28 replies to this topic

[Helene de Montfort]

After finishing the event on my main account, and since i don't need the double xp, i decided that i could start a new account, taking advantage of the xp boost and the LBK gift...

So i started playing, doing the academy, then using a trial mech until i could buy my own LBK-C, while advancing the event goal.

I had just finished mastering the LBK-C when i got the LBK-Prime from the event...

The first point, all the games i did with the trial mech only gave me cbills, no xp... Basically, that's fine if you consider that you can use whatever you want as trial mech without getting any useless xp... Well, until you realize that you aren't getting any useful xp either.

After getting the LBK-Prime, i tried to come with a build that would work for me... Well, i think the LBK-C is much better, but i still managed to come with a build that can do 200-400 damage per game, up to 700 on very good games. Considering i'm still skilling it, it could be worse. I haven't tried mixing omnipods yet, because... Well, we will discuss that.

The first thing that came to my attention, is that while it's easy to change completely the weapon arrangement of an omnimech, the skill tree being tied to the mech, and not the omnipods, it makes it completely impractical to do it. What's the point of having omnipods if you're not having omniskilltree?

The second thing that came to my attention, is that after the end of the cadet's bonuses, and the free premium day, skilling the new mech was actually costing me more cbills than i was earning. It's probably because of the double xp, it creates an imbalance between the xp i earn and the cbills i get. But it mean that any event giving a boost of xp is actually preventing you to use all the extra xp you get, just because you can't get the extra cash to buy those skill points.

The third thing that came to my attention is that, even if there wasn't the extra xp event, buying weapons and omnipods to change my build was always going to set me back in my progression. And i'm not speaking about the perspective of buying another mech, this is so far away that even though i'm an experienced player, i don't see this new account buying a second mech before months, and many months. Since i need at least four mechs to go to faction play (i'm not counting trials), it mean that i will maybe be able to field a dropdeck in 2018, even though i got a free LBK.

I can only imagine the kind of grind it mean for new players, if it takes me 6 months before having enough mechs to enter faction play, how much time will it take them? Years?

I don't know if any of you have experienced the same?

[mike29tw]

SP really shouldn't cost c-bill. At this point almost all progression is gated by c-bill, consider how many progression currency we have (5? 6?), it's pretty ridiculous.

Edited by mike29tw, 30 May 2017 - 02:14 AM.

[Xetelian]

I think this adversely affects the new and the casual players and very adversely affects the New and Casual players.



What turned me off WoT was the grind, the game was fun to play when you won but it was an unending cycle of 5 losses and 1 win over a good length of time before I quit. I was new, I wasn't able to carry a team of such massive weight and was not enjoying the prospect of having to.



WoWS gave out a free ship so I tried it, I enjoyed it vs bots and moved on to PVP, where I got *****. I was NOT prepared for the massive difference a real match was bringing. I definitely thought it was a well made game but it was very hard.





Now MWO, the old skill tree had you buy 3 mechs, 1 of which you wanted and 2 of which you could live without. Look at the SDR, I bought it as my first purchase and got the 5D which has 3 energy points and ECM. I was forced to buy the 5V which is considered one of if not THE worst mech in the game. I elited all of them and mastered the 5D and 5K because that was when MGs were useful.

So I understand that with this new skill tree that they want to have you spend as much as you would have on 3 mechs and as much XP as you would on 3 mechs to keep it similar.


That is where I have a problem. It just costs too much, it cost too much when you had to outfit 3 mechs to master 1 but it is doubly so when it takes 1 and a half wins to get 2 nodes which new players aren't going to progress through quickly.



I say lower the cBill cost or get rid of it.

You should want people to have cBills, cBills = more mechs and more mechs = more mechbays and mechbays are easy money.


You shouldn't need premium time to have a good time.

The best thing to come out of this awful skill tree mess is the rule of three going away. To bad they couldn't have done that when people were coming in droves on Steam, maybe we'd have retained a higher amount. Hell they could have NEVER had it in the first damn place and I wouldn't have had to buy 2 AWS and 2 HGN that I didn't want to skill up my Heavy Metal and Pretty Baby (which are hot garbage now and weren't great then).



PGI has a real bad set of values for how people should spend their time and money. Hero mechs are generally terrible, maybe a couple of them are decent but there really is no incentive to buy them. I am not advocating for a Pay 2 Win heroes but they could be a LOT better than they are now.


This very easily becomes a PokeMech game, if you make cBills flow more freely and want to sell mechbays but when you want to make those cBills flow you have to pay for time that runs when you're not online and heroes that when people ask which ones they should get only 3 or 4 of them are considered worth it. Even the new ones coming out are mostly crap.


