Posted 26 May 2022 - 07:36 AM
Generally speaking i am way more for what was done then againt. The best part is that there are way less "useless" skills that have to be taken, and i can actually focus on whats truly useful to me. That, and i think they balanced it pretty well by locking some of the more "desireable" things like radar derp, speed tweak, ect behind nodes that while not useless, id not normally take so there is a bit of a incentive to not necessarily shove seismik+speed tweak+radar derp on every single mech (even though for me 100% radar derp is not a option but a necessity as its a nice "screw you" to the lermers and anyone whos relying on a lock to guess when and where ill poke out of cover for follow up attacks.
Many previously hard to get nodes are now stupidly low cost to obtain like the "essential" (for ballistics/missiles) ammo nodes and velocity is extremely easy to get with negligible sacrifice, same for laser duration which previously required quite a few worthless cooldown nodes that do jack squat for vomit mechs that rely on single exposure alpha damage (and the few staredown "DPS" vomit mechs with pure LPLs are a joke vs dakka).
That said, one downside i do see is that it does permit more optimization, to the point that i can easily get 100% heat+range, 100% radar derp, seismik, ECM, las-duration, and all im left with is a rather simple choice of either 100% speed tweak with ~75% of the survival nodes, or 100% survival with 50% speed tweak which isnt really much of a sacrifice. That doesnt really feel like a "give or take" choice, its more of a "get everything choice (at least for laser vomit builds which dont need anything but heat+range+duration, and armor is sorta needed on every mech).
Its pretty clear post skill tree patch that there is alot of "filler" in the skills that frankly no decent player is going to bother using, things like fast startup (anyone whos playing T1 level has override on anyway), gyros (balliustic shake isnt that big a deal, it gonna mess with snipers regardless of skill or not, and its gonna be irrelevant at shorter range anyways where you just point and click). The old tree at least made people choose to take some of the filler since there was no way to avoid it. Before, it was generally a good deal of the offensive tree on EVERY mech, and if i wanted radar derp+ECM, all i had left was the ability to get half the OPs tree and a couple token armor nodes. Speed tweak was completely off the table (unless i wanted no armor and ignored the OPs tree), and well i never even bothered thinking about things like JJs (they arent really a big deal now eiither as id rather have more offense then situational JJ boost if the mech even has the option to run JJs), or the consumable tree (i generally dont like to run consumables as they feel cheap and i do ok enough without spamming arty as a crutch, i only carry a single UAV on my QP mechs, and bring arty once in a blue moon when im in a group or something, that or FP back in the good old days when people still played it and it only had the classic attack generator maps on it).
I still say its way better then it was, but there is that drawback that skilling a mech nolonger feels like its give or take but rather a choice of which one skill you want to give up some of rather then before. Now, if i had 100 skill nodes i could literally have EVERY mech i play carry 100% of all the skills i deem useful in non niche circumstances. Before, id need at least 150 nodes to truly obtain evetything i wanted to obtain as all the truly desired things were locked at or near the bottom of rather large and complex trees filled with tons of junk i couldnt care less for. Its an improvement in the "fun aspect", but its worse from a choices aspect as there really arent much if any sacrifices i have to make to obtain every one of the truly desired skills, in my case: radar derp, speed tweak, heat/cooldown (only pick 1 depending on if energy or dakka), and seismik.
2
Goggles Paesano, on 24 May 2022 - 09:55 PM, said:
