78 replies to this topic

[GabrielSun]

We've been saying it all along. The problem we have with the trees is clearly outlined with the attached image.



Look at how far these are spread out. Heat containment and Cool Run were the first thing you picked up before... and cheaply. Why do I have to spend 21 pts minimum to get them now? It's ridiculous.

Take all the trees and group similar functions. As is now the skill tree absolutely removes any kind of creative building and makes you shotgun the entire tree to obtain one function you may be looking for.

[Y E O N N E]

You have to spend that because they are too valuable to let you a la carte with. They want you running closer to equipment baseline and giving up some potential advantage in one spot to gain another one here.

Whether or not they were successful at incentivizing you away from always maximizing those out is another question, but I have no quarrel with the concept.

[R Valentine]

Yeonne Greene, on 26 April 2017 - 06:25 PM, said:

You have to spend that because they are too valuable to let you a la carte with. They want you running closer to equipment baseline and giving up some potential advantage in one spot to gain another one here. Whether or not they were successful at incentivizing you away from always maximizing those out is another question, but I have no quarrel with the concept.

What do you mean they are "too valuable"? We already have those skills on our mechs, and they're the cheapest and fastest ones to get. Too valuable my ***. They work just fine in their current iteration. There's no need for the ridiculously complicated and stupid implementation they're trying to sell us on.

[Duncan1dah0]

You should not have to waste points in hill climb and gyros. If it is a concern on power creep and needing to make high investment in certain powerful skills cost you more, well then just make them cost more. Make level 1 Heat containment worth 1 skill point, but level 3 or 4 takes 2, then level 5 takes 3. You then are directly putting your money where you value it and at the same time sacrificing in other areas. Why is this such a hard thing?

[Alexander of Macedon]

This and the IS quirk nerf are ******* absurd. It's like all the development decisions at PGI are made while the teams are plastered.

[Ruar]

Kiran Yagami, on 26 April 2017 - 06:32 PM, said:

What do you mean they are "too valuable"? We already have those skills on our mechs, and they're the cheapest and fastest ones to get. Too valuable my ***. They work just fine in their current iteration. There's no need for the ridiculously complicated and stupid implementation they're trying to sell us on.

What he means is that cooling your mech is harder in the new skill tree so anything that helps you vent heat, and subsequently have higher DPS, has more value than on live.

The devs don't want people able to spend five points and get all of the most valuable skills creating a system very much like we have now. They want you to make choices on what you can take and what you'll have to leave behind. Which actually makes sense because they want people to customize based on role, weapons, play style, etc.

The problem is they mashed everything together into a tangle instead of having a linear system. They could still have a high cost on valuable skills in a linear system by simply adding in more nodes to take. Instead they are making cookie cutter builds because everyone is going to take a few key skills and the chain down to them.

They have good intentions but poor execution.

[Y E O N N E]

Kiran Yagami, on 26 April 2017 - 06:32 PM, said:

What do you mean they are "too valuable"? We already have those skills on our mechs, and they're the cheapest and fastest ones to get. Too valuable my ***. They work just fine in their current iteration. There's no need for the ridiculously complicated and stupid implementation they're trying to sell us on.

Whether or not you already have them and whether or not they are currently cheap is 100% irrelevant. Having better cooling capacity is clearly of high value. The trend PGI wants to take is to make all 'Mechs run hotter and shoot slower than they currently do, so there is zero expectation that any 'Mechs should play exactly like it does on the current live server.

[R Valentine]

Yeonne Greene, on 26 April 2017 - 06:50 PM, said:

Whether or not you already have them and whether or not they are currently cheap is 100% irrelevant. Having better cooling capacity is clearly of high value. The trend PGI wants to take is to make all 'Mechs run hotter and shoot slower than they currently do, so there is zero expectation that any 'Mechs should play exactly like it does on the current live server.

Only not all mechs need cooling as much as others. PPFLD builds will be virtually unaffected. This hurts DPS builds the most.

[Ruar]

Kiran Yagami, on 26 April 2017 - 06:53 PM, said:

Only not all mechs need cooling as much as others. PPFLD builds will be virtually unaffected. This hurts DPS builds the most.

I think that's kind of the point. And if the low heat builds become the new meta then players will adjust within the skill tree to compensate. Then we'll have the civil war tech released and everything will change again.

[R Valentine]

Ruar, on 26 April 2017 - 07:01 PM, said:

I think that's kind of the point. And if the low heat builds become the new meta then players will adjust within the skill tree to compensate. Then we'll have the civil war tech released and everything will change again.

