549 replies to this topic

[Rhialto]

So everyone is posting here? Fine I'll repost here also.

Instead of forcing to explore a skill tree by the top most cell, let people select the start cell, this mean any of the most outward cells.

So instead of having everyone always unlock skills by the top with the same starting skill and dig the same path probably in the same way many will do, it would be a lot more interesting if everyone could decide the starting cell and go from there. That would offer a lot more possibilities and much more differents builds on the terrain.

Let's see with Mobility:



Instead of forcing everyone to start with the Kinetic Burst 1 cell, one could decide to start from the bottom with Speed Tweak 5 and go up a few cells to reach what would fits prefered build.

Another one may prefer Torso Speed 2 as a starting point.

Again I think this would help for build diversity with all the Mechs we will encounter on the battlefield.

I can't see any negative impact with this, do you? Maybe I missed something.

[El Bandito]

BLOOD WOLF, on 25 April 2017 - 06:22 PM, said:

was the skill tree supposed to address Clan vs Is balance? I thought the Civil war was doing that?

It made balance worse by nerfing IS mech quirks which the skill tree doesn't even give full refund to. Meanwhile meta Clan mechs are getting those skills without cost, cause they never relied on quirks in the first place.

Edited by El Bandito, 25 April 2017 - 06:45 PM.

[Navid A1]

sierra gulf, on 25 April 2017 - 04:58 PM, said:

I am also weary of the respec cost and it's impact on customization, but I am not certain if I think it will be prohibitive yet. It will all depend on how many nodes I want to change at a time and how often I want to change them. If changing every match, yeah, that would be prohibitive. If changing once every couple of play sessions with a chassis, probably not. I also expect there will be long periods in which I don't change them and so will have a stockpile of xp and perhaps gxp I can draw on. The idea of the xp I earn on a mastered mech having a use beyond conversion to gxp does appeal to me, so my main concern is the specific price of node re-acquisition.

A simple change from a LPL to a PPC or vice versa can cost upwards of 7K XP.

You want to switch back?... 7K

oh... you want to switch back for this week... 7K

the comp match needs to with this build?.... 10K...


yeah sure.

Edited by Navid A1, 25 April 2017 - 07:00 PM.

[kazlaton]

The refund is simply unacceptable. I'll be getting over 34,000 gsp. Since all the mechs I use are already mastered, I won't be spending any on them, so I'll only be able to use it on new mechs. That means I will have enough gsp to fully master 375 mechs.

Is anyone here planning on buying another 375 mechs? Because I sure am not.

I swear, I think PGI goes out of there way to make the skill tree idea worse each time they change it.

[Ruar]

kazlaton, on 25 April 2017 - 06:51 PM, said:

The refund is simply unacceptable. I'll be getting over 34,000 gsp. Since all the mechs I use are already mastered, I won't be spending any on them, so I'll only be able to use it on new mechs. That means I will have enough gsp to fully master 375 mechs.

Is anyone here planning on buying another 375 mechs? Because I sure am not.

I swear, I think PGI goes out of there way to make the skill tree idea worse each time they change it.

There are a total of 242 nodes per mech so they are expecting people to spend that extra on the additional points over 91. There's some reason for wanting to do this but I don't recall it off hand and PTS just crashed for me or I'd try and figure it out.

[AnHell86]

Hey!

I welcome the new skill system to further customizing the roles of my mechs. 400 XP is such a low value - we all have lots of XP in our top performing mechs. We can now use that to strengthen the role of our mech.

However, it is not ideal to click: (number of mechs) x (91 SP). But I just use 36% of my mechs (which are 55).

Balancing is just not realistic because Clan Tech is supposed to be much more advanced than IS Tech. Hopefully, the Civil War Tech will bridge the differences.

I do agree that the new skill system will make weak mechs weaker and strong mechs stronger. I would predict that PGI will keep some quirks on the IS mechs in an upcoming patch.

o7! Gonna go buy my Uziel mech pack now <3

[50 50]

Deathlike, on 25 April 2017 - 01:20 PM, said:

As for refunds... I would like all my modules to give back straight C-bills homie. I don't want them pre/auto-converted to some other currency.

