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Learning To Hate One Thing In Skill Tree


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#1 MischiefSC

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Posted 28 April 2017 - 10:45 AM

Quit trying to force me to buy worthless **** to get stuff I do need. 91 pts isn't enough if you do that. I don't need hill climb. Don't want it. Don't need it. Stop trying to force me to buy that module with my limited skill points if I want access to the exact same stuff I had with just skill unlocks before; quick ignition, heat containment and cool running.

The stupid, terrible thing is it's got me starting to think the existing broken skill tree and buying modules is still better because at least I can just get what I want and spend cbills/GXP on what I want.

I want to like the skill tree. I'm trying really hard. Quit making it so pointlessly difficult.

To get back just what I had in basics for mobility and operations I had to spend 61 pts to get 50 pts worth of quirks. 11 pts were thrown away. Hill climb, gyro, arm pitch are worthless. Like 1% MG range quirks.

Stop it. You've got me restricted to 91 pts so I'll never have sensor/derp again, etc. etc. Because not having mobility quirks is like starting a match with one leg missing compared to those who do and heat containment/cool running is worth more than filling half your mech with DHS.

So we get 30 pts to spend and we can either get a handful of weapon quirks to make up some of what was lost with the removal of the skill tree and maybe some extra ammo, or, I guess, we can throw it away to get radar derp and a bunch of **** we don't need.

I hate to say this, I do, but I like the skill tree less and less the more I actually use it.

Edited again -

God damn it, really?

So I have to get laser quirks, even on a mech with no lasers, to get range, cooldown and heat gen?

You managed to let me get ballistic quirks without forcing me to get gauss, LBX or UAC quirks. However I'm forced to waste quirks on lasers?

WILL YOU ******* STOP IT!

Edited by MischiefSC, 28 April 2017 - 10:53 AM.


#2 Monkey Lover

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Posted 28 April 2017 - 10:52 AM

I'm OK with some of these as it looks like this is how they're making the more valuable nodes cost more.

What I do not the like is the nodes where you can't 100% use them for example . Like armpitch when you never planned on having arm weapons.

#3 Mycroft000

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Posted 28 April 2017 - 11:18 AM

MischiefSC, I agree with you 100%. Having said that, if this is the tree we are going to get saddled with, look at what I think is going to be fairly close to the "Solved" state of the skill tree.

https://mwomercs.com...f-skill-points/

#4 Wintersdark

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Posted 28 April 2017 - 11:44 AM

Needing to take the other skills to maximize cooldown/range/heat gen is fine; it's a clever way to balance the inherent disadvantages of mixed builds. Just don't maximize those skills then. Or accept there's diminishing returns for a boated build maximizing those things.


Skills like Hill Climb being necessary works to increase the cost of what would otherwise be high value skills. It'd be exactly the same if they just assigned different values to some skills instead, rather than needing a Hill Climb to get a Speed Tweak, Speed Tweak would just cost two SP. At least we get *something* along the way here.

Edited by Wintersdark, 28 April 2017 - 11:45 AM.


#5 Mycroft000

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Posted 28 April 2017 - 11:51 AM

Valuable skills should be more accessible and cost more. Hill climb should cost less. So should make of the less valuable skills, that might lead to people seeing a bunch of cheaper skills as being worth taking over a handful of higher cost skills.

Or it will just show that those cheaper skills are unnecessary to the game and can simply be removed or boosted until they are actually worth taking.

#6 FupDup

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Posted 28 April 2017 - 12:00 PM

View Postmycroft000, on 28 April 2017 - 11:51 AM, said:

Valuable skills should be more accessible and cost more. Hill climb should cost less. So should make of the less valuable skills, that might lead to people seeing a bunch of cheaper skills as being worth taking over a handful of higher cost skills.

Or it will just show that those cheaper skills are unnecessary to the game and can simply be removed or boosted until they are actually worth taking.

Hill Climb needs to be flat out reworked since it barely even fulfills its intended function of making it easier to climb up stuff.

The current thing it does is make you decelerate slower when you start climbing something steep enough to trigger the slowdown. The problem is that you're still decelerating quickly enough that you don't get much further than usual.

The way it needs to work is increasing your minimum and maximum slowdown angles. Basically, these are the values that determine how steep of terrain you can climb up before you get the speed penalty. This is the main difference between the movement archetypes like "small," "medium," "huge," etc.

