First off lets look at the refund process. The new PTS introduces a bunch of new Items. GSP HSP HXP Etc. All very confusing. i have had to read threw the notes several times to come to grips with all the new Points i will have to deal with. This is a lot of clutter that does not need to be. Clean this up PGI. why we have more than just XP and GXP especially when u give us a refund ledger with how we are being refunded confounds me. I also feel Modules should be refunded for C-Bills. They were purchased with them and should be refunded as such. No GSP or any other nonsense. I do like how finally my Mastered and Elited mechs will get there SP to bring them up to the equivalent or the new skill tree equivalent of their previous level.
I personally will be getting based on the PTS :
Refund from Modules GSP = 14,956 or based on 91 pts per mech 164 mechs worth of SP.
Refund from Pilot Nodes = 363,000 GXP so another 5 mechs worth of mastery
now mind you i already have 350,000 GXP in the bank so another 4 almost 5 mechs mastered.
Add on top of all of this out of my 140+ mechs 95% are fully mastered so they will all be getting 91 SP already. Some of those mechs such as my Black Widow have just under 1 million XP. This makes giving me GSP a waste and i assume there more people like me out there.
On to the Skill trees. First off they are very cluttered. For example the firepower tree has 73 nodes. it is still annoying to go through it. the skills that have SP put in them are nice and brightly lit while the surround available skills have color but its to the point where its barley visible. this makes it hard to follow. slight improvement over the previous version but still needs work.
Half of the trees are quite useless and i am upset i am forced to take things i dont want for some things i do want. In the live Skill tree i get things i dont want but in the end i get all the skills. In the PTS i need to make sacrifices of getting things i do want because of things i dont want blocking those SP . Good example is the mobility tree and arm pitch blocking speed tweak. Example a large number of my mechs dont have arm weapons and zero or very very low arm armor. Forcing me to waste some of my limited SP on arm pitch that does zero for me is bad skill tree design. Once again i would have zero problem being forced to take arm pitch if it didn't mean i have to sacrifice some where else. IE live is better here.
PGI and people have this false impression the new Skill tree promotes roles and promotes mechs not to boat. I highly disagree with this based on the fact there is more SP location than available SP to spend. Mechs who Boat a single weapon system will get a numerical advantage in SP over mech who dont specialize.
The new Firepower tree also heavily favors clan mechs. You will be giving access of skills to mechs who currently do not have access to them. Clan laser mechs getting Duration reduction is a huge buff to those mechs. The High alpha ebon for example doesn't care much about cool down or heat get. Duration makes those mechs do more damage in less time and more pinpoint. same goes to a lesser extent ballistic velocity. K3 kodiak gets buffs night gyr dakka gets buffed. Maybe this wouldn't be so pronounced if you were not removing tons of quirks on mechs who need quirks to compete with mechs like the EBJ or Timber who have none or some negative quirks.
Currently in MWO you have Meta or top Mechs who perform that way do to hit box design and mount number/location. Now on top of this you have a Meta for those Meta mechs. IE a specific build that maximizes that mech. with the new skill tree you have added a 3rd meta to the mix. now you have top mech with top build and top skill tree build. there will only be 2 or maybe 3 different good ways to skill out 99% of the mechs out there. this makes it harder to do non meta things in non meta mechs. you are by adding more choices narrowing the meta. the current skill tree doesn't do this and i hope PGI will maybe see that. the current Tree doesnt favor a mech or a build everyone is equal here. that is what PGI should strive for in the new SKILL TREE design.
Edited by SteelHoves, 27 April 2017 - 07:12 PM.