140 replies to this topic

[Mystere]

fat4eyes, on 28 April 2017 - 11:30 AM, said:

True, it would be cleaner, but we'd lose out on the extra benefits. And there's the matter of having leftover sp if you have too many nodes that cost more than 1 sp.

An "extra benefit" to a Mech that has zero use for it is not a "benefit".

[FupDup]

WarHippy, on 28 April 2017 - 11:42 AM, said:

I hate to say it, but I agree. On a similar note the cool down nodes bother me as well because they apply to all weapons. Under the module system if I was running a mix of lasers and ACs I would likely have a range module for both and a cool down module for the ACs. I preferred it that way because it made heat management a little easier. Under the new skill tree if I want faster cool down on my ACs my lasers end up with it as well.

The point of rolling them together was to reduce the complaints about the skill tree benefiting boats more than multi-weapon mechs. I don't really feel that strongly about it, but I understand the reasoning in this case.

Even without cooldown modules on your lasers, you're still going to have to hold off on firing them at certain times anyways. The tiny cooldown buffs from the new skill tree aren't enough to make a real difference (9.9% IS and 7.7% Clan IIRC).

[Coolant]

try to adapt

[VanillaG]

Ultimax, on 28 April 2017 - 11:34 AM, said:

No you do not get benefits along the way. That requires everything on the trees to have value - this is the major issue with the skill tree.

Some skils are FUNCTIONALLY VALUELESS.

There is a reason why no one ever takes garbage like "hill climb" - and sorry, but my Grasshopper with NOTHING BUT LASER HARDPOINTS very clearly doesn't need missile skills just so I can take more things to benefit lasers.

What is the marginal value of those additional laser nodes that require you take either missile or ballistic nodes? Could you not take those nodes and use them in other tree that would directly benefit your mech? You made the decision to go after those nodes but in reality those additional nodes have less value than something else.

[FupDup]

Coolant, on 28 April 2017 - 11:45 AM, said:

try to adapt

Adapting doesn't make the flaws of the system (as it is currently proposed) magically go away.

[AphexTwin11]

MischiefSC, on 28 April 2017 - 11:08 AM, said:

Have you actually seriously tried to use it?

I mean it. Who's actually tried to use it? As though you were seriously trying to build a mech.

So to get the mobility stuff back from the skill tree I have to spend 61 pts to get 50 pts of quirks I need. I don't want to buy the hill climb module. I never did. Why am I forced to? And the gyro module? I can't get useful **** without wasting 11 SP.

Weapons are even worse. While I can avoid ever having to buy a gauss charge up, LBX spread or UAC Jam quirk if I don't want them it's impossible to get the range, cooldown and heat gen quirks without buying laser quirks. Also 2 ammo capacity quirks - for a mech with no ballistic or missile points.

So you have to utterly waste 22 skill points to get useful quirks. It's not possible, literally and mechanically, to get back what you lost in the skill tree with 91SP. To get 84 pts of what would be useful I have to spend 106.

Specifically because you've got to get 22 pts worth of **** you don't need or likely want. That possibly has no actual use on your mech.

With modules at least I can just get what I want.

**** it. I'd rather stick with what we have. I've given this criticism every single time. I'm more than willing to go with **** all whatever on the refund to get there. I want a skill tree ...

but I abso -****ing-lutely hate, despise and would quit playing the game over intentionally stupid stuff like this. If SP cost not just XP but cbills then the intentionally making me throw some away, be unable to build the skill tree in a way I find value in, because some total ***hole somewhere thinks it's funny to make people buy something of absolutely no use at all what so ever to get something of critical use, that's something that will irritate me every single time I go to skill a mech.

Stop it PGI. ******* STOP IT.

Not kidding. Tina, I hope you're reading and collecting this. The next time there's a meeting to discuss the skill tree and changes, please take a dish rag and soak it in water. Twist it up and whenever someone says this is a good idea or tries to justify it, please say 'Well, the general player opinion on that was' and then out of nowhere, WHAP! Right across the face with a wet rag.

I want to love the skill tree, I want to be onboard with the new changes. I'm game with the skill tree being an overall nerf, I'm game with it adding another money sink. Christ, I buy 99% of my mechs with cash. I want to feel good about doing so.

That aspect of the change however doesn't make me feel good. It irritates me greatly. See how the ballistic side of the weapons skill tree has gauss charge up, LBX and UAC jam chance reduction? See how I can get all the useful, general weapon quirks without touching them?

