6 replies to this topic

[Mycroft000]

Why aren't some skills inaccessible when you take others?

How do you build an extremely fast race car(thinking of the agility tree here)? You strip all of the other components off of it and carry the least weight in the body and frame of the car.

What happens when you take an off the line production car and add bullet proof glass and armor plating? It gets much slower and less maneuverable.

There are many more examples to be made but these are the simplest and should be the most demonstrative that the skill tree needs to force choices to be made between what we can take rather than just leaving the entirety of the new skill tree open with filler nodes being the only limiting factor. This is a limit that will truly result in the most optimal set of nodes being discovered and used by everyone except for two groups of players, new players who don't know any better, and stubborn players who think their skill selections are better when ultimately the math isn't really on their side.

[Xaims Andrews]

Agreed, the proposed trees do not have a true give and take with every node being only plusses. Each node on the Mech Tinker trees (you really can't call them skill trees, they are not skills) should have a pro and a con for enabling that node. That is a true give and take system where people need to make choices about how to customize their mech with tradeoffs. If each node had a pro and a con, then there would not be an issue with more linear Tinker trees.

For example, if you enable a node that gives a bonus to laser range (pro), then the same node should also give some amount of added heat (con) for lasers. Thus as you add range to your lasers, it comes at a cost of more heat. Higher level range nodes would come with even more heat. This way, you have to choose, do I really want to fire this ER large laser an extra 200m if it means generating .5 more heat?

Put some logical explanations around this, like your Mech mechanic was able to make your lasers fire further, but only by pushing more power through them causing them to heat up more. Make the level 1 nodes give say 5% more range with 1% more heat. The level 2 nodes, give 4% more range with 2% more heat, and so on. Thus as you go to max out laser range, it comes at a cost of much more heat.

For nodes that just give a bonus, like seismic sensor, make them require a certain level of enhances sensors before you can unlock seismic. That at least has a logical reason for it than the PTS web of nodes now.

In some cases, the pros of one node, could be canceled out by the cons of another node. That would be ok though. Just like the example of the fast race car, you might strip out all the parts you can to reduce the weight of the car by 500lb. Then because you saved that weight, you are willing to put on heaver suspension that helps you take corners better.

PGI, Please think about having the trees be less of a web and adding pros and cons to each node. This current web system you made is just madness.

[Insanity09]

Alternatively, there could also be a place in that for defined roles of a sort. Picking a role for your mech could determine what trade-offs you wanted to make.
One method would be for a role to limit the maximum points spent in particular trees, another might be that certain sections of non-favored trees would be greyed out.
Each different role would naturally have different maxable and limited trees.

A mech defined as a scout (by your choice!) could get full access to the agility, sensor, jump, and auxiliary mazes, but limited to firepower and survival. A tank would be limited on agility, jump, and sensor, but would have full access to the survival and firepower trees, and so forth.

That said, I also could see that unlocking certain nodes might limit others (take structure or armor nodes, start losing agility nodes, etc.). I don't know that a 1-1 basis would be reasonable, but I'm sure a reasonable balance could be achieved.

[Mycroft000]

Both of these ideas are exactly the kinds of things that should happen. They would lead to true diversity of builds and mech enhancement selections. The tree we're being given does none of this and will lead to a few months (at most) of frustration before the new system is optimized by the pros and everyone knows exactly which 91 nodes to take for their particular mech/play style/load out.

[The Basilisk]

mycroft000, on 03 May 2017 - 08:49 AM, said:

Why aren't some skills inaccessible when you take others?

How do you build an extremely fast race car(thinking of the agility tree here)? You strip all of the other components off of it and carry the least weight in the body and frame of the car.

What happens when you take an off the line production car and add bullet proof glass and armor plating? It gets much slower and less maneuverable.

There are many more examples to be made but these are the simplest and should be the most demonstrative that the skill tree needs to force choices to be made between what we can take rather than just leaving the entirety of the new skill tree open with filler nodes being the only limiting factor. This is a limit that will truly result in the most optimal set of nodes being discovered and used by everyone except for two groups of players, new players who don't know any better, and stubborn players who think their skill selections are better when ultimately the math isn't really on their side.

You're absolutely right that would be the kind of trade off mechanic I was wishing for.
Increases in the surviveability skill decrease the effects of nodes in the mobility skill tree, what would be a less agressive approach.
On the other hand the minmax fanatics would be screeming ultrasonic when they could not get max heatefficiency and max firepower at the same time.
Faster reload less range, higher range slower reload, shorter burntimes less heatefficiency and so on.
More modification less optimization.

[Mycroft000]

The Basilisk, on 04 May 2017 - 07:57 AM, said:

You're absolutely right that would be the kind of trade off mechanic I was wishing for.
Increases in the surviveability skill decrease the effects of nodes in the mobility skill tree, what would be a less agressive approach.
On the other hand the minmax fanatics would be screeming ultrasonic when they could not get max heatefficiency and max firepower at the same time.
Faster reload less range, higher range slower reload, shorter burntimes less heatefficiency and so on.
More modification less optimization.

I need to make 300 alt accounts to be able to hit like on this enough.

[Sagedabluemage]

well if u check to awhile back like about a couple years ago when they first introduced the skill tree they did exactly that. The difference between it was you had a small amount of module slots and they didn't really stack up to any benefit for range cool down or anything then the absurd cons that went with it at the cost of millions of c-bills and gxp per module to unlock. I remember having a discussion on the forums somewhere for this and the guys at piranha were very insightful originally on the ideas. I think its under GXP and Modules rework cant remember exactly but check it out should be somewhere in the archives.