Skills should either be low cost or XP only. It only took XP to basic a mech, and the rule of 3 was ridiculous so there really isn't a good precedent for cBill costs on the skills.

Edited by Xetelian, 30 May 2017 - 02:18 AM.

[Bud Crue]

Helene de Montfort, on 30 May 2017 - 01:55 AM, said:

I can only imagine the kind of grind it mean for new players, if it takes me 6 months before having enough mechs to enter faction play, how much time will it take them? Years?

I don't know if any of you have experienced the same?

I keep coming back to this in my head...is the removal of the rule of three really that much of a benefit at the cost of the skills tree grind which even if a new player never makes a mistake, and knows exactly how they want to build a mech, and never changes that mech, is still pretty extensive and intimidating.

Think about those qualifiers. How likely is it for a new player coming to this game (at this point in time) is going to know exactly how to build a mech to their skills and desires? How likely is it that they will never make a mistake in skilling it out? How likely is it that they will never decide that "oh this metamechs build runs too hot and I need to rebuild it,and thus respec it for my level of play"?

Pretty damn unlikely it seems to me.

And thus, the grind is not only extensive and expensive (no idea if it will be worse or better than before) but also fairly frustrating. Before, the NPE was following a set path. Now, it is fraught with the peril of "getting it wrong". Remember a new player will be iteratively applying skills as they gain XP. As such, they will likely focus on things like firepower, and then when they decide that meta laser sniper is just not for them? They will change it. They will lose all that progress. They will get frustrated. Then in a month or two or three, assuming they have stuck with it, and finally gotten a mech or two "right", how do you suppose they...the new players...are going to react when PGI changes their energy weapons stats, nerfs a weapon at random, makes their mech, of all the mechs in the game, less agile or less durable or whatever else PGI is going to do as they "monitor balance closely" and push to "remove overall quirks" as they have promised to do (see Q&A and Dev post about preliminary balance data)?

I think the average new player is not going to put up with that level of BS.

I think if I were a new player who hadn't come to this game for the pure nostolgia of the BT and MW games of my youth, I would not put up with a gaming experience where I never know what is going to be changed, trashed or made OP, or one where the idea of leveling is nothing more than playing the percentages on skins whose percentages may change month to month but I get charged a fee to be forced to compensate for those changes.

[MustrumRidcully]

I suspect the double XP leads to having more XP for your Skill Points, but not the CB.

I think the new player experience hasn't really changed in regards to how fast you can get into faction play.

1) You can actualy use Trial Mechs for FP. (You should not, but you can.)
2) Remember that to master mechs before, you would need 3 variants before. This took time and C-Bills as well,and it doesn't build your faction play deck.
3) Then you would need to acquire the modules for the mechs you actually want in faction play. (The new skill system combines modules and the old mech masteries)

Faction Play with your own mech and without spending real world money is far off for new players. (Which is likely part of the problem of the Faction Play population.)


Regarding the "Omni Skill Tree"
Most of the skills in the skill tree are not gear-dependent. If you want to stay flexible, avoid the few ones that definitely are. (LIke the LBX, UAC, Missile and Laser Duration skills or the ECM skill, if you'd really use a mech that can use ECM without ECM.)

[Karl Streiger]

ok mastering 3 Kodiaks or other high rated Xl mechs did cost more but not the typical 3 variant

look i wanted to master the CTF- i bought the 2X the 3D and to safe money the 4X - i did not fit out the 4X with any equipment and just grinded my way through basics.
Because I already had my Dragons at Elite - i sold the 4X as soon as the basics were complete.
When you only wanted 1 variant per mech at master you didn't need 3s to get there.

Now however the costs for leveling are the same (something that is good) - but i suspect the costs are much higher now.

Somehow I'v forgotten the C-Bill costs for "buying" SPs (dense by my part) and wondered where my money has gone. I did had enough GSps. Would be great to have a "global redo" for the skill changes in the last 5-10minutes.

