65 replies to this topic

[Johnny Z]

I can choose to have a extra fast mech with lots of firepower or a fest mech with lots of armor or combinations there of. This skill tree makes it a lot more interesting.

I am waiting for new content other than replacing the place holder skill trees so its not all perfect, but at leas this is a step. Would be nice if the trolling trying to delay everything constantly would be a little less. These things get updates no matter what anyway.

[Napoleon_Blownapart]

i DLd test yesterday and got to respec 1 mech.i didnt like the useless skills blocking the ones i want, like arm tweaks in a mech with only 4 torso weapons on it and i think the skill tree going live b4 the new civil war tech could end up being a cash grab to respec mechs you just skilled 2 months ago.

[Alexander of Macedon]

Roadbuster, on 29 April 2017 - 01:36 AM, said:

What do the people who complain about the skill tree expect?
A mech with the firepower and tankiness of an assault and the mobility of a light mech?

You complain about your mech running hotter now...
And? What's the problem? You won't be the only one. Everone will experience the same.
What does this mean for you? You might have to change your build, or sacrifice survivability and mobility for firepower, or you will have to manage your heat better.
I think that's perfectly fine.
Do you guys even remember what it was like before we got quirks?


Don't think of this skill tree as a nerf.
It's changing the gameplay. You will have to make trade-offs.
I just hope it will greatly increase TTK by reducing the potential of alpha strikes. Because it drives me crazy to see the tankiest mechs in the game hide behind cover to not get killed in seconds.
Maybe we will see real fights more often again.
The only thing left to do is to bring the "bad" mechs like Victor, Dragon,... back to a level where they are viable again. Stop the power creep.


Something I'd like to get, is the ability to try a "skill-setup" in the testing grounds, before making the final decision and saving.

I wouldn't be complaining at all if IS 'mechs weren't all getting hammered into the ground with quirk nerfs at the same time. There's a massive shift in relative power that's going to leave most clam 'mechs about as strong or slightly stronger while most IS 'mechs are outright garbage. I can think of maybe 4-5 IS 'mechs I play that I would still want to use after all this drops.

If it were this skill tree alone, I'd be content to let it launch and see how things go. But it's not the skill tree alone, and it isn't even the major problem. If they think for some godawful reason that the timeline progression will somehow make a bunch of low-tier IS 'mechs OP, they damn well should have waited to see if that actually happens instead of nerfing them all months before the Civil War update drops. A Centurion or LCT-1V with enough offensive quirks to be viable in QP ain't gonna impact raised TTK in a meaningful way, yanno?

[oldradagast]

DAYLEET, on 28 April 2017 - 10:50 PM, said:

In any case, i just hope it releases asap. And then hope theres a will to keep working on it.

This is PGI we're talking about.

If they had any will to keep working on it, they would have actually redesigned the damn thing by now and moved away from the insane, maze-like structure of 91 skill points scattered over hundreds of choices. We wouldn't have a skill maze, dead skills, must-have gated skills, and so forth. They also wouldn't be dumb enough to strip mediocre mechs of life-giving quirks, thus killing them, or nerfing mobility in the game via the engine decoupling.

PGI is only concerned about hammering this new, stupid vision of the game into the production servers: a game where everything is nerfed, but meta mechs are nerfed less and thus become the only things playable. A game of vastly reduced mech options where you even get punished via a skill respec cost for daring to change your mech loadout. In short, a stale, repetitive game of the same meta mechs with the same meta builds poking each other in the face from long range, day after day.

If anyone thinks the game is stale now, they have no idea what is to come if this stupid mess live.

[oldradagast]

Roadbuster, on 29 April 2017 - 01:36 AM, said:

What do the people who complain about the skill tree expect?

How about a skill tree design that doesn't look and feel like it was built by a high-school programming student who graduated with a "gentleman's C?" How about something that isn't a stupid, tangled maze of false choices, utter crap, and gated requirements? How about a system that doesn't strip all the needed quirks from so many mechs, thus rendering them worthless and reducing the game to a handful of viable mech choices? How about a system without a respec penalty since customizing your mech is one of the few interesting things left to do in this game?

