82 replies to this topic

[AnTi90d]

I was reading OHPG and I came across this thread:

(Warning: sodium levels are at an all time high in the comments.)

https://www.reddit.c...99d&sh=553b8b03

..and within it this bit of information was posted:

Well, I'm more than a bit sad about this news.

I rather liked having a mech and being able to, at any point in time, decide that I wanted to do something different with it. Whether I'm still trying to feel it out and see what works for my playstyle on that chassis or trying to retool my FP dropdecks because of some tonnage change, limitlessly customizing mechs has been a fun part of the game.

I'd go as far as to say that I'm not the only one that has enjoyed having the ability to swap the weapons and modules and change something from AC10/MDLAS to UACs to PPC/Gauss for no cost.. or even just deciding if you want to go with MDLAS or MPLAS, so you try each build out and see which one better melds into your playstyle.

So, what do you guys think?



(Also.. LOL @ people that don't know the difference between, "your," and, "you're," especially if they're native English speakers.)

[FireStoat]

I understand where Russ is coming from, in that the vast majority of Whales and streamers are sitting on a Fort Knox of Cbills & banked Premium time that they don't touch. PGI feels that an increased CBill sink is needed.

The thing about this though is that it's doing absolutely nothing to promote build diversity and experimentation, which were two key points that were listed as design goals of the new system. Either they should re-think their approach for players experimenting and not feeling forced to boat weapons and follow a very narrow choice of meta builds, or just admit that they had big dreams but no imagination to reach them.

[The Lighthouse]

I see.

I am one of the large marine mammals for this game, with 13,848 banked premium time.

I guess I can just walk away from all of these.

[Kael Posavatz]

And I thought I had a lot of premium time (shakes head)

Wait, are those days or hours?


But no, seriously, I can sort-of see Russ' point. The problem is that it undermines arguments about the versatility of OmniMechs, which is one of the reasons for repeatedly hammering the Clans. Locking jumpjets to omnipods was an early one (I can still remember when I could move JJs around on the Timberwolf, sigh).

[Sarcasm set to: On]
And, really, I am a Clan loyalist. Can someone explain to me why I continue to sully my honor with c-bills other than because it makes PG--I mean, *cough*ComStar*cough* happy to make me dance to their tune?

[The Lighthouse]

Kael Posavatz, on 15 February 2017 - 01:03 AM, said:

And I thought I had a lot of premium time (shakes head)

Wait, are those days or hours?


But no, seriously, I can sort-of see Russ' point. The problem is that it undermines arguments about the versatility of OmniMechs, which is one of the reasons for repeatedly hammering the Clans. Locking jumpjets to omnipods was an early one (I can still remember when I could move JJs around on the Timberwolf, sigh).

[Sarcasm set to: On]
And, really, I am a Clan loyalist. Can someone explain to me why I continue to sully my honor with c-bills other than because it makes PG--I mean, *cough*ComStar*cough* happy to make me dance to their tune?

It's hours.

This is how this huge marine mammal I am perceive Russ's saying:


So, I bought tons of mechs with real money, so I have a lot of mechs. (about 160) So I am in need of burning all of the my cbills for skill tree if this is actually going to be implemented.

Well, that's actually understandable, since people have been swapping modules for too long time. But re-spec also costs cbills? So, what's going to happen when a meta shifts to one to another, and then I have to re-spec quite a lot of mechs to stay competitive and viable for gameplay.

In other words, more mechs I buy/own, I get more punished by needing to spend more cbills to 'maintain' mechs I own.

Only logical conclusion is that I have to stop buy/get mechs so the maintenance fee is something reasonable.

So, translating Russ's word, this is how I am hearing:


"Please stop buy new mechs since you guys have to spend quite a lot of time to maintain mechs you already have!"


So I guess I will stop buying new mechs from now on, following Russ's recommendation. Or I can just stop playing this game altogether.

Edited by The Lighthouse, 15 February 2017 - 01:23 AM.

[Widowmaker1981]

I think re-spec costs arent as bad as people are making out, its not like you will be respeccing the whole mech (since you can do skills individually) - its really only the weapon tree you would ever change, no? In my opinion things like the defence tree and the lower chassis tree are basically essentials for 100% of builds ever.

