14 replies to this topic

[Malrock]

So i filled out the tree, and boy does it feel crappy to fill that thing out. Just based on the amount of time alone to fill that thing out is awful. Having to read through 91 + skill points and determine the optimal path through by taking the least number of bad nodes possible is a real chore. Doing it more than a few times is a real pain.

I think everyone has beaten to death how awful the costs are both to purchase, respec, and owning multiple of the same chasis, so i won't belabor those points here, but the problem still exists.

As to the individual tress:

The new weapons tree - while being somewhat a step in the right direction is still very gated by specific weapon skills and is not set up well. If you carry ballistics and lasers on the same mech you are basically hosed by the tree design. You can't for example get laser cooldowns, and buff your UAC's at the same time. Boating problem still exists. This tree is still way too specialized and gated. I like the reduction from many trees to a single one but this tree needs an even further reduction because it is WAY too bloated. The weapon skills need to be made even more generic. The bloat is way too harsh in that tree right now.

Survival - This tree feels like it will still always be mandatory, just not the entire tree, because it is too costly to pick up some worthless skills. Why people who don't have AMS are forced to take AMS skills in order to progress through the tree makes no sense. Especially since the system warns you that you have chosen things that don't even apply to your mech.

I took major portions of the mobility tree as torso twisiting was horrible with out it. Felt like I was playing under water. Problem was that it wasn't even able to get back to the same functionality i have now, starting and stopping is a pain in the rear, and turning isn't fun either. Feels like they moved the game back to a snails pace. Plus identifying the proper twisting nodes took some careful node reading, as i didn't do it right on my first try.

operations - this is where they are hiding the heat mangagment skills behind a slew of other garbage. The worst part is this is mandatory or your mech overheats like no ones business but the tree doesn't get you back to current version instead it gets you back to a much lesser version than what we have now. It feels horrid, because you over heat much more quickly even when you take the tree and get all the heat helping nodes, but you have to waste a lot of points to get non helpful things in order to snap up the heat management ones.

Because they beefed up the number of nodes needed in the weapons, survival, operation, and mobility trees, the ones that I sacrificed was sensors. I built out several mechs and if you didn't take huge chunks of the above named trees then piloting your mech felt terrible, as compared to live.

To give you an idea of what this feels like - they nerffed the ever living snit out of your mech, and you can go into the mech tree to get back 75% of the amount they nerfed. The only exception being the survival tree where you are getting all new functionality. Other than survival your mech will for all intents and purposes be inferior in all ways to your mech on live no matter how you fill out your tree. You will move at a glacial pace, can't turn worth a darn, accel and decl horribly, and over heat like crazy, in comparison to live and this is with all the relevant skills in the trees taken to buff those items. It feels truly awful. We are basically losing functionality on every mech in the game.

[Gas Guzzler]

I actually felt like the firepower tree addressed boating pretty well, as range/cooldown/heat/velocity apply to multiple weapon types.

[Amsro]

Tru but the main point is that EVERYONE gets nerfed, not just you personally, the entire game feels slower and more tactical.

I personally think the game feels better this way overall. Still lots of things to change about the skill tree in general. Less skill points, instead of 91 how about 50 but you can have more linear trees to choose from.

[Malrock]

Gas Guzzler, on 01 March 2017 - 10:47 PM, said:

I actually felt like the firepower tree addressed boating pretty well, as range/cooldown/heat/velocity apply to multiple weapon types.

It helped a bit, but it still encourages boating in my opinion. You go down your primary weapon system and get a few incidentals along the way to help other systems. You can't just buff all around cool downs or heat reductions though with out spending nodes on specific systems, and if you want to bring lasers and ballistics you get hosed.

[Malrock]

One of my problems with the weapons tree is i would like to get some of the ballistic improvements but also want to benefit my lasers. However i am already packing pulse lasers so i don't need a lot of duration reduction talents, and the trees are separated by missiles so unless i go down both sides i can't really benefit both systems. With all the other mandatory nodes in other trees i also can't afford to go down both sides.

