13 replies to this topic

[MookieDog]

PGI's next epic fail is the skill tree 2.0:

1. So PGI wasted time in designing a ledger of what we were supposed to be getting back for the 2.0 skill tree change. The ledger is worthless. Do not want it, do not need it. Waste of code and space. Spent fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to allocate SP in the plethora of ways how to convert five different ways into skill points.

2. Less thought was put into this skill tree than the last one. The nodes now turn different colors whoopee freaking doo. The weapons tree is a giant mess. Duration is the new hill climb, ok so I am taking 6% duration off of three seconds. If it was 33% it would be worth it.. but 6% is not even noticeable. Simplify the tree.. its not that hard. Cooldown 1-2-3-4-5... Velocity 1-2-3-4-5... Range 1-2-3-4-5... I know, Uncle Russ said that coding is hard.

3. Players are STILL penalized for taking nodes that they want. For normal full speed tweak you get to spend 24 nodes from your 91. You get to make your mech the way PGI envisioned it. If I want speed tweak 5 I should be able to spend 5 nodes not 24.

4. PGI reduced the amount of consumables down to one. So all mechs which a the standard two consumable slots just got hit by the nerf bat. As if nodes were not at a premium to begin with, you now get to spend nodes to open a slot just to get back what all mechs in the game had to begin with. And we are going to be reimbursed for consumables, so I now get to chose between an improved UAV or an improved Artillery Strike when I used to have both. Wow.... feel the suck.

5. This is going to be more of an IS nerf than a rebalancing. The IS will lose speed tweak. While the clans will also lose speed tweak, the difference is going to be much more notable, on average, 64.8kph versus 81kph. This will force the IS to eat up tonnage with heavier engines to make up for the loss of speed. So what will give up.. armor, extra heat sinks or risk the chance of running an XL and being destroyed in one alpha strike? None are really a viable option.

Without the addition of Light Fusion Engines (tech advance in July?) which only take up two critical spaces in each torso I really can not give a near favorable impression of the skill tree. If what is planned in the road ahead is, basically the cart before the horse: Skill tree first.. then the tech to make up for it shortfalls of the skill tree. Which begs the question, will the skill tree have to be revamped again (after launch in May?) once the new weapons are available?

My assessment has not changed: The skill tree is still a walking abortion.

[Ruar]

1. I like the ledger. I wanted to see how the reimbursement process happened. If you don't like it then just turn it off.

2. Agreed, the tree being tangled is bad and doesn't make sense. Make it linear with varying skill costs/returns.

3. They can't charge five SP for speed tweak and then five for hill climb because one has so much more value than the other. A skill with more benefits or is more useful has to have a higher skill cost. Right now they do that by burying these skills amongst other skills, but that is just confusing, illogical, and annoying. There is no need for this to happen.

4. This fits in line with their desire to make choices mean something. Someone who wants more consumables can go that route now. If you want to be upset about anything regarding slots then think about the fact that specialty mechs that have extra slots are losing that extra item with no compensation. Example is the Phoenix Shadow Hawk with an additional mech module. This just goes away with the new skill tree.

5. Kind of. They said they have plans to look at quirks and balancing as they go forward. The first step is implementing a skill tree in order to streamline boosts and balance. Then they can go back and make adjustments mech by mech. I assume they will use data after the skill tree goes live to help provide areas where balance is needed. Add to this the tech balance from the Civil War release and I think we are seeing the beginning of bringing balance between Clan and IS.

[ForceUser]

Why did it only take me 15 seconds to convert HSP to SP? I'm no Einstein but it didn't seem particularly unintuitive. The ledger was cool though, I really dig it. And it's just pulling data that they already have anyways. It's something you can do in like an afternoon.

You either make Radar Dep cost 15 SP and you get nothing with it or you get to choose the bonuses you get for buying radar dep for 15 SP. The second one sounds waaay better. And yes, you will pay 15 SP for Radar Dep because it's a very strong set of nodes. It's called balance.

Spending a single one of your 91 SP gives you an additional consumable. Sounds reasonable to me.

Civil war tech is coming in 2-3 months and will bring parity to IS vs Clan. Considering the Skill tree is going to go live in a month and then we'll have 1-2 months to PTS the new tech before that gets released, seems like designing the system with the new tech in mind is a prudent thing to do.

[Venshaw Kerensky]

The skill tree is NOT broken. Why are you trying to fix what is NOT broken? Many things in the game need attention of this magnitude, but the skill tree is NOT one of them!

JMHO but this feels like a Smedley blunder. =(

Edited by Venshaw Kerensky, 25 April 2017 - 07:06 PM.

[ForceUser]

There is no skill tree, the current skill tree is meaningless and ancient, little more than a placeholder. It's worse than broken, it's a 5 year old decrepit and obsolete placeholder game mechanic. The last of the original game mechanics to get an overhaul. There is nothing in this game that needs this more.

Edited by ForceUser, 25 April 2017 - 07:01 PM.

[Drunk Canuck]

Ruar, on 25 April 2017 - 06:39 PM, said:

1. I like the ledger. I wanted to see how the reimbursement process happened. If you don't like it then just turn it off.

2. Agreed, the tree being tangled is bad and doesn't make sense. Make it linear with varying skill costs/returns.

3. They can't charge five SP for speed tweak and then five for hill climb because one has so much more value than the other. A skill with more benefits or is more useful has to have a higher skill cost. Right now they do that by burying these skills amongst other skills, but that is just confusing, illogical, and annoying. There is no need for this to happen.

