196 replies to this topic

[El Bandito]

Prosperity Park, on 04 December 2016 - 06:59 PM, said:

I swear that half of people complaining are acting like they're not even getting the experience points back.

The returned XP will be miniscule compared to the amount that is required, in the first place.

And what about new mechs? I'm sure as hell not getting any experience back for them. Their grind will be tedious. And I am not just talking about XP, what about C-Bill costs?

Finally, you are assuming (always a dangerous notion) that most players actually like to play one particular mech over and over again for long periods of time. All PGI is enforcing is to have people spend their time "maximizing" a single mech's potential through XP grind, which is detrimental to their policy of giving us new mech every month. Why buy a new mech if this one is not yet done mastering?

Edited by El Bandito, 04 December 2016 - 07:12 PM.

[oldradagast]

Dex Spero, on 04 December 2016 - 07:00 PM, said:

Prosperity_Park, you stand before this tribunal charged with demanding reasonable and proportional responses from the forum members. This is the foulest of sins and you have been judged guilty without trial. Have you anything to say in your defense before you are burned at the stake and buried in an Urbanmech made of salt?

Except he didn't expect any such thing. He's accusing everyone of "whining" while not even reading or responding to their very valid arguments against the new system. Worse, he's living in some world where he thinks PGI has some sort of mastery of game balance and properly tests things before implementing them - thus far, there is no proof of such behavior on any large scale anywhere in MWO's recent history. Or, do I need to remind people of:

• Hover jets
  
• Energy Draw
  
• Infowarfare, and the magic of "ghost range."
  
• Long Toms
  
• Community Warfare Phase "whatever the heck we're on now."
  
• That amazing Pinpoint skill
  
• The power of LBX's and autocannons

Do I have to continue? Seriously, I am damn tired of listening to people label everyone with a valid argument and a mountain of reasoning to support it as a "whiner." It's nothing but a laughable ad hominin attack that makes it painfully clear the attacker has no evidence to support his position... unless we're to pretend that "this one time" PGI is going to get it right.

Edited by oldradagast, 04 December 2016 - 07:08 PM.

[FupDup]

The TL;DR of the complaints:

1. The XP values shown at MechCon were absurdly high. Each skill should take no more than 1000 XP to unlock, and even that value would require considerably more time to fully master a mech than current (what is the current amount per variant again? I think it's 60250, ignoring the three-variant requirement).

2. There needs to be special consideration for mechs that are bad without quirks. The easiest/best way to do this would be to not completely nuke the base quirks they come with. Let them keep some innate quirks out of the box so that they can be playable without grinding, and then use the new skill tree system to let players build on top of those innate quirks.

Edited by FupDup, 04 December 2016 - 07:13 PM.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

Is there some indication that earned XP in excess of that required to buy skills won't be transmuted with all the rest?

[TercieI]

El Bandito, on 04 December 2016 - 07:04 PM, said:

Why buy a new mech if this one is not yet done mastering?

This is the biggest thing that makes massively inflating XP needed foolish for PGI. I'm going to be way less inclined to buy new mechs if there's still work to do on ones I already have. And if they take out the "rule of three" their mech pack model stops making any kind of sense, too.

[oldradagast]

DaZur, on 04 December 2016 - 07:04 PM, said:

Yes, I understand the frustrations of the Pokemech players who mastered all their mechs... Sorry, but I believe it's been understood the mastery system was a place-holder for a very long time now so I'm not entirely sympathetic.

No sane game company resets people's avatars FOUR YEARS into their game's release, and then gives them a piddly amount of effective XP (post XP inflation in the new skill system) with which they can only recover a fraction of their previous power. Oh, sure - there's probably some game company or two somewhere that did this successfully, but I'll bet their game is not a shallow, niche product on an aging engine like MWO. And I also bet they are a company that has a lot more trust from its customers than PGI currently has.

As for the rest, it's not just about de-leveling my mechs - it's about stripping away the inherit Quirks that make bad mechs playable. If all mechs use the same skill tree and lack quirks - or even if the needed quirks are locked behind mountains of XP on the new skill tree - there will be no reason to play anything but the most meta mechs. The ones with the best hardpoints and geometry. They will utterly dominate in a quirkless environment; if you think the meta is boring now, it will be an order of magnitude more stale if this proposed system goes live without a massive overhaul.

So, it's really a double-whammy to current players: you strip my mechs of their levels AND render all my non-meta mechs unplayable. Gee, I can't wait for the future of nothing but Stormcrows, Timberwolves, Kodiaks, etc. Booooooring...

Edited by oldradagast, 04 December 2016 - 07:16 PM.

[Palor]

The only thing the new skill system did was make me feel foolish for buying so many mechbays during the sale. It seems I already have more mechs than I will ever use again.

Buyers remorse, I didn't see that coming.

[El Bandito]

Palor, on 04 December 2016 - 07:14 PM, said:

The only thing the new skill system did was make me feel foolish for buying so many mechbays during the sale. It seems I already have more mechs than I will ever use again.

Buyers remorse, I didn't see that coming.

Which is probably why PGI had been keeping it quiet until after mechbay sale. When something is too good to be true it probably is.

[Cy Mitchell]

I really do not understand the complaint about new players being at a huge disadvantage due to the new Skill Tree. Are they not at a huge disadvantage in the present system? "New" players are not supposed to be going up against players with years of experience and fully skilled out Mechs anyway. That is what the PSR is supposed to prevent.

