369 replies to this topic

[Zookeeper Dan]

A skill tree should ultimately be the way the game goes. The current mastery system is awful, especially for new and casual players.

I hope we see this soon and it doesn't wind up in the same dumpster as info tech and power draw!

[cougurt]

i know some people are going to be upset about the delays, but you really can't rush a massive change like this. don't blame the "whiners," this one's on PGI for not doing something about the skill system years ago.

[Alistair Winter]

Good that it's delayed, but I really hope you listen to the feedback regarding the structure of the skill tree and the frustration with being forced to basically unlock entire branches to max out a specific upgrade. The current complex web with skills scattered randomly is just not any fun to deal with. Each choice feels meaningless and forced.

Just... have another look at the feedback and popular polls.

[justcallme A S H]

Deathlike, on 13 March 2017 - 06:34 PM, said:

Insanity delayed for now.

Indeed. For now.

This news item is basically an admission of "We got it quite wrong, again" but not in as so many words... Essentially some backpeddaling after calling some players cheapskates, which wasn't a smart move.

It's really great to praise PGI for listening to the community outcries, but the fact of the matter is it should never have reached the PTS in the state it was in, more particularly the 1st iteration.


Hopefully it's actually a properly thought about and designed when it comes back as the feedback is plentiful. Not hard to work out where to fix it, just need to sit down for a month/two and hash it out.

Edited by justcallme A S H, 13 March 2017 - 07:33 PM.

[BogGnarr]

PGI this is great. Thank you for taking the time to listen to the community and push forward with this new skill system in a progressive way. Personally, and I think most players agree, a new skill system is a good thing for this game and would hate to see all that work go to waste either by scapping it or releasing too early.

Keep up the good work.

[Cpt Leprechaun]

Posting this for exposure please watch in full

So1ahma skill tree Proposal

[Alistair Winter]

Russ Bullock, on 13 March 2017 - 07:04 PM, said:

As to the skill tree, I think some levels of disagreement on the right path for balance or the layout of the skill tree nodes would be expected and could be accepted. As the shortcomings in our transition process became clear and we could see that certain players were going to lose progress that became obviously unacceptable and we had no choice but to delay.

It's not just some levels of disagreement, it's actually possibly close to what you consider "consensus" (I.e. 80%) among the players. Most players seem not to enjoy a skill tree where they are forced to take so many nodes in random positions, basically to the point of unlocking the whole branch to get what they want. It makes the choices seem meaningless instead of empowering.


https://mwomercs.com...have-consensus/

[Clanner Scum]

Thanks for taking the time to flesh things out. A simplified skill tree with common sense toward the economy is something that needs to be addressed. Take ALL the time you need, don't need to rush things.

EDIT: Also I think PGI should take a very serious look at So1ahma's skill tree. His skill tree is exactly what should be implemented in the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFDIhYwslVM

Edited by Clanner Scum, 13 March 2017 - 07:53 PM.

[Moonlight Grimoire]

Please do not take long to hit up the PTS with another build. I do not want to go without a skill tree into 2018. There is of course the one that the community came up with that was mentioned in the podcast and I would urge to be looked at and be mocked up by someone in the office to play around with. While it is not required to be the skill tree when we get the new skill tree, something a bit more in depth would be nice compared to the current dearth of options within our skill tree.

Please also look at the mode (statistics term) earnings of players because you want to make certain your common players and more so your new players feel their time in game is worth the effort to keep playing. The grind is a slog now for a new mech, throwing in a cbill skill cost will make it worse, yes no more rule of 3 helps, but, we still are adding a new draw on an already pathetic in game economy. Preliminary data analysis is showing 100-150% increase of baseline income. Increase hero mechs and other cbill boosting mechs from 30% to 50% at least, if not up to 100%, and premium time all the way up to 100% as well. Give us a reason to invest in your game, give people a reason to play. Look at how long the mode (stats term again) that players play at and how much money they make and how much XP. Not only that but look at the lower standard derivations of players for their hourly income in game and per match and average time played per session. This helps ease people into the grind of the game, it help psychologically to prevent burn out by seeing noticeable gains over time, and, makes cbill boosts far more worth while.

[Marius Evander]

Very saddened its delayed was looking forward to something new in the game. in its current status is was still better than what we have.

[benben10]

i cant read all the comments right now so I'm just going to say my ideas.

1. have skills unlock in 2 stages. first using experience and the unlock applies to ALL mechs owned of ONE VARIANT. stage 2 apply the skill to each INDIVIDUAL mech by purchasing with C-bills. (OPTIONALLY have some skills be FREE of c-bill cost)

2. use mouse-over to select a chain of skills instead of clicking each individual skill. skills default to using mech XP and can be clicked individually to apply GXP instead.

[MovinTarget]

justcallme A S H, on 13 March 2017 - 07:33 PM, said:

Indeed. For now.

This news item is basically an admission of "We got it quite wrong, again" but not in as so many words... Essentially some backpeddaling after calling some players cheapskates, which wasn't a smart move.

It's really great to praise PGI for listening to the community outcries, but the fact of the matter is it should never have reached the PTS in the state it was in, more particularly the 1st iteration.


Hopefully it's actually a properly thought about and designed when it comes back as the feedback is plentiful. Not hard to work out where to fix it, just need to sit down for a month/two and hash it out.

To be fair they pretty much said "yeah, we got it wrong" which from a business standpoint, you almost *never* hear because there is a complete fear of opening yourself up and showing vulnerability that isn't wholly irrational.

