Conclusion Of Skill Tree Pts - March 8 - 4 Pm Pdt
#361
Posted 12 March 2017 - 12:34 PM
OR
Good vidio.
When talking to the Developers in Vancouver B.C. I sincerely think they are looking to make the game survive and improve. I also believe Russ Bullock
https://twitter.com/russ_bullock
would rather wait until the Skill Tree is perfected, but knows it would take too long. Given the time I actually spent in the Test Server Client, and the time most of the rest of the community spent in it, combined with those that really did test it hard, the data probably inconclusive at best. If they waited six months, there would still need revamping.
Face it !!! (LOL)There will not be sufficient conclusive data until real live drops go for a few weeks.
This sounds weird, but, I think Russel knows he needs the real time feedback he hates the most, "our many gamer opinions" after we "ACTUALLY" Play the tree.
The real problem and technical issue is wading through the refuse to find the proper work a rounds. The most vocal are not always the voice for Mechwarror Online player base.
I do not know how they came to the current tree, but I like the idea of a tree system. I played League of Legends to do some father son bonding with my boy. Their tree system seemed to be very good and fair and I would prefer something more like it, including the separate tree for specialty buffs like how we use modules now instead of mixing them in.
Getting back to Russ https://twitter.com/russ_bullock and Dev crew wanting to make the game to survive, I think the original 3 mech to Master program had more to do money. Doing one Mech and a Skill Tree is for new players (we need them).
While getting new players should mean more money, I believe they are trying to induce new players to be able to buy in and stay in at a lower investment of money and grinding. For those that have alternate accounts ( I used my son's account) it is a tough thing in this game to start fresh. Very much so if you are not already an elite gamer, or have never played a Mechwarrior video game.
I am not saying "Have patience." I am saying "Dunna quit lads."
I will continue to play and believe that I will find my niche regardless of the changes.
#362
Posted 12 March 2017 - 12:42 PM
Dr Angst, on 12 March 2017 - 05:57 AM, said:
Hopefully you will lurk and come back to see the mayhem or not six months from now.
We will all miss your destructive tendencies, excepting when you are on the other team of course.
GL HF o7 Servus
#363
Posted 12 March 2017 - 12:46 PM
23203, on 11 March 2017 - 12:42 AM, said:
uninstall and maybe have a look again in one or two years if still alive as i did at the end of beta.
Dont like pay to win
How pay to win? Cannot fathom. Maybe I have not read the appropriate post?
#364
Posted 12 March 2017 - 01:08 PM
SuperFunkTron, on 10 March 2017 - 05:08 PM, said:
-They explained why they are doing what they are doing (non linear trees, number of nodes, c-bill cots etc)
-As of a few days ago, they decided 45,000 c-bills a node was more appropriate, but stated that it may still come down further.
-They explained that just because people didn't get the response they wanted, doesn't mean that they didn't reed and consider people's posts and ideas. Also that they are much more responsive and to criticism when it is respectfully delivered as opposed to written abuse.
-They said that the version posted on March 21 will not be final but rather a starting point with continued tweaking and adjusting as data comes in to support those changes.
-There was a section discussing the "unequal nerfs" but I came in half way in to that so can't really say much beyond the game not being a direct translation and that the engine decoupling adds to the factors they need to consider when they are setting the new baseline for further analysis and tweaking.
Thanks man.
And for a refresher course lol
Edited by plodder, 12 March 2017 - 01:12 PM.
#365
Posted 12 March 2017 - 01:33 PM
Captain Hawkins, on 12 March 2017 - 12:44 AM, said:
Not saying I agree with everything, but the Initial post is well worth the read regarding the podcast from last night.
https://www.reddit.c...s_bullock_feat/
To me that post was beautifully written and hit pretty much everything right on the head. It's impressive (and a bit sad) that someone who has only been playing the game for 3 months has more insight into the skill tree system and what's going on than the developers themselves.
