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1. Impact on actual gameplay. Well, game feels unexpectedly better. A lot better and funnier. Survival tree did a good job increasing TTK, most of mechs feel stronger. Removal of mobility benefits from engine combined with agility tree makes mechs' mobility differentiation MUCH smoother. Mechs not only feel stronger but also more different from each other. Massive quirks removal is questionable thing however. Some mechs got a bit underperforming again. Something doesn't feel right about my Summoner and Black Knight.
2. Nodes allocation. Hey, PGI, everyone understands that you're trying to use filler nodes as a way to increase SP cost of useful nodes. Yes, that's good intention and we all agree. But it's implemented awfully. Main issue — tree lacks any system or logic. Filler nodes look totally unrelated to desired useful nodes. This could be achieved in much simpler way with much more compact tree while providing exactly same benefits. You could just simply make useful nodes cost more without any gateways.
3. Economy and refunds. Well, I got tons of GSPs and HSPs which are going to save me a lot of time and c-bills so I'm barely affected by the c-bills sink. And guess what? I'm just enjoying the game. People who didn't get much SPs from refunds are probably going to grind and suffer. Sorry for them. Especially taking into account that it usually takes you more than 91 SP to find your perfect build. My point is that additional c-bills sink is a horrible idea. If I didn't get all these tons of free SPs (about 3700 + lots of HSPs) I probably wouldn't start playing MWO again. «Grinding for HUGE BATTLE ROBOT WHOA» and «gridnding for +0.75% hill climb to unlock +0.1% cooling efficiency» are kinda different things, don't you think so? One is exciting, another one is boring routine. Re-activation of nodes for XP is also just ridiculous.
4. Thanks for removal of The Rule of 3 though. It was abomination (just like modules).
5. Other UI issues (besides skill maze).
Quirks list is a mess. No differentiation between inherited ones and stats from skills.
Highlighting nodes of same type when hovering mouse over them would help to navigate the Skill Maze A LOT.
Auto-activating all the gateway nodes (in a shortest route) when clicking locked node could help to reduce amount of required clicks.
To many clicks to purchase skillpoints. Why can't I just type the amount of SP I'd like to purchase instead of click-click-clicking on a slider?
Specific trees.
1. Firepower. Messy as hell but funny to play with. It actually provides you with lots of choices but it's pretty hard to navigate. Also, why spread/duration/velocity weren't combined into «precision» or something like that? These nodes still encourage boating.
2. Survival. Most impactful in a gameplay way (deals with low TTK issue) but also the most boring one. It basically workds just in on/off mode, like a one huge node. I always max it first.
3. Mobility. It's even messier than firepower, but pretty variative and interesting to play with and really helps to achieve a smooth differentiation in mechs' mobility. In terms of gameplay this one feels the most «healthy». Torso pitch nodes feel like a robbery though.
4. Jumpjets. Hahahahaha, no. Well-performing jumpers don't need it, hoverjet coffins don't benefit from it. Fix the whole hoverjets issue first and then we talk.
5. Operations. Well-balanced but boring as hell. It has basically three stages: 3 coolruns, 5 coolruns, 5 coolruns + extra heat capacity. Works pretty well as skillpoint sink for energyboats.
6. Sensors. Garbage. Cheap advanced zoom is cool, target decay skillpoint-sink for lurmboats is nice too, everything else is not worth attention. Hiding ECM nodes behind so many fillers is pure robbery. Especially behind radar deprivation, benefits of which are overlapped by ECM. Nodes are distributed too widely. From all the trees this one needs to be more linear the most.
7. Auxillary. Into the trash it goes.
Edited by Appuagab, 25 May 2017 - 03:59 PM.
