155 replies to this topic

[Nightmare1]

Roughneck45, on 08 February 2017 - 04:00 PM, said:

True, but this is also assuming you had modules for each of your mechs instead of swapping them out.

This is true - I often had unfilled module spots on my Mechs.

Spreadsheet here that I did a while back: https://docs.google....Ncl0/edit#gid=0

The XP cost to Master a Mech in the new Skill Tree should not be significantly more than the 107,500 shown in the sheet. Each Skill Tier is worth 21,500, right? And you had to Basic two other variants? So that means you need 5 x 21,500 XP. That should be the XP limit for the new Skill System.

As for node costs, I undestand why PGI boosted the price. They want to create a C-bill sink since we won't be purchasing three at once, and we won't be buying modules. However, that's simply too much per Mech. I own roughly 140 Mechs as of this moment. There's no way I will ever be able to afford to Master them all. This is the kind of thing that would drive me to quit the game because the goal of Mastering them all is unattainable.

[Steve Pryde]

Carl Vickers, on 08 February 2017 - 05:13 PM, said:

You made a conscious choice not to buy modules, there are consequences for choices, good and bad.

Your point makes no sense just because he has mastered all mechs and now he can't skill them because of c-bill costs. C-bills are for mechs and equipment, not getting the pilot better.

PGI should remove c-bill costs entirely and be happy that some players have a tons of c-bills to buy new mechs (what means they need new mech bays = $$$).

Edited by Steve Pryde, 08 February 2017 - 06:04 PM.

[Carl Vickers]

Steve Pryde, on 08 February 2017 - 06:00 PM, said:

Your point makes no sense just because he has mastered all mechs and now he can't skill them because of c-bill costs. C-bills are for mechs and equipment, not getting the pilot better.

PGI should remove c-bill costs entirely and be happy that some players have a tons of c-bills to buy new mechs (what means they need new mech bays = $$$).

He decided not to buy certain modules that was his choice, my statement remains valid.

[Javin]

I like the new skill system. I see some awesome and fun possibilities.

However I think the excessive cost will
A: Will add more grind to the game, making it less fun for new players.
B: Make pugs get stomped harder because new players may be buying new mechs not spending the 9.1 mil to skill out their mechs. Leading to experienced players with lots of c-bills and exps having up to 15% range, heat reduction, etc over pugs.
C: New players may not understand the skill system, making the cost of corrections add to the grind, making the game less fun.... losing new players.

Edited by Javin, 08 February 2017 - 07:44 PM.

[SmokedJag]

Penalizing established, highly committed players is not good. As currently proposed, the Cbill costs would nerf all of their 'Mechs unless they had purchased modules on each 'Mech. This is a poor result.

[Nightmare1]

SmokedJag, on 08 February 2017 - 06:31 PM, said:

Penalizing established, highly committed players is not good. As currently proposed, the Cbill costs would nerf all of their 'Mechs unless they had purchased modules on each 'Mech. This is a poor result.

Bingo

[Exard3k]

Javin, on 08 February 2017 - 06:21 PM, said:

I like the new skill system. I see some awesome and fun possibilities.

However I think the excessive cost will
A: Will more grind to the game, making it less fun for new players.
B: Make pugs get stomped harder because new players may be buying new mechs not spending the 9.1 mil to skill out their mechs. Leading to experienced players with lots of c-bills and exps having up to 15% range, heat reduction, etc over pugs.
C: New players may not understand the skill system, making the cost of corrections add to the grind, making the game less fun.... losing new players.

I like it too.

And no...there will be two kinds of old players. the players with lots of modules compared to their amount of mechs and the old players that are switching a single set of modules across 100+ mechs. The first group won't have any problems, the latter will face cbill problems and have to decide which mechs they level up rather than being able to master them all.

When it comes to fully outfiitting a mech (e.g. for CW dropdeck), new players will have to pay way less to get a good dropdeck. In general this is a very beginner-friendly change to MWO in terms of "grind to get to my favorite mechs max performance".

And players aren't stupid. Everyone in 2017 playing online MMO knows about skill trees and respeccing cost. I never had an issue with respeccing as a new player in a new game.

Edited by Exard3k, 08 February 2017 - 06:44 PM.

[HolyTerra]

As far as customization goes, it is nice to be able to pick exactly what one likes for any given chassis. However, I will also put in my 2 cents and say the costs are WAY too high since we are losing the ability to swap modules between mechs. That is an absolute HUGE loss of capability and not at all a good user experience.

With swappable modules, I could experiment with them on different mechs before deciding if they were a good fit for any eventual build I wanted to make. Then I would grind a while to save up the c-bills I needed. Now, that ability to try things out is gone unless I want to spend a ton for the "privilege" of being able to reset.