Even just reading the snips from the podcast (after having listened to the whole thing) just reinforced my belief that PGI has fallen dreadfully out of touch with their own game. The "baby" concept seems to hit most of Russ's ideology dead on (since Russ and Paul seem to micromanage the company terribly). That's not to mention the KISS principle and how truly it needs to be applied to the mess we're being presented with of the skill trees.
While I might not think So1ahma’s concept is perfect, I certainly think it's the best basis that PGI has for fixing the skill trees and make them worth while. After all, every mech has their own entries on the XMLs for quirks, what's adding 1 little line for each variant with the number of nodes one can put into the skill tree(s).
Edited by Sereglach, 12 March 2017 - 02:29 PM.
#366
Posted 12 March 2017 - 01:53 PM
SuperFunkTron, on 12 March 2017 - 10:07 AM, said:
I think we need to start keeping a record of people who say they are done, done buying things, or absolutely hate the new system and see where they are at 1 month, 3 months, and 6 months after implementation.
I think people will vote with their feet, mouses or whatever they vote with on the internet. You may disagree with them but I believe the problem is that having listened to the NGNGtv podcast (stupid cheapskate joke aside) I do not think that PGI presented a coherent rationale for what they were doing. If anything the cheapskate joke was just the icing on the cake of what seemed to be a "la la la, I am not listening!!!!!!" As I said in a post above there are two reactions to that either you say meh I keep playing until I get bored or you throw your toys out of the pram.
Normally I would not be siding with the throwing the toy out of the pram, but I am finding hard not to have sympathy for those that have tried to engage with PGI but they seem fixated with the main tenets of this Skill Tree even though from the podcast they contradict themselves.
The point was people could see this one brewing from MechCon. I remember people analysing screenshots and then going to Russ and saying 100K Cbils per node and 91 nodes and sure enough we were told that is just a placeholder The grind will be just the same.... form then on in when it got released with the same numbers, it gets to be a lack of trust issue. What has been disappointing for me is that I actually like the concept of the skill tree and the cost while still stiff, are kind of bearable but what I think people are objecting to is that like so many of the PTS's I think they pretty much overcook everything, they are poor communicators and lastly they even break their own rationale for doing things. I repeat what I said about Chris's comments on So1omah's skill tree proposal in that he completely misrepresented it in terms of the weapon boating. His comment about min maxing were undermined when he said that the survival tree was often maxed out because people seemed to invest in it despite the nerf to it as well as the fillers which they acknowledge is the approach they are taking no matter what. Indeed Chris stated they did not wan to d a linear tree. It is almost he had no understanding of what he said and its implications. I feel the philosophy that PGI seems to be adopting is to make the game mechanics as complex as possible yet the game play as simple as possible just make it about damage and kills and then for them to stress about the mythical holy grail of balance between two technologies which are completely unbalanced on purpose in 3050s (yes they should have gone for the 3060s as a start date.
Anyway I am repeating myself but needless to say the whole NGNGtv thing seemed like a PR car crash of a damage limitation exercise a kind of how not to do video, which would have been comic if these guys were not serious.
Now don't get me wrong I have had interactions with the guy in charge of the Academy code and he explained a lot of the issue he had in a forum interaction as I ended up play the battle zone in the academy since there was no one on the PTS to play. His answers and rationale was succinct and helpful. I did not get what I wanted but it was clear why I could not.
Now am I quitting? Despite what I have written above NO I definitely am not. This is the only game I play (and it has taken me this long to get this bad at it. I am old and cant fathom any game that does not have real world physics so things like Overwatch while I love the stylisation just confuses my brain. The only other game I play is Total War Series of which I play the turn by turn campaign rather than the real time battles mostly. If I feel like I am not getting the enjoyment out of MWO I'll wait for the MW5 in the hope that they can not really screw up PvE campaign.
Now will as it stands the last time I looked there were around 30K players with at least 10 games playing last season. I suppose I would not expect a massive drop off from that but any drop from 30K player around the world playing this game will hurt and any drop off of people being unconvinced to by mech packs will again hurt the PGI's finances. If you start by pisisng off the players who buy mech packs , needed them to grind old mechs rather than having to buy and grind new ones then you are shooting yourself in the foot.
