101 replies to this topic

[Old-dirty B]

Stefka Kerensky, on 21 May 2017 - 07:31 AM, said:

HOnestly skill tree and global nerf are esactly the reasons why I'm enjoying mwo much more now than when I left 6 months ago: less twitch shooter more robotic war machine, known as battlemechs

Ofcourse, my tasting is not yours. Im totally aware most of my honesty is pure personal preference and regarding this theres no right or wrong.

Some people like slower paced mwo, i like the pace pre-patch.

Edited by B3R3ND, 21 May 2017 - 08:21 AM.

[Imperius]

Zigmund Freud, on 21 May 2017 - 06:06 AM, said:

Then how do you see a balance solution, where both lights can kill an assault, and assault can "aim and defend himself"? The only way how lights can kill an assault is when they are fast enough to stay behind assault's back, or hit and GTFO quick enough. If a direwhale (assault of assaults) can aim and hit a light, one or two alphas will be over the top enough to kill it. It won't be defending yourself, it will be making lights utterly useless, if even the slowest of all assaults can kill them 1 on 1.

You shoot me from behind and make sure you have cover to use! No difference than the rest of us! It's not like we can 360 turn. The dire wolf twist speed has been fine and **** since launch. There was no need to make it more ****!

[Vxheous]

LordNothing, on 21 May 2017 - 03:58 AM, said:

just remember everyone gets the same nerfs. eventually someone will crack the recipe for op and use it to make a fool out of pgi. if no one figures out how to do this, then maybe they actually did something right for a change.

There are a few really OP broken mechs right now, you'll see them floating around in Group queue.

[Zigmund Freud]

2xShockFist, on 21 May 2017 - 06:54 AM, said:

Its funny, cause I remember back in the day people complaining that mechs moved too fast and it didn't feel mechwarrior enough cause mechs were supposed to be slow and clumbsy. Now that we sorta have that people are complaining again. I dont even.

Well, there are different people and opinions. ITT a lot of people say they like this change, for instance.

[Mystere]

2xShockFist, on 21 May 2017 - 06:54 AM, said:

Its funny, cause I remember back in the day people complaining that mechs moved too fast and it didn't feel mechwarrior enough cause mechs were supposed to be slow and clumbsy. Now that we sorta have that people are complaining again. I dont even.

Is it so difficult to imagine that it's not the same set of people complaining?

Nightmare1, on 21 May 2017 - 07:19 AM, said:

I disagree with the OP. This Skill Tree has breathed a lot of life back into the game for me!

Good for you. On the other hand, it did nothing for me.

Edited by Mystere, 21 May 2017 - 08:52 AM.

[Mystere]

Gimpy117, on 21 May 2017 - 07:48 AM, said:

-I dunno about lights either, but when you tag a Arctic Cheater in the torso with 2 LPL, 2 Medium twice and throw in an AC 20 and he runs away...certian light mechs seem to have just gotten really,really tanky with skills

A SplatDog seemed to work just fine yesterday against them.

[Angel of Annihilation]

S p a n i a r d, on 21 May 2017 - 08:10 AM, said:

Let's look at one of your examples: Linebacker > more agile than a Panther. But if you look at the stats, while it really is higher, the difference is not that big, like a few points or something. You make it sound like it's flying.

Me? Personally I'm ok with that. Since the Panther still moves like a light mech. And if that's what it takes for people to consider Linebackers instead of the usual mech picks, fine by me. Because if the Linebacker is just mildly more maneuverable than the other Clan Heavies (like you said), it won't a be that of a big deal for players to consider using them over the usual picks

While I agree with you for the most part, I think you have to look at how absurd some of the mobility advantages and disadvantages are. You have a 75 ton Night Gyr with a 13.11 accel rate, while a 75 ton Black Knight is running around with a 24.63 Accel rate. So we have a mech designed in 2578 with better performance characteristic than one designed in 3052 that also happens to be using advanced tech and prototype equipment. Now I know PGI threw lore out of the window a long time ago but do you think there should be more of a baseline across the weight of the chassis?

