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[Cy Mitchell]

I posted this idea in another thread but because Russ stated on Twitter that the next month would be used to shape the way the new Skill Tree will function, I thought I would also post it as a suggestion. This may be something that you already have considered or have planned but, if not, then maybe it will help:

Rampage, on 05 December 2016 - 10:29 AM, said:

Not if they give an initial supply of "free" SP for the bad Mechs that can be used up before the player has to start buying SP with XP and C-Bills. That and putting a much lower SP cap on powerful Mechs would solve the problem completely. That way you could bring the sub par Mechs up closer to the level of the better Mechs immediately and not have to pay crazy amounts for the Skill Points to do so.

For example: A Kodiak KDK-3 might only get to buy 13 SP to simulate the present skill tree and retain its present level of performance. It would get no additional slots for customization because it has no need nor does it presently have additional quirks. The Kodiak pilot would have to re-purchase those SP with C-Bills and EXP

A, Vindicator 1R, on the other hand, currently has 16 quirks and is still a bad Mech. The Vindacator might get 16 free SP that can be used to get him up to the level that it currently is. Then you would have additional SP added to account for the 13 current skills and a few more to make the Vindicator perform better. So maybe the Vidicator would get a total of 40 SP (for example) to use for leveling 16 of which would be free and could be used immediately.

That is just one way that PGI could use the skill tree without unfair cost to bad Mechs and it would also help balance the Mechs overall.

Determining a base number of free SP for each Mech would be as easy as counting up the number of quirks it presently has. Then you can adjust the total number of allowed SP up or down based on the desired performance level. Thus the skill tree would work to balance performance the Mechs one against another with the player being the one to decide how he/she wants to play the Mech and what skills will best allow it to be played as desired.

Edited by Rampage, 05 December 2016 - 11:16 AM.

[50 50]

Little hard to say at this stage.
The brief glimpse of the skill tree we saw looked fairly generic. It is individual per mech and it may be that on certain mechs and variants have different options. For example, I would not expect the jump jet skills to be in the tree for a mech that cannot equip jump jets, or I would not expect the Urban Mech to have quirks for torso twist angle.