953 replies to this topic

[invernomuto]

Jep Jorgensson, on 24 May 2017 - 06:00 PM, said:

That still does not change the fact that he will have to spend hours skilling up his mechs if he wants them all in usable condition. Frankly, your statement is like telling somebody that they do not have to get a tooth pulled right away, that they can do it later. Either way, he still needs to get a tooth pulled and it is still going to be painful. Having done the same with my own mechs, I know how much of a pain it is and sympathize with him. PGI made the game needlessly complicated and no amount of sweet words from you nor anyone else is going to change that fact, sugar lips.

While I agree that there are some shortcomings in the current ST (e.g. the possibility to copy-paste skill setups between variants and the possibility to try a skill setup at least in the training ground BEFORE spending skill points), I really do not understand the "half an hour" spent on a single mech that I read on these forums. Maybe I chose some easy mechs, but I do not find so complicated. It is of course more complicated respect to a system where you did not have, essentially, any choice, but it is quite fast to skill a mech once you figure out the important nodes. Of course you have to do some choices and to do and maybe you have to spend some C-bills to revert some changes but nothing game blocking for me.

[MovinTarget]

As someone that played WoW from vanilla to panda pokemon, i find the "Blizzard does trees better" argument laughable as their skill tree started off being robust and and has been changed REPEATEDLY until its now simple enough for their elementary school-aged target audience.

No one seems to remember back when you had to repecc up to 50 chatacters several times over a few months because they kept breaking the game with stun-lock rogues and unkillable pallies and whatnot.

Any time you add the slightest bit of complexity, someone is gonna rage.

Its been a week now and maybe its me but it seem most of the forum hate has abated, with even sone saying "okay its not as bad as i thought it was" and such.

If you haven't tried it yet, do so with one of your less-played mechs. This way if you have an "oops" you don't feel like its screwed up on you fav mech and have to pay for respecc.

Then skill up mechs you use the most.

What you will find of the mechs left to skill is is that you can do them on the fly pretty quickly right before a match where you need them.

Edited by MovinTarget, 25 May 2017 - 03:00 AM.

[KingKickAss85]

Ulvar, on 24 May 2017 - 11:43 PM, said:

if diablo is a rpg for you, we don't need to discuss this any further ^^

By basic definition it is. Is the best or most modern, no. Need something more vanilla? Try anything Elder Scrolls, anything Final Fantasy, any of the Witcher titles, the list is endless.

I like how the only answer the fanboy service club ever gives is " it gets easier as you do it". Instead of defending a system that has major flaws from the get go, help be part of the solution and get either a better skill experience or a compromise of some kind. PGI ignored a lot of feedback from both test server sessions, and if they had addressed even half the complaints, we all most likely would not be here, wasting time trying to prove one side right or wrong.

[MovinTarget]

KingKickAss85, on 25 May 2017 - 04:55 AM, said:

By basic definition it is. Is the best or most modern, no. Need something more vanilla? Try anything Elder Scrolls, anything Final Fantasy, any of the Witcher titles, the list is endless.

I like how the only answer the fanboy service club ever gives is " it gets easier as you do it". Instead of defending a system that has major flaws from the get go, help be part of the solution and get either a better skill experience or a compromise of some kind. PGI ignored a lot of feedback from both test server sessions, and if they had addressed even half the complaints, we all most likely would not be here, wasting time trying to prove one side right or wrong.

Not fanboy-ing here, i simply like it better than "you will take these 12 skills and 4 module slots and thats all you get"

You have to admit that complaints on the forums are not a valid gauge of the overall community since the majority of the community doesn't come here.

I also want to point out that I try not to speak for the community since i can't and hold no illusions as to what the whole community wants or even a majority. I pose questions, offer suggestions, but i don't claim to have all the answers as some do.

I say "try it" b/c there are people raging based of theory or the opinions of others and i think we can all agree that the community as a whole can't just take our opinions at face value when system is there for them to experiment with...

