94 replies to this topic

[TheCaptainJZ]

Clay Endfield, on 25 April 2022 - 12:18 PM, said:

So how is event que going to function? Is it a lobby where challenge progress can made on events, excluding standard lobbies from qualifying (as in, you go to event que to complete events; all "progress" outside of event que doesn't contribute to challenge progress) or is it a special gamemode lobby, where the community can do silly things like urbie derbies, 100 ton fatties only, only energy weapons/only ballistics/only missiles?

Cause if it's a special lobby for goofy matches, I'm all about that.

It's flexible which is fantastic. They can use it as a fun queue or a special challenge/event queue. It supports drop decks if they want to use it for FP or limited respawns. They can control group sizes, no groups, or mixed. They can have event queue specific challenges and rewards, but those count against general events too, like match score, etc. They can tweak variables. There really are a lot of possibilities and it's a fantastic addition. It will use PSR for matchmaking purposes but never modify it.

Edited by TheCaptainJZ, 25 April 2022 - 04:14 PM.

[JOATMON Incorporated]

Thank you for the update!

This is still looking very interesting.

I am just curious about a point of clarification.

It has been noted that if you don't touch any of your skills on a mech after the change it will stay the same, but if you change it then there might be some issues.

Hypothetical question here for clarification.
If I were to say have Hard Break 1 2 and 5.

After the change and if tweaking skills, say for some reason I want to unlock all the Hard Break skills.

Would I activate Hard Break 1 and 2, need to purchase/activate Hard Break 3 and 4, and then simply reactivate the previously purchased Hard Break 5?

Or Do activate 1 and 2, then need to Purchase hard break 3 and 4 for the first time and then need to repurchase hardbreak 5 even though it was previously purchased?

[Ralgas]

So i'm hearing a lot of "what if's" about nodes skimming this. As far as i've read, seen (and if the patch doesn't bug...) current builds wont be affected at all, there will be no refunds, and the only time a player will require Sp is under the following conditions-

1) The old build skipped middle teir nodes
2) The skipped nodes were never unlocked for the mech
3) The old tree is being altered by the player.

Still feel this is a pretty easy trade off, given the majority of builds that need respecing will be doing it to get bonus's previously unavailable to it under the old trees. Leave it alone and you get exactly what you had pre patch.

Edited by Ralgas, 25 April 2022 - 04:36 PM.

[w0qj]

+1

Many folks will only change the Skill Tree for those mechs they enjoyed playing, and therefore:
a) Favorite mechs likely have spare XP points for SP conversion immediately**
b ) Favorite mechs for most players are fun and do well; obtaining further XP-->SP should not be a chore!

Note: ** My favorite mechs have spare XP in the 5-6 digit amounts!

And for the other mechs that I've dutifully leveled up to the minimum/basic 91-Skill points and I've disliked the mech,
I can continue to play these as usual even after this Skill Tree revamp 2022! I personally do not plan to re-skill these.
(Lights + Mediums...cough... I'm looking at you...)

ScrapIron Prime, on 25 April 2022 - 09:08 AM, said:

I'm liking this. Excellent work, Devs! Especially the part about the mech just working with the skill tree you have on patch day. Spending future points to unlock better options is going to be a grind for some folks, but you're not taking away anything they have like the big change was from "Master 3 Mechs" to the current system. I look forward to the new mix of options we're going to have.

As an aside, I'm wondering how many folks will dislike it just because its a change. Those threads in General Discussion are coming.

Edited by w0qj, 25 April 2022 - 06:43 PM.

[Navid A1]

JOATMON Incorporated, on 25 April 2022 - 04:26 PM, said:

Thank you for the update!

This is still looking very interesting.

I am just curious about a point of clarification.

It has been noted that if you don't touch any of your skills on a mech after the change it will stay the same, but if you change it then there might be some issues.

Hypothetical question here for clarification.
If I were to say have Hard Break 1 2 and 5.

After the change and if tweaking skills, say for some reason I want to unlock all the Hard Break skills.

Would I activate Hard Break 1 and 2, need to purchase/activate Hard Break 3 and 4, and then simply reactivate the previously purchased Hard Break 5?

Or Do activate 1 and 2, then need to Purchase hard break 3 and 4 for the first time and then need to repurchase hardbreak 5 even though it was previously purchased?

This:

You activate Hard Break 1 and 2, need to purchase/activate Hard Break 3 and 4, and then simply reactivate the previously purchased Hard Break 5.

[JOATMON Incorporated]

Navid A1, on 25 April 2022 - 04:56 PM, said:

This:

You activate Hard Break 1 and 2, need to purchase/activate Hard Break 3 and 4, and then simply reactivate the previously purchased Hard Break 5.

Thank you for clarifying. This is how I thought it would work, but wasn't sure. This is a relief for sure.

I have minimal issue with it going forward like this. There will be some impact to my builds. But those impacted look to be hit for only about 3-4 per mech on average. The lowered cost for additional SPs will not only make those fill in SPs fast to get, but will significantly help in any future mechs.

