Foreword;

This may be a bit of a long one.

I have played many an MMO over the past few years, there have been some excellent innovations, many of which I am pleased to see in ESO. The one thing I feel that is lacking from most mainstream MMOs nowadays, that would in my opinion fit perfectly into the ESO landscape (and has been present in previous Elder Scrolls games) is the ability to make your character less combat focused in favour of taking up any other professions.

Firstly, to clarify one thing - every characters needs to be viable in combat to an extent. You need to be able to quest and take part in some group activities. However whilst all characters are born equal, who is to say you shouldnt be able to specialise a bit? It is already commonplace and acceptable to have different skill trees/talents/whatever you want to call them depending on your game for PvP, PvE, Solo Content, Raids etc. I am pleased to see that ESO has gone a step further by introducing crafting skill trees, why not take things a bit further?

So What am I Suggesting?

Imagine this - my hardy Orc has a decent Battleaxe and some Heavy Armour. He knows how to cut down a few Mudcrabs etc, but thats not where his real passion lies (if you will excuse the RP-talk). No, what my Orc lacks in combat prowess, he makes up for in his supreme smithing. Folk come from all over the server to buy his wares. He can repair, improve, modify and create the sort of armour which your top end raiders want to be wearing (although naturally he reserves the best for himself).

In an MMO environment, this means I spend a fair old bit of time gathering materials and buying extra-specialist resources from NPCs to make my gear (this can then balance the profitability of the spec). As a master Blacksmith he still does get a few combat related perks such as improved armour rating when wearing his own gear, lower durability damage etc - in a group he can passively boost these stats for teammates as well, or repair other paty members armour on the fly. Like I said, he has to be viable in combat, at least to a level where he can quest acceptably and help in groups and provide value.

Why stop at the crafting skills? Exploration, Fishing, Trading/Bartering....there are so many avenues that can be explored for the non-combat professions, to varying degrees. I dont think all of these would be suitable to take as a characters primary spec, but they still add a lot of flavour and choice, which is something I am really big on.

Like I said, ESO is already halfway there by implemented the crafting skill trees, which is one of my favourite features of the game. In the previous Elder Scrolls games I loved that you could make an Imperial character and be a silver tongued mercantile genius. Talking your way out of potential fights, getting better prices from merchants etc rather than just battering through the game with a hammer. I would love to see an MMO attempt something like this. Some "MMO" style games have done it historically - games going as far back as Runescape gave you extensive facilities for levelling professions. What I am now proposing is the ability to make that the primary focus of your character right from the get-go.

How Would it Work?

I dont really know. It could be an active choice/specialisation you make from character creation along with Race and Class (hell even make the Crafting professions classes in themselves, supplemented by some combat abilites...).

The key things are being able to earn experience outside of combat from your desired path to glory, being able to quest/group to a competent level (doesnt have to be up to the 100% efficiency of a pure combat built character, as long as you are competent), and having tangible rewards for this tradeoff in the form of superior crafting products, special rewards/items/skills/crafting or exploration quests...I dont know, use your imagination. I just think that ESO has so much of the framework in place to already achieve this, that it would be the perfect game for such a concept to take root.

This is very much just a raw concept which I would like to throw out to the wolves and get opinions on. I realise that the game is too close to launch for radical changes but this is just a bit of a passion of mine and wanted to get other peoples thoughts and suggestions. I realise that from a balancing perspective it would require some work to prevent non combat classes from being under or overpowered, but as a concept I think this would be fantastic for an MMO like ESO.

Agreed 100%. I've been barking about wanting to have the ability to specialize for over a month, and not just with crafting professions. I can't tell you how much I'd love to be able to focus entirely on Alchemy or Assassination. How would it be done? It would just require more skills in each tree, and perhaps a reduction in available skill points. Having other means of gaining experience would be a different matter, but it should still be pretty simple. Just follow the format of previous Elder Scrolls games: using a skill improves it, and improving skills gains you levels. I'd like to see more focus on using your skills and less focus on grinding quests to progress.

I don't see the problem here, you just have to put more points in crafting and less in combat.

As for lowering available skillpoints or making crafting more restricted, ZOS has already answered to that with something along these lines: "We do not want to do that because we feel players will just make alts to master everything anyway"

Mastering crafting is tough enough as it is. It's not just putting all the points in the crafting skills, it's also researching all the traits, etc, which will take weeks of work.

I'm quite happy how crafting was handled and I hope nothing is changed about it.

Though I admit I would be disappointed if I had enough points to fully take all my combat skills and master all crafts.

It will take months not weeks to research all traits and that is provided you have put points into the research skills.

well, months are made from weeks, so months = weeks

But yes, as you say

You had me at Fishing. I'd love to be able to focus on fishing as a profession. As long as fishing was useful and fun. Maybe one day they'll take fishing to the next level for us.

The issue is that he just wants to be a blacksmith. The game doesn't allow him to do that, and he is forced to spend points elsewhere.

I think that's nonsense. I know I wouldn't be interested in having an alt for every crafting profession. I would just want to be able to specialize in 1 or 2, and trade with others for whatever else I need. I think it would be awesome if the game allowed that, but it doesn't really.

