132 replies to this topic

[Deathlike]

Is it just me, or is this really bad for building mechs?

I haven't gotten it installed yet, but from reading... committing to weapon "skills" or whatever is stupid if you haven't finalized the build. In essence, it's counterproductive for newer players (let alone the lame trial mech system), but it also locks them down when they haven't fully committed. It's easier to commit to non-weapon skills (like structure bonuses) or module bonuses (like Seismic) which is arguably more lasting unless you've committed to a specific build.

There's so much fail here.

[Baron Blitz Fokheimer]

HXP needs to be locked to the chassis, and not the variant. This is non-negotiable.

We played your "three to master" game for years, which forced us to grind out mechs we didn't want for the sake of maxing out the one(s) we did want.

Either change this policy, or multiply all of our experience pools by 2.38428 ((1,500*91)/57,250) during the reimbursement process. Actually, do both.

And cut the CB cost of each skill point by half.

Edited by Baron Blitz Fokheimer, 08 February 2017 - 09:19 PM.

[FireStoat]

And so I'm done eyeballing the notes and almost have the PTS ready to go and...

It dawned on me that people that pilot Light & Medium mechs are going to really fall off in their numbers. If it costs 9.1 million Cbills to max out a mech's skills, wouldn't common sense dictate that you're gaining a far greater utility from the firepower trees with mechs that pack a lot of weapons?

Edit - I went ahead and logged into the PST. I went to my Pakhet hero and unlocked 84 points worth of stuff for ER medium lasers (maxed beam duration, mixed other stuff), SRMs (maxed cooldown, mix of other stuff), things needed for Radar Derp and Seismic, some structure stuff, cool running / containment, and speed tweak.

For the most part it felt like I was able to get more total bonuses than I could otherwise obtain from the current Elite bonuses + 2 weapon modules + radar derp + seismic, but I DID lose my 8/8 bonuses on the Pakhet, aside from the torso twist arc. The missile velocity and turn speed were gone.

If I was a brand new player just now getting into the game, I probably would play it and have fun and still not need to spend real cash on the game aside from a minimal amount for mech bays. There's no damned way in hell I would buy lower end medium mechs or any light mech AND max them out for skills. No way. PGI absolutely MUST adjust the victory / loss rewards for a match with a modifier based on tonnage if they want to sell Javelins or any light mechs at all in the future.

Edited by FireStoat, 08 February 2017 - 08:50 PM.

[Accused]

As it is, you need to fully invest in a tree to get all the basic performance you're getting now back.

For instance, you start unlocking a tree - go all the way down - grab speed tweak 5. Only spent a couple of skill points on nodes to get there. "Not bad" I first though. Maybe, just possibly, PGI might be on to something here.

Turns out "Speed Tweek 5" doesn't mean it's "Speed Tweak 5". It means it's the fifth speed tweak on the tree. You need all the speed tweaks to max out your speed because they all stack. And those are hidden behind other nodes you may or may not need.

[EgoSlayer]

I'll just sum it up like this:

[Revis Volek]

VorpalAnvil, on 08 February 2017 - 07:17 PM, said:

The only premium time I have ever had came from events and who wants to pug 30 hours a week? I have just over 100 mechs, most of them are ranked up. I'm sitting on 300 mil cbills and will be a billionaire when they refund modules. Why is it so hard for you people to manage your cbills? I feel like this parallels real life where people who can't manage money feel entitled to welfare. I was patient and prudent with my purchases. Why should I suffer because most of you have the self control and spending habits of a drunken sailor on shore leave?

TL;DR Git gud at cbills

The only mechs i bought with RL money was clans, the rest out of the 180+ i own are Cbill purchased and they all have engines as well as loadouts aside from a few duds i never play, ever.

That is why i dont have much more then 10 mill right now...but if you are a mizer and just hold onto cbills and never buy new mechs it is really easy to save that is 100% correct or use RL moneys.

[Deathlike]

Revis Volek, on 08 February 2017 - 09:23 PM, said:

The only mechs i bought with RL money was clans, the rest out of the 180+ i own are Cbill purchased and they all have engines as well as loadouts aside from a few duds i never play, ever.

That is why i dont have much more then 10 mill right now...but if you are a mizer and just hold onto cbills and never buy new mechs it is really easy to save that is 100% correct or use RL moneys.

I iz mizer.

Thanks Paulconomy.

[MrMadguy]

I like the idea of restricting players' choices. That's, what I actually have been asking for. Some Meta players pick some Meta 'Mechs with good quirks, like +100500 structure, are able to have such bonuses, as speed tweak, literally for free and also equip OP Meta modules, like seismic and radar derp. That results in having completely OP 'Mechs, like ER-LL vomit Lights. And now they'll have to choose. If you want to attack from 1000M distance - you have to sacrifice something else in order not to be OP cheat, like to be slow and having few armor. Yeah, they'll still be able to have same OP skills, but now they'll have to sacrifice something else, like speed and armor/structure. Let's see, how it will be implemented. I hope, it will be true choice - not just extra grind gate for same OP skills for the sake of grind only, so at the end balance will be as screwed, as it's now. I.e. Meta players will have their Meta anyway and only casual players will be punished.

