perks). As far as Godlike players - with the level limit of 120 hours - not much you can do to god out with that limit. Even if they raise it - just adjust skill ups and accordingly and only the nerdiest is going to spend that much time trying to do all.

But having to choose a class right off the bat and not being able to grow as you like is displeasing to the TES player.

Having it be classes from the start and factions alliances from the start is not RPG .... it is kiddie time - c'mon guys jump in who cares why we fight!

Except those "professions" were interchangeable via being part of a skill based system.

Meaning you were not one "class", you were a combination of different skills.

For example, I was a Droid Engineer, a Creature Handler, and a Rifleman.

What "class" does that make me? I'm not DPS, because I'm not full on combat specialized. I'm not just a "merchant" because I utilize combat.

Similar to how a TES-like system could work.

You put a limit on perks, as we see in Skyrim. So when a person doesn't perk into the Restoration skill, guess who's not the healer? That guy.

The role of the healer will be filled by the guy who perked into Restoration. The role of DPS will be filled by the guy who perked Two Handed. The role of tank will be filled by the guy who maxed out his Heavy Armor perks. But it also allows flexibility so that everyone running around isn't just Orc Warrior, as the OP gave the example of.

They are taking the easy path. Instead of trying to be creative they cut and paste another game into the TES universe

And that game was in mid dive even before NGE..

Are you new to TES games, right? in every TES game there's no healer/dps/tank beside yourself, you have to heal, do damage while taking damage, that's the fun of the game, not go in X boss, Spam one skill untill it die, or if you're "Healer" spam heal until no one die, no roleplay, no tatics, i'm already bored of the game and it didn't even came out.

First of all, I'd like to point out that class systems are not somehow magically easy to balance. That's why Blizzard is still making changes on a regular basis. They keep chasing an imaginary unicorn that constantly seems to elude them(because it doesn't exist).

Second of all, This is exactly why I said that a lengthy beta would need to be held. To find the closest thing to balance as is feasible. To see what players try to throw at your world. To find the unexpected synergies. And then to make changes where needed. This is no different than a class based system, abilities are known. It's just how they work together that you figure out.

Now let's take your Heavy Armor/One-Handed(I would go with the more diverse skills of earlier iterations)/Destruction build. Well he can't cast spells and swing his sword at the same time, so this character has two methods of offense and has possibly sacrificed some defense to do so. Possibly weak against illusion(fear, calm and fury effects being particularly bad) and conjuration(giving you other things to worry about), and eternally frustrated against someone that specializes in alteration and restoration(who can magically mitigate and negate damage) Marksman/Illusion could use hit and run tactics against him, ducking behind walls and vanishing only to take a shot and start the whole thing again. Frankly, the only real advantage your combo gives is equal combat viability at any range. Certainly, there will be builds that are more advantageous than others in specific situations, but you might as well complain about Mortal Strike spec'd Arms Warriors being better for PvP than Prot Warriors in Vanilla WoW. The players will sort out what works best,

The important thing is to make certain that every skill is useful. If someone wants to focus on smithing/enchanting/sneak as their majors, let them. They'll be great for crafting and can travel through hostile territory unscathed. So what if they can't fight? They serve the purpose of the player that created the character without making him slug his way through combat so he could make a better gauntlet. You could have speechcraft allow a player to negotiate substantially better quest rewards and use skill specific bardic abilities for social situations. Now a character with speechcraft could be desirable to get a particular item that couldn't be found otherwise, but is also useful for a goof-off character that just wants to hang out in the local tavern and sing. Mercantile would have obvious uses, but could also have perks that benefit a character in player-to-player trading the way finance skills work in Eve.

So, to reiterate:
1. Balance is an illusion that can only be settled on, never actually achieved(without class homogeneity).
2. Classes or skills, there will be cookie cutter builds
3. Skill-based allows for more interesting cookies.
4. Beta will help balance things in relation to the game world.

I'm not even against folks wanting to perform a dedicated roll within a group dynamic. I'm just not keen on forcing all ESO players to do it, or having content that demands it. The holy trinity is beyond stagnant and TES seemed perfect for breaking up the monotony bestowed on the mmo market.

I mean am I supposed to stay just for the lore with ESO? Honestly, the lore isn't that memorable and there's no real defining art style... as in these components are technically there but are usually more generic, than not. TES is about freedom of gameplay, which made generic lore, a generic art style, and lack of a decent story palatable, endurable,...forgivable. Always forgivable, just as long as I could be and do damn well near anything I could think up.

How is a game with lore involving
-time traveling death machines
-spaceships
-moon-colonies
-loading saves and pausing the game when opening the menu are things your character actually does
-hermphorditic gods that exist in multiple realites,
generic?

Hell they even made Akatosh, Talos, Lorkhan, sithis the same being.

one of Elder Scrolls biggest features is its batsh** crazy lore.

Because Sony was already in the process of ruining that game before NGE, and began the destruction of that game with the CU.

akatoshistalos,

Are you counting on me reading all the books in the library and on miscellaneous book shelves, because if so, I have a confession to make, skipped more than a few of them.

I've completed morrowind, oblivion, and Skyrim more than once each and honestly there isn't much in the lore that really pulled me in but if the books did it for you or you opted for some enlightening exposition from a random shopkeeper, more power to you.

Wait, what?

Yeah, according to the 36 lessons of vivec loading saves, and pausing time via opening the inventory, is part of CHIM.

The construction Kit/Mod tools under whatever name they use, also exists as a place called the provencial house

What exactly is CHIM?

Sorry, I'm by no means a lore expert, and when it's abbreviated, even less so.

CHIM isnt an abbreviation, that is how the word is spelled.

As for what CHIM is, CHIM is the secret symbol of royalty, it is a power were one relizes they are everything, and everything is them, yet still retain the ability to say "I AM".

They gain the ability to alter the world in countless ways, Tiber Septim used CHIM to change Cyrodiil from a tropical Jungle into a forest.

Awww, so CHIM is essentially a 4th wall breaking dues ex machina.

Kinda, it is what Lorkhan created the mortal realm for, to help the other spirirts find CHIM.

It ties into the tower, the shape of the unvierse, th towers(white-gold. Numidium, crystal tower, Fallensti, snow-throat etc. etc.)and many other things.

Implying they did.


Mostly for keeping people interested in the classes, actually. If their only goal was to balance classes, they wouldn't be introducing new spells / abilities with every xpac.

Keeping people interested in classes? Have you ever heard anyone express any reaction to a class change in that game that didn't boil down to either "thanks for finally fixing my class," "OMG, [class] is so OP now," or "Y U make my class useless?" Adding more abilities may be to keep players interested, but makes balance even worse than it was before. I'd say my statement stands.