What if I have a mech that has been using U-AC for a while, but I want to try LBX. Oh wait, I spent all that exp on U-AC tree items, so I guess I have to either buy a whole other copy of the same chassis, or pay to have that skill tree reset.

Oh, and the way the skill trees are laid out, it forces you to purchase enhancements that you may have zero interest in, just to get the ones that you are (no interest in Speed Retention, but I have to get several of them to get at Heat Containment, for example). Not at all a good thing.

You cannot remove functionality from the game, charge people more for an inferior replacement, and expect people to remain happy.

Speaking as someone who has purchased 6-8 mech packs, mastered multiple chassis, and is a near daily player.... this is something that does not encourage me to stay with the game for much longer.

Edited by BobTheMad, 08 February 2017 - 07:08 PM.

[Lyoto Machida]

Smell Da Glove, on 08 February 2017 - 04:55 PM, said:

some of us play a lot more then 2 mechs and a lot more then just 1 per session. While I respect that a portion of the population exist that only plays a small selection of mechs, there are others who like to spread the love around.

Also there are many like me who just want to drop and grind. I don't want to fiddle with mechs between drops all the time and I still want to play different mechs.......

While I can appreciate your sentiment, this was much worse before the favorites menu and saves times were improved. How long does it really take to find that module you need now if you saved all your module mechs as favorites and the save time is a few seconds?

If you've got three or four of each seismic, etc, it's not that hard to do. Alternatively, you can do what others have said and spend billions of c-bills on modules. Personally, I would have bought mechs with that instead but to each his own...

[JC Daxion]

Exard3k, on 08 February 2017 - 06:40 PM, said:

When it comes to fully outfiitting a mech (e.g. for CW dropdeck), new players will have to pay way less to get a good dropdeck. In general this is a very beginner-friendly change to MWO in terms of "grind to get to my favorite mechs max performance".

totally agree... this is going to cost less for new players.. Even on sale, i only need to buy one assault.. that is less than the cost of buying 2.. just to skill up.

I have about 100 mechs now.. Ill get enough cash back to at least pick my top 20? to skill up.. Ill play um and work on making money to get others i like. Heck maybe i have enough to get even more.. I dunno..

But honestly over all this will be a much better system in the end i think, though swapping around builds might cost a bit more if you are respecing. But in that case you can just buy another mech, and skill it up, and now you have 2 builds, which is cheaper than the 3 you had to buy in the old system.


Funny,, all the folks that said they wanted new skill trees, and just single mechs got it, and i was saying this is exactly how it would be. Costs for single mechs would go up, but over all be cheaper, for one, but not many.. and lookie that.. But i am not shocked that the same people that did not like every change till now, don't like this..

My only hopes are it makes the game better balanced in the long run.


In short, pick your top 15-20 mechs.. and skill um up.. It's funny people are complaining about i own 200 mechs, but many are the same people saying, they haven't played X mech in years.. Even if you played 1 mech a day, many people would take 1/2 to 3/4 of a year just to play um all.

Edited by JC Daxion, 08 February 2017 - 07:21 PM.

[762 NATO]

Steve Pryde, on 08 February 2017 - 06:00 PM, said:

Your point makes no sense just because he has mastered all mechs and now he can't skill them because of c-bill costs. C-bills are for mechs and equipment, not getting the pilot better.

PGI should remove c-bill costs entirely and be happy that some players have a tons of c-bills to buy new mechs (what means they need new mech bays = $$$).

This

[Deathlike]

I think the prices are overly stupid.

I'd rather be paying in XP than C-bills.

For a skill tree, it shouldn't require money for skills.

[RestosIII]

Deathlike, on 08 February 2017 - 08:02 PM, said:

I think the prices are overly stupid.

I'd rather be paying in XP than C-bills.

For a skill tree, it shouldn't require money for skills.

I just got it. You're paying to take training courses from qualified Clan Diamond Shark combat experts!

[Kaeb Odellas]

This new skill system is a goddamn nightmare for people with massive mech collections like me.

I have 323 mechs. Over half of them are mastered. With the new skill system, I need 3 billion C-Bills to get mastered again, and the vast majority of them won't have enough historical XP.

On top of that, I only have 7 million C-Bills in my account, because I like to experiment. If I hadn't bought any modules and instead spent those C-Bills on collecting more mechs, I would only have enough to master a handful of mechs come the 21st.

This is messed up, you guys. Really, really messed up.

[SockSlayer]

I think its time to just remove the flamers, they were better in their original state, and every change just makes them worse...now they aren't even in the skill trees...

Edited by Independence MK2, 08 February 2017 - 10:38 PM.

