392 replies to this topic

[Lucky Rookie]

So1ahma's skill tree design:

[AureliusDean]

How long should I hold on to my refunds before I start tweaking my tiny little stable?

[Wintersdark]

AureliusDean, on 10 March 2017 - 05:48 PM, said:

How long should I hold on to my refunds before I start tweaking my tiny little stable?

Why hold on to them at all?

[Bud Crue]

AureliusDean, on 10 March 2017 - 05:48 PM, said:

How long should I hold on to my refunds before I start tweaking my tiny little stable?

Depends on the mechs. Some folks insist that PGI will be doing nonstop monitoring and buffing of mechs and weapons folling the institution of the skills tree. Such passes will likely be directed to buffing under performing mechs that they are planning on nerfing as pert of the skills tree. It is impossible to know how PGI will buff (or nerf) any particular mech so if the mechs you have are quirk dependent I would hold off "tweaking" them for at least a month to see what PGI initially does.

If on the other hand your mechs are NOT quirk dependent, then I would go ahead and skill them out at your convenience. While it is certainly possible and in fact likely that PGI will be doing performance passes to weapons systems, particularly in light of new tech, it is impossible to guess how those passes will affect specific mechs, so there is no point in trying to anticipate it.

[SuperFunkTron]

Lucky Rookie, on 10 March 2017 - 05:41 PM, said:

So1ahma's skill tree design:

What I see here is essentially the "linear model" people have been requesting. While its nice in concept, So1ahma says himself that certain areas would need to find ways to adjust cost to improve balance. I think So1ahma's idea really adds more background into how PGI ended up at the system that they did, especially with some of the info they gave during the NGNG discussion today.

The weapons trees being separated in his example bring us back to the PTS 1 model which encouraged boating more than the PTS 2 variant.

All in all, I could see So1ahma's tree looking like early sketches and ideas PGI probably played with at the beginning of their work on this, long before they realized how many different things they need to put in the tree and how to prevent people from grabbing all the power nodes and making ultimate mechs rather than needing to specialize in 1 or 2 areas or choose to be mildly buffed across all the areas.

[SuperFunkTron]

AureliusDean, on 10 March 2017 - 05:48 PM, said:

How long should I hold on to my refunds before I start tweaking my tiny little stable?

If its weapons quirks on a mech that you are worried about, doing a respec of that tree (likely a partial respec since things like range, heat dissipation, and cool down won't change much) won't really cost much to do. They are already down to 45,000 c-bills per node and may drop even lower than that before launch.

[Vashramire]

Too much bloat in the trees and far too many points to spend. If the barrier for entry for new players wasn't high enough already, wait till they find out they have 91 points to literally throw away and waste money and XP on as they try and learn the game. Even Warcraft cut down their skill trees (for better or worse) and cut out all the tiny incremental +1% stats for things that feel impactful. They even cited that spending points felt underwhelming, much like this skill tree.

[Domenoth]

SuperFunkTron, on 10 March 2017 - 06:04 PM, said:

The weapons trees being separated in his example bring us back to the PTS 1 model which encouraged boating more than the PTS 2 variant.

You did watch the video right? Because your description here makes it sound like you didn't.

If I take 12 Medium lasers, I get 12 Firepower nodes. If I take 6 Medium Lasers and an AC/10, I get 24 Firepower nodes. If I take 3 Medium Lasers, 1 AC/10, and 1 SRM 4, I get 36 Firepower nodes.

How does that system promote boating?

[Wintersdark]

SuperFunkTron, on 10 March 2017 - 06:07 PM, said:

If its weapons quirks on a mech that you are worried about, doing a respec of that tree (likely a partial respec since things like range, heat dissipation, and cool down won't change much) won't really cost much to do. They are already down to 45,000 c-bills per node and may drop even lower than that before launch.

And there's only a cbill cost the first time you unlock the node. Respeccing afterwards only costs XP, and less than the original purchase XP cost.

[AnTi90d]

Lucky Rookie, on 10 March 2017 - 05:41 PM, said:

So1ahma's skill tree design:

PGI claimed they talked with Solahma and considered his ideas..

.. then they said that his FIrepower idea would incentivize boating..

which proves that PGI didn't even consider Solahma's idea, nor did they even take more than a cursory glance at it.

http://i.imgur.com/W0YT13k.png

In that system, it would be incredibly easy to maintain balance between crap-mechs and meta-mechs in the same weight class. Just give underperformers that have low mounts / few hardpoints / multiple types of hardpoints a higher Firepower value until they aren't underperformers. If there are overperformers, reduce their Firepower value.

[Wintersdark]

Domenoth, on 10 March 2017 - 06:29 PM, said:

You did watch the video right? Because your description here makes it sound like you didn't.

If I take 12 Medium lasers, I get 12 Firepower nodes. If I take 6 Medium Lasers and an AC/10, I get 24 Firepower nodes. If I take 3 Medium Lasers, 1 AC/10, and 1 SRM 4, I get 36 Firepower nodes.

