91 replies to this topic

[Kali Rinpoche]

The cost of nodes for those of us with large stables of Mechs is still too high.

You are STILL forcing us veteran players to put out billions of Cbills to spec our mechs to make them payable again.
Add some kind of one-time legacy cost reduction for owned and previously mastered mechs. The module refund is not going to cover our cost for many of us.

The cost should be in the 2.5 million per mech range.


Skill Tree

• Except for still forcing us to waste points to get to what we want I'm okay going forward with the new system.

Edited by Kali Rinpoche, 03 March 2017 - 10:22 AM.

[soapyfrog]

The cost is by far the biggest problem i agree, and it distracts being able to properly discuss the merits of the skill tree.

No matter how good for bad the skill tree is, if i cannot afford it, it doesn't matter... I will be out.

And to expand on what you are saying Kali, it should absolutely be less than 2.5 million per mech, if it costs anything at all, which to me it's not really clear it should.

One things is for sure though: nodes should be free. If there a charge it should be on acquiring the skill point. That way respecs are free and nothing is lost.

The idea of losing xp for changing skill nodes is abhorrent.

[vettie]

Along those same lines of thought, does the 'cost' (both CBill and Xp or SP or whatever they call it) REDUCE the 'fun' of playing in the mechlab / swapping you build (relatively quickly) because of the respec cost or the skills node changes + cost required?

[soapyfrog]

vettie, on 03 March 2017 - 10:58 AM, said:

because of the respec cost or the skills node changes + cost required?

The cost of changing skill nodes IS the respec cost.

I would venture to say also that skill tree is to sprawling and cumbersome to be very fun to configure... that it costs so much basically means that I can't even consider it on it's other merits anyway, fun or not.

[Malrock]

Yeah costs are still to pricey.

I disagree with OP though the skill trees still need a lot of work.

[Kali Rinpoche]

soapyfrog, on 03 March 2017 - 10:52 AM, said:

No matter how good for bad the skill tree is, if i cannot afford it, it doesn't matter... I will be out.

And to expand on what you are saying Kali, it should absolutely be less than 2.5 million per mech, if it costs anything at all, which to me it's not really clear it should.

One things is for sure though: nodes should be free. If there a charge it should be on acquiring the skill point. That way respecs are free and nothing is lost.

The idea of losing xp for changing skill nodes is abhorrent.

I agree, if I can't afford it, I don't want to regrind 500 million cbills I'm short. PGI is dead set on milking our Cbills with the PTS, 2.5 million to buy the 91 nodes I can live with. It would even be better if it was cheaper.

[Sorbic]

I applaud PGI for adjusting the cost and I think it might be ok for new/unskilled mechs. That said they really need to offer free/almost free skill tree specs (first time) for mechs that players have already unlocked skills for.

[The Lost Boy]

It wont be "billions"

200 mechs would be 1.12 billion.

I have 64 mechs.

I will prob max out 20 or so.

I play around 10 regularly.

We all have an abundance of "hangar queens"

Enough with the hyperbole.

[Sorbic]

Lemming of the BDA, on 06 March 2017 - 07:13 PM, said:

It wont be "billions"

200 mechs would be 1.12 billion.

I have 64 mechs.

I will prob max out 20 or so.

I play around 10 regularly.

We all have an abundance of "hangar queens"

Enough with the hyperbole.

ahh, hyperbole from the other side of the spectrum...

Translated your statement read like "My scenario is the only one that matters." Sorry but I have close to 200 mechs, most of them mastered and I do like to cycle through them even if I only play a few games at a time in most. Plain and simple there needs to be very cheap skill nodes for the first time an already mastered mech is skilled.

At 144 million I currently have far more more c-bills than I've ever had and it would barely make a dent in the cost I would pay just to get back to where I already am.

[GenghisJr]

After a little while, PGI will notice that the whales have stopped spending...because they are remastering mechs they havent used in years, when PGI realises how long it will take the average whale to remaster their garage, PGI will need to do something to stop those whales working on old mechs and give them an incentive to spend again...because I know for me it will be about three years before I need to spend real cash again...145 mechs, a couple of hours game play a week.
Of course PGI could try the business model where the sell the same old stuff to new players instead of the sketchy model where you sell new stuff to the same old players and always run the risk of the same old players stopping spending..perhaps because PGI just gave us three years work to get back to where we are now.

[The Lost Boy]

And yet it wouldnt be " billions".

I inventoried my modules and stand to get a refund of 758,000,000 cbills.

And there dosnt have to be anything. We are in controll of jack and sh!t and jack left town.

Start your inventories now, figure out how much you are going to get back, and and how much you need to level up.

The one thing that is nice is that each node only costs cbills once. The 400 xp to turn nodes back on ist too bad.

[soapyfrog]

Lemming of the BDA, on 06 March 2017 - 08:53 PM, said:

The one thing that is nice is that each node only costs cbills once. The 400 xp to turn nodes back on ist too bad.

That is not nice. It means that most mechs that you care to experiment with are going to cost substantially more than the 5.46 million c-bills and 72800xp.

The 400xp charge for nodes you already 100% paid for is just a ******* slap in the face.

