Iv always hated classes and being pidgin hold to one style and its next to impossible to keep balance in game. Being able to lvl any skills you may want /need to feel best for you means everyone can be on an equal footing and play vastly different fighting styles. So in affect you dont ever have an overall lvl just many skill lvls simple.

as much as i would LOVE to have a TES system ...

realistically it will be hell to balance it properly....actually mathematically speaking it will be impossible to balance by any human mind

Ah yea classless system, like Darkfall perhaps?

Where people autorun or using macro programs to cast fireballs in the noob area (where they can't get killed),in order to get skillpoints while beeing at work.

No thanks its proven to not work in an ONLINE Game.

Huh?You mean people might have to resort to using computers?

All this nay saying about skill based is adding up to nothing but statements of "I can't imagine it, so it must not be possible."

As for bots spamming skills - checks could be implemented. But who cares about cheats?

Ah what is even the point in arguing this - this whole venture is not really TES - and debating with MMO players is about as much a waste of time as playing an MMO.

Many traits of an Elder Scrolls game 'Won't work' in an MMO. So why not stop making the MMO if you take everything people liked about the Elder Scrolls games and flush them down the toilet.

I agree. We do not know what ZOS or BGS are capable of in terms of making the Elder Scrolls into a MMO experience or a massive single player experience. For this reason alone, being suspicious over this is warranted, yet, at the same time, arguments over what would be possible for them to do in either instance are speculative and futile at best.



I wholeheartedly agree.

only way to balance a TES style of leveling is to allow all players to max ALL skills to 100 and have ALL spells then all we have a lot of gods running around healing themselves while shooting thunder from one hand and swinging a deadric axe in the other

That'll only happen if they don't introduce a perk / level cap. Such things are simple to keep in control and balance, really.

And IF perhaps there is a class or skill combination that does more damage or tanks damage far more efficiently than anticipated all they need to do is nerf the values of certain abilities that're being abused.

It is only a nightmare if they are worried about everything being equal. If done right and managed right a skill based system would work better then a class based system.

Where did they say that?

Are you new to video games?

"In every TES game."

How many TES games have been MMOs? MMOs don't play the same way as single player and aren't balanced the same at all.

Or you do what SWG did, and have a set number of skill points you are able to distribute, thus limiting what each player can do.

You're what's generally called a "Red Mage" aka the "All Rounder."

Nell, you have ot realize that all RPGs are based around archetypes and it doesn't matter if you go part Engineer, part Handler, part Rifleman, you're still fitting a certain archetype because all those skills you are combining are based upon archetypes.

100% balance of course is hard, that's common sense. Actually 100% balance is often completely subjective, even with hard numbers to back it up.

You also continually keep avoiding answering the question:

How does the TES formula work in a team environment. You keep talking in the singular. MMOs aren't singular. PvE is not singular and PvP is not singular.

And you keep talking about a "lengthy beta." How lengthy? Months, years? The fact that WoW is continuously reworking the balance is a good thing.

Except for the fact that a skill based system - like TES, or SWG - allows you to dabble, and essentially create your own archetype by mixing and matching skills as you see fit. In TES, and SWG, you are leveling up skills, not a character class. Yes, I acknowledge that TES has "classes", but what exactly is the point of leveling up? The real benefit comes from leveling up your skills, not your class, which is the opposite of a class system where you don't level up by doing skills, you level up by killing mobs, or completing objectives, and then you are allowed to pick new skills that you want.

TES and SWG, you level up skills, only TES even had a level (SWG didn't have "levels" until the combat upgrade), and as you develop your skills by doing them, you are allowed to progress through them with skill point distribution.

Just because a skill based system still ultimately puts you in an archetype doesn't make it the same as a class based system. Skill based systems offer more fun and freedom, often at the time of balance. Class based systems offer balance and a known "role", but typically at the expense of fun and freedom.

I will just say, in my own opinion, even the best of "class based" systems are inherently inferior to even the worst of "skill based" systems.

I would rather have an unbalanced, but fun, skill based MMO, than a cookie cutter, balanced but nothing really creative class based MMO.

An MMO can't be unbalanced but still fun, it can't. A TES MMO would be better suited, I believe, to having the FFT/FFXI formula melded with a bit of Disgaea and a bit of TES, or TES melded with KoA.

But you simply cannot have an unbalanced but fun MMO, because if it's unbalanced then people will begin to have to, have to, choose some specific set ups just to have fun because all other set ups could be flatly made useless.

SWG struggled with balance in many areas.

It was the most fun MMO I have ever played.

So don't tell me that I simply cannot have fun in an unbalanced game.

There's nothing balanced about TES skills. They are the most fun video games I have ever played. Warhammer table top armies often suffer from a lack of balance. It is one of my favorite fantasy pasttimes to partake in. Again, don't tell me that I simply cannot have fun in an unbalanced game, when I have, and I do.

You are not a hundred thousand plus people Nell.

Balance and fun aren't catered to just you. You may have had a blast one shotting people in various games, simply steam rolling over people or what have you, that doesn't mean the other people were.

If I really want to play a Warrior, but playing a Warrior is underpowered and generally [censored] to play, I'm not often going to play a Warrior when you can just faceroll me as a Wizard. Thus, playing as a Warrior won't be fun because it's not balanced.

Actually, I was on the underpowered side.

A Droid Engineer / Creature Handler with a couple points in Rifleman wasn't going to be killing anybody in PvP.

I still had a blast as that underpowered character though, because the character design was my own, not some arbitrary limited builds that a developer decided upon.

I am often playing underpowered builds, because they are what I want to play.

Implying people don't like to play pre-determined classes. Or games that are set up like KoA/Diablo.

Correct we don't.

And your answer to your balance question has been given at least three times in three different ways in this thread. This means that you are cherry picking the answers you want to hear.

But why are you arguing against people who are lamenting the loss of what makes TES great? Especially when it is pretty much set in stone and the chances that they would change away from a class system to a superior skill system is next to nothing at this point.

I'm sorry, you seem to think that by saying "we" you speak for all players.

Each one of those "answers" has been easily shot down.

If you believe that how you go from level 1 to level 50 is "what makes TES great," you don't have a firm grasp on what TES really is.

Superior skill system... for an MMO.

I honestly don't care how the game would turn out. If I can play Elder Scrolls with friends, I'll die a happy woman.

I can speak well enough from the numerous threads that all lament the loss of the skill system. That is not a hard one to summarize. Just as it is not difficult to summarize that this comment
means that you and others do like to play as set classes. So ... who is speaking for others here?

Nothing has been defeated - so far all critiques of a skill based system have boiled down to "I can't imagine it and it has not been done so it cannot and will not be done." You extend this point of view to then proactively attack all ideas to the effect and attempt to squash ideas contrary to your vision of the perfect MMO. I guess we are the tide you are swimming against as obviously this is the overwhelming current that the metaphor must be alluding to. As if MMOs can only viably be what you want them to be. Because you are a fan boy.

I saw your other post that states the only thing that TESO needed to get right is the lore. Well I and quite a few others on here obviously disagree.

Tolkien as a template for class based systems in RPGs is a played out concept and TES for a good while was a strong departure from that scheme.

That does not matter, there's a reason why we like TES, and it's pointless to make an mmo if it will not have the same feeling/unique style, as the original games have, "MMOs don't play the same way as single player" we are not locked in Everquest gameplay style anymore, we are in 2012, remember? Stop covering zenimax lazyness with pointless defensive arguments, please.
They did it all to avoid hard work to please TES fans, because they are obviously taking a ride in the sucessful, still old, WoW-formula, in hope that they will stole some of it's subscribers, that's it.