Moonlight Grimoire, on 25 April 2017 - 01:32 PM, said:

My first beef loading this up is the change to all modules bought before feb 2017 are not GXP and not cbills. I don't like that change. I have a **** ton of XP sitting around, I don't need more GXP which I can't mix and match with normal XP to fill gaps to get SP so GXP is useless in this new model to me. 7million cbills refunded via this, 800ish MC and 174,000 GXP that I don't give a **** about because I have so much HXP that I can just fill out every mech right friggen now.

Like, okay, I do enjoy the MC refund, thank you, it is nice to get refunded that, I like getting back the GXP put into unlocking modules, but, I would like the cbills back for having bought various modules that are now skills. Certainly at 91SP per mech at 45k per sp on seismic sensor gives you 151 skill points, so the few modules I have would likely cover every mech I have, and I know there are those with far more it wouldn't. I like the consumable refunds as well, that was a wise move as well, good on you PGI. But, again, GXP for Cbills is a bad move imo.

Navid A1, on 25 April 2017 - 02:16 PM, said:

I customize and change my builds quite often, and I have tons upon tons of weapon modules.

At this moment I customize freely.
I paid full cbill price for every weapon module I can put on a said mech and I have them at hand every time I change a build ( I have about 5-10 weapon modules on stand by for every mech)

After the train wreck you call the new skill tree, every time I customize my mech its gonna cost me upwards of 8000 XP... and it its ***** recurring.... each and every time.

Thank you for killing off customization for me. You won't even give me back the price of those modules in Cbills or XP.

What difference does it make if you had to spend the c-bills to get the skill points, or instead have GXP to get the same skill points?
All it really looks like is having a nice fat pool of GXP to specifically use to customize freely for a while without it impacting c-bill earning for other things.
It could have been that the c-bill refund gave players ways to splurge out on mechs and parts.... but then cripple themselves in terms of being able to get the skill points and change the configuration.
How often are you going to keep chopping and changing the mech anyway?

[Deathlike]

50 50, on 25 April 2017 - 07:04 PM, said:

What difference does it make if you had to spend the c-bills to get the skill points, or instead have GXP to get the same skill points?
All it really looks like is having a nice fat pool of GXP to specifically use to customize freely for a while without it impacting c-bill earning for other things.
It could have been that the c-bill refund gave players ways to splurge out on mechs and parts.... but then cripple themselves in terms of being able to get the skill points and change the configuration.
How often are you going to keep chopping and changing the mech anyway?

Because the amount you get back in GSP can potentially more than you'd ever need.

You'll always need C-bills. You won't necessarily need GXP nor GSP.

Universal currency is universal.

You will almost always want to buy new mechs and you will almost always want to buy more engines. GSP cannot buy you either.

Edited by Deathlike, 25 April 2017 - 07:17 PM.

[50 50]

Deathlike, on 25 April 2017 - 07:16 PM, said:

Because the amount you get back in GSP can potentially more than you'd ever need.

You'll always need C-bills. You won't necessarily need GXP nor GSP.

Universal currency is universal.

You will almost always want to buy new mechs and you will almost always want to buy more engines. GSP cannot buy you either.

But they are general skill points (GSP) that can be transferred to any mech.
So instead of having to spend c-bills and xp on unlocking the nodes on a new mech, you can directly convert your GSP to nodes and save those c-bills and xp for other things.
You might never need to spend c-bills or xp on this side of the mech customization again.

[Ertur]

One problem I saw with the firepower skill tree is that there are things (like Range 5) that are only accessible via ballistic only perks. Unless it is possible to back-track upwards (which doesn't seem to be the case in he examples provided). If I'm forced to take ballistic perks on my Jenner, for example, then I am either being nerfed with having fewer effective skill points or I am nerfed with always having less maximum effective range. The same problem exists for Huginns and the energy perks, and the Locust 1V and missile perks. Pure energy boats like the Wolfhounds and pure missile boats like the Oxide get hit twice (the only pure ballistic mechs I could think of were a Scat and Gyr, but they're both Omni's, so they can add other hardpoints).

