After trying the game out last night, here are my observations.
1. Engine Desync completely destroyed the effectiveness of the Spirit Bear. On a related note, MASC has been nerfed into the ground.
2. Fast attack mechs, like the Spirit Bear, Medusa, Stormcrows, and Redline all suffered massive nerfs due to the Cool Shot nerf. Gone are the days where you could dive a murderball, kill a mech, and escape. For people that liked this playstyle, and the ability to do a hard flank maneuver, this is a severe disappointment and has removed a lot of fun and enjoyment from the game.
3. Putting needed nodes behind unneeded nodes effectively increases TTK, creates dead skill points, and pigeon holes players into certain builds for certain mechs just as quirks did before the patch.
4. The average TTK has been increased, which inherently reduces the skill cap for the game. (edited when brought to my attention that I made a mistake)
5. The punitive charges for respeccing a mech are discouraging and puts pressure on players to 'get the spec right' the first time. This discourages experimentation, and reinforces the prevalence of meta builds as they have already been proven effective, thereby creating less risk for the player to spec into it once to avoid the punitive charges for respeccing.
6. HSP is nice for people like me who have mastered many mechs. However, it still does not justly represent or replace the utility of being able to switch modules around, and, combined with the punitive charges for respeccing, represents a massive loss in progression and income for many players. This leaves players with a feeling of being robbed and the impression that PGI does not care about justly compensating their player base for the changes PGI forced up them.
7. There is a massive disconnect between PGI and the player base. Only listening to players that give positive feedback creates resentment and marginalizes those that give constructive criticism. When players feel like their opinions don't matter, they leave the game.
8. After years of trying to get rid of the erppc/gauss/ac poptart meta, it is back with a vengeance. Not that I really mind, due to the fact that used to be my prefered method of play before it was nerfed and fast attack became my prefered MO.
Suggestions:
1. Half the current effects of engine desync.
2. Fix MASC to increase the speed increase time to double what it is now, and double the cooldown speed of the leg damage meter.
3. Streamline the nodes by taking out the unneeded dead nodes and just increase the cost of the next node level. If you want a player to have to pay a certain amount of SP to get the full benefits of fulling speccing into something like Laser Cooldown, then just make those nodes cost that much. Five levels of cooldown, costing 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 for a total of 31 SP to get full Laser Cooldown.
4. The cooldown increase for Coolshot useage is too long. It should be half of what it is at least. This is pigeonholing people into low heat ac builds and poptarting erppc/gauss builds...something PGI had issues with in the past.
5. As others have mentioned, either completely remove the cost of respeccing or give a trial period of a certain number of matches or allow a mech to drop in testing grounds before locking in the SP. Also, add a free respec after every patch that tweaks something in the skill tree. Nearly every game that has a skill tree does this by refunding all the skill points allocated after each patch that changes the skill tree.
6. Increase add a full c-bill refund to the modules purchased before December 3 in addition to the HSP already given, or double the HSP given per mastered mech. This will make up for the utility that was lost by removing modules from the game.
7. Actually show some interest in the constructive criticism that your players give you, and actively engage the community so that the community and the devs work together to create the skill tree system that the players want. The devs aren't always right, nor is the community always wrong. Working together won't give everyone what they want, but it will give most people something they can live with.
Edited by Steinkrieg, 17 May 2017 - 06:03 PM.
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MovinTarget, on 17 May 2017 - 08:21 AM, said:
