358 replies to this topic

[Trev Firestorm]

MovinTarget, on 04 March 2017 - 11:31 AM, said:

Someone pointed out this is not an rpg, which makes sense. Perhaps they should go about things a little differently... instead of modules, you by "kits" that are one-shot customizations. Different variants get different kits options, but there could still be basic ones applicable to most all mechs.

This would be the finicial part. You can buy them right off... just like if you bought a car and immediately kitted it out.

The next phase is your "experience" that gradually increases the proficiency of said kit. If you equip mutiple kits, your "exp" distributes across all of them causing your proficiency to progress more slowly.

Kits could be designed to have several stats or just one with varying effect depending on how many stats the kit affects.

There can be a max on # of kits per mech and a max on kit *type*.

So this would simulate real life "getting to know your vehicle"

This seems a bit more straight forward, giving players ability to tailor their mechs with the hope that the options are clean and understandable...

As irritated as I am with the new cbill cost for reaquiring skills we already have equivalent of... I could get behind this, it would be a somewhat interesting option.

[Arkhangel]

@Arumaside: What Abuse? i'm being blunt. You can't have all good and no bad. [Redacted] You'll still be able to make a plenty nasty mech even with minor tradeoffs.

a game actually loses players if it's too easy to make an "I-WIN" button, both from lack of variation in play, and the fact that those people who win all the time.. well... there's always a team that's LOSING as well, and they shouldn't be the guys who actually had the balls to experiment and try new stuff.

Edited by draiocht, 04 March 2017 - 01:39 PM.
unconstructive, inappropriate language

[MeIsYou]

Dear PGI,

I just found the time to experiment with the new skill tree. Here are my experiences and observations together with some ideas:

Executive summary
In my opinion the skill tree is the next step in MWO evolution and it has the potential to become great.

What I like:
- High variation will allow players to adjust their mechs to their individual playstyle.
- You can't skill the whole tree and therefore have to decide how to develop your mech.

What I don't like:
- Design wrt clarity and skill arrangement.
- Skill node economy.

1. Design
my personal experience is that the design of the skill tree is very confusing, and not just because it's new. I just cannot identify a real clue behind it.
1.1. Clarity
a, My experience is that in the weapon tree it's hard to identify which skills are actually unlocked and which are "ready-to-be-activated". The white lines on each side of the hexagon (+ the lock) are easy to oversee.
Idea: add another background color.
b, The general design gives me the impression that after a brainstorming on which skills could be useful to add to the skilltree, the person who was responsible for the design just threw them together. The result looks like a Jackson Pollock painting. Please don't get me wrong I like Pollock's work but unfortunatly the person here forgot to buy colors.
Idea: please add separate effect based colors for the general skills + see skill arrangement section
c, Warnings
The system warns you that you selected some nodes which does not have an effect on your acutal loadout, but does not tell you which. That's funny don't you think? It's a hide-and-seek minigame
Idea: Add the respective nodes to the pop-up window

1.2. Skill arrangement
Why are general weapon skills mixed with weapon type specific skills now? Might sound strange but the previous version seemed to be more thought trough. I did not follow the whole discussion so maybe there is a point which I just didn't get.
Idea: Identify clear skill dependencies maybe you can think about it as a development of the mech towards a specialization.

2. Skill node economy
My favorite topic. I see the point why it is reasonable to use a system which is not based on unlocking skill nodes which then can be assigned freely, but are skill specific.
What I don't get is why there must be a 400XP charge for assigning a node which already has been unlocked.
Idea: A skill node which has been unlocked once must be free!

Thanks for consideration. I'm looking forward to the new system.

Edited by MeIsYou, 04 March 2017 - 12:50 PM.

[Nelos Kniven]

Looks good!
I do miss the different weapons separate. Even just a Beam, Missile and Ballistic tree would have been better, and provided better specialization. Otherwise everything's great.

[Lucky Rookie]

Anavel Gato2, on 04 March 2017 - 07:41 AM, said:

MWO is no RPG, and we are not here to play RPG.
The tree you're creating is lot more difficult than Blizzard's Diablo skill tree - and Blizzard are considered the BEST in RPGs.

There is no RPG where you're forced to unlock skills/quirks not related on the choosen tree -
and MWO is no RPG, and we are not here to play RPG.

You don't want to get easy reach important skills? Instead of a large, use a high skill tree.
But don't put in a single tree skills we cannot use - (cannot, NOT want not) - and force us to unlock them.

This, a million times.

I tried real hard but I don't see the point of having such complicated, disorganized, unwieldy mess of skill "shrubberies" with lots of tiny insignificant nodes which are also blocked by totally unwanted and useless ones.

