252 replies to this topic

[FupDup]

GenghisJr, on 09 February 2017 - 07:57 PM, said:

i thought modules were being removed, why are people discussing seismic, radar dep and TIG?

Because now they're quirks instead.

[Snowbluff]

process, on 09 February 2017 - 06:11 PM, said:

In defense of compulsory skill nodes, I think it works in preventing too much min-maxing. Like yeah, if I could I would go straight for seismic, radar dep, +armor, torso twist, cool run, hard brake, laser duration, etc.

No that's stupid. Minmaxing isn't bad. Having skills have too much power for their point cost, that's bad. What's not bad is picking your skills to favor certain aspects to fit your playstyle. SMH, SMH.

[Wintersdark]

NighthawK1337, on 09 February 2017 - 06:15 PM, said:

Oh yeah the upper torso skills are basically useless compared to the lower torso skills.
I'd rather get turn rate than torso yaw rate. Also I've only ever been bothered by torso pitch angle, not yaw.

Nobody in their right mind would get torso twist skills over accel, deccel and speed tweak.

Yup. As important as twisting is, it pales in comparison to bringing your guns to bear quickly and efficiently (accel, tweak) and being able to get out of the line of fire asap (decel and tweak). Not getting hit at all trumps spreading damage.

[Wintersdark]

FupDup, on 09 February 2017 - 06:30 PM, said:

What I'll pick for most mechs:

-Full Lower Chassis tree
-Most of Operations for Cool Run and Heat Containment. Maybe Magazine Capacity if using a ballistic mech
-Most of one specific weapon tree based on build (ignoring cooldown because 5% is too low to be worth it)
-About half of InfoTech to get Seismic Level 2 (I personally skip Radar Derp)
-Finish off with Survivability

So, to recap. My mech has enhanced firepower, enhanced mobility, enhanced sensors, enhanced durability, and enhanced "general operations" all at the same time. If I do this, what it my role? What is my specialty?

A specialized skill build would be something like maximum tanky, super mobile ninja, glass cannon, super duper electronics scouting platform, etc. Right now the trees don't have enough nodes to let us do this.

Yeah, I spent some time speccing mechs, and quickly realised that this was fundamentally my problem.

Whatever people want to call it, the reality was that every mech ended up with the same skills, simply because there are a few trees that are mandatory, another couple trees are garbage or of limited use, and you basically only need 1-2 weapon trees and often not all the skills inside those trees.

I'm not set on how they fix it. Adding more depth to trees would help, and reducing skill points would help too (essentially the same thing from the other direction). Probably other solutions as well; I'm too tired and jaded to spend time really working my brain to come up with potential solutions PGI will ignore anyways.



But the current system is going to result in all my mechs getting the same skill profile, differing only in which weapon skills they get.

[LastPaladin]

Criticisms are probably right, but what is the point?

They've already decided what they are going to do, they've designed it and programmed it. If it's a disaster, it won't matter, you are going to be stuck with it. Maybe if you are really lucky they will get around to tweaking it in a couple years after they release a bunch more mech packs.

[Snowbluff]

LastPaladin, on 09 February 2017 - 08:30 PM, said:

Criticisms are probably right, but what is the point?

I sometimes argue or analyze things just for the hell of it. It fun, and it's good for your brain. You might not notice, but your brain did.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Ultimax, on 09 February 2017 - 06:52 PM, said:

I also think it would cause a riot, because as it is we are already being nerfed from what the current tree gives us. I need to check the numbers but I don't think we actually achieve the full values we have now.

To be fair, we also never got the structure/armor buffs before either so while we aren't getting all the skills we did before, we are getting other things we wouldn't have before either (like the info-rekt'd modules as well).

[Zarcuthra]

Bombast, on 09 February 2017 - 07:03 PM, said:

I haven't really been able to do anything on the PTS, mostly because of the biggest problem I have with it - The XP is ridiculous. Just astoundingly high. When I was trying to spec one of my mechs, I was completely demoralized when I realized I couldn't master it, even though it was one of the chassis that I've been grinding just in case something like this happened. In fact, I have exactly one mech that has enough XP to be fully specced, and absolutely none of the rest are even close.

So instead of playing the PTS, I'm spamming x2s for everything because it's time to grind.

I see a lot of other problems with it, but they're theoretical on my part (Though I see a lot of other people complaining about them on my behalf).

Oh, and it seems like the quirks that are staying have been shotgunned randomly, some mechs keeping an avalanche of them, some mechs losing everything, which has the predictable effect of making them inferior to Clan mechs by even greater margins.

The XP necessary is only twice what it is now. How is that "astoundingly high"?

I can Elite a mech now in a week of casual play.

What you said is wrong.

[LastPaladin]

All my brain is thinking is "Am I going to bother grinding on a game I only play casually anymore just to maybe get back somewhere close to the capabilities I have now (already bought and paid for, surely never to be reimbursed)?"

And the obvious answer is "Not bloody likely".

[RestosIII]

Zarcuthra, on 09 February 2017 - 08:37 PM, said:

The XP necessary is only twice what it is now. How is that "astoundingly high"?

I can Elite a mech now in a week of casual play.

What you said is wrong.