[Malrock]

Amsro, on 01 March 2017 - 10:50 PM, said:

Tru but the main point is that EVERYONE gets nerfed, not just you personally, the entire game feels slower and more tactical.

I personally think the game feels better this way overall. Still lots of things to change about the skill tree in general. Less skill points, instead of 91 how about 50 but you can have more linear trees to choose from.

Just because everyone is having their mech nerfed doesn't make it feel any better to pilot your new gimped mech. Losing functionality really sucks, especially since there is no way to get back to what we have on live even buy spending a lot of points in a particular tree. My first attempt I didn't put many points into upper chasis turning and boy did my mech feel bad with out it so on my second I choose a different path that included those points, but even with that i still felt far inferior to the live environment.

I expect this is just going to make a lot of people angry when they find out that their mechs are much less responsive than before. Plus new players will likely find this game state to be nearly unplayable as they won't have the necessary skills to get back to our current 75% effectiveness once 91 points are hit.

[Malrock]

What if they simplified the entire system. We have 7 trees and you can basically take only 4. why not make it super simple you choose which 4 out of the 7 you want to invest in and they give you automatic bonuses based on those 4 choices.

[Malrock]

Gas Guzzler, on 01 March 2017 - 10:47 PM, said:

I actually felt like the firepower tree addressed boating pretty well, as range/cooldown/heat/velocity apply to multiple weapon types.

The energy mech that takes PPC or ER PPC is in a rough spot, as a lot of the velocity buffs are in the ballistics tree, and require you to take other things that aren't going to help you much. Similarly laser duration is a bit rough unless you are using standard lasers otherwise it feels like a waste of points.

Just double checked and it isn't as bad as I had remebered it being, but it is still outside the laser tree and doesn't feel like you are getting much bang for your buck. And because most of them are near the top it means many ballistic mechs are wasting points to extend their already long range weapons. (exception being ac20)

Edited by Malrock, 02 March 2017 - 09:24 AM.

[Vidarion]

Malrock, on 01 March 2017 - 10:58 PM, said:

It helped a bit, but it still encourages boating in my opinion. You go down your primary weapon system and get a few incidentals along the way to help other systems. You can't just buff all around cool downs or heat reductions though with out spending nodes on specific systems, and if you want to bring lasers and ballistics you get hosed.

The updated skill tree doesn't encourage boating any more than the module system does. You can get 3 weapon modules when you've mastered it. That means you can grab cooldown and range for 1 specific weapon and cooldown or range for 1 other weapon. In the updated skill tree, when you're grabbing range nodes, ALL your weapons are getting range boosted. There are some laser specific nodes that impact ALL lasers (not just ER large laser or Medium pulse laser) just as there are some nodes that impact ALL missiles or ALL ammo, but overall it feels like this implementation makes boating a lot less necessary (compared to the first PTS or even compared to live).

Survival: You can skill around AMS overload without a problem. If you don't have AMS systems, there is no need to take those in order to get through the tree.

Mobility: Yep. The baseline mobility has been changed. Every mech is slower and all mechs of a given weight (possibly class) have similar mobility regardless of engine rating.

Operations / InfoTech: Yep. So you have a more diverse set of capabilities. If you want to max out a particular thing, you need to invest in it. It's no different than if they increased the point cost of a given node as you got deeper (Heat Mgmt 1 = 1 point; Heat Mgmt 2 = 2 points, etc). The cost for maxing out a particular skill means spending more points for the additional nodes. The good thing is that you're getting extra things for those extra points. You're not just spending 15 points (for example) to get 5 nodes in order to max 1 skill. You're spending 15 points, maxing 1 skill (or more) and getting a bunch of other things that have traditionally ignored in Live.

[MechaBattler]

When I imagined what the firepower tree would look like. I imagined a tree where the center of the tree is comprised of more general skills. With linear branches comprised of the more specialized skills.

