70 replies to this topic

[The Amazing Atomic Spaniel]

Mawai, on 07 December 2016 - 06:07 AM, said:

I like the idea of a good xp system.

However, like many, the biggest concern I have is balance. Quirks were introduced to aid in overcoming fundamental differences in the effectiveness of specific mechs and the overall advantages of clans vs IS.

Removing quirks and modules while allowing ANY mech to unlock the same sets of selected skills does not address the issues of either specific mech balance or clan vs IS balance.

So, I will be interested to see the final iteration of the new skill system. Perhaps there will be the same skill systems but skills for IS mechs will have larger values than clan ones? However, this does not address imbalances in the unskilled versions of mechs. Perhaps, IS mechs will receive a 5% across the board buff to structure to compensate for the greater overall effectiveness of clan mechs? Time will tell ... but my impression is that just introducing a new skill system that is evenly applicable to all mechs while scrapping quirks will simply put the overall balance back where it was a few years ago (minus the small number of weapons balance changes made over the same time frame).

Yeah. This.

[Ghengis Cohen]

Perhaps I'm naive, but doesn't the new skill tree change the meta-go-round completely? If there is no cycle of nerf/buff/nerf/buff coming from PGI (big if), the meta will be determined by player choices and not the nerf/buff cycle. Are they shirking their responsibility for game balance with the new skill tree?

I must say I have just canceled my roughneck pre-order based upon the many discussions regarding the new skill tree. If you have not seen kanajashi's youtube video on the subject you should check it out. He's done some math and it's depressing. I'm hoping he's wrong, or at least grossly inaccurate.

[The Amazing Atomic Spaniel]

El Bandito, on 07 December 2016 - 07:02 AM, said:

So instead of "buy three to master one" model, we get "buy a mech per loadout or be penalized with MC or grind"? This is a step backwards.

I feel I am being incentivised to sell all my mechs apart from a couple of Madcats and Kodiaks and to never buy any new mechs ever again. Particularly the rather explody inner-sphere ones.

Edited by The Amazing Atomic Spaniel, 07 December 2016 - 07:24 AM.

[El Bandito]

Ghengis Cohen, on 07 December 2016 - 07:22 AM, said:

Perhaps I'm naive, but doesn't the new skill tree change the meta-go-round completely? If there is no cycle of nerf/buff/nerf/buff coming from PGI (big if), the meta will be determined by player choices and not the nerf/buff cycle. Are they shirking their responsibility for game balance with the new skill tree?

PGI will still nerf/buff weapons, skill tree values, and the amount of SP allocated per variant. The Balance Overlord still menaces us with his dart board of balance.

[Bud Crue]

Even with yesterday's twitter clarifications (that's too strong a word...maybe "further hints"?) we are still operating in the dark. If the MC cost to respec is like 15MC and they are giving away 250MC every weekend with the seemingly nonstop events, then respecing probably won't be a big deal for most players. If the XP costs per node are extreme values (as in remotely similar to the "place holder values" of the presentation) then even if MC cost for respecing is low, the XP required to squirk out a mech in the first place is going to make specing, let alone respecing, a moot point for a lot of players mechs.
Etc.

To many variables and too many possibilities.

Now consider that this whole system is an extension of and a replacement for existing "balance" (lets not even get into the whole need to keep quirks for some mechs to create a base line of performance before we even get to the squirk tree). Consider further PGI's past...difficulties...with this concept. Given that history and given just how hard a task this is, and how potentially complex the system may be, I don't think it is unreasonable to believe that this system may very well never see the light of day, especially after we start beating the hell out of it and poking holes in it on the PTS.

[Remillard]

Maybe the best balancing point between monetizing respec (not wholly a surprise here, let's be honest) and the freedom of customizing is some sort of increasing limit. Just for talking purposes say 1 skill point keeping respec for C-bills per N days, with additional respecs costing increasing amounts of C-bills during those N days to the point where a MC spending respec would be beneficial. And always the option for a C-bill clean slate.

Would that achieve some sort of balance?

[Brizna]

I can understand they thinking it's normal fro F2P game to charge for re specs, but large part of battle tech is the ability to customize robots, making that harder or expensive is very anti battletechish. I am very worried about all the problems and bad feelings this may cause depending on costs, which is a key aspect we don't know yet.

This is why I advise the community to ***** and moan loud enough and to PGI to listen, because taking away the ability to customize mechs on the fly may perfectly kill this game faster than they believe, and as juiciy as it may seem to get $$$ you need to keep your customer above anything else.