Mobility, operations and the left side of the firepower skill tree need to be the same. If I need laser quirks I'll get them. If I need missile quirks I'll get them. If I decide I want to utterly waste some SP, I'll get hill climb and gyro quirks and arm pitch quirks. However general quirks and useful quirks hidden behind worthless quirks when we're only allowed X quirks on a mech?

That sucks. A lot. Even on the PTS I've run out of patience for having to even look at it while just skilling up 2 of my 140+ mechs.

Kill it with fire.

[FupDup]

I see Tina lurking in the "reading this topic" pane on the bottom.

EDIT: She's gone now.

Edited by FupDup, 28 April 2017 - 11:54 AM.

[Cy Mitchell]

I have Mastered 11 Mechs on PTS. I can do one in less than 5 minutes now. No, I cannot maximize every skill that I would like to but then that is the plan with the tree and I understand that. I have only ever equipped 3 nodes total that absolutely had no value to my build and that was because I was trying to maximize my heat efficiency on a hot laser heavy build.

None of my Mechs are significantly worse off than they are on LIVE. Two are a bit less mobile and all of them are a bit less heat efficient. I am OK with that.

My experience.

[MischiefSC]

Vxheous Kerensky, on 28 April 2017 - 11:32 AM, said:

I set up one mech and was tired after that with 115 more to go. I also hate how I cant get my mech to what it is baseline now

I get that - it's part of the point. The current system is the product of power creep - that's exactly what modules were. Direct, for money, power creep. I get the need to roll them back.

I'm game with a sort of 'blanket nerf'. Especially in regard to weapons. The reality is that the real DPS of an AC5 isn't 3, it's closer to 4 because you've got it mastered, quickfire and a cooldown module for your AC5s (because nobody mounts just one).

So we've got a ~20% power creep over the 'real' stats in the game.

To reiterate, I'm okay if my mech is a bit slower and clumsier than in live. I'm game with the weapons firing more slowly and otherwise being nerfed across the board a bit from current mastered + modules.

However I want the same real and direct flexibility that the module system provides. Let me get the directly, universally useful general quirks or mobility modification quirks in a linear fashion. If I want hill climb I'll get hill climb. If I want missile quirks I'll get missile quirks. If I want arm pitch I'll get arm pitch.

What I am learning to hate very quickly is having to waste 1/3 of my points on things I don't want to get what I do. It forces me to generalize, not specialize and it keeps me from being able to commit to real tradeoffs and instead makes me waste points to get generally useful stuff because I'll never have enough points to specialize in anything because the general benefits are more useful than the specialized ones.

[WarHippy]

FupDup, on 28 April 2017 - 11:45 AM, said:

The point of rolling them together was to reduce the complaints about the skill tree benefiting boats more than multi-weapon mechs. I don't really feel that strongly about it, but I understand the reasoning in this case.

Even without cooldown modules on your lasers, you're still going to have to hold off on firing them at certain times anyways. The tiny cooldown buffs from the new skill tree aren't enough to make a real difference (9.9% IS and 7.7% Clan IIRC).

I understand that, but I still prefer having a little more fine tuning in my hands than just blanket bonuses. Its by no means the end of the world; just one more thing on the pile that irks me with the new tree.

[VanillaG]

FupDup, on 28 April 2017 - 11:47 AM, said:

Adapting doesn't make the flaws of the system (as it is currently proposed) magically go away.

But is no different than the flaws of the current system that require you to take Arm nodes and the Convergence node to master a mech.

[FupDup]

VanillaG, on 28 April 2017 - 11:51 AM, said:

But is no different than the flaws of the current system that require you to take Arm nodes and the Convergence node to master a mech.

That's exactly what I'm getting at with the "useless skills" of the new tree. One of the main reasons for even making a new tree like this is to allow players to pick and choose what benefits them and their mech the most. The placeholder skills directly contradict this and pose the exact same problem as arm and convergence skills in the existing live system.

[MischiefSC]

VanillaG, on 28 April 2017 - 11:51 AM, said:

But is no different than the flaws of the current system that require you to take Arm nodes and the Convergence node to master a mech.

It's hugely different because taking arm nodes does not leave me with too few points to get Quickstart.

If the premium is going to be on how many points you have then design the system around the tradeoff of where I want to spend those points - not trying to force me to waste points to get things I do want.

If PGI wants the max viable cooldown you can get in the firepower tree more like 7%.... then make 7 cooldown modes of 1% each. Not 10% but 3 of them buried under 10 pts of stuff you don't need 9 times in 10.