It's a little amusing trying to wring out a little extra. But ultimately not worth it. I don't need .8% of cooldown. Makes more sense to use the more general skills as gateways to specialization. Instead of having to get specialization nodes your mech has no weapons for.

[Malrock]

Vidarion, on 02 March 2017 - 09:35 AM, said:

Survival: You can skill around AMS overload without a problem. If you don't have AMS systems, there is no need to take those in order to get through the tree.

No you can't either direction you head you must take at least one of them. They are effectively the gate keepers to the entire left side of the tree.

[Alistair Winter]

I don't mind a universal nerf to TTK or mobility. I still find all mechs fun to play. The real problem for me is whether weight class balance has been improed. And so far, it seems like every weight class was nerfed more or less equally, which means weight class balance has not been improved, so light + medium mechs are still UP and heavy mechs + assault mechs are still OP and by far the most popular.

[Malrock]

Alistair Winter, on 02 March 2017 - 10:37 AM, said:

I don't mind a universal nerf to TTK or mobility. I still find all mechs fun to play. The real problem for me is whether weight class balance has been improed. And so far, it seems like every weight class was nerfed more or less equally, which means weight class balance has not been improved, so light + medium mechs are still UP and heavy mechs + assault mechs are still OP and by far the most popular.

Look i don't mind TTK going up, but that could be done by simply giving everyone double their current armor. Armor buff across the board greatly increases TTK and doesn't make you feel like a complete derp in piloting your mech. Making your ability to pilot your mech much harder doesn't help TTK in fact it punishes positioning even harder thereby lessening time to kill. (although maybe making everyone afraid to engage is your idea of a good way to increase ttk? So instead people will just sit waiting till time runs out rather than fight) It also makes the difference between an unskilled mech and a skilled one much worse, meaning welcome to new player hell. I imagine people will be even more scaredey cats than before with the inability to revers or properly change direction, peaking out will likely be terrible, but jump shooting should become the new norm.

[Amsro]

Malrock, on 01 March 2017 - 11:09 PM, said:

Just because everyone is having their mech nerfed doesn't make it feel any better to pilot your new gimped mech. Losing functionality really sucks, especially since there is no way to get back to what we have on live even buy spending a lot of points in a particular tree. My first attempt I didn't put many points into upper chasis turning and boy did my mech feel bad with out it so on my second I choose a different path that included those points, but even with that i still felt far inferior to the live environment.

I expect this is just going to make a lot of people angry when they find out that their mechs are much less responsive than before. Plus new players will likely find this game state to be nearly unplayable as they won't have the necessary skills to get back to our current 75% effectiveness once 91 points are hit.

Yes but EVERYONE is on the same page, it's not like you are gimped vs another mech.

This game has been getting to fast lately anyhow. Assaults and heavies were too agile.

Yes I agree it still needs tweaking but it's not end of the world bad.

Malrock, on 02 March 2017 - 10:35 AM, said:

No you can't either direction you head you must take at least one of them. They are effectively the gate keepers to the entire left side of the tree.

No man, I have all of them accept the 2 AMS skills unlocked.

[Vidarion]

Malrock, on 02 March 2017 - 10:35 AM, said:

No you can't either direction you head you must take at least one of them. They are effectively the gate keepers to the entire left side of the tree.

Considering I just skilled out that tree without taking either of them, I would disagree.

To avoid the AMS nodes:
- Reinforced Casing 1 -> Shock Absorbance 1 -> Skeletal Density 1 : This avoids AMS Overload 1.
- Reinforced Casing 2 -> Skeletal Density 2 -> Reinforced Casing 4 : This avoids AMS Overload 2 to get to Shock Absorbance 5.
- Skeletal Density 1 -> Shock Absorbance 2 -> Reinforced Casing 3 -> Armor Hardening 3 : This avoid AMS Overload 2 to get to Shock Absorbance 5 as well.