191 replies to this topic

[bilagaana]

Congratulations to everyone involved in the skill tree redesign. They were somehow able to pick apart that rat's nest and come up with something much more rational, coherent, accessible and understandable. And all of it while avoiding a monstrously complicated conversion and compensation mechanic and the need to re-skill dozens to hundreds of mechs. Nice work, gentlemen.

Edited by bilagaana, 08 April 2022 - 02:17 PM.

[C337Skymaster]

Lionheart2012, on 07 April 2022 - 08:19 PM, said:

So I have seen the Devlog and I have reviewed the screenshots. I agree with the sentiment that more powerful nodes should be more difficult to obtain. However, speed tweak never required all of the acceleration nodes prior to obtaining them, and you would want to balance acceleration with deceleration to ensure you could stop at that corner appropriately. I think it would be better to split speed tweak between the acceleration and deceleration trees, and likely off the 3rd and fourth nodes of those trees.

Further, I think that radar deprivation being so difficult to obtain, while target decay is so easy, will lead to the next lurmaggedon. And I know the veteran response, learn to find cover ("git gud scrub"), which is patronizing in the least. I am a veteran, and I do know how to find cover, but target decay will neutralize that cover for a certain amount of time. This is why radar deprivation is a necessary counter. However, I also understand the balance in ensuring that missile weapons need some viability. The old system seemed to have reasonable viability where most could get 60% radar deprivation and investing only 1 sensor range node. But if you wanted 100% radar deprivation, then you would need to invest in another 3 sensor range nodes. I would propose updating the sensor tree as follows:

I'm partial towards the skill arrangement they already have which reduces my Radar Dep investment from 40% to 20% for the ECM nodes and 0% if I only want sensor range. I avoid Radar Dep whenever possible on principle, because it's such an incredibly broken tech. I don't want the skill tree arranged in any way that forces me to get any more of it than I absolutely have to. I wouldn't mind if full investment in Radar Dep only brought it to 75% (including base quirks), or if at the very least full Target Decay could 100% offset full Radar Dep. As it stands, Radar Dep takes precedence, and it doesn't make a lick of difference how much you've invested in Target Decay on the other end.

Edited by C337Skymaster, 08 April 2022 - 02:38 PM.

[Farmer1971]

So I know someone has already asked but is the Event Que the only place you will be able to do Events? If so then you will be forcing people to play mechs they don't have(ie a new or alt account), don't like or aren't good at playing with if you limit what mechs can be played in an event. Also you will be forcing people to play solo when they want to play with friends or forcing people to group up if they only solo drop if you limit events to one or the other Solo or Groups only. Therefore excluding some people from getting Event rewards and shouldn't the event rewards be available to everyone? The skill tree looks like it might work better and the color coding is a nice touch.

Edited by Farmer1971, 08 April 2022 - 03:27 PM.

[VaMPHuNT]

SoulRcannon, on 08 April 2022 - 11:53 AM, said:

Considering the scope of what's possible, these changes look great and I look forward to seeing them in the game.

However...

Quick napkin arithmetic suggests that each mech will need 20-30 changed nodes to re-optimise with this new layout. With the new cost in c-bills alone, that's 500k-750k per mech. That adds up quickly over any one player's mech bays; for me, this would amount to around 200-300 million cbills. Let's say playing super casually with the help of event's etc, I get net (after costs of refitting as I go) 10 million per month, that's up to 2 1/2 years of grind.

What I'm getting at here is simple; even if it's staying at 91 skill points, even if the cost of the grind is going down, this is still a lot of grind being added with these changes, and not issuing any form of refund with these changes doesn't help the medicine go down. Please consider the possibility of some form of refund to come with this, for example by splitting the difference of the old cost and the new and issuing something like 10k cbills and 150gxp per node unlocked, per account as these changes go live.

If you were to reconsider "no refunds", it may help alleviate some of the concerns I'm seeing on this thread.

So, for everybody who is all doom and gloom about not getting any skill points or cbills refunded, and having to reskill their mechs, and this and that and the other, and whatever else they can think of... just exactly how many of your 200, 300, 400+ mechs to you actually play on a regular basis?

Regular basis meaning dropping five or six plus times in a row with the mech because you actually like it? Have you factored into the equation that, on average, a winning match with a hero, with premium, and doing half-decent will net you 400-500k cbills with a single drop?

