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Reducing The Pain For Mech Rich, Module Poor Players


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#61 Kaeb Odellas

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Posted 13 March 2017 - 11:20 AM

View PostAthom83, on 13 March 2017 - 07:16 AM, said:

Honestly, it isn't that bad. Plus with skills I can overclock the cooldown so I fire a true hailstorm of shells with the new skills, even more than I currently do. My preferred is the DC with twin AC-2s. Yes it will run a lot hotter without skills, but you don't need to invest a whole lot to get some of the skills to help. Another reasons the whining is invalid. You don't have to fully purchase every skill. You can buy 20-40 nodes for a mech and be done with it. If you don't use a mech, why bother fully upgrading it? Why not just upgrade it to the point where you can have fun in it?


Your AC2s aren't going to be firing any faster. The highest the cooldown skills go is 8.8%, so with Fast-Fire gone and the cooldown quirk reduced, your AC2s will actually fire slower than before. The cooldown skills are also scattered all over the tree, so you'll have to spend a lot of points on things you don't necessarily want.

Right now you have 25% ballistic cooldown + 5% Fast Fire = 30% cooldown reduction
After the patch (if they keep the quirk change), it's 20% ballistic cooldown + 8.8% cooldown skill = 28.8% cooldown reduction.

This is even worse for weapons that have a cooldown module, as they'll be losing even more with modules being removed.

Edited by Kaeb Odellas, 13 March 2017 - 11:23 AM.


#62 Athom83

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Posted 13 March 2017 - 11:43 AM

View PostKaeb Odellas, on 13 March 2017 - 11:20 AM, said:

Your AC2s aren't going to be firing any faster. The highest the cooldown skills go is 8.8%, so with Fast-Fire gone and the cooldown quirk reduced, your AC2s will actually fire slower than before. The cooldown skills are also scattered all over the tree, so you'll have to spend a lot of points on things you don't necessarily want.

Right now you have 25% ballistic cooldown + 5% Fast Fire = 30% cooldown reduction
After the patch (if they keep the quirk change), it's 20% ballistic cooldown + 8.8% cooldown skill = 28.8% cooldown reduction.

I don't have fast fire as I don't use multiple mechs of the same chassis. Therefor I will still be firing 3.8% faster than I am currently. Plus, I can get more energy skills, armor skills, sensor skills, etc. Plus, with the mag capacity I can drop a ton from my 4 tons of ammo and add some larger lasers (ML/SPL instead of SL). My point was, I can make my mech better than it currently is in the new system. I'm just tired of people complaining about their "dozens of mastered mechs" and how they'll "lose viability" because they "can't afford to master them all" (direct quotes from these forums, reddit, and steam forums) as they have few modules because they sold the ones they didn't use or didn't bother to get multiples as they could swap them between mechs, when I (and others) are sitting here without any mastered mechs because we don't like the idea of being forced to purchase the same mech with a slightly different loadout. Besides sucking it up and purchasing 2 mechs we would almost never use, there was no way we could directly face a fully mastered mech with the same loadout in the same mech. (For the sake of the argument, don't say "but you can with skill" as for the sake of the argument say the two pilots were exactly the same in skill and playstyle). My point was, you don't have to hash out the full 91 nodes. You just have to invest enough to have fun. And while having a full 91 node loadout would be more fun, you can still have fun with a partial loudout with 30 or so nodes.

#63 Kaeb Odellas

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Posted 13 March 2017 - 11:51 AM

View PostAthom83, on 13 March 2017 - 11:43 AM, said:

I don't have fast fire as I don't use multiple mechs of the same chassis. Therefor I will still be firing 3.8% faster than I am currently. Plus, I can get more energy skills, armor skills, sensor skills, etc. Plus, with the mag capacity I can drop a ton from my 4 tons of ammo and add some larger lasers (ML/SPL instead of SL). My point was, I can make my mech better than it currently is in the new system. I'm just tired of people complaining about their "dozens of mastered mechs" and how they'll "lose viability" because they "can't afford to master them all" (direct quotes from these forums, reddit, and steam forums) as they have few modules because they sold the ones they didn't use or didn't bother to get multiples as they could swap them between mechs, when I (and others) are sitting here without any mastered mechs because we don't like the idea of being forced to purchase the same mech with a slightly different loadout. Besides sucking it up and purchasing 2 mechs we would almost never use, there was no way we could directly face a fully mastered mech with the same loadout in the same mech. (For the sake of the argument, don't say "but you can with skill" as for the sake of the argument say the two pilots were exactly the same in skill and playstyle). My point was, you don't have to hash out the full 91 nodes. You just have to invest enough to have fun. And while having a full 91 node loadout would be more fun, you can still have fun with a partial loudout with 30 or so nodes.


