Kiran Yagami, on 14 March 2017 - 07:05 AM, said:
There wasn't even anything "new" about the skill tree. That was half of the complaints. They just reworked how you come about getting what you already have, but in the end most people would end up buying the same skills as everyone else because there's an optimal path, and everything else is sub-optimal. The exceptions would be specific weapon nodes.
Having up to 6 consumables was new. Having multiple of a single consumable was new. Being able to increase your survivability was new. Being able to fit more shots per ton was new. Being able to take more than 2 "mech modules" (radar derp, advanced zoom, etc) was new. Being able to upgrade all of your weapons instead of 1 or 2, and upgrade multiple aspects of said weapons was new. Being able to upgrade your JJ is new. No longer having mobility tied to the engine was new. I can keep going, but I'll stop here. Point is, there were a lot of new things. But half the argument wasn't about "new" things. Half was about mastered mechs pricing, a third was about picking and choosing skills, and the rest was split between "new player" grind, the content, and other minor things.
Kiran Yagami, on 14 March 2017 - 07:05 AM, said:
And respec costs were ALWAYS a terrible idea. Changing load outs and tinkering with builds is half the game. If you gate that behind an xp/c-bill sink you severely lower the value of that part of the game, and that's a suicidal business model. And that's on top of making everyone regrind their mechs again because they added a c-bill cost on things that should be xp only. The change was never going to be good. And they couldn't just give us a skill tree. Oh no. They also had to throw in engine decoupling, quirk nerfs, new mech pack, and other garbage that just adds to already convoluted problems.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Respec costs are not a bad thing. It may be high (it could honestly be dropped to 200 or even 150), but having no cost is a problem in of itself.
Kiran Yagami, on 14 March 2017 - 07:52 AM, said:
The illusion of choice lasts as long as it takes everyone to figure out what the optimal path is. Most of us saw that coming miles away when we went on and tested it. And no, there wasn't anything new. The "new" stuff was just things removed from quirks and dumped into the skill tree instead, which was also a huge mistake. Nerfing IS quirks while giving clans access to them was a double whammy against IS. Again, MORE stuff that had nothing to do with the skill tree all bundled into one package. They couldn't even just do one thing at a time. That was another thing that added to the skill trees failure.
You could say that about building a mech as well. You have the illution of designing whatever you want, but then you get forced to use the optimal path of boating (dakka boats, missile boats, laser vomit) or PPC/Gauss meta. Also, quirks were not removed, just reduced a bit. Also, Clan doesn't benefit as much per node as IS. Another thing, if I remember right large components were getting a major HP buff while small components were getting a HP nerf. Essentially making IS the tanks of the game and Clan the glass cannons. I don't remember if that was for the Skill Tree update or the Time Jump, but they may have been trying to balance things with that.