In short, we expect some basic common sense, understanding of MWO, and at least marginal competency in video game design. But PGI.

[Scyther]

I would very much like to see these builds that Johnny Z, Druarc and others have made that they are satisfied with. So far I have seen some builds that end up satisfactory in about 3 areas/trees, but then almost completely lack anything in other trees (like no Firepower nodes, or no JJ/Sensor/Aux nodes).

If there is a way to build a decent mech with some Heat management, some mobility, some survivability, some sensors, a consumable slot and still has room left over to boost a weapon system or two, please show us your setup!

If on the other hand, the build you are 'happy with' means you maxed 2 trees because that's all you care about, and have a couple nodes left over, then I think maybe your 'happy with' is the very thing other people are 'trolling' about.

[KodiakGW]

Another thread like this. I'll reiterate what I posted in another one.

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

With threads like this, glad I bought Jade Kite. Only going to need that, KDK-3, ACH, and TBR/EBJ after May. Because this is to who PGI is listening.

The new Skill Tree is basically this: removal of weapon module benefits, removal of double efficiencies of Basic skills when Elited, overall armor/structure buffs, increase use of consumables, and locking desired current Elite skills/Mech modules behind unwanted/useless Mech modules. All to theoretically increase TTK, which it won't for top competitive players who know how to aim and kill efficiently. It is not what they were selling: the ability to customize your mech the way you want to play it. If it was, I would be able to trade in the massive mobility quirks on the Top Dog for a decent ERPPC Velocity buff (decent being 20%+, not the 10% currently available) so I could run 2xERPPC and 6SPL like I wanted. Yet another player could keep the mobility quirks and run all MPL.

They could have saved themselves a lot of programming time and just removed the things they are removing, and give every mech an armor or structure buff. There, you just "increased" TTK.

They should put whoever made the Jump Jet tree in charge of redesigning the rest, and keep everyone else out of that process. EVERYONE ELSE, INCLUDING MANAGEMENT. Then release that to test. We'll have a Skill Tree that a lot more will be happy with, or at lease content.

[cazidin]

"Skill-gating" is an OK method? Really? NO! THAT'S A TERRIBLE IDEA! And I'll explain why.

Right now, nobody likes having to take Hill Climb, Improved Gyros or FOR SOME REASON Arm Speed ON MECHS WITHOUT ANY ARMS! Forcing us to take them does not make us like them. We may eat our broccoli but we don't like it. You have to ask yourselves. If a skill is bad or feels underpowered. Why is it still there? In it's current state, or at all?

Here's an idea, now, follow closely here and the secrets of the universe might yet be yours. Ready? OK.

BUFF OR REMOVE THEM.

Let me reiterate that for your benefit. BUFF OR REMOVE THEM!

"But they're there to slow us down and prevent min/maxers from cheating the system!"

Oh, really? These skills serve no other functional purpose than a moderate speedbump towards the path to blowing your mech apart with careful, precision aim. If PGI is adamant on keeping these skills, then at least make them worth taking and reduce the bloat. Have about 1 level of Hill Climb and maybe 2 or 3 for Acceleration/Deceleration. Yeah, we're still wasting a point on Hill Climb but at least you feel like you're getting something instead of ""7.5% hill climb, now go get the other 3 levels!"

But I would honestly prefer that a lot of these useless or underpowered skills were simply baked into the game, again, Hill Climb and Improved Gyros feel like something we should already have for what almost negligible benefit they provide in most situations. If PGI doesn't want players to become too powerful from min/maxing the skill tree, then... here's another thought.

Ready? USE QUIRKS MORE INTELLIGENTLY. Instead of relying entirely on this Skill Tree to balance your game, which should be a FACTOR in balance, not the foundation you build upon, unless you live in Louisiana or near a large body of water and then wonder why everything suddenly went adrift during a mild flood, then quirking mechs correctly and maybe even giving a baseline buff to the IS would be the best thing to do, and leave the Skill Tree as a set of small, but noticeable strength increases.

*Please note that everything written here that may appear insulting, rude, etc is an attempt at sharp, acerbic wit and is not meant to actually insult you, your intelligence or whatever your alternative proposal or feelings on the skill tree are. Unless you're Russ.

