58 replies to this topic

[Tier5ForLife]

I stopped at 93 Mechs because I did not see a reason to get more. If I did not need a IS and Clan deck I would not have this many.

(how many can you play at one time?)

So I put my GXP and C-Bills into Modules.

[Tesunie]

The Skill Tree was placed back into production for several reasons. One of the biggest ones was the cost on C-bills people would need to relevel their mechs. Most players, as you've noted, did not buy enough modules to afford to remaster their mechs, or at least not many of them.

A solution I was thing of was, instead of a refund (or rather, on TOP of the refund) on module, maybe PGI should grant X C-bills for every X exp on a mech. This way, you have the C-bills to level all of your mechs, or you can instead redirect those C-bills wherever you may wish...

Of course, I kinda actually recommend they drop the C-bill cost for skill nodes, and instead just have it all exp related. I also kinda like the idea of "want to remove a skill, you'll lose the experience used to purchase it". This can give someone a reason to continue to work and exp out a mech, as that exp may very well come in handy some other day. (Maybe, at most, have it cost C-bills to remove skills? But I don't believe that would be fair either.)

[soapyfrog]

Tesunie, on 22 March 2017 - 09:45 PM, said:

I also kinda like the idea of "want to remove a skill, you'll lose the experience used to purchase it".

As I have repeatedly expounded, I am so against this idea that this alone would make me drop the game forever, no matter how awesome the skill tree was.

[Devrij]

I don't get all the fuss with this skill tree. I get what they're doing: they don't want to encourage meta builds so they add in fillers and limit the number of points so you have to compromise. Nobody really likes meta builds, (ppc gauss night gym pop tarts are great fun to fight right?).

The upside is that you don't need to buy three mechs just to do up the one you're actually interested in. I have 27 mechs and I earned the cbills to buy the majority of them (I'll admit I bought mc to buy an atlas waaaay back when I first started). I have had to grind away earning cbills to buy mechs I didn't want so I could elite/master the one or two other variants I did. Since I heard about the skill tree I stopped doing that and it has been wonderful having a more varied hangar with single variants that I always fancied but didn't want to have to grind through three variants to enjoy.

With regards to refunds, it seems obvious that people who spent a lot of cbills on modules should get them back when those modules disappear. If you bought mechs instead (like I did) then you get to keep those mechs. They aren't going anywhere so why should you get a refund?

The only losers I can see are those who ordered mech packs with cash without realizing they no longer needed three variants to get the full potential of the mech.

I wish they had just gone ahead with the skill tree so we could have shaken it out properly. If it's gonna be ages then I will be sad because all those single mechs won't be getting mastered and they need some speed tweak etc.

[soapyfrog]

Devrij, on 23 March 2017 - 02:27 PM, said:

I don't get all the fuss with this skill tree. I get what they're doing: they don't want to encourage meta builds so they add in fillers and limit the number of points so you have to compromise. Nobody really likes meta builds, (ppc gauss night gym pop tarts are great fun to fight right?).

This skill tree does nothing stop, impede, or even slightly discourage meta builds.

[Tesunie]

soapyfrog, on 23 March 2017 - 01:40 PM, said:

As I have repeatedly expounded, I am so against this idea that this alone would make me drop the game forever, no matter how awesome the skill tree was.

Okay, I don't understand why that would be such a deal breaker to you, and I honestly would like to know your reasons as to why.


As for myself, I don't see losing experience when I "take back" a skill being a big deal. If you are changing skills out on a mech, that means you are intending to play said mech. By playing the mech, you'll earn experience all over again. This permits you to continue to change your skills as you are playing the mech you are working on.

I also don't know about you, but I have mechs with hundreds of thousands of experience on them... that I can't do anything with at all. C-bills I can use for nearly anything, such as purchasing my next mech, modifying a current mech among, well, just about anything else. Experience, once earned, is only useful for one of two things; leveling up the mech it is earned on, or paying MC to change it over to general experience. So, in the end, it really just builds up with no reduction. Once a mech has become "mastered", that's it. No more "reason" to continue to use said mech, besides for the enjoyment of the mech alone.