Nothing nice about it.

[Dogstar]

@Lemming - you're okay but as I've stated before not everyone else is. Personally I've got enough modules to get back maybe 20 million c-bills but I've got 111 mechs, almost all of which I use

[Sorbic]

soapyfrog, on 06 March 2017 - 09:01 PM, said:

That is not nice. It means that most mechs that you care to experiment with are going to cost substantially more than the 5.46 million c-bills and 72800xp.

The 400xp charge for nodes you already 100% paid for is just a ******* slap in the face.

Nothing nice about it.

While it might not be ideal for some I wouldn't call it a slap in the face. I mean under the current system we just keep building up xp that sit's there uselessly.

[50 50]

The cost is ok.
I would prefer less skill points which would also mean less total cost, but that needs to also go along with less waste on the skill tree.

The problem many are expecting is to do with the refund and then being able to re-master their mechs.
Had a good conversation in another thread with Dogstar and it's really about having that significant disproportion of modules/mech.
I don't see a good way around this as one of the reasons for having the skill costs is to soak up the refund from the modules. So if there was no cost, you would be able to reskill the mechs but we then have a whole bunch of players with more c-bills than they can spend. This will likely mean the same problem with purchasing new mechs as why would you spend cash on them if you can simply wait and buy them when they come out for c-bills.

At the moment, the cost is about 5.6mil to get 91 nodes.
If we halve the number of nodes we can get, you are down to 2.8mil or there about.
to then look at the cost of upgrading an unskilled mech, for a brand new player, that's a fairly insignificant amount of c-bills. It's then just the XP cost keeping it in check.

[Kmieciu]

50 50, on 07 March 2017 - 06:44 PM, said:

At the moment, the cost is about 5.6mil to get 91 nodes.

Instead of spending 5.6 mil on skilltree I would rather spend it on a new mech.

Just like I bought Black Knight BL-6B-KNT during the recent sale. It paid 4.8 million C-bills and got a mech with stock DHS and Endo. Swapped the engine, swapped the modules and I was ready to roll. After the first game I managed to unlock Cool Run, Heat Containment, Kinetic Burst and Hard Brake.

I was happy to spend my MC on a new mechbay. I will probably even spend MC on a camo pattern or some decals. I bought 6 months of premium time and I enjoy mastering mechs in 20-30 matches. After 30 matches I usually have enough C-bills to buy something new.

But If this skill went live I would not have the Cbills to buy that mech, and PGI would not get any MC from me.

Edited by Kmieciu, 08 March 2017 - 12:08 AM.

[Kinski Orlawisch]

Indeed.....I ve all existing mechs. Rebuilding them will take time. Having more mechs in my bays wich are not bee abel too bee played makes no sense anymore.
Atm I divide the moth in 2 parts. 2 weeks for mastering the new mechs...2 weeks for powerplay.

Now I have to concentrate on 60 mechs I have...and over.

But we ll see what PGI decides.

Yes iI had 220 mechs equiped with modules and 458 mechs...with 500+ mechbays...

[Taxxian]

You can Master 3 Mechs for every full Module Set you had in the past, I think thats reasonable...

I dont think its too expensive...

[Magik Jack]

Lemming of the BDA, on 06 March 2017 - 07:13 PM, said:

It wont be "billions"

200 mechs would be 1.12 billion.

I have 64 mechs.

I will prob max out 20 or so.

I play around 10 regularly.

We all have an abundance of "hangar queens"

Enough with the hyperbole.

Maybe you only play 10 mechs, but some of us play in groupplay with teams where using tonnage up requires that you have mechs from all classes pimped and ready to roll, and ideally several for each 5 or 10 tons of weight difference with multiple loadouts on different variants for different styles of play (gasp! yes, some of us play brawlers, snipers, poptarts, and even lights all in one game session. Wasn't that a great thing about this game? My bad, I guess.)

That aside, the elephant in the room for many of us newer players is how can we recommend this game for other new players? It was a hellgrind before this newly proposed system, where you needed a cbill financial advisor to keep from f****** yourself over early on. Now a new player has to worry about buying weapons, engines, mechs, AND SKILLS. If PGI wants new players to keep this game alive this is not going to help. To boot, as someone mentioned before, I like having cbills around for buying new mechs or variants I didn't buy with money in the packs.

On top of this, some of us were thrifty and moved modules around (not buying them and leaving them in the mechs). So we will not be getting that great a refund, I think I will get maybe 40 million cbills back, and I have around 40 mastered mechs needing 5.5 million each. Yikes.

[50 50]

Well, I will admit that if there was no c-bill cost to the skills I would probably go out and buy numerous other mechs that are available for c-bills as soon as I got my refund. They may not see the light of day for a while as I work out what to do with my existing mechs, but it will help fill out a few gaps and get a few duplicate variants that I like.

It probably would not stop me jumping on a new mech release that I fancy and spending the cash either.

Right at this point, I don't really care. I would like the new skill trees so I can tool up a mech how I would like it to function.

If we needed a c-bill 'sink' somewhere in the game, there are some other possibilities that could be explored, particularly on the faction play side of things. But perhaps some new features could be looked at that have a c-bill cost.