221 replies to this topic

[meteorol]

By now, everyone really should know better than to make financial or any decision based on PGIs announcements.

Whe have seen enough of PGIs planned changes getting drowned in a river of rage to really trust in anything getting released as planned. So no, i don't feel slapped in the face, because i spent a grand total of 0 cbills in preperation of the skill tree, because i was pretty sure things would go down the way they did.

You gotta know this community and PGI by now.

[MechaBattler]

Nightmare1, on 18 March 2017 - 06:28 PM, said:

A couple of things...

1) Who in their right minds would start making potent changes to their accounts and gameplay based on any promise from PGI? The devs have too long a history of bad promises for anyone to fall into that trap unless they are very new or very careless.

2) The thing that upset me more than anything else, was PGI's take on time theft. It was okay with them to set us back months or even years on leveling Mechs based on the premise that a handful of whales bought enough modules to completely outfit all their Mechs. In addition, the fact that PGI felt that players being refunded their money for these purchases was somehow "wrong" to the point where they felt obligated to stiff the majority of the player population who did not purchase that number of modules, illustrates a lack of sound logic. Lastly, Russ's snide comments to the effect that people who did not completely outfit their Mechs with modules and engines were cheapskates was quite frustrating. I've never seen a developer possess such disdain for the customers that enable him to pay his bills and live a comfortable life.



This. PGI announced the skill tree revamp, and then quickly turned it into a complete rebalance. They literally made the same mistake that they made with energy draw.

They need to quit making these attempts at stealth nerfs disguised as needed revamps. All it does is estrange them from the community and make everything harder when it comes to real balancing.

Was it frustrating? Were you triggered? Hug?

No, no hug for you. They were revamps. But they were also nerfs. It's called balance. Did you think they could do that without nerfing somethings? They clearly want to keep development on the game going. And it all ties in together. If you're going to add in crit reduction, why wouldn't you test your new crit system with it? You're gonna decouple agility from engines, why wouldn't you test it with a system that changes how skills effect your agility?

The outrage of having your mechs un-mastered. Is completely understandable. But the rest is just nit picking and people wanting the meta to stay exactly where is. Which why the game has stagnated so badly.
I miss the old PGI that would just push things through. Like ghost heat.

[SuomiWarder]

Any old timer that has been here a few years will tell the OP - been there, done that and got the T Shirt.

[SeaLabCaptn]

Mystere, on 18 March 2017 - 05:08 PM, said:

Let me just ask you one question. How useful are lower arm actuator "skills" for a Mech that has no lower arm actuators? <shrugs>

About as useful as ballistic quirks on a chassis that lacks ballistic hardpoints. This is why I don't make drastic changes to my personal economic strategy based on balance alterations (let alone rumors) until the kinks that accompanied said alterations have somewhat stabilized. When skill tree revamp was announced I accepted the fact that I probably won't play much MWO until things cool down, which I'm fine with because I don't spend money here. Things change; best not to get too heavily invested lest I regret my decisions later.

Upside is I've played a musical instrument every day this week, which is a rarity for me, and may or not be related. I think less screen time is doing me some good, personally.

[Weeny Machine]

Mystere, on 18 March 2017 - 05:08 PM, said:

Let me just ask you one question. How useful are lower arm actuator "skills" for a Mech that has no lower arm actuators? <shrugs>

Let me just ask you one question: how many video games have been there from the beginning to now which had useless filler nodes and no one threw a fit like a spoilt brat over that? Oh wait...generation Y and Z galore

[Mcgral18]

Bush Hopper, on 19 March 2017 - 12:02 AM, said:

Let me just ask you one question: how many video games have been there from the beginning to now which had useless filler nodes and no one threw a fit like a spoilt brat over that? Oh wait...generation Y and Z galore

You think Gen Y and Z are the majority player base?


Well, Y maybe
Z is pushing it



I personally have to wonder about the adults crying:" Change! Change! Change!"

Edited by Mcgral18, 19 March 2017 - 12:08 AM.

[Moebius Pi]

Y is being generous. Turn the wayback machine further.

Edited by Moebius Pi, 19 March 2017 - 12:16 AM.

[Weeny Machine]

Mcgral18, on 19 March 2017 - 12:07 AM, said:

You think Gen Y and Z are the majority player base?


Well, Y maybe
Z is pushing it



I personally have to wonder about the adults crying:" Change! Change! Change!"