However, if you can lose experience when you rearrange your skills (remove and place on new ones), you now have a reason to continue to play mechs beyond mastery. You may want a reasonably sized pool of extra experience, so if you do change something you'll have the experience already there to do so with.

This provides reasons to continue to play a mech, and as you play the game, you'll just re-earn the experience. It actually can even give (C) Champion builds a purpose, compared to a "once it's mastered, the exp bonus is basically useless".

I mean, I have my Stalker 3F which has 97,510 experience after mastery. My Battlemaster 1G has 144,702. Dragon 1N has 99,957. Quickdraw 4H 47,949. Thunderbolt 5S 86,654. Hunchback 4J 106,677; 4SP 55,547. Four of my new Huntsmen are already at or above 50,000 experience above mastery. That's not even all my mechs, just the higher ones I could see quickly. That's a lot of experience just sitting there going to waste. Why not let it be of potential use later down the road?

On top of that, I'd like to wager that most players in this game do exactly as what I tend to do, find a build that works for you and never change it (though maybe slight tweaks over time). Thus, once a mech is fully skilled, most of us will probably never touch the mech's skills again.


So, I don't grasp why it's such a bad thing to lose experience when you remove a skill. It actually encourages continued game play with older mechs in my opinion. Gives a reason to continue to work on already mastered mechs. So, I'm really curious as to your take on this, and why you feel it's so bad. (I'm being serious here. I honestly do want to know your opinion and the whys around it.)

[Devrij]

soapyfrog, on 23 March 2017 - 02:48 PM, said:

This skill tree does nothing stop, impede, or even slightly discourage meta builds.

What I meant was that I understood the nonlinear design of the skill tree as being designed to reward mixed builds as opposed to boating and then dumping all your skill points into one weapon tree. In that sense, it punishes boating and some other meta builds.

[Widowmaker1981]

soapyfrog, on 23 March 2017 - 02:48 PM, said:

This skill tree does nothing stop, impede, or even slightly discourage meta builds.

As all 'meta build' means is 'currently most effective/popular build' it is literally impossible to discourage. If you nerf todays 'meta' so that its not meta anymore, there will be a new one tomorrow.

[soapyfrog]

Devrij, on 23 March 2017 - 11:03 PM, said:

What I meant was that I understood the nonlinear design of the skill tree as being designed to reward mixed builds as opposed to boating and then dumping all your skill points into one weapon tree. In that sense, it punishes boating and some other meta builds.

And it does nothing at all to encourage mixed builds. Quite the opposite, it still encourages you to boat as much as possible.

[soapyfrog]

Tesunie, on 23 March 2017 - 05:51 PM, said:

Okay, I don't understand why that would be such a deal breaker to you, and I honestly would like to know your reasons as to why.

Because it puts a mandatory time barrier in front of experimentation, it actively discourages you experimenting with rarely used mechs, and it absolutely kills having fun with themed matches on private lobbies.

It is completely circular logic to say that you need to have something to spend your excess XP on. It is an artificial "need" you are creating that has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual game.

When my mechs are done levelling, I should be able use them in whatever way I want without have no to grind extra. Period. I don't play this game to grind, and if I want to change something on a build I rarely play I absolutely do not want to have to grind an hour or two just to get the mech back to full potential.

Screw that.

Quote

This permits you to continue to change your skills as you are playing the mech you are working on.

What kind of bogus logic is this? How am I not "permitted" to change my skills if the change were to cost no XP?

You aren't a rat in a Skinner box... But you sure are talking like one.

[Jep Jorgensson]

Dogstar, on 08 March 2017 - 02:05 AM, said:

I've noticed that there's an inherent unfairness in the proposed refund for modules.

Currently skills cost nothing and modules are expensive.