#367
Posted 12 March 2017 - 02:25 PM
tokumboh, on 12 March 2017 - 01:53 PM, said:
Listen from 21:15 to 26:40. They specifically state that they started with a linear system in the beginning. Take another listen as to the explanation they give because I found it to be sufficient as to why a linear tree wasn't used. In regard to So1ahma's idea with separating the weapons tree, Chris stated that it would result in allowing buffed weapons for all and then supplementing the mech beyond that. That is pretty accurate regarding how his tree functions. They make it pretty clear that they designed the trees in order to prevent people from maxing out the "power triangle" and are even open to forcing more trade off for heavy investment in one tree resulting in less resources for the others.
They go on discussing it up to 37:20 in more detail with more reasoning behind it. You may have missed that section but I feel it was a very clear insight into what they were thinking and why they set it up the way that they did.
#368
Posted 12 March 2017 - 04:24 PM
SuperFunkTron, on 12 March 2017 - 02:25 PM, said:
Listen from 21:15 to 26:40. They specifically state that they started with a linear system in the beginning.
Yes they did they separated all the weapons out so you could invest in pulse lasers or autocannons alone it encouraged boating becuase everyone took survivability and mobility stuff first. Most people went survivability, mobility and then fire power since the gains on the first two far outweigh the Firepower.
it is what I did on the first PTS and when I tried to do offensive first it left me with little mobility and little armour compared to others so unless I was a light or a long range build I would be at a disadvantage coupled with that playing on the PTS basically 4 v 4 descended into brawl relatively quickly. The best brawling won out in each game I played.
When they move the weapon tree into a single sprawl it did nothing to change that dynamic even with the armour number nerfed.
SuperFunkTron, on 12 March 2017 - 02:25 PM, said:
That is pretty accurate regarding how his tree functions. They make it pretty clear that they designed the trees in order to prevent people from maxing out the "power triangle" and are even open to forcing more trade off for heavy investment in one tree resulting in less resources for the others.
Ok here is the yes and no answer. if you go through So1omah approach it was that each mech would have a different firepower tree with a set number of point allocate to it
To say that it would mean that too much investment is placed in the tree would really depend on whether the investment was 10% improvement per node or a 1% improvement per node. It provisioned a level of flexibility that PGI specifically said they did not want to do and hence they represented it as they would in the style that they wanted not as So1omah has indicated in his reddit post and youtube video
https://www.reddit.c...ockup_proposal/
SuperFunkTron, on 12 March 2017 - 02:25 PM, said:
Yes and the argument was bogus the PTS 1 was pretty much a situation whereby you essentially had to take all of operations because of heat and cooldown. you ended up with most of the armour, people tried to get most of the mobility and especially speed before using the rest on getting thing like radar dep and then weapons. The defensive and mobilty was seen by virutally everyone as just more beneficial and even now I look at what I chose when I did the comparisons I though the gains in firepower were meh for the cost. 5% heat gen reduction over the ability to get in and out quickly for everything baring an assault I'd go for getting in and out quickly. it was not the choices which was the problem it was the fact I ended up with a vast number of clicks to make the choice I made when the tree could have been designed in a linear fashion making the choices simpler in the effect of not trying to work around the obstacles
the simple point is that if we had three node one call firepower one called mobility and one called survivability and I could only access two of them I would make a choice, if you make the tree a sprawling mess and game me 300
nodes and told me I could access 91 of them but the one of them was firepower one was mobility and one was survivability and the rest were filler I would still try and access the ones that I think were best for my mech no matter what obstacles you put in my way. trying to nudge my behaviour into an illogical approach will be met with full on resistance so I you only want me to take one tree then you would better limit me to one tree but what they want is for me to limit myself whilst playing a game of fill in the nodes
This is why I think they fail. They explained that I was given a set of rules and I used them and then they said I am unhappy with what you've done so I'll change the rules then I make the same choices regardless of the penalty there must be a strong reason for choosing that approach.