4. This fits in line with their desire to make choices mean something. Someone who wants more consumables can go that route now. If you want to be upset about anything regarding slots then think about the fact that specialty mechs that have extra slots are losing that extra item with no compensation. Example is the Phoenix Shadow Hawk with an additional mech module. This just goes away with the new skill tree.

5. Kind of. They said they have plans to look at quirks and balancing as they go forward. The first step is implementing a skill tree in order to streamline boosts and balance. Then they can go back and make adjustments mech by mech. I assume they will use data after the skill tree goes live to help provide areas where balance is needed. Add to this the tech balance from the Civil War release and I think we are seeing the beginning of bringing balance between Clan and IS.

In regards to 3, yes they can. By making some skills offer more benefit than others from a percentage point of view, especially across weight classes. Hill Climb having higher values for non JJ Mech's and Assaults would be more likely to see some use over none at all.

[Ruar]

Drunk Canuck, on 25 April 2017 - 07:03 PM, said:

In regards to 3, yes they can. By making some skills offer more benefit than others from a percentage point of view, especially across weight classes. Hill Climb having higher values for non JJ Mech's and Assaults would be more likely to see some use over none at all.

Speed tweak is very useful as it gives you an engine upgrade at no weight/internal slot.

Hill climb gives you the ability to retain your current speed value when moving over moderately sloped terrain.

There is no way that hill climb can ever be as useful as speed tweak. Hill climb is very situational, has limited benefit even in that situation, and is only really useful for certain playstyles or tactical roles. The only way hill climb would be as useful is if it boosted speed on uneven terrain. At which point it would just be speed tweak but with rules instead of all the time.

I can compare other items if you need, but some skills just aren't as useful as others and no amount of increased return will change that fact. Which is why there has to be higher cost for more useful skills. PGI wants to do this through forcing players to get unwanted/unneeded nodes when there is a much easier way to make it happen.

[L1f3H4ck]

They don't listen? Just today we had a twitter conversation with Alex, pointing out that Feb 2nd was a bit mean, since people started buying modules all willy-nilly, since they promised refunds on Dec 3rd. And what do you know, the date got changed.

1) They do listen.
2) You're welcome.
3) You should take into consideration that your opinion might be wrong.

[King Chimera]

You're right, my Highlanders still can't fly at all

[MookieDog]

Frechdachs, on 25 April 2017 - 08:10 PM, said:

They don't listen? Just today we had a twitter conversation with Alex, pointing out that Feb 2nd was a bit mean, since people started buying modules all willy-nilly, since they promised refunds on Dec 3rd. And what do you know, the date got changed.

1) They do listen.
2) You're welcome.
3) You should take into consideration that your opinion might be wrong.

Well my German friend here are the facts:

The skill tree is a bush. The skill tree has not changed from the last time this was shown, its merely changed colors. Should you elect to compare the two side by side you might notice that there has been very little work done to fix said system.

So before you try to take the intellectual high ground that I may be wrong, which may be possible.. One twitter discussion does not mean jack since Alex does not make the final decisions, Russ does. Alex can promise you the Moon, and Russ will be more than happy to sell you a mech pack and give you something you do not want.

Edited by MookieDog, 26 April 2017 - 04:57 AM.

[Jikil]

If we continue to bash the skill tree without offering real criticism on how it can be improved its just going to end up with another "delay" and you'll be stuck with the one we have on live forever.

Skillpoints don't need to be massive increases for mech damage. Is anyone seriously going to put anything into the sensors category aside from maybe radar dep?

No lets be honest your going to sink everything you can into firepower and survival with a few points in the quality of like things like consumables and agility.

We've seen how simple amounts of quirks can massively change a mech from dead to top of the meta food chain.

Lets not let the skill tree devolve into another clan for inner sphere balance debate. We know they will be adjusting it as it goes.

[R Valentine]

Why do IS mechs have to put up with another blanket nerf for 2 months before the new tech? Haven't we suffered long enough? I don't see why they expect us to suck even more until Civil War. Should I just not play until then? What's the purpose of this "design decision". The whole skill tree is going to have to be redone for Civil War anyways. There's going to be weapons released that there are no skills for. So what's the point? I'd sooner just have them wait to release the skill tree until after Civil War then. At least that way my IS mechs don't get stomped into the ground.

[Ced Riggs]

Jikil, on 26 April 2017 - 06:25 AM, said:

If we continue to bash the skill tree without offering real criticism on how it can be improved [...]

Plenty of good feedback in PTS #1 and in this PTS forum, too.

[AngrySpartan]

Jikil, on 26 April 2017 - 06:25 AM, said:

If we continue to bash the skill tree without offering real criticism on how it can be improved its just going to end up with another "delay" and you'll be stuck with the one we have on live forever.
...
Lets not let the skill tree devolve into another clan for inner sphere balance debate. We know they will be adjusting it as it goes.

Clan/IS balance, refunds, skill-to-skill balance, etc. All of those things are important, but they still secondary. The skill tree design (if you dare to call "that" a design) in its core is a mess, which was expressed to PGI many times with dozens of alternatives. Yet, none of these suggestions were taken into account...

PGI should accept that their hexagon spiderweb 'design' is a piece of junk and go back to the drawing board. They have plenty of suggestions where to start from.