How does that system promote boating?

I didn't (not in a situation where I can hear things); but if you only have, say, 12 SP left after investing in other stuff, then you want to only use a single weapon type because you can just cram all those points into (say) lasers, rather than splitting them between 24 nodes? Or are you saying you get extra nodes to unlock for free when you have more types of weapons?

[Domenoth]

Wintersdark, on 10 March 2017 - 06:35 PM, said:

I didn't (not in a situation where I can hear things); but if you only have, say, 12 SP left after investing in other stuff, then you want to only use a single weapon type because you can just cram all those points into (say) lasers, rather than splitting them between 24 nodes? Or are you saying you get extra nodes to unlock for free when you have more types of weapons?

Solahma specifically says you get bonus nodes. If you only equip one weapon, you miss out on points.

EDIT:

Yeah, read Anti90d's post where he provides an image.

Edited by Domenoth, 10 March 2017 - 06:42 PM.

[SuperFunkTron]

Domenoth, on 10 March 2017 - 06:29 PM, said:

You did watch the video right? Because your description here makes it sound like you didn't.

If I take 12 Medium lasers, I get 12 Firepower nodes. If I take 6 Medium Lasers and an AC/10, I get 24 Firepower nodes. If I take 3 Medium Lasers, 1 AC/10, and 1 SRM 4, I get 36 Firepower nodes.

How does that system promote boating?

I missed that part of the explanation, my bad.

After watching that part, isn't that going to add a lot of extra hunting and clicking in this system? There are already enough people complaining about the excess amount of clicking the PTS tree requires and that the tree is to complex and needs to be simplified.

Sa1ohma's got an interesting take on this, but I'm just as happy with the PTS weapon tree as his idea so I don't really see anything really stand out here. Just my opinion though

[Wintersdark]

AnTi90d, on 10 March 2017 - 06:35 PM, said:

PGI claimed they talked with Solahma and considered his ideas..

.. then they said that his FIrepower idea would incentivize boating..

which proves that PGI didn't even consider Solahma's idea, nor did they even take more than a cursory glance at it.

http://i.imgur.com/W0YT13k.png

In that system, it would be incredibly easy to maintain balance between crap-mechs and meta-mechs in the same weight class. Just give underperformers that have low mounts / few hardpoints / multiple types of hardpoints a higher Firepower value until they aren't underperformers. If there are overperformers, reduce their Firepower value.

They talked to him directly, so clearly there was more back and forth there.

Their failure to do what he suggests, however (having read that helps my confusion above) is not that they're ignoring him or not paying attention.

People think not reacting as they like to feedback means ignoring the feedback. There is no coorellation there; you can listen attentively to feedback without doing as people ask.


There are lots of other reasons why they may not have gone with that.

* Redesign cost. They'd basically be starting from scratch all over again, and that would result in months more work.
* UI/database limitations. Can this be done, reasonably?
* Sunk cost. "Sunk cost fallacy" all you want; they've spent a lot of time, and thus money, developing the current system and as such are going to be highly resistant to changing it entirely. While you may hate it, you need to be aware of the realities here. You're essentially asking them to scrap months of work, and waste all that time. Then they'd be making something new, that some people want, but I garauntee you'll still have swarms of angry forumites raving about it, and proposing their own "better" systems.

Remember, while you can readily see lots of people hating the new skill tree system, people all hate it for entirely different reasons; it's just easy to miss that. Things that fix it for Bob make it worse for Alice, and don't help Linda at all.


Disclaimer: This is in no way an indictment of So1ahma's suggestions. I don't know enough about them specifically to make such a claim either way, nor do I know what criteria PGI are pursuing with this beyond wanting to revamp core systems to (according to the designer in the podcast) make future balancing efforts easier. I am in no way arguing about the benefits or quality of So1ahma's work here, pro or con.

[Arkhangel]

@Winter: Yeah... and in all honesty, as i said before, regardless of how many PTSs they ended up doing, not everyone would ever have been happy. ever. Every MechWarrior here's got their own opinions on how stuff should be done, what mechs should be added, what have you. given the actual size of PGI's staff...well... you can't expect miracles. I haven't agreed with everything they've done (looking at you, Khan Mechs), but I'm still sticking with the game because i enjoy it. Hell, half the fun for me is taking a mech people considered an underperformer, or just generally disliked, and coming up with workable builds for it.

should also be noted the guy using the graph back a few pages was probably using one from Steam. not every MWO player plays via Steam, and again, hardly any of us actually frequent the forums either. so you guys claiming to speak for everyone... you aren't. Be pissed at PGI if you want, but it's YOU that's pissed off, don't drag everyone else into it.

[Sereglach]

I'm disappointed that PGI isn't even willing to consider multiple methods of node unlock, one pure (but larger) XP cost to unlock a node and one XP and c-bill method would allow PGI to cover all of their edge cases without issues. At least they're considering more drops to node costs.

