128 replies to this topic

[Insanity09]

The pinpoint skill, with its wasted value has apparently been a known and commented on problem for years. (I've only been playing for ~9 months, it has been an issue at least that long)
That is a plethora of patches where they could have addressed the problem.
They never did.
Therefore, their track record of changing parts of the skill system that are useless and wasted is obvious and bad. They let the issue be outstanding for months and years.

I would have thought that was fairly clear?

Edited by Insanity09, 29 April 2017 - 10:53 PM.

[Dollar Bill]

Yellonet, on 29 April 2017 - 04:05 PM, said:

I'm sure that PGI is willing to change things after the skill tree has been released

Really dude...you believe that?

Anyway, anything PGI tries to do to make this Skill Maze better is like putting lipstick on a pig. The problem is that it's build on a fundamentally flawed non-linear foundation. Something PGI has illogically dug-in their heals over keeping. Because of that, it's never going to work. The Skill Maze is unnecessarily complicated and wouldn't be if the tree was linear, and if PGI would stop trying to control our builds and how we play the game.

If PGI wasn't so arrogant and stubborn, and if they half-way understood this game and what makes it fun (and their customers) there would be a lot less "whining". All the "whining" PGI gets is what PGI brought on its self.

[Yellonet]

Matt2496, on 29 April 2017 - 06:16 PM, said:

Yes, maybe after several years.



Tell that to the IS mechs that are going to get shafted.

I have a feeling that if this skill tree is released in its current state the Clans are going to absolutely dominate the IS in ways we haven't seen since the first Clan Invasion. Hopefully, PGI will get their act together before its release.

However, considering that this is the 3rd or 4th iteration. They really should have it together by now...

I only play IS mechs and still I'm willing to have a go at this. I just can't believe that PGI wants to completely kill off all IS mechs, so therefore I'm willing to go ahead and try the new system with hope that they will fix any unwanted imbalances.

[Appogee]

Yellonet, on 30 April 2017 - 01:16 AM, said:

I just can't believe that PGI wants to completely kill off all IS mechs, so therefore I'm willing to go ahead and try the new system with hope that they will fix any unwanted imbalances.

The error in your thinking is that you believe PGI realises in advance the impact of the changes they are going to make.

Yet, history shows that is rarely the case. So many balance and mechanic changes they intended to fix one thing created multitudes of problems in other areas.

It's all symptomatic of the fact that they rarely play their own game (and when they do, they make their own fun by futzing around with the physics settings and generally not taking it seriously). And that their main design goal for this new skill tree is to prop up CBill sinks to encourage players to buy further Mechs with MC or cash.

While there are always some 'whiners' around, you be wise to heed the concerns of the experienced players here, on Twitter and Reddit, who are rationally trying to warn PGI and players about the side-effects that PGI cannot or will not foresee.

Edited by Appogee, 30 April 2017 - 01:27 AM.

[BurningDesire]

why do we need the stupid armor structure tree??? i say forget the lore (sorry lore hounds) and just change the all mech armor and structure values to where they are at max on the skill tree, otherwise its going to be impossible to level new mechs that have been left behind

[Yellonet]

Appogee, on 30 April 2017 - 01:20 AM, said:

The error in your thinking is that you believe PGI realises in advance the impact of the changes they are going to make.

Yet, history shows that is rarely the case.

It's all symptomatic of the fact that they rarely play their own game (and when they do, they make their own fun by futzing around with the physics settings and generally not taking it seriously).

As I was saying, it's not perfect, nor will it be on release.
For better and for worse, that's how game development - actually software development in general - is done since quite a while.
Make something new, release, try to fix after release.
TBH I wish that PGI would test and release changes much more often than they do.
Given how small this game is in terms of players, with a good feedback system the development could be assisted by the players as testers much more than currently, changing small things and values often might be better and easier to get right than releasing many and big changes just a few times a year.

[Moadebe]

I honestly think the "I gotta click on 91 different things so its bad" argument has got to be the worst one by far. Like you are going to sprain a finger or something....

[Appogee]

Yellonet, on 30 April 2017 - 01:30 AM, said:

As I was saying, it's not perfect, nor will it be on release.

Noone rational expects 'perfect'. But surely everyone should be entitled to expect 'will not fundamentally break game balance'.

Yellonet, on 30 April 2017 - 01:30 AM, said:

For better and for worse, that's how game development - actually software development in general - is done since quite a while. Make something new, release, try to fix after release.

