28 replies to this topic

[Greyhart]

Grus, on 26 February 2019 - 06:10 AM, said:

So you want a bigger skill maze... no.

No I want a smaller skill maze. Frankly I don't want a maze at all just a reasonably straight progression up a tree without the junk in it. i.e. cooldown level 1, cooldown level 2 without the junk in between

I do want it in smaller chunks though. As this will make it easier to understand and will also add short term goals into the skill tree rather than a long meandering maze where completing it feels anticlimactic because you've just reduced that heat by another 1.5% which is meaningless and doesn't make the mech feel any better.

So lets take a laser hardpoint (I am making up figures for illustration only and I am not going to pretend they are realistic).

There are 5 Trees,

1. Range
2. Cooldown,
3. Heat generation
4. Beam duration
5. velocity

Each of those trees have say 3 levels, (you could vary this however for each tree for balance or require more than 1 skill point).

So with Cooldown. Tier 1 give a 2% reduction in cooldown, tier 2 an additional 3% and Tier 3 5%.

Therefore for this example a laser hardpoint would have a maximum of 15 Skills.

but as the trees aren't interlinked and there is no junk you can just go I want to increase range spend 3 points and anything that is in that one hard point has the increased range.

You want to max out that hard point then you can but you are going to have less skills to spend on other hardpoints and on the mech speed, turn etc.

I think it would likely be a good idea to have a maximum number of skill points that can be used per hard point. So if there are 15 skills you might cap the max number of points that can be used in that hardpoint at 7.

The advantage of this is that it would make mechs with limited hardpoints more viable because they don't have to spread the skill points about as much.

It might encourage focus on one big weapon over boating lots of smaller weapons.

It might also encourage a mix of weapons as you can make different weapon types work together easier, by adjusting each individual weapon. eg increasing the range on a small laser and reducing the heat on a medium laser.

So there may be more skill trees overall but they are all going to be off a 6 standard models that are much shorter and easier to do.

[Horseman]

Greyhart, on 26 February 2019 - 05:20 AM, said:

Also it doesn't address the question of why would I come back to a mech once all skilled up?

Because you enjoy taking your pimped-out ride to crush the enemy, see them driven before you and hear the lamentations of their mothers?
Or perhaps because you want to use that mech for Solaris or Faction Play where having a skilled-out mech is quite important?

[Gristle Missile]

A really simple change that would make me feel better about using skill maxed mechs is if there was some sort of icon or badge on the scoreboard GUI for mechs that have 91 skill points active, and another, better one, when a mech has all skillpoints learned in all the trees.


Not only would it be helpful to know if friendlies and enemies are using a skilled mech, but it wouldn't be that hard to implement

The other option I like is adding a small CBill bonus (10-20%) onto a fully skilled mech - chances are its going to cost you a decent amount in CBills to fully skill it so let us use it to make the money back.


That would be enough to make me feel good about playing old classic mechs I have long since mastered

[FireStoat]

Through a casual week of evening play I could master all the skill tree on 3 mechs and have time to spare, and it felt rewarding at the pace it granted. As of the current day, you can do the same thing on one mech instead and we have the skill maze, a nerf to earned match experience that was applied with its release, and the later nerf of arms not being counted for destruction upon a side torso kill which was given to a game 8 years into its lifespan, confirming to everyone we have been playing a glorious unfinished beta.

Yes, I'm salty. A person has to decide if they can handle the current system and enjoy the game for what it is or move on. I decided to keep playing, but at this point in the lifespan of the game, PGI has no vested interests in listening to players about this aspect of it.

[Besh]

FireStoat, on 27 February 2019 - 09:11 AM, said:

Through a casual week of evening play I could master all the skill tree on 3 mechs and have time to spare, and it felt rewarding at the pace it granted. As of the current day, you can do the same thing on one mech instead and we have the skill maze, a nerf to earned match experience that was applied with its release, and the later nerf of arms not being counted for destruction upon a side torso kill which was given to a game 8 years into its lifespan, confirming to everyone we have been playing a glorious unfinished beta.

Yes, I'm salty. A person has to decide if they can handle the current system and enjoy the game for what it is or move on. I decided to keep playing, but at this point in the lifespan of the game, PGI has no vested interests in listening to players about this aspect of it.