McGral...how much change have we had in this game. You sound as if it were on a monthly basis /chuckle

[Mystere]

Bush Hopper, on 19 March 2017 - 12:02 AM, said:

Let me just ask you one question: how many video games have been there from the beginning to now which had useless filler nodes and no one threw a fit like a spoilt brat over that? Oh wait...generation Y and Z galore

I'm sure you've heard of the saying that starts with "A million flies can't be wrong, ...".

Edited by Mystere, 19 March 2017 - 12:33 AM.

[Nightmare1]

MechaBattler, on 18 March 2017 - 09:34 PM, said:

Was it frustrating? Were you triggered? Hug?

No, no hug for you. They were revamps. But they were also nerfs. It's called balance. Did you think they could do that without nerfing somethings? They clearly want to keep development on the game going. And it all ties in together. If you're going to add in crit reduction, why wouldn't you test your new crit system with it? You're gonna decouple agility from engines, why wouldn't you test it with a system that changes how skills effect your agility?

The outrage of having your mechs un-mastered. Is completely understandable. But the rest is just nit picking and people wanting the meta to stay exactly where is. Which why the game has stagnated so badly.
I miss the old PGI that would just push things through. Like ghost heat.

I actually don't mind the nerfs so much. It's the way that PGI went about it that bugs me. Think about it:

1) PGI announces Skill Tree overhaul and says nothing about nerfs.

2) PGI immediately slips a large array of nerfs into the system.

3) Community becomes angry at the deception.

4) Skill Tree tests become a muddled and emotional bomb.

5) Skill Tree gets postponed.

My frustration, as I posted back during the live testing, is that PGI never stays within the lines when it tries to color the page. They can't set an objective and stick to it. Had their objective been to revamp the skill tree and institute balance changes at the same time, and had that objective been communicated at the outset, then we likely wouldn't have had half of the drama, frustration, and push-back that we did.

People don't like to feel hoodwinked, which is basically what happened with this skill tree. They went into it, all bright-eyed and eager, and discovered that the resource and time cost to master a Mech had been raised by a ludicrous amount, that the important nodes were buried beneath a mound of trash nodes, and that Mechs and skills had all been heavily nerfed to rebalance the game. Add to that Russ's very public insults of the community, and you get a very frustrated fan base.

PGI needs to take a lesson from other game devs. Look at STO, for example. When the devs over there revamped their skill tree, they kept to the tree only. They didn't touch any other aspects of the game. Now that the skill tree revamp is done and all kinks have been thoroughly worked out of it, the devs have announced a complete rebalance of the game. They are taking certain skills and weapons and are going with just a few at a time, making slight tweaks. It will be a long process, but they are dedicated to doing it right.

PGI, on the other hand, wants to leap in swinging the nerf hammer like Thor. While many of the nerfs are needed, there is no tact, communication, or respect for the player base in PGI's approach. That's what has frustrated so many of us.

Edited by Nightmare1, 19 March 2017 - 05:09 AM.

[Weeny Machine]

Mystere, on 19 March 2017 - 12:32 AM, said:

I'm sure you've heard of the saying that starts with "A million flies can't be wrong, ...".

I am sure, you wouldn't have survived spending some skill points on fillers. Poor you.

[Bud Crue]

Nightmare1, on 19 March 2017 - 05:08 AM, said:

I actually don't mind the nerfs so much. It's the way that PGI went about it that bugs me. Think about it:

1) PGI announces Skill Tree overhaul and says nothing about nerfs.

2) PGI immediately slips a large array of nerfs into the system.

3) Community becomes angry at the deception.

4) Skill Tree tests become a muddled and emotional bomb.

5) Skill Tree gets postponed.

My frustration, as I posted back during the live testing, is that PGI never stays within the lines when it tries to color the page. They can't set an objective and stick to it. Had their objective been to revamp the skill tree and institute balance changes at the same time, and had that objective been communicated at the outset, then we likely wouldn't have had half of the drama, frustration, and push-back that we did.

People don't like to feel hoodwinked, which is basically what happened with this skill tree. They went into it, all bright-eyed and eager, and discovered that the resource and time cost to master a Mech had been raised by a ludicrous amount, that the important nodes were buried beneath a mound of trash nodes, and that Mechs and skills had all been heavily nerfed to rebalance the game. Add to that Russ's very public insults of the community, and you get a very frustrated fan base.

PGI needs to take a lesson from other game devs. Look at STO, for example. When the devs over there revamped their skill tree, they kept to the tree only. They didn't touch any other aspects of the game. Now that the skill tree revamp is done and all kinks have been thoroughly worked out of it, the devs have announced a complete rebalance of the game. They are taking certain skills and weapons and are going with just a few at a time, making slight tweaks. It will be a long process, but they are dedicated to doing it right.

