[SUGGESTION] Ability to pick 2 subclasses and make it easy to switch between the two.

How would everyone feel about picking 2 favorite subclasses and being able to switch between them without incurring a cost? For those familiar with WoW, it's basically switching specs but you only get 2 and you have to pick 2 out of the 8 possible subclasses.

If the time and effort required to change your subclass becomes too inconvenient, I think the game might suffer from players feeling the need to pick only the "meta" subclass. This might lead players to feel that experimenting with other subclasses is too punishing and prevent them from doing so.

I don't believe we should be able to freely switch between all 8 subclasses, but what if we could just pick 2 that we could switch between, and then incur a cost when we want to reset those 2 picks? I want to be able to experiment with all of the different subclasses, but I don't want it to be too easy. If I could have 1 subclass that I really excel at (like for dungeons, raids, etc) and then another subclass that's more fun (like PVP, sieges, caravans, questing, exploring, or even gathering), I think that would be ideal.

Here's a hypothetical: Imagine that you're adventuring in an 8 man raid or dungeon and brought 1 tank, 2 healers, and 5 dps. Your group decides they need another healer. What do you do?

Do you kick a DPS and invite a healer that's really only needed for 1 encounter?
Do you continue smashing your face against the screen, hoping for the best?
Do you have someone run all the way back to town, respec, and then wait until they run all the way back?
Do you require guildies to stand around outside the entrance to the dungeon/raid so you can freely change up your group comp?

Now I know a cleric subclass won't be able to replace a cleric main. But if enough people could easily switch their subclass to cleric, that could be enough to allow a group to push past a certain encounter. Or what if a boss is immune or resistant to certain element types (or more susceptible to others), players could run into that problem as well.

With the inability to quickly teleport around while also being stuck in a single subclass, I think that puts more emphasis on making sure group composition is solid before you ever start out. Otherwise, groups may run into situations where players are asked to stand outside the dungeon/raid and wait around in case they are needed.

Thoughts?

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Comments

Caeryl

No. The point is for you to think about your choices before you make them. If you don’t have to actually commit to a choice, then why even have it in the first place?

Undead Canuck

Grails wrote: »

Is there going to be a way to preview in game what the augments are for your skills, before you pick the 2ndary archetype?

Sure. Roll an alt.

Ademptio

As much as I understand your standpoint. And I personally would love to try out every single class, hell I got 30+ characters on WoW just to try out something new.
I would vote no against quick class changes. I know ArcheAge putt a pendant in the game a few years ago which allowed people to save certain classes and this ruined the game for me.

An easy example of this would be: Kraken needed everybody to have some kind of Stealth or Feint Death ability to drop aggro so Kraken wouldn't kill you, crew, and your ship.
When the opposing faction would turn up everybody got slaughters cause they would be in Kraken spec and not in their combat spec.
When they introduced the skill change pendant this becomes quite easy. Get out of combat, go combat spec, kill people, go back to Kraken spec and finish Kraken.

I do think that having a locked primary class and an unlocked subclass is a good idea. You will be able to keep your "identity" as somebody mentioned above and while changing the subclass you will not feel like you have to play the same class over and over.

According to the last few interviews, the subclass will change the main class abilities quite drastically which means it will feel like something new and refreshing while keeping your role.

If I roll Warrior, I personally don't want to suddenly become an archer and stand back in the backlines.
But rolling warrior + archer class I wouldn't mind turning my axe attack into an axe throw to get some ranged ability.

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