Arkhangel, on 09 March 2017 - 11:05 PM, said:
and in all honesty, we're all here to use stompy robots to blow up other stompy robots alongside the rest of our team of stompy robots. vast majority of our time isn't going to be spent mucking around with the skill tree anyways.
That is absolutely true, and that's why I, for one, am not saying that the skill tree will kill the game. However, we all play the game for fun, and there are dozens factors contributing to it. All the little things matter, when combined. The ability to play many different mechs without feeling gimped (it doesn't matter if you are actually gimped or not; if you feel that way, the fun is out!). The ability to experiment with various loadouts freely.
I have played a number of MOBA-type games centered around driving or piloting various tech. I like this genre and I've tried: World of Tanks (for a pretty long time and spent some money on it); War Thunder; Fractured Space; Armored Warfare; World of Warships; Star Conflict; probably something else that I've forgotten. Some of these games are immediately more fun than others, but after playing for some time and getting my skill to medium level I start to see the problems with the game. Some games become outright boring; others expose various issues that slowly reduce the fun I get from the game over time. World of Tanks took hold of me for the longest times of all the games, but it has overwhelming issues that have not been addressed in two years so I can no longer enjoy the game.
I have not played MWO
that long (about 4 months since February 2016; and about 4 months since November), but for the moment it is by far the most fun game of this genre that I've played. It's dynamic; the maps don't have predefined "lanes" that you absolutely must take or be destroyed; MWO encourages experimentation and improvisation - both in loadouts, and in how you play the maps, movement patterns etc. But above all, MWO is fun regardless of whether you win or lose, and even the drops where I personally did poorly are often fun still. Which is false for so many other games. I like MWO and I want it to retain the qualities that set it above other similar games. As I said, the little things matter. So no, the skill tree itself will not kill the game but if people get upset they will leave. And it doesn't even matter if they're upset for a good reason or not.
Blockpirat, on 10 March 2017 - 12:15 AM, said:
Here's an email I just sent to PGI support:
Well done. Vote with the purse, that's how business understands it best.
Edited by DavidStarr, 10 March 2017 - 12:34 AM.