With the new system skills are expensive and modules are cheap (in comparison)

Yet PGI are giving large sums of c-bills to players who have ground matches for modules but none to those who bought mechs to skill up instead.

This is UNFAIR

Either everyone should get some money or everyone should get none.

So PGI must either give us some c-bills based on the skills already unlocked on each mech as well as a refund for modules OR they must not give a refund for modules.

I hear what you are saying, and this is what comes to mind.

Grow up. What is not fair is everyone not getting their refunds just because you do not like the fact that theirs are going to be bigger than yours unless you can get a piece of everybody's refunds. Take your lousy communism elsewhere.

[Devrij]

soapyfrog, on 24 March 2017 - 08:03 AM, said:

And it does nothing at all to encourage mixed builds. Quite the opposite, it still encourages you to boat as much as possible.

Maybe I've misunderstood, but the way it looks to me is that if you want to use your points effectively and get the best skills at the bottom of the trees then you need to go through nodes for more than one weapon type. So to benefit from them you need to have multiple weapon types. Surely that encourages mixed builds?

[Dogstar]

@Jep Well done, you've failed to comprehend my point, thanks for bumping the thread.

[soapyfrog]

Devrij, on 24 March 2017 - 10:08 AM, said:

Maybe I've misunderstood, but the way it looks to me is that if you want to use your points effectively and get the best skills at the bottom of the trees then you need to go through nodes for more than one weapon type. So to benefit from them you need to have multiple weapon types. Surely that encourages mixed builds?

Nope because to benefit all the weapons in a mixed build to the same degree you can boating one weapon, you need to spend substantially more skill points in the firepower tree.

In any case there is only marginal benefit to chasing down the bonuses hidden behind skills you don't need; the boat will have a LOT more points to invest in the other trees, and thus always have a significant advantage over the mixed build granted to them by this tree.

The only way to not explicitly encourage boating is to have skill nodes that buff all weapon types equally with one skill point, and to have no nodes that buff just one weapon type.

Actively encouraging mixed builds then requires a systemic change, like diminishing returns for mounting more of the same weapon/weapon type, for example.

[Tesunie]

Devrij, on 23 March 2017 - 11:03 PM, said:

What I meant was that I understood the nonlinear design of the skill tree as being designed to reward mixed builds as opposed to boating and then dumping all your skill points into one weapon tree. In that sense, it punishes boating and some other meta builds.

They did correct the design so all weapons were affected by the generalized skills, and that there were no longer individual weapon trees. This was to encourage/help mixed builds compared to letting a focused build benefit more with fewer skills invested. There were still a lot of skills in their last PTS that were weapon specific, such as beam duration and UAC jam as examples. The last PTS they had skills such as range and cooldown be a global weapon affect, which did help support mixed builds over just boating (but didn't hurt the boats either).

soapyfrog, on 24 March 2017 - 08:13 AM, said:

Because it puts a mandatory time barrier in front of experimentation, it actively discourages you experimenting with rarely used mechs, and it absolutely kills having fun with themed matches on private lobbies.

It is completely circular logic to say that you need to have something to spend your excess XP on. It is an artificial "need" you are creating that has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual game.

When my mechs are done levelling, I should be able use them in whatever way I want without have no to grind extra. Period. I don't play this game to grind, and if I want to change something on a build I rarely play I absolutely do not want to have to grind an hour or two just to get the mech back to full potential.

Screw that.

What kind of bogus logic is this? How am I not "permitted" to change my skills if the change were to cost no XP?

You aren't a rat in a Skinner box... But you sure are talking like one.

Is there a reason for this hostility towards me? I was just explaining my perspective and thoughts on the subject. Or am I just misreading what you typed and placed a voice of hostility where none actually was? (Hard to tell tone of voice in text after all.)

