1
So1ahma’s mockup which I’ll reference a couple of times : https://www.reddit.c...ockup_proposal/
Pardon for the terrible layout of this, it looked better when I typed it all out, but a lot was lost from the document to this.
Hi,
Since I can’t seem have a conversation with either of you, I’ve decided to use this convoluted way to formulate a reply; using quotes and timestamps. I will go in order of the issues said on the podcast, before going to my conclusion of the entire thing. I took most of my Saturday afternoon to write this up, so I’d appreciate it if it didn’t disappear into oblivion unread.
Chris Lowrey is one of the game designers working on balance for the game.
Russ Bullock doesn’t really need an introduction.
First thing’s first;
Balance :
Quote
7:25 – Chris : “the first point is that what I’m really trying to push forward is improving the currently underutilised equipment and options” And Chris makes an example of machineguns, and not everything being as easy as some XML changes and there is a focus on improving the stuff currently present in the game.
Alright, I can agree with this, some things will always be more or less powered, and making stuff like flamers something viable can always be fun for the players who enjoy these weapons.
Quote
8:00 – Bombadil : … Quirks, new tech coming down the road and things like engine desync, mobility …
8:43 - Chris : “So Quirks aren’t going away, they’re going to stay where they are but we’re going to be bringing down offensive quirks a little bit, you know, and I’ve seen the feedback in regards to that decision, but ultimately I feel it’s important that we kind of stick with that mostly because we need to get to balancing some baseline system that aggravate some stuff at the top, as well as the fact that we’ve got new stuff coming pretty soon so we really need to make a push to get some baseline balance to the stuff that’s already in the game because we don’t want to introduce new stuff that is going to massively disrupt things, …” TL;DR : basically, Chris wants to balance old mechs towards the new technology coming in the future.
8:43 - Chris : “So Quirks aren’t going away, they’re going to stay where they are but we’re going to be bringing down offensive quirks a little bit, you know, and I’ve seen the feedback in regards to that decision, but ultimately I feel it’s important that we kind of stick with that mostly because we need to get to balancing some baseline system that aggravate some stuff at the top, as well as the fact that we’ve got new stuff coming pretty soon so we really need to make a push to get some baseline balance to the stuff that’s already in the game because we don’t want to introduce new stuff that is going to massively disrupt things, …” TL;DR : basically, Chris wants to balance old mechs towards the new technology coming in the future.
Here is where I blatantly disagree with Chris. You are making underperforming mechs perform even worse by lowering their quirks, and mechs which are in a good spot without quirks, will perform even better. That is not balance, you’re working against the earlier implemented quirks and boosting the mechs that didn’t need quirks anyway.
Plus, “Balancing towards the future”? What good does that do to me NOW? Are you going to make some of my underperforming mechs even worse because there’s a chance that the new technology in about 4-5 months time will make it too powerful? That’s something you deal with when the technology comes out and during the development cycle of said technology, NOT when the nerfs affect the mech as it is.
Quote
My question I asked in chat : “Quirks. Why did some mechs get their quirks nerfed in the PTS making them worse, while quirkless mechs such as the Night Gyr and Kodiak gain free quirks? “ Phil interjects stating the Kodiak and Night Gyr were affected by the mobility change, that the Kodiak was brought down to Atlas level in mobility
Phil, you changed my question to something that does not matter to the question at hand, I don’t appreciate that. ; which is beside the point of the question. Everything was affected by the mobility change, while only some specific mechs had their offensive qualities lowered. [Example : Summoner went from 30% UAC Jam chance to 20%. 5% could be gained from skills. End result : Kodiak : 5% UAC Jam chance – UP From 0%; Summoner : 25% UAC Jam Chance – DOWN From 30%]
Quote
At around 13:30ish - Chris : “The PTS and the current iteration aren’t 1 to 1”
I would surely hope it isn’t, otherwise you wouldn’t be in this for so called “Damage control”.
