40 replies to this topic

[pbiggz]

Curccu, on 01 October 2021 - 11:46 AM, said:

But but weird build?

Pretty bog standard classic era arms build.

Curccu, on 01 October 2021 - 11:46 AM, said:

edit: on topic, sure wow talent tree is nice but didn't that became way smaller also later? an not really comparable to MWO kind of game IMO. WoW talent tree is well thought that you cannot get everything good you'd want but have to make heavy choices that define totally how you play your character.

Certainly its not fair to expect MWO to do exactly this, im mostly pointing it out because the wow tree does very well at being readable, polished, and easy to keep track of. That said, the MWO skill tree does make you choose between things that fairly significantly effect how you play your mech, its just that with such small, numerous nodes, each choice seems little.

Consider that the weapons tree has 15% range on it. It never feels like that because the nodes are broken up so much and spread so wide across the tree. Speed tweak is a 7.5% buff spread across 5 nodes. Cool run is 10% spread across 5 nodes.

Spreading it out like that kind of makes each node feel weak, even though 7.5% speed, or 10% cooling isn't too shabby, but, in practice, at the very least, it still requires investment. You only have 91 points to spend, and the fetch nodes are generally at the half way or bottom points of the tree. They force you to invest in nodes you don't necessarily want to path to the ones you do want. The effect is the same it just feels muddy.

Curccu, on 01 October 2021 - 11:46 AM, said:

Out of curiosity what would you imagine those last talents of the trees would be in MWO? What would those give?

The fetch nodes already exist. They're basically all the elite nodes from the old skill system, Quick Ignition, Fast Fire, Pinpoint and Speed Tweak. Those still exist in the current tree they're just spread more widely across the tree, and don't have a 3-of-a-type limitation.

If it were my choice, i'd put cooldown at the bottom of weapons, Speed tweak at the bottom of mobility, Jumpjet vertical impulse at the bottom of Jumpjets, Cool run at the bottom of operations, Radar Dep at the bottom of Sensors, and extra module slots at the bottom of Misc.

You don't want to railroad players into finishing out trees they don't want to because they think the max node is too strong to ignore, but you also want to make them feel like committing to a tree gets them a reward worth giving up some utility in another part of the tree. Its a careful balancing act and im sure you and I would have a different idea of where that balance point should sit.

Edited by pbiggz, 01 October 2021 - 01:35 PM.

[Wildstreak]

LordNothing, on 30 September 2021 - 08:43 PM, said:

while i disagree with "fine as is", i sure as hell dont want to redux the skills on all 372 of my mechs. so i agree with the dont mess with it part.

even if they cull the tree down 50% it would still be a pita to redo 372 mechs.

This and I have only about 160.

I know what I would like but given how much effort is put into this game now, doubt it would happen.

[Rkshz]

Dogstar, on 30 September 2021 - 04:19 AM, said:

If there's one thing I've always been disappointing with about the 'Skill Tree' is it's silly name. There's nothing in there that is to do with pilot skill and everything to do with customising or tuning your mech.

Now that the Cauldron are working on this could we please rename it to something more sensible, more lore-ish, and less 'game-y'. My suggestions include:

Mech Tuning
Mech Customisation
Mech Engineering

(for Mech also read Battlemech)

While we're at it is there anything else in the skill tree that needs renaming or making more immersive?

just rename? this is not enough
the whole skill tree is terrible and illogical
they need to divide skills in more detail, so that you do not need to study what you do not want and you need to add a wider list of skills
for example, need to divide:
1. range and cooldown
2. energy and missile and ballistics
3. cooling and other

for example, need to add:
1. masc skills (do the same as with JJ)
2. zoom skills (x2, x3, x4, x5)
3. anti scan skills (skill that will increase the time scan - counter skill of "target info gathering")

[w0qj]

Further building on (a la style of ST:O skill trees):

For each Skill Tree, you can choose from at least 2 career/specialisation unique skills that gives you additional maximum +3% DPS or effect (ie: basically just one additional bonus node effect).

eg: Sensor Skill tree specialisation gives either +3% enhanced ECM, or +3% Seismic Sensor.
Mobility Skill tree gives either +3% Kinetic Burst, or +3% Speed Tweak.
Survival Skill Tree gives either +3% Armor, or +3% Skeletal Structure
Operations Skill Tree gives either +3% Heat Containment, or +3% Coolrun
Firepower Skill Tree gives either +3% Heatgen, or +3% Cooldown
etc.

pbiggz, on 01 October 2021 - 05:11 AM, said:

a big problem with the tree is presentation.

Lots of little nodes, visually mostly identical. There are lessons to be learnt from fantasy here.



