185 replies to this topic

[Mystere]

El Bandito, on 08 January 2018 - 11:34 PM, said:

I prefer this skill tree over the old 3 for 1 system.

I prefer having none at all.

[ScrapIron Prime]

The new skill tree does a better job of representing the genre of a skilled pilot and a mech that has been customized down through generations of skilled techs. Not wonderful, but better than the old system when all mechs everywhere had identical skill ups plus modules that were essentially super-plug-ins that totally did not fit into the genre.

The only true fail is logging in, seeing blue hexagons, saying “looks too hard”, and logging out again.

[BigBenn]

Krysic, on 08 January 2018 - 11:29 PM, said:

I took time off the game, somewhere around a year, year and a half.

I come back to this new skill system and have no idea how anyone thinks it's less than a blatant increase to the grind wall. Immediately all of the animosity I developed comes rushing back after less than an hour and only one match.

Other games make money entirely on cosmetics and expansions. This game is good but it's not getting better, just the same thing stretched more and more thin.

I refused to uninstall in the constant hope that MWO would evolve into something more than a barely scratched out simulator but it seems my hopes were unfounded.

Uninstalling now.

We had a good few years, I spent a couple of hundred on you.
Would have loved to make it a few thousand but...yeah. Anyway. Bye.

You're a drama queen. Congrats. Here is your participation trophy. Move along now and go play WoT.

Or... recognize that the new system allows for a more diverse battlefield and that it takes time to explore and adjust. There are fewer cookie cutter mechs and PGI is continuously adjusting game play for balance. But alas, you appears to be a "flash-bang" type of player suited for the "here-n-now" type games that children play.

Cheers.

[Mister Glitchdragon]

One thing I've learned over the past year is that people who hate the skill tree will always hate it and will take any opportunity to re-fight that lost battle. There's no convincing them otherwise.

Of course, the great thing is that we have the skill tree, and its adherents no longer have to convince the haters of anything.

[Spheroid]

When did you come back exactly? You have zero entries on the leaderboard. I checked seasons 1-19. You are either a phantom or a troll.

Edited by Spheroid, 09 January 2018 - 11:38 AM.

[Mystere]

Mister Glitchdragon, on 09 January 2018 - 09:48 AM, said:

One thing I've learned over the past year is that people who hate the skill tree will always hate it and will take any opportunity to re-fight that lost battle. There's no convincing them otherwise.

Of course, the great thing is that we have the skill tree, and its adherents no longer have to convince the haters of anything.

Well, the so-called "haters" just decide to either ignore the skill tree or not play at all. I am perfectly sure the latter is simply excellent for player numbers.

Spheroid, on 09 January 2018 - 09:53 AM, said:

When did you come back exactly? You have zero entries on the leadboard. I checked seasons 1-19. You are either a phantom or a troll.

Or playing under 10(?) drops per season and deciding to stop or give up for one reason or another.

Did you not know there was a minimum?

Edited by Mystere, 09 January 2018 - 10:06 AM.

[CFC Conky]

Hello all,

I started playing last spring under the old system. One of the unfortunate ‘features’ of the change to the skill tree was that even when fully skilled with 91 nodes, some mechs did not perform as well as they did previously.

Still being a relatively new player, I found that under the skill tree system, I could get useful upgrades to my mechs, i.e. 60% radar dep or 10% heat containment, much faster than under the old system. Now that I am more experienced with the game, unskilled mechs aren’t as much of a handicap so the grind, at least for me, is not that bad. With newly acquired mechs, I usually play around ten matches before hitting the skill tree in order to get a better idea of what nodes need to be activated for that particular mech.

Detractors form the skill tree have some valid arguments and in the end the tree could probably benefit from some tweaks.

Good hunting,
CFC Conky

[AnarchyBurger]

OP I somewhat get you because the new skill system is somewhat intimidating. The truth is though it simply tweaks things, its not a must.

The old system was an INSANE grind. Not to mention the cost of having to get 3 of the same mech to flesh out a tree, AND level them all up.

If your not going to like it... Your not going to like it. But trust me, its much quicker and less grindy than the old system. Hell just the fact that you can buy ONE mech to level, makes it worth it enough.

[Arctourus]

[TLBFestus]

The 3 mech requirement versus the skill maze is just one more example of PGIs inability (incompetence?) to find a way to attract new players.

In the original 3 mech version people would join the game and find that they couldn't just skill up a single mech to get a most improved version, they had to skill up 3.