Quote
14:30 - Sean : “It brought down some mechs which were overperformers”
Once again, my question was regarding the UNDERperformers, not the overperformers. I don’t care that the Kodiak got its mobility nerfed when it’s weapons are getting quirks from the skill tree, and my summoner is worse off than it is currently because the quirks on my summoner were nerfed. Once again, beside the point; a lot of mechs such as the Summoner and Dragon had their offensive quirks lowered, and neither of those mechs were overperformers. The question was skewed towards the engine desync which was not the main concern is said question.
Now I’m skipping most of this, since this is about the engine changes and the like, which is not one of the focusses I want to go into for my reply. Chris will boost underperformers where necessary, or so he says at 17:20ish.
Quote
17:35ish - Bombadil asks Russ for any announcements for new tech:
Russ : “March 14th will be the announcement of a major update for Mechwarrior Online coming later in the summer, it will also include information on this whole technology timeline stuff, as well as the new mechpack that goes along with that; all that is set for around a summer release”
Russ : “March 14th will be the announcement of a major update for Mechwarrior Online coming later in the summer, it will also include information on this whole technology timeline stuff, as well as the new mechpack that goes along with that; all that is set for around a summer release”
Ofcourse, got to bring some new stuff to distract from the actual subject- Look! Shinies! Don’t look here, look there! Wooooowwww!! ….. Make these announcements at the end, not in the middle of something.
18:34 – Bombadil : Moving into the big topic, the Skill tree, Overall goals with the skill tree :
Quote
19:05 - Chris : “There is a lot of moving parts to the current skill tree, and why we’re looking forward to introducing it to everyone. The main thing that we’re trying to do is, kind of a ‘Take the old pilot lab everyone knows we’ve had since open beta and kind of have a bit more ownership in how you basically customise the amount of skills that you put in to help supplement the role of your mech on the battlefield” … “We want to have the skill tree to be a vehicle to pick what general roles you want to occupy in the match. Whether you want to focus more on offensive, defensive or mobility or some of the other supplementary aspects.”
And that is how you ended up with a massive skill tree, with an optimal number of 91 skill nodes? Please. If you want people to make actual important choices regarding to their role, offer specialisation options instead of the “Find the best meta use of the limited amount of points, while taking the least amount of dumpster-quality nodes to get to the good stuff”.
Quote
21:25 – Chris’s thoughts on a more linear tree : “Well, we started the entire PTS process with a bit more a linear tree, with all the weapons basically broken up, but a lot more kind of linear choices, with many of the other kind of branches that go down and everything. And one of the big things, that went against what we’re trying to do is, you know, people are basically picking only a few things from every tree for the one thing that they basically want to add to their mech and just running with kinda everything, and even within some of the linear trees that I’ve been monitoring on reddit and the forums [Bombadil : including So1ahma’s]. Now so like, the big thing that we want, is to basically for investments to actually be towards more general roles and not necessarily cherry picking exactly what you want from every single thing and just really trying to find a place how that mech is going to operate in the match. So taking the weapon tree for example right now, in order to say, cherry pick a heatgen or cooldown node, currently you have a 28 point investment to do it and the reason we’re doing this is because we really want to make sure that especially for those high value nodes, that it really is a significant investment in order to acquire those nodes. But then after you pretty much make that significant investment to get those things, a little bit easier to kind of branch out and get things that occupy the general space of those trees to basically represent so where as heatgen or cooldown maxed out in the current tree would take you 28 nodes, just for an individual one, you get both of them is only about a 35 nodes or something. So the cost of actually specialising from all those skills in the trees, comes down to that. It’s one of the main differences or reasons why we don’t go with a linear tree. With a linear tree, you can basically pick what you want, but then in order to get something within the similar feel, essentially doubles or triples the cost so what we were finding players doing in the original PTS, is that they would only go for that one thing they really wanted, and then would just take those points and dump them into another tree which is more of a give and take than the system we’re putting forward.”
Now Sean goes on about the first PTS and how it promoted more boating, because you had to dump into one tree other than ……..
Now Sean goes on about the first PTS and how it promoted more boating, because you had to dump into one tree other than ……..