You've been playing this entire time without speed tweak our doubled basics? Wow. Props to you I guess?

#64 Kmieciu

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Posted 13 March 2017 - 12:50 PM

View PostPhoolan Devi, on 13 March 2017 - 09:39 AM, said:

lpl range module to max did cost 3,500 gxp which is about 70,000 xp!

Yeah. Except the I could use that module on all of my IS mechs.

#65 Wolf McNish

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Posted 13 March 2017 - 02:52 PM

View Postsoapyfrog, on 11 March 2017 - 09:16 PM, said:

The flawed GXP cost for unlocking in the old system does not somehow justify an endless and longer grind in the new system.

You've already demonstrated repeatedly you are immune to logic, though. The skill tree itself is not really the problem it is the costs and lower costs would be good for absolutely everyone.


That is like saying, the fact that we've been having floods for 3 years in a row isn't an argument for the building of dikes, as they will only prevent a flood with a 98.5% certainty, despite them improving the overall situation.
Logical.........

So no flaws int the system right now do not justify flaws in a certain part of the new system. However, flaws in a current system can justify the switch to a newer less flawed system.

Therefore a comparison between the current system and the new system and a validation of the new system based on the improvements the new system brings over the old system is necessarily valid.

The problem is that you tried to use the two rights don't make a wrong thought as a thought terminating cliche,

The Module unlocking is not the only thing the current skill system is made up of, and not the only problem, so the comparison of the current vs. the new system needs to be on the impact of the system as a whole.

View Postsoapyfrog, on 11 March 2017 - 09:47 PM, said:

Straw man. Lower does not mean free. But even to that point there are better ways to do c-bill sinks.


I think he was just venting his frustrations at you yourself being rather "challenged" with logic there.

The problem is, as I pointed out in another thread that an F2P game needs to be grindy to be commercially successful, and they need that grind to sell us premium time.
It's an inherent design "feature" of every F2P game, as that is how they make money, remember unlike classic MMORPGs, they don't have a subscription cost, so every player, wether he buys, mechs premo time, MC or anything for MC costs money.
So it's in their best interest to create a grind, which is only by the need to not make it too grindy.

The problematic part is like with almost any MMO, we are dependent on them keeping the servers running, unlike with other games like crysis or mods like MWLL.
Once the servers go down, MWO is dead, we can't just use an alternative network and keep going.

So they are dependent on us but we are dependent on them as well.

View PostAthom83, on 13 March 2017 - 05:35 AM, said:

I think quite a few people in this topic are forgetting a major thing (that also makes the OP invalid). Once you purchase a skill for a mech, you keep it forever. There is no cost for removing skills and you don't have to re-buy the skills. You only have to use a little (half the original cost) XP to requip any skill that you removed. For us Mech Poor Module Poor players, it is just fine. I prefer to spend my C-Bills on equipment that I can use on every one of my mechs (I only use IS mechs for reasons). Because of this I have over 150k XP for my Blackjack, and almost as much for my Dragon (which I ended up selling a while ago (Yes I know selling mechs is a "taboo" but Posted Image)). A lot o the people complaining are doing so because they can't afford to "Master" all of thier mechs which were before. And that there will be massive rift in usability between "stock" mechs and "mastered" mechs. But what about everyone who didn't have the liquid in-game income to purchase multiples of a single mech just to "master" it. Were they not facing the odds by being near "stock" against enemies who've "mastered" theirs?

This!

I have more than one mech that is still on basic skills (Atlas, Centurion, Ebon Jag, Hunchie IIC, Highlander IIC) that are still on basic skills, because at the moment there are two barriers to it, C-bills and mechbays.
I have 20 mechbays now (3 from FP rewards, one for that unsellable NCIX mech, 12 bought).
To master the mechs given here I would need a further 15 mechbays, unless I sold other mechs I own, and right now I would like to sell 2 of them, but also regain 1.

So at the moment you have to compete in FP with mechs that are fully skilled.
Under the new System I could skill the mechs in my Drop decks out fully, and could switch tot he mechs necessary, I would not have to run certain builds that don't really work that well in FP just to level them.

View PostKmieciu, on 13 March 2017 - 06:08 AM, said:

I hope you'll enjoy the quirk changes done to those mechs on March 21st.


Come on you can make better arguments, why do you always stoop to the argumentatum ad passiones?

View Postsoapyfrog, on 13 March 2017 - 09:46 AM, said:

Bad things in the old system are not justifications for having bad things in the new system.


Having zero cost to respec is not a problem. There is no reason to penalize people for wanting to change their mech.

