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[Monky]

• Tremendous Newbie Trap - #1 priority should be to fix that. So many bad decisions available (arm speed, speed retention, hill climb, temptation to spread too thin in weapon quirks on 'bracket builds/mixed builds', complicated tree very hard to plan 91 points for, unable to test multiple different approaches without a monumental cash investment etc etc etc) - REVISE RISKS
  
• Clunky interface - Trees are too large and too numerous, even on massive resolutions you're panning all around just to find what the tree contains. Make it concise! Also, HEAVILY consider removing the 'pathways' to unlock - this just content gates the useful stuff by forcing pickups of unwanted or outright useless perks that likely don't fit a given mech. (once again - arm speed, of dubious quality on mechs that even use arms, useless on most cicadas, HBK-IIC's, other mechs, and builds that don't use arm mounts but forced to take in some situations!) - REVISE STRUCTURE
  
• Limits player experimentation - Sure you can still rebuild your mechs despite the skill tree bonuses, but this creates a GAMEPLAY DISADVANTAGE - you are now going to perform X% less effectively offensively with lasers since you have PPC skills, builds that use 2 similar but slightly different weapons have worse synergy (ER meds and C-LPL for example would no longer sync) meaning players who chose to stick with their KDK-3's and just boat UAC's benefit 100% while you benefit less on your mixed build. Not only provides no incentive to experiment - actively discourages it by creating a meta-game that is unfriendly to it! - REVISE INCENTIVES
  
• Underestimated cost - Players must now buy a mech, experiment on desired kit for that mech (blind to affects of skill points) or risk sinking points poorly which then cost to be refunded and respent, then once that expensive process is completed, they can settle on a 'final' expensive skill sink, and are now faced with a dilemma of "do I buy a duplicate and re-equip and re-skill buy, do I waste some cash re-equipping and re-skilling this one (either of which may turn out to be NOT WORTHWHILE and be SUNK COSTS!) or do I give up on my idea and just settle for this?" - no comfortable situations to be found for the player! - REVISE COSTS
  
• Wide-ranging universal trees detrimental to meta-diversity - Since each mech can access each tree (barring mechs that can't jumpjet or equip ECM etc) there's no reason my HBK-IIC which is already a fantastic UAC boat shouldn't pump skillpoints into UAC's and then armor and then mobility... meaning it gets full benefits from offensive, defensive, mobility, and infowar skills while an Atlas needs to spend on ballistics + missile at a bare minimum to reach the same level of offensive benefits, meaning they have to skimp on mobility, info, defense, or something else. In this case, a rising tide does NOT lift all mechs - the most effective are elevated even further above the mediocre and poor. Heavily consider applying skill tree availability differently based on the mech! Powerful mechs probably don't even NEED any weapons tree, probably don't even need armor either! Switch it to as-needed basis! - REVISE AVAILABILITY

Lastly I leave you with this short reddit thread and image that illustrates very succinctly exactly how an effective skill tree should be laid out for MWO ; https://www.reddit.c...e_skill_unlock/



http://i.imgur.com/hWxymb6.png

Edited by Monky, 10 February 2017 - 01:55 AM.