188 replies to this topic

[Dr Cara Carcass]

Silme, on 14 May 2017 - 05:12 PM, said:

Not even close - in fact, I'm coming back for the skill tree revamp. I am hugely curious to see what the new meta will look like because the laser vomit meta has been going on for WAY TOO LONG and is also one of the most boring. I actually enjoyed the days of Goons running 8 Splatcats or SRM6 Awesomes and Dragon bowling. Poptarts and the LRM-ageddon were rather less interesting, but we've been on laser vomit for what, two years?

You realize that the skill tree will not change the meta? The more weapons of one kind you can fit the better it gets with the new skill tree.

[tokumboh]

The Skill Tree is something that I think people will get used to. Do I think it is good, the simple answer is no and there is lots of reasons why it is not good. I have bought the javelin so I will be doing the skill tree fresh but from my looking at the system with a fresh mech, I though the progression was poor and often to make progress you essentially are buy stuff which adds no value and at time you are doing that for a number of games it will be very interesting how people use it on new machs since most of the concern as been about users with mechs and XP to burn. If you have neither XP or C bills to burn it is going to be very interesting

The real interesting point will be when the tech update happens this will amplify any problems with the skill tree.

It is a bit like a car crash you don't want to look but you have a strange fascination.

Now to the questions will I still play. I'll tell you when I try and level up my javelins, which will be interesting since I am very poor at lights, it will give me a chance at looking at Skill Tree with a light mech and looking at how I would make progress.

I never played lights on the PTS so it will be interesting how it all turns outs

[MadRover]

New player but not a stranger to the battle tech universe and honestly I feel I need to put this game down after a whole month of playing. I love the battle tech universe and to be honest decoupling engines and merging every single mech to push a huge mess of a skill web in is unacceptable. Brawling after range combat has always been a thing. This has a bad taste of flavor of the season that I was hoping to avoid. Not to mention this tree will limit creativity in creating builds which is the whole point of this game. I don't mind the grind of 3 mechs. To be fair you don't need to master a mech to be competitive. You just needed the right build and actually pilot your mech properly. Now? What we are getting is something that is not mechwarrior. Please rethink this PGI. If this changes by the time Civil War rolls out I'll be a very happy person.

[XDevilsChariotX]

I'm fairly new and a casual player but I find this new skill tree is going to be very confusing for new players. Hell, I search Youtube and websites now on how to build a good Mech or to try different builds. I feel like I'm going to be really lost on how to build a good Mech now. Personally, I really like the current system. It's very user friendly and don't see the issues for changing it. Not sure, but I think this change may hurt the player base somewhat.

[Liquid Leopard]

I've been playing for 4 years (OMG, it's been that long? Started in March 2013), put $600 or so in this game, wasn't interested in a new skill tree, and now that it's being forced on me I'm deeply unimpressed.

After 4 years I've seen a lot of changes, and while some were positive, it seemed like half were just change for the sake of change. I liked some of the new game modes (especially Incursion, since it has the most convincing, least contrived objectives) liked the mech quirks for a while there, and I had just started to like Community Warfare (and then PGI devolved it into IS vs. Clans, so my FRR allegiance no longer counted for anything).

I've tinkered with the skill tree for 4 mechs, and tried them in-game. Just 150 mechs to go!

I think making me re-learn the game was a really sorry use of man-hours.

[Sharkomodo]

Been playing since 5 months before the first clan mechs dropped. Quit the day of the PTS drop after 2 hours of feeling it out and hating it on every level you can hate something. I'm not ranting for others to join me, or calling for PGI heads. I'm just answering the poll question. I don't play skill tree games and as much as I love BattleTech, this is one of the worst I've experienced. So a game I love just morphed into a game I dislike intensely. That's frustrating and I'm outta here, but life moves on.

[Jeremiah Blackstone]

Have been playing since closed beta, admitedly off and on during that time, with breaks of several months at a time. I only recently returning to the game after a long break, just in time for the Skill Tree to hit, and I actually like it a lot.
Several of my mechs have had a new lease on life, such as my Dragons, and no longer needing to master three variants of each mech, has allowed me to offload a bunch of stripped down clan mechs (I kept the omnipods, so I can theoretically still build the variant mechs anyway).

So, no, not going to leave MWO because of the skill tree.

[Aramuside]

A week in and can say I'm loving the choices. I am however cherry picking mechs to raise rather than blanket doing everything as I'm already noticing how much effect the tree has on different mechs. I'm generally feeling out the effects as I go and deciding if they match my theorycrafted expectations. Surprising difference in how my mechs are ending up and the changes to quirks/weapons definitely inspire me to be cautious in how many I change now.

[impar]

Was playing since closed beta (elite founder) and after the skill tree went live asked for refund of preorders and am looking for another online game to spend time.