Also "used it enough" is ********. You could want to respec before you are even finished getting 91 nodes, or you could want to respec a mech you don't often play, in either case there is no reason for a penalty.

There is no upside to having a respec cost.


For sentence one refer to the first paragraphs of the post please......

For sentence two, I pointed out why that might be a problem for PGI and I why they probably won't let us do that.....

Sentence three, you say there is no reason for a penalty, care to elaborate why.
Athom made a good reason as to why, to make people think about their choices.

It reminds me of AngryJoe complaing in a Risen 2 Review that the game was all about choice and yet it didn't give him enough skill points to let him choose all that he wanted.

Which was the point!

It's like putting a kid in a candy store and say: "you have those two bucks/euros/pounds, now choose something you like."
Instead of saying to a kid in a candystore: "Allright choose what you want, I pay for it."

In case 1, the kid has to think about which candies he's going to get, as he can't get all.
In the second the kid hasn't got to think at all.


View Postsoapyfrog, on 13 March 2017 - 11:06 AM, said:

And MMOs do not have any use for XP (you stop accumulating it!!) at level cap which is where 95% of the actual game takes place.

Also they don't knock you down a level when you respec.

For the rest your post, you are just trundling out a bunch of nonsense logic. Customizing mechs is fun, throwing more barriers in the way of that reduces fun which reduces desire to play which shrinks the playerbase which kills the game.


I think you are talking of an MMORPG or an RPG in that case, and let me explain something to you as a veteran RPG player, who has also played MMORPGs, like Everquest 2, long before F2P, when it was still it's own game.

Skilltree respeccing is a pretty new thing in RPGs, in a lot of the older RPGs you were stuck with your skilltree until you finished the game, or a character as long as it existed.

Which made life pretty interesting, as you had to live with your character's flaws, and from an RPG perspective a character with flaws is more interesting to play, than a perfect character.
As they are their own character and not a cookie-cutter copy of a dozen others.

Which made you think long and hard about your character skill choices, and the best systems never let you made a "perfect" character, as they would invariably be OP.....and really boring.

Funnily the first RPG I can remember that really popularized it was Two Worlds, which isn't a good RPG, as the it's skill system can be abused as hell, making a truly OP character.
So OP in fact, that despite I'm being 80% done with the story, I can't work up the motivation to finish it, as i'm frightfully bored.

Some of the best Rpgs, feature no skill respeccing, which make you think twice about skilling, in a game like this one here, no skill respeccing is not viable, but having a cost to it, might have that function of making people think twice.

And for full honesty's sake, I'm not a big fan of the current skill system, nor of any skill system, I'd rather like it like in the old MW games or MWLL, where the main focus is on the skills of those sitting in front of the screen than the unlocks.

Having none of them would level the playing field between a new player and an old player, as the only advantage that the old player has is the advantage that he has accumulated, only the skills that the player himself have count.

Having an RPG-like skill system in a non-RPG game is pretty much always to the detriment of the new player.
The skills here are a booster, they boost heat dissipation, but they for example don't govern your chance to hit.

RPG-like Skill trees or unlocks are a way to keep the player playing longer for grinding, to have another way of keeping them playing, even if the gameplay isn't that great.

If two players have equal mechs, even if they are unequal in experience, the playing field is more leveled, as the only thing that makes them different is the experience, and that can be gained.

But if you haven an RPG-like system that imbalance that playing field not being leveled is either kept throughout the life of the game or extended.
As the one who started playing first will always have more XP.

And that is why certain games have a level cap, unlike MWO, one where all leveling or XP grinding stops, so that they can create a point where all players are equal, instead of unequal for perpetuity.

Phew long OT thoughtpiece.........I don't like it, but I will try to work with others and PGI to make it better, because wether I like it or not, it's going to be a part of MWO.
And if I want to play, I'll have to deal with it.

View PostAthom83, on 13 March 2017 - 11:43 AM, said:

I don't have fast fire as I don't use multiple mechs of the same chassis. Therefor I will still be firing 3.8% faster than I am currently. Plus, I can get more energy skills, armor skills, sensor skills, etc. Plus, with the mag capacity I can drop a ton from my 4 tons of ammo and add some larger lasers (ML/SPL instead of SL). My point was, I can make my mech better than it currently is in the new system. I'm just tired of people complaining about their "dozens of mastered mechs" and how they'll "lose viability" because they "can't afford to master them all" (direct quotes from these forums, reddit, and steam forums) as they have few modules because they sold the ones they didn't use or didn't bother to get multiples as they could swap them between mechs, when I (and others) are sitting here without any mastered mechs because we don't like the idea of being forced to purchase the same mech with a slightly different loadout. ....snip

View PostKaeb Odellas, on 13 March 2017 - 11:51 AM, said:


You've been playing this entire time without speed tweak our doubled basics? Wow. Props to you I guess?

