33 replies to this topic

[Bud Crue]

jonfett, on 08 February 2017 - 06:47 PM, said:

At this point, I think this new skill tree will accelerate my departure from this game. I don't have time to grind out all of my mechs all over again. Plus, the way certain skills are located in the tree is just plain stupid.

The battletech beta is just around the corner, and as I don't have a lot of freetime, I'll just get my mech addiction with that.

It won't be enough to drive me out, but it will drive out most of my mechs. If the PTS is close to what we end up with, I can't see playing or bothering to level 75 percent of the mechs that currently exist in this game. This system kills all desire to pokemech.

Edited by Bud Crue, 08 February 2017 - 06:52 PM.

[Wintersdark]

RestosIII, on 08 February 2017 - 04:44 PM, said:

Well, while I'm here, I might as well just leave a proper representation of what's going on over here with me in the PTS.

This largely covers my feelings on the matter.

So many things, and I'm not really willing to make any bold statements out of the gate. Lots of moving parts.


One thing I will say...

I think McGral may be kind of happy with regards to Gauss and Crits; he's crusaded about that for years. No more dual gauss "oneshots" due to the extra crit damage (unless someone stripped their cockpit).

[Wintersdark]

LegoPirate, on 08 February 2017 - 05:42 PM, said:

9 million cbills and 150k xp is too much to skill a mech.

It's currently... what... ~75kxp for basic skillups, then more GXP (remember, at ~5% of XP earned) and ~12m cbills to get the modules.

9m+150k is a lot; but conversely you can just skill up a single mech all the way and ignore all the other variants if you want, thus grinding less over all.

Not to say it's ideal, but it's not so horrifically bad either.

I certainly support lower values, mind you.

[FupDup]

Wintersdark, on 08 February 2017 - 07:04 PM, said:

It's currently... what... ~75kxp for basic skillups, then more GXP (remember, at ~5% of XP earned) and ~12m cbills to get the modules.

You don't have to buy modules when you get a new mech, unless it's your first mech ever. Module sharing is a thing.

[762 NATO]

Lower CBill cost. Preferably to nothing. I do not particularly feel the need to spend CBills on Hill Climb, Speed Retention, Quick Ignition just to get to Cool Run and Heat Containment. Hill Climb and Speed Retention?!?!?! Really? Like that has to do with how a mech manages its heat?

Furthermore, AMS Overload and Fall Damage just to get to Armor Hardening? If you fell off something, you chose to do it or you dont know how to drive. And all these things cost me CBills?

Star Citizen is starting to look better and better and it is still Alpha.

Cheers!

[Tamerlin]

FupDup, on 08 February 2017 - 07:12 PM, said:

You don't have to buy modules when you get a new mech, unless it's your first mech ever. Module sharing is a thing.

You don't have to fully use the new skill tree either.

[Wintersdark]

FupDup, on 08 February 2017 - 07:12 PM, said:

You don't have to buy modules when you get a new mech, unless it's your first mech ever. Module sharing is a thing.

Yeah; but then, you don't need modules at all when you first buy a mech. You need them when you want to be more competitive, but it's not a dealbreaker in QP to not have modules at all. *shrugs* I don't bother moving mine around for QP.

I get where you're coming from here, though. I'm not saying the values as they are are good, just that they're not as bad as they seem at first blush.

Like I said, though, I'd certainly appreciate them being lower.

And, of course, it doesn't really matter much to me personally as I'll be able to instantly "master" most of my mechs purely on the grounds of massive amounts of stored XP, so my opinion obviously is "tainted" by that.

This will certainly take longer than the current system at least, longer assuming you're sharing modules and NOT counting the other required XP in skilling other variants of a chassis+buying module unlocks+buying modules.

I'd argue this hurts the "middle player" the most. It's actually better for a new player, but for a more established player who however does not have a massive amount of stored XP and cbills from sold modules, it'll screw them.

762 NATO, on 08 February 2017 - 07:13 PM, said:

Lower CBill cost. Preferably to nothing. I do not particularly feel the need to spend CBills on Hill Climb, Speed Retention, Quick Ignition just to get to Cool Run and Heat Containment. Hill Climb and Speed Retention?!?!?! Really? Like that has to do with how a mech manages its heat?

Furthermore, AMS Overload and Fall Damage just to get to Armor Hardening? If you fell off something, you chose to do it or you dont know how to drive. And all these things cost me CBills?

I assume this is basically just causing the skills you actually want to cost more/require more SP to unlock, rather than having individual nodes cost more as that's kind of a mess waiting to happen.

So, yeah, you're just paying 3 Sp to get that armor hardening, really.

[762 NATO]

Wintersdark, on 08 February 2017 - 07:29 PM, said:

I assume this is basically just causing the skills you actually want to cost more/require more SP to unlock, rather than having individual nodes cost more as that's kind of a mess waiting to happen.