[Deathlike]

50 50, on 25 April 2017 - 07:39 PM, said:

But they are general skill points (GSP) that can be transferred to any mech.
So instead of having to spend c-bills and xp on unlocking the nodes on a new mech, you can directly convert your GSP to nodes and save those c-bills and xp for other things.
You might never need to spend c-bills or xp on this side of the mech customization again.

Back to... I'd rather have C-bills.

If I have to keep simplifying that you can't buy mechs and engines with GSP... I don't know what else to say.

There will always be mechs to buy. You will not respec every mech that you own.

Edited by Deathlike, 25 April 2017 - 07:42 PM.

[Ertur]

Guys, you get cbills for the physical module. It says so quite clearly, you get a full refund for the modules instead of the half-off price you get from selling them back to the store. You get GSP for the GXP's you spent, you get c-bills for the c-bills you spent.

[Deathlike]

Ertur, on 25 April 2017 - 07:42 PM, said:

Guys, you get cbills for the physical module. It says so quite clearly, you get a full refund for the modules instead of the half-off price you get from selling them back to the store. You get GSP for the GXP's you spent, you get c-bills for the c-bills you spent.

I feel like I have to repeat what PGI's own statements say.

GSP is given to you for modules you owned PRIOR to Dec 2016.

Only for modules you bought AFTER Dec 2016 is where you get a full C-bill refund.

[Jman5]

I just don't understand why you guys are creating all these separate currencies for legacy refunds. Just refund it as GXP and Cbills.

So right now we have

1. GXP,
2. XP
3. HXP
4. Cbills
5. MC
6. GSP
7. HSP

It's just all so over-complicated and messy.

[Krucilatoz]

My Suggestion :

JUST PUT IT ON LIVE SERVER IMMEDIATELY.

I know you try to listen your customer, but really, are they worth to listen? Yes, I read those suggestions, even on reddit. But they just represent a small number of player (yet speak VERY loud).
Look all those suggestion/complaints above, "too many clicks" eh? "lack of this.. that" What makes their opinion worth to listen? Are they playing 24/7 ? Were they reading all weapons /mech log on server? Knows which mech perform the best based on data? Are they those youtuber/twitch that has thousand of viewers?
I'm sure those picky complainers didnt play this game much. I even check several of them on leaderboards, they play less than 50 match per-season.

Please be reasonable, the more you listen, the more this game development stalled. I dont want you (PGI) write an apology announcement of Civil War update postponed just because the developer busy on skill tree feature.
Just move ahead.
No one, ever, able to please everybody on this planet

[process]

I tinkered around in the PTS for about 45 minutes. My GSP refund was enormous, around 13,000, plus the full mastery equivalent in HSP for my 230+ mastered mechs, around 21,000.

The situation now is that I'm just sitting on a huge pile of GSP, of which some will undoubtedly go towards unlocking additional skill nodes, but for the most part will probably be allocated towards future mechs. This will drastically cut down on time to master, and means I won't have to spend any cbills on the skill tree in the foreseeable future. Unless I'm figuring this wrong, that's up to 142 future mechs I can master without even dropping once. Neat, I suppose, but I wonder if PGI really thought through whether that's desirable for their game.

A tangential problem I see is the lack of real decision making in the skill tree. I find myself, for every mech, basically going straight to the operations, sensors, and mobility trees and mostly maximizing them. Then depending on the mech, dropping a handful of points into firepower or survival. Because of this, there isn't a huge amount of respec-ing I actually see myself doing, pending future balancing and adjustments.

It's also interesting to see that cbills aren't part of the HSP/GSP and respec equation. All of my future cbills actually don't have a major sink now, while under the current system I was still buying modules. Another unintended consequence?

For new players this does all look convoluted as hell.

Edited by process, 25 April 2017 - 08:09 PM.

[Ertur]

Ok, I stand corrected, for module from Dec 2016 and before it's GSP only.

The whole GSP and HSP process is for legacy people only, in any case; what if there were a way to sell GSP for cbills at the given rate in that menu? That way if you wanted to keep half of the GSP to fill up more of the perk trees you could, and you could get the other half back as cbills.