Improved Gyros can probably just go the way of the dodo for now, or just have its cost heavily reduced.

#7 Ruar

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Posted 28 April 2017 - 12:00 PM

View PostWintersdark, on 28 April 2017 - 11:44 AM, said:

Needing to take the other skills to maximize cooldown/range/heat gen is fine; it's a clever way to balance the inherent disadvantages of mixed builds. Just don't maximize those skills then. Or accept there's diminishing returns for a boated build maximizing those things.


Skills like Hill Climb being necessary works to increase the cost of what would otherwise be high value skills. It'd be exactly the same if they just assigned different values to some skills instead, rather than needing a Hill Climb to get a Speed Tweak, Speed Tweak would just cost two SP. At least we get *something* along the way here.


And yet, they could have built it so I could take speed tweak and then have hill climb be a one point node the same as target retention and arm pitch. Pay more for speed tweak and have a point or two leftover to spend on something I actually want instead of forcing me to the nodes they want me to have. The gate system just means everyone is going to be unlocking the same gates and having the same basic builds, which is very close to what's happening in the game now.

#8 Wintersdark

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Posted 28 April 2017 - 12:40 PM

View PostRuar, on 28 April 2017 - 12:00 PM, said:


And yet, they could have built it so I could take speed tweak and then have hill climb be a one point node the same as target retention and arm pitch. Pay more for speed tweak and have a point or two leftover to spend on something I actually want instead of forcing me to the nodes they want me to have. The gate system just means everyone is going to be unlocking the same gates and having the same basic builds, which is very close to what's happening in the game now.


Everyone is going to have the same basic builds no matter what. If they gate good skills with the junk ones, or just price good skills higher, or whatever else it doesn't matter.

Better is making all skills equally valuable, but that's basically a "ideal in theory but practically impossible" thing. It's not going to happen.



#9 Quicksilver Aberration

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Posted 28 April 2017 - 12:46 PM

View PostWintersdark, on 28 April 2017 - 12:40 PM, said:

If they gate good skills with the junk ones, or just price good skills higher, or whatever else it doesn't matter.

It does matter somewhat actually, since just increasing the cost and ridding ourselves of these less valuable skill obstacles simplifies the tree significantly.

#10 Ruar

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Posted 28 April 2017 - 12:49 PM

View PostWintersdark, on 28 April 2017 - 12:40 PM, said:

Everyone is going to have the same basic builds no matter what. If they gate good skills with the junk ones, or just price good skills higher, or whatever else it doesn't matter.

Better is making all skills equally valuable, but that's basically a "ideal in theory but practically impossible" thing. It's not going to happen.


It matters because I want to be able to choose between sensor range or target retention depending on my build. Using both of those as gate skills absolutely forces everyone into the same design, but having them as their own separate options means we will have a small amount of variety. At the least players would have the freedom to choose one over the other instead of being forced.

Yes, I agree it's a small distinction because a chunk of the player base will hear/see "sensor range is hands down better than target retention for reasons X,Y, and Z" causing the bulk of people to take sensor range as that one extra skill. But not everyone will take it. Some will choose their own path. Except... they can't when the nodes are gated and there is no real choice or options.

Being forced to take a cookie cutter build (web) is very different than people choosing to follow the flavor of the month.

#11 Chound

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Posted 28 April 2017 - 12:52 PM

View PostMonkey Lover, on 28 April 2017 - 10:52 AM, said:

I'm OK with some of these as it looks like this is how they're making the more valuable nodes cost more.

What I do not the like is the nodes where you can't 100% use them for example . Like armpitch when you never planned on having arm weapons.


Some of these nodes were part of the mastering process so you still had to unlock them anyway. The problem is when the Pilot skills and modules get thrown onto the tree. by the time I get the rest I have 11 nodes for weapons. That's no where near enough if I use all three systems and general quirks are spread all over the place. I still think that something like the current pilot skill tree is a good arangement for a skills "tree" let you pick exactly you want at a level you wantn since each level would count as a node or just put all of the nodes for radar derp or laser duration in One place not three or four nodes. 91 nodes doesn't give you a lot of wiggle room for everything as it is.