Anyway...
You can experiment with builds and it would have no affect on the skill tree. Than, if said build worked for you, you could adjust your skills if needed to better suit that build. No matter what, if you don't have the mech levels anyway, you'd still have to gain experience to level the mech. Don't forget about the GXP you'd also have, which could be used as an occasional "quick shift" on a build you like.

On the note of Private matches, you'd have some choices. Go in with the incorrect skills for that build, or you can turn off skills completely leaving everyone in that private match on equal footing. Another option is to create a separate account specifically for themed private lobby matches. I know I once did that for Stock Mech Monday events, and have a second account with nothing but unaltered stock mechs in it. (With the recent changes to the private lobby, I now no longer need said second account, but who knows what I could use it for in the future.) (As a note here, it is not against any rules to own an operate more than one account. Just don't go posting in the forums with them all, especially to try and artificially support a topic.)


For extra experience on a mech, I think it would be wise to have some manner to continue to use that experience. I don't know about you, but I've got tons of mechs that are mastered and just gathering unneeded experience on them as I continue to play them. I wouldn't mind having a reason to continue to work on an already mastered mech. Otherwise, I have nothing to do with the experience that I gain every match I use them in. (And it often it's helpful or wise to change mech experience over to GXP.)

My concept is to continue to have reasons to possibly play a mech. If you aren't using a mech and gaining additional experience, why even bother changing it? Also, the experience needed per skill node shouldn't be that high, probably unlocking a skill node every match to every other match. So, how much of your mech do you see yourself unskilling to reskill somewhere else? Don't know about you, but my mechs really don't change much, so if I do alter something, I'd probably only have a few skills I'd have to alter, not all of them.

My "logic" is based on the fact that you'll always be earning experience on your mechs just from playing the game. Right now, there is only once use for experience gained, and once it's done there is no other practical use for experience gained. So those matches where I'm earning 3,000 exp on my already mastered mech is just "wasted time", as I now have nothing to do with it. Where as, if I lost skill points (or rather, didn't get refunded skill points) when I removed a node, suddenly that 3,000 exp match for my mech can have meaning again.

I'm just thinking this through, and I believe taking back on skills should probably cost you something. If you are playing the mech you intend to change, than you should be able to earn experience fast enough to reskill your mech, especially if you are just making a few slight skill alterations. If you reset your skills back to zero... I don't see why you would need to (at least with what I was looking at with the last PTS). There are some generalist skills you'll always keep.


I think of it this way, most F2P games with experience/skill trees tend to not let you do take backs at all unless you pay real money to do so. As this is not what PGI seems to want (and I applaud them for the less "greedy" path), I do feel that something should be lost for a "take back". Experience seems to me to be the wisest option to charge that fee in, as C-bills are used for just about everything else in the game. Experience, once gained, starts to diminish in value. Once you've hit mastery (currently I should mention), exp on your mech is now meaningless. I'm just thinking that we could provide meaning/value to that once again.


I would now like to remark, what is your take on this? Why are you against such a system? What system would you prefer instead, and why do you feel it is better overall? I don't recall seeing any of that in your previous post to me. I've clearly defined my concept and why I think it would be a good thing for the game. I believe it would balance costs with rewards and provides a reason to continue to earn exp and play a mech. It also provides the Champion with a possible reason to own that, vs just buying the C-bill version. (Right now, if you buy a Champion version of a mech, it's just about a waste as once it's mastered, it's bonus is just useless.)

[soapyfrog]

I am in favour of completely free respec. There is already a c-Bill cost associated with changing your build, there does not need to be more than that. The game should promote player freedom, not tax us constantly for things that just should be fun.

Again it is circular logic that XP needs to be spent on something simply because it exists. It doesn't. No one cares about XP anymore once you hit max level because it doesn't matter, and it shouldn't matter. Literally the only reason it continues to accumulate us so that you can pay MC to convert to GXP and fast level other mechs, if you want; you have the choice to pay money for convenience and reduced grind, which is exactly the free to play model.