Around 50-60k XP to master a mech right now. 130k in the new system. Plus 9.1m C-Bills. That's a goddamn lot, especially considering it's on a per-mech basis. So if you own 2 Adder Primes? Gotta grind that amount out twice.

[Deathlike]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 09 February 2017 - 08:36 PM, said:

To be fair, we also never got the structure/armor buffs before either so while we aren't getting all the skills we did before, we are getting other things we wouldn't have before either (like the info-rekt'd modules as well).

Well, you can now combine Seismic Wallhack, Radar Derp, Advanced Zoom, 360 Target Retention, Adv Gyro, Hill Climb, Cap Accel, Speed Retention, and so much moar now!

[AWOL 01]

I would like to see various roles to choose from (Scout, Brawler, Sniper) that each have their own Skill Tree. For example, the Brawler's weapon trees would only have cooldown so they can get off more shots, the Sniper would have range, the Scout could have heat gen to keep them from overheating and shutting down when trying to escape. Brawlers would have structure and armor hardening, Scouts would have speed tweak, Snipers have radar range, etc. There could be overlap between the trees, but a Brawler may have to invest more skill points to get to things like speed tweak that it doesn't really need, if that makes sense. This would force players to really think about what they want to do with the mech, and not just use the same general skills that have been pointed out before. I tried varying the skills I used but it was so blatantly obvious what the best way to do it was that there was no point in experimenting too much.

Don't get me wrong, this has great potential, and I'd really like to see it properly implemented...

[Bombast]

Zarcuthra, on 09 February 2017 - 08:37 PM, said:

The XP necessary is only twice what it is now. How is that "astoundingly high"?

I can Elite a mech now in a week of casual play.

What you said is wrong.

No, it isn't. It is astoundingly high because it's twice as high as it is now. I have to regrind 19 mechs, plus 4 that I haven't even mastered under the old system.

And good for you, you can get a mech a quarter of the way through the new system in a week. By my rough math, an average player will take over 60 days to master a mech under this new system, assuming one x2 match a day.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Deathlike, on 09 February 2017 - 08:39 PM, said:

Well, you can now combine Seismic Wallhack, Radar Derp, Advanced Zoom, 360 Target Retention, Adv Gyro, Hill Climb, Cap Accel, Speed Retention, and so much moar now!

Yeah, in the end I think it comes out even if not better than before. Sure you can miss out on things like torso twist related items, but while those are nice you get a lot more benefit from the other routes.

[Zarcuthra]

LastPaladin, on 09 February 2017 - 08:38 PM, said:

All my brain is thinking is "Am I going to bother grinding on a game I only play casually anymore just to maybe get back somewhere close to the capabilities I have now (already bought and paid for, surely never to be reimbursed)?"

And the obvious answer is "Not bloody likely".

Do you enjoy playing the game? Didnt you enjoy playing the game before your mech was elited?

Why does your mech need to be elited for you to begin enjoying playing? And, if it is already elited, you are at least half way to eliting it again.

This idea that playing is grinding is ridiculous.

[RestosIII]

Zarcuthra, on 09 February 2017 - 08:46 PM, said:

Do you enjoy playing the game? Didnt you enjoy playing the game before your mech was elited?

Why does your mech need to be elited for you to begin enjoying playing? And, if it is already elited, you are at least half way to eliting it again.

This idea that playing is grinding is ridiculous.

Being forced to play with a handicap isn't fun for a lot of people.

[Deathlike]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 09 February 2017 - 08:43 PM, said:

Yeah, in the end I think it comes out even if not better than before. Sure you can miss out on things like torso twist related items, but while those are nice you get a lot more benefit from the other routes.

Personally, I think it's a lateral move. At best, it's already making the good mechs better, but it doesn't change the state of crap mechs. At worse, it's a misguided attempt especially given the parameters that PGI set for themselves.

[Ultimax]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 09 February 2017 - 08:36 PM, said:

To be fair, we also never got the structure/armor buffs before either so while we aren't getting all the skills we did before, we are getting other things we wouldn't have before either (like the info-rekt'd modules as well).

Agreed.

It's a double edged sword however, which is really going to come down to some subjective preference.

In effect, by making every mech tougher (and I speculate we likely agree the Defense tree is a must-have) you also indirectly make all weapons weaker.

How much a weapon is affected by that is hard to tell, and depends on how much you can mitigate it by pick ups from the trees and working to cover for the loss of efficiencies with the new skill trees vs. old (current) tree.

I'll hazard a guess that it makes an individual's impact through damage contribution harder to achieve - makes it harder to pull off clutch moments where you are outnumbered - but that the overall result against focus fire will be negligible.

Edited by Ultimax, 09 February 2017 - 10:04 PM.

[Mystere]

Bishop Steiner, on 09 February 2017 - 06:03 PM, said:

PGI... you have a chance to do things real well here, or to ship it out halfassed. The idea is not bad, the execution, as seen in the PTS? Is execrable. (And that's not even getting into the real poor UI)

It's looking just like the InfoWar PTS -- a good idea horribly implemented.

[DaZur]

To: Majority of participating contributors to this discussion.

"Thank-You"

Aside from the mild snarky nudges this discussion has been extremely informative... So much so anything I thought to contribute has already been laid out.

Threads like this is what this forum needs more of... Kudos.