32 replies to this topic

[Felicitatem Parco]

My 7 year old son knows how to use the skill tree, and leveled up Mechs with me last night.

The skill tree is so convoluted, bloated, confusing, and nonsensical that a 7 year old can use it. I think that had to be said.

[Mcgral18]

Does that mean it's a good idea?

[Gas Guzzler]

My cat can play an LRM boat so what is your point?

[The6thMessenger]

Gas Guzzler, on 21 June 2017 - 03:51 PM, said:

My cat can play an LRM boat so what is your point?

I raise you to a car-driving dog.

[Gas Guzzler]

The6thMessenger, on 21 June 2017 - 03:53 PM, said:

I raise you to a car-driving dog.

I think one could actually prove that playing MWO is harder than driving a car. Well, playing MWO in a non-LRM boat anyway.

[Kaeb Odellas]

It's not difficult to use. It's just tedious and bloated.

[The6thMessenger]

Gas Guzzler, on 21 June 2017 - 03:54 PM, said:

I think one could actually prove that playing MWO is harder than driving a car. Well, playing MWO in a non-LRM boat anyway.

Basics maybe. But getting good score along with it, is not necessarily part of it.

Learning how to drive a car is easy. But winning in the professional scene, either by derby, by nascar, etc. that's different. Just as it's different in learning how to lurm, and then how to get good scores while lurming.

[Cementi]

Prosperity Park, on 21 June 2017 - 03:42 PM, said:

My 7 year old son knows how to use the skill tree, and leveled up Mechs with me last night.

The skill tree is so convoluted, bloated, confusing, and nonsensical that a 7 year old can use it. I think that had to be said.

I love this thread title. I think I might have to keep it handy and bump it every time someone starts a new thread about how complicated and time consuming the skill tree is.

[Gas Guzzler]

The6thMessenger, on 21 June 2017 - 04:04 PM, said:

Basics maybe. But getting good score along with it, is not necessarily part of it.

Learning how to drive a car is easy. But winning in the professional scene, either by derby, by nascar, etc. that's different. Just as it's different in learning how to lurm, and then how to get good scores while lurming.

Diriving a car competitively or just pushing your car to the limit is not what i meant. I meant your typical day to day driving.

And no, its easy to get good scores LRMing unless your team is bad and you are expected to carry. But we really don't need to go down this road in this thread.

[Deathlike]

Dude, people could "use" the mechlab when UI 2.0 debuted, but that didn't mean it was done properly. The complaining was real because it was bad.

The Skill Tree is literally facing the same issues UI 2.0... sure it works, but it's insane waste of time when you can't even preprogram a template to copy from one mech to another.

Edited by Deathlike, 21 June 2017 - 04:12 PM.

[Bud Crue]

7 year old huh?

Okay, do what I did: ask your teenagers. Show them. Show this game to potential players with disposable income and get back to me with their honest review of not just the skills tree.

My teens said and I quote: "Dad your game is lame, deal with it" (that was the boy). The other one (the girl older with more income) said ...with specific reference to the skills tree and I quote "why would anyone play this mess". ( wish I had a gif of her expression when I showed it to her for the first time).

They both grew up with their man child father showing them Battletech. They both enjoy games. They both spend a bit of their hard earned cash on ones other than this. But yeah, my 7 year old likes the game too. To bad he is not a paying customer though.

Edited by Bud Crue, 21 June 2017 - 05:04 PM.

[Kaeb Odellas]

There are plenty of design elements in the Skill Tree's UI that would benefit from relatively easy fixes.

• Clicking through nodes rapidly sometimes causes mis-clicks due to the game interpreting the click action as a click-and-drag, so you have to slow yourself down. This could be fixed by increasing the threshold for detecting a click-and-drag action.
  
• Maximizing a skill tree requires clicking on every single node in the tree in a valid order. You could alleviate this by adding an "activate all" button for each tree.
  
• Activating a skill at a bottom of a tree requires clicking several nodes in the tree from top to bottom in order to reach it. If clicking a node automatically filled the path from the desired node to the top, that would be very convenient.
  
• Adding skills from the GSP/HSP pool and the XP/GXP/HXP pool requires two separate actions. Very tedious. That should all be one menu.
  
• The Apply button should automatically bring up the "add skills points" menu if the player doesn't have enough skills points available. Instead, you have to bring the "add skills" menu up separately, add the skills needed, and then hit apply. I can't tell you the number of times I've forgotten to apply the skill tree changes because of this.
  