Edited by cazidin, 29 April 2017 - 07:07 AM.

[MischiefSC]

Except "gating" makes useful tradeoffs impossible. I'd have to give up a big chunk of Speed Tweak and other useful quirks to get some useless stuff and the first point of seismic. Not worth it. At all. So any investment in sensors is a waste.

As has been said before - yes, some skills are worth more than others. So make those skills smaller and require more points to but up to max. Lower value skills should give more value per point. For example if I can trade 1% Speed Tweak for 100m Seismic I'd do it. Or for 7.5% hill climb. I can't however. I'd have to give up like 3% Speed Tweak plus some cool running to get 100m Seismic plus like 4 nodes of worthless stuff.

As such they have created a system that punishes me for trying to diversify, generalize or really customize.

All the new skill tree is going to dinos double-down on what people hate about metamechs. There's going to be a clear, significantly superior skill tree (almost full mobility and ops plus 19 pts on one side of the weapon tree) and everything else. So you'll now have people in sub-optimal mechs that handle like they don't even have basics unlocked so they can get 5pts of armor and seismic against people in meta mechs that are as good or better than mastered mechs in live. It'll be more of the same only more impactful. Since there are no good tradeoffs you can make it's going to be people in non meta mechs that handle worse against people in mastered meta mechs.

That's not a good thing.

[DAYLEET]

oldradagast, on 29 April 2017 - 06:14 AM, said:

This is PGI we're talking about.

Yes and i think we've hit a boundary where things arent going to change much. Look at the iteration of the first trees, what change do you expect next? The notes for the next change are not bad, we dont know how or the values but it a good indication that what we're seeing now is what we are getting so let it go live.Test it with real people who, actually playing the game.

Its a pretty big change, we are likely to get better change when the mass get thrown in it. And what do we know, maybe its fine like that, ew have to realise that whast we want isnt necessarily what pgi wants and maybe neither os us is more right. Lets try it.

Ill keep pushing for less gating while keeping the nerf and tradeoff by lowering points and mergin nodes or buffing them with those vials that have a horse on them.

[50 50]

Just re the arm nodes being in there before the torso nodes....
It's occurred to me that this is to even the balance between mechs that can only take arm weapons and those that do the torso weapon thing.
It is widely considered that mechs with the torso weapons, particularly high mounted options (arms are always low) are superior.
So to make 'arm mechs' a bit more appealing, the torso nodes are behind the arm nodes meaning a mech with more arm weapons doesn't have to spend the points on that tree.

Hill climb... it may never have been a highly valued module before but having a bonus in that regard for a point or 2 is not going to break the bank. We've got 91 points. That's heaps.

We should also expect that we are not going to get the same level of performance from the mechs as we currently have on live.
But that's ok. If everything gets toned down, then it's simply adjusting the level of 'power' in the game.

Personally I feel that if we moved to a linear system and had no gating, we might be able to get some additional functionality in the tree that will help us pick the nodes. Might be able to do that now, ie. if we pick the node we wanted and it pathed out the mot efficient way to get there. That would save some clicking. Much easier in a linear view.
A Linear approach also allows for easy expansion and adjustments to specific skills. Trying to add new things to the web might be difficult.
To balance that with the more powerful skills, you can simply have those skills either require more nodes to complete, or we could break up the functionality of the skill so there are more nodes... which kind of does the same thing.
Eg: Could make Seismic Sensor a 10 node skill.
Or: Break Seismic Sensor into a range improvement (It's a 360' sensor so we could have improvements to that radius) and also give it a Sensitivity value so you have to invest in it more to detect different weights of mechs. (ie. level 1 allows you to detect mechs in the 100 to 80 ton range)
This has the desired effect of making these skills cost more, because they are the 'power skills', but removes the 'gating' complaint.

I would suggest though that if we made it simpler and allowed people to specifically select what they want that we are only allowed 50 points allocated.
Want to make those choices mean something?
Sure, you can get radar deprivation, it's 10 points.
You can get seismic, it's 10 points.
But you now need to think about where to put those last 30 points.
A single weapon branch is about 25.
What about mobility?
Survival?