Factually wrong. The first PTS was not Linear in any way, shape or form. You reference So1ahma’s amazing work, and place upon that your gathered data which is not compatible. I can clearly see you did not read what So1ahma intended, and instead applied your own idea of “Oh we already tested this and it didn’t work.”. There is a reason why I consider So1ahma’s work a good starting point, and your implementations of the tree have been a lacklustre mess of nodes.
Quote
Chris : “We want people to think about the general roles they bring to the battlefield, and that includes the roles where they just might not consider going down the offensive tree at all. Like we’re trying to balance all the trees to kinda have a balance between those mechs that have no skills whatsoever and obviously as we introduce more mechs we’ll pickup a new chassis, and still be content with dropping against mechs which have been skilled up. The costs do matter, and if we breakoff the weapons tree in its own separate tree, it will lay more of a focus of ‘weapons are going to be equal across the board for the most part’ and then it really just becomes a focus on these supplementary skills and that’s not what we really want. We want that to take away from other aspects, like investing heavily into survival, it comes with a cost. So we really want players to basically be thinking about the roles that they are occupying within the battlefield and being able to cater their dives into the skill tree to go towards these general roles ‘cause most of the customisation and min-maxing will come from the mechlab anyways."
You are making unskilled mechs worse than they already are, you are not making players think about their optimal roles, you’re forcing them to find an “optimal” path through a mess of nodes, giving the illusion of choice.
Forced and filler nodes :
Quote
28:24 – Chris : “Let’s take a step back from that, and talk just about the general node costs themselves. We balance each of the individual trees more around the high value nodes instead of the filler nodes and whatnot. If you say, ‘remove hillclimb because it’s not providing an effect, it would probably be replaced with something else ‘cause that individual tree has basically been balanced around the cost to get to those high value nodes …”
Chris and Russ, at this point, it was already clear to me that this entire skill tree concoction is “your baby”; and you’re going to do everything you can to make people accept the glorious “baby” and everything will be fine and amazing and- No. You can’t make adjustments to the nodes, as the system itself is flawed.
As a great teacher and mentor of mine once said: “Kill your babies.”, if an idea is so precious and perfect to you, then you should scrap the idea entirely. You will never make this “baby” work as you want it, as perfect as it may seem to you. You’re a slave to your own idea, and this “baby” is forcing your thinking into a narrow box surrounding said idea. Destroy the idea, think outside of the box and look at other options which work better than what you’re currently trying to make work.
The very number of skill nodes you have designed should be clear proof of that, nobody in their right mind would say it’s a good idea to have 91 skill points littered across all sorts of different trees with crap filler nodes in between; it simply does not work. It is a mess to look at, it is a mess to navigate, and it’s a mess to keep track off. Scrap this idea before it’s too late, take another example as a basis and work from that; So1ahma has done a LOT of work for you, reiterate the entire skill tree with So1ahma’s work as a basis, and expand upon that. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but it’s a manageable and clear system where adjustments are easily made, unlike your system where you’d have to find different filler nodes if people are complaining about hill climb.
Make stuff like hill climb an easily accessible option incase people want it, don’t make it a forced choice; same goes for AMS overload or falling damage. If I want it, I’ll take it, don’t force it upon me just because I want some higher armour plating.
Quote
30:10 – Bombadil’s frustration : “People are essentially saying ‘I want X skill, for whatever percentage of my skill points, and they don’t want the filler or whatever nodes in there, they just want the node they want’ I don’t understand that, if you’re getting the skill you want for X amount, one way or the other the same percentage of your skill points, one way is just the skill, the other way is the skill plus some filler … Why does it matter?”
Looking at this, I understand where Bombadil is coming from. Who in their right mind would not want free stuff with their perk?
The fuller answer has more to do with the entire design of the tree; there is little sense of choice to get somewhere. I’m not given a choice, I’m being forced down a predetermined path to get where I want to go; if I want armour hardening, on a mech which does not have jumpjets and does not have AMS, why do I need less fall damage or an AMS overload? It does absolutely nothing for me, aside from increasing the frustration of knowingly having to select something which does not matter at all to me.