I don't understand the lack of cbills, though. I've got 96 fully kitted out mechs (about half of which were bought with cbills, the other half are either packages -- like clan wave one -- or the free mechs we get now and again; and the heros aren't cbills obviously), with another 4 sitting in my mechbays waiting to be rebuilt, a bunch of modules, all of the cbill colors, and over 220M cbills sitting in my bank account doing nothing. And, as a pilot, I am painfully mediocre at best. Any decent pilot should earn more than I do in a match. I haven't felt a lack of cbills since long ago when the only mechs I owned were sets of Jenners, Centurions, Cataphracts and Ravens. I didn't blink when I bought 2 extra Victors so I could master the free one we got, and I didn't care that I lost over half what I spent selling the stripped chassis back (albeit one was stuffed with a bunch of SHS's I had laying around).

edit to add correction: I actually have 241M cbills. It was 220M a week or two ago.

Edited by Ertur, 25 April 2017 - 08:24 PM.

[Weirdjedi]

I have been periodically playing this game for awhile and right now I don't see any real benefit in adding in this system. I've been trying to write down the pros/cons but until my public test client finishes, all I see is a bunch of negative changes. Here, let me list them for you:

1. Module Refund: You will no longer be able to switch modules between mechs. This hurts both the ones who only have a couple and those who have every module slot filled on every mech. People like to be able to switch out their modules when deciding on a different weapon layout. Those with a ton of xp will have potentially "wasted" their module since they no longer can sell it or equip it on another mech.

2. Quirks in Skill Tree: It looks like you are trying to incorporate some, if not all, quirks into the skill tree. Not only does this mean a fresh new mech will be considerable less equipped to handle a match but by the looks of it you must buy them using both xp and cbills. If that wasn't bad, you must choose adding back these slots over retrieving other possible advances. To top it off, some of the quirks can only be obtained after unlocking questionable, non-essential, or even non-relatable slots.

3. Pilot Skill Evolution: The original layout has your standard 13 slot upgrades to master a mech. The new setup requires 91 slot upgrades to master a mech. Even counting the few times you would unlock your global pilot skills and buy/equip modules, it will still take an extensive amount of time for someone to filter through each and every slot on each mech. It can get rather overwhelming for new players (those who may only have 10 mechs) and highly irritating for veterans (those who may well have 100 mechs).

Those three things are perhaps the biggest problems I see with the skill tree.

[Jonathan Paine]

Played a few matches on the test server, and I like where the new skill trees are going. For the most part, boating is slightly harder than it was and diverse load outs work a bit better than they did. Having said that, here are some less than optimal things:

1. Forced buffs to arm mobility.
- dumb, because mechs that have no arm mounted weapons are forced to pick utterly pointless skills

2. Gauss buffs are too easy, especially given that if you go dual Gauss you can ignore any and all heat mechanics.

3. As mentioned earlier in the thread, some mechs are nerfed into oblivion with the new system. My pet peeve is the triple PPC Awesome 8Q. Used to be decent, but cant get anywhere near where it was under the old system.

4. Refunds? Dont really care too much myself, but perhaps 20% of the refund for "old" modules should be in cbills since it appears many players are terminally low on cash.

Keep it up, I am hoping for a MWO that allows for running really mixed load outs and still be at least semi competitive.

[Katastrophy Kid]

I've played on the test server and I have found my Assault Mechs greatly diminished in performance due to the engine decoupling. I find this unacceptable. The engine provides power to the mech's drive chain, so it doesn't make sense that it wouldn't enhance performance. One of the main reasons listed for changing it is because Clan omni-mechs are locked with their engine size. So what? That's the trade off for having a mech that can swap hardpoints. I call BS. If my favorite mech is diminished then I doubt I'll feel like playing as much, if at all. One of the defining characteristics of the KGC is its agility and mobility. Take that away from me and everyone else who likes playing assaults, and you'll have matches that are almost exclusively lights and mediums.

I do like the skill trees though, my one gripe is: why fall damage reduction in survival tree? Wouldn't that make more sense in the jump jet tree?