Less points = meaningful choices = consequences with those choices = mech roles more defined.

[DAYLEET]

MischiefSC, on 29 April 2017 - 07:14 AM, said:

Except "gating" makes useful tradeoffs impossible. I'd have to give up a big chunk of Speed Tweak and other useful quirks to get some useless stuff and the first point of seismic. Not worth it. At all. So any investment in sensors is a waste.

Well it actually forces trade off and we arent going to make the same choice here. I know i wont get speed tweek often anymore since pure agility is more important to me than pure speed. Thats what i think the tree is doing right, forcing us into making decisions. We cant prevent that some of those choices are much better than the rest so we need to either buff the rest or merge them. Instead of gating, merge some less attractive node into those people want and reduce the skill points. That way you still have your tradeoff but it doesnt feel like you are wasting points.

If torso and arm yaw was merged, nobody would *****. Just remove the extra skill points not needed anymore and you still have your "gating" without the negative feeling of paying for something you dont want. "Its mech agility, i need that!" instead of "i dont have arms weapon ffs!"

OR unchain everything, wana chose arms? go for it. Want zoom? take it.

Edited by DAYLEET, 29 April 2017 - 07:31 AM.

[Summon3r]

boy oh boy i can see where this is going....

[Wintersdark]

Khobai, on 28 April 2017 - 07:30 PM, said:

the problem is moving useless skill nodes so they dont wall off useful skill nodes doesnt change the fact they have useless skill nodes.

more important than not gating they need to not have useless skill nodes. every node should be worth a consideration for a skill point.

if you have nodes that arnt worth skill points you need to buff those nodes. like 5% hill climbing isnt worth a skill point. But 10%-15% hill climbing might be worth considering.

the sensor tree is especially screwed up and not worth putting points into. But I already started another post on how to fix to the sensor tree in the skill tree forums.

This. The gating is harmless; if it takes 10 skill points to get Speed Tweak because 5 are Hill Climb and 5 are Speed Tweak, or all 10 are Speed Tweak, is literally irrelevant, and the end result is the same in terms of cost.

The problem is that nobody cares about Hill Climb. Useless skills are useless skills, and it's just they way they chose to do this. But it's a ridiculous perception problem (I don't want to have to buy skills I don't want! Meh!) it doesn't impact builds at all.

Sure, everyone has "cookie cutter" builds with Hill Climb. Everyone would still have 10 points in speed tweak if they wanted it either way, whether or not they have that useless skill makes absolutely no difference whatsoever.

Having no gated skills would require lots more skill nodes to keep high value skills expensive.

And they NEED to be expensive, because you SHOULDN'T be able to get everything you want.

A much better suggestion is making those useless skills worthwhile, THEN you can get rid of gating and have some value to it, but until that point (and it's not going to happen, lets be real here) it makes no difference.

[Wintersdark]

MadBadger, on 29 April 2017 - 06:57 AM, said:

I would very much like to see these builds that Johnny Z, Druarc and others have made that they are satisfied with. So far I have seen some builds that end up satisfactory in about 3 areas/trees, but then almost completely lack anything in other trees (like no Firepower nodes, or no JJ/Sensor/Aux nodes).

That's the goal? There SHOULD be hard choices, and you should have to miss out on things you want. If there's always more stuff you want, the choices in what you do take matter more.

Quote

If there is a way to build a decent mech with some Heat management, some mobility, some survivability, some sensors, a consumable slot and still has room left over to boost a weapon system or two, please show us your setup!

If on the other hand, the build you are 'happy with' means you maxed 2 trees because that's all you care about, and have a couple nodes left over, then I think maybe your 'happy with' is the very thing other people are 'trolling' about.

\
That'd be a bad design. If you can take all of the best skills, then there's really no choice.

You SHOULD be choosing which sorts of upgrades you want, and you absolutely should not be able to get all the upgrades. That's the whole point of the system.

[Shifty McSwift]

Summon3r, on 29 April 2017 - 07:33 AM, said:

boy oh boy i can see where this is going....

To a world of...