In the new version they have to unlock a minimum of 91 nodes to get a truly effective mech, through a system that at the surface is byzantine as all get out.

Now, having the "experience" of gaming for decades and becoming an "older"gamer, I notice one thing that I believe is generally/universally true, that as we get older we have less time to want to pound our way through learning a game that is too intricate, too time consuming to master. Maybe this is not true all the time but generally speaking I think it's an accurate statement. We have less patience.

The average age of the players of this game is significantly older than you find in other similar MMO/arena shooters and therefore they have an audience that doesn't want to be intimidated out of interest in the game. Yes, we stick by it, put up with a lot of BS, but that's because the majority of us were already battletech fans. New players aren't and when they encounter either the 3 mech requirement or or skill maze, I believe a lot just go "WTF is this?" and leave.

They don't spend, because spending really doesn't remove the grind, does it?

So either system is equally ineffective in attracting new players, which the game needs to thrive, and "thriving" is something this game has never done. I think that this is the point that the OPs comments reflect.

BigBenn, on 09 January 2018 - 09:39 AM, said:

and PGI is continuously adjusting game play for balance.

This is not balance....this is constant imbalance at best.

Edited by TLBFestus, 09 January 2018 - 10:53 AM.

[Asym]

Mister Glitchdragon, on 09 January 2018 - 09:48 AM, said:

One thing I've learned over the past year is that people who hate the skill tree will always hate it and will take any opportunity to re-fight that lost battle. There's no convincing them otherwise.

Of course, the great thing is that we have the skill tree, and its adherents no longer have to convince the haters of anything.

This is so very true!

Unfortunately, the "haters" for the most part, have left MWO: to include large numbers of players and parts of teams!!

Hoo-ray, celebrate that victory on the next freaking ghost drop or someone begging to find anyone for a comp match, lad......!!!

A stunning victory; where, the rewards of winning only cost 20 + percent of the small to being with player population.
Even a bad system as the original skill tree was intrepreted to be, is better that a new system used by far fewer players... Players are the life of the game and at this rate, I'd be surprized if Solaris doesn't drive off the rest.... Then, we all lose a game we love....

[Water Bear]

So is this a break up note to an unthinking, unfeeling game or...? Not sure where in the OP a response was requested. They teach you not to say things like that in small talk 101.

[MechaBattler]

The skill system is their attempt to force people to spend c-bills on what used to be modules. They realized a lot of people were just not buying modules. That's where the "cheapskate" joke comes from. I myself did not buy a lot of modules. And am totally a cheapskate.

But the trade off is that they did away with the 3 mechs mastery system. No more unnecessary purchases that you then have to regret sell later. And you don't have to drop 2-6 million per module. Overall it's a price drop if you were to min max every mech in your inventory with modules and 3 mech mastery. But it means if you want to drop optimized anywhere near old performance, you have to drop c-bills and XP to do it.

The system itself isn't complicated. It's just bloated with a lot of clicks. They could have reduced some grief if they consolidated some skills into bigger percentages.

[Suko]

Krysic, on 08 January 2018 - 11:29 PM, said:

This game is good but it's not getting better, just the same thing stretched more and more thin.

Man, this is one of the best descriptions of MWO I've ever read.

Edited by Suko, 09 January 2018 - 11:58 AM.

[Mcgral18]

El Bandito, on 09 January 2018 - 05:01 AM, said:

Better to skill a single mech that you want 1.5 times longer, than skilling 3 different mechs, some you don't even want. Especially Clan omnis, since you can just swap pods.

They could have had the old system needing only 1 mech to master
Would have made for a better new player experience


They didn't even fix the issue of worthless modules; they just made them no longer optional, but a paywall/grindwall/requirement

[C E Dwyer]

Lupis Volk, on 09 January 2018 - 03:47 AM, said:

Quite frankly it always pisses me off when people spout that the old system was better while omitting the rule of three.

Oddly enough it's only ever mentioned when it comes to mech packs, but never when the nostalgia brigade go on and on about how good the old system was......i wonder why?

The old system wasn't any worse than the new.


P.G.I pushed the new as the one thing that was going to make all the balance woes end.

In this is was a spectacular failure and waste of time.

But it's not worse than the old system either..

[Bud Crue]

Cathy, on 09 January 2018 - 12:59 PM, said:

The old system wasn't any worse than the new.