PGI, on the other hand, wants to leap in swinging the nerf hammer like Thor. While many of the nerfs are needed, there is no tact, communication, or respect for the player base in PGI's approach. That's what has frustrated so many of us.

Just a point of clarification. What nerfs are you talking about?

I ask because when the skills tree was presented at mechcon, PGI most certainly did address "nerfs" in that they stated in their power point: "quirks removed" and then provided a sequence of slides showing all quirks being eliminated from a mech's mechlab loadout screen. Over the subsequent days Russ's tweeted out essentially that "jk! no not all quirks were being eliminated" (thus begging the question why it was presented the way it was in the mechcon presentation).

The 56 pages of nerfs that came with the skills tree announcement was not unexpected, but simply...well...nuts. They most certainly did not "all tie together" with the rest of the skills tree proposals. They often seem random, and their only point of consistency is that they disproportionately harm what are already some of the worst performing mechs in the game. Making the worst performers have to compensate for their losses by having to use more nodes to get back to their already crappy state (pre-nerf) makes no sense in a system where all mechs have access to the same number and same nodes...

Sorry, getting off track.

Point is that the "nerfs" were not unexpected, PGI did say they were coming (they just don't make any sense in the context of the proposed system).

[Weeny Machine]

Bud Crue, on 19 March 2017 - 05:45 AM, said:

Just a point of clarification. What nerfs are you talking about?

I ask because when the skills tree was presented at mechcon, PGI most certainly did address "nerfs" in that they stated in their power point: "quirks removed" and then provided a sequence of slides showing all quirks being eliminated from a mech's mechlab loadout screen. Over the subsequent days Russ's tweeted out essentially that "jk! no not all quirks were being eliminated" (thus begging the question why it was presented the way it was in the mechcon presentation).

The 56 pages of nerfs that came with the skills tree announcement was not unexpected, but simply...well...nuts. They most certainly did not "all tie together" with the rest of the skills tree proposals. They often seem random, and their only point of consistency is that they disproportionately harm what are already some of the worst performing mechs in the game. Making the worst performers have to compensate for their losses by having to use more nodes to get back to their already crappy state (pre-nerf) makes no sense in a system where all mechs have access to the same number and same nodes...

Sorry, getting off track.

Point is that the "nerfs" were not unexpected, PGI did say they were coming (they just don't make any sense in the context of the proposed system).

Removing quirks wouldn't have been the problem - wouldn't have all mechs got the same amount of skill points

[Drunk Canuck]

Toha Heavy Industries, on 18 March 2017 - 03:29 AM, said:

Hope they work harder on it.
If the AI of our beloved potatoe overlord VIP atlas is indicating what MW5 is gonna be like i'd say ggclose.

AI is more accurate than 75% of the player base.

[Bud Crue]

Bush Hopper, on 19 March 2017 - 05:53 AM, said:

Removing quirks wouldn't have been the problem - wouldn't have all mechs got the same amount of skill points

? Not sure I am understanding you.

Are you saying that removing quirks would not be a problem since all mechs got the same amount of skill points?

If so I disagree.
Take a Vindicator for example
Here you have a mech that is already crappy in the current system where all mechs once mastered have the exact same "skills". This mech is crappy or a "low tier" mech even with its large array of quirks.

Now, take away or reduce its quirks in that system. Is it made better or worse? Worse right?

Now put it in a new system where all mechs have the same amunt of skill points. Now again, take away or reduce its quirks in that system. If an objectively better mech...a higher tier mech...gets to choose 91 nodes from the same selection of nodes as our crappy mech, how is our crappy mech, which has now lost its quirks, going to somehow be at an equal position as that better mech?

How does nerfing an already bad mech in a system designed to give all mechs the same number of options somehow make that crappy mech competitive when in the previous system -where all skills were equal and it had quirks- it was not?

[Weeny Machine]

Bud Crue, on 19 March 2017 - 06:05 AM, said:

? Not sure I am understanding you.

Are you saying that removing quirks would not be a problem since all mechs got the same amount of skill points?

Quite the opposite. I meant that removing quirks would have been fine, had the different chassis got different amounts of skill points, e.g. an underperforming mech gets 120 skill points, an overperformer 90points (random numbers)

Edited by Bush Hopper, 19 March 2017 - 06:17 AM.

[Bud Crue]

Bush Hopper, on 19 March 2017 - 06:16 AM, said:

Quite the opposite. I meant that removing quirks would have been fine, had the different chassis got different amounts of skill points, e.g. an underperforming mech gets 120 skill points, an overperformer 90points (random numbers)

Gotcha! Agree. My idea is to just leave quirks as they are in the live server and then nerf (or god forbid buff) as necessary...ya know like they've done forever. But I guess that is just crazy talk to some folks.