The skill tree lacks the flexibility and degree of customization that exists in live. I make a more useful/impactful/meaningful tradeoff when I choose between cooldown and range modules or which weapons I'll put modules in for or deciding between seismic or zoom or derp than I do on the skill tree.

Currently in the skill tree I'll never take a sensor or armor or other quirk because quickstart/speed tweak are always useful and separate winning from losing almost every match. Same with the mobility quirks. So you've only got 29-30 pts to spend to make your weapons more useful. If I was making a poptart for comp matches I might give up the mobility quirks for JJ quirks but that's a pretty narrow example.

Because of the waste and inability to customize in a meaningful way it just means that no meaningful customization exists.

Because I have to get hill climb to get speed tweak hill climb isn't a customization option; it's just a tax. If I could decide between 0.9% heat generation and 7.5% hill climb, I'd probably try the hill climb. 0.9% heat gen I can deal with and some extra mobility helps.

However that tradeoff doesn't exist in the skill tree. I have to spend the points on hill climb to get speed tweak so hill climb, arm flex et all are never in play for a tradeoff. There are fewer customization tradeoffs in the skill tree in any real sense than exist in live.

[Marquis De Lafayette]

I just looked at this as a global nerf to certain capabilities....sure some things are buffed, but in what I have tried to work on on the PTS, I definitely can't get back to the offensive capabilities I had without crushing loses in other areas. So, my Gargoyle (for example) is overall worse than before. Yes, better in some areas (like climbing hills and less fall damage) but probably worse overall.

However...lest I completely lose my mind I have to remember....EVERYONE is also struggling with the same problem. So, if I am worse in some areas....so is everyone.

Therefore, I am willing to go with it still.. reserving the right to change my mind.

P.s...there are advantages to nearly everyone taking less fall damage. When you strip and leg-leave your opponent they have a harder time killing themselves. Got to find the silver lining here...

Edited by Marquis De Lafayette, 28 April 2017 - 12:06 PM.

[R Valentine]

That was pretty much my thoughts on the subject. I tried to rebuild my live Roughneck on it and failed miserably. They took my offensive quirks, so recouping those meant I was already at a disadvantage vs. mechs that have no quirks to steal. The UAC jam chance is a measly 5%. They took 5% of my jam chance to force me into the jam skills, but 5% isn't worth a damn to people without quirks already, meaning only quirked mechs will get it while at the same time, quirked mechs will be forced to get it because PGI stole 5% of their quirks. Wow. What a stupid idea. I suspect LBX spread is the same way. Useless without quirks, but not forced to buy it with quirks. I hate hill climb. Kill it with fire. Kill all the formerly useless modules with fire. Forcing us to take them doesn't make them useful. It just makes them exponentially more infuriating. Kill the entire tree with fire and then urinate on the ashes.

[Shifty McSwift]

MischiefSC, on 28 April 2017 - 11:43 AM, said:

It's an utter waste because it's making you buy something you don't want to get what you do.

I get if they want to reduce the amount of those high value, general quirks -

So just reduce the value of the individual nodes

let me stop you here, as you seem to be presuming a lot already and you addressed the point I made in the first sentence. I still would argue it is not an UTTER waste as you still get the resulting nodes behind the ones you don't want, it is somewhat wasteful yes... But an utter waste is hyperbole man.

[Ultimax]

VanillaG, on 28 April 2017 - 11:51 AM, said:

But is no different than the flaws of the current system that require you to take Arm nodes and the Convergence node to master a mech.

It's different, because there are double nerfs baked into the transition.

Even if we could buy everything we had now in skills, we would be taking a nerf.

On top of that, you can't buy them all back - as they are spread out among trees full of empty choices.


There are also WAY MORE empty choices than there are now - and I really don't want to click 91 nodes per mech.

This system all but guarantees that I will be abandoning more than half of my collection of mechs - because I really have better things to do in my life then click my way through 18,000 freaking nodes.

This isn't an MMO ffs, it's a shooter - you could have a skill tree this ridiculous and sprawling if it was just for the pilot - not for each mech.

Edited by Ultimax, 28 April 2017 - 12:12 PM.

[Mazzyplz]

anybody played playstation 1 final fantasy?

this feels exactly like when they replaced the materia system which was awesome and allowed character customization for the pathetic board game from ffx.

it was a bad change then and it is a bad change now

to recap -

this is cool




this completely sucks





why go in this direction? it would be a good idea to learn from other company's mistakes.

