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1. The UI is overly cluttered
Too many nodes, overall looks daunting to newbie players. Most of the trees could be replaced by a visually much simpler representation of gating certain upgrade tiers based on amount of skill points spent on the specific branch - mechanically equivalent, less confusing to newbies.
Additionally, the unavailable skill trees still clutter the UI.There's no point in showing ballistic trees on a chassis with no ballistic mounts, for example, or PPC trees on a chassis that cannot fit a PPC due to only having its' energy mounts in CT/head (different matter with omnimechs, obviously).
2. It's a global nerf to weapon performance.
The skill system is supposed to replace the quirk system and modules, but as far as the bonus magnitudes go it's barely equivalent to modules
3. The individual purchases do not feel substantial or consequential
I'm sorry, but most new players will not see any reason to invest SPs in "+2% range". Bump up the bonus and bump up the cost and you're making the decision feel like it has impact getting somewhere.
4. It encourages maxing out individual skill trees instead of trying to build any kind of synergy or specialization.
Cap SPs that can be spent on a given tree, making it impossible to buy every skill in the given tree at the same time, or make certain selections mutually exclusive (do you want jump height or jump vectoring?).
5. It ignores opportunities for skills that could provide more variety and utility.
What if I'm interested in actually increasing missile / LBX spreads to make them better critseekers at the expense of damage?
What if I'd like to increase the range of my TAG or extend the duration of ECM disruption effect created by my PPCs?
What if I'm not interested in vanishing from enemy radar as quickly on breaking LOS, but would like to reduce the range at which my mech can be detected instead?
Nowhere to be found.
6. It lumps together skills that don't really belong and keeps apart skills that should go hand in hand
The sensor tree, defensive tree, mobility tree and operations tree are obvious culprits here. In some cases, it forces us to spend skill points on unwanted secondaries (a LURMboat doesn't need target retention, for example, since we won't usually be brawling to begin with).
Speed Retention, for one, feels more like it belongs to Mobility. Fall Damage could use duplicate nodes in the Jump Jet tree, as there's a synergy between both.
The Sensors tree is currently a frankensteinian hodgepodge of detection and countermeasures.
Perhaps it needs a redesign into separate Detection and Countermeasures trees, and then the Detection tree needs some rearrangement of nodes so that we can choose to optimize for ranged combat or brawling without wasting SP on unnecessary nodes?
7. It encourages boating instead of diversity.
This is mainly because having all your weapons benefit from the same skill tree creates a feedback loop where you want to make the most of it. The type of build that benefits the most here is the laserboating meta with its' ML/LL and MPL/LPL boats,
Here's a thought: what if the trees were broken up so that we had a generic tree (with a limited amount of SPs that could be invested), a weapon class tree (generic "energy", "missile", "ballistic" buffs) and then finally a weapon family tree ("Lasers", "Pulse Lasers", "PPCs")? If you wanted to min-max a certain aspect of the weapon's operation (especially if there was a cap on SPs per tree), you'd have to do it by spending SPs on more generally applicable quirks as well.
8..It does nothing to promote a chassis' "iconic" loadout
It creates no distinction between chassis - instead of increasing diversity of fielded chassis, it funnels everyone towards a handful of "meta" chassis that allow better boating.
I'd expect certain chassis to have additional skill nodes - or entire trees - that allow it to buff its' stock weapons and equipment load.
Think along the lines of Hunchback 4G being able to spend SPs on nodes that buff specifically the AC/20.
9. The armor/structure quirks are not sufficiently clear or controllable
Buffing arm armor? I mean, really. Add some more interesting options, like being able to buff armor on a specific side of the mech, or make an explicit choice between arm, leg or torso armor.
Edited by Horseman, 09 February 2017 - 05:10 AM.
