109 replies to this topic

[R Valentine]

Erronius, on 10 May 2017 - 06:36 AM, said:

Or another good part is the "Greed is Good" portion at 32:30, which is also interesting from an MWO/sales perspective. Players in EVE were also furious over the Walking in Stations fiasco and the underlying attempt to push appearance item transactions into the game.

LOL @ MonocleGate

I don't think I've logged any of my accounts in since before Incarna.


The two main differences I see in this regard between MWO and EVE is 1) the vast difference in players investment ("Oh, you bought 200 mechs? That's cute. 18,500 mouseclicks? Your online life must be so difficult!") which leads to 2) a fundamental difference in player churn and retention. EVE unquestionably has a much higher bar to entry in the form of (or lack of) the 'new player experience', but I always felt that EVE players often ended up being incredibly loyal and hardcore, and that's part of why "Jita Burns" and the number of people quitting was so notable. MWO is many times easier to get into, but it is also much, much easier to just drop and walk away from. So in a sense I don't see protests in MWO being QUITE the issue as it was in EVE, but then again, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if MWO has a much bigger issue with "grabbing" new players quickly and not letting people churn back out within a certain window of time.

What it boils down to me is that there's a serious question to ask...is it just the vocal minority on the forums who have their proverbial panties in a bunch? Because if in the long run the skill tree is better for getting and retaining new players and eliminating churn...then the complaints here on the forums from the same group of people, over and over, ad nauseum, is really a somewhat minor consequence. And the people asking (no...demanding) that PGI do something differently is really people asking (no...demanding) that PGI cater to smaller niche subgroups as opposed to looking at the larger picture.

You first have to prove that garbled mess of mediocre skills is better for new players in the long run. Right now you can't get skills wrong. The new skill tree is hard to get right. It's such a spider web of deceit and broken promises. I'd wager that's worse for new players. The one and only saving grace is the elimination of the rule of 3, but that's just a grain of sugar coating on one steaming pile of horse manure.

[Monkey Lover]

Phoolan Devi, on 10 May 2017 - 03:51 AM, said:

New people won't have 4 types of xp but only two!

You telling me they're going to have two menus depending on if you have the new and old xp? That would be great if not new people will still have to see these menus when they try to do anything. Heck i had issues when I was on the pts questioning what this junk was

[Monkey Lover]

The Unstoppable Puggernaut, on 10 May 2017 - 12:38 AM, said:

Another PTS session?

But tonnes of people whined about the good feedback that resulted in an iteration of the cycle.

This time round I was just strictly bug testing and that's it. Also PGI didn't listen to my idea of saving templates for the tree's so we don't get RSI from "clickbydeath". Also linear upgrade paths (that in theory would soak up more SP but allow weapons to recharge in sync).

But hey, who cares. Roll it out champs, I can't wait

Doesn't really look like they took anyone idea other than maybe some gui changes.


I'm hoping for a pts with the real numbers they're going to use to balance all the mechs. They're nerfing mechs and putting in engine decouple this is going to be a big balance change for both Is and Clan.

[Tordin]

Monkey Lover, on 09 May 2017 - 10:16 AM, said:

I like the skill tree a lot but i want a balanced game after it comes out.
YES! IS to IS balance is Bad and is going ot be worse! this is what im saying. WE need to balance this .

If we don't do it now its not going to even get started until after new tech. Thats if they EVER do it again.

So the raging hatemongering are based on the fear that the balance of the Skill Tree (individual + tech side specific) nodes for IS/ Clan and suffering/ overperforming will never come?
Even with what (as far as I remember, was it Russ?) Chris our new balance overlord have stated. That yes mechs on both sides will suffer for a time until the new tech are in place for THEN to balance accordingly.
Sure features, tuning of mechs and so on, before have been thrown into the abyss.

Prime examples are Energy Draw and info warfare. Sabotaged, undermined, rushed and wrecked both by comfort zone l33t players and reckless, hasty decicions made by PGI. Im not sure whats worse!

Yeah. Gotta love the freaking scapegoing and stamping open minded players and community members as zealous white knights, by the very disgusting opposite side the black knights represent.
At least some salty founders have a good reason for why they are dissatisfied and the decency to quit the game and quit being on the forums instead of going on a witch hunting rampage, convince tourney and spew poison.

Edited by Tordin, 10 May 2017 - 01:31 PM.

[Monkey Lover]

Tordin, on 10 May 2017 - 01:26 PM, said:

So the raging hatemongering are based on the fear that the balance of the Skill Tree (individual + tech side specific) nodes for IS/ Clan and suffering/ overperforming will never come?
Even with what (as far as I remember, was it Russ?) Chris our new balance overlord have stated. That yes mechs on both sides will suffer for a time until the new tech are in place for THEN to balance accordingly.
Sure features, tuning of mechs and so on, before have been thrown into the abyss.

