53 replies to this topic

[Widowmaker1981]

Gas Guzzler, on 02 March 2017 - 02:24 PM, said:

Own personal play style? There is a correct way to play a given loadout and an incorrect way to play it. You need to realize that your "examples" are arbitrary as **** and don't actually prove anything. I can talk through some random bracket build and act like every decision I make is the optimal decision even if its a completely garbage build in the context of MWO. A ML/SRM Warhammer is not a brawler. Its too hot and requires too much laser duration. A more applicable comparison would have been an LB20 SRM6 Orion IIC with a Timber Wolf or 5 x SRM6 Summoner.

Those three would, aside from the weapon quirks, have pretty much the exact same set of skills.

To be fair, in the current tree there are *some* choices to make. There arent enough points to get anything else if you take the full armour bonus, speed tweak, basic weapon buffs (15 points or so), Seismic and rederp and full coolrun/heat containment. But the JJ tree is actually decent now, as is the consumable tree, so .. choices.

For example on the Shadow Cat ill probably take full consumable boosts and skip agility because with MASC its still easily agile enough and i can live without the extra 7 kph from tweak.

I actually like the new trees and think they are good, though the weapon tree needs work - if im running a PPC mech i shouldnt be forced to waste points in either laser duration or missile spread if i want more than 3% heat gen. The weapon specific quirks should be on the edge of the tree so you can ignore them if you dont have that weapon (like the UAC jam chance ones are)

The base mobility values on the other hand are.. welll.. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU PGI. EFF YOU.

The MAD-IIC has a twist/turn value equivalent to running it with a 280 rated engine on live. That is complete WTF. And the accel decel values on literally everything are TERRIBLE.

[Old-dirty B]

Widowmaker1981, on 03 March 2017 - 04:14 AM, said:

... There arent enough points to get anything else if you take the full armour bonus, speed tweak, basic weapon buffs (15 points or so), Seismic and rederp and full coolrun/heat containment.

The system would be a lot better if it was designed in such a way that you are not able to select all of these "important" upgrades, it should have to offer choices between these - that would matter!
armor or speed, cooldown or seismic? that are important choices, not those choices where one have to decide between laser duration or missile spread in order to get to the heat node when running a ppc boat...

[Cato Phoenix]

I'm with Bud Crue here.

I was excited for the skill tree to get the chance to tailor my mechs to their own specific needs. However, my mechs now feel nerfed in almost all things, across the board. And now there is a significant cost to getting them back to a less-than-baseline. I mean, if things are getting blanket nerfed across the board just nerf us, don't make us pay for it too.

So now I feel a bit jilted.

[Widowmaker1981]

B3R3ND, on 03 March 2017 - 04:27 AM, said:

The system would be a lot better if it was designed in such a way that you are not able to select all of these "important" upgrades, it should have to offer choices between these - that would matter!
armor or speed, cooldown or seismic? that are important choices, not those choices where one have to decide between laser duration or missile spread in order to get to the heat node when running a ppc boat...

So you mean you want to be even further below current baseline? Im saying there are choices, but you can get roughly back to current levels if you take basically zero extra stuff, or you can take some of the extra new stuff at the expense of some of the original baseline stuff.

I think its currently good, i dont want what you are suggesting because it would mean everything in the game getting giganerfed. I regard Seismic for example as something every mech needs and must be able to acquire because there is no rearview mirror in the game.

What is NOT currently good is the baseline agility values, they are an unmitigated disaster, especially acc/dec values. Even when fully buffed by the agility tree they are still completely terrible.

Edited by Widowmaker1981, 03 March 2017 - 05:00 AM.

[Nutta88]

I think that the base values for all mechs should be "similar" to mastered on live at the moment (maybe not speed tweak for the net code issues), the skills then give you a nerf and buff to something on your mech... all mechs should feel good to play from the start.

Un-mastered mechs should be competitive and fun, "mastered" just different or more specialised. Gaining xp should allow you to tweak your builds, but in a way that tweaks your mech for your play style.

Increasing laser weapon range costing an increase to laser weapon heat gen.
Increasing ballistic weapon range costing an increase to ballistic weapon cooldown time (to get around the gauss issue but have them consistent).

It would be good for the skills to go both ways so you could increase and decrease weapon range with a corresponding buff or nerf.

The increase in buff could diminish as as points are taken in a skill and the nerf could increase to tweak the balance point of any skill.

Equipment could also have some flavour e.g. a Donal ppc made on Twycross having a lower max range but less heat… so 10 dam 9 heat with 496m range. While the Donal PPC made on Arc-Royal has more range for more heat. So 10 dam 11 heat with 594 range.

[Pyed]

Nutta88, on 03 March 2017 - 05:10 AM, said:

...the skills then give you a nerf and buff to something on your mech... all mechs should feel good to play from the start.

Un-mastered mechs should be competitive and fun, "mastered" just different or more specialised. Gaining xp should allow you to tweak your builds, but in a way that tweaks your mech for your play style.