So if you give it an honest go and don't like it, fine, at least you tried it and you can give an opinion based on experience and not theory.

Edited by MovinTarget, 25 May 2017 - 05:14 AM.

[Kusunoki Masashige]

Why are you Silent PGI since the skill tree came out..... scrambling to figure out how to reverse your shrinking player base?

Or are you making new mech packs to get more money to pay for all the refunds you have to give now?

[MovinTarget]

Kusunoki Masashige, on 25 May 2017 - 07:49 AM, said:

Why are you Silent PGI since the skill tree came out..... scrambling to figure out how to reverse your shrinking player base?

Or are you making new mech packs to get more money to pay for all the refunds you have to give now?

Why not both?

[NocturnalBeast]

Kusunoki Masashige, on 25 May 2017 - 07:49 AM, said:

Why are you Silent PGI since the skill tree came out..... scrambling to figure out how to reverse your shrinking player base?

Or are you making new mech packs to get more money to pay for all the refunds you have to give now?

They mostly communicate on Twitter, because it is easy to retweet only the nice feedback, so your feed is only filled with complimentary tweets.

[MovinTarget]

Hmmm, I know Guass *used* to have triple optimal for max range, but no longer... Is the IS LB10x supposed to? That's what I'm seeing...

[DeathStalker13]

Now that I have all these new jazzed-out skill tree mechs, I just need a sale on some warhorns or camo so I can spend this MC in my account. C'mon PGI, we need some new outfits and colors for bikini season!

Edited by DeathStalker13, 25 May 2017 - 09:31 AM.

[MovinTarget]

DeathStalker13, on 25 May 2017 - 09:30 AM, said:

...new outfits and colors for bikini season!

B/c ya know the Gargoyle is daaaaaaaaaaaaang sexy in a thong! >.<

[Duilliath]

Ed Steele, on 24 May 2017 - 04:48 PM, said:

I have been playing since June of 2012 and I like the skill tree...just sayin'

And I've been playing since July 2012, and I have to agree with Boaz. It's an extremely poorly designed system, and PGI refused to listen to the majority of feedback and suggestions from the PTS. They spent too much time and money developing it as it is that they didn't leave themselves any room for changes, so they just rammed it through hoping they could get all the sheeple to accept it.

Ed Steele, on 24 May 2017 - 09:11 PM, said:

The problem is that nothing can ever be satisfactorily resolved for "everyone". And if PGI tries to make something that appeals to two diametrically opposed mindsets, then all they will do is end up making "everyone" dissatisfied. The best thing they can do is stick to one way or the other.

I disagree. There isn't just two ways to do this. If they had simply listened to their playtesters they could have changed the system for the better before implementing it. If they'd done it right then the people that are complaining would be happy and the people that like the new system the way it is would mostly be happy with it as well.

Ulvar, on 24 May 2017 - 09:14 PM, said:

whats the problem?
the game has improved with the patch and you keep complaining about everything.
pgi isn't blizzard nor they have the resources. we all know pgi has a weird understanding of usability but they make this game and for for me the patch has improved the game a lot.

The problem is that it has NOT improved the game at all for most people, and it doesn't take a ton of resources to come up with a skill system that isn't complete crap. This is entirely a design issue, not technical. Don't get me wrong. I like the idea of a new skill tree, but what we got was poorly designed and is simply added frustration.

Ulvar, on 24 May 2017 - 09:26 PM, said:

i'm sure its a step in the right direction, we need further improvements and people to calm down.

through armor skills the game plays more like mech combat than ever before.
balance between clan and is is the same or even has improved.
(complaining about the module refund is ridiculous because you invested the money elsewhere)

I for one am completely happy with how the refund turned out for me, however I can understand other people's complaints. Quite a few people would have ended up with far more GSP than they would ever need, so they wanted to sell the modules they weren't getting full refund on. Unfortunately that was impossible without also taking a loss on those that WERE supposed to be fully refunded. What's more PGI refused to communicate to clarify on that issue. What they should have done is made GSP sellable for half it's C-bill value and announced it as such ahead of the patch.