I would like to think those of us trying to articulate what was problematic were the ones they listened to as opposed to the ones that simply screamed at them. It took a while, yes, but I am glad to hear they are revising the refund policy to be more inclusive.

There needs to be an understanding on both sides because they can't just change things on a dime mid-stream and the fact that they willing to open up their development to criticism has to be frustrating as they don't seem to be able to make everyone happy (and lets be honest, some people, given a voice, will never be happy unless their precise vision of the game is accomplished).

[InspectorG]

Good.

Please USE THIS OPPORTUNITY to build a tree that helps Quirk-Dependent Mechs as well as gives Light Mechs more viability.

Mutually exclusive choices: Good.

Requiring to unlock unwanted nodes to get the good ones: Bad

PGI, if you set this up decently, Quirk Balancing and Tree Balancing will be easier to do(assume you will need to do so in the future).
If implemented poorly, problems will compound when trying to juke values between two systems.

Good luck!

[Ruar]

Cpt Leprechaun, on 13 March 2017 - 07:36 PM, said:

Posting this for exposure please watch in full

So1ahma skill tree Proposal

Yeah, this is something we need to test. Please make this happen in PTS 3.

[Kael Posavatz]

So we might see Skill Trees...later. (where it joins the rightly discarded InfoWar and the kludge-y Energy Draw).

What about Timeline Advancement and loyalist rewards?

Oh, and what about Incursion? Wasn't that supposed to be a thing?

Are we not yet due for...Roadmap!

Edited by Kael Posavatz, 13 March 2017 - 08:03 PM.

[Gannycus]

Russ Bullock, on 13 March 2017 - 07:04 PM, said:

I few thoughts on the subject.

Many might view this as similar to power draw in that it might seemingly be delayed indefinitely, at this point in time that is certainly not the case. While energy draw showed some interesting promise and I would like re explore that at some point it was ultimately an experimental feature. The new skill tree is still viewed internally as a solid improvement to the balance of the game and the starting point for so many new balance methods.

As to the skill tree, I think some levels of disagreement on the right path for balance or the layout of the skill tree nodes would be expected and could be accepted. As the shortcomings in our transition process became clear and we could see that certain players were going to lose progress that became obviously unacceptable and we had no choice but to delay.

As Alex mentioned this discovery helped us realize we had to adjust our refund plan to one of refunding progress.

As we rectify these problems we will also take time to further refine the user interface as well as continue to make as many balance improvements as possible.

Just keep it simple and take a look on this for some inspiration:

So1ahma skill tree Proposal:

[MechLord71]

I honestly do not know if this is good or bad. It is definitely stagnant. Nothing new. More development time spent on something that may or may not make it into the game. Oh well, I guess the backlash was too much for them since clearly something drove this last minute panic and change of heart.

Once again, maybe this would have been disastrous and maybe it would have been very good for the game. We may never know.

I doubt everyone will ever embrace the changes proposed. Change is a hard thing to deal with. I do not think this game can just stay the same though either...it needs something. I hope PGI finds that something since I want this game to succeed over the very long haul.

[justcallme A S H]

MovinTarget, on 13 March 2017 - 07:43 PM, said:

Spoiler

To be fair they pretty much said "yeah, we got it wrong" which from a business standpoint, you almost *never* hear because there is a complete fear of opening yourself up and showing vulnerability that isn't wholly irrational.

I would like to think those of us trying to articulate what was problematic were the ones they listened to as opposed to the ones that simply screamed at them. It took a while, yes, but I am glad to hear they are revising the refund policy to be more inclusive.

There needs to be an understanding on both sides because they can't just change things on a dime mid-stream and the fact that they willing to open up their development to criticism has to be frustrating as they don't seem to be able to make everyone happy (and lets be honest, some people, given a voice, will never be happy unless their precise vision of the game is accomplished).

Honestly rather than bringing something like this in, 5 years down the track... Anything of the below:

- New maps
- Fix FP / deliver was promised 3 years ago
- Focus on the game modes (escort is disliked by majority)
- Fix the balancing properly
- Ensure advancing the timeline is actually a success.

^ that still will keep people playing. Will the skill tree keep people going? Not really, maybe a month/2 while it's shiny/new.

I get what Skill Tree was trying to do, alleviate some of the problems in terms of balancing (even though it doesn't fix IS XL, the biggest issue) and as a business it'll be frustrating to be pushing this back - but it was clearly too big of an ask without enough of a clear understanding from the outset.

[Punk Oblivion]

Just an idea for new economy transition. You could figure out roughly how much bonus stats mastering a mech gave vs modules in the current system. For ease let's say mastering gave 50% bonus and mods gave another 50%. You can still refund us EXP for mastering and CBills for mods.

BUT in the new system make the first 50% of the skill points cost the equivalent of the old mastery unlocks, costing EXP only to unlock. THEN the second 50% of skill points starts adding in CBills. These could have similar cost totalling up to the average cost of 3 modules in the current system.

This of course can be easily adjusted to any percentage of what the Mastery vs mods ratio is, as well as adjusted easily to whatever changes happen to the skill trees or number of skill points we end up getting.

This way mod swappers at least get a good chunk of points into most their mechs, and can fully deck out a few favorite mechs. And people who bought lots of mods can fully deck out all their mechs for their larger investment.

P.S. I am a mod swapper and would be happy with something like this.

[MechaBattler]

I'm betting they're just going to consolidate the crappier nodes into less nodes and make the tree a little more linear with less points. I doubt they're gonna rework it to the point that people really want. But that's how compromise works.