109 replies to this topic

[JadePanther]

Shifty McSwift, on 26 May 2017 - 11:01 AM, said:

What are you kidding me OP? To fill a skill tree it is like 4 million, that is less expensive than 1 of the better modules, and that doesn't include the cost considerations of buying 2 additional mechs to skill them out and the other 3 modules that vary between 2 and 6 million each.

Could have sworn this would be a cazidin post but the OP seems serious

go more for at least 5 counting the variations of unlocks and changes that will prolly total closer to 125sp unlocked.. 91 is just the max u can use but theres gonna be more than that unlocked especially with new tech and the eventual tree changes that will take place with the next 2 patches..

[SQW]

JC Daxion, on 26 May 2017 - 12:54 PM, said:

well, I bought a warhawk, and direwolf.. the money i saved not buying 2 more of each i have enough cash to skill up 15 mechs.

Now after mastering, you have one WHK and one DWF instead of 3 or each.

New system is better only assuming you'll ever want to buy one variant of the chassis and only one of that particular mech. The new system is great for mastering the 3 lone prize mechs I got but not so much when I want to have multiple variants of a mech or multiples of the same variant. It's especially galling with the latter because respecing your mech weapons also means more xp cost to reorganize part of the skill web.

Let's face it, it's mostly reorganizing the deck chair on the Titanic and to those who want to specialize rather than diversify, this system is actually worse. Of course, without in-game economy, what else are we gonna spend the XP and C-bills on?

[Shifty McSwift]

JadePanther, on 26 May 2017 - 09:41 PM, said:

go more for at least 5 counting the variations of unlocks and changes that will prolly total closer to 125sp unlocked.. 91 is just the max u can use but theres gonna be more than that unlocked especially with new tech and the eventual tree changes that will take place with the next 2 patches..

And you are assuming that they won't refund XP when making skill tree changes, when we really don't know.

SQW, on 26 May 2017 - 10:44 PM, said:

Now after mastering, you have one WHK and one DWF instead of 3 or each.

New system is better only assuming you'll ever want to buy one variant of the chassis and only one of that particular mech. The new system is great for mastering the 3 lone prize mechs I got but not so much when I want to have multiple variants of a mech or multiples of the same variant. It's especially galling with the latter because respecing your mech weapons also means more xp cost to reorganize part of the skill web.

Let's face it, it's mostly reorganizing the deck chair on the Titanic and to those who want to specialize rather than diversify, this system is actually worse. Of course, without in-game economy, what else are we gonna spend the XP and C-bills on?

Paper thin arguments that are heavily perspective based, whatever, deckchairs on the titanic really? You wanna doomsay harder or is that your best effort?

And now you dont have 3 variants.... Right, so you are saying you LIKED the 3 mech rule now......... People be flip flopping all over the place. Jokes been had.

[Shifty McSwift]

JadePanther, on 26 May 2017 - 09:41 PM, said:

go more for at least 5

Hell I go for 10 million more just to sooth your fears.. Thats 14 million and the cost of the mech. VS the cost of 3 mastered mechs, and 4 modules at the very least which is some 40 million... I tripled and then some the skilltree price and it still is cheaper overall particularly for "new" people.

This topic is over guys, there is no way you are going to make the ST seem more expensive, no matter how you try frame it.

[RumpledMunky]

Chados, on 26 May 2017 - 03:59 AM, said:

I'm tweaking a Rifleman, the only mech I'm actively dropping nodes here and adding nodes there on. The rest get what looks to me to be an optimal nodeout for their role and done.

Dropped 9 nodes when I realized that I needed more heat management and decided not to spend GSP. I used the mech's personal HXP/MXP pool. I had 180,000 MXP on the mech at the patch so I have plenty.

9 SP cost over 400,000 Cbills.

It's gonna be a very long time before a stone noob can manage to make her first million. It was over a year in the old system before my balance broke a million and two years plus several events before it broke 100 million. The learning curve just leaned past vertical into negative territory. The difference between a skilled out 91 node mech and a brand spanking new one is tremendous. Noobs won't earn jack for a very long time in an unskilled mech. PGI, please figure out a way to give noobs at least one mastered mech at the end of the Academy.

So far the cost has kept me from wanting to play. I've been around since beta I have maybe 35-40 mechs. Most of them are cash bought from packages over the years. I don't have that much spare time to play so I've never had a lot of C-bills just sitting around. Most of them have been spent on upgrading the engines and such in the mechs I have. As of the introduction of the skill tree I had just over 4 million C-bills. I have far more overall experience mixed up in the different types than I could ever need, but I can barely afford to max out the tree on just one mech. I don't have the motivation to grind out 40,000,000 C-bills(I played 10-15 of the mechs I own on anything like a regular basis) just to be able to play on the same relative footing I was at before. If I were new I probably wouldn't mind but I don't feel like starting over.