Indeed I must be imagining a linear Tree PTS because I did all the PTS's and none of them were linear trees
Their argument was that philosopical one they wanted players to behave in an certain manner and players did not and their answer was to force player into do things in a certain way and basically player refused. You could hear the tug of war that was going on. It became ridiculous. They could have done this som much easier with less point and less nodes if you want people to make a set of trade off make the tree do that all it did was hide the good stuff behind a node wall of stuff which people did not want such a ECM behind radar dep, why would I want radar dep? Chris himself used the term fillers and indeed he even made it clear it did not matter what the fillers wer they could actually be nothing in the node the point was spending the cost to traverse the tree.
Most of us felt that was a waste of time effort, in skilling up your Mech. It would have been far more useful to have a correctly costed linear tree you could even have restricted the number of nodes not only globally but per tree there could be 8 Info tech node but you could only take a maximum of 3 for example it would have been far more simple easier to modify add to and not create the mess that they have.
What was more annoying was that they talked about min maxing and yet Chris conceded that they could not stop min maxing since the survival tree basically meant that people maxed it out. which contradicted his earlier asertion of people dipping into each tree.
Lastly what they wanted was people to make hard decision on things. I did I went through a light mech my ACH-PRIME where I concentrated on mobility and sensors auxilluray heat and jump jets and left me a little for weapons
My BSX-1 where I maxed armour and operations and had less sensors and looked at making sure a SRM spread and magazine capacity. A did a brawler build CTF-0XP which maxed the ECM part of the sensors and seismic together with extra coolshots and I skimped on mobility just taking the hard brake kenetic burst, but because DPDS was nerfed due to the heat and cooldown general nerfing I change the build to something with 1.4+ heat management raising the engine and changing the MPL to ML and adding more heat sinks . and my assault was the KDK-3 i pretty worked down to radar derp, again all the operations since that is where the bulk ofthe heat management is and went for al the uAC jam chance as far as I can remember.
My point was if you read my post I put up earlier is that the current tree was not a trade off of firepower mobility and survivability much of that is done with your mech itself. If you need high dps as a brawler you don't have enough heat capacity youmake a sacrifice on your loadout since the margins in the skill tree have not enough effect in themselves. What I do fee sorry for is someone whom grinds out 10Skill point worth of XP and C bills and has to spend it. and then go back and try his mech out. at best he feels cheated out of a nights grind since 10 points buys you very little. where as a the old system for a new player 750XP which could be 3 losses got you 5% cooldown for your mech. it made it more playable
The system make little sense in terms of showing progression, they are trying to force you to take suboptimal options they argue against min maxing and then argue against dipping into all trees they have no coherent philosophy it would have been useful to tell us what they wanted us to do with examples but the argument was all over the shop
Lastly here was someone whom actually noterised the whole thing with what I though was the best view of what I heard
https://www.reddit.c...s_bullock_feat/
it is also on this forum.
I have already written too much on this subject and it is way past midnight now but I understand why you are defending this you love the game but from a dispassionate view point. I think they have chose a philosophy and are trying to bend players to their viewpoint. The acknowledge the fillers are fillers so why are they wasting people time and energy with that you could make it 50 nodes out of 150 and keep the total costs the same it just does not make sense to 28 nodes for heat gen of 1% for some people the gain is not enough
#369
Posted 12 March 2017 - 06:14 PM
tokumboh, on 12 March 2017 - 04:24 PM, said:
There are a lot of points to address but I'll keep it to just a few as this has been argued to death.
-Abilities and filler nodes: They intentionally put the most desired nodes at the bottom so that they would require greater investment. That is a means to prevent people from cherry picking all the best abilities and making overpowered machines. As nice as it would be to have full ECM or radar deprivation, Seismic, maxed out weapons, speed tweak, amazing heat efficiency and great info tech, it leads to a stale game when every mech becomes overly capable.