[MischiefSC]

DAYLEET, on 29 April 2017 - 07:30 AM, said:

Well it actually forces trade off and we arent going to make the same choice here. I know i wont get speed tweek often anymore since pure agility is more important to me than pure speed. Thats what i think the tree is doing right, forcing us into making decisions. We cant prevent that some of those choices are much better than the rest so we need to either buff the rest or merge them. Instead of gating, merge some less attractive node into those people want and reduce the skill points. That way you still have your tradeoff but it doesnt feel like you are wasting points.

If torso and arm yaw was merged, nobody would *****. Just remove the extra skill points not needed anymore and you still have your "gating" without the negative feeling of paying for something you dont want. "Its mech agility, i need that!" instead of "i dont have arms weapon ffs!"

OR unchain everything, wana chose arms? go for it. Want zoom? take it.

Mobility tree need maxed save like 2 nodes for speed retention. Speed is ability to get into position or out of a bad position. All the nodes up there are critical. Sensor tree is a waste. OPs, agility, 19 weapon. Maybe those weapon to consumables in part.

[Johnny Z]

Can all the speed armor and firepower nodes be moved to the start of the skill tree for the Marauder. Thanks.

[DAYLEET]

MischiefSC, on 29 April 2017 - 08:16 AM, said:

Mobility tree need maxed save like 2 nodes for speed retention. Speed is ability to get into position or out of a bad position. All the nodes up there are critical. Sensor tree is a waste. OPs, agility, 19 weapon. Maybe those weapon to consumables in part.

If you mean seism and radar derp by sensors and not the lesser nodes, ill take seism and derp before anything speed thats for sure. If we disagree on this then this might be a good indication that the tree is working. Id rather see someone incoming out of sight than get in/out faster by 15kph. In the end, we need to play this on live to be sure but if not everyone agrees what they need then pgi might have succeded. Still hate the chaining/gating though.

[MischiefSC]

Wintersdark, on 29 April 2017 - 08:09 AM, said:

That's the goal? There SHOULD be hard choices, and you should have to miss out on things you want. If there's always more stuff you want, the choices in what you do take matter more.

\
That'd be a bad design. If you can take all of the best skills, then there's really no choice.

You SHOULD be choosing which sorts of upgrades you want, and you absolutely should not be able to get all the upgrades. That's the whole point of the system.

Then there's no advantage to not maxing the best stuff and never touching the rest. Ideally you want a system that gives me a reason to take anything but max agility, Ops and 19 pts in weapons on a laservomit mech. There's nothing I. The other trees worth the cost of giving that up for. If I could scale some of that down in manageable pieces to get other things I would. This system doesn't allow that. Gating means 1 pt if a useful sensor node costs me 5 useful points from mobility or OPs tree to get. Bads will do that. They'll give up 50% of their weapon performance and mobility to get 10 total pts of health on the location that matters. So they'll be worse on every trade, every exchange of weapon fire and every position shift so that 1x they can soak 2 ML of damage.

So they'll be bad, spending cbills to play worse than they do in live already. That's not a tradeoff it's an invitation to rage. In a sick way I appreciate that PGI is trying to nerf 75% of the games players while buffing 25% (my Roughneck 3A is better on PTS than live for example because I'm not making bad skill tree choices) but it's bad for the game.

I'll bet you a mech pack right now that if this goes live then less than 30 days after that we'll have people raging over the metamech equivalent of skill tree and how it's ruining the game because those evil tryhards are making smart skill tree choices and smart mech choices and the people in non-meta mechs (which are even worse in the new system) and bad skill tree choices (like spending any points in sensor and 99% of the time survivability) are losing more than they were in the old system.

DAYLEET, on 29 April 2017 - 08:27 AM, said:

If you mean seism and radar derp by sensors and not the lesser nodes, ill take seism and derp before anything speed thats for sure. If we disagree on this then this might be a good indication that the tree is working. Id rather see someone incoming out of sight than get in/out faster by 15kph. In the end, we need to play this on live to be sure but if not everyone agrees what they need then pgi might have succeded. Still hate the chaining/gating though.

UAV and situational awareness > seismic and derp which, at best, give a small advantage maybe 1x in a match. Mobility gives you an advantage in every shift of positioning, trade and in a brawl.