[Guzzarov]

Summer is here i already have a job .
I wont get any new mech packs or putt much time on this for now looks a bit like a mess they don't know how to fix after the massive critic .So silent from them head in the sand syndrome this is not happening ?
I have tested a few mechs and changed skill and still don't like it .
I will not invest to much time in this game for now will wait and see what happens and try some different skills and builds when i have some time over.
Have a nice summer all see you around .

Edited by Guzzarov, 25 May 2017 - 12:08 PM.

[NocturnalBeast]

Unfortunately, the population of this game has noticeably declined and this can be proven because the match maker no longer separates tier levels. In the past few months, I have been seeing Tier 1 and 2 players mixed in the same games as Tier 3 and 4 players quite regularly. To me, I see two problems, one is that there are too many new / casual players leaving because the game is too complex and many veteran players / hardcore fans are leaving because they are tiring of the knee-jerk buffing and nerfing that is done to appease whiners.

Now, I personally am getting older and so is my computer, so I do not do as well in shooter games as I used to and I will probably be playing the turn-based BATTLETECH more than MWO in the near future (provided that the final product is as good as it seems it will be).

Edited by Ed Steele, 25 May 2017 - 12:34 PM.

[Mycroft000]

Duilliath, on 25 May 2017 - 12:04 PM, said:

The problem is that it has NOT improved the game at all for most people, and it doesn't take a ton of resources to come up with a skill system that isn't complete crap. This is entirely a design issue, not technical. Don't get me wrong. I like the idea of a new skill tree, but what we got was poorly designed and is simply added frustration.

I agree with most of your post and here I have mixed agreement on. The game has in fact improved for most people. But what's happened is that we've been forced to settle on getting something that's a moderate improvement, and not being given something that is truly well designed.

I mentioned this before, but this new skill tree is like saying, "I used to drive a Model T, now I drive a Yugo". It is an improvement in many ways, but why should be be stuck driving a Yugo when they could have taken design tips from any number of other games and given us the Pontiac Firebird to the other games' Camaro?

An improvement, doesn't mean good. And an improvement in one area(in game) does not necessarily translate into a universal improvement(mechlab interface with the new tree is horrible). I'm not saying we should roll back to the previous system, but they need to go through Skill Tree 3.0 design phase and take another ground up approach and give us something that is actually really well designed, with a good user interface, and is an actual improvement not just to gameplay but to time spent in the mechlab.

[Domesticon]

MovinTarget, on 25 May 2017 - 08:45 AM, said:

Hmmm, I know Guass *used* to have triple optimal for max range, but no longer... Is the IS LB10x supposed to? That's what I'm seeing...

Yes, they never changed the LB-X triple range, probably because the real optimal range for LB-X is usually around half (or less) the range it will do maximum damage per pellet at.

[MovinTarget]

Domesticon, on 25 May 2017 - 12:41 PM, said:

Yes, they never changed the LB-X triple range, probably because the real optimal range for LB-X is usually around half (or less) the range it will do maximum damage per pellet at.

kk tnx, I just hadn't ever looked at it before now, with the range incrementally improving, I noticed the max range...

I wouldn't waste a lot of ammo on extreme ranges, but its nice to know if I see a high concentration of enemies in the distances I can pepper them a few times for assists later... hopefully...

Edited by MovinTarget, 25 May 2017 - 12:48 PM.

[Duilliath]

mycroft000, on 25 May 2017 - 12:34 PM, said:

I agree with most of your post and here I have mixed agreement on. The game has in fact improved for most people. But what's happened is that we've been forced to settle on getting something that's a moderate improvement, and not being given something that is truly well designed.