Edited by RumpledMunky, 27 May 2017 - 01:33 AM.

[Roadbuster]

What's the average ammount of CB you get for a match? Without CB bonus and premium time. 70.000CB?
You need 800XP and 45.000CB for each SP.
I think most new players will need 2-4 matches to get 800XP, which should give them enough CB to unlock a SP.

Yes, it reduces CB income and slows down new mech acquisition, but once you have the SP unlocked, everything you get can be spent for something else.


I'm a bit torn when it comes to SP cost.
On one side I find it slows down progress, but on the other side it offers a sense of achievement for new players, as every SP they unlock is an improvement. And SP can be acquired rather quick, compared to the XP unlocks for elite or master we had before.

[Roadbuster]

RumpledMunky, on 27 May 2017 - 01:28 AM, said:

So far the cost has kept me from wanting to play. I've been around since beta I have maybe 35-40 mechs. Most of them are cash bought from packages over the years. I don't have that much spare time to play so I've never had a lot of C-bills just sitting around. Most of them have been spent on upgrading the engines and such in the mechs I have. As of the introduction of the skill tree I had just over 4 million C-bills. I have far more overall experience mixed up in the different types than I could ever need, but I can barely afford to max out the tree on just one mech. I don't have the motivation to grind out 40,000,000 C-bills(I played 10-15 of the mechs I own on anything like a regular basis) just to be able to play on the same relative footing I was at before. If I were new I probably wouldn't mind but I don't feel like starting over.

If you had basics or elite unlocks you got a bunch of free SP. If you had a mastered mech you got full 91SP for free.
If you had nothing unlocked, nothing changed.

[Xetelian]

46 matches vs 50-80 but it was ALL XP and GXP it didn't cost cBills.

[Kanil]

Xetelian, on 27 May 2017 - 02:08 AM, said:

46 matches vs 50-80 but it was ALL XP and GXP it didn't cost cBills.

I'm not sure where you found the buy one get two free 'mech sale, but for those of us who didn't, it definitely did cost c-bills.

[Chados]

Prosperity Park, on 26 May 2017 - 02:22 PM, said:

If it took you a YEAR to get a million Cbills, then you are on the wrong forums because you weren't playing MWO. This is also obvious because MWO has a new player cadet bonus worth several million Cbills. I have to report this as a troll thread since it is so blatantly incorrect.

Thanks for shouting down my experience. Stop being awesome for a moment and maybe consider that everyone isn't all l33t and k3wl like you are. Some of us are mere mortals.

In my case, I got the cadet bonus, yeah. And like a total noob idiot I spent it on a set of Cicadas and then a new Jager, trying to figure out what I could run and how to run it, and since I sucked as a pilot I was getting nowhere and fast. I've played MechWarrior titles for over 25 years, and probably ran Riflemen while you were in elementary school, so I get the game. I'm also well into middle age and not nearly as fast on the draw as I was when I was 25 years old, so I don't grok twitch play, okay. It took me two years to make top of T3 and when PSR hit my K/D ratio was 0.17. I've "got gud"...well, not really but much better than in the beginning...but some of you all have totally forgotten what it's like to be a fresh, stone noob in this game. It's not pleasant.

After my first month in game...I'm persistent...I was broke, couldn't afford the cbills for a third Jager, and was >< that close to quitting. I'd actually bought some MC and had for God knows what incredibly stupid reason bought an X5. Just for the hell of it I threw two LRM5s on. And discovered noob LRMing. I was intrigued, rounded up every piece of equipment I had, all of it, and bought a C1 Catapult. And I've run Cats ever since. The C1 led to my first Mastery Pack. Catapults. The Jester was the mech that taught me how to employ direct fire. I joined a unit. And I'm still in the game today. But I'm a fan from way back. Who's going to stick it out that long? When nutech hits month after next with rACs and heavy lasers on the field TTK is going to drop back to one shot levels again. A heavy large laser does 18 damage. I already see an 80-point CT get cored in one shot by Clanner laservomit. When they're running multiple heavy lasers with it, it'll go from cored to poof in one shot and the speed of the game is going to increase again. Which means that noobs in fresh mechs are going to be lunchmeat. I know that for some of you that's great, those of you that think like that probably like to pull wings off butterflies too, I'll bet. But how many of those noobs are going to stick it out and buy new things? And keep the game alive? Think about it.

