45 replies to this topic

[oldradagast]

I honestly don't like "Trees" - I really prefer a totally flat collection of skills, without levels or gates, divided into several groups. Then, each Role gets, say, 2 of those groups.

Major groups would be: Durability, Firepower, Mobility, and Info Warfare (which is Sensors and Stealth.)

Then, you could have Roles:
Brawler = Firepower and Durability
Skirmisher = Durability and Mobility
Scout = Mobility and Info Warfare
Fire Support = Info Warfare and Firepower

Put about 10 skills per group, all of similar power (if possible), and then you get 20 skills total per role, but can only have 1 role and, say, 12 skills active at a time. Free respect, and done.

This would require junking most of the silly skills, like reducing falling damage, or tiny incremental improvements to jumpjets, etc. Also, while Firepower should have some heat reduction skills, extra range, etc, I'd kill all the weapon specific skills and go no more specific than weapon type: missile, energy, or ballistic. That would help push players away from having to worry about specific weapons, like an SRM 2 vs, a 4, vs a 6. It would reduce boating a bit and get rid of the need to waste a pile of money and XP because - oh, no - I changed my SRM 4's to SRM 6's and now have to get the right skills for that specific missile launcher. That's just GRIND, not CHOICE or ROLES.

Deep skill trees and dozens upon dozens of skills have their place, but not in this type of game, IMHO. In a game where your skills basically ARE your character - well, that and equipment, I guess, it works. But I really feel in MWO, your mech and its build should be the majority of what "you" are the game. The skills should help add roles and flavor, but not be a dizzying array of tangled choices or something you have to grind through for months to achieve parity with whatever the meta of the week may be.

Edited by oldradagast, 04 March 2017 - 07:44 PM.

[Dracol]

I created a thread with my proposal HERE

The elevator pitch though is as follows:
Mechs can be improved in 6 different areas (Offensive / Defensive / Mobility / Sensor / Operations / Specialization ). With the exception of the Specialization tree, each tree has 10 levels of improvement and at each level a pilot choices one of 3 options. The Specialization tree has only 5 levels, but each level has 7 options to choose from. Any tree can be improved at any time, however each level needs to be unlocked in order. Once a level is unlocked, the selection can be changed at a reduced xp cost.

[Jaybles-The-PegLeg-PotatoCaptain]

I'd like to see an either or system with a linear tree. You can do weapons or you can do armor, but not both, you can do mobility or info tech, but not both. Something along those lines where there are 6 or 8 trees but you can only skill 3 or 4 of them and there aren't enough skill points to max the 4 that you do choose. So you could only max 2 trees and then have skills in 2 others. Something that would let lights and fast meds load up on mobility/jump/info tech, but forces heavies/ assaults to choose between weapons or armor. Let an Atlas quirk armor/structure and mobility. Let a highlander quirk PPC/Gauss and jump jets, but make it a paper tiger. No armor or mobility if you choose weapons and jumping, etc. Force the players to choose between the trees, but give them the freedom to skill anything they want in each tree.

[Reno Blade]

MischiefSC, on 03 March 2017 - 09:14 PM, said:

Here's my tree -

All Skills have 6 nodes and are cumulative.

Each branch is separate because you can then quirk mechs by giving them bonus nodes to apply to set branches. So, for example, the Atlas gets + 3 nodes in Survival Branch.

SURVIVAL
======================
Armor:
1: + 1%
2: + 1%
3: + 1%
4: + 2%
5: + 2%
6: + 3%

Structure:
1: + 1%
2: + 1%
3: + 1%
4: + 2%
5: + 2%
6: + 3%

Crit Reduction:

1: + 1%
2: + 1.5%
3: + 2%
4: + 3%
5: + 4%
6: + 6%
=======================

ALL WEAPONS - by having one set of quirks that impact all weapons you promote mixed and varied builds because you're not forced to drill down on a single weapon subset.
=======================

Cooldown:

1: + 1%
2: + 1%
3: + 2%
4: + 3%
5: + 3%
6: + 5%

Range:

1: + 1%
2: + 1%
3: + 2%
4: + 3%
5: + 3%
6: + 5%

Velocity (ballistics and missiles)/Crit Chance (for lasers)

1: + 1%
2: + 1%
3: + 2%
4: + 3%
5: + 3%
6: + 5%

=================

Make sense? I don't have time to work out sensors and the nifty stuff like ammo buffs here. Maybe have a selection of single node perks that require 2 pts each, like an ammo bonus perk.

