43 replies to this topic

[NeoCodex]

Was there any word or plans for that?


Will different chassis have different skill tree options? Because that would only make sense. Imagine an EBJ get a full set of weapon and mobility quirks the same as Orion.. I just can't get into my head how will they balance this.

You would have to put manual values or disable some options for the stronger mechs, so you're basically balancing the skill trees now. For example did they think about using the current quirk bonuses and keep those somewhere in the skill trees...? Or did I miss something?

[naterist]

i imagine that that has something to do why it is being delayed for testing and not rolling out in the december patch.

[Lily from animove]

Dunno, don't really can say I like it, it will clearly be much like the old one, except having dead choices and must have choices.

I would have prefered a "mechlab" where we cna adjust a mechs ability by altering it's behaviors including ups and downs, like, more laser range for the heat tradeoff, or less heat for less range. More pthc for less jar angle, and more speed for less angle, or the other way around.

Now it's just an unlock "tree" again with superior and inferior choices.

[DovisKhan]

Good question, because if they use the same template for every mech, then it's a HUGE buff to Clan mechs and an even bigger nerf to underperformers


In terms of survivability it also seems like a nerf, for example Atlas loses ~1/3rd of it's structure bonus (at this current build) and if you also factor in that a Direwolf gets 25% more survivability, well, heh, who would ever bring an Atlas...

[Tristan Winter]

Nobody seems to know the answer, but the consensus (based on Russ' vague explanation) seems to be that the bad mechs get more upgrade opportunities in the skill tree than the good mechs. So you can potentially unlock more skills with your Commando than with your ACH, for example. Or different skills. Obviously, not every mech is going to have access to every skill. There are jump jet skills that won't be available to the Atlas, for example.

The immediate problem is that every mech starts out as unskilled. So imagine the face of a new player who just bought the Awesome 8Q and realized that he has to play for 100 hours in order to unlock the skills he needs to match the power of an unskilled Kodiak. That's going to put a big damper on the New Player Experience.
"Oops, you bought the hard mode mech. Enjoy the next 30 weeks of trying to make it viable. Please buy some C-bill bundles. You're going to need them."

Another potential problem is whether the available skills are flexible enough to handle every weakness of the bad mech. For example, will the Kit Fox and Adder provide the specific mobility skills they need in order to compensate for their slow speed. Will the Dragon and Catapult potentially be able to unlock the extra CT structure / armour they need to survive. Will the Yen Lo Wang be able to unlock +20 armor points for its right arm, specifically, as opposed to getting +3 armour to every component?

We don't know the specifics. But consensus is that PGI has tried to figure out a way to give the bad mechs more skills or better skills.

It's kind of chaotic, because PGI has taken the normal concept of a skill tree and expanded it to the point where it scarcely makes sense to call it a skill tree anymore.

[El Bandito]

Maybe they will offer smaller trees to good mechs? But that doesn't make sense cause bad mechs will now require more XP and C-Bills to be viable, which will further drive away players from them. Maybe each variants' skill tree has different values? But that sounds like too much work for PGI.

[Lily from animove]

El Bandito, on 05 December 2016 - 02:39 AM, said:

Maybe they will offer smaller trees to good mechs? But that doesn't make sense cause bad mechs will now require more XP and C-Bills to be viable, which will further drive away players from them. Maybe each variants' skill tree has different values? But that sounds like too much work for PGI.

that would be horrible, think about the upraor evertyime a tree for balance reason is changed people get mad because they spent a load of XP for that. Also it owuld make balancing much harder when stuff changes to include the skilltrees as well. That wouldn't be a good choice to manage it by PGI's side.

[naterist]

Not nessacarily. It looks like things a grouped under different trees, an i imagine the goodies are spread out decently across them, and they limited how many unlocks each mech gets. In addition. And by tree i think it adds an certain percent for each quirk in game, and some add the mech modules. But i think its going to go through a vigorous testing period, especially russ said that was the holdup for it and assault, was testing. I think itll help with diversification though, because, take the la lalinche as an example. Its hella quirked for large pulse and ac10, and thats the only reason its viable and even then its a stretch. With this new skill system, you can quirk it to be OP with an AC 20 and medium lasers, then you couls use the extra weight to throw in a MASSIVE standerd engine and make it the fastest zomie assault ou there. And thats just off the top of my head with one mech. As long as they get the limits on what the skill tree can do at an appropriat level, found through a good amount of testing, as they seem to be doing, i think itll be a great edition to the game. It could make many non meta mechs have a unique meta to them.

Personally i want each mech varient to have a seperate tree, unique only to them, thatll make it easier to discourage certain playstyles on certain mechs, and encourage others y adjusting, while allowing any playstle to be attained through hard work on the other skill trees. And it would make sense. It should be easier for a grf-2n to have missle quirks earned then laser quirks, because thats its purpose, so put a shortcut upgrade to max missle quirks in the middle of the special varients tree... but this last paragraph is a wishlist, not what i think were getting.

Edit I ment to quote the third post in the thread.... oops.

Edited by naterist, 05 December 2016 - 02:49 AM.

[kapusta11]

Something tells me bad mechs will have better skill trees.

[Lily from animove]

naterist, on 05 December 2016 - 02:47 AM, said:

Personally i want each mech varient to have a seperate tree, unique only to them, thatll make it easier to discourage certain playstyles on certain mechs, and encourage others y adjusting,

that would kill those mechs, because the meta is the meta and the first thing the meta kills is those not able to meta.