[Jehofi]

I play MWO because i like the core gameplay. So what is this core gameplay? Building a "fun" Mech and shooting other Mechs.
Dear PGI, there are a lot of things that you can improve from the current state, but if you Cut into my Fun im gone.

In all honesty you should talk about WHY you want to make those changes / decisions!
Do you need a Cbill sink?
Do you need it monetize more (and thus increase the grind)?
Do you ...?

If WE know what you want to achieve, i am certain we can come up with acceptable suggestions (unless you are greedy)!

EDIT

Widowmaker1981, on 15 February 2017 - 02:05 AM, said:

I think re-spec costs arent as bad as people are making out, its not like you will be respeccing the whole mech (since you can do skills individually) - its really only the weapon tree you would ever change, no? In my opinion things like the defence tree and the lower chassis tree are basically essentials for 100% of builds ever.

Essential things should not be in a skill tree! This should be about choice and hopefully it will be, thus the respec costs need to be adressed!

Edited by Jehofi, 15 February 2017 - 02:10 AM.

[The Lighthouse]

Widowmaker1981, on 15 February 2017 - 02:05 AM, said:

I think re-spec costs arent as bad as people are making out, its not like you will be respeccing the whole mech (since you can do skills individually) - its really only the weapon tree you would ever change, no? In my opinion things like the defence tree and the lower chassis tree are basically essentials for 100% of builds ever.

Oh dear, look at the past. See what PGI has achieved.

1) Killed off entire jumpjets.
2) Killed off entire light mechs by stupid re-scaling.
3) Attempted ridiculous Energy Draw.
4) Infowar. (lol)

They will be keep doing this, and it won't be just weapons tree I have to re-spec. And even if it is weapon re-spec only, it has 100x multiplier for my case. I am not really willing to spend ~200m when the meta shifts every single month.

[Cato Phoenix]

Yea, I mean, that's obvious. It has to cost something or you could shuffle around cbills and respecs like nothing else.

My thought would be to make it cost only XP to reskill.

[The Lighthouse]

Cato Phoenix, on 15 February 2017 - 02:17 AM, said:

Yea, I mean, that's obvious. It has to cost something or you could shuffle around cbills and respecs like nothing else.

My thought would be to make it cost only XP to reskill.

Argh, that's even worse for us huge marine mammals. It is still crazy grind (now I actually have to play all the mechs every single time) and even worse is that I cannot buy XP with money, unable to actually save time by spending money.

[PJohann]

This is actually VERY BAD news. Lools like Russ really want that mc/cbill charge for respec. Even that small amount of MC is still clear attempt to monetize gameplay. If this happen I will abandon this game. Im ok with expensive visual customisations, but paying for BASE GAMEPLAY features is completely off.
Nothing worse for game than developer disconnected from community and game itself.

[Cy Mitchell]

I never expected free respec so I am not surprised by this nor am I put off by it as long as the cost of the skill tree in both XP and C-Bills is reasonable. Right now, I do not think it is reasonable.

[Bud Crue]

Free respec every time PGI nerfs or changes quirks. How about that? I should nt have to pay every time they play darts and randomly ruin something else.

[Anatidaephobia]

Russ, please don't pull a Hawken. I've lost a mech game I've loved already, don't make me lose another one due to bad dev. decisions once again. (Hawken Devs wanted to experiment; experiment failed, over half of the community went away; Devs kept being adamant, more players disappeared, project was then shutdown and all that was left was around 20 players playing on dead servers until it got bought out by a company which wanted to make a quick buck from the few remaining and has accomplished nothing since then)



You don't have a community of a million players like World of Tanks or LoL or CsGo or... You need to attract NEW players and KEEP them together with the old ones. Not push the old ones away when there won't even be anyone capable of replacing them. You simply cannot do the same thing as a game with a massive community where over half of the people will accept whatever you do. If half a million people quit, you still have half a million people remaining. If half of THIS community splits, you'll barely have a community left.


I literally need cbills for almost anything I want to do; modules, engines, weaponry, mech frames, ... It's already a grind at times, but it's worth it because I can do so many things with one frame; change from energy to ballistic, from ballistic to missiles, etc.. etc.. Don't add in an extra cbill tax to that too.


