14 replies to this topic

[Void2258]

The multiple mech requirement for advancing in the pilot tree is unbalanced, unfair, and unfun. I have been playing since the first week of the beta, and I do not have a single mech with anything except the basic tree unlocked. Why? Because I am interested in playing a variety of mechs I find fun, not spending my hard earned c-bills (or worse MC) on a junky chassis I am going to sell as soon as I grind out the basic tree.

This system unbalances matches because people in mechs they don't want won't upgrade them. Therefore whichever team has more people grinding for the pilot tree is disadvantaged. It is unfair to other players on these teams because they have been randomly matched with a team more likely to lose through no fault of their own. Players grinding may not even care about winning or even bother to play, instead going near AFK so they get XP for being there. It is unfun because it forces you to grind mechs you don't care about. The game must have time sinks to get people to buy things, however, anytime the game starts becoming annoying and drives people away in the name of time sinks, something has gone wrong.

This adds up to is a massive problem with the design. At any given time you are going to have a large number of people not having fun because they are playing mechs they don't want to, not having fun because they are playing with a disadvantage, and not having fun because they are playing with AFKs.

Instead of running with this broken system, a second set of actual pilot abilities on top of mech abilities (and that is really what the current "pilot tree" is: mech abilities) would have served the same purpose of taking up time without the disadvantages of forcing mechs on players. With the game coming up on "release", we need to address these issues now, not later. It is far past time to get rid of cross chassis requirements and focus on the advancement tree(s) adding to the game, instead of being a detriment. If the game is released in its current state, it will probably fail, as most players will choose to leave instead of dealing with this system. Please PGI, for the sake of the game, fix this.

(Before anyone says "why did you wait to now to talk if here since the beginning of closed beta", I have been talking about this constantly since then, and I have not been the only one. We need to get a critical mass of player upset and complaining to PGI if we are going to get this fixed, and we need to do it now. Once the game is "released", it will be near impossible to fix this before it tanks.)

[Lord Perversor]

maxed Jenner, Centurions, Blackjacks ,Highlanders, and all Heavies aside the Quickdraw (wich is in progress)

i keep the variants whose config i like then sell the others, i ALWAYS upgrade with endo and DHS, sometimes even changing artemis and FF on and off in the same mech after 3-4 matches until i find the config i like.

and all this with the premium time from the same founder pack you bought... with still spare MC So no in the long way you should try to max the different variants since each one are a whole different mech .

Altought i may agree i would like some *choices* in the exp tree so i can focus each variant in a more predefined role than just the overall develop.

Edited by Lord Perversor, 04 July 2013 - 10:10 AM.

[Void2258]

You are a dedicated play, Lord Perversor. Do you really think the average player with no investment (brand or monetary wise) in the game is going to be so dedicated? Or are they going to go "oh man I need to play these other chassis that look really lame and don't let me build/play how I want? **** that, I'll go play SMITE instead". I can tell you from experience with people I know that that is the much more common case.

[TehSBGX]

I've maxed CN9-A and hunchie 4sp. I chose not to keep the hunchie after while though. They're likely gonna revamp the skill tree when clans hit because Omnis just bork the whole thing. They may revamp it before that too. Basically it's pretty obvious the skill tree system is gonna get revamped, just wait a while.

[Void2258]

TehSBGX, on 04 July 2013 - 11:15 AM, said:

I've maxed CN9-A and hunchie 4sp. I chose not to keep the hunchie after while though. They're likely gonna revamp the skill tree when clans hit because Omnis just bork the whole thing. They may revamp it before that too. Basically it's pretty obvious the skill tree system is gonna get revamped, just wait a while.

Gee waiting patiently for them to just decide to fix it. I guess a year isn't that long. We've gone through almost a hundred patches and they haven't changed anything, but I'm sure if we all just sit here quietly they will fix the massive problem they won't admit exists on their own.

[Sug]

Void2258, on 04 July 2013 - 02:09 PM, said:

We've gone through almost a hundred patches and they haven't changed anything

Come on buddy.


If you've been playing for a year you probably have a bunch of cbills and a ton of xp banked on the chassis you play. Wait for a double xp conversion weekend, use your MC to exchange XP to GXP, then buy, level, and sell the chassis you need for master.

I've got 214k GXP, almost 300k xp banked on chassis I play, 16 variants mastered and 13 at Elite level. I haven't grinded out a variant since i got Master on my Founder's Catapult.

Edited by Sug, 04 July 2013 - 02:18 PM.

[Void2258]

Sug, on 04 July 2013 - 02:17 PM, said:

Come on buddy.


If you've been playing for a year you probably have a bunch of cbills and a ton of xp banked on the chassis you play. Wait for a double xp conversion weekend, use your MC to exchange XP to GXP, then buy, level, and sell the chassis you need for master.

I've got 214k GXP, almost 300k xp banked on chassis I play, 16 variants mastered and 13 at Elite level. I haven't grinded out a variant since i got Master on my Founder's Catapult.

Just because you can work around the system doesn't make it less stupid. The fact that you have a REASON to work around it shows that their is a major flaw. Also, I am not going to pay them my hard earned money to get around their ****** up system.