[Scyther]

I'm not sure to what extent people may be exaggerating in this thread or simply looking at part of the picture and not the whole thing. Granted, I feel the current skill tree can use some re-work, some UI tweaking, maybe some more info popups for clarity etc. However I don't think it is massively grindy or somehow worse than or equivalent to 'rule of 3'. Let's get some numbers:

New Player:
-Completes Tutorial, that's 5 million C-Bills right off the bat
-Completes 25 Cadet matches (in Trials or purchased mechs) - That's 8 million from the bonus (iirc) plus 2 million or more

So 25 matches/4-7 hours of gameplay, the new player has roughly 15 million C-bills. Depending on his purchase decision, this can get him say 2 fully kitted out (DHS, Endo, weapons) IS mechs, 1 or 2 decently fit Clan mechs, or if he goes for a maximum C-Bill mech, possibly 1 well fitted assault, either side. Or he could own up to 3 not-completely fitted IS mechs for instance. (Fitted means gear/weapons/upgrades, not SP/skills)

Somewhere recently a dev posted that average new player payouts are in the range of 800-1000 Exp and around 100,000 to 130,000 CB, can't recall the exact numbers. So as long as the new player is using his new mech(s), he is earning 1 SP and an excess 50-80,000 CB per match.

The old system took @14,000 Exp to 'basic' a mech, at which point to progress further you had to go and buy a 2nd mech of that chassis, effectively doubling your expenses after earning 14K exp (by progress further I mean 'towards the goal of unlocking 3 basics'). So buy a mech, play 15-18 matches, time to buy another mech. New player earned maybe 2 million CB in those matches, can he afford a new mech yet? Nope? Well time to grind first mech, at least you can use the exp later.

The old skills took @35,500 Exp to 'elite' iirc, and 57,000 exp to master. You had to 'basic' 3 (for total 42,000 Exp) before you could even start elite. You had to buy 3 and play them for 15-18 matches each before you could even start elite. They also consumed mechbays which are an MC purchase, not a C-Bill. So to elite more than 2 mechs you had to start sending money to PGI. (Meaning no decent Faction Play drop decks until you spent $$)

Your first 'elite skilled' mech effectively cost you 3 mechs purchased, 63,500 exp earned, 3 mech bays consumed, and now you have to decide 'do I sell mechs back to recover bays, send PGI real $$, or just stop here and find another game to play?' And if the player wanted a Radar Dep module for that first mech that's another 6 million right there (as opposed to unlocking 9-10 nodes in Sensor tree for 3 points of RaDep).

I really don't see how the current system can be worse than that, for new or old players.

The current system allows him to buy roughly 1 SP per match, and set aside 50,000+ CB per match for later purchases. Certainly it takes 40-50 matches before he can buy his next mech (while his first now has dozens of skills unlocked). That is slow progression compared to, say, World of Tanks, where you would work through a handful of tanks in that time. On the other hand, you will likely throw away/sell back those WoT tanks, whereas your MWO mech is probably a keeper.

On the whole, economics wise, I think the new skill tree is about 30-50% 'more efficient' than the old system, looking at rule of 3, total Exp costs, module C-Bill and Exp substitutions, and mech bay savings. It just 'seems' more expensive because what you used to spread across 3 mechs or delay until later (module or mech bay purchases), is now blended with your very first 'mech levelling experience'.

Edited by MadBadger, 30 May 2017 - 03:56 AM.

[Wildstreak]

Helene de Montfort, on 30 May 2017 - 01:55 AM, said:

The first point, all the games i did with the trial mech only gave me cbills, no xp... Basically, that's fine if you consider that you can use whatever you want as trial mech without getting any useless xp... Well, until you realize that you aren't getting any useful xp either.

That's new. When I first started about 5 years ago, you collected XP on a variant when using it even as a trial. Are you sure there is no XP on the Linebacker-C? Getting a Prime does not and should not mean you get the XP from using the C variant to use, it should be on the C if you buy it.

Helene de Montfort, on 30 May 2017 - 01:55 AM, said:

The first thing that came to my attention, is that while it's easy to change completely the weapon arrangement of an omnimech, the skill tree being tied to the mech, and not the omnipods, it makes it completely impractical to do it. What's the point of having omnipods if you're not having omniskilltree?

Lost me here.

[Angel of Annihilation]

mike29tw, on 30 May 2017 - 02:14 AM, said:

SP really shouldn't cost c-bill. At this point almost all progression is gated by c-bill, consider how many progression currency we have (5? 6?), it's pretty ridiculous.

I kind of feel the same way. It was great to have a double XP weekend and I took advantage of it to give many of my mechs the experience required to master, however none of them are mastered. Why? C-bills.

It is not that I don't have any, I have 93 million of them but just because the rule of three is gone doesn't mean I am not buying new mechs. In fact I play on buying a couple Supernovas this month at a cool 15 million or so each, then come July, I have to completely re-outfit all 50 some odd IS mech I own with new tech. LFE aren't going to be cheap and neither are the weapons. Hell even an ER ML is probably going to be 100k each or more and considering almost every IS mech I own mounts 2-6 MLs, I am probably going to have to buy 150 of them alone (well unless I want to play the swap game all the time).

Point is, I never feel like I have enough C-bills in this game.

[Davegt27]

Mastered is an weird term
my Night Gyr has only 83 active nodes but 92 total

I would think mastered would be 237 nodes unlocked that way it only cost 400 xp
and the end of the c-bill tax

[Mawai]

Karl Streiger, on 30 May 2017 - 03:18 AM, said:

ok mastering 3 Kodiaks or other high rated Xl mechs did cost more but not the typical 3 variant

look i wanted to master the CTF- i bought the 2X the 3D and to safe money the 4X - i did not fit out the 4X with any equipment and just grinded my way through basics.
Because I already had my Dragons at Elite - i sold the 4X as soon as the basics were complete.
When you only wanted 1 variant per mech at master you didn't need 3s to get there.

Now however the costs for leveling are the same (something that is good) - but i suspect the costs are much higher now.

Somehow I'v forgotten the C-Bill costs for "buying" SPs (dense by my part) and wondered where my money has gone. I did had enough GSps. Would be great to have a "global redo" for the skill changes in the last 5-10minutes.

The cataphract 4X costs 5.3 million cbills ... that is enough cbills for 117 skill points if you kept it and about 58 skill points if you sold it back. You had to buy 3 cataphracts .. the 2X is 5.75mill and the 3D is 9.88 mill. That does not include ferro/endo/double heat sinks or equipment.

Assume that you only wanted to keep one and you had already elited another heavy. You could then sell two of the cataphracts back after basic ... net cost would be (5.75/2 + 5.3/2) = 11.05/2 = 5.535 million cbills = 123 skill points AND the skill points include any expenditure you would have made on modules (that assumes that you sold the mechs fully outfitted ... if you just sold the chassis back then the new skill system is relatively even cheaper).

The new skill system is a much cheaper route to mastering one mech than the old one. The big difference is that it FEELS more expensive because you never build up a reserve of cbills for the next big purchase .. you are always spending your cbills 45,000 at a time to get a new skill point and thus never build up cbills like you used to have to do to purchase the next variant.

The bottom line is that the progression for new players is actually CHEAPER than it used to be with the 3 variant requirement. With the same in game earnings as before this means that the grind is actually shorter to getting a mastered mech.

On the other hand, IF you want to reach mastery in three variants of the same chassis in the new system then it MAY cost a bit more than before depending on whether you module swapped or not. It costs about 4 million cbills/mech for the 91 skill points ... if you still buy 3 variants and fully outfit them then there are no savings there and the 4 million/mech represents the module cost for the mech in the old system. If you did not module swap then you probably spent 12 to 20 million on modules for each mech making the new system MUCH cheaper ... if you did swap then 4 million might or might not be about the average spent on modules over all your mechs. Either way, the new system is cheaper unless you purchased NO modules or only a very small number of them.

[Helene de Montfort]

MadBadger, on 30 May 2017 - 03:51 AM, said:

Somewhere recently a dev posted that average new player payouts are in the range of 800-1000 Exp and around 100,000 to 130,000 CB, can't recall the exact numbers. So as long as the new player is using his new mech(s), he is earning 1 SP and an excess 50-80,000 CB per match.

here, i was rofl... New player payouts? This is BS... Do you think they are always winning?

This is what it get to earn that much on loss with double xp event :



This is what most new players get, but with only half the xp :



I suggest you drop your calculator and go create a new account... Because what you describe is definitely not what i'm experiencing.

[ShoX]

I have no idea what you're all smoking in regards to the respec cost of mechs. I turned a 4 LPL Kodiak into an LB20 brawler moving about 17 SP. That's still cheaper than changing a single module on that mech you had to buy in triplicate before. ANd afterwards moving back to 4 LPL only costs me XP, which is coming out of your ears anyway once you're past 91SP.
Conversely, someone with a competitive mindset can now look up online what's hot, buy it off their Cadet bonus, build it to spec and play it for a while until they're maxed. Rinse. Repeat.
Note that a competitive person with a 10 minute google investment faces little to no loss there. No built in useless purchases as before as long as they looked into what they were doing.
And don't tell me this is the only time you could face severe cost for not knowing what you do. I can't be the only one who had extended zoom and then found it utterly useless in practice.
Bottom line is that decrying the skill tree based on cost is very selective reasoning and presumes different kinds of people using different systems.
You can't compare a potato using the skill tree with a capable user using rule of 3. Rule of three was waaaaaay more dangerous as far as remorse opportunities are concerned.

[Scyther]

@Helene de Montfort:

Average player results have nothing to do with my calculator, nor do a couple of match losses represent the average. From PGI's post: https://mwomercs.com...d-chris-lowrey/

"We took a data pull from all Tier 4/Tier 5 players without Premium Time, but who are active players, and looked at their average C-Bill and XP earnings per-match. The player data showed us that the average C-Bill earning per-match for a player in that bracket was 119,315 C-Bills. The XP average was 818."

[Bandilly]

Helene de Montfort, on 30 May 2017 - 01:55 AM, said:

Since i need at least four mechs to go to faction play (i'm not counting trials), it mean that i will maybe be able to field a dropdeck in 2018, even though i got a free LBK.

I can only imagine the kind of grind it mean for new players, if it takes me 6 months before having enough mechs to enter faction play, how much time will it take them? Years?

Under the old system you had to buy 12 mechs and then spend 72m in modules if you wanted 4 mastered mechs with modules to make one fully tricked out drop deck. Under this system you buy fewer mechs and spend significantly less overall to get to the same point. So your point in it taking forever is pretty much moot, it's way way faster now...not even half the cbill cost from what it used to be.


Of course you can also fill in with trial mechs, so even the newer cheaper faster standard isn't even necessary.

Edited by Bandilly, 30 May 2017 - 06:31 AM.

[Burke IV]

ShoX, on 30 May 2017 - 06:19 AM, said:

Conversely, someone with a competitive mindset can now look up online what's hot, buy it off their Cadet bonus, build it to spec and play it for a while until they're maxed. Rinse. Repeat.

If people are looking up cookie cutter builds why bother with a tree in the first place? they could have just locked the mechs and been done with it, much easier to balance that way.

[Exilyth]

If you're making a meta build on a good chassis you'll get somewhat of a smooth ride.

If you pick one of the less performant chassis/variants and/or go with a bad build, it will be rough.


I'm currently on a PXH-2 and so far it's been a pain for me - ecm is useless until you get the nodes and lack of mobility means many of the shots you'd be able to twist on a fully skilled mech will hit you in the squishy parts.

[Trainee]

Was playing around with my free LBK-P today, and went to the skill tree to check how many skill points I could get. I then realized I would have to spend 4.1 million credits to get to 91 Skill Points. Uhhh, no thanks.

Maybe this mech rocks with skills mastered, but I haven't heard anyone say that anywhere. And sure as hell I'm not going to spend any of my 4000+ points from my module refund. I'll save them for mechs I know will be good. Which basically makes me purchase less mechs.

I keep hearing people say that this way is cheaper than buying 3 mechs, and maybe in the long run it is. But I didn't have to buy 3 250std engines, 18mpls, 3 seismic, 3 derp, etc. I could swap them around to the different mechs. And speaking of modules, I didn't even think of buying them until I got into a unit and started doing FW.

Honestly it's kind of taken the fun out of skilling up a mech. Used to be cool to get all 3 basic'd then elited. Now I just look at how many cbills this is going to cost me in the end.

Don't get me wrong, I think the new skill tree is a decent idea. But the 45k per point needs to be adjusted significantly.

Old Skill Tree: 3 HBK's 1 250std engine, dbl HS's, Endo = ~18.7 million cbills + matches/time to skill them all up

New Skill Tree: 1 HBK, 1 250std engine, dbl HS's, Endo, 60 SP's = 9.9 million cbills + matches/time to skill it up.

That 60 SP number is random, no idea what it should be for equivalency to Elite on old system.

[Scyther]

My math may be off but that looks like 'new system costs half what the old system did' to me. Also, you aren't counting in module costs, which are built in to the skill tree. The full 91-point SP unlock costs you less than a single Radar Dep module before.

Also, plenty of people say the LBK is a good mech, you just have to look.

Edit: If I was setting the prices I'd be looking at something like 30K to 36K per node, so not saying 45k is a 'good' price. Just saying that it's not a show-stopper. If I was PGI I'd rather people were spending C-Bills to get new gear and new mechs to try out.

Edited by MadBadger, 30 May 2017 - 03:24 PM.

[Bud Crue]

Trainee, on 30 May 2017 - 03:06 PM, said:

...And sure as hell I'm not going to spend any of my 4000+ points from my module refund.

Why not? Are there some other 44 or so mechs you are itching to use those points on?

Don't get me wrong, I despise aspects of the skills tree,particularly things like the respec costs and how it hurts experimentation and build diversity, but seriously you have those 4000 GSP to spend, what is the point of not spending them on a free mech upon which to experiment?

Edited by Bud Crue, 30 May 2017 - 03:26 PM.