Yub that is what more than a few of us have done, especially the new players, for whom the new system is supposedly so bad.
BTW Bravo-Zulu for giving him credit.
The problem is that right now, if we have a favourite mech, and we have only one of them, due to any constraint, we might get experience and improve our skills as players, the mech is stuck to be less efficient than it's counterparts.

So despite it's more complex nature, which could be the real problem for new players, especially those without a Battletech Background, I think the new Skill system could be better.

So yes they might be stuck to one mech only for a while, but they will be able to fully skill it out, and learn something from that process..........I don't think they will make the same mistakes twice.

Oh and while a dropdeck of three Atlases is very Lyran, it's not very viable in MWO right now....Posted Image

And if you got through this most Lyran of posts, (in other words extremly long and heavy Wall of text) treat yourself to a PPC Steiner style. ;)

Edited by Wolf McNish, 13 March 2017 - 02:53 PM.


#66 soapyfrog

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Posted 13 March 2017 - 03:09 PM

The problem with the new skill tree is not that it forces hard choices, it's that it does NOT force hard choices.

There are just a few ways to reasonably spec, and for the most part you can get everything you want. The only choices you have to make is about stuff that is quite peripheral to performance of the mech.

Most people would like a tighter skill tree with harder choices.

You and the one other guy who want to force people to pay to respec don't even play the game that much or even dig into the tools that are available to you now, so forgive me if I don't give you a lot credit for wanting everyone to have a more punishing experience, grindwise.

#67 Phoolan Devi

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Posted 13 March 2017 - 03:17 PM

View PostKmieciu, on 13 March 2017 - 12:50 PM, said:

Yeah. Except the I could use that module on all of my IS mechs.


What I wanted to say by that is, that the grind for new players to have mechs with equal values as veteran players is way way lower now. The advantage dor the lesser grind is at some point gone, since you can't swap anymore. But for me not being able to swap is beaten by the opportunity do have more module benefits than I could've had with modules due to slot restriction.

#68 BSK

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Posted 14 March 2017 - 12:50 AM

View PostInsomnium80, on 13 March 2017 - 03:39 AM, said:


You're dreaming of mastering 300 mechs? Go ahead.


I have more than 2 trillion and 2 million [gxp]. But I don't have the motivation to click 54.600 times to skill all my 300 mechs after the reset ..

#69 Kmieciu

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Posted 14 March 2017 - 12:55 AM

View PostKaeb Odellas, on 13 March 2017 - 11:20 AM, said:


Your AC2s aren't going to be firing any faster. The highest the cooldown skills go is 8.8%, so with Fast-Fire gone and the cooldown quirk reduced, your AC2s will actually fire slower than before. The cooldown skills are also scattered all over the tree, so you'll have to spend a lot of points on things you don't necessarily want.

Right now you have 25% ballistic cooldown + 5% Fast Fire = 30% cooldown reduction
After the patch (if they keep the quirk change), it's 20% ballistic cooldown + 8.8% cooldown skill = 28.8% cooldown reduction.

And the BJ-1 was nerfed even further on PTS.
It lost a total of 15% on AC2 cooldown quirks (10% ballistic 5% AC2). It also lost 20% AC2 heat gen.

This mech is not overpowered by any means. In fact, it is almost useless against jump-snipers and high-alfa laser vomit.
Without these quirks, it is not worth using anymore, since any clanner with UAC2s & skill tree will be a better choice.

#70 Athom83

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Posted 14 March 2017 - 04:18 AM

View Postsoapyfrog, on 13 March 2017 - 03:09 PM, said:

You and the one other guy who want to force people to pay to respec don't even play the game that much or even dig into the tools that are available to you now, so forgive me if I don't give you a lot credit for wanting everyone to have a more punishing experience, grindwise.
Yes, I don't have 5000 hours plus into the game as I have a life to get on with. But I do try to play a few hours every other day while taking the occasional month long brake as something new and shiny came out. And me wanting a more punishing experience? No. I just don't want it to be so easy that I can spend an hour in the game and be able to do drastic things. I like having to work for things.

#71 soapyfrog

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Posted 14 March 2017 - 05:27 AM

View PostAthom83, on 14 March 2017 - 04:18 AM, said:

Yes, I don't have 5000 hours plus into the game as I have a life to get on with. But I do try to play a few hours every other day while taking the occasional month long brake as something new and shiny came out. And me wanting a more punishing experience? No. I just don't want it to be so easy that I can spend an hour in the game and be able to do drastic things. I like having to work for things.

Great. And that's not going to change even if my concerns are fully addressed.





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