Out of the 102 mechs I currently have in my bay, I have 41 fully elited mechs, probably within 5-10 partially skilled mechs, and the rest have zero skills invested (Because I just don't play them, at all. Looking at my lights and most of my mediums).

Of those 41 elited mechs, 15-20 of them are mechs I no longer enjoy playing or only use in FW or comp. I can practically count, on two hands, the number of mechs I'm instantly going to be re-skilling as needed once the new trees drop, and I've got to say, I love what I'm going to be able to do with them. I've never once considered taking Radar Dep or Speed Tweak on anything due to the massive skill cost investment which would take away from the firepower or survivability of my heavies and assaults.

With these new trees, I'll pretty much have Radar Dep as a staple on them all, with the ECM nodes stapled to any mechs I have that use ECM. Total cost to reskill using the math above? 5-10m cbills upfront. Just do two drops with each mech you want to re-skill and as long as you do half-decent you'll have covered your costs right there outside of any skill point investment from XP, HXP, GXP, or GSP.

If anybody here who has 200+ mechs can legit tell me that they play every single one of their mechs every single day, for more than just one or two drops, then please feel free to call me out on it. But I'm also willing to bet that the majority of those players who do have more than 200-300 mechs, they've also probably got at least 100m+ cbills sitting around with nothing better to do.

Instead of looking at this as all doom and gloom and "Oh no, I have to spend cbills and XP to reskill my mechs", why not flip that coin over and look at it from the other side?

1) We just got a brand new chassis (The Crusader) announced, the first actual new chassis in three years
2) This skill tree redesign is something that was suggested or brought up years ago, and should have been changed then
3) These are simply the first steps on the path that I hopefully see as an example of great thing to come for MWO

Edited by VaMPHuNT, 08 April 2022 - 03:26 PM.

[Nightbird]

I hope they will make skill trees accessible to any mech so I can save a few and load them. Right now they are variant specific so you have to export and import codes repeatedly.

[Clay Endfield]

VaMPHuNT, on 08 April 2022 - 03:16 PM, said:

So, for everybody who is all doom and gloom about not getting any skill points or cbills refunded, and having to reskill their mechs, and this and that and the other, and whatever else they can think of... just exactly how many of your 200, 300, 400+ mechs to you actually play on a regular basis?

Regular basis meaning dropping five or six plus times in a row with the mech because you actually like it? Have you factored into the equation that, on average, a winning match with a hero, with premium, and doing half-decent will net you 400-500k cbills with a single drop?

Out of the 102 mechs I currently have in my bay, I have 41 fully elited mechs, probably within 5-10 partially skilled mechs, and the rest have zero skills invested (Because I just don't play them, at all. Looking at my lights and most of my mediums).

Of those 41 elited mechs, 15-20 of them are mechs I no longer enjoy playing or only use in FW or comp. I can practically count, on two hands, the number of mechs I'm instantly going to be re-skilling as needed once the new trees drop, and I've got to say, I love what I'm going to be able to do with them. I've never once considered taking Radar Dep or Speed Tweak on anything due to the massive skill cost investment which would take away from the firepower or survivability of my heavies and assaults.

With these new trees, I'll pretty much have Radar Dep as a staple on them all, with the ECM nodes stapled to any mechs I have that use ECM. Total cost to reskill using the math above? 5-10m cbills upfront. Just do two drops with each mech you want to re-skill and as long as you do half-decent you'll have covered your costs right there outside of any skill point investment from XP, HXP, GXP, or GSP.

If anybody here who has 200+ mechs can legit tell me that they play every single one of their mechs every single day, for more than just one or two drops, then please feel free to call me out on it. But I'm also willing to bet that the majority of those players who do have more than 200-300 mechs, they've also probably got at least 100m+ cbills sitting around with nothing better to do.

Instead of looking at this as all doom and gloom and "Oh no, I have to spend cbills and XP to reskill my mechs", why not flip that coin over and look at it from the other side?

1) We just got a brand new chassis (The Crusader) announced, the first actual new chassis in three years
2) This skill tree redesign is something that was suggested or brought up years ago, and should have been changed then
3) These are simply the first steps on the path that I hopefully see as an example of great thing to come for MWO

Hey, just cause we're getting "something" doesn't mean we're getting what we want. I have a hard enough grinding out skill points as it is; this only makes it worse.