#12 Wintersdark

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Posted 28 April 2017 - 12:53 PM

View PostQuicksilver Kalasa, on 28 April 2017 - 12:46 PM, said:

It does matter somewhat actually, since just increasing the cost and ridding ourselves of these less valuable skill obstacles simplifies the tree significantly.
I don't disagree that simpler would be better. I still think halving the skills/doubling the effect is a really good thing to do...


But it's not going to happen, so whatever. *Shrugs* it's a pretty small matter otherwise.

#13 Nightmare1

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Posted 28 April 2017 - 02:09 PM

I have mixed feelings about the node tax. On the one hand, requiring pilots to make hard choices between certain skills does make some sense. However, I also agree that in a lot of cases, PGI is forcing us to make trash choices.

You example of having to purchase energy nodes for ballistic-focused Mechs is a good one. My pet peeve is having to purchase arm skills for Mechs that don't rely arm-mounted weapons in order to get more important nodes. There needs to be more common sense in how the node tax is applied.

Overall though, this is a significant improvement to the previous PTS.

#14 Mycroft000

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Posted 28 April 2017 - 04:35 PM

We're not being forced to make choices, we're forced to look for the optimal(least wasteful) set of nodes.

#15 MischiefSC

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Posted 28 April 2017 - 05:45 PM

View Postmycroft000, on 28 April 2017 - 11:18 AM, said:

MischiefSC, I agree with you 100%. Having said that, if this is the tree we are going to get saddled with, look at what I think is going to be fairly close to the "Solved" state of the skill tree.

https://mwomercs.com...f-skill-points/


Nope, the sensor stuff is not nearly as useful as the same points spent on mobility. You'll want to max mobility or the sensors are not worth much.

Same with armor vs weapon stuff. Gank > Tank.

QS Kalasa sorta went over it in your thread. This argument ties into my whole issue with the skill tree -

There's going to be people who are effectively playing the game without ever getting Elites unlocked, just some (not all) their Basics but they'll have Radar Derp and Seismic. Other people are going to get double basics + 15% burn duration decrease, range perks and the equiv of cooldown modules on their mechs.

The second group is going to either already have or pretty quickly develop the situational awareness to not need derp or seismic and they're going to crush the first group the same way T1 vets (who are actually T1) stomp T4s in new mechs.

Your 'armor' quirks are earning you, on most mechs, about 1 medium laser hit more durability one time total over the match for which you're giving up about 5 points (10%) more damage via faster cooldown and heat management every time you go to shoot over the match.

The mobility quirks are even more critical. If you and I both have, say, a Roughneck (Roughneck is Bestneck) and we get into a brawl with full mobility vs your gimped mobility tree I'm just going to circle you. I'm literally going to get 2 additional shots into you that you can't return on a 90 degree mutual pivot because I can turn further, tighter and faster. Essentially you're making my success against you in even a moderately close fight a sure thing. Even at range I'm going to get my sights on target first and be able to twist away first.

Brawl or poke the person with the full mobility tree is literally like someone with full Mastery vs someone with just a couple basics (not double basics) unlocked on live.

That's the problem. These are not 'equal tradeoffs'. If you take sensor over mobility and firepower then you're going to consistently lose to those who do.

Now, if you could trade 1% of that heat management for 1 node (100m) of seismic, would you? Probably. Maybe. Depends on the mech.

That would be a worthwhile tradeoff (values subject to relative value of quirks). The current system eliminates that. To get Derp or Seismic, even at basic level, you need 5SP. That's giving up 14% quick ignition and 4% Cool Run. Utterly and completely not worth it. It's 4.5% of your top speed (that's about 2 or 3 engine sizes depending on the mech) from Speed Tweak plus 5% turn rate.

Your 'standard skill tree' is going to put you at a disadvantage against one that literally rebuilds exactly what we have today - near max the mobility tree, near max the operations tree, put 19 pts into weapons.

You hit the crux of it with your last post. We're being forced to pick the least wasteful set of nodes. This not only doesn't give us 'more options' but it just creates more ways for people to screw themselves, only now they're going to pay cbills and wasted time to screw themselves.

View Postmycroft000, on 28 April 2017 - 11:51 AM, said:

Valuable skills should be more accessible and cost more. Hill climb should cost less. So should make of the less valuable skills, that might lead to people seeing a bunch of cheaper skills as being worth taking over a handful of higher cost skills.