My only remaining concern for the change as planned is for those folks who have huge stables of mechs. Someone trying to redo 500+ mechs and needing 3-4 SPs per can get a little resource intensive very quickly.

I guess as long as folks adjust the mechs as they use them, or leave the skills set as they had them pre patch they will be ok. But knowing they have a virtual army worth of hardware that is suddenly "out of date" since it isn't fully min/maxed and knowing it might take 1500-2000 SPs to correct it will likely rub some people the wrong way.

I know that older skill layouts are supposed to be grandfathered in post patch. Is it all possible to localize the grandfathering to specific sections of the Skill Tree?
For example if someone has their Hard Brake skills set at 1 2 and 5, they can just leave that part of the tree alone permanently, but they could do adjustments in the firepower range part of the tree without needing to fill in Hard Brake 3 and 4? I guess the downside of this approach might be that it could essentially drag the full transition out indefinitely on the backend for calculations. That probably isn't ideal. But it could allow continued minimal changes without additional costs. That might be important for some chassis such as omnimechs where firepower skills needed can shift rapidly depending on weapons loadout.

[KursedVixen]

My only gripe now is that IS skil tree has a few nodes higher than the CLan one like laser duration and stuff especially laser duration why do IS lasers need to fire faster??? why can't clans get a bigger duration reduction?

I personally think both skill trees should have equal values aside maybe from clan laser duration due to clan lasers having longer durations.

Edited by KursedVixen, 26 April 2022 - 04:36 AM.

[fake cat]

I need Quirk text Highlighting.
onry Quirk. onry

[PocketYoda]

Looks like an amazing update thank you, sad we must reskill everything with no exchange from the old version. all that real life money wasted, unless i misunderstood.

Edited by Nomad Tech, 26 April 2022 - 07:41 AM.

[TheCaptainJZ]

Nomad Tech, on 26 April 2022 - 07:22 AM, said:

Looks like an amazing update thank you, sad we must reskill everything with no exchange from the old version. all that real life money wasted, unless i misunderstood.

Well, you don't have to reskill all your mechs at once and if you don't touch one at all, it will retain what it has now at least. Previously purchased nodes are still purchased. With 91 total nodes, you may find that the vast majority of the nodes you have you still want to keep, they are just organized differently. If you got all the heat gen nodes, you might have picked up most of the cooldown nodes as well
I understand exactly why they didn't want to do a refund--the previous time that happened, it was a convoluted nightmare for everyone. You had Historical XP, and Historical SP, ugh. I would imagine that the May and June events will contain a lot of free SP giveaways so you won't have to pay anything to reskill your mechs. I wish they could eliminate SP entirely and go back to XP for skills actually.

[CFC Conky]

JC Daxion, on 23 April 2022 - 06:44 PM, said:

Looks pretty solid..

I just wonder how many mechs are going to be needing to be toned down a bit as min/maxing will be a bit easier.

I am thinking that as well, we’ll just have to see.

Good hunting,
CFC Conky

[ghost1e]

JOATMON Incorporated, on 25 April 2022 - 09:03 PM, said:

My only remaining concern for the change as planned is for those folks who have huge stables of mechs. Someone trying to redo 500+ mechs and needing 3-4 SPs per can get a little resource intensive very quickly.

IMO this is looking to be more like 20+ SPs per mech if you want to optimize them, starting from trees that are optimal right now.
that's (even with new costs) 500k CBs per mech, which with 100s of mechs can accumulate a lot.

Now, I know that you don't ever use ALL of your mechs. But I personally need to have at least 100 mechs out of my 300+ constantly ready and optimized to switch to, so this change is going to hurt quite a bit economically.

[Kodan Black]

On the one hand tweaking most of my mechs is gonna be costly if they don't reset the trees. But if they wipe all the trees of all my mechs that forces me into devoting time to "fixing" my mechs before I am able to play them.

I don't think there is a great option really, so whatever path is probably just as good/bad as any other to me.

[JOATMON Incorporated]

TheUltimateGhost, on 26 April 2022 - 11:06 AM, said:

IMO this is looking to be more like 20+ SPs per mech if you want to optimize them, starting from trees that are optimal right now.
that's (even with new costs) 500k CBs per mech, which with 100s of mechs can accumulate a lot.

Now, I know that you don't ever use ALL of your mechs. But I personally need to have at least 100 mechs out of my 300+ constantly ready and optimized to switch to, so this change is going to hurt quite a bit economically.

Ouch, Sorry there UltimateGhost. Ok going from 4 to 20 SPs per mech has a sizable impact. If such a large overhaul is needed, then pain threshold is going to be hit much sooner which will impact an even large number of players than I was expecting.

While I support PGI's obvious great intentions for this project and I applaud their effort and coordination with the player base, I am concerned it will alienate a portion of the player base.

I understand and support that skill refunds are not to be granted, but perhaps PGI could do something else to help ease this pain beyond simply lowering costs for additional SPs? A few suggestions:
-1. Perhaps gift a number of SPs (say 5) to players for each mech chassis on which they posses at 91+ SP unlocks. It could either be a lump sum, or maybe already assigned to the chassis in question. Whichever would be easier for PGI to implement.