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Lucky Rookie, on 10 March 2017 - 05:41 PM, said:

So1ahma's skill tree design:

This basic premise I support 100%, it's basically exactly what people have been asking for. One of the main shortfalls in the current system is the "filler" nodes. PGI knows they're filler and knows they're terrible, but they were directly refusing to consider buffing nodes to make them worthwhile. People wouldn't complain about node investment if they were relevant AND they actually had some respectable value.

The only thing I don't see necessary are the weapon unique trees in his tree. Sticking to one generic firepower tree that effects all weapons equally I think is fair, as long as it's worthwhile and not a mess of filler and/or completely irrelevant nodes to get to what you want. His basic premise in skill tree organization completely covers that flawlessly.

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Regardless, I don't think the added grind or implementing such a system 5 years into the life of the game is going to go over well; and I think PGI is going to suffer dearly for it.

The only thing I'll give them a miniscule amount of credit over is making some attempt (even if obviously talking down to their player base in the podcast) at trying to reign in costs before it goes live. However their skill tree organization is still a mess and the fact that they're just brushing off the feedback with "well we designed it this way and we know better" doesn't help their case at all.

If anything the podcast helped drastically reinforce for me why I haven't spent any money on PGI for almost two years now.

[Marius Evander]

Wish they could merge the missile laser and ac specific buffs in the firepower tree together into 1 set of nodes with 1 of each of the types in them , because right now the firepower tree does nothing to discourage boating.

Also wish they would have made it the more you spend on armor the less you have to spend on mobility and vice versa, which makes sense realistically, more weight in defence, less manouverable and vice versa

Also, everyone who actually bought modules for most of their mechs should now complaoiin this reduced cbill cost is unfair and demand free mech bays so they will have a use for all this cbills were going to have otherwise we're getting shafted by the people who didnt buy modules.

Edited by Cadoazreal, 10 March 2017 - 07:45 PM.

[SuperFunkTron]

Cadoazreal, on 10 March 2017 - 07:43 PM, said:

Also, everyone who actually bought modules for most of their mechs should now complaoiin this reduced cbill cost is unfair and demand free mech bays so they will have a use for all this cbills were going to have otherwise we're getting shafted by the people who didnt buy modules.

Or we could throw the money at variants we don't want so we could complain about having to max them out

[Stitchedup]

If this game dies because of this, big deal Iam pretty sure we will all find the next thing to play. But i do think we should throw some Cbills to past supporters. Big deal if they spend it to buy some new mechs or skill some old ones. The new system favors the new player (which is a good thing) and keep the servers full and easy to get a game which is the only thing that really matters.\
The main thing i liked was the pace of the game and being able to be good in it even with high pings

Edited by Stitchedup, 10 March 2017 - 10:42 PM.

[Blockpirat]

Wintersdark, on 10 March 2017 - 05:14 PM, said:

So, do you have any thoughts on how your situation sits now, given you'll receive enough cbills to master all your mechs, and 20 more?

First of all, this isn't about my personal situation alone. I'm just one of many guys with way too much disposable income who supported PGI in the past and are now slowly burning out due to repeated disappointing design decisions.

When I started playing MWO, /r/mwo already existed and was a place of saltiness and negativity towards PGI. I could see why some of these people were frustrated but thought that their bitterness was over the top. They were "on an island"

Since then I have invested thousands of €uros into the game. I don't regret that. I had a great time and met fantastic people.

However, many little things like the map remakes (who needs visibility anyway?), the minimap (anyone remember the Mappening?) and the sheer amount of Mechpacks thrown at us (Wanna buy a Mechpack?) have slowly changed me.

And it's not just me.

Back then, /rmwo used to be the place of negativity, whereas /r/outreach was the place of white knights defending PGI's actions. I used to be one of them. If you look at /r/outreach today you can see that not just I, but many loyal, long-term customers there have become disillusioned with PGI's business practices and long-term vision for the game.

Regarding the skill tree and the C-bill costs:

I have not yet had the time to watch the full podcast (it's 8:30 in the morning here). If the C-bill costs are actually going down so that previously mastered Mechs can be mastered again even by players with few modules (I had quite a lot of them actually), then that's a good thing.

However, the C-bill costs are not the only problem this new skill tree has. No need to repeat everything here. Just take a look at the countless feedback threads.

When you have seasoned players looking at your mess of a skill tree, saying "Nope, I can't be bothered to click my way through this monstrosity!" and logging out again, then you should seriously reconsider your basic design premises.

I love this game and I want it to succeed. If I didn't care I wouldn't have written forum and Reddit posts, I wouldn't have played so many hours and invested so much money, I wouldn't have spent hours making the video.

So, please, PGI, rethink your design decisions (keeping all types of players in mind), take your time implementing new features, actually consider community feedback, and give as a long-term vision for this game that doesn't simply consist of offering us shiny new Mechs and weapons.