Or it will just show that those cheaper skills are unnecessary to the game and can simply be removed or boosted until they are actually worth taking.


Sorta. You can keep them all at 1 SP but alter the relative value of what each SP gets you. So 0.5% in Cool Running for example is maybe worth 7.5% Hill Climb. You can keep it at a 1 to 1 ratio - just have getting 10% in cooldown cost 10SP but 30% Hill Climb only cost 4 SP to get up to.

You don't have to change relative SP value, just relative value of what that SP buys you in each skill.

#16 Mycroft000

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Posted 28 April 2017 - 05:50 PM

Posted Image

This is the benefits you gain for going max in agility vs only spending 18 nodes.

#17 Wintersdark

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Posted 29 April 2017 - 08:17 AM

View PostNightmare1, on 28 April 2017 - 02:09 PM, said:

I have mixed feelings about the node tax. On the one hand, requiring pilots to make hard choices between certain skills does make some sense. However, I also agree that in a lot of cases, PGI is forcing us to make trash choices.

You example of having to purchase energy nodes for ballistic-focused Mechs is a good one. My pet peeve is having to purchase arm skills for Mechs that don't rely arm-mounted weapons in order to get more important nodes. There needs to be more common sense in how the node tax is applied.

Overall though, this is a significant improvement to the previous PTS.

It bothers me when you're taking upgrades that are literally useless, but ultimately it's just a clumsy way to add diminishing returns for single-weapon type mechs (this is a pretty important balance point and, while pretty clumsy, actually fairly clever) and higher costs for higher value skills, without changing skill node costs on an individual level (which is fraught with peril). Long rambly sentence is long and rambly, but I'm not fixing it.

Sure, they could just split Speed Tweak, for example, into 10 skills instead of 5, and put Hill Climb elsewhere, but people would be spending exactly as many skill points to get Speed Tweak either way, and in that later situation now there's even more total skill nodes on the trees.

Seriously, if you assume that getting a given skill is going to cost you, say, 10 skill points, what does it matter if you get it and a silly gate skill, or you just get that skill? At the end of the day, you're getting the skill you want at a fixed cost either way. Who cares if you got an additional skill you don't care about or not? It's just not a big deal. People need to just let that go, it's a stupid complaint.

#18 Wintersdark

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Posted 29 April 2017 - 08:29 AM

View PostMischiefSC, on 28 April 2017 - 05:45 PM, said:


Nope, the sensor stuff is not nearly as useful as the same points spent on mobility. You'll want to max mobility or the sensors are not worth much.

Same with armor vs weapon stuff. Gank > Tank.

QS Kalasa sorta went over it in your thread. This argument ties into my whole issue with the skill tree -

There's going to be people who are effectively playing the game without ever getting Elites unlocked, just some (not all) their Basics but they'll have Radar Derp and Seismic. Other people are going to get double basics + 15% burn duration decrease, range perks and the equiv of cooldown modules on their mechs.

The second group is going to either already have or pretty quickly develop the situational awareness to not need derp or seismic and they're going to crush the first group the same way T1 vets (who are actually T1) stomp T4s in new mechs.

Your 'armor' quirks are earning you, on most mechs, about 1 medium laser hit more durability one time total over the match for which you're giving up about 5 points (10%) more damage via faster cooldown and heat management every time you go to shoot over the match.

The mobility quirks are even more critical. If you and I both have, say, a Roughneck (Roughneck is Bestneck) and we get into a brawl with full mobility vs your gimped mobility tree I'm just going to circle you. I'm literally going to get 2 additional shots into you that you can't return on a 90 degree mutual pivot because I can turn further, tighter and faster. Essentially you're making my success against you in even a moderately close fight a sure thing. Even at range I'm going to get my sights on target first and be able to twist away first.

Brawl or poke the person with the full mobility tree is literally like someone with full Mastery vs someone with just a couple basics (not double basics) unlocked on live.

That's the problem. These are not 'equal tradeoffs'. If you take sensor over mobility and firepower then you're going to consistently lose to those who do.

Now, if you could trade 1% of that heat management for 1 node (100m) of seismic, would you? Probably. Maybe. Depends on the mech.