I'm NOT a fan of the module system, but what it does is simple : It allows for this need of customisation to be so possible. You can swap around weapons, modules, engines, heatsinks, armour pieces, omnipods AT LITTLE TO NO EXTRA COST BESIDES PURCHASING SAID EQUIPMENT ONCE. Take a careful look at the LOUD part of the previous sentence, THAT is what is making the grind bearable for new players and even then most new players won't stick with it so long.

You're already grinding away for new mech frames, you're grinding to get some of those needed modules, you're grinding for engines, you're grinding to be able to afford those 11 PPCs you want to stick on a direwolf as an experiment to see how quickly you can blow yourself up by the press of a single button - But the most important thing of this all, it's worth it because it's fun to run around in a mech and shoot stuff, it's fun to experiment. And not everyone has 5 billion cbills laying around with nothing to spend them on. Don't take the extreme as the middle of the pack.




Just make it cost Mech XP at best, I wouldn't mind playing 5 matches to gradually outfit my mech; I will have to grind some Mech XP, but atleast I gain cbills for my effort which I can spend on more mechs, thereby creating a gameloop which consists of the following :

Buy mech -> Spend cbills to outfit mech / swap parts with existing mechs -> Play with mech -> Get XP and cbills -> Spend XP to make the mech better -> Spend Cbills on a new mech -> Spend cbills to outfit mech -> Play with...

With an extra small loop for mech customisation :

Buy mech -> Spend cbills to outfit mech / swap parts with existing mechs -> Play with mech -> Spend XP to make the mech better -> Realise it's not working -> Change mech setup / swap parts with existing mechs -> Play with mech -> Spend XP to make the mech better -> Get more Cbills for a new mech ...


Now add in "grind cbills" to almost every step; Spend XP and Cbills to make the mech better, spend cbills to change mech setup, spend XP and cbills to make the mech better... The grind is too large. I want to play to have fun, I don't want to play to grind stuff to possibly have fun later. I already have my job to give me the satisfaction of doing something because I have to survive, a game is not supposed to feel like work. If people have more cbills, they'll buy more mechs, if they buy more mechs, they need more mechbays, if they have more mechs they'll want to make them look pretty and spend money on MC.

And for those who don't spend a dime and play the game as "free to play" as it is advertised; they're the shooting targets for the players who are helping to pay your bills and are having a good time doing it.

[thievingmagpi]

I won't continue playing this game if this happens

[SmokedJag]

It's not 9 million (you won't change most non-weapon traits) but ~ 2 million to swap from lasers to PPCs and another two million when you decide that didn't work well even with full quirks is too much. The weapons themselves don't cost that much off the rack, never mind having them in inventory.

[Weepy Wanebow]

I think if the cost of mastering a mech is fairly cheap and the cost of respect is fairy cheap then there is nothing wrong with it costing something. However, I mean....like really, dirt cheap.....like a node cost 5k to 20k cbills and a respect for any individual node is 1/4th of what the original node the player is dropping cost.

Changing up Mechs shouldn't be more of a sink or challenge then it already is. They need to consider how players actually operate. I get that "swapping modules" may for some reason be distasteful to PGI (Although, I'm not sue why) but having pay on the front end and back end is a bad idea. Its like being double taxed on something...."oh you bought this product and then realized after purchase you didn't need it? here is are stocking fee and a tax for that restocking fee". I hate the threat "if this happens then I won't play" mainly because I think it is unnecessary and childish. I've always been of the mindset that if I feel screwed by a company I will just take my business elsewhere without so much as word as to why when I do it. Let the message that their business practices are unacceptable through their bank account. But...with PGI asking for feed back on this Play test....yeah. I don't know if I will abandon the game over this but there will be plenty of people who will. It is an action that seems aimed at destroying its consumer base. If I was a company in the middle of making another game, I wouldn't be trying to **** punt my fan base as far away from me as possible.....especially if I was relaying on them buying my next game. Seems like bad mojo to me PGI.....bad mojo indeed.