FWIW, closed Beta started May 22, 2012 .

Edited by Besh, 27 February 2019 - 10:19 AM.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Greyhart, on 27 February 2019 - 01:44 AM, said:

No I want a smaller skill maze. Frankly I don't want a maze at all just a reasonably straight progression up a tree without the junk in it. i.e. cooldown level 1, cooldown level 2 without the junk in between

Yeah me too. I proposed a diminishing return system where they broke everything out into a separate skill with 10 levels of the skill each and each higher level cost progressively more experience. For example, level 1-3 for a given skill would be pretty easy to get with only a few matches. Level 4-6 would maybe take 10 matches per skill each level and level 7-10 would take dozens of matches. You would have a skill for everything, Range, heat cap, dissipation rate, heat reduction, radar dep, target aquisition, torso twist range, torso pitch, armor, structure, etc and because there were so many different skills and you had a progressively harder progression as you moved up the skill levels you would end up having to chose to go wide and only put a few point in many skills, go deep and specialize only in a few skills or find some sort of balance. Also you could theoretically max out every skill but since the level 7-10 skills require very significant investment in XP to reach and I am talking 1000s of XP here, it might take you 1000-1500 matches max every skill.

The basic premise is chose what you want to buff up on your mech, then choose how much time you want to invest to buff those areas up. The end result would probably be someone investing maybe 5-6 points in maybe a half dozen things, 2-3 points in maybe a half dozen more and maybe have 1 or 2 skill in the 7-10 range for an time investment of around 100 matches. Additionally since the upper levels of the skill require thousands or tens of thousands of XP to raise each point, one would theoretically always have a reason to continue to play the individual mech 1000+ matches if you wanted to max all skills in it.

[Variant1]

This new "skill" tree aka quirk tree is not an improvement it basicaly creates an even bigger grind and wider gap between new players. The Weapon nodes are too powerful and give striaght up weapon buffs that destroys weapon balance. Mechwarrior weapons where always about consistency: Medium lasers always performed at a certain range, large lasers, small lasers etc. This glorified quirk tree basicly makes weapons shoot furhter,faster and less heat which basicly contributes to the fast ttk, it adds more min maxing to the game which makes meta builds even stronger. And to to top it off mechs already get quirks: so now you have quirks and skill tree nodes to give weapons ridiculous killing speed/firepower.

And people wonder why alpha strike warrior is so strong

[Greyhart]

Variant1, on 27 February 2019 - 10:48 AM, said:

This new "skill" tree aka quirk tree is not an improvement it basicaly creates an even bigger grind and wider gap between new players. The Weapon nodes are too powerful and give striaght up weapon buffs that destroys weapon balance. Mechwarrior weapons where always about consistency: Medium lasers always performed at a certain range, large lasers, small lasers etc. This glorified quirk tree basicly makes weapons shoot furhter,faster and less heat which basicly contributes to the fast ttk, it adds more min maxing to the game which makes meta builds even stronger. And to to top it off mechs already get quirks: so now you have quirks and skill tree nodes to give weapons ridiculous killing speed/firepower.

And people wonder why alpha strike warrior is so strong

To me this makes no sense.


Why is a straight buff over the entire mech and every weapon more balanced than the same buff but only applied to one hard point at a time?

Surely overall it would create better balance, As your energy boat direwolf is going to cost more to skill and therefore have serious cost benefits than when compared to your your 2 medium laser spider.

The less firepower a mech has the more skill points it would have to spend in other areas.

A 12 laser mech gets a massive benefit from the weapons tree compared to a 2 laser mech, but they both spend the same amount of points? how is that balanced?

Again I suggest a simple non maze structure to these upgrades and if being able to upgrade one hardpoint totally is considered a problem then you can have skill point cap per hardpoint as well as a total cap on the skill points per mech. But currently we are fine with all the hardpoints being completely buffed in every aspect, so i don't see why a per hardpoint limit would be needed.

Edited by Greyhart, 01 March 2019 - 01:54 AM.

[Bud Crue]

Greyhart, on 01 March 2019 - 01:52 AM, said:

To me this makes no sense.

He’s talking about the current skill tree schema (not the one you are proposing but the one currently in game) vs the old linear mastery path.