P.G.I pushed the new as the one thing that was going to make all the balance woes end.

In this is was a spectacular failure and waste of time.

But it's not worse than the old system either..

Well, to be fair they pushed skills tree to meet four stated goals:
Increase mech build diversity.
Provide more player choice.
Transition the community to the 1 mech model
Dramatically decrease overall quirks.

Not exactly curing all the balance woes, and hey meeting one out of three actual stated goals aint bad, right? I play fewer mechs with less build diversity than ever. My choices are almost always dictated by the balance pass o’ the month and what is broken the least. Offensive quirks for the IS have indeed been reduced a bit but defensive quirks are still plenty dramatic, plus they added rule of 8 quirks to many clan mechs that didn’t have them before.

But we ave been transitioned to a one mech model (despite mechs still being sold in three mech model). So by PGI standards the skills tree is a home run, smash hit, out of the park, success! What makes this all the funnier is that you are totally correct, the skills tree despite failing to meet 3 of 4 of its PGI stated goals is better than the old system...that’s saying something.

[IllCaesar]

Krysic, on 08 January 2018 - 11:29 PM, said:

I took time off the game, somewhere around a year, year and a half.

I come back to this new skill system and have no idea how anyone thinks it's less than a blatant increase to the grind wall.

While that it what it immediately struck me as I can see benefits to it.

1. Less real-world money spent on mech bays.
2. Less real-world money or C-Bills spent on second or third variants that you don't want. Often unwanted among IS mechs and outright unnecessary among clan omnimechs, you can save a lot of money.
3. Without everything being maxed out the gap between newer, inexperienced players and older players is bridged a little bit.
4. The skill tree allows you to better customize a mech for certain specific roles better than you could have before rather than just vaguely all of them to a certain degree.
5. A fair amount of them aren't relelvant to a specific chassis the way you play it anyways so for most mechs the new skill tree being a bit limiting isn't a huge deal.


I don't love it, there are plenty of glaring issues and it absolutely strikes me as a money-grubbing move, but I can see the upside to it. That said, even some of those points I listed come with asterisks. Probably my biggest beef is that while it can be cheaper to skill tweak something like an assault mech nowadays doing it for a light mech can cost about as much than it would for a set of three, even more if you buy the mech on sale.. Its a little over 4 million C-bills to get 91 SP on a single mech. The Urbanmech sale offered three Urbnmechs for about 3.2 million C-bills. The just passing Panther sale offered three Panthers for 4.5 million C-bills total. The XP -> SP conversion very obviously benefits heaver chassis while its an outright detriment to lighter ones. You already de facto needed DHS and Endo-Steel,often FF armour, meaning it cost about 2 million C-bills in extra to optimize a light mech. The fact that DHS upgrades cost the same across all weight classes was already a major obstacle to the popularity of light and mediums. They just added 4 million on top of that. It costs more to finish the skill tree than to buy a whole new light chassis and optimize it now. PGI had a real opportunity to balance the game to get more lights and mediums in the fray by having skill points cost differently depending on the weight class, unquestionably less obtrustive and limiting than repair and rearm, and they missed it because, I assume, greed.

[NRP]

I just came back from a long hiatus (quit just as the skill tree went live). After a month or so of screwing around with the new skill tree, I can say I really think it's worse than the old system. None of the very limited node choices available feel particularly meaningful or impactful.

In fact, all I really see is everything that is no longer available on my mechs (but used to be), like speed tweak, cool run, radar derp, etc. In a lot of cases, you need the nodes for other things just be able to survive and actually kill something. It feels like a big take away, and I don't see that the overall gameplay experience is better for it. It just feels like PGI really wanted to take something away from the players. It's like their design goal was "You can't have it all". Only problem is for a few years we could have it all. Now the mechs just feel worse overall. They're slower, more cumbersome, hotter, more fragile, weapons jam far too easily, etc.

Don't get me wrong, the game is still mostly fun. To me, it just feel less that it was.

[blood4blood]

When I first came back the skill tree seemed very confusing. I still haven't really figured the best way to min/max it, but that's OK, I've never really min/maxed this game all that much. I do like that you can distribute things more to your own taste for each mech rather than the same must-grind trees for Mastery along with the must-have modules. As for grind, 1 mech is easier than 3...so yeah, I think overall the skill tree is a much better system. (HOLY SHZZZZ I wrote something positive about MWO! I feel tainted in my /bittervet-ness.)