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[oldradagast]

So, folks are talking about the new PTS skill system, and it looks like nothing has been learned.

I'm not going to delve into whatever values they've tweaked by fractions of a percent, or which good skills have probably been stuck behind useless ones. I freely admit I'm not wasting my time even downloading the PTS since, after seeing the mountains of data from the last time we did this - and seeing that the new go around is basically yet more of the same based upon more data provided from the community - it would be a waste of my time.

As far as I can tell, nothing major about the skill maze design itself has changed:

• It is still a tangled web of skills that each offer tiny bonuses so you end up with 91 shades of grind after slogging past false choices
  
• It still utterly fails to achieve anything remotely close to "role warfare" since most mechs will grab the same skills, with weapons being the only major variance.
  
• It still has needed skills gated behind nearly worthless ones and even utterly worthless ones that boost things your mech lacks. Grind is NOT choice.
  
• It still has a respec cost, thus foolishly punishing people for using a key part of the game - the mechlab. Without mech customization, this game would have died years ago; it is madness for PGI to punish customization.

The only "big change" since last time seems to be PGI has found a different way to refund people for their modules. That's nice, I guess, but what about the product itself? Focusing on the refund only is like a restaurant that produces terrible food focusing on how to better give angry and nauseated customers a quick refund vs. actually fixing the terrible food itself.

If the new skill system stinks - which it appears it still does - even mucking around with it with infinite free skill points will still not be a fun experience or improvement to the game. And this doesn't even touch on the removal of needed quirks for weaker mechs, engine decoupling, etc.

Anyway, at this point I'm reasonably sure PGI doesn't care and is going to roll this dumpster fire out, completely unbalance the game, toss in New Tech, and then take 6 months to a year off from fixing anything with the mess they've created out of a once playable game.