Let me be plain, the skill tree works great for me because I have most of the mechs I want and will end up concentrating on a few favorites. I have enough GSP to skill out 65 mechs fully and that's on top of the 70-some I had, 50 or so of which were mastered, before the changeover. I have 200 million Cbills and nearly 400,000 GXP. So I'll be fine. The new system has let me beef up my favorites that were too fragile before. But it takes longer to grind nodes for one mech under the new system than it took to grind three through basics and one through mastery under the old system. That's all I'm saying. The cadet system ought to get one mech to mastery for these noobs so they have one platform that can match the majority of 91-node mechs out there.

Edited by Chados, 27 May 2017 - 04:32 AM.

[sneeking]

i watched a live stream today of a genuine new player who just found mwo using trial mechs and i watched him.

he was getting frustrated and slaugtered, he was still working through cadet bonus. he was getting very upset that all the mechs cost real money and i tried explaining there is two prices, the gold is MC and the blue is Cbill.

i tried to show him through the different weight classes and while doing so he bought a blr1g even though i was saying dont buy anything yet. then he went in a match and got slaugtered again face tanking and overheating firing 6x ml on single heatsinks...

we didnt even get to the new tree lol

what an eye opener it was much easier back when i did it !

he is gonna be lost when he discovers the tree !

all i could do was leave him links to smurfy with advice to test his builds and a youtube vid on new player 1st mechs and use of the lab...

i feel bad for the guy

[Chados]

Exactly. You stick with it, you eventually get to where you can save cbills instead of spending everything refitting mechs. That happened to me when I got the missile Catapults mastered and then bought the Marauder and Rifleman collector packs. I got Dragon Mastery a month before that and by then was running in company groups. When the MAD dropped I got a big cash infusion and the 3R(S), which at the time was a really good mech plus a 30% bonus. That's the one that pushed me into T4 and T3. It's my third most dropped in mech after two of the Catapults. If you hang with it the game lets you in at some point. But the struggle is real til you get that first hero mech mastered, invest in some premium time, and get to where you don't have to skill up anything for awhile. That's the point I'm trying to get to.

[sneeking]

i dont ever use the preem time

3500hrs in the bank

never touch it

[sneeking]

the new guy i was watching also found his way into the cw menu n i was like DONT !

leave that alone for now...

you can see how this all goes wrong for new players there is nothing in place to keep them out of trouble.

[Phoolan Devi]

RumpledMunky, on 27 May 2017 - 01:28 AM, said:

So far the cost has kept me from wanting to play. I've been around since beta I have maybe 35-40 mechs. Most of them are cash bought from packages over the years. I don't have that much spare time to play so I've never had a lot of C-bills just sitting around. Most of them have been spent on upgrading the engines and such in the mechs I have. As of the introduction of the skill tree I had just over 4 million C-bills. I have far more overall experience mixed up in the different types than I could ever need, but I can barely afford to max out the tree on just one mech. I don't have the motivation to grind out 40,000,000 C-bills(I played 10-15 of the mechs I own on anything like a regular basis) just to be able to play on the same relative footing I was at before. If I were new I probably wouldn't mind but I don't feel like starting over.

You won't need to start over and it costs you zero c-bills and xp to get to the status you were before!

What costs are you talking about?

[sneeking]

it will cost zero if they make no mistakes

they have to research so the mistakes of others dont cost them

if they research and make no mistakes then the cost of what they had can be zero

otherwise it could cost more

[Phoolan Devi]

Chados, on 27 May 2017 - 04:18 AM, said:

Thanks for shouting down my experience. Stop being awesome for a moment and maybe consider that everyone isn't all l33t and k3wl like you are. Some of us are mere mortals.

In my case, I got the cadet bonus, yeah. And like a total noob idiot I spent it on a set of Cicadas and then a new Jager, trying to figure out what I could run and how to run it, and since I sucked as a pilot I was getting nowhere and fast. I've played MechWarrior titles for over 25 years, and probably ran Riflemen while you were in elementary school, so I get the game. I'm also well into middle age and not nearly as fast on the draw as I was when I was 25 years old, so I don't grok twitch play, okay. It took me two years to make top of T3 and when PSR hit my K/D ratio was 0.17. I've &quot;got gud&quot;...well, not really but much better than in the beginning...but some of you all have totally forgotten what it's like to be a fresh, stone noob in this game. It's not pleasant.

After my first month in game...I'm persistent...I was broke, couldn't afford the cbills for a third Jager, and was &gt;&lt; that close to quitting. I'd actually bought some MC and had for God knows what incredibly stupid reason bought an X5. Just for the hell of it I threw two LRM5s on. And discovered noob LRMing. I was intrigued, rounded up every piece of equipment I had, all of it, and bought a C1 Catapult. And I've run Cats ever since. The C1 led to my first Mastery Pack. Catapults. The Jester was the mech that taught me how to employ direct fire. I joined a unit. And I'm still in the game today. But I'm a fan from way back. Who's going to stick it out that long? When nutech hits month after next with rACs and heavy lasers on the field TTK is going to drop back to one shot levels again. A heavy large laser does 18 damage. I already see an 80-point CT get cored in one shot by Clanner laservomit. When they're running multiple heavy lasers with it, it'll go from cored to poof in one shot and the speed of the game is going to increase again. Which means that noobs in fresh mechs are going to be lunchmeat. I know that for some of you that's great, those of you that think like that probably like to pull wings off butterflies too, I'll bet. But how many of those noobs are going to stick it out and buy new things? And keep the game alive? Think about it.

