Elder Scrolls Online devs talk Classes Refresh after community feedback

ZeniMax Online Studios (ZOS) has responded to community feedback by announcing a sweeping overhaul of Elder Scrolls Online’s (ESO) current class systems.

This was delivered to the EOS community as the Class Identity Refresh. The initiative aims to restore what ZOS is calling “The power fantasy” and the purpose of ESO’s original classes.

The devs are hoping to do this while the game is turning, which is a massive undertaking to address years of feedback on balance, subclass dominance, and the stacking of these issues across years of releases in the long-running MMORPG.

A Community-Driven Shift

Developers reacting to community feedback can be unpredictable. Poorly handled, it can lead to knee-jerk alterations that undermine the aspects of a game players have poured hundreds of hours into.

Change isn’t easy, and can force loyal players to walk away if they aren’t taken seriously or nerf abilities in some way, but the ZOS’s dev team has gone into great detail about ESO classes, and some fans are cautiously optimistic.

“We used to have class identity. That is now gone. I welcome any effort to bring it back,” said one on the EOS message boards.

ZOS’s statement delves into design philosophy, long-term class vision, and what the team calls ESO’s identity framework.

Dragonknight power gap

Most players are bracing for the first major overhaul: Dragonknight. As the inaugural class to receive the refresh, it will likely enjoy a temporary advantage across ESO’s PvE, PvP, and dungeon content until other classes are brought up to code.

The first class to have this boon will feel comparatively stronger, which is a dynamic ZOS is writing cheques to navigate as their release schedule plays out.

The Elder Scrolls release schedule from ZOS reads:

• Dragonknight
• Warden
• Sorcerer
• Templar
• Nightblade
• Necromancer
• Arcanist

Rebuilding “Class Identity”

At the core of the refresh is a return to class identity, a longstanding element of the fantasy genre.

“For example, Nightblades rely on cunning and shadow to stay elusive in battle, striking while the moment is right, while Templars draw on divine energy for more zealous and direct combat,” the developers explain.

Each class is meant to represent a specific power fantasy, something many felt had been diluted as subclassing and hybridisation stacked on character builds with each new release.

The refresh signals a potential shift toward purer, more thematic builds, reducing reliance on subclassing or cross-skill-line combinations to remain viable.

“As it stands, subclassing is objectively stronger than ‘pure’ classing by a large margin for several reasons. This is mostly caused by the vast differences in individual skill line designs,” says ZOS..

It’s a polite way of saying they have some major work ahead to take the game back to pure fantasy tropes and then tweak accordingly as the roster of refreshed classes takes hold.

Reining in Subclass Dominance

One of ZOS’s central goals is preventing subclassing from dominating the existing meta, which has intensified with every new expansion added to the game.

“Our aim isn’t necessarily to nerf, though. While in some instances nerfs may be necessary,” the team notes. “We’ll be using values and specific effects to create more powerful or punchy abilities and passives, but with greater nuances that prevent subclassing from completely dominating the meta.”

Refining a class system without weakening players or stripping away fantasy-RPG flexibility is a vast undertaking.

ESO’s current system allows every possible build within the established boundaries, but some players want to be Conan the Barbarian mixed with Corvo Attano, and others want to be a pure version of Grognak.

Still, there has been more positive feedback from the community than anticipated, with one user summarizing the model response.

“Doing it one at a time is smarter as well, even if it might lead to inconsistency in style/effectiveness/etc, it’ll allow ZOS to see how one singular updated class affects the environment, and properly compensate/fix/etc when they’ll need to. Instead of unleashing hell all at once.”

This approach will take years, not months, to implement. One thing is clear: an incoming meta shift will rise and fall with each class refresh, but it seems to be a path back to established RPG builds.