What do you mean "new meta"? PPFLD is already the meta. The Night Gyr is king, followed by the Kodiak and Hunchback IIC. This is only going to entrench the current meta further. Brawling will be nearly dead.

[Y E O N N E]

Kiran Yagami, on 26 April 2017 - 06:53 PM, said:

Only not all mechs need cooling as much as others. PPFLD builds will be virtually unaffected. This hurts DPS builds the most.

First, that's besides the point.

Second, only the FLD 'Mechs leaning heavily on Gauss are unaffected (the perpetual issue with Gauss is that it deals only 1 point of heat). Those that lean on heavily PPCs will run hotter, meaning less DPS from them at a distance, meaning you can move up on them while sustaining less damage in return. Couple that with potentially increased armor. SRMs and small-class lasers (mostly cERSL) could wind up stronger due to superior damage over heat through weight. We'll see, map pending of course.

Third, that's more of an issue with DPS builds running inherently too hot, and that's mostly because PGI nerfed the 5-class ACs too much with that heat increase to 1.5. And that's not the only case where the gun runs too hot for what it needs to do; isSL, isML, isMPL, AC/40 (ghost heat), and the isERPPC are all too hot for what they are clearly intended to be good at given their other specifics. Drop the heat on those weapons and we'll be in a better place.

[R Valentine]

Yeonne Greene, on 26 April 2017 - 07:08 PM, said:

First, that's besides the point. Second, only the FLD 'Mechs leaning heavily on Gauss are unaffected (the perpetual issue with Gauss is that it deals only 1 point of heat). Those that lean on heavily PPCs will run hotter, meaning less DPS from them at a distance, meaning you can move up on them while sustaining less damage in return. Couple that with potentially increased armor. SRMs and small-class lasers (mostly cERSL) could wind up stronger due to superior damage over heat through weight. We'll see, map pending of course. Third, that's more of an issue with DPS builds running inherently too hot, and that's mostly because PGI nerfed the 5-class ACs too much with that heat increase to 1.5. And that's not the only case where the gun runs too hot for what it needs to do; isSL, isML, isMPL, AC/40 (ghost heat), and the isERPPC are all too hot for what they are clearly intended to be good at given their other specifics. Drop the heat on those weapons and we'll be in a better place.

How about... no. Why nerf things that are already too hot when weapons with 0 heat are already better? Just leave the current system in place instead of throwing the balance even further off. I'm tired of this, "well, they just need to buff that weapon then" garbage. They never do. PGI will get around to AC/5s in 2076. There's no reason at all to nerf DPS builds while PPFLD is still king, and no reason to mess with heat management at all. PGI doesn't just do things out of order. They forget the steps they missed and leave broken stuff even more broken. No, enough of that. Don't mess with what's currently working, or at least working in a somewhat viable manner. This whole skill tree idea has been one debacle after another.

[Y E O N N E]

Kiran Yagami, on 26 April 2017 - 07:49 PM, said:

Don't mess with what's currently working, or at least working in a somewhat viable manner. This whole skill tree idea has been one debacle after another.

It's not working though, not even in a somewhat viable manner. It hasn't been working in a somewhat viable manner since before December 2015. Before that point, IS and Clan were fairly well balanced. After that point is when PGI inexplicably gave the IS some uber-buffs, and we've been suffering the knee-jerk nerfs ever since.

[MechaBattler]

They want you to make a choice. No more easy just fill up all your skills and get all around good performance. Now you'll have to specialize to get peak performance. Or you can generalize across the board, but make sacrifices to do so. Now could it have been done better? Yeah. Nothing is perfect. But it's still better than what we have on live. Although it does make you question what they have in mind for balance.

[Naaaaak]

Yeonne Greene, on 26 April 2017 - 06:25 PM, said:

You have to spend that because they are too valuable to let you a la carte with

"Too valuable"? This is complete nonsense. I don't want to waste money and XP on crap I don't want or need. Making me spend 20 unlocks to get the 5 I want is garbage design and a waste of my time and resources.

This is not an unlock tree. This is an unlock "web" that has no rhyme or reason. We don't need cute little hexagons. We need a list with levels 1-3 or 1-5 for various skills, making the latter skills take 2 or 3 points instead of everything taking 1.

[Tesunie]

Every time I see talk about skill trees, it's always compared to "what we have now" and "why it is worse".

It's a different system, which is suppose to be less min/max and more balanced with pros and cons to trying to get specific skills.

