7 replies to this topic

[cazidin]

Greetings MechWarriors. Today I have a simple question. Can PGI fix the Skill Tree in under 2 weeks, when the next patch will hit live, or can we expect another delay, another PTS session and undoubtedly more good ideas muddled with glaring bad ones.

[R Valentine]

No, and I hope they delay it. It is still in an atrocious state and things will only get worse if they implement it early, not better.

[MechaBattler]

The only thing I want to see addressed is what they intend to do for underperforming mechs now that they've had their quirks raked over the coals.

Will we see a careful and considered re-quirkening? Or could we see a skill percentage increase? Or screw em, who needs em? Inquiring minds would like to know.

[Monkey Lover]

It really isn't so bad right now if they just took care of some of the balance issues.

So yes, they can but im not sure if they will.

[Bud Crue]

I hope they continue to work on it. I hope they reduce or concentrate it so that it doesn't feel like such a chore. I hope they do something to the interface so that it is more engageing and fun. I hope they organize it so that you are making real choices instead of just the choice of how I am going to nerf my mechs relative to the current system. I hope they wake up and realize that nerfing the worst performing mechs in the game is not a good way to increase diversity.

What I expect however that this sucker is going live in a state very close to what we have and if so it will be the opening of the first seal that leads to the apocalypse of this game's end. I expect a lot of veterans will find the skills tree to be such an annoyance that they just don't bother with it for most of their collection. I expect the costs of it when combined with the nerfs will be the destruction of mech diversity and a guarantee of only the best variants of the best chassis being played. I expect nonstop balance passes from here to eternity causing players to feel forced into respecing with every pass, causing immense frustration, leading to loss of players, then an increase in wait times and a general degradation of game play, which will feed back on itself. I expect the nerfing and skills tree combo will be a great selling point for new tech. I expect that that which currently exists will be rendered legacy tech and will within a year cease to be relevant in the game. I expect PGI to not bother trying to "recover" the performance of this legacy tech and these legacy mechs as long as sales of that which is new keeps the lights on.

So those are my hopes and my expectations. I hope I am wrong with my expectations, though I expect that I am not.

[Baulven]

I would prefer another delay and fixing a lot of the core issues they have instead of pushing early. In the current state I believe it would hurt player count, and it won't bring in new blood.

[Malrock]

What they should do, have another round of PTS, and try to fix some of the still glaring problems with agility decoupling and the talent trees.

What they are likely to do based on what we can see from russ's twitter is ship as is consequences be damned. He seems to think everything is really great. Not sure he has ever even seen these PTS forums.

[oldradagast]

If released as-is - or in the same skill maze idea just with more stuff shuffled around - it will spell the beginning of the end for this game unless hastily reversed and/or scrapped.

It is an utterly illogical mess of tangled, cross-purpose skills, with most of the good stuff gated behind trash. Top that off with the fate of quirks being unknown - and, at best, seriously reduced, and you're left with far fewer mechs worth playing, far less resources to level up the few mechs you keep playing, and far less patience to enjoy the game after staggering through the skill maze.

The best part: they plan on release new technology in the not too distant future. Because they insanely decided to stick with rather specific quirks for weapon types instead of generic ones for missiles, energy, and ballistics, they are going to have to EXPAND and redo the whole weapon part of the skill tree once these new weapons appear. More chaos and confusion and more grinding - what fun!

Seriously, PGI does not get it. The current skill maze is a game killer. MWO does not have enough momentum or player base to survive screw-ups like this in remotely decent health.