There are degrees of 'brokenness'. In my 30 years of experience as a gamer, I've never seen a dev so consistently release broken or badly-thought-through features as this dev.

This one will be a doozy. They are going to kill their previous revenue stream (the three Mech purchase) while fundamentally breaking game balance (nerfing the worst chassis, giving the best chassis access to new buffs, and overall increasing Clan Tech superiority) and requiring their customers to spend literally hours re-unlocking their existing purchases.

Yellonet, on 30 April 2017 - 01:30 AM, said:

TBH I wish that PGI would test and release changes much more often than they do.
Given how small this game is in terms of players, with a good feedback system the development could be assisted by the players as testers much more than currently, changing small things and values often might be better and easier to get right than releasing many and big changes just a few times a year.

I completely agree. The tragedy of MWO is that PGI have one of the most loyal and committed customer bases of any game franchise. No matter how badly they treat us and the game, we keep spending money.

Instead of leveraging the loyal player base, they turn their back on it.

Edited by Appogee, 30 April 2017 - 01:43 AM.

[Appogee]

Moadebe, on 30 April 2017 - 01:34 AM, said:

I honestly think the "I gotta click on 91 different things so its bad" argument has got to be the worst one by far. Like you are going to sprain a finger or something....

It would take me 23,023 clicks to re-Master my Mechs. That's 32 hours of clicking, at one click per 5 seconds... but practically speaking it will be much more, when you take into account the time needed to choose the optimal unlock path for each Mech.

(I won't re-Master all those Mechs. Who could be bothered?)

However, does even half that amount of time - 16 hours simply unlocking existing Mechs - seem trivial to you?

You might say "I don't have that many Mechs, so no problem for me". Well, bully for you, I wish I too hadn't spent so much money on this game.

Instead of "punishing" their best customers for spending so much money on the game, perhaps PGI could put in some effort to alleviate those concerns...?

Edited by Appogee, 30 April 2017 - 02:00 AM.

[Yellonet]

Appogee, on 30 April 2017 - 01:39 AM, said:

Noone rational expects 'perfect'. But surely everyone should be entitled to expect 'will not fundamentally break game balance'.

IMO there isn't much of balance at all. And I keep thinking that it might take a proper train wreck to get on track with a functioning balance that makes most if not all mechs usable and not as now where most mechs is a handicap.

Appogee, on 30 April 2017 - 01:39 AM, said:

There are degrees of 'brokenness'. In my 30 years of experience as a gamer, I've never seen a dev so consistently release broken or badly-thought-through features as this dev.

This one will be a doozy. They are going to kill their previous revenue stream (the three Mech purchase) while fundamentally breaking game balance (nerfing the worst chassis, giving the best chassis access to new buffs, and overall increasing Clan Tech superiority) and requiring their customers to spend literally hours re-unlocking their existing purchases.

Maybe PGI doesn't get that much income from the 3-mech system, you can buy them with C-bills and mech-bays you can get from here and there sometimes, also not everyone is a mech hoarder that hangs on to every mech they every buy.

Personally I stopped spending money quite a while ago, always going up against meta clanners pisses me off and I just get angry playing the game, that's when you have to take a break.
I haven't played more than 6-7 matches in the last 6 months I think. So I'm hoping for big changes to make the game interesting again. If it's bad for IS I'll just stop playing again.

Appogee, on 30 April 2017 - 01:39 AM, said:

I completely agree. The tragedy of MWO is that PGI have one of the most loyal and committed customer bases of any game franchise. No matter how badly they treat us and the game, we keep spending money.

Instead of leveraging the loyal player base, they turn their back on it.

Personally I just couldn't justify spending so much more on a free to play title than any other game I've ever owned so I just stopped and now I feel less invested (excuse the pun) in the game which makes it easier for me to try enjoying the game instead of trying protect my investment.

[Yellonet]

Appogee, on 30 April 2017 - 01:49 AM, said:

It would take me 23,023 clicks to re-Master my Mechs. That's 32 hours of clicking, at one click per 5 seconds... but practically speaking it will be much more, when you take into account the time needed to choose the optimal unlock path for each Mech.

(I won't re-Master all those Mechs. Who could be bothered?)

However, does even half that amount of time - 16 hours simply unlocking existing Mechs - seem trivial to you?

