YUyahoo, on 29 November 2015 - 06:28 PM, said:
Many many more people than me are unhappy with skill tree nerfs,...
These nerfs are coinciding with generic buffs to the base mechs (primarily IS) in their various movement mechanics. No, not all mechs get them, and one could argue that not all of them need them. Clan mechs are already very good in these mechanics compared to their IS counterparts. For the sake of gameplay and balance, obviously lore has needed to take a back seat to playability or half the games content would be obsolete (read non-clan) and the time and investments made into those avenues would feel (and in effect be) wasted. How that ultimately is cleaned up and sealed with a bow is an exploration obviously needing more time.
I'm a legendary founder- I've put in countless hours into the game, and more money than I probably should have (though never a gold mech). I'm not tier 1, I'm not a god at pvp, and I'm only a passable tactician, but you know what? I don't need to have a significant skill tree advantage over newbies.
I've already got custom mechs, cbills, modules, map understanding, mech understanding, mechanics understanding, and just good old fashioned piloting experience. THIS is my advantage. Any other bonuses from things like skill trees is just extra frosting on the cake.
They could burn the entire skill tree to the ground, and you know what? The game will still be playable, and you'd still be able to blow people up and be competitive and have fun. And what would it cost you? Wasted time playing mechs you didn't want to play for the sake of that mechanical advantage. That's it.
The entire incentive for the argument against the skill tree nerfs is because players are upset that they've spent time skilling up mechs; and that time, effort, and reward is being temporarily marginalized. Not because of some holy crusade for the game's health or balance.
And I wager they do revamp the skill tree, so it doesn't stay marginalized for those of us who have put in the effort to skill up those variants we didn't like. Yes, it falls into the proverbial "soon" category- which may or may not be for a while. But for the sake of an impending steam launch, and the games overall health under current circumstances, the changes are better made now than left to poison new players.
Is everything perfect and polished? Gods no. But they've done PTS attempts, they've got steam coming online soon which is a ball not easily stopped from rolling, and they're obviously not sitting on the side lines leaving an imbalanced game to stay imbalanced. That shows, at the very least, investment in what they've built, and by that token, I think its not unreasonable to expect them to try to better the game more in the future.