Edited by Void2258, 04 July 2013 - 02:35 PM.

[Sug]

Void2258, on 04 July 2013 - 02:27 PM, said:

Just because you can work around the system doesn't make it less stupid. The fact that you have a REASON to work around it shows that their is a major flaw. Also, I am not going to pay them my hard earned money to get around their ****** up system.

The "reason" it works like that is so this free-to-play game can make some money....

If it's not worth it to you then don't spend the MC.

[Void2258]

If this were League and I told you you had to play shaco, eve, and nocturne before you could get ANY of them tier 2 runes, and until then hope you like playing all games with tier ones while others have tier 3, you would be ******* pissed unless you liked all 3 of them. Now imagine if I said this back when Eve was completely and purposefully underpowered. Being free does no mean you have to force players to do things they do not want to do. You can get money without making your game act like an *******.

I am perfectly willing to put in effort. But I am not going to do it playing a mech I don't like. I am here to have fun, not take the intro lab courses so I can get to the good advanced stuff. This is a game, not school.

Edited by Void2258, 04 July 2013 - 06:20 PM.

[Void2258]

Sug, on 04 July 2013 - 03:16 PM, said:

The "reason" it works like that is so this free-to-play game can make some money....

If it's not worth it to you then don't spend the MC.

Yeah you know what 90% of players are going to say? "I have to ******* use money just so I can level mech? Not 'can', but 'have to'! PAY-2-WIN! **** YOU MWO, I'm playing something fair."

If you make a game a chore so people have to spend money on things they don't want to, they will leave. And then none of us get to play.

[Sable Dove]

Aside from the fact that being able to use real money to improve your mechs at a much, much faster rate than if you didn't pay is a form of pay-to-win, the current skill trees suck. There are no choices like there were supposed to be, aside from "which order do I buy all of the upgrades in?" and "Am I willing to pay an atrocious amount of money so that my new mech isn't awful without lots of grinding?"

A system that puts you at a disadvantage when buying a new mech, unless you pay real money, is not a good system. It's part of why the game is so unfriendly to new players. Even if they use the champion mechs, they are still at a palpable disadvantage to players with Elite or Master mechs.

[Void2258]

Sable Dove, on 04 July 2013 - 06:31 PM, said:

Aside from the fact that being able to use real money to improve your mechs at a much, much faster rate than if you didn't pay is a form of pay-to-win, the current skill trees suck. There are no choices like there were supposed to be, aside from "which order do I buy all of the upgrades in?" and "Am I willing to pay an atrocious amount of money so that my new mech isn't awful without lots of grinding?"

A system that puts you at a disadvantage when buying a new mech, unless you pay real money, is not a good system. It's part of why the game is so unfriendly to new players. Even if they use the champion mechs, they are still at a palpable disadvantage to players with Elite or Master mechs.

Again, I am not saying being able to improve FASTER for money is bad. It's perfectly fine. But the current setup forces you to pay money or playing mechs you don't want you TO improve ANY mech. There isn;t one mech in the game that can be gotten to master without either spending an atrocious amount of time playing games you don't want to play ("being forced to take the intro course before the fun course") or pay huge amounts of money to bypass via GXP and playless leveling (aka gaming a badly designed system to skip the parts you don't like).

Money to advance faster is fine. Forcing people to pay or play in a way they explicitly want to avoid is not.

Edited by Void2258, 04 July 2013 - 06:39 PM.

[XX Sulla XX]

Its not broken at all. Its a logical way to have add a revenue stream to this game. You can put in time or money to upgrade your mech. Its logical and works fine. Its part of the trade off of how free to play games work. Plus its really easy to level mechs.

[Shiro Matsumoto]

XX Sulla XX, on 04 July 2013 - 09:25 PM, said:

blah...... Plus its really easy to level mechs.

.

Surely it was fun with Mechs who have 3 variants that play diffrent, but not weaker... my Catapults, Trebuchets...

Say that again with Mechs who have atrociously crappy variants.. Commando, Spider...

[Void2258]

John McFianna, on 05 July 2013 - 03:11 AM, said:

.

Surely it was fun with Mechs who have 3 variants that play diffrent, but not weaker... my Catapults, Trebuchets...

Say that again with Mechs who have atrociously crappy variants.. Commando, Spider...

Exactly. There are some variants that do objectively suck. Do you know why? BECAUSE THEY ARE MADE TO SUCK.

To get the minimum 3 variants, they put in mechs from different time periods. For example, the Raven-3L is just better than the 2X and 4X because the 2X and 4X are the prototypes for the 3L. TT made these mechs to fit timelines and to be the inferior early models that would match up with the mechs at that time. They are not meant to be in service at the same time. But to level up the 3L, you have to play these mechs that are BY DESIGN, inferior to the other variant, thus annoying the player playing them and disadvantaging the team that has to have them instead of the better variant. It's like telling someone they have to take a WW2 Sherman into battle in order to learn how to use their M1A1.

On the other hand, the catapult designs are in service at once because they serve different roles. None of them are objectively bad compared to the others, although most people play the A1 completely differently than it is meant to be used (close range spalshcat as opposed to long range fire support).

Edited by Void2258, 05 July 2013 - 12:25 PM.