I mentioned this before, but this new skill tree is like saying, "I used to drive a Model T, now I drive a Yugo". It is an improvement in many ways, but why should be be stuck driving a Yugo when they could have taken design tips from any number of other games and given us the Pontiac Firebird to the other games' Camaro?

An improvement, doesn't mean good. And an improvement in one area(in game) does not necessarily translate into a universal improvement(mechlab interface with the new tree is horrible). I'm not saying we should roll back to the previous system, but they need to go through Skill Tree 3.0 design phase and take another ground up approach and give us something that is actually really well designed, with a good user interface, and is an actual improvement not just to gameplay but to time spent in the mechlab.

I'll totally agree with you here. A new ground up skill tree implementation would be acceptable at this point. I still say pushing out what we have now was a complete mistake, though. Do it right the first time. That's why you go through testing.

Btw, I'd totally take a T/A over a Camaro most any day. Screamin' Chicken FTW!

[Mycroft000]

You're right, they should have seen that the overwhelming feedback they were receiving was that the direction they were going was not what those of us who cared enough to give our time and energy to test their system would like to see implemented.

I still can't figure out why they didn't look at the old system, and expand on it. Don't generate an all new system, iterate on what you already have.

[NocturnalBeast]

mycroft000, on 25 May 2017 - 02:08 PM, said:

You're right, they should have seen that the overwhelming feedback they were receiving

You mean the "Overwhelming" feedback from the small minority of players who actually tried it out on the test server and the people who parrot whatever their favorite streamer thinks about it on Reddit?

[KingKickAss85]

MovinTarget, on 25 May 2017 - 05:07 AM, said:

Not fanboy-ing here, i simply like it better than &quot;you will take these 12 skills and 4 module slots and thats all you get&quot;

You have to admit that complaints on the forums are not a valid gauge of the overall community since the majority of the community doesn't come here.

I also want to point out that I try not to speak for the community since i can't and hold no illusions as to what the whole community wants or even a majority. I pose questions, offer suggestions, but i don't claim to have all the answers as some do.

I say &quot;try it&quot; b/c there are people raging based of theory or the opinions of others and i think we can all agree that the community as a whole can't just take our opinions at face value when system is there for them to experiment with...

So if you give it an honest go and don't like it, fine, at least you tried it and you can give an opinion based on experience and not theory.

Didn't mean to make it sound like you were fanboying. I've actually read several of your posts and you truly do try to help. I played several matches when the patch rolled out last Tuesday, but for many reasons associated with the debacle of a skill tree (at least for myself), I decided to stop playing and demand a better skill tree. We may find ourselves on opposite sides of this debate, but that doesn't mean we can't find common ground.

I agree that the skill tree is "better" than what we had, but it is still a disaster with how they implemented this. I'm just gonna throw some proposals out there and would love some honest, non-biased feedback on it:

1. They need to redesign the skill trees from the ground up. Instead of just lumping all nodes together in say the firepower tree for example, break it down into sub-categories. Have a branch devoted to each skill. Have 1 for range, 1 for cooldown, etc. Basically allow the player to pick which paths they want without forcing them to get nodes they don't want.

2. Get rid of the 400xp sur-charge on re-activation. If I'm grinding things out to unlock nodes, I should be able to change them like changing my underwear, which is free to do.

3. Re-couple the mobility back onto the engine. That was never a problem to begin with, and it doesn't do a blessed thing to even up clan vs. IS. The pros and cons of engine size are known. Bigger engine allows faster torso twist, etc., but you lose tonnage you could use to equip some weapons or equipment. That always seemed like a fair trade to me.

4. If the mobility is re-coupled onto the engine I would be fine with a reduction in total nodes you can have active at once. Take it from 91 down to around 60.

If even 1 or 2 of these things is implemented in some form or another, I would be happy with the direction of the game and would fully enjoy playing again.

Again, I would love some feedback on this, as I see it as a compromise that would serve most everyone and all parties get something they want.