As for hostility, I am hostile to your ideas because you want to add a hitherto nonexistent cost to changing builds, which would hurt everyone, which would discourage experimentation, discourage dusting off unused mechs, discourage having FUN in the mechlab, for no tangible benefit excerpt to provide YOU with a carrot to chase that few of us care about.

If respecs are free, however, everyone benefits, even you. The carrot you crave is an illusion your brain is creating, it has nothing to do with the game. Play MWO because it's fun. Don't ask PGI to punish you more with artificial and unnecessary grind: just play the game. Most of all, don't desire that other players be punished just because they like using the mechlab more than you. Their fun us not wrong. And if you really need that artificial carrot maybe PGI can charge XP for cosmetics or titles or some other thing you can chase.

[Tesunie]

soapyfrog, on 24 March 2017 - 11:53 PM, said:

I am in favour of completely free respec. There is already a c-Bill cost associated with changing your build, there does not need to be more than that. The game should promote player freedom, not tax us constantly for things that just should be fun.

Again it is circular logic that XP needs to be spent on something simply because it exists. It doesn't. No one cares about XP anymore once you hit max level because it doesn't matter, and it shouldn't matter. Literally the only reason it continues to accumulate us so that you can pay MC to convert to GXP and fast level other mechs, if you want; you have the choice to pay money for convenience and reduced grind, which is exactly the free to play model.

As for hostility, I am hostile to your ideas because you want to add a hitherto nonexistent cost to changing builds, which would hurt everyone, which would discourage experimentation, discourage dusting off unused mechs, discourage having FUN in the mechlab, for no tangible benefit excerpt to provide YOU with a carrot to chase that few of us care about.

If respecs are free, however, everyone benefits, even you. The carrot you crave is an illusion your brain is creating, it has nothing to do with the game. Play MWO because it's fun. Don't ask PGI to punish you more with artificial and unnecessary grind: just play the game. Most of all, don't desire that other players be punished just because they like using the mechlab more than you. Their fun us not wrong. And if you really need that artificial carrot maybe PGI can charge XP for cosmetics or titles or some other thing you can chase.

Okay. Here is where you have FAILED.

You have failed to present your concepts and ideas (until right now).
You have failed to try and present your concepts and ideas in a manner to try and convince someone else they are a good idea.
You have failed to be respectful, and decided to attack a person, instead of challenging their idea/concept.
You have failed to explain why one presented idea is or is not a good one.
You have failed to add to a debate.

---

You have been hostile to me, because you did not like my concept, but then failed to present your own concept. Believe it or not, I actually would prefer a skill system where one is able to freely move skills around as desired. You did not present this concept, so I could neither agree with you nor disagree with you. Also, PGI seems to have an intention of providing some "oopsie" tax within the skill system (not uncommon for free to play games). My proposal is an "if" they are going to implement some "harmful" tax to undoing skills "this is how I'd like to see it done".

However, you never got to realize that, because you never asked. You didn't debate the concept.

---

You have accused me of providing "circular logic". You seem to think this remark, on it's own and undefined, wins you all arguments and nulls my concept. I am sorry, but that is not true. This is not a remark conductive to a debate, and instead is just a method being used to try and discredit my opinion with no facts or concepts as to why my idea may or may not be bad.

My logic actually was very linear in it's thinking.
- I earn c-bills and experience for every match I play.
- I don't like paying C-bills for skills, as I pay experience for skills as it is.
- I don't like paying C-bills to remove skills.
- I always earn more experience on a chassis as I use it.
- If I had to choose a currency to pay for removing skills, I'd rather pay experience (AKA: lose experience spent on the skill), as C-bills have currently more value and can be used for more things. I can't with experience.

