Getting rid of classes was a mistake

>getting rid of classes was a mistake
Not really, because classes were ultimately just a collection of starting skills anyway. Morrowind had completely free-form character progression, the only minor commitment you had to do was to decide whenever you are focused on combat, magic or stealth skills for the modest increase in skill gain.
TES was never a class based RPG and that is fine.

The real problem was getting rid of things like skill and attribut based faction progression gates. One of the biggest and most notorious issues with both Oblivion, and Skyrim, is the fact that you can incredibly easily max out basically any faction storyline in like one or two sittings, and it's completely unrelated to your actual character build.
Want to be a Supreme master of the Mage guild, while you are playing a mentally stunted Nord with no magic skills?
No problem. There is no actual demand on you to have your character and your faction progress in any way relate. Combined with fast travel, and generally trivial systems, it makes the game play like a sandbox, and not an RPG. There is no commitment to anything, and that removes any sense of actual presence.

RPG's need to have some degree of restrictions based on your character build. That is what makes an RPG, as opposed to pure sandbox. TES abandoned that notion with Oblivion, and it's what frustrates real RPG fans about Beth games so much.

>because classes were ultimately just a collection of starting skills anyway.
Which developers can balance right. That's the important take away. You can't balance individual skills as well because a player can always accidentally choose a host of "wrong" skills and be almost completely useless.

In a proper class you might have weak skills too, but the class itself is balanced to work regardless.

"Classes" were useless because you never went with a pre-made one, you always created a custom donutsteel OP one and there was literally no difference endgame between classes and no classes

That's why they should have made them less useless. Make you choose from fully balanced skill trees that are playable in their own right. Right now if you choose those less useful trees in Skyrim you are just setting yourself up to be weaker in fights. They should have made character creation such that you choose 2-3 trees and all of those trees are powerful in their own right. So, even diplomacy and lock picking leads to a class that can handle his shit everywhere.

>Which developers can balance right.
Honestly, class-confines in RPG's really only make sense in group-based RPG's. The benefit of a class is specialization, which is most fun when it's used to discover interesting synergies. Outside of that, there is not much benefit in having rigid class system.

I do agree that a good RPG ballances creativity and option, with restriction. That is the POINT of an RPG. Unlike Sanbox, RPG's are about commitment to your character, that is the core of a roleplaying game experience. Your build is what defines your experience. Low int character should not have access to high-intelligence requiring actions, and vice versa. This is the fudnamental truth of RPG's bethesda has completely tossed out of the window.

But I don't think class system is the best way to achieve that, especially in games where you play as a singular character. Especially especially in a sandbox RPG like Morrowind, where ultimately, your power-celling is supposed to be exclusively your own effort. If you want to play the game for thousand hours, eventually max out your character in every possible fashion - that is fine, that fits the systems and story Morrowind was going for.

But in Morrowind, that process had to be earned. Unlike in later Beth games, where everything is both riddiculously level scaled, and absolutely not build-lock, which makes any and all story and quest progression possible, and consequently, meaningless, and straight up silly.

Just about everything you attributed to Morrowind is Skyrim.

I'm never going to defend the Bethesda way. You all must have played a warrior or a sneak archer. I chose a destruction mage and found it the hard way that my choices didn't scale in damage. Fuck that nonsense. If the game had a proper destruction CLASS the dumb developers would have had to balance it right, but they didn't think people would deviate from the cookie cutter choices that much. The Skyrim system screams no-choices. Classes would unironically bring us more choices when ALL the skill trees were made into different useful classes.

elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/College_of_Winterhold_(Skyrim)#Lectures

playing wrpgs is a mistake

I don't think I've ever had a problem with making any build work in any TES game I've played. Granted, I did not play Arena or Daggerfall to any extent. Morrowind had classes that were easier and less easy early game, but you could make anything work with just a bit of effort. Meanwhile, Oblivion and Skyrim don't have inefficient builds at all, because their don't have nearly any situational skills to begin with. You might just really, really suck at these games.
If anything, the problem with post-morrowind Beth games is the opposite: the RPG systems are so generous to make sure no retard is EVER left behind they basically remove the most interesting elements of the game. Not only that any build can do any quest at any level, but class switching is also RIDDICULOUSLY easy in Oblivion and Skyrim.

The problem with modern day Beth is that it tries too hard to make sure you can't get locked out of anything, no matter your choices. Not the other way around.a

Every post you write is generalized mumbo jumbo. I gave you concrete examples. Those are verifiable and true. Destruction magic doesn't scale, it's inherently badly designed. Only warrior and sneak archer really work in that game, everyone else sets themselves up to be way weaker with the level-scaling system that the game has. It doesn't give you any fucking choice. The only they to fix it is to 1. create classes that are easy to balance, 2. make the game world richer so that it doesn't only revolve around combat, that even a less combat-focused character doesn't get left behind. But all know the latter is impossible for Bethesda, so the only real way to reduce cookier cutter choices is to use classes.

>you never went with a pre-made one, you always created a custom donutsteel OP one
Speak for yourself

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Bethesda games pot-morrowind revolve around you. Nothing in the world actually changes.

Your concrete example is meaningless. First of all you never even said which of the three games you are talking about. Second of all, I made both pure destruction mage, and multiclass specking into destruction work in all three of them.
You just suck. And I can't even begin fanthom how did you manage to suck in franchise that is so DESPERATE to make sure even the worst players can't be left behind.
Destruction spells don't scale, that is why in Morr and Oblivion you have spell crafting, and you can actually make a spell that 1-hits everything through out the ENTIRE game in Oblivion with sub 50 destruction. Lightning, 3-sec duration, I think like 20-40 damage. It will wipe out your mana bar but god is it stupidly overpowered, and generally just badly balanced. Oblivion is trash, and Skyrim isn't much better, but it's bad because of how forgiving it is, not the other way around.

You really just suck very badly.
You are not wrong about the games - at least Ob and Skyrim, not having non-combat options though. That sucks, but then again you don't have non-combat skills either, so yeah, it's a wash.

>Your concrete example is meaningless.
Might be meaningless if we weren't in a fucking Skyrim-related thread talking about the issues related to not having classes. Ffs pull yourself together and learn to have a real discussion.

Bethesda games will never get less combat focused. That's a fact. They are going to get MORE combat-focused as they need more and more sales. In that scenario only combat skills are going to matter when it comes to your choices. The "pick your skill" buffet is inherently wrong for this model. If you do like me and pick a less useful fighting skill, you might get left behind due to level-scaling. If you pick primarily non-combat skills, then you getting left behind is guaranteed. Do you see the problem here? The only way to not leave skills marginalized is to bundle them with classes. That way you are guaranteed to get useful skills with less useful ones. Skyrim is over a decade old. It's pretty much an established fact that sneak archer is the only real class in the game. So I don't know wtf you are talking about when you say there are plenty of things to choose from. No there isn't. Sneak archery has become a joke with the game.