This frustration is not present in a tree such as So1ahma’s concept, where I can make a clear and precise choice for what I want, when I want it. I choose to go into radar deprivation, and then I move towards the ECM boosting nodes or even sensor range; I have selected what I want in just a couple of clicks. Then it gives me a meaningful choice between choosing radar deprivation and something else, because all the starting paths are equal.
If I play a brawler, I want radar deprivation so I can take cover more easily before being highly damaged or destroyed before reaching my optimal range. In this case, I don’t have any need for sensor ranges, or any of the sort.
If I play a long-range distance scout, I will go into sensor range, target retention, target data, … to relay the information to the team. Already I will have less points to spent elsewhere, so the system balances itself out. Unlike yours.
Currently, if I want ECM, I have to drag myself down the tree, taking a bunch of filler nodes which don’t matter to me, to get something I do want. Once again, an illusion of choice is being created. What if I don’t need radar deprivation because I’m getting ECM? Where is my choice? Where is my customisation? Where is my specialisation? All I see is “Try to find the optimal route through the maze and do this for every mech you own”.
Quote
33:50 – Russ : “It is a min-max mentality, some players have a lot more of it than others. It’s always supposed to be about ‘Tradeofs’. People have been talking for a long time, about wanting to have increased time-to-kill, and things like this. And also, we’ve had a conversation before like there’s a common sense in it, the triangle of mobility, firepower and protection. Like that’s an accepted notion of balance that a mech should have a speciality on various areas of the triangle, or mediocre in all three, there’s a number of ways that you could that, but you don’t have good balance when there’s a mech that has top protection, top agility and top firepower. And we’ve seen that with certain mechs that have had that, that’s why they become very powerful. So the notion of the skill tree, I know that people ultimately say ‘I want everything, I want to be top performing in firepower, agility and protection’ and the trees, I believe, were designed through some feedback in the player base, through the initial two PTS’s to be less min-maxed, to be less capable of creating that situation and more geared towards trade-offs. So if I go all the way to the bottom to the protection tree and get all the protection possible, I might not have enough points to go right to the bottom of the other two aspects of that pyramid, and that’s the goal. In fact, I am open for Chris and the other people working on this, to further explore that notion of taking that concept even further. We can have the roles, like an Atlas which is literally a tank, and then you have someone else who has gone the opposite way and it’s going to feel different and I think there’s a lot more opportunity here to for things to feel a lot different on the battlefield when you see a particular chassis, you don’t just know for sure that he’s got this exact build, and this exact combination of modules and that’s just the way you run one of those mechs. I think the tree is supposed to create a lot more trade-offs, and a lot more of that kinda situation. I just think there’s a lot of players out there that are onboard with that and they’re excited to try that, but there’s a section of players that aren’t and will never be because they’re not really for the entire concept of trade-offs kind of mentality but more of a ‘let me cherry pick exactly what I want’. We’ve seen that with the module system, if you’re not building your mech exactly like this and not cherry picking these exact things, that’s all anyone will ever do and it doesn’t really become much a skill tree. I wish we could even go further with that concept if possible. Choose which cherry you want to specialise in but anyway that’s my thoughts on it. ”
Your skill tree does not accomplish the goal you have in mind, you’re making every mech which has taken radar deprivation similar to any other mech which has taken radar deprivation; you are placing a further emphasis on the “meta”-builds, by making an obnoxiously large skill tree where it’s going to be a meta system of “How to navigate the tree to get most of the good stuff with least of the bad stuff”. You’re failing in your design goal, you can allow cherry picking with a trade-off by allowing meaningful choice in a system. There will always be “meta” builds, there will always be one mech which is better than any other mech in some way or another; that’s the nature of the beast, just look at the amount of mechs that are available in this game already. It’s a GOOD thing that people can pick their favourite mech and play with it even if it isn’t “meta”. I don’t even play meta and I’m having fun with my own builds, so allow me to specialise my weird builds without getting forced into a similar “jack of all trades, master of none” skill system.
People are naturally greedy, if you have a choice between three things, they usually want all three; it’s not up to you to decide how people should make that choice, allow them the option to go full in on a tree if they so wish, but don’t make it overly complex like it is now. 91 points is a LOT when most is filler in between.