I am looking forward to the new Skill Tree. There will be a negative impact for me because I have a couple chassis with multiples of the same variant. They are currently all Mastered because if you do one then they all are Mastered. As I understand it, when the new Skill Tree is implemented then each Mech will have to be skilled out independently even if you have done the same variant before. That means that completing all the skills on two Prime variants of the same chassis will cost me twice as much as it does not. That is the only place where I see a huge increase in the grind.

Also, while some IS Mechs may have 50+ skill points, I believe that many Clan Mechs will have only 10 or 12 things that can be leveled up. Balancing the Mechs could become just a matter of adding or reducing available skill points.

[Gentleman Reaper]

Guys, there's still so many unknowns about how this system will work, it seems entirely pointless to complain about something that was merely teased:

We don't know if refunded XP will be multiplied, with us also earning much more XP per game.

We don't know if the stated XP total required to max out a mech is just a placeholder, or if that accounts for every single skill, not the max number of skill that a chassis can have.

We don't know how uncompetitive mechs will benefit, maybe a set amount of points are given at the beginning, rather than more total points that we'll have to grind longer for.

We don't even know what the average max amount of allowable skills each mech will have. Maybe top tier mechs will only have a dozen points, with bottom tier mechs having two or even three dozen points.

So until Russ starts giving us more info, it's pointless to argue about unknowns and spread misinformation.

[El Bandito]

Gentleman Reaper, on 04 December 2016 - 07:29 PM, said:

So until Russ starts giving us more info, it's pointless to argue about unknowns and spread misinformation.

In the case of PGI, it is usually a safe bet to assume the worst.

[Gaden Phoenix]

Gentleman Reaper, on 04 December 2016 - 07:29 PM, said:

Guys, there's still so many unknowns about how this system will work, it seems entirely pointless to complain about something that was merely teased:

We don't know if refunded XP will be multiplied, with us also earning much more XP per game.

We don't know if the stated XP total required to max out a mech is just a placeholder, or if that accounts for every single skill, not the max number of skill that a chassis can have.
....
So until Russ starts giving us more info, it's pointless to argue about unknowns and spread misinformation.

Better to highlight the issues early and be pleasantly surprised then to stay silent and be shocked when implemented.

Edited by Gaden Phoenix, 04 December 2016 - 07:34 PM.

[Super Trooper]

So with the XP tree change, and the heatscale 2.0 in development, and FW test 4.0, when will MWO get out of beta and be ready for launch?

[Cy Mitchell]

Gentleman Reaper, on 04 December 2016 - 07:29 PM, said:

Guys, there's still so many unknowns about how this system will work, it seems entirely pointless to complain about something that was merely teased:

We don't know if refunded XP will be multiplied, with us also earning much more XP per game.

We don't know if the stated XP total required to max out a mech is just a placeholder, or if that accounts for every single skill, not the max number of skill that a chassis can have.

We don't know how uncompetitive mechs will benefit, maybe a set amount of points are given at the beginning, rather than more total points that we'll have to grind longer for.

We don't even know what the average max amount of allowable skills each mech will have. Maybe top tier mechs will only have a dozen points, with bottom tier mechs having two or even three dozen points.

So until Russ starts giving us more info, it's pointless to argue about unknowns and spread misinformation.

If we did not allow the "Oh Noes, the sky is falling!" threads on this forum then more than half the post would be gone.

I think that I will just wait until we know something definite about the new system before I panic.

[Johnny Z]

Looking forward to the new skill tree also.

[TercieI]

OK, so I just looked at the video and they actually say there's a limited amount of SP per mech (and it appears the example has 75 as its limit). Wouldn't that just be 75,000 XP? That seems like no problem, only a slight increase over the current 57,750. Can cover the gap off my couple million XP mechs...

[RestosIII]

Super Trooper, on 04 December 2016 - 07:36 PM, said:

So with the XP tree change, and the heatscale 2.0 in development, and FW test 4.0, when will MWO get out of beta and be ready for launch?

#MechCon #2017 Origin launch party.



Blech, I got chills even mentioning that system. Or it could be my cold. One of those.

[Pjwned]

If PGI had done a somewhat decent job getting things done lately, and doing them correctly i.e not having a public test that bombs completely because it's so bad or a miserable failure in the form FW phase 3, then there wouldn't as much cause to worry.

But they haven't done a decent job for the past while now and people have some reason to think that the skill tree will feature an absolutely insane grind, which is something that PGI would do considering how much they love making people grind, and as such people are concerned about what they saw.

If it's not going to be as bad as people fear then PGI should do a better job presenting it.

[Barantor]

I guess I don't understand.

I can get a mech basic'd in the current system in a few hours. Elite can be done in a few more hours if I have the other two basic'd. Mastery I usually let happen as it will.

This current skill system is a joke, it has been a 'stand in' for the longest time. It needs to die.

Do I think people are making wild assumptions right now? Yup, mostly because not a lot was revealed at mechcon.

Having a system that takes time to 'complete' is a good thing. Having a system that deletes the '3 mech' system is good. Yeah it might take longer to get the mech like you want it but that's a good thing, it's something to work for. Everyone will be in the same boat, nobody will be the only one.

I think we need to find out more before we make any more assumptions.

[Carl Vickers]

Palor, on 04 December 2016 - 07:14 PM, said:

The only thing the new skill system did was make me feel foolish for buying so many mechbays during the sale. It seems I already have more mechs than I will ever use again.

Buyers remorse, I didn't see that coming.

If you have played this game long enough, you know PGI's modus operandi. If you see certain hero mechs on sale for no apparent reason, expect nerfs to those mechs incoming, they know they wont get brought after that so its a cash grab.

Guess they have taken it to a whole new level with mech bay sale and nerfing XP on mechs. Im glad I decided to keep my wallet closed for the mech bay sale now.