No, rather PGI has done that right or not is a different story, but please stop saying "we can get that right now". The concept isn't to let you "still get everything you have now" and instead make it "select what you feel you need most". It's a completely different system. Or would you still like to own and basic out three mechs still to unlock "elite level" skills too?

[Y E O N N E]

Naaaaak, on 26 April 2017 - 09:34 PM, said:

"Too valuable"? This is complete nonsense.

If it's nonsense, then why are you complaining about it?

Quote

I don't want to waste money and XP on crap I don't want or need. Making me spend 20 unlocks to get the 5 I want is garbage design and a waste of my time and resources.

This is not an unlock tree. This is an unlock "web" that has no rhyme or reason. We don't need cute little hexagons. We need a list with levels 1-3 or 1-5 for various skills, making the latter skills take 2 or 3 points instead of everything taking 1.

There is no distinction between more expensive skills and having to spend some points on interim skills to get to higher levels except that you pick up extra value-adds along the way. I'd much rather spend 3 points to get a fifth 1.5% cool-down and also get some laser duration and heat gen along the way than just spend the three nodes only for the fifth 1.5% cool-down and nothing else.

Tesunie, on 26 April 2017 - 09:40 PM, said:

No, rather PGI has done that right or not is a different story, but please stop saying "we can get that right now".

It is a different story, because they haven't quite gotten the concept of trade-offs right. There remains an optimal path through the trees that can be nearly universally applied for maximum impact.

[Tesunie]

Yeonne Greene, on 26 April 2017 - 09:42 PM, said:

It is a different story, because they haven't quite gotten the concept of trade-offs right. There remains an optimal path through the trees that can be nearly universally applied for maximum impact.

If pathing is an issue, which leads to "powerful and useful skills" as being too easy to get (as in, negatively impacts the choice between functions) or too hard to get (making them not worth trying), than that is an issue that needs to be mentioned.

GabrielSun, on 26 April 2017 - 05:51 PM, said:

Look at how far these are spread out. Heat containment and Cool Run were the first thing you picked up before... and cheaply. Why do I have to spend 21 pts minimum to get them now? It's ridiculous.

The underlined section is my reference point that I don't like seeing.

I know, we want to compare it to something and that something is the current skill system in the game. But, I'm advising that people just try not to compare the two, as they are suppose to be drastically different system. Right now, there is no creativeness in the skills, as everyone ends up having the same skills and there is no give or take, no decisions to be made.

The current proposed Skill Tree is suppose to be designed to force people into making a decision. Do I want to get weapon skills, survivability skills or agility skills? Which one is more beneficial to me/my build over the others? Or do I want to just dabble in a little of each but not focus on any given one?

If the current trees aren't having you think about the skills you wish to unlock, and you can literally "get everything you want" too easily, than that needs to be questioned. Not, "We could get it before real easy, I want what I had before", as what we had before (now for the record) is a skill system that is boring and everyone just checks off all the skills and move on. (Including some that do completely nothing right now, and have for years.)

[Ruar]

Yeonne Greene, on 26 April 2017 - 09:42 PM, said:

If it's nonsense, then why are you complaining about it?



There is no distinction between more expensive skills and having to spend some points on interim skills to get to higher levels except that you pick up extra value-adds along the way. I'd much rather spend 3 points to get a fifth 1.5% cool-down and also get some laser duration and heat gen along the way than just spend the three nodes only for the fifth 1.5% cool-down and nothing else.



It is a different story, because they haven't quite gotten the concept of trade-offs right. There remains an optimal path through the trees that can be nearly universally applied for maximum impact.

I'd rather spend one point on cool down, one on laser duration, and then spend the third on whatever I choose instead of being forced to take a skill the devs are forcing me, and everyone else, to take. They've simply built a new cookie cutter instead of actually allowing us to customize the way we want.

I have no problems with higher cost skills, but there must be no filler nodes. Let us pick only what we want. Its easy enough to do if the just admit they've messed up on the tree.

[Jack Shayu Walker]

I remember that one PGI dev said he liked the tangle tree over a linear tree with varying costs because it allowed players to get extra miscilainious stat bonuses in addition to what they're intentionally looking for. He said something along the lines of "Why would you not want the free bonuses? I don't get that?"

What he fails to understand is this: he is not selling us a real piece of military equipment, no we don't just want everything we can get for the same price. This is a video game, we want the opportunity costs, we want to feel specialized, that's part of the fun! No we don't want free hill climb! We want to feel like our choices are impactful!

Give us linear trees, and let us pick what we want with varied prices based on the nodes!