Quote
40:20 – Russ : “There are limitations on the number of different skill trees we can have, it’s really not technically feasible from a balance, work, or database perspective. It’s just too unphasmable[? Didn’t quite understand the word] to essentially have a custom tree for every single variant in the game. … Based on weight class, IS/Clan, …”
Russ, please don’t give me that. That’s the typical mumbo jumbo I’ve heard a hundred times before in my own life. Nobody is asking you to design an entirely unique tree per mech, that would be insanity. But, if you design a modular dynamic system, you can even use a simple Unsigned Short attached to the mech chassis, taking around 8 to 10 bits of data for the number of skill points available in a firepower tree.
KISS. Keep It Simple Stupid.
Quote
48: 55 - Russ : “It’s really hard to accept change, it definitely seems change is hard.” “I think the only reason this is an issue, is because we are talking about, you know, a game that people have been playing for 5 years and 5 years in, we’ve completely revamped the skill tree because the initial skill tree system was almost a placeholder and was the last feature that had really gone unchanged since closed beta. That’s why we want to tackle it, because we already replaced all of the placeholder systems. So when you change something 5 years in, this is kinda what you get.”
Let me just say, I’ve been here for less than 3 months. I haven’t been playing for 5 years or whatever, I’m not attached to your current implementation and I do feel it needs a change to make things better. Your current plans are not a positive change.
The reason people are up in arms about it, is because your plans are not positive for anyone involved. It’s not an “Oh, FINALLY! We will get some good changes!” it’s “Oh, this is even worse than the placeholder…”
Don’t think everyone in your community is a stubborn kid holding onto the playground pole because it doesn’t want to go home, they may be some, but they’re not the majority by any stretch.
And to your other statement of “If the game shipped tomorrow”… I’d still say, ‘What the hell have they been smoking? Is this a placeholder skill tree or something? What a mess.” It would not be fine, I daresay I wouldn’t even touch the game after seeing the tree and the effort that goes into it; and this is coming from someone who was overwhelmed by the Path of Exile tree until looking the entire thing over, which I don’t have with your current tree, it is chaos at first sight and it stays chaos. [And NO, I don’t want a Path of Exile-style tree in Mechwarrior Online.]
Quote
52:14 – Russ : “We’re totally open, we’re not stuck on this, this is the perfect way. Um, it’s a good UI, I think we spend significant time on it, we made a lot of changes since it’s been on the PTS but it’s not perfect yet. I think we need to just approve a design that is technically feasible.“
… Your “baby” won’t ever be perfect, it is not designed with perfection in mind, it’s an idea that has outgrown itself and is obstructing the things you could do. You calling it a good UI is just proof, you’ve spend a lot of time on it, I see that, there’s emotional value invested in it, I see that; but the fact of the matter is, your UI is terrible, your skill tree design is bad and nothing you try will make this implementation any better.
I’ve seen enough software designers who got stuck in their own idea, creating things which were unsuccessful and leaving them with tears in their eyes as the one in charge tells them that the entire thing they considered their “best” idea is a pile of ****.
And you know what? Every single one of these people, revisited their idea, came up with something else and quite innovative and never looked back on it. It is time to let this skill tree go before it gives you even more problems later down the line.
Quote
53:17 – Skill tree colour changes come up on the screen
Yeah, it’s more clear. It should have been more clear from the start, to be fair.
It’s still a bad tree design, though, no matter how shiny it looks, the base is still a disaster.