You might say "I don't have that many Mechs, so no problem for me". Well, bully for you, I wish I too hadn't spent so much money on this game.

Instead of "punishing" their best customers for spending so much money on the game, perhaps PGI could put in some effort to alleviate those concerns...?

Maybe they could make it so you can copy a certain tree config that you've already selected (if you want the same on another mech) and that you could sort of draw in the boxes in the tree instead of clicking each one.

[Appogee]

Yellonet, on 30 April 2017 - 02:20 AM, said:

Maybe they could make it so you can copy a certain tree config that you've already selected (if you want the same on another mech) and that you could sort of draw in the boxes in the tree instead of clicking each one.

Yes, that would be a great start. Seems like it would be relatively easy to code, too.

[Dodger79]

Bishop Steiner, on 29 April 2017 - 10:26 PM, said:

You see...i have to say I find this logic hard to follow.

What track record? They've never attempted to fix the skill tree until now, so they don't actually have ANY "track record" in that regards.

Crazy that.

Are you really arguing that PGI does not have a track record of "implement now, fix it later, but never happens or only years after"? Just because the placeholder-skilltree hasn't been touched for years and so we should not complain because it's just their first attempt? But aren't you missing here the circumstance, that this, their first try in rougly 5 years to fix the placeholder-system, is _exactly_ the fact that proves the concerns to be legit because adjustments might take another 5 years?

Espeacially when the rework does not have to be an overcomplicated, overwhelming bad UI with a lot of additional currencies, no real give and take beside "take this useless sh*t in order to get to an actually useful skill instead of sth like making skills more expensive the bigger the bonus gets so you can decide to have a real specialist with your available skill points or a Jack of all trades who can do anything but nothing outstanding well? Or skills that disable other skill trees as soon as you skill them, e.g. if you want to level weapon range you cannot level lower heat for this weapon because longer range equals more energy needed. These would be a "give and take"-system, and not "you have to skill hill climb to get radar derp". And this concept is easy understandable and often used in other games. But as we are talking about PGI, they obviously prefer to reinvent the whell every time they want to add sth and make it as complicated and userunfriendyl as possible instead of making it easy, understandable and fair.

[Bishop Steiner]

Dodger79, on 30 April 2017 - 02:44 AM, said:

Are you really arguing that PGI does not have a track record of "implement now, fix it later, but never happens or only years after"? Just because the placeholder-skilltree hasn't been touched for years and so we should not complain because it's just their first attempt? But aren't you missing here the circumstance, that this, their first try in rougly 5 years to fix the placeholder-system, is _exactly_ the fact that proves the concerns to be legit because adjustments might take another 5 years?

Espeacially when the rework does not have to be an overcomplicated, overwhelming bad UI with a lot of additional currencies, no real give and take beside "take this useless sh*t in order to get to an actually useful skill instead of sth like making skills more expensive the bigger the bonus gets so you can decide to have a real specialist with your available skill points or a Jack of all trades who can do anything but nothing outstanding well? Or skills that disable other skill trees as soon as you skill them, e.g. if you want to level weapon range you cannot level lower heat for this weapon because longer range equals more energy needed. These would be a "give and take"-system, and not "you have to skill hill climb to get radar derp". And this concept is easy understandable and often used in other games. But as we are talking about PGI, they obviously prefer to reinvent the whell every time they want to add sth and make it as complicated and userunfriendyl as possible instead of making it easy, understandable and fair.

I'm saying...exactly what I said, in specific response to this comment:

Insanity09, on 29 April 2017 - 10:00 PM, said:

If it were't for the fact that PGI has a lousy track record of fixing their skill system I'd possibly agree.
How long has pinpoint been a skill?

Kindly show me where PGI has attempted to fix the skill tree before this time. I'll wait.

[oldradagast]

This thread is a perfect example of "new speak" and how it dominates discussion these days. Facts are relabeled "whining" and people who bring up facts are called "whiners," "special snowflakes," or some other snotty term that refuses to actually address the facts. Then, people go out and vote like idiots, support the skill maze over common sense, etc. FACTS ARE NOT WHINING.

People have laid out a mountain of FACTS regarding why the skill maze is an utter failure:

• The UI is horrible; too many clicks, insane arrangement of skills, etc.
  
• The arrangement of skills makes no sense and forces people to grind through dead nodes. That is just utter crap from a game design perspective, and GRIND is neither CONTENT nor CHOICE.
  
