36 replies to this topic

[Mcgral18]

Gas Guzzler, on 10 February 2017 - 02:06 PM, said:

I don't really like the exclusive choice thing tbh. I don't see what agility and durability should be exclusive. What if you want to be agile and durable? What if you want agility and pew pew? What if you want pew pew and durability? What if you want all 3 and no infotech, but also no upper chassis agility?

I don't know, in my personal opinion, I'm not a fan of exclusive choices, but I do think some of the nodes need to be nerfed, including accel/decel, velocities, durations, jam chance, and some others.

Agility and Durability tend to go hand in hand, as well


Though, Damage Mitigation VS Damage...tankiness?

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

I too dislike the idea of limiting what we have as a way of causing choice. I'd rather increase what we have so that players can specialize heavily into one tree in particular instead of buying multiple trees. Something like being able to buy the survival skill tree x5 times for your Atlas and walking around like you're the VIP would be awesome. It also encourages actual diversity in mechs and makes people not too sure what they will really be facing from any given mech.

[PhilTheDestroyer]

Great explanation of the main issues with the system. I would love to see the ideas you talked about implemented in the skill tree.

Putting the skill tree into live play in it's currently state, even with reduced c-bill/xp costs will have a very detrimental effect on player retention.

[Stone Wall]

basically Ghost Heat 3.0

plzno PGI

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Stone Wall, on 10 February 2017 - 02:40 PM, said:

basically Ghost Heat 3.0

plzno PGI

Wait, what part of it is similar to ghost heat 3.0?

[cazidin]

Dakota1000, on 10 February 2017 - 02:55 PM, said:

Wait, what part of it is similar to ghost heat 3.0?

They're both flawed and unintuitive for new players?

Edited by cazidin, 10 February 2017 - 03:26 PM.

[Fantastic Tuesday]

Gas Guzzler, on 10 February 2017 - 02:06 PM, said:

I don't see what agility and durability should be exclusive. What if you want to be agile and durable? What if you want agility and pew pew? What if you want pew pew and durability? What if you want all 3 and no infotech, but also no upper chassis agility?

Yeah I'm inclined to agree. In fact what I had in mind wasn't as harsh as what I proposed, I was just trying to get the point across with as much brevity as possible.

For instance, In my head, all of the skill nodes that effect durability would be set up something like this:

[Leg durability] or [acceleration]
[Side torso durability] or [turn rate]
[CT durability] or [heat dissipation]
[Decreased weapon crit chance (on self)] or [all weapon cooldown reduction]

With fancy names like reinforced actuators / hotwired actuators for the first pair and shielded exhaust / expanded exhaust for the 3rd.

Likewise, heat skills would be spread through other similar trade-offs throughout the tree. Essentially, you could:

Go full durability and take a reasonable spread of other skill sets
Full durability and most of another skill set (and a sprinkling of others)
Jack-of-all-trades it.
Etc.

The point being, you should never be able to take all of whichever skill sets you want. Allowing this, as the current tree does (and many trees throughout less spectacular games) just creates optimal unlock paths that no one with access to a skill guide would ever deviate from.

Edited by Fantastic Tuesday, 10 February 2017 - 03:49 PM.

[Big Tin Man]

Hey FT, Alex just said they're aiming for March patch now to allow for more development. Get cracking on a detailed trade-off system.

[Malrock]

Big Tin Man, on 10 February 2017 - 04:42 PM, said:

Hey FT, Alex just said they're aiming for March patch now to allow for more development. Get cracking on a detailed trade-off system.

Where was this stated? NVM i just found it.

Edited by Malrock, 10 February 2017 - 05:26 PM.

[Fantastic Tuesday]

Big Tin Man, on 10 February 2017 - 04:42 PM, said:

Hey FT, Alex just said they're aiming for March patch now to allow for more development. Get cracking on a detailed trade-off system.

I might just have to. Put my money where my mouth is.

[InsaneRotta]

Fantastic Tuesday, on 11 February 2017 - 12:48 AM, said:

I might just have to. Put my money where my mouth is.

You need any help?

I made this thingy and you're welcome to use it:
Old vs new skill comparison

[SuperPignouf]

Hi there, 

I wanted to react to Fantastic Tuesday video about how skill tree should be all about making mutually exclusive choices and his comparison with World of Warcraft trees. You really nailed my general feeling about this tree! It has already been showed that with the currently proposed tree it is possible for each mech to pile all defensive nodes with a good chunk of sensors, operation and mobility while leaving enough for one type of weapon. Not much customization indeed.
I felt the parallel with WoW very interesting and thought it would be a good idea to think about how we could implement it.
I built a rudimentary wow like tree to help with the discussion.
I wrote it one my smartphone so there is not much mise en page going on. Below each floor you have the three nodes separated by //.