Let me be plain, the skill tree works great for me because I have most of the mechs I want and will end up concentrating on a few favorites. I have enough GSP to skill out 65 mechs fully and that's on top of the 70-some I had, 50 or so of which were mastered, before the changeover. I have 200 million Cbills and nearly 400,000 GXP. So I'll be fine. The new system has let me beef up my favorites that were too fragile before. But it takes longer to grind nodes for one mech under the new system than it took to grind three through basics and one through mastery under the old system. That's all I'm saying. The cadet system ought to get one mech to mastery for these noobs so they have one platform that can match the majority of 91-node mechs out there.

Let me be plain! The new skill tree is way cheaper considering grind and effort. So why should there be a reward for new players now when under the old system, which was harder for noobs, there wasn't?

[Phoolan Devi]

sneeking, on 27 May 2017 - 07:01 AM, said:

it will cost zero if they make no mistakes

they have to research so the mistakes of others dont cost them

if they research and make no mistakes then the cost of what they had can be zero

otherwise it could cost more

Well, those who want to "research" might want to "research", but it's not essentially needed.

Who guarantees you, that the researches don't produce more "mistakes" than you would have done by your own and template skill trees will definately not resemble or serve every playstyle......so "research" is a bit daft, don't you think?

[sneeking]

nothing gurentees that at all

i researched but i made changes to my implementation based on my builds and my own style of play.

i dont think it was daft in the least for me to have done research first, my 1st mech done on the tree cost me only 3 points more thhan the free historical from mastery due to a small mistake. from that i learned a lot and did my 2nd mech freehand and iv made no changes to it yet.

Edited by sneeking, 27 May 2017 - 08:13 AM.

[Angel of Annihilation]

BurningDesire, on 26 May 2017 - 08:55 PM, said:

there where some pros to the old system. Like maybe one of the three variants you buy is something you would never normally play only to find you love it over the one you though was going to suit you.
of the three variants you buy you could sell the ones you disliked using and regain some cbill loss. With the new system you start spending cbills in the skill tree ontop of the mech only to realise you hate it, so you finish leveling it and want to sell it all that cash wasted on a mech you wont keep with your four mechbays.
Hell i remember when i started i couldn't afford a ER PPC so i had to make do with what i had and it took me ages to afford one. Put that ontop of the fact you are getting pounded into the dirt cause you haven't worked out the learning curve yet. Earning bugger all cbill cause you suck only to have to spend even more cbills on skill tree nodes cause without it your experience only makes you start to resent playing a mech, to then not have enough cbills to afford even one new variant.

With the old system it was ages before i could afford a radar derp mod, and i was so thankful when i had saved enough to afford one. I was also thankful i could swap it. Now what i see i cant get people to stick with ther game because lurm spam in lower tiers is real

Honestly you bring up some good points.

Kind of like you mentioned, having to buy the three variants required me to play the three variants. That being the case I can't count the number of times I found myself deciding that one of the variants I never would have purchased if I hadn't been required to purchase it, turning out to be my favorite and most successful variant.

Another thing is that while it might have taken forever to buy a Radar Dep module, once you had it, all your mechs had it and having it didn't mean you had to gimp your mech in order to mount it. Under the current system, it takes 16 points to get 100% Radar Dep, using 16 points there might very well cost me 16 points form the weapons tree and that buys me -5.25% heat gen and +5% extra range. That is what I mean by gimping.

So while I do kind of like the new tree system, It still leaves alot to be desired. I guess if it comes right down to it, I would like to see the trees more focused allowing you to buy what you wanted rather then having to take, this, that and the other thing just to get what you want. I think it would have been best to have a very linear tree specific to each thing, like a radar dep tree that had 20 stages to it each giving 5% reduction or a Energy Range tree that had 20 stages each giving .25% range bonus. You would still have 91 points or whatever and you still couldn't buy everything you wanted so you would still have to make choices but at least then your selections would be what you wanted.

I mean lets be honest, I want Radar Dep which if I could just buy the Radar Dep, it would cost me 6 points. I really could care less about the Target Info Speed, Target Lock Decay, Sensor Range and Target Retention that I have to buy along the way.