• In the end, there are only a handful of viable builds after you grind through them, thus defeating the claimed design goal of "encouraging build diversity." Just more GRIND and cookie-cutter meta mechs and meta builds.
  
• The respec cost is a total insult, further discourages build diversity, and has no place in a game like this, where customizing your mechs and changing them regularly is a huge part of the fun.
  
• The removal of large quirks from so many poor mechs utterly kills them. You'd have to be insane to think that stripping all the quirks off an Atlas and putting it up against a quirk-free Kodiak is somehow now "balanced" because, "uh, both of them get to pick skills off the skill maze." Yeah, and at any given point in that skill maze, the Kodiak will still wipe the floor with the now quirk-free Atlas.
  
• The engine decoupling is idiocy and accomplishes nothing. All it does is further reduce viable mechs and builds since now you no longer have a choice in how mobile your mech is. PGI will tell you that, and they will determine your mech's role, not you. How the hell is that fun or "encouraging mech diversity?!"

The rest of the OP's post is just drivel. Change is not always good, facts are not whining, expecting something for our money is not "entitled" in a negative way, and if PGI was interested in "adjusting things" to fix this mess they are creating, they wouldn't be creating the mess and ignoring all valid feedback!

Edited by oldradagast, 30 April 2017 - 06:23 AM.

[Johnny Z]

Well the complaining pros have got their way almost every time so what ever. The game is still not much different than beta in a lot of ways and even the relatively tiny changes turn into a giant snow job so again, what ever.

[oldradagast]

Yellonet, on 29 April 2017 - 04:05 PM, said:

I'm sure that PGI is willing to change things after the skill tree has been released so it's not the end of the world just because there are some potential problems at first.

So, you honestly think PGI is going to change and improve the skill tree AFTER it goes live when they have shown no willingness to address the major problems with it while it is in the test phase? Do you even hear yourself or understand the absurdity of what you're claiming?

PGI has a long track record of letting serious issues fester for years in this game, and they've also shown no understanding of how to really balance MWO. This sudden obsession with this laughable skill maze is just their latest failure. They aren't going to fix it now, or ever, because if they cared even a bit about what the community thought or how much damage this was going to do to their game, they would be fixing the problems NOW.

No, this will be another stupid failure like so many other things in MWO. Take a long look at that Pinpoint skill that has done nothing for over 4 years. THAT is a prime example of PGI's eagerness to fix issues in the skill system. Enjoy 4+ years of the skill maze, assuming this game doesn't die long before that.

Edited by oldradagast, 30 April 2017 - 06:28 AM.

[SmokedJag]

The barrage of sh1tposting defeats any point of PGI using the forums for feedback. I mean, what are they going to see...

-- I don't want big engines nerfed
-- I want more money
-- I didnt ACTUALLY mean I wanted progression instead of Cbills WTF
-- I want to be able to get far more top tier skills than I currently can
-- I want no change in the system whatsoever because I played the current system

None of that is useful even when it's coherent and not soaked in memes and insults. PGI has been explicit that the development direction of the game is to do engine desync to nerf putting giant engines in 'Mechs and to replace the module system - which was never supposed to be permanent and is massively imbalanced - with a skill tree. Deal. With. It.

Edited by SmokedJag, 30 April 2017 - 06:28 AM.

[oldradagast]

SmokedJag, on 30 April 2017 - 06:27 AM, said:

None of that is useful even when it's coherent and not soaked in memes and insults. PGI has been explicit that the development direction of the game is to do engine desync to nerf putting giant engines in 'Mechs and to replace the module system - which was never supposed to be permanent and is massively imbalanced - with a skill tree. Deal. With. It.

In short, PGI has been explicit that they are going to do things that most of the community doesn't want to fix problems that don't exist, thus causing more imbalances in the game and further reducing people's ability to customize their mechs, play the mechs they want to play, and have fun in the game.

Oh, people will "deal with it," but I don't expect they'll do so in a way that benefits PGI's bottom line.

Edited by oldradagast, 30 April 2017 - 06:33 AM.

[KodiakGW]

Yellonet, on 29 April 2017 - 04:05 PM, said:

Would you people stop making sh1t threads about the skill tree already?

Will you people stop making sh11 threads saying the skill tree needs to happen in it's current form while still FAR from any semblance of perfect or what was stated it would be, and calling anyone who doesn't agree with your OPINION a whiner?

Thank You. See, at least I said thank you.