_Legs internals
Structure buff // more ammo in leg mounted ammo// improved accel/decel

_Legs externals
Armor buff // improved turn rate // improved leg mounted jump jets

_Arms internals
Structure buff // 1 extra slot per arm // cooldown for arm mounted weapons

_Arms externals
Armor buff // increased heat dissipation for arm mounted heatsinks // projectile velocity and range for arm mounted weapons

_Torso internals
Structure buff // torso speed // 1 extra slot per torso

_Torso external
Armor buff // increased heat dissipation for torso mounted heatsinks (not including engine) // projectile velocity and range for torso mounted weapons

_Cockpit
Less shake and explosion blind // zoom + advanced heat and night vision // advanced com array (share results of seismic sensor and results of target info with team)

_Sensors
Target decay // target info gathering // seismic

_Engine
Speed tweak // engine mounted heatsinks heat capacity and dissipation // improved engine casing (extra torso structure, armor and twist rate from STD engine casing or no negative effect from losing part of XL engine)

_Paint
Camouflage (longer enemy targeting time) // radar deprivation // repulsive paint (slight reduction in incoming damage)

_Weapons operation
Weapons overload (cooldown and heat gen) // fine tuning (spread, jam chance and beam duration) // long barrels and refined beams (projectile velocity and weapon range)

Here is my reasoning :
1) wow like tree with stages of 3 choices each. The player can chose a single node from any floor without needing to have previous floors unlocked.

2) in general each floor has a defense node, an offense node and a more utility oriented node.

3) the nodes on a same floor should give comparably strong bonuses (choices between nodes should be non obvious), each tailored to further specialize the mech

4) to make it more "real", each floor represents a part of the mech, say cockpit, sensors or arms internals. It reflects the skill and understanding of a pilot and his repair crew.

5) my sample tree has been made mainly with IS mechs in mind. It aims to address IS versus clan and STD versus XL balancing by giving the opportunity (at the cost of other strong bonuses) to run XL without dying from ST loss, to buff tankiness and twist speed when running STD, to add free slots in arms and torsos (thus allowing an IS mech to bring ferro more often, or put two uac5 in a XL ST for instance)

6) there is a small take on information warfare by giving a node allowing to share results of seismic sensor on the minimap and target info (all members of a team could see a pop up near the target of a mech running said node with it's info, allowing to pinpoint weak component of a mech you did not even target)

7) clan mechs should receive a partially different tree

8) underpowered mechs like the hunchback, Victor, Orion, cataphract, highlander... Should still receive quirks or special nodes in the tree tailored to their specific needs

9) I did not put any number in my tree because that's where all the balancing goes and the content of my nodes are mostly placeholder. The whole point of this is to show that a WoW like tree is possible and allows better customization than a "grab everything you need without having to make difficult choice" tree like they are proposing

10) as a sidenote, I really think the new skill tree should be more "game changing" than what PGI is proposing. They are simply spreading quirks and old skills and modules with extra armor and structure in a badly structured tree. I think this is the occasion to actually fix for good many of the recurring balancing issues in this game. Issues that are discussed again ad nauseam by many veteran players who have often better views on the game than many designers at PGI.

Cheers!

Edited by SuperPignouf, 11 February 2017 - 03:31 PM.

[MechaBattler]

I'm with you on the idea that there should be trade offs. You shouldn't just get everything you want. In spite of what the meta FPS crowd say. But at the same time, they should be noticeable trade offs. Not 5% on my jump jet duration. So that at least you're actually feeling the improvement for the sacrifice you make.

Edited by MechaBattler, 11 February 2017 - 03:46 PM.

[Monkey Lover]

Fantastic Tuesday, on 09 February 2017 - 04:19 PM, said:

I was typing this quickly. The video explains it far better.

Sorry it's no different than we have now. Everyone boats. If you don't boat then you quirk your main weapon with two modules. What any different here? Backup weapons have never been as good.

Edited by Monkey Lover, 11 February 2017 - 04:10 PM.

[VitriolicViolet]

yeah boating is nigh unkillable as a play style. it would be nice if the game in general didnt promote boating but it does in nearly every aspect. Regardless of changes to the skill tree boating will always be the easiest way to play this game, its simply inherently easier to keep track of one weapon with one range, cooldown, heat etc. It will always be inherently harder to use mixed builds as you have to keep track of several ranges, time shots for synergy etc.

Short of crippling boats through stuff like ghost heat it will always be the easier way to play, and thus will always be popular. Im not saying dont try to stop it but that you essentially cant, its easy and so will be popular.

[Fantastic Tuesday]

To the last two comments: don't put words in my mouth. If you actually watched the video you'd know that:

* I said that this system is not going to fix boating.

* I explained that boating has causes far outside the realm of the skill tree.

PGI's new tree cements boating as the optimal play style. There is an opportunity here for the tree to not do that. Please don't dismiss that opportunity because 'boating has always been dominant so I don't care.'

[Cato Zilks]

I said this elsewhere but it seems to agree with you.
"First, I slightly tweaked the Laser Tree in a way that makes way more sense:


Second, I think these stats need a buffing with a major system tweek. I will go over the tweek first, basically, I think the Green and Red columns should cost 2 unlock points per block to unlock the second set (it would cost 25 total slots instead of 20). So, that means players can either get duration or range but not both without really investing in lasers. This extra investment means they have to give up other things to max out the mechs.

Now, I think this should be balanced out with slightly improved "quirks" that you reap as benefit.

By doubling down on the number of slots needed to master out a weapon like this, it means that weapon-boating is not as advantageous as the PTS currently makes it. I think similar systems could be applied to other weapon systems as well."

Edit: I am now thinking that a total of 30 points might be more justified to fully unlock a weapon type (2 points for every range and duration if you pick from both).

Edited by Cato Zilks, 12 February 2017 - 02:26 PM.