• Because skills are specific to individual mechs, saving a loadout should prompt you to also save your skill tree changes if you've made any, because skills are now part of the loadout. Many times I've saved a loadout, thought I was finished thanks to years of conditioning from the old skill system, attempted to do something else, then had that popup reminding me that I have skill tree stuff to change.

[Kaeb Odellas]

Prosperity Park, on 21 June 2017 - 03:42 PM, said:

My 7 year old son knows how to use the skill tree, and leveled up Mechs with me last night.

The skill tree is so convoluted, bloated, confusing, and nonsensical that a 7 year old can use it. I think that had to be said.

Cementi, on 21 June 2017 - 04:05 PM, said:

I love this thread title. I think I might have to keep it handy and bump it every time someone starts a new thread about how complicated and time consuming the skill tree is.

A 7-year-old doesn't necessarily have the life experience to recognize a bad system when they see it, whereas most MWO players have probably used skill systems in other games that were far better-designed than MWO's.

I don't remember a whole lot about 7-year-old me, but I can tell you that I probably wasn't watching Power Rangers or Dragon Ball Z with a critical eye.

[Coolant]

Mcgral18, on 21 June 2017 - 03:45 PM, said:

Does that mean it's a good idea?

Red herring – distracting by deviating from the topic at hand by introducing a separate argument that you believe is easier to speak to.

How about you comment on the OP's actual point that if a 7 year old can understand the skill tree it should be easy for anyone to understand?

[MrJeffers]

Coolant, on 21 June 2017 - 06:20 PM, said:

Red herring – distracting by deviating from the topic at hand by introducing a separate argument that you believe is easier to speak to.

How about you comment on the OP's actual point that if a 7 year old can understand the skill tree it should be easy for anyone to understand?

And you completely miss the point of the post you are quoting. Just because it's easy to understand, doesn't make it good. Easy doesn't matter if it's not good for the game. And many feel that it isn't good for the game, which is the point of that quote. It's a counter point, not a red herring.

[Kaeb Odellas]

Coolant, on 21 June 2017 - 06:20 PM, said:

Red herring – distracting by deviating from the topic at hand by introducing a separate argument that you believe is easier to speak to.

How about you comment on the OP's actual point that if a 7 year old can understand the skill tree it should be easy for anyone to understand?

It is easy to understand the concept of pulling weeds from a garden. Doesn't mean it's not tedious.

[Erik Ouzbel]

Kaeb Odellas, on 21 June 2017 - 06:50 PM, said:

It is easy to understand the concept of pulling weeds from a garden. Doesn't mean it's not tedious.

This. It's also very easy for those unfamiliar with the game to make poor choices and make a horrible build. The jump jet tree should only show up on variants that have jump jets. Improved gyro is useless since all it does is reduce a mild inconvenience. Quick startup is almost useless. Survivability always helps, but being able to see how each section increases with each click would help to shave a couple points off of a build.

Is it better than the old 3x system? In a way. You don't have to buy three of a kind to max the mastery. The tree still needs a ton of work. Combining the different ammo bonuses into a single node type would help. Maybe toss in the Guass charge with the UAC or laser duration nodes. Or on a unit with no energy weapons, have that bonus apply to either missile or ballistic cool-down. If they want to bring back more quirks, maybe have it so you spend so many in a certain tree to obtain it.

[TheArisen]

I don't feel like it's hard or tedious. Just takes a minute for me.

[JC Daxion]

Bud Crue, on 21 June 2017 - 05:04 PM, said:

7 year old huh?

Okay, do what I did: ask your teenagers. Show them. Show this game to potential players with disposable income and get back to me with their honest review of not just the skills tree.

My teens said and I quote: "Dad your game is lame, deal with it" (that was the boy). The other one (the girl older with more income) said ...with specific reference to the skills tree and I quote "why would anyone play this mess". ( wish I had a gif of her expression when I showed it to her for the first time).

They both grew up with their man child father showing them Battletech. They both enjoy games. They both spend a bit of their hard earned cash on ones other than this. But yeah, my 7 year old likes the game too. To bad he is not a paying customer though.

I have to ask, what games they actually like.. Group think is so strong in kids today it's not even funny.

[PhoenixFire55]

Prosperity Park, on 21 June 2017 - 03:42 PM, said:

My 7 year old son knows how to use the skill tree, and leveled up Mechs with me last night.

A monkey can press 91 random button too. Whats your point?