Edited by MrMadguy, 08 February 2017 - 10:08 PM.

[4rcs1ne]

I feel like this change will discourage build diversity even further since it will take a substantial amount of grinding to unlock the weapon quirks needed to be remotely competitive. IMO, the c-bill prices should be much lower. Having to grind 9.1 million c-bills to master a mech is insane.

Also, who in their right mind thought it was a good idea to drop this on the PTS less than two weeks before release??

[MrMadguy]

But yeah, what I don't like - is constant tries to force spending CBs on modules. For example weapon modules were implemented to force extra GXP/CB expenditure on us. But in the past I could simply ignore modules. 'Mechs themselves cost too much. Buying proper equipment - effectively doubles their cost. Also buying modules - would triple their prices. I have around 70 'Mechs and I have 0 spare CB to buy modules on them. Simply because MM is broken, all my matches are terrible and rewards are complete crap. But now "modules" are being forced on me. Simple logic. In the past something like Seismic + some weapon modules costed exactly this 9M CBs. But now even baseline skills will cost CBs. And without baseline skills some 'Mechs are literally unplayable.

So. If PGI wants me to spend CB on skills - they should fix their matchmaker first. We will talk about it, only when my rewards will be 150K CB and 1500XP per match - not 20K CB and 200XP, I have now.

Edited by MrMadguy, 08 February 2017 - 10:00 PM.

[Averen]

aw darn... The more I read (lots of threads on reddit) the worse it seems.

No build variety, using more than 1 weapon type is heavily punished, ridiculous pricing for anything but clan mechs, especially if you like more than 1 variant, super expensive Cbill and grotesk XP cost, respec costs full money,

Also 91 klicks per mech upgrade, which is still the least of my worries.

This exacerbates every problem the game had while not really solving anything; or even replacing it with something worse.

---

Want a tip, PGI? You want people to keep playing your game and spend money on it?

Make it fun.

This is a large disappointment. Hoped this would revitalize the game, make me feel good spending money at it... but this is not what the game needs, at all. Doesn't seem like PGI even understand the game, spending so much work on a system that a) creates more problems than it solves and b.) makes the game 100% less fun to play, crippling the mechlab's variety even more.

Edited by Averen, 08 February 2017 - 10:05 PM.

[Jettrik Ryflix]

For anyone complaining about boating, just a heads-up: the module system already encourages boating.

If anything, the skill trees give you the choice to improve multiple weapon systems (at the expense of other upgrades, of course).


However, the re-spec thing is really going to limit flexibility. Spec your mech to meta, and leave it there because you don't want to pay every time you switch your loadout.

As if having to pay for Endo-Steel back-and-forth wasn't bad enough...

[Mystere]

Accused, on 08 February 2017 - 05:21 PM, said:

We have less than two weeks to report bugs, balance, test, rebalance, polish before this gets shoved down our throats? PGI at it's finest.

Which begs the question: how many people are going to spend enough time testing the trash-level mechs? I imagine most will just test their favorites.

[meteorol]

With the current values, it's nothing short of one of the biggest disasters in mwo history.

It will simply wreck build diversity, further hurt mixed builds, promote boating even more AND prevent people who switched modules to master their mechs via cost barrier.

That is, quite frankly speaking, stuff that could massively bleed the playerbase.

[DAYLEET]

Deathlike, on 08 February 2017 - 07:21 PM, said:

Is it just me, or is this really bad for building mechs?

I haven't gotten it installed yet, but from reading... committing to weapon "skills" or whatever is stupid if you haven't finalized the build. In essence, it's counterproductive for newer players (let alone the lame trial mech system), but it also locks them down when they haven't fully committed. It's easier to commit to non-weapon skills (like structure bonuses) or module bonuses (like Seismic) which is arguably more lasting unless you've committed to a specific build.

There's so much fail here.

Weapon values are low anyways and you cant really pick and chose one. I dont think a lot of people will want to spend in weapons unless their mech already have good weapon perks and want to stack. Technically, if balanced was achieved, your mech probably needs more the survival perks if he has already weapon perks. But we will have the choice now which is nice. Ofcourse we will have to test and tweek and have "fun" without spending perks first and that will suck.

I might not use 2 consumable every match anymore. One tree cost about 900k cbills and gona need that 80k. My teams can buy their own uav/arties from now on.

Edited by DAYLEET, 08 February 2017 - 11:23 PM.