This works off the concept that:
- Experience loses all value once a mech is mastered, and instead just sits there on the mech.
- C-bills retains value, as it is used to purchase many other things and is not limited onto "a single mech".
- There are mechs that contain a bonus (30% Champions, 10% Set of 8 Omnipod sets, etc) to generating experience. This bonus becomes obsolete sooner, as once you master a mech additional experience on said mech is essentially worthless.
- Removing experience from a mech's experience pool provides experience with some limited value, even after mastery of a mech.
- I'll always earn additional experience, just by playing a mech. This now provides a reason to continue to play a mastered mech, beyond just performance of said mech and enjoyment of the game.

So, overall, my concept has some rather sound reasoning and logic. One part of the concept flows into another, and provides new and added meaning to owning some specific mechs (Champions).

Now, if you wish to counter my concept, please inform me where you feel my concept is wrong.

---

So far, you have decided to treat me unfairly based on a concept I presented. Instead of trying to convince me that my concept is wrong, or that another concept could be better, you have instead decided to just throw anger and hostility onto me. Instead of trying to convert someone over to your concept, becoming another supporter and voice for PGI to hear, you have instead tried to deny me. This means (by logical reasoning), that you leave my concept open to be accepted by others instead, and to possibly grow in more voices for PGI to hear. You have decided to, instead of addressing the concept and me, leave me alone to be another voice for PGI to listen to. Another concept that PGI may choose from.

By your actions, you have logically just informed me that you don't mind PGI considering my experience "oopsie tax", as you've certainly made no attempt to make me rethink my concept.

This is suppose to be a debate. You don't seem to be debating here. You seem to be trying to place demands and decrees.


I have been very polite and nice to you. I see no reason for you to be hostile to me. We can easily discuss this still.

[soapyfrog]

Tesunie, on 26 March 2017 - 05:21 PM, said:

Now, if you wish to counter my concept, please inform me where you feel my concept is wrong.

Sure!

Experience has one purpose, and that is to level your mech. Once your mech is leveled, it might as well stop accruing (and in fact in your typical level based game, MMO or otherwise, that is usually what happens).

Now, in MWO they borrowed the concept from World of Tanks that your XP that is accrued after levelling is complete is retained and can be converted to GXP with MC as a convenience so you can level other mechs faster.

So that is why you are still gathering XP.

To say that you need an additional xp sink to encourage you to generate more xp is circular logic. You want a reason for having the XP so you invent an arbitrary need to spend it. But in fact we do not need this "second currency" at all, especially not to create a completely unecessary additional grind... there is no need to add "limited value" to extra XP by creating an artificial need for it. It might as well not exist, but for (as I said) the facility of converting it to GXP to reduce the grind on other mechs.

Even worse, XP is mech specific, meaning if I have something additional after finishing levelling that requires spending XP I must spend XP from that specific mech (which takes a variable amount of time) or spend real money for GXP.

That means any mech that I have finished leveling but which has little excess XP on it requires a time commitment every time I want to change my skill tree. It would be preferable (though still not desirable) if I could throw c-bills at it instead, since those are pulled form a common poolthat are not mech specific, and thus (unless I am very poor) no immediate time penalty is applied.

But why even charge c-bills for respec? It is a flat penalty to experimentation, which already carries with it (usually) some equipment cost. There is no persuasive reason to add additional costs to playing around in the mech lab. There is no persuasive reason to punish players who want to change their build for a private lobby one off, or for players who just like to tinker constantly with their mechs whether they play those mechs or not.

Who is harmed by such an addition, and who is helped?

Harmed: everyone, because costs go up and time or money sinks are added to the simple fun of mech customization
Helped: people who are bothered by having extra xp on their mechs and/or people who feel like they have too many c-bills

From a personal perspective, XP represents above all your time spent in the game and to lose it for any reason is simply not acceptable to me and to have to repurchase something you already had (as was proposed in the last skill tree PTS) is doubly unacceptable. The fact that you lose money when switching endo, ferro, double heat sinks and artemis on or off is bad enough, there should absolutely not, in my opinion, be more mechanics like that added in the game.

[Ockish]

You bought mech's instead of modules, ... is the new system taking your mech's away?
No.