[VaMPHuNT]

Clay Endfield, on 08 April 2022 - 04:12 PM, said:

Hey, just cause we're getting "something" doesn't mean we're getting what we want. I have a hard enough grinding out skill points as it is; this only makes it worse.

They're reducing the XP and cbill costs to unlock skills. They're breaking the trees apart, mostly, which means you can avoid taking any nodes you don't want to take unless you're looking for those powerful ones such as Radar Dep, Speed Tweak, consumable slots, etc.

How is this making it worse?

[T e c h 4 9]

Vladokapuh, on 07 April 2022 - 09:14 AM, said:

this will make a difference between 0/91 and 91/91 mechs even bigger, which is bad.
considering that with this change our skill trees will be full of bad nodes that arent needed anymore, evrything will need new trees anyways, so you should have used this chance to reduce maximum amount of nodes we can use
while you are at it, remove the old clutter stuff from skill tree launch, convert all HSP and HXP to globals, it doesnt serve any real purpose anymore besides making a mess

While I assume that whatever nodes are currently on each of my mechs will remain, and then, as stated previously, I'll have to re-skill in order to "optimize" my skill trees based on this re-design (which may require me to spend more XP/GXP/GSP/etc.), I'm in agreement with this post above (except the first sentence). Reduce the overall number of nodes in some of the trees (easily cut them in half by doubling the effect). Give credit for the highest node, even if under the new system it would only be "half" unlocked, as a courtesy to the players.Maybe allow an in-game "refund" of GSP for nodes for the first month after implementation, so the "unnecessary" nodes we were forced to take (that we don't need now) can just be reset and result in a GSP refund - seems like a simple solution to me.Heck, you could just make the "respec" button just delete all purchased nodes for that mech, and result in a GSP refund on the spot - call it a feature update and leave it, so no need to turn it off later.

Sure, sure, you could then use that GSP on other mechs....so what? I mean, at some point, all the XP I earn on my favorite (most played) mechs is useless anyway....unless I convert it to GXP. So, if that's an issue, just make the refund in XP and c-bills then, so the XP can only be used on that mech and the c-bills can be used for....anything.

All I know is this: if you make it too arduous to re-spec our mechs, we won't be happy. If we have to spend additional c-bills/GSP to re-spec with other nodes that we can now get (that we couldn't before due to the design of the trees), we won't be happy. Many of us went thru this when the Skill Tree came out; it was NOT fun to go through every mech and skill them. Remember, we didn't have the "save" and "load" buttons back then to create templates so we could apply them in a few clicks, which was a huge oversight at the time and took a long time to be added.

Please don't make that mistake again. Thank you.

Now, to be clear: I'm very happy with the development efforts I'm seeing. The game is getting active dev time, that's awesome. New chassis, awesome. New maps and map re-works, excellent. Skill tree re-work, great news. So, thank you PGI dev team for making sh!t happen; better late than never.

Edited by T e c h 4 9, 08 April 2022 - 05:01 PM.

[SoulRcannon]

VaMPHuNT, on 08 April 2022 - 03:16 PM, said:

So, for everybody who is all doom and gloom about not getting any skill points or cbills refunded, and having to reskill their mechs, and this and that and the other, and whatever else they can think of... just exactly how many of your 200, 300, 400+ mechs to you actually play on a regular basis?

If anybody here who has 200+ mechs can legit tell me that they play every single one of their mechs every single day, for more than just one or two drops, then please feel free to call me out on it. But I'm also willing to bet that the majority of those players who do have more than 200-300 mechs, they've also probably got at least 100m+ cbills sitting around with nothing better to do.

Instead of looking at this as all doom and gloom and "Oh no, I have to spend cbills and XP to reskill my mechs", why not flip that coin over and look at it from the other side?

1) We just got a brand new chassis (The Crusader) announced, the first actual new chassis in three years
2) This skill tree redesign is something that was suggested or brought up years ago, and should have been changed then
3) These are simply the first steps on the path that I hopefully see as an example of great thing to come for MWO

All of these new things are great, not sure where you got the impression that I thought otherwise. I'm looking forward to this new skill tree iteration, the event queue and the Crusader. And I don't play all my mechs all the time on MWO (I mostly play hero chassis because of the c-bill grind) but I'd certainly like to.