300+ hours is nothing. People will reach that within a month easily. Then what? But the amount of time it takes is irrelevant. The end result should be the motivating factor, but with the end result being homogenous end game characters, I personally don't find it very motivating.

No, he is not forced to put any points anywhere else. Just don't put them anywhere.

The game will have over 200 skill points. What did you expect? A blacksmithing skill line with 200 skills?

If you don't like it, it's sad for you, but it's certainly not going to change. I like it like it is.

We both know what I meant by "forced" in that context. The same way you're never "forced" to upgrade from the very first weapon you ever find, but you'll be SOL if you don't. Obviously it isn't a viable option.

I think 100 would be reasonable. 100 skills at 200 skill points. Or 50 skills at 100 skill points. Somewhere around that 2:1 ratio.

I just have a hard time understanding why people would like it that way. One of the most important aspects of an MMO is building a character that is unique to you (or at least to me). With 300+ skill points and < 500 skills, that's a whole lot of similar people running around with limited build options. I also think it's short sighted, and the early-mid game content will suffer for it.

No, we both know nothing. You write "forced", I read "forced".

No offense meant, but I think it is a ridiculously high amount. Right now, you need 13 skill points to master blacksmithing (only the crafting aspects of it) or 25 skill points total if you include the gathering/hireling/extracting skills.

That's plenty enough.

But on that point, like many others, it's only my opinion against yours. None of us is right, but the game is how I like it.

Oh well, I have a hard time understanding people who think like you do... I don't think it's going to limit you from being unique. If blacksmithing required 50 skill points, you wouldn't be more unique, you would still be the same as all others who put all their points in blacksmithing too. And then people would just make alts to be good in more than one craft. It's been like that in previous MMOs and people didn't change between now and then.

I don't think it's short-sighted at all. Limiting the number of crafts you can effectively work on would be against the Elder Scrolls spirit. I think that would make the game suffer.

I think the OP has a good idea and more options to customize gameplay is never a bad thing.


Perhaps roll over the armor trees into their respective crafts?

It helps to read the entire sentence to understand the intended meaning. Anyway, it's not important. In the off chance that you didn't understand what I meant, I trust you do now?

I think that is a ridiculously low amount. With 300+ skill points and investing a max of 25 in blacksmithing, it's pretty much an afterthought. 50 or even 100 wouldn't be difficult to do. Have passives for armor/weapon type, armor/weapon quality, trait quality, upgrade success rate, gathering rate, research rate, repair rate, etc. 10 different passives with 10 ranks each. Boom, done, 100 skills. Now the tree actually has some depth to it and it means something to be a blacksmith. Do similar things for the other professions and crafting is instantly much more interesting and rewarding (at least to me).

Yes, but that number would be far less because it would be harder to do. It would be a real investment to put half of your skill points into a single skill tree. The way it is now, 25 of 300+ is nothing. That leaves 275+ points to put elsewhere. You really aren't making any sacrifice, you can still max out your class trees, weapon tree and armor tree. In fact, you pretty much have to put some points into a crafting skill, because where else are you going to put them? That makes crafting seem like an afterthought, which I think is sad. Imagine being proud of your investment in blacksmithing, then have some other dude be like "Oh, you're a blacksmith? Yeah, pretty sure I maxed that out too cause I needed to spend the points."

Some people, sure, but not people like me. Also, not too many people would want to do that if developing a crafting skill actually required any meaningful sacrifice, as it would be more challenging to do so.

Being able to max all skills in ES games has always been one of the few things I've always disliked about them. However, at least they could kind of get away with it because they were single player games. When you have an MMO and you stick RPG in there, character progression is going to be a big deal and most people are going to want to feel like they can build a character that is substantially different from others.

I've played a little bit with the skill calculators and it took me about 80 points just for one of my skill bars: 5 abilities, one ultimate along with passives. If I went for two skill bars (with weapon swapping), it would take even more.

...But I thing I get your point better now. I wouldn't object to more stuff in crating skills, but 100 is still to much in my opinion. Doubling it to 50 might be nice enough.

I could see a skill in which you could invest 4 or 5 skill points and that would allow you to use the different levels of tempers (green, blue, purple and gold if I remember appropriately), but besides that, I have a hard time thinking of any new skills.

The more that I think about it, the more I think that the best implementation to achieve the desired result would be to actually have entirely new classes for the professions.

All classes should be able to gather, and have access to basic crafting, but perhaps in order to produce anything of value (say higher than green quality?) or to research traits - that was only available to the crafting classes.

Their skill trees would be new (and standard classes wouldn't have access to any crafting skill trees) - perhaps one tree for related combat abilities (again to use the blacksmith example, bonuses with heavy armour and shields, better repair options, bonuses using self made gear etc). Another tree could be "Production" which would focus on your output (chance to make 2x item, chance for higher quality or rarity, chance for improved traits etc). The third tree could be a combination of gathering perks, hireling, extraction, research etc.

You could then have class quests such as orders for specific items to craft, or a one time quest item requirement special materials. There is plenty of possibility, this would be in addition to standard quests and would make up for the Craftsmans lower efficiency in completing "combat" quests.

The reason i would love this in ESO is that it fits in with the previous elder scrolls games, and ESO already has the framework in place by nature of the way it deals with skill trees etc.