6 replies to this topic

[Arianrhod]

Okay. So, on the one hand, PGI listened, and combined all the weapons into one tree in order to make mixed builds not be discouraged.

HOWEVER.

Another critical thing that was generally requested by players in the forums was linearization. And in that respect, PGI actually diminished the linear aspect of the firepower trees.

In skill tree PTS one, you could cherry pick which weapon attributes were most important to you. For example, my mech maybe doesn't have the heat cap to support having a faster cooldown. So I want range and velocity instead, and can spend the points I would have used on cooldown on heat dissipation over in the operations tree.

And that was good. That was the one thing I liked about it. It gives you meaningful choices.

So what the hell is this new tree??? I need to buy laser duration to access broad weapon heat gen????? I need to get high explosive buffs for missiles to get to cooldown???? Why???? What if I'm not using missile weapons????? I shouldn't have to pick up LBX spread for my laser boat to access range 10! And why is "missile rack" even different from "magazine capacity"? I have tried and it is literally impossible to unlock every skill node for any single attribute without picking up SOMETHING useless to your build.

And while we're on that, SRM high explosive? Why would I want that, the effects of it are minimal and barely noticeable. I don't rely on critical damage when I calculate how fast I want to down an enemy, and forcing everyone to have higher critical damage just increases the randomness of the game.

All "special" effects for weapons need to have their own COMPLETELY LINEAR trees. Make a tree for cooldown, velocity/duration (as one set of nodes that effect both velocity and duration), range, ammunition capacity, and heat gen, where you can pick which of those aspects you want. Then have separate trees for the nonsense like ultra jamchance, gauss rifle charge, LBX/SRM spread, etc.

Tl;dr: PGI, I like what you did with combining the weapons. But you need to un-scatter them. If you want players to have choices, you have to make it so that they can actually choose.

EDIT: UPDATE: I've tried skilling an Atlas 7-S, which has an AC/20 and 4x SRM6 launchers. I've avoided all Gauss and LBX skills, and tried to avoid all High Explosive skill nodes. Here are the nodes I can't unlock without either investing in laser buffs for lasers I don't have or high explosive buffs I don't want:
-Range 3
-Cooldown 4
-Cooldown 2
-Heat Gen 1
-Cooldown 3
-Heat Gen 2
-Cooldown 6
-Range 6
-Heat Gen 6

Edited by Arianrhod, 02 March 2017 - 02:57 PM.

[Gagis]

The fact you can't min-max without having to compromise with sub optimal routing between the best nodes is a good thing. What you are complaining about is one of the best features of the new tree.

You actually need to decide if you want ALL of the weapon cooldown nodes, or would be better off taking something else when you reach diminishing results with having to travel far for the last bits. This is good design.

Decisions on what to invest in should not be easy.

I can't believe how many people want to have their cake and eat it too on the forums. I hope PGI doesn't take all this bad feedback into account.

[Ruar]

Gagis, on 02 March 2017 - 03:32 PM, said:

The fact you can't min-max without having to compromise with sub optimal routing between the best nodes is a good thing. What you are complaining about is one of the best features of the new tree.

You actually need to decide if you want ALL of the weapon cooldown nodes, or would be better off taking something else when you reach diminishing results with having to travel far for the last bits. This is good design.

Decisions on what to invest in should not be easy.

I can't believe how many people want to have their cake and eat it too on the forums. I hope PGI doesn't take all this bad feedback into account.

OR....

Drop the skill nodes down to 60-70 and make linear trees where I can pick exactly what I want.

Maybe keep 91 skill points (what an odd number btw) and just put in diminishing returns. Example... 9%range boost costs 3 points (1pt = 5%, 2pts=4%, 3pts=3%, 4pts=2%, 5pts=1%) but getting all the way to 15% range boost would cost 15pts total. For some people max range is worth it, for others they would rather take the lower range but have points to spend elsewhere.

This also makes it easier on new people to reach parity faster as well.

What can NOT happen is forcing players to take skills they don't want in order to get to skills they do want. That's how you convince players it's time to move on to new games.

[Arianrhod]

Gagis, on 02 March 2017 - 03:32 PM, said:

The fact you can't min-max without having to compromise with sub optimal routing between the best nodes is a good thing. What you are complaining about is one of the best features of the new tree.