Let us ask a simple question: At its core, what does this new skill tree really bring to the table, compared to the current one? A little bit of choice where there was none before. That's it. Such a small progress does not need such a complicated monstrous design.

But we now have new exciting stuff like JJ trees, armor&structure tree you say? Yes, those are very nice but NONE of these new features have anything to do with the design of the skill tree. PGI can easily add these new features to the current version of mech skills and bam, mission accomplished with zero complexity.

I like increased TTK and less agility overall but, again, these have nothing with the design of the skill tree.

So, in a nutshell:
Good: Provides choice for players, where there was none. That's the point of having a skill tree in the first place.
Bad: Anything and everything else. Ouch.

- Respec costs should be ZERO and that is the end of discussion. I can't stress this enough. Part of the appeal of this game is the endless tinkering in the mech lab since there is very limited content in the game otherwise. Skill tree should follow this model. If you think making respecs expensive will make people buy more mechs, you are seriously mistaken. Penalize respecs at your own peril.

- Skill point costs are still too high. Lower them to make mastering mechs easier so we would want to buy more mechs, instead of less.

- Vastly simplify each individual tree. There is simply no reason to have 10 nodes of the same thing with pathetic bonuses each time. Reduce the max number of skill points to something like 50 or so. It is pointless and extremely frustrating to click 91 times for laughable bonuses each time.

- Make every single node worthwhile on its own. Each should give a meaningful bonus and unlocking a node should feel like an accomplishment, not a drag.

- Instead of forcing people to get useless nodes and pissing them off, increase the cost of nodes which are more powerful. Powerful nodes should cost more and that's it.

- Current PTS pits whole trees against each other. This is not a real choice because there is no way to properly balance different trees against each other. Either defense will be king or mobility (or some other tree, depending on the mech and total benefits of those skills). On the previous PTS armor&structure bonuses were sizable and not taking them would be a mistake. No choice here. Conversely, current PTS has lower values for those and now there is absolutely no point to take them on an assault. No choice here either. To fix this, the choices should be within the trees themselves and trees should not be able to be completed.

Example: Defense tree should have armor, structure, critical hit reduction, radar dep, ecm, shock absorbance, ams and anything else PGI can think of. Give them two levels each and limit the tree to have max 12 points out of 24 total. Make armor, radar dep and ecm, crit reduction cost 2 SP per node since they are more valuable. You want to be a tank? Get two levels of armor, structure and crit reduction and that's it. No radar dep for you. Want dep? Compromise on something else.

You get the idea.

Edited by Lucky Rookie, 04 March 2017 - 12:59 PM.

[HolyTerra]

Arkhangel, on 04 March 2017 - 07:46 AM, said:

hey Bob? how about PGI adds repair and rearm back in? would you like that? given it costs five times as much to repair an OmniMech as a normal mech? the costs are far from "insane." they're completely fair, as long as you actually USE that mech, [Redacted].

as for the other two.... Modules are GONE with this, and they're called Tradeoffs. Deal with it, Minmax Meta[Redacted].

Hey TrollBro, I am hardly whining. I am also hardly the only one who feels this way:\

https://mwomercs.com...ee-node-prices/

Edited by draiocht, 04 March 2017 - 01:37 PM.
Quote Clean-Up

[Arkhangel]

BobTheMad, on 04 March 2017 - 01:18 PM, said:

Hey TrollBro, I am hardly whining. I am also hardly the only one who feels this way:\

https://mwomercs.com...ee-node-prices/

Bob, it's 400 xp. you get that in a match if you actually DID something. and if you're planning a full remap, then you should just take the time to save up. I'm not trolling, i'm being blunt. You can't have all positives and no negatives anymore.

[cougurt]

is there any good reason for this to be a tree? i feel you could accomplish the same thing with much less clutter and confusion by making it a simple set of upgrades instead. e.g. condense all of the mobility tree into a set of 5 or so general mobility upgrades. additionally, certain skills could have negative attributes associated with them, such as increased armor coming with a speed penalty. this would provide the sort of give-and-take that you're looking for.

Edited by cougurt, 04 March 2017 - 08:38 PM.

[SuperFunkTron]

cougurt, on 04 March 2017 - 02:21 PM, said:

...certain skills could have negative attributes associated with them, such as increased armor coming with a speed penalty. t

Save something for Faction Specific Mechs to utilize!

In all seriousness though, based on their explanation of PTS 2, I am under the impression that they are trying to set a slid baseline before they start addressing individual variants and getting a bit more creative. I highly doubt it will remain untouched after they implement it, hopefully this month.