By the 13 out of 19 of the Assault Mechs have better acceleration than the Night Gyr.

That being the case, I think all Light mechs should have minimum around 60 Acceleration , Mediums should have at minimum around 30, heavies at mimimum around 20 and Assaults at minimum around 10. This would remove those special snow flake mechs that have significantly slower than average acceleration.

[MischiefSC]

Viktor Drake, on 21 May 2017 - 09:17 AM, said:

While I agree with you for the most part, I think you have to look at how absurd some of the mobility advantages and disadvantages are. You have a 75 ton Night Gyr with a 13.11 accel rate, while a 75 ton Black Knight is running around with a 24.63 Accel rate. So we have a mech designed in 2578 with better performance characteristic than one designed in 3052 that also happens to be using advanced tech and prototype equipment. Now I know PGI threw lore out of the window a long time ago but do you think there should be more of a baseline across the weight of the chassis?

By the 13 out of 19 of the Assault Mechs have better acceleration than the Night Gyr.

That being the case, I think all Light mechs should have minimum around 60 Acceleration , Mediums should have at minimum around 30, heavies at mimimum around 20 and Assaults at minimum around 10. This would remove those special snow flake mechs that have significantly slower than average acceleration.

Because even with the lower mobility the Gyr is the best heavy overall. If it was more mobile then it would be way superior to every other option. So think of it like this - most other heavies got mobility quirks to offset the high mounts and build options of the Gyr. They're just baked in now.

[R Valentine]

TTK hasn't gone anywhere since the skill tree patch. People have just dumped DPS builds in favor of high alpha builds even more so than before. Most people skip the survival tree, and unless your mech already had huge armor/structure quirks it doesn't help much. The only thing the skill tree has done is reinforce the current meta to a larger degree, but we already knew that. Min/maxing is more important now than ever. No bad mechs suddenly became good mechs. It's just our current list of good mechs got better, well the bad mechs got worse. Nothing has really changed, save that we all have to click 91 times per mech because reasons.

[Weeny Machine]

Imperius, on 21 May 2017 - 05:07 AM, said:

Where did I say the light isn't supposed to kill a assault? As it stands now lights aren't killing assaults (at least the direwolf in my case) with skill I'm not suggesting we should go super fast. I'm saying it's ******** people here think it's considered acceptable balance to take away the ability to aim and defend yourself!

Have you fought a javelin yet? That piece of **** takes more fire than a assault can!

The worst group of players minus a few are lights! They think their jobs are to be fast brawlers who rarely relay information! I'd rather they weren't on my team 90% of the time!

You cannot leg a Javelin and say light players are the worst...oh the irony

[Wolfwood592]

I really don't think engine desync is going to "HURT" the arrival of new players.....WHY? Because it is all they will know. Right now we are dealing with a bunch of people who can't handle change, and especially that their precious 100 ton mech got slloooowwww. I personally still LOVE playing my Atlas, though I am not against change.

All the classes have trade-offs, it needs tweaking, but not as drastic as some people are saying.

[Too Much Love]

Khobai, on 21 May 2017 - 01:14 AM, said:

The game feels inconsistent to me

You have some heavies that are more agile than lights

You have some lights that pilot like assaults

You can have two different assaults which have huge disparities in how agile they are

Its a damn mess.

Imagine how boring it would be if every assault is the same as every other assault, and every light feels the same as the other light.

What you condemn is called diversity.

[Weeny Machine]

drunkblackstar, on 21 May 2017 - 09:51 AM, said:

Imagine how boring it would be if every assault is the same as every other assault, and every light feels the same as the other light.

What you condemn is called diversity.

No one complains when there is variety within a weight class. Heck, let an agile assault behave like a heavy and no one would care. However, if a mech behaves better than some mechs two classes lower in the weight chain, then something is really wrong.

You know, you cannot do this and at the same time standardize the size of light mechs with hilarious results by arguing "this is volumentric". Lights got hammered hard by this. Yet, the other way around it is totally fine to make HUGE exceptions.