-Size of trees vs. linear nodes. I understand the thought with linear trees and trees that require higher costs for better nodes and even the case for compression of nodes so that there are fewer nodes with a larger benefit. It's nice to see more impact from a single node purchase than having to buy more upgrades in smaller quantities. Your claim of insignificant percentages I feel lacks context. Despite this, I find the larger tree creates more of a spectrum than binary features. Some numbers are small (>1%), but if you consider what they apply to, they tend to be appropriate.
Of course, many players will be maxing out certain abilities on most of their mechs, which is fine. However, there are many players who will actually not prioritize certain "prime abilities" because they don't feel the cost is worth it. They can gain a portion of an ability without having to fully master it. That is what I like about the larger tree. It allows players to choose how far they upgrade on a spectrum, with some variation of the paths they choose to get to those final values. Granted, some trees don't offer much variation in arriving at certain prime abilities at the bottom of the tree, but having the freedom to be able to gain some degree of an ability is really nice.
Those who are looking to max out abilities won't understand it, but there are players who choose to complete only a portion of many of the trees because they feel that a certain amount of an ability is sufficient to their needs and thus have more nodes to place in other places.
-tree coherence: I've been seeing a lot of posts saying that these trees are incoherent and it is making me wonder if I'm autistic because they make sense to me. Highly desirable nodes are at the bottom. A variety of related upgrades are above that. The upgrades closer to the top are used as a means to offer some buffs to a mech specializing in that tree while the highly desirable nodes at the bottom are elite upgrades for that field. It prevents a mech from accumulating an excess of elite upgrades and creating balance disturbances by becoming overpowered.
I could be wrong, but that sounds like a coherent layout with a well defined goal. I do concede that some of those earlier abilities could be made better, and I'm even sure that PGI would like to hear what those replacement suggestions are so that they can improve upon the tree.
We could really have an endless discussion about the different facets of this situation but there's no point to it. I believe that a simple, linear tree system allowed for balance, that it would have been the type of tree we ended up with. I am sure that a lot of thought and consideration was put into trying to find out the simplest way to implement a tree while accounting for all of the balance issues that could arise and find that there is a lot of sense in these trees (even with its admitted short comings). This won't be the end of the tree's development, but offers a step in the right direction and a system that improves on the status quo. Not everyone will see it that way, but a lot is being done both blatantly and subtly and I'm confident that PGI is neither using this to kill the game off nor to harm it.
#370
Posted 12 March 2017 - 06:27 PM
While we dont know for certain, the pod cast smacks of damage control due to people asking for refunds on mech packs which we know some have done. For PGI to do the pod cast means there were more than just a few people.
#371
Posted 12 March 2017 - 07:24 PM
Penang
#372
Posted 12 March 2017 - 07:29 PM
All in all i think the new system is better, mainly because it offers greater flexibility in how your mech performs (exactly what this game is about, and why i was against costs to respec - just limits your ability to modify the mech). Just the costs are still rather astronomical, particularly given you dont get any back if you sell the mech (probably wont happen as often as needing 3 to master, but a big loss none the less).
Honestly if you do nothing but refund some CB allong with the 'old xp' refund, i think you'll have this about right. if you lower the cost to more like 30-40k per node then i think it'll be near perfect.
Just as another suggestion - a progressive cost rate - so that the total cost to fully spec a mech is the same (~5M) but the fist node costs perhaps 1/5th or 1/10th of the last... makes the barrier to entry a bit lower for poor/new players while still providing a cost/CB well.
ultimately however if it does feel too painfull to make headway in the new system then ill just leave. im not a whale, but im not a cheapskate either, having invested somewhere north of $200-300 in the game. I do like this game, more than most, but there's plenty else i can do with my time and money. Put simply PGI, please dont make a molehill in to a mountain.
Edited by I Peed My Pants, 12 March 2017 - 07:35 PM.
#373
Posted 12 March 2017 - 09:37 PM
Dr Angst, on 12 March 2017 - 05:57 AM, said:
I'm glad Mechwarrior Living Legends is back "under construction" so I can get my "robutt-fix" from time to time.
Was fun getting a couple of hundred followers on twitch playing this game but I guess that's history as well now.
Bye.