You actually need to decide if you want ALL of the weapon cooldown nodes, or would be better off taking something else when you reach diminishing results with having to travel far for the last bits. This is good design.

Decisions on what to invest in should not be easy.

I can't believe how many people want to have their cake and eat it too on the forums. I hope PGI doesn't take all this bad feedback into account.

To be honest, I don't want to have everything (although I can see how I came across that way). I think PGI should make individual attributes be spread across more nodes, say, needing 10 or even 15 nodes for cooldown and another 10 or 15 for range; that way you'd have to make real decisions because investing in the firepower tree would take up a lot of nodes quickly. Then if you wanted all the major attributes: Range, cooldown, velocity/duration, and heat gen, you'd have to spend 40 or 60 nodes to get them all. This forces you to actually prioritize. You could get them all, but it would reduce what you could spend in survival and operations, so you'd probably not pick up certain firepower skills. (And hey I'd even be open to something crazy like 20 nodes per skill–if the same upscaling of node costs was applied to the survival tree, which currently is a Must Invest tree for all mechs.)

My problem is, instead of doing that, they just rearranged the nodes so that I have to unlock more cooldown to get more range, cooldown that I might not even want. Or Missile High Explosive that just seems. . . . Out of place. I literally have to unlock all firepower skills to get all firepower skills. What I want to do is just go down and say, unlock all the range nodes and then not spend skill points on any other firepower skills.

EDIT: Or just reduce the total number of skill points per mech.

Edited by Arianrhod, 02 March 2017 - 03:47 PM.

[Gagis]

Linear trees with dimnishing results are boring design. In the current system the cost of reaching a desired node is different based on how much your current mech can benefit from the nodes you travel trough, which encourages you to seek synergistic loadouts and to experiment with optimal balances of stats. Those who benefit a bit more from the nodes you travel trough gain a bit more for their skill points, which is a way to balance mechs.

Expecting people to travel trough bad nodes to reach the good ones is perfectly fine and will alienate far fewer players than you think. It would just be easier to accept if the great nodes were clearly highlighted so they scream "I AM HERE, AND I AM GREAT, HOW DO YOU PLAN TO REACH ME, PUNK!?". The current UI doesn't really show much, so players get misconceptions about what it means to have to travel trough the skill tree for the best bits.

Quote

What I want to do is just go down and say, unlock all the range nodes and then not spend skill points on any other firepower skills.

This would be bad and encourage min-maxing. It is better that you can probably take about half of the range nodes with minimal waste of resources, but will have to consider if you really want range so much you want to travel to the other end of the skill tree for it, or if you'd be better off spending all those points on survival instead.

Edited by Gagis, 02 March 2017 - 03:53 PM.

[Ruar]

Gagis, on 02 March 2017 - 03:49 PM, said:

Linear trees with dimnishing results are boring design. In the current system the cost of reaching a desired node is different based on how much your current mech can benefit from the nodes you travel trough, which encourages you to seek synergistic loadouts and to experiment with optimal balances of stats.

Expecting people to travel trough bad nodes to reach the good ones is perfectly fine and will alienate far fewer players than you think. It would just be easier to accept if the great nodes were clearly highlighted so they scream "I AM HERE, AND I AM GREAT, HOW DO YOU PLAN TO REACH ME, PUNK!?". The current UI doesn't really show much, so players get misconceptions about having to travel trough the skill tree for the best bits.

Because I'm going to change my build completely since I get some LBX spread reduction. Oh I know... I have a few nodes worth of SRMs so lets just slap one of those on because I need to be synergistic.

Yeah, that makes sense.


We already have hardpoint limitations which encourage synergistic design. We don't need a skill tree which ignores things like some mechs don't have missiles but you have to unlock missiles and LBX in order to max out the range boost.

As for the better skills.... just make their cost higher. It would be so easy to see that 90% of the mechs in the game run radar dep so double the cost and see how people adjust their builds. No need to hide radar derp under four useless skills.

Edited by Ruar, 02 March 2017 - 03:54 PM.

[soapyfrog]

This tree discourages mixed builds as much as anything they have done before.

That they can't fix it means they simply don't understand what encourages boating.

That they don't understand is deeply depressing. I would forgive the average forum user for not understanding, but for the devs not to is just, again, depressing.