Costs / economy :
Quote
58:29 – Russ : “You know, we’re doing our best to try and get it right, and I think for some aspects that we felt strongly about. And as you know, we have an initial one time cbill cost per node now, I don’t see the cutting cbill costs as an option and it makes sense to have them there, an XP portion and a soft currency portion and you only have to buy it once. But also, if you’re thinking about the modules aspect, people bought lots, people bought hundreds of millions of dollars of modules and those are all being refunded a 100% and those modules cbills represented essentially skill tree points. So those cbills are going to be applied again into the skill tree and skill point functionality. I think it’s important that we have to have a one time cbill cost and that’s exactly where people would spend those otherwise, essentially the skill tree for free plus hundreds of millions of dollars of cbills worth of that don’t even have to go into the skill tree system or into the same functionality they used to. I need to have a cost there, the last number that people have heard …-database queries, etc …-. Like the whale guy who put the video up today, … I understand that feeling too, but a few things to get out of the way, we have to keep in mind ofcourse also, that new skill tree does not equal old skill tree. There’s a lot more in the new skill tree. Old mastery doesn’t equal new mastery, there is a lot more power and functionality in the new skill tree. Even having said that, I think the misinformation is that, this particular person, I’ll use him as an example, had a lot of mechs, over 300 and had around 120 of them mastered and only a couple of them elited. We did decide a few days ago, on a reduction in the cost, based on some other research we’ve been doing, based on some average cbill earnings per match with like new players, non premium players, stuff like that. …. Half the cbill earnings for a new player, looking at around 3-4 nodes per match. … This particular person, after they get their cbill refund, which was huge, like over 500M because of all the modules they had, after you apply 45K per node, to all the 120 mastered mechs, times 91 nodes, times 120 mechs, the total cost of cbills he’d spend, would mean that he could master those 120 mechs again, AND have additional enough cbills to master an additional 18 mechs. So in that particular case, I think it was a situation where it was an assumed problem, that grew into to something that wasn’t one at all. Now that’s a good example I wanted to share with you and there’s a few other situations.“
Waitwait. Let me get this straight, a new player should spend over half their cbill earnings to skill up their mech, while at the same time saving for an engine, weapons, Ferro, Endo, DBHs? Are you realising what you’re saying here? That’s insane. New people want to buy a mech, have fun with the mech, a new player wants lots of different mechs because mechs are FUN.
Now you’re just increasing the grind on a new player even more- And hey, I AM a new player, let me tell you my part of the story then : I only 2 modules, 1 4x Zoom which I bought before realising that it’s not that useful, 1 Radar deprivation module which I got forced to buy because almost all of my games were too filled with LRM boats and I needed it to survive before LRM boats ruined my fun entirely. I am starved for cbills as it is, but atleast I can swap the module, engines, weapons, … from my other mechs to make the grind more bearable.
Now you’re saying you want to further increase the grind? Do you have statistics? How long does a new account usually play for? What makes you think this is a good idea?
Quote
1:04:36 – Russ : “There are some people, ofcourse, that have a lot of mechs and a lot of mastered mechs, but, they’re cheapskates. They don’t have many modules.”
… Russ, here you’ve just dropped the ball entirely. Your game’s tooltip supports the Swapping Of Modules on its own, it was an intended design and it’s the reason why people don’t make too much of a deal of the 6M cbill price tag for a radar deprivation module is because it was swappable. Now you’re kicking against people’s shins because they prioritise having fun in their mechs, over grinding out module sets per mech.
Shame. On. You.
Add to that, even as a “joke”, as someone speaking to a community, you’d best watch your words more carefully in the future. Not everyone is fluent in English, not everyone can see the “joke”- and to be honest, hearing it again, it doesn’t sound like a joke. You’re lucky that Bombadil and Phil did some emergency “It’s a joke” damage reduction, because if you had been anywhere close to me, I’d toss my glass of water in your face.
All you’re sounding like is “Boohoo, my players don’t want to play my game like I want them to play it” and they have that right to do so. And don’t come tell me that the majority of players have a full module set for each of their mechs, because your “some” is a larger part of your community than you’d think.
Also, who cares if some people get more “excess” cbills? What are they going to do with it? Sell it for real mone- Oh wait, right, you can’t trade. Hey, maybe they will buy more mech bays because they want to buy new mechs? Oh wow, who’d have thought of that, huh?
What about new players who bought mechpacks and spend their cbills on tuning up these mechs? Is this just a middle finger in the face because they decided to spend money on your game? Hell, I’m regretting spending some already!
There’s no defending your statement, you devised the system, you advertised the system and the players used the system as it was intended- It’s not their problem, it’s YOURS.