I tried to get my friends into this game. None of them ever got into it. Too difficult for new players. I stuck with it because I've played since mw2. 637 hours in I'm calling it quits. This patch is stupid. It's not interesting and honestly I'm over the grind.
#375
Posted 13 March 2017 - 01:10 AM
I Peed My Pants, on 12 March 2017 - 07:29 PM, said:
All in all i think the new system is better, mainly because it offers greater flexibility in how your mech performs (exactly what this game is about, and why i was against costs to respec - just limits your ability to modify the mech). Just the costs are still rather astronomical, particularly given you dont get any back if you sell the mech (probably wont happen as often as needing 3 to master, but a big loss none the less).
Honestly if you do nothing but refund some CB allong with the 'old xp' refund, i think you'll have this about right. if you lower the cost to more like 30-40k per node then i think it'll be near perfect.
Just as another suggestion - a progressive cost rate - so that the total cost to fully spec a mech is the same (~5M) but the fist node costs perhaps 1/5th or 1/10th of the last... makes the barrier to entry a bit lower for poor/new players while still providing a cost/CB well.
ultimately however if it does feel too painfull to make headway in the new system then ill just leave. im not a whale, but im not a cheapskate either, having invested somewhere north of $200-300 in the game. I do like this game, more than most, but there's plenty else i can do with my time and money. Put simply PGI, please dont make a molehill in to a mountain.
I would agree with this to some extent i think we should definately be seeing a c-bill refund for one time only for the mechs we have at current levels.
Take for example my Firebrand, i have a glut of XP on it as i drive it a lot currently 245,700 xp and its been mastered for years. I would say its fair to get the required 5,460,000 cbill refund to bring back to mastered level for once only and any respeccing after that i have to pay for. Fair enough.
Now lets take my Rifleman 3C that is only just elited, i think its fair that i should receive 'just enough' cbills to bring that back to elite. lets say two thirds of the 91 requirement so around 3,600,00 give or take.
Now you could argue this cbill pay wall is as a result of removing the three mech requirement so i would say its also fair (maybe instead of what I've just said) to get a refund on any of the variants that i have sold after basicing them to elite or master the one. This would be problematic for some chassis say that are good performers, for example i own all centurions bar the AL (previously owned however) and all the locust's bar one of them and a good few blackjacks. So i own more than three variants of a specific chassis in several cases so i shouldn't see a refund. But i have only kept one mech of certain chassis the aforementioned firebrand, a Huggin, a griffin 2N to name a few so should i get a refund on the other two variants i sold in due course. (When i say a refund i mean the standard cbill cost).
However if i want to buy a new mech that I've not had before or really don't currently own either i should have to start from scratch.
Edited by mad kat, 13 March 2017 - 01:13 AM.
#376
Posted 13 March 2017 - 02:17 AM
tokumboh, on 12 March 2017 - 01:53 PM, said:
I know that Steam doesn't include all the players in this game but these numbers speak for themselves:
http://steamcharts.com/app/342200
#377
Posted 13 March 2017 - 02:55 AM
Dr Angst, on 12 March 2017 - 05:57 AM, said:
Same thoughts. It was a good time, but everything that has a beginning, has an end. While the devs are deaf to the community, I'm not gonna play this game ever again.
#378
Posted 13 March 2017 - 09:00 AM
I looking forward the skill tree, as it brings a change. And i found the remastering complaints a bit funny, as I mastered at least half of my mech purely out of necessity to be able to play the one I really like at top performance.
I have most of my mech mastered, and I not intend to master half of them again, as I'm fairly sure I won't play them. I could sell them for money, but I prefer to keep them in case they just get a new quirk overhaul, or later on the skill tree mechs could get a personalized skill tree too, to add flavor to variants.
#379
Posted 13 March 2017 - 09:01 AM
Personally, I say I'm glad it's about to go live, especially since I've been waiting for this for a long time and I want to get to it. I can't help but feel that most of those who are saying not to let it go live yet are just afraid of the changes it will make to their live mechs and their environment and just want to keep delaying it to remain in their comfort zone as long as possible.
Bring it on.
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