What is holding me to continue playing this game is that I can see how much potential it has, and I don’t think I’m alone on this. With that said, I really feel the game needs more World Talent Tree’s and it already has the capability of producing 3 more, and as to why they were not released as separate tree’s I don’t understand. These of course would be lock picking, sneaking, and athletics.
First off, lock picking.
Lock picking only has one use in this game and it is to unlock random treasure chests that players find in the game, and that’s great, I really love the idea that I could stumble upon a random chest and be blessed with loot because I’m out in the world exploring. The sad fact about this is that after the initial thrill of finding these chests wears off you just find yourself uninterested in looting them, mostly due to the fact that they hold garbage loot with absolutely no chance of holding anything worthwhile. On top of that the task of looting them in general becomes incredibly simple and it’s not due to the fact I earned that ability, every chest is literally “simple” difficulty based on my toon’s level.
If there was a talent tree for lock picking that you leveled up by unlocking chests that would bring more of TES feel in general, it wouldn’t even have to be an elaborate tree. Some simple talents I can think of off the top of my head could be increased chance to find rare items like purples, increased gold gain, chance to not break locks, a two hour cool down to instantly unlock the chest, daily quest (like fighter’s guild Cyrodiil quest) where players need to unlock a certain number of chests to gain bonus loot or experience with the thieves guild (when it is released). Just simple thing’s like those could bring a better experience to players.
Secondly, sneaking.
I really think that sneaking should have it’s own talent tree. This alone could open the door for a lot more character customization if the current sneaking talent’s were taken out of the medium armor skill line. The “improved sneaking” talent could easily be left in the game and moved over to a separate tree, and leave room in the medium armor tree to help fix a lot of the balance issues that stamina builds have. On my DK I spent ~ 60k gold building a stamina based set just to see that my DPS completely pales in comparison to the Meta of light armor destro. The biggest reason that I found it fails is the fact my light attacks with a TWO HANDED AXE does HALF the damage of that of a RESTO STAFF, also a destro staff (caps are necessary). So simply adding a wep dmg increase talent into medium armor could help a ton to make some nice dmg builds with stamina. It could even open the door for hybrid healing builds where people heal in medium armor all enchanted with magic to gain the healing bonus from wep dmg, and can easily swap to a bow or DW and put out fair dmg. This could also encourage stamina based support abilities. Anyways, having the ability to be a “sneaky” character should be earned, even if your a NB, Bruce Lee wasn’t born a ninja. People should be able to level their sneaking talent simply by using it, gaining experience from initiating fights while in sneak, distance traveled while sneaking, stealing while sneaking, even avoiding fights with sneaking based on the detection indicator eye opening and closing. The talents for the tree seem fairly obvious, increased movement speed, detection radius, increased crit chance from sneak, increased dmg from sneak attack from behind, maybe even an ability to vanish with a speed boost. Like I said, all this would have to be earned from using sneak and not just acquired because you know how to equip medium armor.
Lastly, Athletics.
This is also an aspect of the game that could be elaborated on. It’s currently also a part of the medium armor skill line which I feel takes away from opportunities of the tree to bring more balance to stamina builds. Athletics would include, Dodge rolling and jumping. The fact that this isn’t its own tree takes away from customization that the game could have. Every player has dodge roll, it’s very much a part of the game and I use it in many situations and my only reward is I don’t take dmg. There should be a talent tree for this that rewards experience for successful dodge rolls. It would encourage players to use it more and even help hone their ability to play the game. Obviously the current athletics talent in medium armor would be used. Other passives could be dmg boost after successful dodge, free cost of ability after dodge (wouldn’t even have to be successful, it wastes a lot of time to roll and cost is considerable), Chance for a free dodge roll (15% chance and scales, CD 15 seconds after proc?, or stacking buff for each successful dodge to increase chance), even an ability to allow free dodge rolling for ~15 seconds + global reduction, even global reduction could be a passive. This is high resources, but an ability to jump over players or mobs and knock them down for an open back stab. Maybe even a passive that increases jump distance after successful dodge(great PvP escape talent and high skill required). There could be so much done with an athletics tree, and again it would all have to be earned and rewarded to players that accomplish successful dodging. As for jumping there currently isn’t much use for it in the game, but jumping puzzles like in GW2 could really bring in a distraction for players. I heard Paul Sage himself say he likes puzzles for distractions. Now whether or not jumping puzzles keeps TES feel that’s another story. As it stands now the puzzles in ESO are pitiful in quantity, hardly challenging, and lame to repeat. They really should make daily puzzles that change every day based on an algorithm and give respectable rewards for difficulty.
I do understand that if any of these idea’s were to be incorporated into ESO they would fit best in the patch that brings the justice system, thieves guild, DBH etc. or shortly after to insure they were done right. I feel if they done this it would be a step in the right direction to help bring the character customization they want the game to have. Now for all I know I may have just wasted my time writing all this up because they may already have all these idea’s in mind, but if not they probably won’t pay this any attention unless enough of the community wants it, much like the up-coming 3v3v3 tourny they are going to hold at Quakecon. If that gets good results I’m sure they will incorporate it in the game, Which I really hope they do, I’ve been dying for some sort of small scale PvP. Dueling is on the horizon as well and I can’t wait. So to ZOS I really hope you read this and take some of it into consideration.
Elder Scrolls Online: Dragonknight & Sorcerer, Alliance Points 