Quote
1:08:20 – Russ : “When people bought those modules, they were in fact buying skill points in some way.”
… No they weren’t, they were buying modules, advertised as modules, with a tool tip that you can share modules between mechs. Stop making excuses and make it work, because those “efficient” players are being screwed over by you because they used a system as it was implemented.
This is bad practice and you know it, and no matter how many excuses you make, don’t make other people responsible for decisions in their past in your system.
Quote
1:11:15 – Russ : “We have players sitting on loads cbills and it came from playing the game.”
So? They enjoy playing your game, be glad they play your game. Let them sit on their cbills like some wealth-crazed ancient dragon or whatever, I can’t access it anyway.
If someone has 2 billion cbills, it doesn’t mean anything to me. He can’t share it with anyone, it’s stuck on his account. It doesn’t help me if someone else has lots of cbills.
I don’t even see how this economy matters, have you seen someone complain about having too many cbills? Heck no, this is a problem you created in your mind. There is NO economy in Mechwarrior Online.
Conclusion :
Please make the correct decision to scrap the current iteration of the tree, as it does not fulfil the stated design goals and is too static for an ever-evolving game. You don’t want to suddenly come to the conclusion that you have to redesign the entire skill tree in 3 years time, then you will have wasted development time making it, implementing it and balancing it for that entire period.
Please take another look at So1ahma’s mockup, it’s simply the best starting point you can have for a skill tree build with feedback from the community; try an implementation with another PTS and see the feedback you get then.
Separate the Firepower tree entirely from the other tree, make Firepower something that you fill in separately for free with a limited amount of points depending on the mech chassis [again, like So1ahma suggested, ...]. It will allow you to balance things more specifically when needed, you could even adjust the values on mechs which perform too strongly compared to others.
Personal notes :
Chris :
You set your focus on battlefield roles, then ask yourself this : In what way is this skill tree promoting roles? You say stuff is balanced within the tree, yet I cannot see any of the logic present in that. Your skill tree is a mess, it’s irritating to work with, doesn’t allow for expansion of skills.. What are you going to do when the new weapons come out? Stuff more optimal nodes in the tree? Will you nerf weapons because the general perks make them too strong? Please, just specialise in a separate tree with its own points for the weapon system; for your sake and mine.
Even if flawed, So1ahma’s system is dynamic and can be expanded upon in any direction you need; you want more balance options for ECM? Nerf something about it, add in a separate ECM branch to the skill tree and balance that out. An entirely new weapon system is released? Add in the separate weapon tree and balance it accordingly.
You can set a total cost per off-shoot branch as a balance, you can go from high to low, from low to high, equal share per point, custom values.
If you’re intend of looking at the future, look at your own skill tree in a year from now, look at it in two years from now; it is not dynamic, it is not expandable and it will be a royal pain in the *** to deal with for you and any of your successors.
KISS. Keep It Simple Stupid.
Russ :
You can keep going on about the “millions” you’re pushing into the “economy” of MWO, but what kind of economy do we even have? It is a closed system, I cannot trade my cbills to someone else; I don’t care if someone is sitting on 2 trillion cbills and refusing to invest it into anything, let them. They’re enjoying your game in their own way, they buy things they want, they play the game and usually they are more dedicated than anyone else.
Next, you seem to have something against “min-maxers”, or people who hoard cbills. Now ask yourself this- Who is the majority of people who own lots of cbills? The very same people buying mech packs. They don’t have to spend cbills on buying mechs, they pay their cold hard cash for it. Don’t punish the people who are funding you directly, and don’t take the big hoarders of cbills as the baseline for everyone else.
You need to focus on building the name of your game, expand upon what makes this game fun; not try to fight against the very people who make your community an awesome place to be in. I came for the big stompy robots, and the community helped me make myself comfortable even within a flawed system such as the modules and mech/pilot skills.
Thanks for reading.
And yes, I know I referred to So1ahma's mockup far too often, but it's the closest to a dynamic expandable concept we currently have, and as such, is the best example I can currently give.
Edited by Anatidaephobia, 11 March 2017 - 12:17 PM.