It feels like I'm the one you jumped on in response to some of the less complimentary things being said on this thread, which is strange because what I put out there was also a response to some of these posts. I want more people to be happy about these changes. I'd be mostly OK getting on with the new grind (I'm not flush with cbills, it would be a grind). But not everyone is happy with it. I just wanted to provide broader context, some perspective as to possibly why there might be some unhappiness, and proffer a suggestion to help more people be happy with the changes.

This game's monetisation model has always centred around the mechs. The Cauldron understands this where they try to make every chassis viable. But the grind is still there, it's getting better and that's great, but it can still feel stifling. A problem I made for myself, but look at all these pretty mechs! The changes announced in this thread are a step in the right direction, and I think it's the best we can hope for within their limitations, but it's still an imperfect system and anything that could be done to lessen discontent might be helpful. Can't hurt to try in asking this, and I don't wanna get bogged down going any further than that.

[Bowelhacker]

Nah, just get rid of all skills entirely and just have EVERYTHING MAXXXED OUT AT ALL TIMES...

[Clay Endfield]

VaMPHuNT, on 08 April 2022 - 04:18 PM, said:

They're reducing the XP and cbill costs to unlock skills. They're breaking the trees apart, mostly, which means you can avoid taking any nodes you don't want to take unless you're looking for those powerful ones such as Radar Dep, Speed Tweak, consumable slots, etc.

How is this making it worse?

Because now, I have a mountain of spent GSP/EXP that was WASTED on fluff skills. Removing the fluff skills means that all my "optimized" mechs are no longer optimized; and in order to make them competitive again, I'm going to have to take my ENTIRE inventory of mechs back out to the rice fields to grind out C-Bills and EXP. All those C-Bills, GSP, and EXP that went into filling out the fluff between the desired nodes has been thoroughly and utterly crapped on.

With a refund, I only have to redistribute skills for 211 mechs; without the refund, I have to grind EXP/C-Bills for 211 mechs.

Why do you think so many players are upset?

[Lionheart2012]

Horseman, on 08 April 2022 - 10:22 AM, said:

You'll be saving a **** ton of skill points by skipping dead nodes and pre-requisites in the tree. Chances are radar derp will become a standard upgrade for just about everyone with the skill points you're saving from irrelevant crap.

I had 3 shock absorbance nodes, 1 hill climb, and 1 sensor range that I could do without. And with the new tree, those will easily get eaten up by additional heat containment, cool run, and armor hardening nodes.

[C337Skymaster]

So maybe I've just been playing the game too long, but as someone who has just over 400 'mechs, I'm under the impression that anyone with 200+ 'mechs has CB to burn. By the time you get up to 200 'mechs, either you're pumping cash into the game and have premium time running, or you're capped on 'mech bays and are accumulating CB while waiting for the next series of events and sales. Either way, XP is going to be a bigger bottleneck than CB, and the process of accumulating XP on 'mechs that need it will cover the CB requirements and then some.

I think everyone is either forgetting, or never experienced, the cost of Modules. Under the original system, things like Anchor Turn and Speed Tweak cost XP only. Modules, however, were unlocked and upgraded with GXP (making that MC conversion process suddenly worthwhile), and cost between 2 million and 6 million CB apiece, depending on the module. But at least they were freely swappable between 'mechs.

This is all WAY cheaper and more flexible than it used to be, and is only getting cheaper and more flexible, still.

[BigSpam]

Thank you!

[Clay Endfield]

C337Skymaster, on 08 April 2022 - 06:26 PM, said:

So maybe I've just been playing the game too long, but as someone who has just over 400 'mechs, I'm under the impression that anyone with 200+ 'mechs has CB to burn. By the time you get up to 200 'mechs, either you're pumping cash into the game and have premium time running, or you're capped on 'mech bays and are accumulating CB while waiting for the next series of events and sales. Either way, XP is going to be a bigger bottleneck than CB, and the process of accumulating XP on 'mechs that need it will cover the CB requirements and then some.