[Lukoi Banacek]

My mastered mech on live:

• Heat dissipation 15% and Heat Max 20%
  
• Accel/Decel 15%
  
• Torso Twist 5% range, 5% speed
  
• Arm Speed for movement 5%
  
• Turn 5%
  
• Global Weapon CD 5%
  
• Weapon Convergence 15% (which I'm pretty sure impacts nothing)
  
• 2 consumable slots
  
• Radar Derp at 100%
  
• Seismic at 250m (the current max range)
  
• Ballistic Weapon CD 12%
  
• Ballistic Weapon range 10%
  
• Quick power up
  
• Speed Tweak 7.5%

It has energy weapons as well but I'm limited on module spaces like most mechs.

My same Mech on PTS using 90 of the 91 SP:

• Heat dissipation 8% and Heat Max 15% but an additional global heat generation of 5% for weapons
  
• Accel/Decel 25 and 20%
  
• Torso Twist 2% range, 4% speed and Pitch 10%
  
• Arm Pitch 12%
  
• Turn 5%
  
• Global Weapon CD 5.4%
  
• nothing about weapon convergence (as I suspect, it means nothing anyway)
  
• 2 consumable slots
  
• Radar Derp at 100%
  
• Seismic at 200m (the max range on PTS)
  
• no specific weapon CD bonuses
  
• Global Weapon range 10%
  
• Quick Power up
  
• Speed Tweak 7.5%

On top of those scores, which are different but franky, somewhat similar (and even better in certain cases) to my live bonuses, I gain:

• Hill climb 10% (don't care about this really)
  
• Gyro 70% (I mean, I guess it's ok)
  
• Laser Duration 7.5% (now this I DO like)
  
• Sensor range 12% (doesn't hurt)
  
• Target decay 2.1 (doesn't hurt)
  
• Target Info gathering 12% (another I actually like)
  
• Target retention 200m
  
• Velocity 8% (I love velocity buffs to ballistics/PPC)

So....none of these last 8 were things I was trying to get to on the flow chart. They were in my way as I wandered around trying to get to what I did what.

Overall, I'm coming out ahead imo. Heat management stuff was largely nerfed across the board, as was consumable access, seismic overall etc. So we're all largely baselined there.

THAT BEING SAID -- to truly specialize "deep" into anything like ECM, Consumables, specific weapon you do have to sacrifice something. I hate to say it but I think PGI is meeting it's own intentions on that one. I'm literally just as lethal in this mech as before and have some tangential bonuses that I don't mind, but if I really wanted to build a pigeonholed specialist I'd have to absolutely give up something that up to this point, I take for granted.

What I'm more concerned with is the lack of quirks for certain mechs (mainly IS) under this new system, because I don't think I can effectively rebuild an IS mech to look so identical if it was heavily quirked and for the life of me I cannot see why they will suddenly stop needing them due to the ST patch?

I get wanting to get ready for the new-tech evolution, but in the mean time, leave them their quirks. I could be wrong though. I've heard of a few outliers that can still be made nasty (but their hitboxes/low arms will still render them "for fun" vice "for top tier competition" use mainly).

[VanillaG]

MischiefSC, on 28 April 2017 - 12:01 PM, said:

The skill tree lacks the flexibility and degree of customization that exists in live. I make a more useful/impactful/meaningful tradeoff when I choose between cooldown and range modules or which weapons I'll put modules in for or deciding between seismic or zoom or derp than I do on the skill tree.

Currently in the skill tree I'll never take a sensor or armor or other quirk because quickstart/speed tweak are always useful and separate winning from losing almost every match. Same with the mobility quirks. So you've only got 29-30 pts to spend to make your weapons more useful. If I was making a poptart for comp matches I might give up the mobility quirks for JJ quirks but that's a pretty narrow example.

It actually gives you more flexibility because you can take less than 100% of a current module. You have the option of either spending tonnage and crits or SP to get similar performance. A good example of this are the Magazine skill nodes. For Ballistics you basically get a free ton of ammo for every 3 tons that you equip. You can either drop a ton of ammo and get different equipment or get more shots. Same with range and cooldown nodes and Targeting Computers, Heat nodes and heatsinks, and Speed Tweak and engine size.

Smaller incremental values makes it easier to make the tradeoffs and has an effect of flattening the curve between good and bad builds. With certain builds I am happy 60% of Speed Tweak and Radar Derp and spending those nodes in other trees. Other builds I will sacrifice Firepower and Sensors for full Speed Tweak and Heat nodes. Granted the skill tree is not a clean as modules but it allows for much greater customization than you can get now.