[Ano]

Widowmaker1981, on 15 February 2017 - 02:05 AM, said:

I think re-spec costs arent as bad as people are making out, its not like you will be respeccing the whole mech (since you can do skills individually) - its really only the weapon tree you would ever change, no? In my opinion things like the defence tree and the lower chassis tree are basically essentials for 100% of builds ever.

While I'm not a huge fan of the double-dip approach to skill unlocks, I think Widowmaker might be right -- even pending any adjustments to skill costs/respec costs, for the most part the only thing we're going to be swapping around are the weapon skills.

Personally, I think it would make sense to have respecs cost some fraction of the initial skill unlock cost (either by refunding a portion of the spent Cbills on respec, or by simply reducing subsequent skill buys after the full set are unlocked). If nodes cost (say) 20-25% of the initial purchase cost for respecs, then the majority of loadout-based respecs would cost relatively little -- only a few matches-worth of CBills -- and even a rebuild-from-scratch would still manageable for most people.

[MuonNeutrino]

If skill tree goes live with respec costs, I'm done with this game. Screwing around with builds is, in my opinion, *foundational core gameplay* for MWO that should never be charged for. Trying out random weird builds just to see what'll happen is half the fun of the game for me. I strip and rebuild several mechs every play session. If I have to pay even a few mil to swap around weapon quirks each time, I probably literally won't make any cbills. (e: I make 140k cbills/game average, so it's 18 games to pay to respec 20 nodes. At a ballpark of 10 minutes/game total, that's 3 hours, or a good evening's play. I rebuild at least one mech per play session. These respec costs will literally eat up every last cent I earn.)

And it only gets worse if they *do* manage to properly balance the skill trees. Right now it's just the weapon skills you'd be respeccing, but that's only because the rest of the trees are poorly balanced enough that there's such an obvious 'why would you ever take anything else' optimum skill distribution. If the skill trees get fixed to the point where's actually multiple interesting roles and choices enabled by different selections of non-weapon skill points (like there *should* be), then changing around the build and role of a mech will require paying to respec even more skill points.

Right now I'm already faced with only having the c-bills to re-master less than a quarter of the 96 mechs I own. I skip around and play different mechs all the time - if I want to reproduce my current ability to do so, I'm already faced with a truly ridiculous grind just to get my stable back even close to where it's currently at. Even if respec costs weren't a thing at all, it'd still prevent me from buying any new mechs for a very long time, and frankly the variety of mechs is one of the big reasons I play. And then you want to prolong that grind pretty much indefinitely by choking off my income with respec costs?

So once this goes live, I won't be able to play 3/4 of my mechs with any level of bonuses. (And 3/4 of my stable are 'crap' mechs that really *need* the bonuses.) I also won't be able to afford to buy any new mechs for ages. And then on top of that I'll have to choose between either *never fixing either of those things* because all my income goes to respec fees, or else playing the game in a way that I don't enjoy by never changing the builds on any of the mechs I *do* play.

I enjoy playing a wide variety of mechs and builds. It's what's attractive about this game to me. In a single stroke this system will remove 3/4 of my stable, prevent me from adding to it, and prevent me from playing the remaining mechs in an enjoyable way. So why the **** would I stick around?

Respec costs are not negotiable to me. Either they go, or I go.

Edited by MuonNeutrino, 15 February 2017 - 09:30 AM.

[Talorien]

Ano, on 15 February 2017 - 07:50 AM, said:

While I'm not a huge fan of the double-dip approach to skill unlocks, I think Widowmaker might be right -- even pending any adjustments to skill costs/respec costs, for the most part the only thing we're going to be swapping around are the weapon skills.

Personally, I think it would make sense to have respecs cost some fraction of the initial skill unlock cost (either by refunding a portion of the spent Cbills on respec, or by simply reducing subsequent skill buys after the full set are unlocked). If nodes cost (say) 20-25% of the initial purchase cost for respecs, then the majority of loadout-based respecs would cost relatively little -- only a few matches-worth of CBills -- and even a rebuild-from-scratch would still manageable for most people.

I'd be okay with a one-time fee of say (max) 50k CBills to respec ALL 91 nodes.

At that level, it's essentially a microtransaction or small tax that I understand the game needs to survive. But to charge the full fee the 2nd time for what the player has already bought is very off-putting and will almost certainly lose players.