Your plan would be more fun and in the spirit of the skills tree, but only if the true under performers really got a decent bonus number of nodes; and I don't think I trust PGI to properly identify those under performers or get then node numbers right (they called the Enforcer 5P an over performer, they nerfed the Grasshopper 5J for over performing, etc.)

[Nightmare1]

Bud Crue, on 19 March 2017 - 05:45 AM, said:

Just a point of clarification. What nerfs are you talking about?

I ask because when the skills tree was presented at mechcon, PGI most certainly did address "nerfs" in that they stated in their power point: "quirks removed" and then provided a sequence of slides showing all quirks being eliminated from a mech's mechlab loadout screen. Over the subsequent days Russ's tweeted out essentially that "jk! no not all quirks were being eliminated" (thus begging the question why it was presented the way it was in the mechcon presentation).

The 56 pages of nerfs that came with the skills tree announcement was not unexpected, but simply...well...nuts. They most certainly did not "all tie together" with the rest of the skills tree proposals. They often seem random, and their only point of consistency is that they disproportionately harm what are already some of the worst performing mechs in the game. Making the worst performers have to compensate for their losses by having to use more nodes to get back to their already crappy state (pre-nerf) makes no sense in a system where all mechs have access to the same number and same nodes...

Sorry, getting off track.

Point is that the "nerfs" were not unexpected, PGI did say they were coming (they just don't make any sense in the context of the proposed system).

You are correct that the quirk nerfs were mentioned before hand. Those aren't the ones to which I'm referring.

I refer more to the nerfs such as the agility changes, engine decoupling, and the fact that the new skills do not measure up to the old skills + module system. While PGI was upfront about the Mech-specific quirk changes, they did not even hint at the bevy of non-quirk nerfs that we would see. Those are the ones that surprised people unpleasantly.

The best thing PGI could have done, would have been to rework the skill tree using the old values (for example, up to 12% faster cooldown instead of just 5%) and then balanced the Mech quirks. Once that was fixed, a global nerf could have been implemented for balancing weapon cooldowns or whatever else they wanted. After that, engine decoupling could have been introduced and balanced.

My point, is that PGI could have sequenced this entire experiment and communicated it effectively, rather than saying one thing and then doing two things. That leads to confusion and push back and detracts from the overall revamp attempt.

I, for one, was looking forward to the new skill tree, although I thought it needed additional work. All the other changes that PGI tried to address at the same time created too much confusion to effectively ravamp the skill tree though, which led to the push back that killed it. This is the exact same thing that happened with energy draw (another item I was actually looking forward to). Instead of trying to create a new energy and heat system, PGI opted to transform it into a massive rebalance of heat and weapon values. They went outside the scope of their objective, confused and upset people, further exacerbated the problem by making poor balancing choices, and then ultimately killed it instead of trying to fix it. I rather expect to see the skill tree go the same way now since it follows PGI standard operating pattern.

PGI needs to learn restraint. When it stops biting off more than it can chew, we might start seeing some real, positive changes. Until then, we'll just keep getting frustrated.

[Bud Crue]

Nightmare1, on 19 March 2017 - 06:32 AM, said:

...

PGI needs to learn restraint. When it stops biting off more than it can chew, we might start seeing some real, positive changes. Until then, we'll just keep getting frustrated.

Yes. An interesting aside is Russ's statement on twitter that "engine decoupling has to come with skills tree". It was never even mentioned or hinted at until PTS 2.0 but now it goes hand in hand with the skills tree?

Yeah. He also said that they have been as "communicative as possible" following PTS 2.0 despite not a single post on the forums following the announcement and only a few tweets during that time.

And yet they seem truly bewildered when there is QQing about this stuff. Sigh.

[Weeny Machine]

Bud Crue, on 19 March 2017 - 06:23 AM, said:

Gotcha! Agree. My idea is to just leave quirks as they are in the live server and then nerf (or god forbid buff) as necessary...ya know like they've done forever. But I guess that is just crazy talk to some folks.

Your plan would be more fun and in the spirit of the skills tree, but only if the true under performers really got a decent bonus number of nodes; and I don't think I trust PGI to properly identify those under performers or get then node numbers right (they called the Enforcer 5P an over performer, they nerfed the Grasshopper 5J for over performing, etc.)

They nerfed even the Huginn in one of the last patches...that was somehow disturbing.