2
Also it doesn't address the question of why would I come back to a mech once all skilled up?
So how to make a system that works on improving the mech and gives depth that brings you back to play that maxed out mech again?
So this idea occurs to me:
The idea of the skill tree is that it is tweaks to a mech by engineers rather than direct upgrades.
Instead of tweaking the mech as a whole why doesn't it treat the equipment on a mech like equipment and armour in a standard RPG. You know where you improve the sword by putting a rune of speed on it to increase the swing speed.
So with each weapon hard point (or equipped weapon) on the mech would have its own small simple skill tree. This would allow you to adjust cooldown times, range etc for each individual weapon on the mech.
So you could have say 5 skill points spendable in a laser hard point. That hardpoint has 3 channels with 3 tiers (9 skills altogether). Say Beam duration, cooldown and heat. you could max out one and then have 2 skill points to place in the other 2.
This would allow for people to increase the range of small laser but not large laser if they so wished.
I've outlined the simple version for laser but for things like ballistics you can have larger trees to cover the variety of weapons. So a hardpoint could have an upgrade path for gauss rifle or jam chance etc.
It would also have the advantage of showing the relevant stats for that weapon on that mech.
Things like twist speed, armour, internal structure, sensors, speed would also be tweakable by the same sort of system.
Assuming a set number of skill points per mech this would mean that mechs with less hardpoints would have a potential advantage over boating loads of weapons as the more hardpoints the more slots to spend those skill points in and therefore the thinner the spread.
The system helps new players because it would focus in on an aspect of the mech would present on opportunity for the stats surrounding that part of the mech to be explained and expanded on.
As for long term. Once skill points are maxed out you of course would have the respec costs. But i would also suggest an ability to dump the XP into an increase c-bill reward skill tree, which would be unlocked on mastery and be very very expensive and provide a max of say 20% increase.
So in short the skill tree should be broken down into individual components rather than one big mess as it is now.
PS
Yes I know we won't get any changes, the game is in maintenance mode.
Yes I know we aren't going to see a new online mechwarrior anytime soon and that if PGI were to do it they'd not be any good.
Edited by Greyhart, 26 February 2019 - 05:23 AM.