Overall I think that the next few months are going to be foundation stabilizing followed by expansion on the features like FP and the skill tree, hopefully Faction Specific Mechs in the not too distant future.

[Wintersdark]

Bush Hopper, on 04 March 2017 - 10:18 AM, said:

You should not only regard the values in a vacuum. As I wrote before, lighter chassis sacrifice a lot to gain speed and (well, hopefully) an agility advantage. Their lighter chassis brings with it drawbacks. However, it should also bring advantages. Too bad that PGI dropped the ball on radar detection time. This could have been an advantage of a smaller chassis. So what is left as a compensation? Speed and agility. That is balance.

Currently, though, nearly all heavies turn so fast that they have an easy time to keep a light in their firing arc. Which means an inherent value which costs them nothing nearly compensates what lighter chassis pay for in range, dps, high alpha, structure, armour, heat dissipation etc.
That is not balance.

I'm not arguing this. It's tough, though, because if you slow them down too much, people *scream* bloody murder.

I've been pushing through this whole time that Mediums in particular need a lot more agility than they have on live, for all the reasons you say above.

In current live play, if I'm in anything more maneuverable than a Direwolf, the best player in the world can't stay out of my firing arcs, and only very strong players in exceptionally fast lights can stay out of my DWF's firing arcs - and I'm *not* a tremendously good player.

Quote

While I respect that heavies should be fun to play, you shouldn't forget that they have many advantages and they can't have everything. On the live servers, they basically have that. The result? The heavy queue is nearly always the higherst outside of events. Only assaults top them now and then but even that is rather the exception.

As for lights: I tested several chassis and I could write a novel now but I will spare us both As a rule of thumb you can say that the ones which had hardly any quirks perform better now and vice versa. But that is no surprise. What disappointed me the most are the decel/accel and turn values, though. Some more help for the light and to some degree the meds to sidestep fire would have been appreciated. Bear in mind that the 35t mechs are still huge

Yup, like I said, I'm with you there. It's just a tough nut to crack, particularly when so many players have invested so much in heavies.

So, my approach here is:

Compare it to live. Not to the goal you'd like to see, but how it is compared to live.

As it stands, Assaults are overall losing agility, Lights are gaining substantially in some ways, Mediums are gaining across the board, and most heavies are remaining pretty static.

You're still not going to stay out of a Heavy's firing arcs in a light, but you ARE going to do better vs. an Assault than now, so there's that.

Gr Armpit, on 04 March 2017 - 12:49 PM, said:

Looks good!
I do miss the different weapons separate. Even just a Beam, Missile and Ballistic tree would have been better, and provided better specialization. Otherwise everything's great.

It's not, though, because that basically requires weapon specialization and thus boating. I don't think boating is the worst thing in the world, but when your skill trees force it, that's bad. As it stands, mechs required to bring multiple classes of weapons are already basically worse off out of the gate than those that focus on one kind.

cougurt, on 04 March 2017 - 02:21 PM, said:

is there any good reason for this to be a tree? i feel you could accomplish the same thing with much less clutter and confusion by making it a simple set of upgrades instead. e.g. condense all of the mobility tree into a set of 5 or general mobility upgrades. additionally, certain skills could have negative attributes associated with them, such as increased armor coming with a speed penalty. this would provide the sort of give-and-take that you're looking for.

Yeah, I think if they're not going to go with "diminishing returns" skill nodes (where different nodes of a skill have different value) I think there's a really good argument that they should just cut the number of nodes and the number of skills both way down, make them much smaller. It'd be less intimidating for new players, and while you'd lose some partial speccing choice but stand to gain in simplicity.

[Daemon04]

pts 2.0.
cost is fine - as stated by snuggles and in prior posts cost to module ratio is amazing.

firepower skill tree might need the proper colors. having a node unlocked makes the next following appear as if unlocked because it shares the same color with the unlocked one.
survivability is ok.

agility is a *****. so many nodes til the speed tweak which i consider a must have for heavies and assaults at least and their acceleration and deceleration is going to suffer from that pretty hard as well.
although ive encountered that my dragon slayer has gained quite some speed. it doesnt feel like an assault but a heavy heavy mech.

jumpjet tree is incredibly effective. i can poptart with that very dragon slayer. positive for this mech but i cant imagine how that will affect the viper or the flying cicada. gotta try it out.

consumables may become valuable assets in the future for factionplay matches but i cant think of spending that much money by using all six of em in a single qp match. instead of earning cbills it may lead to wasting it and then becoming spacebroke.
not much of a consumables guy. cool shots and uav improvements seem to be fine, though.