[Tyler Valentine]

FupDup, on 08 February 2017 - 04:55 PM, said:

Or the fact that we can almost max out five trees, meaning that every mech is forced to be a generalist. We are forbidden from specializing our entire SP pool into a single tree. For example, why can't I spend all 91 SP on armor buffs? Why can't I have super speed? Or other fun specialists? The inherent drawback to balance this is that you will only have the benefits of one single tree and no others. Like, if I went and got a really crazy fast laser cooldown, then I couldn't spend those SP on armor or agility. I'd be slow and fragile. It balances itself out.

Exactly. PGI had an amazing opportunity here to give everyone options with their mechs. Some people would focus on speed, others armor, and others firepower; netting a totally diverse population of Mechs on the battlefield. You'd never know exactly what type of build you were facing until you got up close and personal. Instead they force you to spread your points out, meaning that eventually everyone's build will be relatively similar. I really hope they change this before the final relase.

[Sereglach]

The prices are beyond absurd. These prices will kill off the player population as fast as what happened to Star Wars Galaxies when they did their gameplay overhaul.

For newer players the "New Player Experience" just became "New Player Hell" because of the absurd grind for even a single mech. It used to be you could master mechs and then modules were a long-term afterthought once you had actually established a respectable stable of mechs.

Not to mention most people would swap modules around (hell, some people even swap engines, too), but now the cost of a full suite of modules is hard-baked into the grind. That's absurd. Most players will suffer at the hands of these changes. "The grind will be about the same" my ***.

Personally speaking, I've got a collection (modest/average for a long term player? I see a lot of bigger numbers around here) at 106 mech variants. Even though they're mostly light mechs, I still only have something like 60 million c-bills in reserve. EVERY LAST VARIANT that I currently own is mastered. 100%. However, I only had enough modules for a FW drop-deck, because that's all I needed (and really all anyone needs). After this change hits -even with module refunds- I won't even be able to master 20 of them while completely breaking my bank. How is that reasonable or fair?

I think it's cute that PGI obviously knows this system is screwed, because they gave out 2 BILLION c-bills for this PTS run instead of the normal 200 million. Why would they put so many c-bills into the accounts unless they knew how badly this would affect players?

Independence MK2, on 08 February 2017 - 08:43 PM, said:

I think its time to just remove the flamers, they were better in their original state, and every change just makes them worse...now they aren't even in the skill trees...

Wrong thread for the comment, but I know how you feel and am right there with you. However, PGI needs to FIX the Flamers, not remove them. Also, they weren't the only ones screwed, because MGs and TAG didn't get any love, either.

[Sarsaparilla Kid]

Suggestions:

1. Spending our previously earned Mech XP should NOT cost C-bills to repurchase the same skills...seriously. I can understand a cost for using GXP, because that often led to buying modules that will get refunded anyway, but Mech XP had no previously associated costs, so there's no C-bill refunds coming to help repurchase skill points.

2. Let us sell our unwanted mechs for full value rather than the current "used car" rates...we're going to need the C-bills to skill up again...at least those of us that are mech-rich and module-poor. Had we known this system was coming up, we would have not purchased 3 variants for each chassis, we would have only purchased our favorite ones. As it is, we get no love in selling back the unwanted ones.

3. If the C-bill cost to purchase skill points remains at its current level, you will definitely see fewer mechs and mechbays being purchased. If I sell half my mechs to pay for skill points, I'll have a lot of free mechbays that I'll probably never fill up again, and even if I did buy more mechs, it will be at a slower pace with the grind and associated costs currently displayed on the PTS.

Edited by Sarsaparilla Kid, 08 February 2017 - 09:23 PM.

[GrimRiver]

I feel this is a whole lot better than the 3 mechs to master system.

Cheaper too, as you don't need to buy the other 2 mechs then upgrade their gear to DHS/ENDO/FF to make them worth playing with and grind on each of those mechs until you basiced them and then buy mod(s) to help the main mech you've mastered.

The new skill tree is just a more direct route to the mech you want to master, less hassle.

Maybe the high prices was to curb people from dumping all their c-bills and XP into one skill set right off the bat. if prices are high then people are more likely to be frugal with their earnings like a psychological deterrent?

Edited by GrimRiver, 08 February 2017 - 09:39 PM.

[Riitters]

RestosIII, on 08 February 2017 - 04:09 PM, said:

Considering they're removing the quirks and things like Speed Tweak that my mechs relied on the first place, yes, yes I do have to buy the skills.

Considering that the time you'd spend to earn enough XP to Basic 3 + Master 1 previously will net you OVER TEN MILLION-CBILLS @ 2.5k XP / 250,000cb per game, you're coming out ahead. Stop crying about something you haven't given critical thought to.