59 replies to this topic

[Koniving]

On a side note, I think the skill tree should be renamed to a "tinker" tree. Or upgrade tree or modification tree. Because none of these things have to do with a pilot's skills... but modifications to the machines.

Don't get me wrong, I'm on board with everything EXCEPT using Cbills to get the mods.

If they want us to sink cbills, then make Faction Warfare matter, give us repair and rearm, tie Quickplay into Faction warfare by some means or another, commit players into factions rather than bouncing back and forth, make mercs ENTIRELY different from faction loyalists by being a Hard Mode and allow us to invest our campaigns into getting edges over the other factions.

Throwing this in as a new "Oh you gotta buy your 'quirks' " thing is about as stupid as an idea could possibly get. Especially since there's supposedly an option to pay REAL MONEY to reset it if you **** up... in which you get none of your Cbills back!

[Clownwarlord]

Bombast, on 11 February 2017 - 07:16 PM, said:

Except everyone, and I mean everyone, wants this Skill Tree to work. Everyone.

Unlike ED, we're all on board for this new system. We just think PGI is royally screwing it up.

EDIT: Ok, not everyone. There's that weird guy who keeps saying skills have no place in Mechwarrior and never has.

Ok how did they screw it up? How would you change it? If you have an issue with something how about you give a solution? (Not just directed at Bombast but everyone who gives a negative Nancy whine about anything PGI does.)

[Bombast]

Clownwarlord, on 11 February 2017 - 07:31 PM, said:

Ok how did they screw it up? How would you change it? If you have an issue with something how about you give a solution? (Not just directed at Bombast but everyone who gives a negative Nancy whine about anything PGI does.)

Have you been over to the PTS boards? Plenty of people have given constructive criticism. Like reducing chaff skills, putting diminishing returns on each tree to 'punish' boating and promote diversity, just cutting out the 'mandatory' trees that waste space, reducing the cost of skills because 135 thousand XP and 9 million C-Bills is ridiculous, especially since you have to pay to respec - Allow for skill swapping without total respec so you can run more than one build on a chassis, fix remaining quirk distribution, do something, anything to avoid the Clan/IS divide this skill tree seems to be stoking the fires of...

And so on.

[Koniving]

Overall, the uproar I believe has a bit to do with the overall costs of doing "all the skill tree" upgrades that you are allowed to unlock and how it violates a core principle of "Humane Design."


Especially when you consider how many mechs players often try to collect. Myself I'm at 217 and I am always perpetually poor in game.

[Lostdragon]

I don't understand the logic behind the high cbill cost, it is just incredibly stupid because it has enraged the players and it is not in PGI's best interest financially. If people have more Cbills they will spend MC on mech bays, colors, camo, decals, etc. for those mechs. If people are constantly Cbill poor then they have a lot less incentive to spend.

Of course, the idea may be to punish free players and make buying mech packs the only way to play a reasonable amount of time and be able to afford to skill up mechs.

[Felicitatem Parco]

Lostdragon, on 11 February 2017 - 07:58 PM, said:

I don't understand the logic behind the high cbill cost, it is just incredibly stupid because it has enraged the players and it is not in PGI's best interest financially. If people have more Cbills they will spend MC on mech bays, colors, camo, decals, etc. for those mechs. If people are constantly Cbill poor then they have a lot less incentive to spend.

Of course, the idea may be to punish free players and make buying mech packs the only way to play a reasonable amount of time and be able to afford to skill up mechs.

Have you considered considered that buying the entire info tech tree gets you 30 million CBills worth of modules for less than 3.5million CBills?

[Lostdragon]

Prosperity Park, on 11 February 2017 - 08:06 PM, said:

Have you considered considered that buying the entire info tech tree gets you 30 million CBills worth of modules for less than 3.5million CBills?

So freaking what? If I have to do it 100 times then that doesn't actually save me any money, does it?

[Davegt27]

Op its about getting used to whatever mechanic the game developers come up with

The amounts are irrelevant

If you feel like the game is fun to play the grind won't seem bad

GLHF

[Clownwarlord]

I suggest reading these two posts and or ideas.

The first is:
https://mwomercs.com...t-ptr-feedback/

In it is described the feel of the new skill tree and a solution for the 3 variants of the same mech chassis. That way all those who have thrown money at mech pack after mech pack they can now still have a reason to keeping 3 variants. I really do like the idea of selecting a favorite of the variants and allowing it to get a small bonus (like some extra nodes). This will also keep a reason to buy a big mech pack of different variants.

The second is:
https://mwomercs.com...l-nodes-respec/

In it is an idea of solving the "respecing" (re-specializing) issue. The idea is when you go to re-specialize your mech instead of losing those nodes they just go inactive. This allows a person to if they want get every node possible and then after doing so be able to re-specialize/re-map/"respecing" after re building their mech a different way. The example given is if you have pulses and want to go to regular lasers and then go back to pulses.

Now as for a third issue I noticed is that in some cases you have to get nodes you wouldn't to get to nodes you want. Essentially wasting a node or a couple of nodes. This has been brought up in multiple threads and posts. Which can be simply solved by re-designing some of the maps

In an overall though the new skill tree seems great just needs some fixing, and I really do hope it makes it into game over top of all this whining which has prevented other massive updates to the game that have caused wasted hours of development.