[C E Dwyer]

More I've read the last few days, makes me feel so glad I cancelled my preorders

I did have a little thoughtful moment, thinking why did I cancel on the Assassin as it's a mech I really really wanted to play, but not now.

[Mawai]

keith, on 07 December 2016 - 06:19 AM, said:

bet u will see sweeping balance changes ever month or so with mc cost tied to mmo style skill tree. screams pay me to keep up with balance changes or grind me. if i still played more i would be much more angrier.

Honestly, I will save any anger for the actual implementation.

I am not going to react to speculations (even my own or yours) on what the skill tree may or may not look like in the end. I will wait and see and hope that PGI does a decent job ... but in my opinion, anger at this point is a waste of time and energy since there really isn't anything to be angry about. Redoing the entire skill system is awesome and long overdue ... I will save my reaction for what they finally produce.

IF they do something like you suggest THEN I will worry about being angry ... however, IF they do something like that THEN I won't be playing and will probably care less. Unfortunately, IF they make such design decisions THEN there may be many people who feel similarly and those who remain can then judge the state of the game at that point

Edited by Mawai, 07 December 2016 - 06:08 PM.

[Mawai]

Belacose, on 06 December 2016 - 09:03 PM, said:

If respeccing is not absolutely free then it's painfully obvious what's a driving force behind the new skill trees.

This has often been a controversial issue with several other F2P games. Some eventually come around to allowing 100% free respects, but only after months to years of constant painstaking lobbying from a player base. The only reason to not allow totally free respecs is because there's no money in it.

With each change to meta - you'll need a respec.
Upon realizing you accidentally misplaced points or forgot a specific skill after saving - you'll again need a respec.
After each future patch - you just may find yourself wanting a respec.

PGI will have to weigh how much money they'd like to make off this as opposed to how much they can afford to anger their customers.

It will really depend on how much you need to change your skill choices as balance shifts.

There are a lot of mechs out there with predominantly energy hard points. Other mechs are primarily missiles or ballistics. Obviously, most folks will choose skills to benefit those weapon systems on those mechs. Will a shift to a ballistic meta affect the skills selected on a mostly energy hard point mech? Probably not much I would think.

Most of the games where respecs are required as meta shifts are games where skill trees provide specific special abilities that synergize with special items in the game or with other specific skills to make combinations. The mech skill trees just don't work that way. All the buffs are relatively small for example and generally affect specific aspects of the mech or weapons (e.g. structure, armor, range and cooldown of specific weapons).

You may have to select range or cooldown for example.

However, if the system is well designed this actually gives some justification to having variants ... particularly for clan omni mechs ... since you can select skills differently for each torso and then combine the omni pods to use the builds suited to the skills you have selected for that variant. It can also work to some extent for IS mechs but each of those tends to have different hard points so the skill specs would tend to be different based on variant rather than omni pod selection.

Anyway, the bottom line is that until the system is out there isn't much point worrying about it. My main concern is respecing if you make an error. If respecs are cheap then this isn't an issue but if there is still a concern then PGI could provide one free respect a month or something similar.

[MauttyKoray]

Tahribator, on 06 December 2016 - 11:25 AM, said:

In my eyes these things are happening with this change:

• They're increasing grind.
  
• They're increasing monetization (XP to GXP more valuable, MC to respec).
  
• They're throwing away 2 years' worth of quirk balancing and starting anew with a new system. Results to be seen.
  
• More min-maxing opportunities for the meta stuff.
  
• They're making customization harder by increasing costs. Making people to "bet safe" by going for FOTM builds. Less incentive for experimentation.
  
• Clicking through skill three every time you respec will be tedious. You decided to try SRMs on your lurm Catapult? Too bad, pay us for the respec and you have to click through 5 trees again.
  
• They're making "bad" variants even less attractive.

I don't see a single positive that's worth mentioning. Yet, people are defending it. Saying "it'll feel like a proper F2P", they play the same 'Mechs anyway, they're always on premium so they earn good XP per match and they don't Mechlab much. What the hell am I missing here? There should be an outrage.


It's almost like they decided to monetize MWO even more in order to cover the costs of MW5.

Quirks have always restricted mechs to be built in a way that takes advantage of them to perform better. That's not ideal in a Mechlab oriented Mechwarrior game which is about mech customization.

Now you'll be able to build the mech the way YOU want it and tweak it to perform better for the way you play/build it.

Want to build a mech 2 different ways? Buy it twice, build them differently, and there you go. Don't waste skill points unless you know what you want to do. Try builds before putting points into the skills, not the other way around.