I've spent some time thinking about this over the past couple of days, and here's more of what I would like to see out of the Skill Trees. @Russ Bullock said he would look them over on last evening's NGNG Podcast, so I'm holding him to that.
I know the PTS has been finalized, and we're going to get what PGI have already developed from that, but what I'm about to propose will deal with further diversification, though I believe it will also simplify things a good deal for players, and there's no reason this couldn't be considered for follow-on work.
Right now, PGI has EVERYTHING placed into those six "skill tree" blocks, and that's fine... for a beginning. However, the MechWarrior's here understand that we are, again, being cheated -to an extent, especially concerning Role Warfare- out of what PGI told us they were going to do, and I have a means of getting them back on the right track. Again, I'm no programmer, but here it goes... rather than focusing EVERYTHING into those six trees, it needs to be diversified as follows...
1)
Pilot GENERAL Skills: These are the skills every pilot can master for every 'Mech, but they are specific to the pilot and should, as a result, have a separate small "tree" to work from. These skills should be available for use no matter what 'Mech I get into, once I've paid to master it/them; alternately, there may be some skills from this/these "tree(s)" that CAN NOT apply to a particular 'Mech I'm driving, and could be shut off -made unavailable- for that 'Mech,
2)
Pilot ROLE Skills: We all know the role of a BattleMech is about the use of weapons, armor and speed of the 'Mech, in various combinations. Lights will, typically, prioritize speed over weapons and armor and Assault pilots will typically load up on weapons and armor and the speed be damned. The problem with the current skill tree is it does not allow for certain combinations of nodes to work in concert for these 'Mechs to do their jobs more efficiently. The de-coupling of engines from many of the actions 'Mechs used to have in this game is an excellent beginning to that, but it does not allow for recon players to play as recon, for combat players to play as combat, etc. This part of my proposal makes it so that certain role-types are locked to certain 'Mechs and the "trees" within those role-types can be geared specifically to give boons and skill combinations for the type of 'Mech that the pilot can take to help fill out the role. Instead of a pilot purchasing skills they neither need nor want for the role-type they're trying to play with a particular chassis and variant, they can instead purchase, at a higher C-Bill and/or XP cost, skill nodes that have been placed adjacent to one-another on the role-type tree, as opposed to being required to purchase one or more unnecessary nodes to get to that point. The C-Bill and/or XP cost would not equal the cost of skipping around on the tree, it would be less, but somewhere between the cost of the two nodes for the role-type tree and the cost of the three plus nodes for the general tree, as they are, now. It will require a bit more work to build the trees, but the pilot skills in each one of these pilot role-types should be few and expensive to acquire,
3)
Chassis GENERAL Skills: These are skills laid out that are applicable to ALL 'Mechs, and can be purchased by ALL pilots. Weapon Skills, for example, should be universal across ALL 'Mechs. If I turn on Large Laser Mastery +2%, for example, I should have that bonus across ALL of my chassis and variants, not just for that one 'Mech; obviously, if a 'Mech I'm driving disallows for use of that skill, the skill will not be available for that chassis or variant. I'm not talking about putting cool-downs, range ups, etc. for weapons on the Chassis General Skills "tree", just the weaponry and any nodes that apply to ALL weaponry. Additionally, these could be broken down by weight class, where you have Large Laser Mastery +2%, again for example, each across Light, Medium, Heavy and Assault classes, though I'm still uncertain why that would be necessary,
4)
Variant SPECIFIC Skills: These "trees" would harness the remainder of the nodes not used in the previous three sections, and would still be many. However, if there were a way to turn off certain nodes that cannot be used by the variant being mastered, that would be yet another way to move people toward stylization of their 'Mech based on chassis role-type. Perhaps, to correct the potential deficiency of players wanting to diversify, some of these nodes not specific to the 'Mech could be turned on again if the right skill or combination of skills from Pilot General, Pilot Role, and Chassis General were purchased, and then those nodes could be purchased, as well.
What would be an excellent end-goal for these "skill trees" is to have a living tree for each 'Mech a pilot takes on, which morphs based on what is removed from or added to the "tree".
All of these NEED to be broken out to separate trees, further than what's available, now, because right now it's all just kludge-werks, hard to find what we actually want without a significant time investment, and not every. single. skill applies to every single pilot and/or every single chassis or variant. So, why would I
waste my C-Bills on a node I will NEVER EVER use on ANY 'MECH I PURCHASE, EVER!?!?!?! If these are diversified to Pilot General, Pilot Role, Chassis General, and Variant Specific skill "trees", PGI you would be able to develop more nodes that are relevant to each of these sections, and each would have to be developed separately, and you would be able to compress some nodes, such as multiple 1% nodes, without actually sacrificing the costs or variance and efficacy of the individual 'Mechs, and you would be able to diversify the 'Mechs themselves to act in particular ways that separate them not only role-wise, but also mechanically, from their counterparts.
Look, I think you guys know I'm a helicopter guy, Army-school trained, and I know how to work on Blackhawks, Kiowa Warriors, Apaches, Chinooks, and even the UH-1 Iroquois. I've worked on one V-22 Osprey, a couple of Air Force puddle jumpers, and I've worked on many variants. For example, I worked on a fire variant Blackhawk, where it has a large water take strapped to the bottom, with at least one water pump and a long snorkel that reaches the water, so it can suck up water and put it on a fire. The Longbow Apache has a massive sensor dome on top of the rotor mast that I've helped remove and install -I wasn't able to see inside, because the stuff was still classified back then. I've also worked on different types of 'Little Birds', the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior, with hardened chassis', larger engine, etc., and that's our recon bird from hell. Every last one of these aircraft has a different role to play, a different mission, and different characteristics to the other aircraft; however, in many instances, the same principles, procedures, and techniques you use with one aircraft, you use them with all aircraft. A pilot moving from one aircraft to another has to have training and a check-ride before they can pilot an aircraft other than the one they trained on in flight school, and that signifies the gaining and use of special skills for the specific aircraft.
The same thing could be done for MWO, for the specific chassis, and I don't believe you would really need to gain that much of a headache to build in the proper amount of diversification to help players become more immersed, and more specialized for this game. I believe it would be worth the work for you, PGI. You've already put thousands upon thousands of man-hours into building worthless crap that hasn't worked well and that you've scrapped in favor of projects proposed by this community... perhaps you can put your time and energy into something like your community was calling for on the No Guts No Galaxy Podcast, yesterday (3/10/17), and what folks here are calling for, as well, yeah?
Edited by Kay Wolf, 11 March 2017 - 09:35 AM.
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Wintersdark, on 08 March 2017 - 05:58 AM, said:
