10 replies to this topic

[karrade85]

Okay last time I played was around January of 2016 I think. I stopped due to the death of my laptop. Now I got a nice new rig and I'm thinking about getting back into PC gaming such as MWO. My question is how much has changed though? I'm I gonna have to completely start over?

I used to be a big missiles guy cause the laptop caused me to really lack in frame rates at times. We are talking like 20 for a high and mostly in the teens. I only played with clan mechs as the group I was in was a clan wolf. I did have some UAC builds and laser builds of course but since I was lackin frame rates I tried to stay with heavier mech classes. If I remember right ebon jaguar, mad dog, Timberwolf, Dire wolf, to name a few.

I also am confused because I come back to find I have over 2,000 hours of premium time....not sure what that's all about since I know I never bought that also what the heck is a refund ledger and why is all my crap beening sold off?!

I have high hopes for frame rates on new rig, (I5 7600K CPU, GTX1080 GPU, 8GB DDR4) Wired connection. Goes to a Asus Monitor 24” Full HD (1920 x 1080) with 1ms response time and 144Hz refresh rate for smoother gameplay.

Edited by karrade85, 11 July 2017 - 01:28 AM.

[Skarlock]

Well, needless to say a lot of things have changed, but a huge change is coming up next week as they are adding new guns to the game, so you picked a good time to come back.

You have a refund ledger because modules no longer exist in the game, you were refunded their cost in XP for the new skills tree. Now you skill each individual mech, so you no longer have to have three variants of the same mech to master them, you can just have one variant and skill it out to the max (91 points per mech). You were also refunded the cost of consumables as you now only get one consumable slot by default, but you can spend 1 skill point to get two slots like normal.

Can't really say if you'll like the changes or not, but I'd give it a try. Just be sure to learn how the new skill tree works in game so you can get the most of your mechs.

[karrade85]

No more modules?!.....huh well that's a big change alright for me.

Not having to skill 3 variants is awesome, really like that change.

Are LRM builds/missile boating effective?

Are heavy UAC builds still pretty good as well?

[Audacious Aubergine]

Not having to skill 3 variants is more or less offset by the amount of XP you now need to "master" a mech's skills. As for the skill tree itself there are some tutorial posts out there that aim to make sense of the intricate *********** web that is the new skill tree.
As for builds, I've found that all of the pre-change builds are still as effective. In fact, for the first three-ish weeks it was utter lurmageddon (for some reason or another, possibly due to a concurrent event as well??)
Enhancement modules such as seismic, adv zoom and radar dep still exist in the form of skill tree unlocks. Some of them take more of an investment to access than others, but this was true even back in the old system

[karrade85]

Was just looking at the new skill tree's and my heart sank. Besides the fact this makes my brain hurts to look at the tangle web that has been weaved I fear this is gonna be a grind. Although maybe it wont be so bad haven't real gotta feel for how hard to skill this up will be.

Anybody got a feel for how long this thing would take to max out from scratch hours wise?
Obviously I'm talking estimates here and yes obviously you don't need every skill to really have good builds I'm just trying to get a feel for the tree here and the time investment it will take.

[Audacious Aubergine]

Someone did the maths somewhere but I don't remember off the top of my head.
On the bright side, any of your fully mastered mechs will have 91 skill points banked so you can use those to kick start it straight to "mastery". Fully elited gives you 57, which is what most of my mechs had and basic'd gave you 23 or so. In addition, all the XP is banked as well so you can use those for buying points right off the bat.
Don't be too discouraged by how complex it looks - I've found that there are a few catch-all paths that seem to work quite well for most builds that I'm running, most of which I took from Metamechs http://metamechs.com...es/skill-trees/
Personally, I'm enjoying it since it allows me to stack skills on top of quirks. With the right skill choices I've gotten the AC2 cooldown on my BJ-1 down to nearly 0.5s. It's beyond hilarious

[Storyteller]

If you have played a good match with 2x XP reward and without premium time active, you will earn enough XP to unlock one node. So if you do it the efficient way and without premium time and no global XP, it will take you round about 91 matches to unlock all nodes. But your mech will be more effective than it was with the old skill system.

You should have lots of global nodes, if you were an active player before Januar 2016. You can use those to unlock nodes for all your mechs.

Edited by Storyteller, 11 July 2017 - 04:03 AM.

[Rogue Jedi]

each module was worth a certain ammount of general skill points.

GSP can be spent on any Mech, Mech SP can only be spent on that specific varient, and any skills purchased are per Mech no longer per varient.

if you want to max out a Mech and have Mech SP or general SP to spend it should take less than 5 minutes per Mech, however if you mean earning the XP and Cbills to skill a Mech from scratch you are probably looking at 40-120 games depending on how well you do.

when PGI decided on the costs per node they went with the average XP earn and half the average cbill earnings per match for a t5 player as the per node cost.

LRM and balistic builds are most certinly still viable, and LRMs seem more common in group queue since the skill tree went in, and I still see quite a few balistic Mechs.

next week we get new FedCom Civil War era tech. for more details see the linked posts below
https://mwomercs.com/civil-war-update
https://mwomercs.com...c-test-session/
https://mwomercs.com...iday-june-30th/
https://mwomercs.com...uly-5-4-pm-pdt/

Edited by Rogue Jedi, 11 July 2017 - 09:55 AM.

[Tier5 Kerensky]

UACs have received small nerfs here and there, they are still good on their thing, dishing out damage and not instantly boiling.

Better LRM5s have also received small nerfs but LRM 10 boats have not really noticed anything. I think during all these times LRMs have been challenging but workable.

Clan large pulse laser in particular have received nerfs, they no longer do much anything at longer range. Here long range is about 700-800 and above. Recently all lasers received adjustments but I think overall they were smaller than that now-old Clan large pulse change.

The "meta", what works and what doesn't, have changed most I think.

Dire Wolf is rather weak unless you have friends to escort and are playing in group queue. Ebon, Mad Dog and Timber still are okay mechs, I think Timber Wolf have changed mosts, it's been replaced by other top heavies like Night Gyr. But it's still good mech. Dire Wolf might work slightly better come next patch, if enough players brought the Annihilator, as it's similiar and has similiar speed cap.

You missed out completely the ordeal of Kodiaks and Kodiak-3 in particular, which is more or less a good thing.

I think lights have received biggest changes overall by class, but if you didn't have them, you might not noticed much. Unless you try to play Dire Wolf too much.


Your premium time is probably from mech packs. Can't imagine premium time coming out of nowhere.

[karrade85]

Thanks for your help guys,

I think I'm gonna try to see if any of my old clan mates are hanging around on TS and go through the skill tree with them. From what you guys have been saying I won't really be starting over since I had skilled up on these Mech's in the first place. I will just have to spend the points I got sitting on the tree.

I got online yesterday for 1 match just to test out the new PC setup and WOW! I'm happy to report my CPU and graphics card will be just fine to provide me with awesome frame rates I never have ever played with before. Once I relearn the controls and get my feet wet I anticipate being a much better player than before cause lets face it playing with frame rates in the teens to almost single digits was a serious handicap that I'm happy to be rid of.

I also did have a cheetah and some fast mechs but as you can imagine I didn't use them much. Moving that fast at slow frame rates was stupid hard and made it nearly impossible to effectively deal much damage or move well around the map. Now though I look forward to playing around with them.

[Audacious Aubergine]

I know the feeling. I upgraded my computer a couple of weeks ago and I was in absolute awe of how smooth the framerate was. Turned out that I was so dismal with gauss rifles and ppcs because my computer was too low-spec to keep up with my targets