Ignoring the exact contents of the tree, this is a much more readable progression tree. Each node has a unique tooltip, making them visually distinct. Some nodes eat up multiple progression points, so you have a single node with increasing value rather than 5 or so small identical nodes, cluttering up the tree. Each descending row requires a set amount of investment above it (Row 2 passives only become available with 5 points of investment in that tree, row 3 with 10, row 4 with 15, so on). Arrows denote passives requiring a prerequisite (mortal strike in the arms tree can't be taken without putting a point in sweeping strikes). The bottom nodes (requiring the most investment) require you to lean into one tree over the other, and the heaviest or most significant nodes are placed at the bottom to reflect that, not unlike MWO. Indeed in many many ways this is very similar to MWO's skill tree, only significantly cleaner, more readable, and more polished.

[pbiggz]

All good ideas.

The point i made by presenting the example I did was to highlight the usability and polish of a similar system, and thus highlight the lack of those things in the MWO skill tree. MWO's trees are technically functional, and still do the same thing, they just dont look good. They don't feel good. They are dead simple and yet totally inscrutable just by dint of having so many nodes it muddies the water.

When the rework comes (and im sure it will), these things must be taken into account.

[FupDup]

About the number of nodes: The reason stated by PGI that they went with so many weak nodes rather than a smaller number of strong nodes was to make players feel like they're making more constant progress.

If you pay 800 XP for 1% range three times, or you pay 2400 XP for 3% range just once, you get the same 3% buff at the end but the former method reduces the amount of time between each node even if the end result still costs 2400 XP either way.

[caravann]

The slow increase is working if it is a power fantasy.

Each "node" is made to prevent similar nodes being given

it's only a matter of taste, to make it perfect it must be imperfect.

The key here is , damage and armor. Survival skill has become a must.

Sensors are not needed with stealth armor and can be skipped

Mobility for many assault makes mobility skill nodes skipped

Firepower is mostly based on hardpoints.

Operation is another traditional skill tree, everything or nothing.

Jumpjet is mostly based on hardpoints.

Ultility is a skill node who is used by experienced but doesn't provide anything to rookie.

No, the kill tree is rubbish for an online game.

Objects are what matter. Better guns is better guns. No skill node changes physical limitations.

[Dogstar]

Rkshz, on 01 October 2021 - 08:12 PM, said:

just rename? this is not enough

Oh I absolutely agree on that point.

However I trust enough in the changes the Cauldron have made so far that they will make the 'skill tree' better overall, and once we see what they propose we can decide whether it's good enough.

I simply want to get rid of the stupid name so I'm bringing that to the attention of the Cauldron so that hopefully, they will take a few minutes to improve the immersion elements of MWO.

[Mark Yore]

I'd also like the ability to skip over skills that are not relevant to your mech, such as velocity for a laser vomit build. If you did it as a series of concentric circles, with the central point opening up the skill and increasing ability the further you extend outwards it would mean that there would be less "wasted" points in builds.

For example Sensors would have skills for Range, Info Gathering, Zoom, Target Retention, Target Decay, Radar Deprivation, Zoom, Enhanced ECM and Seismic. Some of those would only have two points and some would have five. I might get both points in Seismic Sensor without having to get any points in Target Decay.

At the moment I have skills in my mech that are completely useless for that build.

[pbiggz]

FupDup, on 02 October 2021 - 10:46 AM, said:

About the number of nodes: The reason stated by PGI that they went with so many weak nodes rather than a smaller number of strong nodes was to make players feel like they're making more constant progress.

If you pay 800 XP for 1% range three times, or you pay 2400 XP for 3% range just once, you get the same 3% buff at the end but the former method reduces the amount of time between each node even if the end result still costs 2400 XP either way.

There are justifications for it. I think it was an overcorrection. We swung from "it takes 3 weeks to master a mech because you need to elite 3 variants" to "i get a node every match". It is good to give players a steady stream of progression but too much and it gets muddy.

Dogstar, on 02 October 2021 - 10:56 PM, said:

Oh I absolutely agree on that point.

However I trust enough in the changes the Cauldron have made so far that they will make the 'skill tree' better overall, and once we see what they propose we can decide whether it's good enough.

I simply want to get rid of the stupid name so I'm bringing that to the attention of the Cauldron so that hopefully, they will take a few minutes to improve the immersion elements of MWO.

This is an underappreciated point, because flavour is really important to a game like mechwarrior. If you called it a "talent tree" it would feel arbitrary and out of place. A skill tree is still a bit flavour-weird, but we all accepted it because "skilling your mechs" is what we used to do, so it sort of got grandfathered in.

Since its now a per-mech tree, with performance tweaks, calling them performance tweaks or chassis mods, even if they were functionally identical would make the system feel totally different.