JJs would need 2 or 3 x the bonus currently provided and it needs to be flat values, such as 3m bonus jump range, etc. It needs to be as valuable as comparable weapon quirks.

Then give players enough points to max out 45% of the total quirks.

question here:
Would you just limit the total SP, or would you limit SP per branch? (e.g. 10 points max on survival branch)

Would the "extra" SP for the Atlas just being
7: + 3% to be selectable, or would you also get more SP to spend in total (or in the branch, if limited)?

PS:
not really created new branch, but I've re-ordered the weapon branch here with a poll.
So far not much feedback...
https://mwomercs.com...anch-like-this/

Quote

Current PTS2 Weapon skill branch colored by type

Spoiler

Option1
Regrouping for multiple "lanes" with same number of Nodes per type:

Spoiler

Option2
Regrouping of attribute types with some number changes also:

Spoiler

Option3
Lanes per weapon attribute with max values
edit: missed green cooldown text (14x 0.85% = 12%)

Spoiler

Edited by Reno Blade, 05 March 2017 - 12:36 AM.

[BenWhiskeyjack]

Like the idea of this post...I fleshed out my ideas since it was an interesting exercise, and I felt my thoughts didn't exactly mirror what everyone else already had (though I only skimmed some posts)

I did my view here:
https://docs.google....dit?usp=sharing

I skipped jump jets and auxiliary, but they could follow the same idea. And I got rid of mech ops since it was just a hodge-podge...the nodes are built into other trees.

Some broad assumptions
---Easily reach reach parity with elited mechs today
---Reuse the overall concept PGI has to limit rework on their part - they have a lot of the pieces already.
---Diminishing Returns except the last node - provides significant value to hit the last node
---Skill Caps within the trees - to enforce choice within a tree. You can get 90% Radar Derp or seismic and something else
---If this creates mechs that are too over-powered, a cap could be instituted across trees (in my example right now, there's a max of 50 skills across all trees, if you enforce a "mech cap" of something like 35, there would be some harsher choices to make)
---Trees are somewhat newb friendly - they enforce some decent basic capabilities and then there's a choice of specialty upgrades.

Cost-wise - I would say the costs per node could stay the same; depending on the final views, the caps and changes I made would mean ~20% reduction in nodes (assumes 70 cap, or less if they did mech caps), so it would mean less cost for players overall.

I should note that in several cases I combined nodes to 1 or 2 values to get to some meaningful choice without making it complex. The one that some may find shady is the sensor range/zoom. I put these together since it was likely long-range mechs would need both, and it allowed balancing the sensor tree cap.

Firepower for lasers will also look odd, but I tried to set it up such that laser boats had the same choices as ammo based mechs - meaning they'd get 4 weapon upgrade nodes, plus cooldown or range. Velocity links down to Energy heat gen as well to enable PPC mechs to have some interesting options. (in all other cases, any nodes linked above another node would be required, but this one would not require the laser nodes)

The values are meant to be pretty close to what we should see in game, except for armor/skeletal density. (they would all need tweaking, but hopefully not so much as to require more nodes)

[Appuagab]

A couple more branches of skill tree of my dream. All values are obviously placeholders again (except that on free node). I didn't include heat reduction form JJs because I think it should be moved to some other branch and combined with some other useful things in a single node instead of using it as SP-sink-filler.



UPD: Made a complete one, check my thread https://mwomercs.com...id-like-to-see/

Edited by Appuagab, 06 March 2017 - 02:59 AM.