[Too Much Love]

Bush Hopper, on 21 May 2017 - 10:02 AM, said:

No one complains when there is variety within a weight class. Heck, let an agile assault behave like a heavy and no one would care. However, if a mech behaves better than some mechs two classes lower in the weight chain, then something is really wrong.

You know, you cannot do this and at the same time standardize the size of light mechs with hilarious results by arguing "this is volumentric". Lights got hammered hard by this. Yet, the other way around it is totally fine to make HUGE exceptions.

Besides that "better" or "worse" very often is pyrely subjective terms, there will always be good and bad mechs.

It's impossible to make some ideal meter to mesure all weights and classes and divide them by certain creteria. Even if you make it the game would become grey and lose its flavor.

[Koniving]

I enjoy them more that they are slower, clumsier, etc. if I wanted twich mech combat I'd play Gundam.
But.. I'm not liking the mobility tree.

To get anything I have to accept hard brake. I don't want hard brake.
I definitely don't want so much of it.

Why you ask? "Why don't you wanna stop quick?"

Because hard brake is tied to deceleration of all sorts, even when not breaking.
For example, hill climbing. Anyone remember the Pretty Baby? When it came out before quirks, it had two 'perks' to it. One was 200% torso twist speed (hot dayamn! Even greater when that was discretely turned to 400% after the first 'quirkening') The other was terrible brakes. It had a negative trait to hard brakes that continued to be after the original skill tree being mastered. What really sucks back then is the regret of leveling up the original skill tree for it, because once I did that I couldn't climb to insanely high places EVEN WHILE EVERYONE ELSE COULD NOT due to the speed reductions in hill climbing slopes.

I could take an awesome, and DROP on you from up higher than even those with jumpjets could get to, and all it took was a Pretty Baby because of all the Awesome with bad 'brakes', it had the worst... and thus it barely slowed down by maybe 20 kph when climbing steep slopes.

Hard brake though... makes it difficult for any mech to climb hills. Try it. Take a mech you haven't skilled, climb some steep hills. Then trick out hard brake.
Bye bye hill climbing abilities. Sure you can take the hill climbing quirks... but I don't want to spend skill points to make up for problems that other skill points created.

Edited by Koniving, 21 May 2017 - 10:14 AM.

[Ripper X]

Most likely we will see some agility quirk adjustments to the mechs and probably other types of quirks being adjusted.
PGI has stated this game will be forever changing. Game feels more different than before and yet feels familiar.

[Koniving]

Side note, it also seems that the Pretty Baby was forgotten in quirks, or more specifically the pilot who was "one with the machine", whom was known for 'skipping' in an Awesome across a battlefield as a method of evading LRMs. Skipping.


This is me skipping, back when the Pretty Baby came stock with great acceleration and terrible brakes.

But quirks just stopped caring about who we are.

[Koniving]

Ripper X, on 21 May 2017 - 10:14 AM, said:

Most likely we will see some agility quirk adjustments to the mechs and probably other types of quirks being adjusted.
PGI has stated this game will be forever changing. Game feels more different than before and yet feels familiar.

You mean like classic MWO?

(This might be familiar if you play defense in Incursion now; back then we got more money for winning by base capture than by elimination, as such the base HAD to be defended which is what my role is; wait for the enemies to completely ignore the front line force and rush the base with ernest for the maximum payoff).

[Mawai]

Ok ... after having played a few matches over a range of my mechs I like the skill tree and haven't noticed that much of a nerf to mobility. This is just my experience. I am also finding the mechs to be as much fun as ever and in some cases more fun to play.

First ... I absolutely LOVE not having to swap modules. It wasn't that big a deal but it was a maintenance chore. Now, the mechs are skilled up and all I need to do is tweak then just hit drop without having to worry about whether I remembered to install modules.

I have so far played:
1) Jenner JR7-D
Skills:
Aux - 6 - extra UAV and 2 extra slots
Sensors - 20 - seismic and radar derp
Operations - 20 - heat management
Jump Jets - 15 - more lift and duration
Mobility - 30 - all of speed tweak

Experience:
Fun to play, if anything it felt like better agility than before the skill tree, jump jets were more useful, sensor skills were also useful - target info meant I could focus fire better. I didn't put anything into the firepower tree so the effect of weapon modules from the old system was lost but that was never really the focus for my builds. Some one else could put more into firepower.

