15 replies to this topic

[xeromynd]

FEEDBACK: In bullet form!

POSITIVE:

• AC2s have a cooldown skill now! (since AC cooldown is a general quirk)
  
• Some new skills are interesting "Gauss Charge Hold, LBX Choke, Enhanced ECM, Jump Jet Quirks)
  
• The amount of customization is nice (but comes with drawbacks.... why do we have to unlock skills we don't want, to get skills we DO want).
  
• Clan mechs having access to the UAC Jam Chance quirk is amazing (if you're on the giving end)

NEGATIVE:

• So many clicks: 91 clicks to fully spec a mech. Eugh....
  
• Players that didn't buy modules, or were fiscally responsible with modules (swapping one between multiple mechs) are at a disadvantage

• Skills & Loadout changes save seperately from one another.....why tho?

• The HXP conversion box is....confusing, and should NOT update as you type numbers into the conversion box. This makes entering the total amount of HXP hard, as you have to remember the whole number, since it changes as soon as you type in one number.

• Like many others have said, this encourages BOATING, which I thought Russ was against? I'd rather unlock either the lasers tree or pulse lasers tree, not both. People will boat a single weapon type so they can buff that type only, and have more SP for structure, armor, and non-weapon quirks.

• It's too expensive. Respecing a mech should be cheaper. Keep in mind that loadout swapping is nerfed. CBill grind is massively increased because of the Skill Nodes, Respecing, and buying all new variants to run multiple loadouts. (It's either buy a new copy of the same variant, or pay for a full respec each time you want to flip to a different loadout.)

• It should cost the SAME AMOUNT to master a mech in the PTS as it does NOW in the live server. No one likes grinding, it's not fun, it's a cheap and annoying way to keep people playing more.

New player experience:

• None of this is friendly to new players. Us old players will adapt and learn the new Skill Tree system, but to new players this is just overwhelming. It's SO much information at once. Not to mention that respecing is basically a punishment for new players making bad decisions on their skills.

• This patch has SIX currencies. GXP, MXP, HXP, SP, MC, & CB. surely that's easy for new players to understand.....right?

General::

• You're nerfing the "fun mechs"..... why? Why did the CDA-3C deserve a nerf to the only weapons that make it viable/ Why did the CN9-D deserve a cooldown nerf when it was one of the most fun Cents to play? Why did the VND-1X deserve a ballistic cooldown nerf? (Because it was super OP, right?) Why did the LCV-1V deserve a nerf when it was one of the only fun IS mechs to actually play.

• The Gauss Extended Charge just repeats the same audio sample, sounds kind of lazy.

• What's the point of the "click and drag" system of viewing Skills when we have convenient tabs at the top for clicking? Also the ability to click and drag vertically is absolutely useless. There is no information above or below the skill trees at all. Why not just make it so that our mouse wheel scrolls left to right through the trees if we hover over the main screen area.

• Regarding the Ammo Skill: I've tested it. The additional ammo added is based off the amount of ton/half-ton units of ammo added to a mech, NOT the total ammo count a mech has. This is rather.....odd. -- Example: AC10 Ammo. One 1 Ton unit of AC10 ammo yields 3 extra shots, so 23 total. One 1/2 Ton unit of AC10 ammo unit yields 1 extra shot, 11 total. Makes sense...... But when you equip TWO 1/2 Ton ammo units to your mech, you only get 2 additional ammo....wat.

• The "arm speed" quirk is just useless.

I'm sure I'll update this more as I find more things.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------


**UPDATE***

Now that I've played a little bit, and had time to think, here are suggestions on how to improve this system:



First off: **I think this Skill System is BETTER than the one we have now, but NOT in it's current state. It has a very long way to go.** here are some suggestions toward that end:

-**Make Respeccing COMPLETELY FREE.**


-Make **all costs a little cheaper** OR increase CBill rewards in matches.


-Let us use the **scroll wheel on our mice to scroll left to right in the skills window.** There is no need to look above and below trees with the current click-and-drag mechanic.


-**Change the HXP box to NOT auto-update** when you are converting XP.


-Either **reorganize the skill trees so we don’t have to select bad skills** to get to good skills, **or allow us to unlock skills ABOVE the current hex**, if it isn’t already. This would allow us to bypass crap skills that no one wants by going down one side of the tree, and coming back up the other size, essentially going around bad skills.


-**Make the Ammo Skill calculate the additional ammo by TOTAL ammo** equipped to a mech, not by each unit (ton) of ammo equipped. ½ Ton + ½ Ton right now yields LESS ammo than 1 Full Ton of ammo.


-**Seriously take a second look at the mechs that were FUN before**, and received nerfs (CDA-3C, LCT-1V, CN9-D, VND-1X and many more). It looks like you guys just did blanket nerfs to offensive quirks without taking each individual variant’s NEED for quirks into consideration.