...

It would be good for the skills to go both ways so you could increase and decrease weapon range with a corresponding buff or nerf.

Yes! YES!

I threw together something similar to what you're talking about after the first skill tree iteration unveiling, though it mostly got ignored:
https://mwomercs.com...17#entry5614417

[Kali Rinpoche]

ForceUser, on 02 March 2017 - 09:43 AM, said:

Is because there is no one right answer.

But- but they said they wanted choice!

No.. no they don't. See, people want the illusion of choice. They want to feel like they are making a choice and through that choice getting the best and be better than everyone else. Through their own smartitude(fun not-real-word) they want to feel like they made the best choice, they picked the right answer, but there isn't one right answer and this can be frustrating.

People also want to have the illusion of sacrifice to get that right answer but in reality they don't actually want to sacrifice anything worth while to get the skills they want. They want everything without any (real) cost. This kind of ties in with the previous point.

I've been playing around with the skill tree and it's very interesting and I especially like the new weapon tree. I can fiddle for hours with this getting the skills I want on a specific build that I play a specific way. I'm a big proponent of meta builds but people don't play meta builds the same way. For example someone that is a better gauss user would get more from skills and improve the gauss while players who are more comfortable with ERPPCs can focus more skill points on skills that buff them. Alternatively some people are better pokers and picking the right skills on the way to speed tweak will mean they can improve their play while others who are better at moving around the map to better locations can take skills that improve their ability to reduce incoming fire while doing so, on their way to speed tweak.

With regards to sacrifice I've found that with every build I tend to be just a few SP short of a skill I really want so I go through my entire build and I decide where I can scavange those extra SP, or if the skills I want is worth the sacrifice. And even better because the trees have so many ways of GETTING to a lot of the skills (more often than you'd think) I have multiple choices of how I will scavange those extra SP.

Some of the skills themselves are pretty amazing as well. The ammo ones especially on tonnage strapped SRM and Ballistic mechs can suddenly free up an extra ton or two. This can then go towards another HS or a slightly faster engine. This then offsets the sacrifice I had to make in Operations to get those ammo capacity skills in the first place.

The amount of interaction, give and take, sacrifices, choices and just general possibilities of the Skill tree is just amazing. And it's very well thought out, there are dozens of tiny little things that show how well thought out and tested this is. A small example of that would be the AMS skill. If your mech doesn't have AMS then you can't pick that node, and thats great, but those two skills do no block any other skills but at the same time can still be used to bypass other skills if you do have AMS and don't like the alternative. So even with 'useless' skills you often have a choice between a suboptimal skill and a skill that's maybe more useful.

The beauty of what PGI is trying to do is that there will never ever again be just one right answer and that scares the living daylights out of people. They feel paralyzed by the choices, fearing they will make the wrong ones and be forever at a disadvantage. And that fear is what we are seeing as hate for the new system.

Please PGI, there is so much potential in this new system. Do not let the fear of the player base torpedo another desperately needed change to MWO. The game is stagnating, It needs something to make it exciting again, like the old days when everything was still new.

Exactly

[GabrielSun]

I don't hate the tree. I don't like it. Not the concept of it, but the implementation. It is absolutely not because I am afraid of choices though. I just don't like wasting points to pay for miniscule upgrades on the odd item to progress in the tree to where I want to go.

There would be several options to implement to make it perfectly acceptable to me. 1. Give us more max points if you're going to roadblock paths, or 2. Make the trees capable of purchasing the next point any direction once a node is purchased, or 3. Make it a progressive linear path for each type of bonus.

[C E Dwyer]

Bud Crue, on 03 March 2017 - 03:52 AM, said:

Yup. Commercial practices 101: First lesson:

So you have a popular product. How do you make it better?
1) Add features and functionality at a cost increase proportional to those benefits?
2) Remove features and functionality with a cost increase despite the reduction in features and functionality.

Every successful product on earth ever, chooses answer 1; always, every time. PGI? Chooses 2,always, every time.

You cannot expect customer "buy-in" when all you are you doing to the product is taking things away. That is every nerf pass ever. That is the minimap. That is ghost heat, that was ghost damage, that was ED, that is this PTS. Change is hard enough. Change that results in less than what you had before AND at an increased cost is ALWAYS bad, unpopular and frankly will cost you your business in the end (unless of course you have an exclusive license to a beloved IP).

In the PTS I can't get any of my builds even close to how they feel on the live server. I must sacrifice something. Even if you ignore survivability you still lose some functionality of current mastery and modules; and even if that is the intent, it still sucks. Yet I am being charged more for this lessening of functionality and value. All while being forced to use an interface that is incredibly burdensome and which is going to result in an overall lessening of my enjoyment of the game, a reduction in diverse game play choices and an utter demolition of what is left of the NPE in this game.