[naterist]

kill the meta. #MakeStockModeGreat(Viable)Again

[Peter2k]

No one knows


But you can easily give a bad mech 100 points to specialise instead of 75
Or give higher rewards on the skills you unlock

For instance instead 2.5% cool run 5%
Or more structure armor buffs

And
We don't know if some mechs get maybe some special skills in the tree
Like +10 armor for arms/legs

Still a lot we don't know
And a lot PGI could do to

But again
We'll see it on a PTS first

[The Unstoppable Puggernaut]

The rubbish mechs (or terrible variants) will be scrapped ever more. They relied on their quirks to survive (not do well). Take them away and there's now a lot of mechs I'll be scrapping.

This is actually where I was hoping PGI would keep quirks but only give them to those who needed em.

[Dee Eight]

They'll probably build some of the trees around all the quirks used by the various variants of a chassis, as well as their hardpoints.

[Duke Nedo]

NeoCodex, on 05 December 2016 - 01:22 AM, said:

Was there any word or plans for that?


Will different chassis have different skill tree options? Because that would only make sense. Imagine an EBJ get a full set of weapon and mobility quirks the same as Orion.. I just can't get into my head how will they balance this.

You would have to put manual values or disable some options for the stronger mechs, so you're basically balancing the skill trees now. For example did they think about using the current quirk bonuses and keep those somewhere in the skill trees...? Or did I miss something?

I'd make these guesses:

• Over all it will work a bit like "choose your own quirks"
  
• Different mechs will have different skill trees. You can imagine that armor/structure will only be available to IS mechs for example to compensate for XL engine death etc
  
• Bad mechs will get much higher returns from generic skill trees
  
• Not only 2. and 3., but their trees may also be bigger
  
• If 4., in order not to demand more time put into bad mechs before they reach the level of unskilled good mechs the way to "quirk" bad mechs would best be made by letting them start with a certain number of Legacy XP that you can spend freely to "bring it up to par" before you start to grind your own xp into the bad bot.

In this form I think it could work. There are many pitfalls... I am... worried.

The over all XP requirement must be lowered too. I think the XP I invested in mastering my 200 mechs should cover to skill up all my mechs to say 50/75 or so. Otherwise my bad mechs will never see any of that XP and I'll only play my best mechs and variety will go down.

[Shiroi Tsuki]

naterist, on 05 December 2016 - 03:16 AM, said:

kill the meta. #MakeStockModeGreat(Viable)Again

Viable 12 Jumpjet Spiders
Viable Flamer boat Hunchback

H Y P E

[oldradagast]

They won't.

Oh, sure - they'll probably give the crud mechs nicer skill trees, but that is still meaningless in the long-run since you'll then have to grind out "skill-quirks" to make your subpar mech not awful; in the current system, you get those quirks for free to balance out the mech's flaws. Given the length of the grind, the removal of the 3 of a kind rule, and the XP inflation that makes it so we can't re-level most of our mechs in the new system with the XP we've earned, players are simply going to ignore subpar mechs and only focus on the handful of meta mechs based on hardpoints and hitboxes. This will be boring enough for experienced players, but new players will be fed to the sharks when they learn - the hard way - that 90% of the mechs in the game are weak to useless under this new system. Want to buy a mechpack?

Remember how stupid the game was right after the Clans came out? Remember when no quirks existed and there was no reason to play anything but top-tier meta? That's where we'll be again unless this proposed joke of a system is heavily revised.

Edited by oldradagast, 05 December 2016 - 04:27 AM.

[LordNothing]

every mech will have a different tree supposidly. i presume the crappy mechs will have better options.

[naterist]

Revised? No. Sorry, but rember, your not going to be able to use modules anymore, so if you want to get radar dep, your going to be sacrificing your weapon quirks. Speed boost? Need to limit something else. This is going to be such a shift from what were used too, that i think all the past metas are going to be making simultanious comebacks. Victor can get a poptart meta back, and kodiaks can focus on uac boosts. Its actually gonna be a cluster-f**& of metas when it first comes out. After, there will be enough there that i think itll stay varied for a VERY long time as people play around with different builds and values on different mechs. The profile of a mech is going to become a lot more important than the loadout however, since op dont mean jack if your too big to use cover effectively.

And info tech is a skill tree now, so im super pumped for that in a light mech...

Edited by naterist, 05 December 2016 - 04:37 AM.

[Wildstreak]

I understand why they changed it though honestly I wish it never existed in the first place.

I understand why they have a Skill Tree, it is the MWO way of doing what other online games do, their version of character progression though I think it should have been done another way.

Given that the Skill Tree has been an issue for some time, I like to believe they have been working on this new one for quite a while including NOT using the same tree for every Mech. I like to believe they will include many things like quirks to certain Mechs only available on equipment such as Targeting Computers and Command Console, part of the imbalance in the quirk system.

I also like to think the New Skill Trees will not be same size for all. A Timber Wolf's Skill Tree will be different than a Black Knight with fewer choices and/or costing more to go up. A Black Knight should have a different one than a Marauder.

History in this game though leads me to believe the following WILL happen.

1 - The PTS will be open for people to try this.
2 - PTS players will give feedback.
3 - Some of the feedback will be based on bad player behavior.
4 - Some of the good feedback will be ignored for some reason when ported to Live.
5 - When it goes Live, it will be like a 2nd PTS.

I believe this because I have seen it happen before with things like the re-quirkening so I am very confident it will happen that way.

How will they balance Bad Mechs?

Some at the last minute, others not at all.