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TLDR. remove weapon talent trees completely and let players customize mechs based on movement, armor, heat, abilities (derp, seismic, etc) and infotek (sensors, ecm) to allow full variety of variants and different weapon layouts to be effective. Quirks still boost weapon systems on oddball variants and generate fun mechs such as old dragon making them playable. Game stays fresh and everyone is happy.
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The current weapon trees available in PTS are very strong. We all talking about -15% duration for lasers, -10% for pulse, serious SRM spread reductions, etc. Regardless if these weapon talents were less, people would still take any damage advantage they can gain, because in a competitive pvp shooter, nothing beats weapon upgrades.
This was reason we used the cbill sinks called weapon modules. Clan medium laser range, ppc CD's, they gave that small edge required to deal with the opposition. But it was not fun, it did not benefit new players entering the game and was annoying micromanagement you did before every drop.
What breaks the system on PTS is weapon talents. There are 4 obvious trees to take. Hitpoints, Mobility, Derp/Seismic and Heat tree. This allows you to pick one weapon tree, making boating massively superior to anything else. For example, HBK-2C-A with 2LPL and 6SPL is vastly superior to 2LPL 6SML build, because one build will take advantage of the pulse laser tree fully. This is not healthy for MWO, this reduces fun. Ability to experiment with various builds is the core of this game. This talent system prevents that.
So, why do we exactly need weapon trees in the first place? Remove them and have these following talents available for mech:
- Mobility
- Armor
- Heat (total heat cap, heat reductions, etc)
- Effects (Seismic, Derp, etc)
- Infotek (Sensors, ecm, etc)
Give 45ish points to player can max roughly 3.5/5 trees of these. You can take mobility and armor, but have to pick either effects or infotek. Or you cherry pick deprivation, leave seismic and go for bit more in another tree. Or going with cold build, lets you leave heat alone, etc.
This way, we can specialize hulls for their intended purposes that suit the mech and playstyle. PGI will still balance the mechs by weapon and other quirks, but they are not so much effected by the players choices. Players choose abilities for the mech, while base structure is given by quirks like it is now.
This enables odd-ball variants to be effective and without forcing players to boat single weapon types and allows quick re-design of mechs to fit various playstyles. Sure you would still have to buy double or triple variants here and there, but compared to what we have going on now, system without weapon talents would be much superior.
