35 replies to this topic

[Initium Thoth]

I'm finding that 95 would be better. That's just to get my favorite shadow cat to the current spec in the production version of the game.

[Devils Advocate]

I'll agree it's way too many skills. Are there any mechs out there (besides those that are focusing on Jetpacks) that don't end up with less than like 5% range, most of the sensor tree, a fistfull of cooldown, and some armor stuff? I can't "focus" on offense because I have too many points. I spend 30 on firepower (and end up barely more powerful than I started), fill out all the nodes I could ever want on that tree, and still have room to fill out two more trees. Nobody would ever avoid the sensor tree because it has nodes that actually have incredible effects on gameplay that aren't just 1.5% laser duration reduction so everyone is going to take those. By the time you're down "customizing" your 100 mechs I bet they all play virtually identically to one another.

Edited by Devils Advocate, 26 April 2017 - 04:28 PM.

[Thaddeus Necromancer]

I personally would like to see under performing Mechs get more skills and over performing Mechs get less (use mountains of data to determine specifics). I would love to play some of my oldies again.

[Kaeb Odellas]

Thaddeus Necromancer, on 26 April 2017 - 08:46 PM, said:

I personally would like to see under performing Mechs get more skills and over performing Mechs get less (use mountains of data to determine specifics). I would love to play some of my oldies again.

The problem with this approach is that it means bad mechs will be strictly worse than the good ones until you grind out all of the skills. Better to buff baseline stats than give it a higher skill cap.

[chucklesMuch]

Yes but the total number isn't my biggest complaint - have 200 if you have make them meaningful... the total number of useless (no weapon for node), unwanted (leave my mech arms alone), inconsequential increments as to make them seem meaningless... that is making the need to click 91 of them much worse...

Edit: I'm much happier and have a better sense of progression in the current system... too many meaningless choices isn't fun

Edited by chucklesMuch, 27 April 2017 - 12:51 AM.

[Danjo San]

MookieDog, on 26 April 2017 - 02:26 PM, said:

Drop below 50? 90 too many? Please put your bong down. I cant even get a Marauder-3R in 2.0 back to what I currently play in. Lets see: hill climb you must take... laser duration.. must take... nerf on the heat scale.. must take.

yeah ... you got it, you get more!

Thaddeus Necromancer, on 26 April 2017 - 08:46 PM, said:

I personally would like to see under performing Mechs get more skills and over performing Mechs get less (use mountains of data to determine specifics). I would love to play some of my oldies again.

+1

[Naaaaak]

Ced Riggs, on 26 April 2017 - 05:37 AM, said:

Diablo II had 100. Don't get me started on Path of Exile, or Skyforge. You'd probably die in Neverwinter Nights, where you could get upwards of 10 skill points per level, with 40 levels as the cap. So, no, 91 isn't too many for a videogame.

The difference is, you're talking about skills for one character in those games vs 91 * your mech count in MWO. 16,835 skills await my unlocking. I get to play the skill web (it's not a tree) waste-of-time "minigame" 185 times.

I bet the trees in the games you mention were organized in a logical manner, something the current skill web lacks. I am not looking forward to skilling up anything even once under the coming trainwreck.

[50 50]

oldradagast, on 26 April 2017 - 02:57 PM, said:

All they need to do is create a handful of roles - things like; Brawler, Fire Support, Scout / Stealth, and Skirmisher - with about 20 skills in each role with no gated skills - pick whatever you want. You pick 1 role per mech and 12 skills active at any given time, and that's it. You can eventually unlock all roles and skills, and there's no respec cost for changing them, but you can't have them all active at any time. Finally, display the role on a given mech on your team next to it when you press "Tab" to see your team.

I remember your suggestion from the previous test.
Forcing roles is one option, but how those roles are defined could vary wildly to player concept of what they could/should be.
Not sure that restricting us to roles is beneficial in that we have a great deal of choice and it would prevent us from making those choices.

A lot of people want a simplified system, something very visible and easy/quick to use.
At the same time, we do want those choices to mean something.

If we do take the existing system and streamline it that will mean removing some excess skills particularly in the firepower tree. It also means we could select exactly the nodes we want and not feel like we are 'wasting' points.
We can do that, BUT, there is no way we should have 91 points.
If overall the mechs are weaker than what we have in live now, that is also ok as it affects all of us and all the mechs. We'll get use to it.
But the important bit is making those choices difficult. 50 points would be roughly 1/5th of what we can unlock and allocate right now on the test server.
That will be tough, but I feel it's necessary.

Otherwise, yeah, perhaps a 'field configuration' for roles is something we should explore.

[Nameless King]

CapperDeluxe, on 26 April 2017 - 05:33 AM, said:

I know it's hard to quantify what the "correct" number of skills should be, but having to allocate 91 for mastery makes the process of skilling out a mech seem more complex than it should be for a video game.

