BearFlag, on 05 March 2017 - 08:34 PM, said:
I think they did muddy the waters a bit by wrapping too much in with the ST. It's hard (for me) to get a good feel for agility when engine decouple is thrown in.
Ok my view is that the Skill Tree is actually part of a balance pass and a big change in the mechanics of the game
I think understanding the intent is important to make any criticism valuable and any concerns that they have not thought through heard.
It is clear they had a conflicting brief to begin with or else we would not have had the original weapon trees. it appears that they wanted to keep some semblance of the modules but that conflicted with the idea of not rewarding boating which the modules definitely do. So in part they were breaking their own aims and that leads to a level of frustration and confusion.
Personally looking at the changes I think the following PGI are trying to do the following
1.Increase TTK by basically nerfing both heat and cooldown check out how much your module bought you and now how much you get with maxing out the trees
2. Slow acceleration and deceleration rates so as to ease networking software. it make predicting movement easier and thus hit registration being better.
3. A nerfing of quirks: I think this is due to the fact that the next gen weapons will do more to equalise the IS and Clan so bringing compared to quirks. Indeed it may make for example STD engines in IS redundant unless there are limits to what mechs can get the new weapons
4. Changing mobility such as to differentiate mechs in a manner that can't be tailored by the user, which would mean for example a more tanky mech would have lower mobility than a less tanky mech which leads to
5. They actually like tinkering with the mechanic over producing new relevant content as it is easier and more predictable. This alst point is not a criticism it is an issue with lots of software projects. It is much harder to add new features test and QA them especially as the game get more complex. I am surprised they have not gone to a quarterly release scehdule to make sure that the QA is done properly.
Now I believe that in reality some of the changes are there to make the revenue stream more robust. In the long term selling mechs can not be the way to go if you think about it I have 87 chassis and play about 10 hours a week to play that is 60 games a week I would not be able to play them one game each a week and if I decide to play one a week it would take over a year to get through them. So I guess that means more game modes maps and other features which begs the question how do you pay for all of this. My view is purchasing MC to avoid the grind.
it is also interesting that looking at the resistance mechs that I personally would buy the urbie but am not sure about the others and the reward on purchase are not great. I think we are moving into the post mech pack phase. My only hope is the mechs they do bring out are differentiated enough to part people with their dollars.
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