Still play once in a while as habit, maybe 4 hours since the skill tree, and havent yet finished configuring the single mech I have been using in a way I feel satisfactory.
This skill tree offers the illusion of choice, the amount of unnecessary nodes one needs to unlock to get to the needed nodes is just poor implementation.

Also, enemy mechs have no... "flavour" now. The same mech\variant can be tanky, or be more agile or be more deadly. You are facing a Hunchback\Centurion\whatever and you do not know how to handle it. Familiarity was lost.

[Nightmare1]

impar, on 27 May 2017 - 12:36 PM, said:

Also, enemy mechs have no... "flavour" now. The same mech\variant can be tanky, or be more agile or be more deadly. You are facing a Hunchback\Centurion\whatever and you do not know how to handle it. Familiarity was lost.

I.e. - "I can't adapt and want something easy where I don't have to think."

This new skill tree is worlds' better than the old one. Give it a chance.

[impar]

Nightmare1, on 27 May 2017 - 12:39 PM, said:

I.e. - "I can't adapt and want something easy where I don't have to think."

No. Mechs\variants are no longer unique, with different strengths and weaknesses. Their strenghts can be made even stronger or their weaknesses can be covered with skills.
So (back to flavour) some mechs were sweet, others were salty and you knew which ones were what. Now they can be made even sweeter, or saltier or a mix of sweet\salt. Flavour was lost\familiarity was lost.

[Nightmare1]

impar, on 27 May 2017 - 01:47 PM, said:

No. Mechs\variants are no longer unique, with different strengths and weaknesses. Their strenghts can be made even stronger or their weaknesses can be covered with skills.
So (back to flavour) some mechs were sweet, others were salty and you knew which ones were what. Now they can be made even sweeter, or saltier or a mix of sweet\salt. Flavour was lost\familiarity was lost.

This demonstrates a lack of understanding and familiarity with the new tree, as well as a lack of imagination.

[Insanity09]

That is rather condescending of you nightmare, as well as incorrect.

The new skill tree does give you some choices in how to spec, that much is undeniable.

However, where before your quirks were built in to give each variant character, now you have the choice to further bolster those quirks (if they are still there) or spend many points elsewhere.
As impar suggests, this means that the individual character of a given variant is now blurred. Will the previously tanky mech now be seriously tanky, or will it now be more of a striker? It is impossible to know ahead of time, and even the same exact mech variant could be different between players (or heck, even matches, if somebody respecs).

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that the overall preset knowledge about what to expect, capability-wise, from a given mech is now lost.
Will that griffin be extra tanky? Will that heavy/assault be mobile enough to handle a light on its own? Depends on how the player specced.
It does change things, both for better and for worse.

[dethjester76]

I've been playing for a few years now. Spent way more money on this than any other game, and I used to feel like I got my money's worth. Anyway, I went month or two without playing, thought I'd pop back in and play for a few hours...And I spent all the time I meant for playing partially filling out skill trees for mechs that I had previously maxed out. And I don't know how the conversion was calculated, but it doesn't seem like I'll have Enough GXP to fill out all my mechs that were previously maxed out.

Overall, I'm not leaving the game, but I don't know when I'll have the time and patience to reconfigure all the mechs I used to use, then take the time to grind them back up to max out the skills. I probably won't be on faction play for at least a few months, and I'm not going to spend any more money on this game, which I think PGI cares about more than the # of active players.

[impar]

dethjester76, on 29 May 2017 - 08:35 AM, said:

And I don't know how the conversion was calculated, but it doesn't seem like I'll have Enough GXP to fill out all my mechs that were previously maxed out.

You dont need to spend GXP, you can transform XP\HXP to SP. Messy and overcomplicated, as only PGI can make things.

dethjester76, on 29 May 2017 - 08:35 AM, said:

... to max out the skills.

You can not max the skills. And, if you decide on modifying weapon loadout, some skills should be changed.

dethjester76, on 29 May 2017 - 08:35 AM, said:

Overall, I'm not leaving the game, but I don't know when I'll have the time and patience to reconfigure all the mechs I used to use, ...

I have only been playing with one mech and am still not satisfied on the skills choices I made.

Insanity09, on 27 May 2017 - 03:35 PM, said:

As impar suggests, this means that the individual character of a given variant is now blurred. Will the previously tanky mech now be seriously tanky, or will it now be more of a striker? It is impossible to know ahead of time, and even the same exact mech variant could be different between players (or heck, even matches, if somebody respecs).

Exactly. Familiarity was lost.

Edited by impar, 29 May 2017 - 11:30 AM.

[LucasVanWolf]

2 Years,

I quit .... tried lots of mechs to choose perfect wariants and settings... and they screw: good mechs,some wapons... and now skill tree ...it means learning configuration again in all mechs... so sorry PGI.

[Mycroft000]

So after having the new skill tree for a while, I'm revisiting this thread. I'm not leaving. Never planned to leave. However until I've spent 9000 GSP on old and new mechs, I'm not spending new money on the game. There's no reason to spend anything. I don't need premium time since I can level up the next 100 mechs I purchase for cbills for free.