2) HBK-4G
Skills:
Sensors: 16
Operations: 9
Mobility: 15
Firepower: 51

Experience:
Generally good. Didn't feel any slower or much less maneuverable than it did before. Hard to judge the effect of the large investment in the firepower tree.

3) Catapult Jester
Skills:
Auxilliary: 6 - 2 UAV + 2 extra consumables
Sensors: 18 - radar derp
Operations: 9 - mostly heat
Jump Jets: 12 - initial lift and duration but you get some vectoring anyway
Mobility: 23 - kinetic/hard brake, turning and torso
Firepower: 23 - all four laser duration and as much heat/filler as possible

Experience:
This was a blast. I usually play my Jester much like a heavy light mech with close to max engine. It performed really well and the laser boosts from the firepower tree seemed to help. With the points in mobility it didn't seem nerfed in the movement department at all.


4) MAD-IIC-A
Sensors: 16 - radar derp and filler
Operations: 21 - as many heat related as possible plus filler
Mobility: 19 - kinetic, hard brake, torso twist plus filler
Firepower: 35 - UAC and 3 laser duration plus as much heat gen as I could fit in

Experience:
This felt somewhat less maneuverable than previously but not anything like unplayable and in fact almost un-noticeable. Arms were quick but the torso would take a bit longer catching up. Accel/decel were still good for an assault. I didn't notice any real issue with performance or firepower.

---------------------

Some general comments:
1) I have purchased radar derp 100% on every mech. This comes along with boosts to sensor range, target info gathering and a generally useless +200 to target retention. That +200 to target retention is, in my opinion, a design flaw. I think the special replacement skills should all be leaves and only the more generic skills used as filler in order to reach those.
2) I haven't tried playing without a skilled up mech to see the difference.
3) I'd like to see more of the special leaves (UAC jam chance, gauss cooldown, laser duration, advanced zoom etc) and some options to reach those. Having a bit of choice of which generic skills to take (i.e. range, heat, cooldown, sensor range, target info) might be nice.


Overall, I haven't seen any huge degradation in mech capabilities. Mechs don't feel like snails ... they are still fun to drive ... they are all still effective. Maybe not balanced ... but PGI will have the numbers. However, currently most IS mechs still have their quirks ... I don't really want to see what balance is like if those are removed since IS already lags clans.

It might be interesting to replace quirks with either bonus skill points or a "quirk" tree along with quirk points that players could spend to further customize their mechs.

--------------------

The bottom line in my opinion is that the sky is not falling, the new skill system is better than what it replaced, and if there were nerfs they seem pretty minor and affected everyone so it is a wash in the end. Others experiences may differ and I have to try out more of my mechs.

P.S. I also tried a HBK-4SP ... this mech has huge structure quirks so for that mech I went heavy into the survival tree earning a 25% to structure and 15% to armor. In practice it seemed to make surprisingly little difference but I may have just been unlucky. As a result, I am still trying to figure out if the survival tree actually has any worthwhile benefit.

An interesting idea for the survival tree might be damage resistance to different weapon types.
- energy resistance (energy weapons)
- ballistic resistance (ballistic weapons)
- explosive resistance (missiles)
.. which would allow for damage mitigation of specific damage types. The code to do this with missile bay doors already exists so something similar shouldn't be that hard to implement.

Edited by Mawai, 21 May 2017 - 11:20 AM.

[Victor Morson]

B3R3ND, on 21 May 2017 - 02:53 AM, said:

Im totally fine with the class didferences and agree what each class should be, its the total "slowing down" the game i dont like at all. I specifically started playing MWO because it had just the right twitchy-ness and sluggish-ness actoss the weight class board - sort of arena shooter witch mechs that i really liked, but that specific character is now gone...

Get the mobility upgrades.