Also all three ideas solve the majority of the issues mentioned:
1. cost of cbills and xp because of re-specialize/re-map/"respecing"
2. mech packs purchased in the past due to requiring three variants
3. useless nodes in the way to get the nodes you want.

[Tripzter]

Personally i think the amount of skill points should be unlimited and you should be able to research everything as long as you play that mech long enough.

[Kdogg788]

vandalhooch, on 11 February 2017 - 06:22 PM, said:

In other words, you spent your C-bills buying more mechs instead of fully kitting out the ones you already had. Now, you will have a large number of mechs and not enough to fully kit them out. That's what YOU CHOSE to do.

Other people chose to fully kit out their mechs which means they didn't have the C-bills to purchase large numbers of mechs. That's what THEY CHOSE to do.

Now, you'll spend your time earning C-bills to kit them out and they'll spend their time earning C-bills to buy new mechs. Seems pretty fair to me.

Honestly a good proportion of my mechs were bought with dollar bills not cbills. Most all these mechs are mastered or close to it. I used my cbills to buy equipment like DHS, XL engines, weapons, etc. Over the course of my time in this game I leveled them all up. Now they want to remove all the XP from everything and force me to buy it all back with cbills. In what world does this make sense? I work two jobs and out in over 12 hours a day during the week now. I don't have time to make MWO another part time job. At the moment I can afford to fully spec out about 11 mechs or mostly skill up about 20... Of 110!

-k

[Baba_Yaga]

Bombast, on 11 February 2017 - 07:16 PM, said:

Except everyone, and I mean everyone, wants this Skill Tree to work. Everyone.

Unlike ED, we're all on board for this new system. We just think PGI is royally screwing it up.

EDIT: Ok, not everyone. There's that weird guy who keeps saying skills have no place in Mechwarrior and never has.

That's funnyminhear more people are hating it! Myself included!

[Appuagab]

Clownwarlord, on 11 February 2017 - 05:57 PM, said:

The cost is actually cheaper if you have been buying mods for each and every mech, and yes there are people who do this. Why? because module hunting is a pain in the *** and wastes time I could be blowing mechs up.

I like how the only excuse to this PGI's fail is their another fail that they just ignored all this time. «Why should we fix our garbage UI when it encourages people to grind more?». We should have had a module finder tool the exact time they rolled out a new UI, I even made a thread with suggestion of how it may look like but it's not PGI's style to fix anything without breaking anything.

Edited by Appuagab, 12 February 2017 - 01:16 AM.

[Chuanhao]

The C-Bill cost of 9.1M to master a mech is way below that of having to purchase another two variants and having to master those as well.

With regards to boating, for those that want to max out their Favourite weapons, they can, for those that don't, max out other things like defensive tree, mobility tree. And leave weapons alone. But yeah, I think skill respec should be way lower. Maybe free?

At the end I'm Glad for the change cause I no longer have to buy 3 variants when I only like one for every chassis

I can also customise what I want generally. Arm and torso pitch yaw not very needed for a missiler, so I give up on those.

I actually look forward to playing all those other mechs of mine that I no longer played having already mastered them

A good change, good good change. Now just how they price the next mech pack is going to be interesting.

Edited by Chuanhao, 12 February 2017 - 01:34 AM.

[Master Maniac]

vandalhooch, on 11 February 2017 - 06:22 PM, said:

In other words, you spent your C-bills buying more mechs instead of fully kitting out the ones you already had. Now, you will have a large number of mechs and not enough to fully kit them out. That's what YOU CHOSE to do.

Yep. I spent my c-bills buying lots and lots and lots of mechs, because that's precisely what I had to do to master them and max out their "efficiencies" so as not to be at a functional statistical disadvantage to other players. It was not fun. Being forced to play mechs I didn't want to play was an often torturous affair - and honestly, I don't have an issue with a new system *in theory.*

But there's the rub. Yeah. I chose to do that. You're right. And I already did it. I already "achieved" that. And a button is being pressed, a switch is being pulled, that completely and totally erases that across the board, forcing me to essentially start over.

And that's a load of rubbish. Sorry, but that's just straight-up ridiculous. Now, if already-mastered 'Mechs got to start out with the old benefits pre-unlocked, I'd have less of a problem with this. In fact, I'd have no problem with this whatsoever...again, in theory. Other players are pointing out valid issues, like the potential of discouraging or flat-out killing mech-collecting and customization for nuance's sake, which are both big parts of the game that I would argue are vital. I'm not too sure about that myself - what I'm stuck on is the grind reset imposed on old-guard, longtime players like myself.

It's far, far from acceptable.

[I_AM_ZUUL]

Hamerclone, on 12 February 2017 - 12:30 AM, said:

That's funnyminhear more people are hating it! Myself included!

We do WANT it to work... unfortunately this dumpster fire we are presented is not what anyone wants.

[Appuagab]

Chuanhao, on 12 February 2017 - 01:28 AM, said:

The C-Bill cost of 9.1M to master a mech is way below that of having to purchase another two variants and having to master those as well.