sensor tree appears to be same as first pts but im still opposing the idea of radar deprivation being behind nodes i wouldnt ever need to touch. at least the first node should be the rsdar depr.1 so new players have something that will keep em alive just a tad longer.
as for target info gathering. good idea of trying to get people use that over a bap but the advantages i gain with a bap ar far more superior than just a target info gathering module. in doubt go for side torso.

having experimented and studied the tree once again i am tempted to say that it looks like an improvement but regarding the clan mech to is-mech imbalance still a big issue because of the following reasons.

instead of giving some mech variants quirks how about just locking them. best example is the kdk-3. unquirked a menace. quirked and moduled to the max that uac will be unstoppable. another example could be the marauder-2c scorch but ill go on with the kodiak.
what if we took that teddy bear's uac jam chance and heat gen and velocity and cooldown away instead? no i dont want to kill this mech and no im not gonna show you on the paperdoll where the bad mech touched me but given the data pgi has collected for all mechs and loadouts shouldnt they have figured out what actually makes each mech "op"?

another matter: instagib xl need to be looked at, too.
both sides one shot or just receiving the heat penalty.
in the setting of the new skill tree the survivability nodes may not assist well enough to extend the ttk especially for is-mechs with xl-engines. the structure and armor buffs barely keep a whm 6d alive as is but if focus fire with ppd is applied to any side torso it will just go puff no matter how maxed out the skill tree.

[SuperFunkTron]

Daemon04, on 04 March 2017 - 06:56 PM, said:

agility is a *****. so many nodes til the speed tweak which i consider a must have for heavies and assaults at least and their acceleration and deceleration is going to suffer from that pretty hard as well.
although ive encountered that my dragon slayer has gained quite some speed. it doesnt feel like an assault but a heavy heavy mech.

On this point I've got a different stance. I haven't found speed tweak to provide a significant enough improvement to be worthwhile for heavies and assaults (with the exception of mechs like the linebacker and gargoyle). The extra speed is nice, but in reality, an extra 4-8 kph doesn't provide enough incentive for me to choose it over maxing out armor or adding more nodes to weapons instead (I guess this is the skill tree at work allowing each of us to decide our priorities on our builds, which is a good thing here). I feel that the improvements in acceleration are a fair compensation for making the speed tweak more costly to attain, especially since those are more relevant in situations where anything other than a sprint are necessary or just a luxury.


Other than that, I agree with many of the points you made. There are a lot of positive things in the newest PTS, some color tweaking on the tree would help a lot, and over all it provides a good feel.

I was doing some tests earlier tonight earlier tonight with mechs that had no nodes compared to the same mech being fully upgraded and found that though the upgrades provided a noticeable edge, it didn't render an unimproved mech incapable in comparison. The standard was obviously inferior, but it was by no means a big enough difference to consider it punishing or an unfair advantage, especially considering that the cost to upgrade it to a reasonable level (about 25 nodes was enough to create a noticeable boost in performance) is small enough.

[Tilakkam]

This skillsystem is bs. If i was PGI - i leave current module system until new tech arrive and then - not a skill, but manufacturer system, where every weapon has its + and - .
New players will have a standart tech and if you wanna something MOAR - buy this weapon of that manufacturer. BT already has a list of manufacturers.

[Xaat Xuun]

I'm trying to imagine, how long it's now going to take (with the new skill tree) a brand new pilot, to obtain a max Speed Tweak, compared to current live version.
getting there heat management down, sensor upgrades and such as well

it's not something I could check in PTS.
in skill tree test 1, I was actually able to get what felt like, I have currently in live, but I only had that one session to check, some things I just couldn't check.
Skill tree test 2, I cannot do the same, I have to give up too much, so in one or more areas, I have less then currently, but yet due to the way the tree works, I gain nodes (AKA modules) I would never had have, but are still useful, but nothing really gained.

in skill tree test one, I was able to get the Firepower and Survival , which was a plus compared to live version
In Skill tree test 2, I think it's better, you're either going to take Firepower or Survival, there is a give or take there, but my firepower, is much lower, then I was able to gain in Skill tree test 1, So I feel like I'm giving up more in skill tree test 2.