-2. Upgrade the champion mechs to have massive bonuses to GeneralXP gained. (Maybe also add some sort of Cbill % bonus to champion mechs as well.)

-3. Allow players to convert a static quantity of chassis XP into GXP free of cost.

-4. (If done in conjunction of any of the above) Put up a SP sale with very steep discounts.

[Navid A1]

JOATMON Incorporated, on 26 April 2022 - 01:17 PM, said:

Ouch, Sorry there UltimateGhost. Ok going from 4 to 20 SPs per mech has a sizable impact. If such a large overhaul is needed, then pain threshold is going to be hit much sooner which will impact an even large number of players than I was expecting.

While I support PGI's obvious great intentions for this project and I applaud their effort and coordination with the player base, I am concerned it will alienate a portion of the player base.

I understand and support that skill refunds are not to be granted, but perhaps PGI could do something else to help ease this pain beyond simply lowering costs for additional SPs? A few suggestions:
-1. Perhaps gift a number of SPs (say 5) to players for each mech chassis on which they posses at 91+ SP unlocks. It could either be a lump sum, or maybe already assigned to the chassis in question. Whichever would be easier for PGI to implement.

-2. Upgrade the champion mechs to have massive bonuses to GeneralXP gained. (Maybe also add some sort of Cbill % bonus to champion mechs as well.)

-3. Allow players to convert a static quantity of chassis XP into GXP free of cost.

-4. (If done in conjunction of any of the above) Put up a SP sale with very steep discounts.

We'll see if they bundle the patch with GSP for people. Would be a good thing to do.

[Znail]

JOATMON Incorporated, on 26 April 2022 - 01:17 PM, said:

Ouch, Sorry there UltimateGhost. Ok going from 4 to 20 SPs per mech has a sizable impact. If such a large overhaul is needed, then pain threshold is going to be hit much sooner which will impact an even large number of players than I was expecting.

While I support PGI's obvious great intentions for this project and I applaud their effort and coordination with the player base, I am concerned it will alienate a portion of the player base.

I understand and support that skill refunds are not to be granted, but perhaps PGI could do something else to help ease this pain beyond simply lowering costs for additional SPs? A few suggestions:
-1. Perhaps gift a number of SPs (say 5) to players for each mech chassis on which they posses at 91+ SP unlocks. It could either be a lump sum, or maybe already assigned to the chassis in question. Whichever would be easier for PGI to implement.

-2. Upgrade the champion mechs to have massive bonuses to GeneralXP gained. (Maybe also add some sort of Cbill % bonus to champion mechs as well.)

-3. Allow players to convert a static quantity of chassis XP into GXP free of cost.

-4. (If done in conjunction of any of the above) Put up a SP sale with very steep discounts.

This is pretty good ideas. The main reason behind them not wanting to do the xp refund is the work both for them and for players to reskill all the mechs. Something along the line of giving everyone 5 global skill points for each mech shouldn't be too much work for either.

[Re4PeRger]

Why not just count the percentages of the now unlocked nodes pre patch?
For example, I got 4x +1% range nodes on a mech unlocked pre patch, node 1, 2, 3 and 15, makes +4% range in total.
Wouldn't it be much easier for PGI to just sum up all pre-patch skill nodes and unlock nodes equal the same percentage , i.e. range +1% nodes 1 to 4 giving the same 4% range as before?
This way there would only be costs for new unlocked nodes after deselecting unwanted nodes, which I was forced to unlock in the old system.

[TheCaptainJZ]

Re4PeRger, on 27 April 2022 - 04:12 AM, said:

Why not just count the percentages of the now unlocked nodes pre patch?
For example, I got 4x +1% range nodes on a mech unlocked pre patch, node 1, 2, 3 and 15, makes +4% range in total.
Wouldn't it be much easier for PGI to just sum up all pre-patch skill nodes and unlock nodes equal the same percentage , i.e. range +1% nodes 1 to 4 giving the same 4% range as before?
This way there would only be costs for new unlocked nodes after deselecting unwanted nodes, which I was forced to unlock in the old system.

I'm guessing it would have to do with the backend technical implementation. It's a hierarchy design where they are linked in a specific order. I suppose they could have gone with each range node can be activated individually but then you probably couldn't select the last one to select the whole string of them. Besides, it would be possible I think for them to vary the values of each node now, so progressing farther down a tree has a more incremental effect in bonuses, if they wanted to.

[PocketYoda]

I have nearly 350 mechs and a good chunk of them have skill points full.. this is going to be a massive effort to get them reskilled over time..

[Flying Fox 333]

Thanks for the update. I do like the changes overall.

On a bit of a unrelated note there has been some speculation that the new event mode may replace Solaris due to the disappearance of the tab in one of your earlier build demonstrations. I know a rebranding is in the works so the Solaris 7 moniker will probably go soon too. Has there been any announcement regarding what will happen to it?