I think everyone is either forgetting, or never experienced, the cost of Modules. Under the original system, things like Anchor Turn and Speed Tweak cost XP only. Modules, however, were unlocked and upgraded with GXP (making that MC conversion process suddenly worthwhile), and cost between 2 million and 6 million CB apiece, depending on the module. But at least they were freely swappable between 'mechs.

This is all WAY cheaper and more flexible than it used to be, and is only getting cheaper and more flexible, still.

Couldn't be more wrong in regards to your mech = c-bills assumption. I have 211 mechs and 5 million C-bills. A fat chunk of my clan mechs still need engines. A number of my mechs need overhauls due to Cauldron changes. I only ever buy mechs/engines during sales. The most C-bills I've ever built up to was 47 million, and that was in anticipation of a Holiday sale; and that 47 mill disappeared in a matter of minutes once the sale went live.

I never have enough C-bills for skilling mechs.

[Bowelhacker]

Clay Endfield, on 08 April 2022 - 07:04 PM, said:

Couldn't be more wrong in regards to your mech = c-bills assumption. I have 211 mechs and 5 million C-bills. A fat chunk of my clan mechs still need engines. A number of my mechs need overhauls due to Cauldron changes. I only ever buy mechs/engines during sales. The most C-bills I've ever built up to was 47 million, and that was in anticipation of a Holiday sale; and that 47 mill disappeared in a matter of minutes once the sale went live.

I never have enough C-bills for skilling mechs.

You should probably take that 1% label off your name then, povvo.

I'm really bad at this game and I still have 1.5 billion c bills laying in a big pool for me to dive into.

[Clay Endfield]

Bowelhacker, on 08 April 2022 - 09:53 PM, said:

You should probably take that 1% label off your name then, povvo.

I'm really bad at this game and I still have 1.5 billion c bills laying in a big pool for me to dive into.

And what does any of that have to do with the conversation? So what if you have 1.5 billion; that does nothing for the players who don't want to grind more resources due to questionable development choices.

[cazeral]

Only real benefit I'm seeing Time/C-Bills/XP wise, is for a new chassis. In every other situation, where the new skills apply and you paid for one of the gatekeeping nodes, you loose.

To optimise your distribution, you will relegate those gatekeeping nodes to the has been bin, then if you want to make any changes on the ported lines, you will have to buy the vacant spots to then reclaim what was already yours.

The more I look at it. Although time consuming on reskilling chassis, the fairest thing to do would have been a full refund of nodes (even if to just a single pot to make it easier to code) and allow players to rethink and rebuild without what may prove to be chassis loads of messed up, ported trees worth of earning SP all over again.

This in now very much a half-a-job approach PGI have become well known for.

[Reno Blade]

I like what i see so far.
A few improvements i would like to see:
- quirks: add skill values and quirk values in brackets, e.g. 25% (10+15) to indicate what you get from quirks and how much from skills.

-Skill tree: double total node amount per type, so you can "choose" to go deeper into a specific skill. E.g. change from 10x 1% nodes to 20x 1% for a total of 20% instead of total10%.
And please buuff jumpjets (and maybe sensors) nodes...

- event queue: modifiers such as half/double velocity/cooldown/heat/dmg/gravity are a must have!
And then have some 4v4 or 2v2 in there too (maybe reusing solaris with that queue).

Edited by Reno Blade, 09 April 2022 - 05:25 AM.

[SPNKRGrenth]

My biggest hope with the skill tree rework, is that they massively reduce skill node counts, and rebalance accordingly. One of the biggest reasons why so many people jumped ship and never came back when the new skill tree was first added, was just how many clicks it took to do a mech.

Instead of 91 active skill nodes, balance for 20-30 active skill nodes instead. Instead of having 5-15 skill nodes for each main stat increase, have 1-3 skill nodes. Lesser nodes that only have 2 nodes as it is, could be combined into a single set of combo nodes to stay worth it. Example being just having 2 "missile mastery" skill nodes, instead of 6 missile related skill nodes for single stats.

This would make it way quicker to skill a mech, look far cleaner and straightforward visually, and make each skill node feel more rewarding to earn and activate as well. It would confuse new players far less, and not annoy old players nearly as much. Just maybe, it could even convince players who left years ago, to come back and give it another shot.

Edited by SPNKRGrenth, 09 April 2022 - 05:59 AM.