[GabrielSun]

Aside from being a little anti-casual player (which include the high costs), it seems like most of the effects of quirks and module bonuses are muted quite a bit. Took a KDK3 out for a spin and it overheated far sooner than I have in live (and it's not even mastered there). I think that's because I went for refresh on the uac tree.

Assaults do seem a little tougher if they go for the defensive tree. The upper chassis is horseshit if you're trying to just use a torso-mounted build. They really need to split that up so you're literally not wasting hundreds of thousands and a dozen points to get slightly better torso twist speed and yaw. The firepower trees clearly split functions, why can't those other ones?

I didn't play a lot of drops so I couldn't tell if sensors or aux actually offers anything valuable at all.

[ingramli]

I have read the topic and the introduction about the new skill tree system. I do not want to go into details about it, but my feeling about the changes in a whole, would be

PGI want us to spend more time to grind and/or money to complete our collection, or we cant complete with others because they spend more money/effort.

What PGI doing is to make our (majority of players, who dont spend 30 hours+ a week grinding, or have lots of real money spend on it) lives harder, so that they can earn more by those who are willing to spend to buy a relief (yes, those rich players can simply buy 6.5M C-Bills with 4K MC).

It is a clear move towards P2W model, period.


In addition, for those who say it encourage boating, i would consider this statement would be a yes and no. To play "competitively" with limited money and time on it, it is true to some extent. On the other hand, most players will get tired and less of entertaining if they always ride the same mech, with the same loadout, doing the same role in the game. People get tired with it, and will uninstall the game eventually.

Edited by ingramli, 08 February 2017 - 11:23 PM.

[BLOOD WOLF]

meteorol, on 08 February 2017 - 10:39 PM, said:

With the current values, it's nothing short of one of the biggest disasters in mwo history.

It will simply wreck build diversity, further hurt mixed builds, promote boating even more AND prevent people who switched modules to master their mechs via cost barrier.

That is, quite frankly speaking, stuff that could massively bleed the playerbase.

lets not be a drama queen here. Kinda moot point condering moduels did what the skills would do for boating. For instance Ballistic cooldown UAC/5 modules.

Cool that Clans get DECREASED JAM CHANCE, how awesome is that.

[RestosIII]

MrMadguy, on 08 February 2017 - 09:41 PM, said:

That results in having completely OP 'Mechs, like ER-LL vomit Lights.

Did... Did you just call ERLLas light mechs OP?

[lazytopaz]

CN9-D Quirk Current New Change
LB-10-X Cooldown -10% -5% -5%
Ballistic Cooldown -30% -20% -10%
Ballistic Velocity 20% 0% -20%
LB-X AC Spread -10% 0% -10%


Good night sweet prince?

You can get 5% of LBX cd back... but 10% of overall ballistic cooldown ... is gone.
This skill tree will encourage to buy different variants that you want to set up with your fav build.... and never ever tinker around it anymore bcs it will cost you loads of cbills just to respec e.g. from brawler to sniper.

Apart from that skill tree consists of numbers that are 1-2% ... so in the end you'll getting about 10-15% bonuses......
As I feared. Meaningless impact. I know that you need every bit of an edge on the battlefield.... but it feels like skill tree will be mostly something that you could ignore for the most part (apart from generally useful stuff like heat containment, infotech radarderp/seismic and speedtweak).

Man I wanted so badly for trees to have numbers like 20-30% so pumping max points e.g. into AC tree would make you a beast with it... but you would sacrifice loads of points that you could've put elsewhere.

And tying up AMS tweaks with armor/structure bonuses.... there goes my hope for tanky builds.
Defensive tree should consist of at least one more tree to further commit to either utility skills or additional armor /structure bonuses. Like Defensive Tree I and Defensive Tree II

But secondary tree unlocks after you pump certain amount of points into the tree like 75% of the Defensive 1 have been unlocked = Defensive 2 is available to put points in.

In general I think pumping loads of points into one tree should give you the option to pump some more just like I described just now.

EDIT :
Just checked on PTS. My beloved CN9-D LBX rate of fire has been nerfed. It's not as fast as it used to be
I mean I could put loads of points in many other things like increased seismic and sensors + target retention 360 and armor+structure buffs....... but the LBX dakka is gimped. It's main strenght has been dampened.


It takes 9,100,000 Cbills + 136,500 XP to max out a mech. Cthulhu forbid if you fu#k up your build or have a sudden change of heart and you want to try something else.....

RESPEC - full maxed spec respec costs 2,275,000 but you get your XP back.

Most interesting point you can invest in the skill tree :
Magazine Capacity +10

I wish skill tree branches had more of that kind wildcard push the limit spec point.

Boating will be loads less effective than having more than 2 weapon systems (which in this case would be 1 primary developed and 2nd no/few points in it).

Edited by lazytopaz, 09 February 2017 - 03:11 AM.