That would be a worthwhile tradeoff (values subject to relative value of quirks). The current system eliminates that. To get Derp or Seismic, even at basic level, you need 5SP. That's giving up 14% quick ignition and 4% Cool Run. Utterly and completely not worth it. It's 4.5% of your top speed (that's about 2 or 3 engine sizes depending on the mech) from Speed Tweak plus 5% turn rate.

Your 'standard skill tree' is going to put you at a disadvantage against one that literally rebuilds exactly what we have today - near max the mobility tree, near max the operations tree, put 19 pts into weapons.

You hit the crux of it with your last post. We're being forced to pick the least wasteful set of nodes. This not only doesn't give us 'more options' but it just creates more ways for people to screw themselves, only now they're going to pay cbills and wasted time to screw themselves.



Sorta. You can keep them all at 1 SP but alter the relative value of what each SP gets you. So 0.5% in Cool Running for example is maybe worth 7.5% Hill Climb. You can keep it at a 1 to 1 ratio - just have getting 10% in cooldown cost 10SP but 30% Hill Climb only cost 4 SP to get up to.

You don't have to change relative SP value, just relative value of what that SP buys you in each skill.

See, I read this and I agree with this, but your problem here is you're blaming the wrong boogeyman in your OP.

The problem isn't gating.

The problem is relative value of skill nodes. Right now, there are skills worth a lot, and skills worth next to nothing. You'll NEVER get all the skills to the same value, so (going with the "skill nodes all cost the same" design, which is a good idea) you need gating or just more skill nodes for a given feature. Either way is pretty similar in practice.

There's two types of gating, too. There's "heavy investment" gating, and "cost increase" gating.

G = gate skill, S = desired skill

Heavy Investment:

G > G > G > G > S > S > S > S. It costs 5 points to get the first S, then one point per additional S. This is used to make a particular skill less common in the game, because it requires heavy investment in a particular tree to get it. Seismic, Derp, they're like this because they DON'T want everyone to be able to just grab each and ignore the rest of the Sensors tree. You need to choose to go more sensor-oriented if you want these things.

Cost Increase:

G > S > G > S > G > S > G > S It costs 2 SP per point of the desired skill. This is functionally identical to just raising the cost of the desired skill, and effectively identical to halving the gain of the desired skill and (doubling the number of skill nodes). It's a little less granular, but if anything the current skill tree is WAY too granular anyways.




Any proposal requiring MORE skill nodes is an automatic no as far as I'm concerned. Simply asking for cheaper access to the best skills is also a stupid idea, as that makes it even more "I'll just take the best of everything and nothing else". But the real problem ultimately is that there's such a disparity between good skills and bad skills. Simply raising values won't really fix that. So gating is kind of necessary


Back to the quoted post:

Yes, people will have good builds and bad builds. It WILL differentiate good and bad players more.

Any system that allows choice will do that. It's unavoidable, and not really a problem. It's no different than simply having a customizable mechlab.

#19 Mycroft000

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Posted 29 April 2017 - 09:36 AM

The reason why I see gating the skills as a pointless solution is that it doesn't lead to meaningful decisions. There are no limits that require us to choose between skill A or B. Without that limitation, the minimal bonuses that we are getting from each node we get to choose don't really add up to a legitimately noticeable effect. A 3% difference in speed tweak amounts to a total difference in real KPH value of 2-3 KPH on the majority of mechs in the game, a Nova with full 7.5% speed tweak will do 87.1, 4.5% speed tweak will get it to 84.6, a total difference of just under 2.5 KPH. I truly do not think that the extra 3% is worth 22 extra nodes.

#20 Nightmare1

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Posted 29 April 2017 - 02:15 PM

View PostWintersdark, on 29 April 2017 - 08:17 AM, said:

Who cares if you got an additional skill you don't care about or not?


It's just annoying. Look at the following:

Option 1: Buy Level 1 Torso Twist for 1 point. Buy Level 2 Torso Twist for 3 points. Etc.

Option 2: Buy Level 1 Torso Twist for 1 point. Buy Level 1 Arm Pitch for 1 point. Buy Level 1 Fall Protection for 1 point. Buy Torso Twist for 1 point.

Suddenly, it feels bloated and almost like someone is trying to stop yo from acquiring your skills. I know that's not the case, but it's not very clean, creates a mountain of mouse clicking, and engenders a feeling of resentment that you're being "forced" to buy something you don't want.

I'm not saying that's right or wrong, mind you. I'm just explaining the reasoning.





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