Prime examples are Energy Draw and info warfare. Sabotaged, undermined, rushed and wrecked both by comfort zone l33t players and reckless, hasty decicions made by PGI. Im not sure whats worse!

I see no reason any mech should have to suffer for months because new tech "might" buff them. Nerf them when we do the pts for the new tech not now.

They said they buff any mech that needed it after the 70+mech range nerf they did last year. It never happened , they never went back and adjusted even one of them.. All the junk mechs that were "ok" when you had extra range and now never used. They're doing the same thing again.

Can't we just have the new skill tree without screwing with the balance?

Edited by Monkey Lover, 10 May 2017 - 01:36 PM.

[R Valentine]

Tordin, on 10 May 2017 - 01:26 PM, said:

So the raging hatemongering are based on the fear that the balance of the Skill Tree (individual + tech side specific) nodes for IS/ Clan and suffering/ overperforming will never come? Even with what (as far as I remember, was it Russ?) Chris our new balance overlord have stated. That yes mechs on both sides will suffer for a time until the new tech are in place for THEN to balance accordingly. Sure features, tuning of mechs and so on, before have been thrown into the abyss. Prime examples are Energy Draw and info warfare. Sabotaged, undermined, rushed and wrecked both by comfort zone l33t players and reckless, hasty decicions made by PGI. Im not sure whats worse! Yeah. Gotta love the freaking scapegoing and stamping open minded players and community members as zealous white knights, by the very disgusting opposite side the black knights represent. At least some salty founders have a good reason for why they are dissatisfied and the decency to quit the game and quit being on the forums instead of going on a witch hunting rampage, convince tourney and spew poison.

They've never actually gone back and adjusted mechs after nerfing the crap out of them like they said they would. They won't this time. So we'll have even less viable IS mechs than before, only now with a lame skill tree that's arguably worse than the current skill system. Another few patches and we won't have any IS mechs at all, and they'll still be claiming to come back to "adjust" them and not do it.

[Moonlight Grimoire]

Funny enough today I was working on my schedule for the next few weeks while on the train and wrote down on Sunday Evening to grab all my modules that aren't being refunded, and sell them off since the Skill Tree is coming. Because well, for better or worse the Skill Tree will be here on Tuesday and by Sunday hopefully PGI will have posted patchnotes on their final version of the skill tree and it's refund system (thus I will sell off what I want to and keep a chunk for the bit of GSP that I feel is worth while).

As it is, Tuk I feel is more of a "Hey, let's get people some money ahead of the new tech coming before people hit summer break" because summer break starts soon for some people, and the weather is turning nicer and some people (myself included) like to spend time outside. So now is a good time to dump a good chunk of cbills into people coffers (though laughably little when IS tech upgrades are considered due to LFE's are going to be pricey as XL's pretty much).

Oh well, at least by the end of this I will nearly be to 70mil for the first time, with skill tree I should be nearing 100mil, should be enough to retrofits and equipping mechs and experimenting with new tech.

[Naglinator]

Shatara, on 09 May 2017 - 12:13 PM, said:

137, not counting spaces. If he somehow could use his keyboard at typing speeds to skill mechs, it would finish about one and a half. Of course, it takes longer to click on multiple boxes than to type a sentence, so the time it took would probably be less than skilling one robot out of probably a couple hundred.


And how many characters did the average player have? 20? 50?

Not quite accurate as I used my WHOLE HAND to type that message. I can only use left click to "skill the tree"

[Wil McCullough]

Tordin, on 10 May 2017 - 01:26 PM, said:

So the raging hatemongering are based on the fear that the balance of the Skill Tree (individual + tech side specific) nodes for IS/ Clan and suffering/ overperforming will never come?
Even with what (as far as I remember, was it Russ?) Chris our new balance overlord have stated. That yes mechs on both sides will suffer for a time until the new tech are in place for THEN to balance accordingly.
Sure features, tuning of mechs and so on, before have been thrown into the abyss.

Prime examples are Energy Draw and info warfare. Sabotaged, undermined, rushed and wrecked both by comfort zone l33t players and reckless, hasty decicions made by PGI. Im not sure whats worse!

Yeah. Gotta love the freaking scapegoing and stamping open minded players and community members as zealous white knights, by the very disgusting opposite side the black knights represent.
At least some salty founders have a good reason for why they are dissatisfied and the decency to quit the game and quit being on the forums instead of going on a witch hunting rampage, convince tourney and spew poison.

Pgi has a really bad track record of completing "phase 1, phase 2" plans. Most of the time, things are left at "phase 1" until years later.