So, yeah, you're just paying 3 Sp to get that armor hardening, really.

Linear skill trees with increasing costs would be much less painful and rage-inducing. "Level 1 Heat Containment - X Cost. Level 2 - 2 times X cost. 3-3. Etc" This would be fine. But dumping 100k CBills into Hill Climb?

I havent been playing much more than a year. I feel shafted by the Light Rescale and the PHX Debacle of 2016. Now this? And I can only imagine the salt and rage of the 4 year vets.

Cheers

[Wintersdark]

762 NATO, on 08 February 2017 - 07:40 PM, said:

Linear skill trees with increasing costs would be much less painful and rage-inducing. "Level 1 Heat Containment - X Cost. Level 2 - 2 times X cost. 3-3. Etc" This would be fine. But dumping 100k CBills into Hill Climb?

I havent been playing much more than a year. I feel shafted by the Light Rescale and the PHX Debacle of 2016. Now this? And I can only imagine the salt and rage of the 4 year vets.

Cheers

From a 5 year vet perspective, I'm not ragey at all. Honestly, this whole thing doesn't impact me much at all: I've got hundreds of thousands of XP in each of 100+ chassis, and after they refund all my modules a truly absurd pile of cbills (and even more XP).

I think it's the middle players who get screwed here, really, not people like me. After all, we have to buy literally non-functional skills (as opposed to ones we may not really care about) right now to level mechs, not to mention skilling up chassis we don't even want to use.

[Mister Blastman]

[jonfett]

Bud Crue, on 08 February 2017 - 06:51 PM, said:

It won't be enough to drive me out, but it will drive out most of my mechs. If the PTS is close to what we end up with, I can't see playing or bothering to level 75 percent of the mechs that currently exist in this game. This system kills all desire to pokemech.

Yep. It really does.

Edited by jonfett, 08 February 2017 - 08:36 PM.

[RoninV3]

Wow, The cost on these is pretty step (HXP/XP/GXP) wise. I attempted to recreate several of my mastered chassis and it was impossible. Further the C-bill component is not going to be offset by the refund we will be seeing. This needs ALOT of work

[cazidin]

Mister Blastman, on 08 February 2017 - 07:57 PM, said:

That poor mech looks like she's in pain!

[Solzen]

So yesterday I watched Bearclaw's stream and someone made a comment on how expensive it was just to respec the tree and my initial reaction was 'well, just make sure you have what you want before you lock it in.' However as I thought about it more I realized how right they were about not only respecing but the cost of the tree in general. I'm not talking about xp, I'm talking about cbills. From what I saw last night (I'm installing the PTS right now) it costs around 9 million to spec out a mech. I have 46 mechs. 9x46 is 414 million or 414 billion cbills (this is just a rough estimate) to master all my mechs again.

I'm assuming this cost was based around the idea of the module refund, the problem being most pilots, at least newer ones like myself, don't have modules for every single mech. We have a small pool of them and move the modules to whatever mech we're currently playing. I did play a little faction warfare, so I did make sure I had enough radar derps and a few other modules to kit out a drop deck of 4 mechs, but that's pretty much it. Now granted, not all of my mechs are currently mastered, but I doubt I'd be able even half of my stable with the cbill cost alone.

So how does the cost in cbills affect new players entering the game? Well basically you now have to add a 10 million cbill cost to each mech you buy, and that's just to fill out the tree once. Think about when you were all new, how many times did you change the loadout on a mech? If you were like me learning this game, it was pretty often. Its a hefty roadblock for anyone trying to get into this game, especially when you have to pay even more to respec.

Finally let's talk about omnimechs, I'm a clanner at heart. I love my omnis but as I thought about this more last night, the more I realized this was going to make their versatility pretty much obsolete. Again, I'm not saying I restructure every single omni I own on a regular basis, but there are some chasis, like my ebon jags that I do mess around with fairly often. Given the cost of the tree, the only way I would be able to do that is if I never took any weapon quirks or made very small changes to the loadout (for example: Moving from 6 medium lasers to 2 large and like 3 smalls or somethin on a linebacker) so they stay in the same weapon tree.

Now I do like the way the tree feels, the amount of customization that it -could- enable but I feel like with the current price of it, it will not be able to achieve that goal. Of course there's always the chance that the prices were arbitrary for the purposes of the PTS and will be brought down, but I'm worried that this is not the case. So here is -my- solution for this. First, make the leveling the mech up only cost XP. I don't see any reason why it should cost cbills and it makes the system entirely unforgiving for new players and far too rigid for veterans. Second, make respeccing the tree cost 2 Million, a flat cost you pay each time you want to start over. 5 million at the max, but really I should stress here, I think it should be lower than that for the sake of gameplay. People will use their cbills to buy mechs (Something I really, really wanted to do when the final patch dropped). You still have a bit of a money sink but you will also allow players, new and old, to fine tune their mechs rather than cross their fingers and hope for the best.