[Aramuside]

mycroft000, on 01 June 2017 - 10:55 AM, said:

So after having the new skill tree for a while, I'm revisiting this thread. I'm not leaving. Never planned to leave. However until I've spent 9000 GSP on old and new mechs, I'm not spending new money on the game. There's no reason to spend anything. I don't need premium time since I can level up the next 100 mechs I purchase for cbills for free.

You've just hit on one of the major oddities to me. Even though I found I liked the skill tree I'm actually not sure what I'd spend money on. I looked at buying MC in the sale and couldn't think why I'd need it. Particularly with the energy revamp I'm happy to just play and compete until the Civil War tech is released and we have a clearer image of how competitive every chassis/weapon will be. That said I did but some more mechbays out of MC from the Tukayyid event!

Edit: I am wasting a lot of premium time sadly as all the mechs I use are starting with 91 points.

Edited by Aramuside, 02 June 2017 - 04:42 AM.

[Mycroft000]

Yeah, I have a little over a month of remaining premium time.

I think I have 86 Mechs and 108 Mechbays.

I didn't even bother spending any of my 2600 MC on the sale because why would I?

I started the update with 10300 GSP and have only used about 500 of that because I'm proceeding extremely carefully with my skill trees, and have pretty much determined that the Firepower tree is largely useless with the exception of certain builds.

That means once I have fully skilled up all of my mechs I will have primarily used the 91HSP I have on more than 80% of them to have done a near permanent setup on almost everything I own.

Once I've spent 91 points on them all, I'll have a dozen or so(mostly newly bought with C-Bills) mechs on which I can spend a few hundred more GSP.

Once that's done, I'll have enough remaining GSP that I can spend those remaining points on approximately the next 100 mechs I purchase.

The final result is that eventually I'll need to start buying Mechbays again(assuming I don't continue to accumulate them in Faction play, and as the result of event rewards). And at that point, I won't need C-Bills to purchase those, I'll just spend a few more dollars on MC and buy a handful at the next 50% off sale.

I can't imagine a point where I'll need to buy another mechpack for the foreseeable future to get premium time. I've spent over $500 on this game since I started playing at the end of 2015.

How can this possibly be a good thing for them to have done?

[Wintersdark]

mycroft000, on 02 June 2017 - 02:14 PM, said:

Yeah, I have a little over a month of remaining premium time.

I think I have 86 Mechs and 108 Mechbays.

I didn't even bother spending any of my 2600 MC on the sale because why would I?

I started the update with 10300 GSP and have only used about 500 of that because I'm proceeding extremely carefully with my skill trees, and have pretty much determined that the Firepower tree is largely useless with the exception of certain builds.

That means once I have fully skilled up all of my mechs I will have primarily used the 91HSP I have on more than 80% of them to have done a near permanent setup on almost everything I own.

Once I've spent 91 points on them all, I'll have a dozen or so(mostly newly bought with C-Bills) mechs on which I can spend a few hundred more GSP.

Once that's done, I'll have enough remaining GSP that I can spend those remaining points on approximately the next 100 mechs I purchase.

The final result is that eventually I'll need to start buying Mechbays again(assuming I don't continue to accumulate them in Faction play, and as the result of event rewards). And at that point, I won't need C-Bills to purchase those, I'll just spend a few more dollars on MC and buy a handful at the next 50% off sale.

I can't imagine a point where I'll need to buy another mechpack for the foreseeable future to get premium time. I've spent over $500 on this game since I started playing at the end of 2015.

How can this possibly be a good thing for them to have done?

You bought mechpacks specifically to get premium time? I mean, that was a contributing factor for me, but I bought mechpacks because I wanted the mechs. The premium time just helped make it a better deal, and it still does.

While I have some 10k GSP sitting around, AND already mastered my mechs with HSP (not to mention zounds of GXP and whatnot), that just means any mech packs I buy I'll be able to instantly master. That's fine for me, levelling mechs isn't very interesting to me, I'd sooner just have them mastered and play with them at 100%.

What I don't have is an unlimited amount of cbills. I bought a couple mechs (and instantly mastered them) with the ST release, and now have just 30m cbills left. This puts me back to where I was before the ST in terms of cbill need: I only used cbills for monkeying with builds and buying new mechs(because I was a cheapskate and would just move modules to mechs I needed to be fully competitive with), and that still applies. I just don't have to **** around with moving modules anymore.

So... For me anyways, Premium Time still has value. More cbills = more mechs. Mechpacks get me enough premium time to never worry about it, and shiny new mechs to boot. So... yeah? Not seeing the problem, really.

The alternative was insufficiently refunding players (see ST V1.0) which (rightly) really pissed off a lot of people. This one over-does things situationally, but it's way better to have a system that doesn't screw anyone out of progress they earned already.

I can't be mad because PGI gave me too much stuff =)