Maybe they don't have proper mechanics and kpi set in place to gauge actual mech performance. [redacted] Maybe they hope players will just get used to it or something.

Whatever it is, i can understand the apprehension when quirks, which are the only things keeping most IS mechs afloat, are being taken away "temporarily". Because that "temporary" period may last years.

I wouldn't be surprised to see after 6 months, after lots of outcry from players, that pgi announces they're working on balancing ONE IS chassis. Like the vindicator or something. Only.to end up having it get weird quirks like mg rate of fire or some ****. And 6 months later, they'll announce they're working on the victor. And after giving it leg structure, they'll realize the plan won't work because they're releasing mechpacks faster than they can balance them and quietly hope that the playerbase will forget everything.

Edited by Tina Benoit, 11 May 2017 - 02:57 PM.
staff abuse

[fat4eyes]

If we're talking hidden agendas it's more likely that TUK3 is a baseline data collection exercise for clan vs IS balance in preparation for the new tech.

As for the skill, it's going to be fine. The amount of choice it will put in building mechs outweighs any temporary balance issues. We may ***** and moan about PGI not fixing stuff, but they DO fix balance issues that are sufficiently evident. Remember the Gauss and laser nerfs that were put in after the Clans were introduced? Or the very quirk system itself that peopke are now DEFENDING against skill tree changes? You may disagree with the amount and extent of the fixes put in, but PGI does fix balance. And they will fix any balance issues in the future as well, because it is in their interest to do so. Having a grossly imbalanced game means noone plays it, and they don't get money.

Edited by fat4eyes, 11 May 2017 - 04:09 AM.

[Monkey Lover]

Well looks like we're not getting another test.

So
A: we getting​ the same nerfs we have now and going to suck
Or
B: They're redoing all the skills without a test and very likely going to need lots of patches.

I'm guessing A , good luck to all of us.

Edited by Monkey Lover, 11 May 2017 - 10:16 AM.

[Erronius]

Kiran Yagami, on 10 May 2017 - 07:37 AM, said:

You first have to prove that garbled mess of mediocre skills is better for new players in the long run. Right now you can't get skills wrong. The new skill tree is hard to get right. It's such a spider web of deceit and broken promises. I'd wager that's worse for new players. The one and only saving grace is the elimination of the rule of 3, but that's just a grain of sugar coating on one steaming pile of horse manure.

Yeah, I dunno. The entire concept of having to buy 2 additional mechs just to master the one mech you wanted in the first place always seemed really irritating to me. Not so irritating that I would feel compelled to come to the forums and start threads about it...but it def felt like a really hamfisted attempt to force people into buying more MC in order to buy more mechbays. People seem to want to make light of that change, but I feel like a lot of established players have dealt with it for so long that they aren't going to see it like a new person might. As bad as the skill tree might be, I'd prefer to deal with that mediocrity as opposed to being forced to buy extraneous mechs/mechbays. Trading the need for +2 mechs and +2 mechbays for having a ton of clicking doesn't seem like a bad trade to me, but YMMV. And I get that people with 200+ mechs might feel that they're going to be penalized twice (penalized once for having to buy extra mechs/bays in the past, and penalized a second time for the future skill tree investment), but for me I think the most difficult thing isn't going to be the skill tree...it's going to be trying to decide what (if any) mechs I'm willing to part with in order to free up mechbays. Having to trim the fat after the fact is always going to be a more difficult decision than deciding not to buy variants in the first place, but again, that's just my opinion.

Now, once the skill tree goes live, I'll consider changing my opinion if the ST just languishes indefinitely and it looks to be, in fact, demonstrably worse than the Rule of 3 to new players. But I guess I'm not so soured on PGI, like a lot of the resident bittervets seem to be, that I'm unwilling to give PGI the benefit of the doubt. It's clear from the scores of threads complaining about the ST that many feel differently, but if this turns into a train wreck in actuality I won't have a problem just /shrugging and admitting that the naysayers were right (and when it comes to persistent online games, the naysayers are usually right more often than not). But I also don't see the point is whipping myself into a frenzy like some sort of forum flagellant either, and you gotta admit, there's no small number of people screaming as if PGI stole their cloudsong.

[Horseman]

Erronius, on 11 May 2017 - 07:14 PM, said:

But I guess I'm not so soured on PGI, like a lot of the resident bittervets seem to be, that I'm unwilling to give PGI the benefit of the doubt

Not a matter of being soured to me... the ST AsSeenOnThePTS™ is simply badly designed and PGI's rush to launch it in its' present half-baked state with no further iteration is irrational from every perspective.
Even from their own - they're putting themselves in a corner they won't be easily able to back out of if this decision turns out detrimental to their revenue stream.

Edited by Horseman, 12 May 2017 - 02:21 PM.