-I don’t know….what can be done about the upper right corner conversion and “cart” box in the UI, there’s just so many numbers and units and stuff. It’s way too confusing.


-**6 Currencies is WAY too much** to manage or for new players to think about, there needs to be less. Why can’t our “historical XP” just be tossed into our GXP pool? GXP isn’t used for unlocking access to modules anymore, so what’s the harm in doing that? The only reason I can think for PGI making HXP is that they want people to transfer HXP -> MXP, which can then ‘possibly’ be converted to GXP using MC, which is a way for them to make money. But **** that, throw us a bone here.


-I have no suggestions on how to fix boating single weapon types (which this encourages), there have already been suggestions by other players that are better than anything I could think of.


-The **"Consumables"** tab in the Mechlab is now a dinky little box that serves a very small purpose. Surely this could be integrated into another place in the mechlab, no?


-**Make Skills and Loadout changes save TOGETHER** (they currently do not)




Lastly: There will absolutely, 100%, need to be a TUTORIAL for new players to use this new system. Not just some VOD you can watch on the website, but an actual in-game tutorial. This NEEDS to be in place upon the release of this new skill system, no exceptions.

Edited by xeromynd, 09 February 2017 - 12:20 PM.

[Barantor]

I agree with most of what you have there except the part about the grind for skill.

We need the grind. It's something to give you a goal for, even if you hate getting there. There is a reason people play MMOs for so long and it's often to get up to the top level. This is/will be like that for a lot of folks.

That said I don't think that the cost should be as high on them, both for c-bills, mc and xp. It needs to be lowered a bit, but the amount of things to do will keep many folks interested in this game.

I know I could get a mech mastered in an afternoon with the current system, so the thought that it should only be that long is kinda weak IMO.

Good lord YES about the updating HXP typing in though.

[Gas Guzzler]

I agree with most of that, how would you fix the boating thing? I actually dont think its that big of deal, most people only take 2 weapon types anyway. And to be honest, if you are purely boating you have to contend with Ghost Heat, when you split weapon types, you don't, so theres that to consider.

[l33tworks]

Dont mind a time or xp grind now that its per variant unlock but the c bill cost is too much

[Skribs]

I have enough of a grind already. There's plenty of Mechs out there that I don't own. There's plenty I have gotten through packages that I don't have leveled.

[Tamerlin]

I hear "too many cbills" all thru the forums, but nobody suggests what the correct amount should be...

[KafkaSyrup]

Tamerlin, on 08 February 2017 - 11:35 PM, said:

I hear "too many cbills" all thru the forums, but nobody suggests what the correct amount should be...

Zero... unless there is an increase in cbill earnings. This is steepening the barrier for the new player base and will harm the games growth. If they really insist that this game needs more treadmill, I would say 1 mill to max a light/medium ... 2mil to max a heavy assault.

Edited by KafkaSyrup, 08 February 2017 - 11:42 PM.

[xeromynd]

Tamerlin, on 08 February 2017 - 11:35 PM, said:

I hear "too many cbills" all thru the forums, but nobody suggests what the correct amount should be...

Plenty of people are suggesting things here and on the Reddit as far as I've seen.
Respecing should be free. Nodes should cost 25,000 to unlock.


As far as XP goes, it should cost the SAME amount of XP to skill up all 91 nodes as it does now to "Master" a mech (64,500 XP, I think?)

Edited by xeromynd, 09 February 2017 - 12:00 AM.

[Ravenlord]

Barantor, on 08 February 2017 - 10:50 PM, said:

I agree with most of what you have there except the part about the grind for skill.

We need the grind. It's something to give you a goal for, even if you hate getting there. There is a reason people play MMOs for so long and it's often to get up to the top level. This is/will be like that for a lot of folks.

That said I don't think that the cost should be as high on them, both for c-bills, mc and xp. It needs to be lowered a bit, but the amount of things to do will keep many folks interested in this game.

I know I could get a mech mastered in an afternoon with the current system, so the thought that it should only be that long is kinda weak IMO.

Good lord YES about the updating HXP typing in though.

There's a difference between having to work for something and grinding.
Grinding is when you have to work so much for something that it isn't fun anymore but only annoying and frustrating. IMO grinding, even though widely used, is NOT a good way to keep players playing and I find myself rather turned off by it and actually less willing to play a game if it becomes too grindy, and I am sure I am not alone with that.
That is actually part of the reason why I basically stopped playing world of tanks completely. In order to keep up with all the grinding for the new tanks I would have needed to completely forgo playing other tanks I actually wanted to play for fun despite playing quite a lot, so I got more and more frustrated until I basically quit.

Here in MWO it is quite doable to play and experiment with builds and different mechs just for the fun of it while still being able to get the new mechs and level them up in a more or less timely fashion.
I think PGI got the ratio of grind to fun quite well and I would find it very sad, to say the least, if that was to change.

Edited by Ravenlord, 09 February 2017 - 12:02 AM.

[MechaBattler]

My suggestion for addressing boating. Separate point pool for weapons.