What if instead the total number to master was a cool round number like 50? To accommodate that change the number of nodes would need to also be decreased, and the individual node % increased to have similar affect with fewer nodes.

How about 150? or 200

[Thaddeus Necromancer]

Kaeb Odellas, on 26 April 2017 - 09:32 PM, said:

The problem with this approach is that it means bad mechs will be strictly worse than the good ones until you grind out all of the skills. Better to buff baseline stats than give it a higher skill cap.

That's easily handled, give that under performer the additional skills free up front.

[50 50]

oldradagast, on 26 April 2017 - 02:57 PM, said:

All they need to do is create a handful of roles - things like; Brawler, Fire Support, Scout / Stealth, and Skirmisher - with about 20 skills in each role with no gated skills - pick whatever you want. You pick 1 role per mech and 12 skills active at any given time, and that's it. You can eventually unlock all roles and skills, and there's no respec cost for changing them, but you can't have them all active at any time. Finally, display the role on a given mech on your team next to it when you press "Tab" to see your team.

After a further thought on this and after looking at various other posts about 'templates', being able to go through one mech, select the skills (doesn't have to be all 91 nodes) and then have a number of templates that we could save that selection as. That would be nice.
It's a bit like the drop decks.
We pick a number of options and then save it. An option to name the template and boom. Off we go.
That way you can configure for the roles, if that is how you would like to identify the templates, but are not restricted.

[illudium Q 36]

Okay, I get it. 50 50 only dates women who are 50. He never spends more than 50 dollars at a time. Plays MWO in 50 minute increments ..... no problama. But only 50 skills ..... ?

[50 50]

So much to be said with that comment.

Buuuut.... to the point.

If at the moment everyone takes the same skills on all their mechs because we have the points to do so, how does that promote roles or diversity?
If allocating nodes from one tree means you can't take nodes in another because you simply don't have enough then we won't have the same problem we have now of just stacking bonus after bonus on top.

I'll enjoy 91 points.
I'll certainly notice how difficult it will be to leave some nodes out if I only had 50 to allocate.
Not locked into that though, can respect if it doesn't work. But at least the selection will give the mech a specialty.

[Tekamen]

Quick synopsis: New Skill Tree PTS of 91 skill points isn't enough to bring mechs back to old (current live) skill system with modules. A template system should be used to allow pilots to save and quickly apply their base 80+ skills to a new mech, leaving the remaining skill points to be manually activated by the pilot. The new mech skill tree should be renamed to Mech Upgrades, and PGI should consider leaving or creating an actual Pilot Skill Tree where you could pump earned EXP and GXP into unlocks.

I don't feel there is enough skill points. I know that the 91 skill point cap can be adjusted, but after playing around on the test server I could barely get mechs back up to the current agility, mobility, and chassis heat mitigation quirks. Seismic and Radar Deprivation skills are mandatory for most of my mech builds, so I found that after that was mastered there was only 8-10 points to differentiate the mech builds. I decided to forgo armor hardening or weapons upgrades because the point investment isn't worth the reward to most mech builds, especially lights.

A better solution for players that know they are going to always pick the first 80+ skill points in the same tech trees is to add template functionality to the Skill Tree. They really should rename it to Mech Augmentations or Mech Upgrades, because everything is mech specific. PGI Dev's could then create an actual pilot based skill tree with ever increasing levels and minor adjustments to reaction time and management of critical mech systems. As you level up each successive level requires more EXP to be earned in order to unlock the next tier or percentage bump.

The main problem with the old skill tree wasn't necessarily its setup or layout...it was the lack of diversity and once you had maxed out a master module slot, what was a pilot to do with the 1,000,000+ mech EXP they earned on their favorite mechs? Converting to GXP was a complete waste of your MC, which could be used for more important things like new mech bays or for making your drab IS green or boring Clan grey mechs pop with new one shot skins and colors.

At this point a change is needed to breath new energy into the game; and helping the developers support their vision and goals for MWO moving forward is better than putting a stop to progress.

Edited by Tekamen, 02 May 2017 - 09:20 AM.

[B0oN]

While I´m okay with the amount of SP to plonk down on mechs, I´d really like PGI to be prepared to give some of the lesser perfoming lights a little boost, say 5 SP more overall .

Please DO note that this is just a way ahead prediction of mine, nothing accurate and thusly could turn out totally nonsensical once SkillTree ^TM drops live .

[Captain Grayson Lighthorse]

Should be set at 120 skills to make up for all of the skills we have to waste to get to what we want and to bring the mechs close to where they really should be. The 91 skills are what we had with the previous system in which we had ZERO waste! We got to purchase EXACTLY the modules we wanted and nothing else. In this skill tree we are forced to spend 20 to 30 skill points for nodes we DON'T want to get to the ones we DO want. Either give us 120 skills to allocate or let us navigate BOTH ways (up and down) through the skill tree.

Edited by Captain Grayson Lighthorse, 11 July 2017 - 12:45 PM.