Sigh. Go back. Go simple. Look at what other successful games are doing (I know, I know, PGI refuses to ever use working mechanisms and are obsessed with reinventing the wheel but giving it corners, because they know best, but geezus this has all been done before and it doesn't have to be this hard). But whatever you do stop taking things away and expecting your customers to be happy or or even merely cooperative regarding its testing or results. That will never happen because no one likes having things taken from them.

I actually don't mind the fact this new system lowers the optimised builds on live.

PTS 2 is stopping single weapon builds from being the only real choice to take.

what I don't like about it runs as follows.

P.G.I are insisting on using module skills none but a complete newb ever thought were useful, and building the nodes forcing us to take them.

It's already clear that the choices are already obvious.

You max the survival node missing out AMS over load.
You grab all the hard braking skills
you grab as many sensor skills as you need to get seismic and perhaps radar dep.

The only real choices you have are on Jump Jet mechs which is do I take more or less on the jump jet node and then use the rest on weapons.

I'm not going near the engine decoupling because that's not skill tree related.

The kind of tree people want and does actually force you to take a choice each 'level' while would be o.k for mobility, armour, sensors, etc, won't work with weapon nodes because it then makes the single weapon mech king of the heap once more

[GabrielSun]

Cathy, on 03 March 2017 - 10:56 AM, said:

The kind of tree people want and does actually force you to take a choice each 'level' while would be o.k for mobility, armour, sensors, etc, won't work with weapon nodes because it then makes the single weapon mech king of the heap once more

I think the weapon tree just needs some path tweaking to make it perfectly usable. The other stuff needs the real work. If they insist on doing a tree structure, remove roadblocks or make them far more valuable.

[Old-dirty B]

Widowmaker1981, on 03 March 2017 - 04:58 AM, said:

So you mean you want to be even further below current baseline? Im saying there are choices, but you can get roughly back to current levels if you take basically zero extra stuff, or you can take some of the extra new stuff at the expense of some of the original baseline stuff.

I think its currently good, i dont want what you are suggesting because it would mean everything in the game getting giganerfed. I regard Seismic for example as something every mech needs and must be able to acquire because there is no rearview mirror in the game.

What is NOT currently good is the baseline agility values, they are an unmitigated disaster, especially acc/dec values. Even when fully buffed by the agility tree they are still completely terrible.

Im talking about choices that mean something, my suggestion has nothing to do with nerfing. What i suggested is that if someone opts to upgrade mobility it should get you near or perhaps even above our current baseline but that also means if you dont opt for it you should be significantly less mobile... the same goes for any other upgrade. One shouldnt be able to pick everything but that what you do pick should make a big difference.

[oldradagast]

ForceUser, on 02 March 2017 - 09:43 AM, said:

Is because there is no one right answer.

But- but they said they wanted choice!

No.. no they don't. See, people want the illusion of choice.

When a thread makes malicious assumptions about everyone's motives - basically assuming everyone is a liar - it's safe to say that whatever conclusions it comes to are incorrect. This thread is no different.

Yes, I want ACTUAL choices and ACTUAL tradeoffs in the skill system. I've long hated the mindless "throw more cbills and XP into skills and modules to make everything directly better than it was before" system we've had for so long. But the proposed skill system fails for numerous very real reasons:

• Serious nerfs to mechs that are already weak via removal of most or all of their major quirks. Does the game really need even fewer viable chassis and loadouts?
  
• A huge, lumbering skill tree full of worthless and illogically arranged skills that do nothing but increase the grind to get the skills you actually want while offering plenty of false choices for new and inexperience players to waste resources on trash skills. For all the flaws of the current skill system, even the newest player can't make wrong choices in it; they can easily waste a fortune under the new system
  
• Ironically, despite the 91 skills per mech, most mechs will end up with the same skills anyway since some skills are vital and so many are marginal or utterly worthless. So much for any actual choices to be made!
  
• No respect for the grind: taking things away, which is what is being done here, is stupid and makes you lose customers.
  
• Finally, the new skill system does NOTHING to resolve the "grind and your mech gets directly better" issue some folks had, and it actually encourages even more boating of single weapon types.

No, the new system is an utter failure as shown. It fixes nothing, still forces long grinds to directly upgrade your mech, buries the useful skills behind piles of trash skills that are XP walls or false choices, and turns something simple into a tangled, confusing mess.

Edited by oldradagast, 03 March 2017 - 03:59 PM.

[HammerMaster]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor

READ IT.
Every pass.
Every non-lore hullabaloo.
Every PGI made up mechanic.
FAILS.
Because you over complicate things.

[Bogus]

I clearly got put on a different PTS than the OP, because what I'm seeing is the exact opposite: almost all mechs have one, and only one, correct set of nodes based on the current loadout. It's certainly true that the old system had no meaningful customization either, but it should come as no surprise that attempting to replace that with the same thing but with more grind and a larger gap between good and bad mech geometry is engendering a lot of strong feelings. As I've noted elsewhere, I actually like the underlying concept but I have serious concerns about what a universal tree is going to do to chassis-to-chassis balance and what I'm seeing on PTS is not doing much to convince me otherwise.