You're saying this like people will get 2 mechs equivalent amount of c-bills along with module refunds. Three basics rule was total abomination, that's certain, but that doesn't mean that everyone was keeping just one mech of each chassis after mastering. When I really like some mech I often buy all variants of it because I know they are good. Especially for non-omni mechs because their freedom of customization is limited by hardpoints. Sometimes people even buy multiple mechs of the same variant and in that case they don't have to grind XP for that mech again because it's already mastered.
What I'm trying to say is that if PGI gets rid of some old artificial limitations that's not the reason to replace them with new ones.

Edited by Appuagab, 12 February 2017 - 02:47 AM.

[xe N on]

vandalhooch, on 11 February 2017 - 06:22 PM, said:

In other words, you spent your C-bills buying more mechs instead of fully kitting out the ones you already had. Now, you will have a large number of mechs and not enough to fully kit them out. That's what YOU CHOSE to do.

Other people chose to fully kit out their mechs which means they didn't have the C-bills to purchase large numbers of mechs. That's what THEY CHOSE to do.

Now, you'll spend your time earning C-bills to kit them out and they'll spend their time earning C-bills to buy new mechs. Seems pretty fair to me.

In other word, people that buy a lot of mechs potentially with MC and switched module in the past to minimize grind will be shafted.
In other word, PGI wants people to buy less mechs and concentrate on a few.
In other word, people that bought maybe lower tier hero mechs just for fun now will reconsider that.
In other words, less sold mechs potentially means less sold camos, less sold colors, less sold decals, less cockpit items.

MWO content currently: Wanna buy a new mech pak™? Shut up and take my money!
MWO future content: Wanna buy a new mech pak™? No thanks, not done yet grinidng my previous mechs.

Either PGI is so rich because of all the people already dumped money into that game or they are economically spoken just plain incompetent.

Edited by xe N on, 12 February 2017 - 03:43 AM.

[Kdogg788]

xe N on, on 12 February 2017 - 03:35 AM, said:

In other word, people that buy a lot of mechs potentially with MC and switched module in the past to minimize grind will be shafted.
In other word, PGI wants people to buy less mechs and concentrate on a few.
In other word, people that bought maybe lower tier hero mechs just for fun now will reconsider that.
In other words, less sold mechs potentially means less sold camos, less sold colors, less sold decals, less cockpit items.

MWO content currently: Wanna buy a new mech pak™? Shut up and take my money!
MWO future content: Wanna buy a new mech pak™? No thanks, not done yet grinidng my previous mechs.

Either PGI is so rich because of all the people already dumped money into that game or they are economically spoken just plain incompetent.

Exactly this. Before this change I was considering actually buying something. Now not at all. I woundnt have the resources to reapply a fraction of the skill points I already have. Now all that time in game will be spent just leveling new mechs before I can even consider buying anything in game to make them better. Not cool.

Master Maniac, on 12 February 2017 - 02:23 AM, said:

Yep. I spent my c-bills buying lots and lots and lots of mechs, because that's precisely what I had to do to master them and max out their "efficiencies" so as not to be at a functional statistical disadvantage to other players. It was not fun. Being forced to play mechs I didn't want to play was an often torturous affair - and honestly, I don't have an issue with a new system *in theory.*

But there's the rub. Yeah. I chose to do that. You're right. And I already did it. I already "achieved" that. And a button is being pressed, a switch is being pulled, that completely and totally erases that across the board, forcing me to essentially start over.

And that's a load of rubbish. Sorry, but that's just straight-up ridiculous. Now, if already-mastered 'Mechs got to start out with the old benefits pre-unlocked, I'd have less of a problem with this. In fact, I'd have no problem with this whatsoever...again, in theory. Other players are pointing out valid issues, like the potential of discouraging or flat-out killing mech-collecting and customization for nuance's sake, which are both big parts of the game that I would argue are vital. I'm not too sure about that myself - what I'm stuck on is the grind reset imposed on old-guard, longtime players like myself.

It's far, far from acceptable.

Pushing their core audience from the game isn't exactly a good business model. No one should have to redo their entire mech roster. I'd need another 5000 to 6000 matches just to reapply points I already have put in mechs.

-k

[Mudhutwarrior]

I do know why so many are hopeful about this because hope is for those already defeated.

This issue with PGI is just the same as gameplay. Wash, Rinse, Repeat. Its the same as any other feature brought to the game. Never well thought out but just a placeholder to justify spending time on while the game itself remains the same. If it looks like it might be successful they will hold it for another project. PVE went in that direction with MW5. It was supposed to be implemented in this game.

This new system is the new Ready Button, LFG button. We all know it but the hopeful white knight to keep this dysfunctional idea of design alive. I am glad there are so many good suggestions to make this work but remember CW? Same as it always was. If it works out to be a good Idea it will not go into this game but the next. Your buying Bernie Madoff Mech Packs and MC will just go to finance something else. Remember there is another Transverse just around the corner.

And one thing. Congrats to all those Mech warriors who have woken up. Nice to know the world isn't totally full of consumer zombies.