Mark Yore, on 03 October 2021 - 01:57 AM, said:

I'd also like the ability to skip over skills that are not relevant to your mech, such as velocity for a laser vomit build. If you did it as a series of concentric circles, with the central point opening up the skill and increasing ability the further you extend outwards it would mean that there would be less "wasted" points in builds.

For example Sensors would have skills for Range, Info Gathering, Zoom, Target Retention, Target Decay, Radar Deprivation, Zoom, Enhanced ECM and Seismic. Some of those would only have two points and some would have five. I might get both points in Seismic Sensor without having to get any points in Target Decay.

At the moment I have skills in my mech that are completely useless for that build.

The long and short of it is you need to have some skills you dont necessarily always want, generalist skills that are helpful but not quite so min-maxy, otherwise the trees get samey because what point is there in taking generalist nodes when i can just skip to the nodes that let me kill faster? Critical to note is that these generalist nodes should still be good, having bad nodes to break up the good nodes is not how you do this.

There is also a balance to be struck here.

https://tbc.wowhead....nt-calc/paladin

Check this talent tree calculator out. You'll see that each row requires a certain point investment in each of the trees (row 2 in holy requires 5 points in holy, row 3 requires 10, so on so forth).

What that means is you need to invest in that tree to progress down it, but you don't necessarily need to invest in every single node. You have leeway to skip some of the nodes you don't want.

Additionally, to fupdup's point. At least in old world of warcraft, you got a talent point every level. There are fewer nodes on these trees to be certain, but some of these nodes will eat up 2, 3, or 5 points, providing those step by step buffs that multiple individual nodes in the mwo skill tree provide now, just in a much cleaner, more readable way. The top line skill nodes on most of the trees are an excellent example of this. You don't need to invest 10 points in the top line of the paladin trees, you only need 5 to progress to the next row, but each of the trees has 10 points of nodes available, so if you wanted 10 points in that row, you could put them there.

[Haipyng]

The entire point of the Skill Tree is to give us something to spend Cbills or MC on. I am a bit old school, but I miss games where you tested your skill against another person's skill, not how much they are ground away at the game or how much money they spent.

[ScrapIron Prime]

Haipyng, on 03 October 2021 - 09:19 AM, said:

The entire point of the Skill Tree is to give us something to spend Cbills or MC on. I am a bit old school, but I miss games where you tested your skill against another person's skill, not how much they are ground away at the game or how much money they spent.

The grind in this game is nothing, and you don't have to spend ANY MC. PGI has always been good about that.

[Haipyng]

ScrapIron Prime, on 03 October 2021 - 09:47 AM, said:

The grind in this game is nothing, and you don't have to spend ANY MC. PGI has always been good about that.

I never it was bad, or that you needed to spend MC. Just that is what the skill tree was there for. Did you disagree with that?

[PocketYoda]

Mech experience grind is what it should be called..

[Curccu]

caravann, on 02 October 2021 - 11:28 AM, said:

Mobility for many assault makes mobility skill nodes skipped

Well mostly because mobility nodes are % values and if you add some extra 10% for very small number like 6 it doesn't really give anything meaningful, as for lights you add to their large value that same 10% then it is pretty huge difference.

[FinnMcKool]

plz plz change the color of the text that refers to quirks , it needs to be easier to tell quirks from skills

its a bother to run to the store or some web site to see the quirks of the mech you happen to be playing with
in the mech lab

just a change the color for quirks so you see it right away in the select mech screen.

Skills "Green"
Quirks "Blue"

Edited by FinnMcKool, 04 October 2021 - 09:53 AM.

[Rain Dark Sky]

ScrapIron Prime, on 03 October 2021 - 09:47 AM, said:

The grind in this game is nothing, and you don't have to spend ANY MC. PGI has always been good about that.

Games like WoW take months to level up and equip a character.

With MWO you can easily do it in a week.

[pbiggz]

CherokeeRose, on 04 October 2021 - 01:17 PM, said:

Games like WoW take months to level up and equip a character.

With MWO you can easily do it in a week.

The rate at which you get points to invest is entirely within PGI's control. They can set it to whatever they like. It has no bearing on the actual function of the tree. A point is a point, whether you took 5 matches to get it, or 1. When I use wow's talent tree as an example, im not advocating for making the grind harder. I've been pretty explicit that the current skill tree functions almost exactly the same, it's just inscrutably hard to read and full of muddiness and noise that makes individual decisions feel meaningless.

[Mark Yore]

CherokeeRose, on 04 October 2021 - 01:17 PM, said:

Games like WoW take months to level up and equip a character.

With MWO you can easily do it in a week.

I've done it in 48 hours to get a mech ready for competition, but when you pick up 3 to 6 points a match for a particularly aggressive mech with bonuses then it can be done in 25 matches.

[Rain Dark Sky]

Please don't change the skill tree, I like it the way it is.