Laser side of firepower tree need some adjustment, compared to the rest of the weapon, I find I have to spend double the SP compared to the other weapons, just to match my Cooldown and Heat Gen, to be on Par to what I have in Live currently
Although, from the Operations Tree, I can better then live, slightly

Firepower - feel it needs adjusting
Survival - like it, or satisfactory for me
Mobility - needs adjustment . . . as mentioned from another poster need a speed tweak node earlier for one
Jump Jets - No comment don't have any SP to place in there anyways, . . manly due to Firepower and Mobility trees
Operations - okay with it, feel there needs some adjustment, but if none, it's still okay to me,just another expensive tree
Sensors - like it, can live with it, just a couple SP more then I want to spend there, but I gain that SP from ones not used in Consumables, but then again those are lost else where
Consumables - I'm fine with it, 4 or 5 SP is all I'll spend there

going from memory, apparently, I must have been pressing the wrong key for screen shots, was going to use those Screenshots to help me show and tell more of what I meant

[Real men have back dimples too]

Make Mechwarrior great again

[pacifica812]

I just wanna say that I started playing this game roughly 2 years ago, and it took some time for me to learn to play it in such a way that I began to really enjoy it. I also invested some money in it - the game that I came to enjoy very much.

Yet now with the new mobility system the game is not the same and you're forcing me to "adapt" to the "positive changes" you want to make. Frankly, I don't care if you wanted to implement this mechanic 4 or 5 years ago, it wasn't there when I started playing! You should have put a big warning sign on the front page or the download page:

UNDER CONSTRUCTION!
THE DOWNLOADED SOFTWARE MAY NOT REFLECT THE FINAL PRODUCT!

I invested my hard earned money, devoted my time and put a lot effort in trying to climb the learning curve of MWO in good faith to reach the "rainbow at the end of this path". But somehow I get the feeling you're pulling and stretching this path all the way to oblivion. Re-quirking, re-balancing, re-inventing all along, all in the name of the "Balance The Almighty" - some pagan deity that you have devoted your purpose to.

This concept reminds of a band that I used to play in, where the leader of the band constantly kept rearranging songs that were already done, performed on stage and recorded, thus making the progress of the band suffer for it, which led to the only possible outcome - the band fell apart!

As far as the skill tree goes it's buggy, it doesn't feel like it's a gain, in a sense it's a giant nerf bat for the IS tech, and it's definitely over complicated and manipulative, making you invest XP and C-bills in stuff that you don't want. I am glad that you let us try it out on the PTS, but to have the community of your customers letting you spot out the basic flaws which could be pre-determined by your tests, is like BMW release a new model, and then the customers realizing the brakes don't work - It's hilarious and in the end embarrassing for any company.

This $#!- is


So please!!!!

PGI get your stuff together, for the sake of all of us...

[Koniving]

Can Steam be used to get onto the PTS server by enabling its beta setting?

Similar to how DayZ's main and test builds can be swapped by going into the game's properties (on Steam) and choosing which version to run?

[Koniving]

pacifica812, on 05 March 2017 - 01:28 AM, said:

Yet now with the new mobility system the game is not the same and you're forcing me to "adapt" to the "positive changes" you want to make. Frankly, I don't care if you wanted to implement this mechanic 4 or 5 years ago, it wasn't there when I started playing!

Why we can't have nice things...
PGI: "We're going to improve the crappy experience we've provided for the past few years that have alienated the original target fanbase so that we might be able to draw them back in."
Player majority: "YAY!"
Player minority: "No! You can't have positive changes because I might have to adjust to the fact that movement 'Quirks' are now Inherently installed as unlisted quirks and nothing ACTUALLY changed beyond I get the acceleration, deceleration and twist speeds of a mech with the maximum engine without having to have the biggest, most limiting engine possible to be viable. Wait that means I could actually carry real weapons on my mechs... Nooo! Now I have to adjust to being able to carry weapons that do something instead of boating small lasers!"

PGI: "Alright so we've decided to undo everything." <---Lets hope this isn't the route PGI takes... that's already happened a few times now.

(When are we getting information warfare? After reading a bit of lore on the Crab, I'm eager for those super sensors. Speaking of which, I think it's high time we enabled "Sensor crits." Because after reading some of the more specific sensor lores... lets just say that while BT's BAP would put them to shame, many of these have systems that would put every sensor enhancement on MWO to shame.)

Edited by Koniving, 05 March 2017 - 02:55 AM.

[Ery]

Where are the C-Bill Consumables from the events? Were they also exchanged in C-Bills? Cant find any info about it.

[pacifica812]

Koniving, on 05 March 2017 - 02:49 AM, said:

Player minority: "No! You can't have positive changes because I might have to adjust to the fact that movement 'Quirks' are now Inherently installed as unlisted quirks and nothing ACTUALLY changed beyond I get the acceleration, deceleration and twist speeds of a mech with the maximum engine without having to have the biggest, most limiting engine possible to be viable."

Oh I wish that was the deal, because then I wouldn't have to worry about a light mech slowing down like a truck on the PTS.