[Morggo]

Novakaine, on 09 May 2017 - 12:10 PM, said:

There was a similar ragequit-wtf-to many clicks-omgerd - hate in another game I like to play.
But after implementation everyone started to breath and then love the skill tree.
Was it perfect naw.
But the customization available for each individual character breath fresh air into the game.
In my opinion.

Didn't know you played Novakaine, cool! ANYhow, I agree.. people were terrified at the coming of those trees... and now, most wouldn't trade them for anything (me included). Agree, all will be fine here, too.

[Mcgral18]

Wil McCullough, on 10 May 2017 - 09:53 PM, said:

Pgi has a really bad track record of completing "phase 1, phase 2" plans. Most of the time, things are left at "phase 1" until years later.

Maybe they don't have proper mechanics and kpi set in place to gauge actual mech performance. [redacted] Maybe they hope players will just get used to it or something.

Whatever it is, i can understand the apprehension when quirks, which are the only things keeping most IS mechs afloat, are being taken away "temporarily". Because that "temporary" period may last years.

I wouldn't be surprised to see after 6 months, after lots of outcry from players, that pgi announces they're working on balancing ONE IS chassis. Like the vindicator or something. Only.to end up having it get weird quirks like mg rate of fire or some ****. And 6 months later, they'll announce they're working on the victor. And after giving it leg structure, they'll realize the plan won't work because they're releasing mechpacks faster than they can balance them and quietly hope that the playerbase will forget everything.

Anyone remember those "Temporary" 2.0 SRM damage buffs?


Thankfully, that also stayed in Phase 1

[Erronius]

Horseman, on 12 May 2017 - 02:20 PM, said:

Not a matter of being soured to me... the ST AsSeenOnThePTS™ is simply badly designed and PGI's rush to launch it in its' present half-baked state with no further iteration is irrational from every perspective.
Even from their own - they're putting themselves in a corner they won't be easily able to back out of if this decision turns out detrimental to their revenue stream.

But are you willing to give PGI the benefit of the doubt when it comes to improving/tweaking the ST once it's released? Because that's what I was talking about when I made the soured comment. A lot of people have been vocalizing an utter lack of confidence in PGI, based on their view of PGI's track record.

The only thing people can all agree on is that the ST as it stands now is sub-optimal. I don't think I've seen anyone argue that this is perfect, or that the ST is currently in a form that can stand the test of time. But when it comes to what PGI should do now is where people are all over the map. I've seen people argue for abandoning the ST altogether, for pushing it back for another iteration or two, or for pushing it out now (some people are tired of waiting). Oddly enough, the lack of a player consensus on that doesn't exactly give PGI an incentive to NOT just push it out now. What's the upside of PGI changing direction if any change of direction is just going to result in people complaining no matter what? Hell, I'd push the ST out now, too, if I was PGI.

IMHO there will be plenty of time to roll up my sleeves and criticize the ST, if PGI just pushes it live and then wants to leave it as it is now. But I won't have a problem if PGI continues to tweak nodes or streamline the trees. Do I think that will happen? Quite likely, it won't. But I don't really care to attack them as if that is written in stone, either.

[Daruwind]

ST needs more testing. Idea is good, implementation bad and well anybody foolish enough to ignore Solahna good advices is ,,,, doomed. We saw Energy draw, inoftechwatever..... Well PGI i propose toast to your Titanic number 3 at least GG close!

Edited by Daruwind, 12 May 2017 - 04:33 PM.

[Horseman]

Erronius, on 12 May 2017 - 03:56 PM, said:

But are you willing to give PGI the benefit of the doubt when it comes to improving/tweaking the ST once it's released?

Are you willing to accept that once it's released, the amount of course correction they can do will be extremely limited? Because that's the problem here: can't hotfix a fundamentally flawed design.

Edited by Horseman, 13 May 2017 - 12:11 AM.

[Alilua]

Just waiting for a certain entity to interfere with communications across the Galaxy and lock things up after medeling in events they should not have. Cough comstar cough.
Least the blakests take over I think the great houses, clans, and members of mercenary pilots should be able to retain their ability to affect the universe to keep it safe from falling into utter destruction from a dictator worshipping cult. There may be huge changes in the coming years but it shouldn't be time for jihad yet, recent events seem to be throwing the universe onto a path of a very dark age reminiscent to events that have happened in the past.
As the universe has clawed it's way back from nuclear distraction once before we should take this time to honor the sacrifices our comrades made and be sure those that fell did not do so in vain.

[Duncan1dah0]

Rizzelbizzeg, on 09 May 2017 - 05:37 PM, said:

Path of Exile skill tree just for another comparison. I did not play that game long at all though.

Holy Crap!