[Lily from animove]

Barantor, on 08 February 2017 - 10:50 PM, said:

I agree with most of what you have there except the part about the grind for skill.

We need the grind. It's something to give you a goal for, even if you hate getting there. There is a reason people play MMOs for so long and it's often to get up to the top level. This is/will be like that for a lot of folks.

That said I don't think that the cost should be as high on them, both for c-bills, mc and xp. It needs to be lowered a bit, but the amount of things to do will keep many folks interested in this game.

I know I could get a mech mastered in an afternoon with the current system, so the thought that it should only be that long is kinda weak IMO.

Good lord YES about the updating HXP typing in though.

I disagree, in any PVP based game grind is extremely bad for proper fairness. Thats a workign concept for PVE but not for PVP.

[Reno Blade]

xeromynd, on 08 February 2017 - 11:59 PM, said:

Plenty of people are suggesting things here and on the Reddit as far as I've seen.
Respecing should be free. Nodes should cost 25,000 to unlock.


As far as XP goes, it should cost the SAME amount of XP to skill up all 91 nodes as it does now to "Master" a mech (64,500 XP, I think?)

The basic idea is that you now get modules for SP and they costed millions of CBills to buy once and thousands of XP to unlock.
If the cost would be reduced or even free... all the people who already spend time to grind Modules would have "wasted" much more than the cheap ones.

I think that if there where "Elite" SP which cost much more, the cost for the other SP could be reduced to get back the ability to skip certain module skills if you are broke.
BUT .... where to stop? Weapon buffs were previously modules (e.g. cooldown and range), so these would all be Elite SP and cost more?
That would push people even MORE towards boating, isn't it?

[Prof RJ Gumby]

To deal with the boating issue, weapon nodes should have a general tree with nodes for global weapon range bonuses, nodes for global cooldown bonuses and "maintenance" (or maybe "quality") nodes that would confer a bonus to weapon specific attributes (i.e. a maintenance node would improve at once: uac jam chance, lbx/srm/lrm spread, mg cone of fire, gauss hold time). It's the only way boating one weapon won't get another advantage on top of all the advantages it already have due to how this game works.

Edited by Prof RJ Gumby, 09 February 2017 - 12:57 AM.

[xeromynd]

**UPDATE***

Now that I've played a little bit, and had time to think, here are suggestions on how to improve this system:

-Make Respeccing COMPLETELY FREE.

-Make all costs cheaper by 10% at least.

-Let us use the scroll wheel on our mice to scroll left to right in the skills window. There is no need to look above and below trees with the current click-and-drag mechanic.

-Change the HXP box to NOT auto-update when you are converting XP.

-Either reorganize the skill trees so we don’t have to select bad skills to get to good skills, or allow us to unlock skills ABOVE the current hex, if it isn’t already. This would allow us to bypass crap skills that no one wants by going down one side of the tree, and coming back up the other size, essentially going around bad skills.

-Make the Ammo Skill calculate the additional ammo by TOTAL ammo equipped to a mech, not by each unit (ton) of ammo equipped. ½ Ton + ½ Ton right now yields LESS ammo than 1 Full Ton of ammo.

-Seriously take a second look at the mechs that were FUN before, and received nerfs (CDA-3C, LCT-1V, CN9-D, VND-1X and many more). It looks like you guys just did blanket nerfs to offensive quirks without taking each individual variant’s NEED for quirks into consideration.

-I don’t know….what can be done about the upper right corner conversion and “cart” box in the UI, there’s just so many numbers and units and stuff. It’s way too confusing.

-6 Currencies is WAY too much to manage or for new players to think about, there needs to be less. Why can’t our “historical XP” just be tossed into our GXP pool? GXP isn’t used for unlocking access to modules anymore, so what’s the harm in doing that? The only reason I can think for PGI making HXP is that they want people to transfer HXP -> MXP, which can then ‘possibly’ be converted to GXP using MC, which is a way for them to make money. But **** that, throw us a bone here.

-I have no suggestions on how to fix boating single weapon types (which this encourages), there have already been suggestions by other players that are better than anything I could think of.

-Make Skills and Loadout changes save TOGETHER (they currently do not)

[Cpt Zaepp]

+1 to all of your points.

Just tested it and it is ridiculously miss-designed in (almost) all aspects.

Edited by Cpt Zaepp, 09 February 2017 - 12:45 PM.

[xe N on]

The "fixed" skill system is the complete wrong direction. It makes any mech less flexible in it's loadout. Want to equip LRMs instead of SRMs? Sorry, but you need to respec for the full potential. This make the mechlab and the game overall less interesting.

The high invest costs would be ok, if they would be one-time! Free respec is the right way.

If you want to limit respecs, than give one respec per day (not accumulating). Any further costs Cbill or MC.

Make respecs unlimited with premium time running.

Edited by xe N on, 09 February 2017 - 12:59 PM.