11 replies to this topic

[Nightbird]

By making them deeper, I mean having more nodes to pick from and increasing the maximum bonus. So that instead of being able to max out firepower, survival, operations, speed tweak, and aux, with some left over nodes, you can max out only two areas and be forced to pick and choose more.

Edited by Nightbird, 08 July 2022 - 08:40 AM.

[YueFei]

Nightbird, on 08 July 2022 - 08:33 AM, said:

By making them deeper, I mean having more nodes to pick from and increasing the maximum bonus. So that instead of being able to max out firepower, survival, operations, speed tweak, and aux, with some left over nodes, you can max out only two areas and be forced to pick and choose more.

I like the idea of greater specialization and "opportunity costs". For example, an even deeper Survival Tree might be a lot more valuable for some mech builds and playstyles, but as it is now there's a "ceiling" preventing you from getting even more.

For example, is an extra 15 meters of range on SRMs really that valuable? Maybe I'd rather have an extra ~12% more armor.

[feeWAIVER]

I could be wrong but I don't think they can increase the amount of nodes, but they can adjust the values on the nodes that are there.

[TheCaptainJZ]

Since we still have to consider old players who could come back in a year or two and still need their old skills to continue working, as advertised, we can't really change the numbers of nodes at this time. And since PGI didn't want to do a drastic refund and redo, we're limited by fairness to minor tweaks. More nodes could be added but honestly I wish we had half as many nodes to spend and had to be more selective that way.

[Meep Meep]

TheCaptainJZ, on 08 July 2022 - 12:47 PM, said:

More nodes could be added but honestly I wish we had half as many nodes to spend and had to be more selective that way.

Yeah I'm also of the mind they should compress the skill tree if possible by a third or even half and adjust the bonus and points accordingly.

[Nightbird]

TheCaptainJZ, on 08 July 2022 - 12:47 PM, said:

Since we still have to consider old players who could come back in a year or two and still need their old skills to continue working, as advertised, we can't really change the numbers of nodes at this time. And since PGI didn't want to do a drastic refund and redo, we're limited by fairness to minor tweaks. More nodes could be added but honestly I wish we had half as many nodes to spend and had to be more selective that way.

If you increase the number of nodes to choose from, how does that break existing skills? You also don't need to change the value per node.

[FupDup]

In terms of node count, I don't see a "compression" happening because PGI's explicit intention was for progress to feel incremental and continuous.

So, for example, if one node for 2% range that costs 1600 XP is identical to 2 nodes for 1% range that cost 800 XP each from a gameplay perspective, PGI wants the latter because it lets people feel like they're making continuous progress rather than moving in large "chunks" with a big time gap between them.

Edited by FupDup, 08 July 2022 - 01:03 PM.

[LordNothing]

i often find myself asking why there isnt a node for x, where x is whatever thing im equipping to my mech at the time that isnt already affected by one or more nodes.

[YueFei]

I think what Nightbird is proposing is that we still have a max of 91 active nodes. We keep the existing Skill Tree as it is now. We just grow it with more nodes to go deeper for certain parts of it. The current Skill Tree would be a subset of the new Nightbird Skill Tree.

Seems like this should be somewhat feasible from an engineering PoV? All existing Skill Tree configs would still carry over and work as-is. And it's not power-creep because if you wanted to take advantage of some deeper portion of the tree, you'd have to make a corresponding sacrifice elsewhere and de-activate nodes in another tree.

We'd just have to be careful not to overly deepen certain trees which offer increasing returns (every additional node is worth more than the previous node), such as the Heat Gen tree.

[Nightbird]

YueFei, on 10 July 2022 - 11:11 PM, said:

I think what Nightbird is proposing is that we still have a max of 91 active nodes. We keep the existing Skill Tree as it is now. We just grow it with more nodes to go deeper for certain parts of it. The current Skill Tree would be a subset of the new Nightbird Skill Tree.

Seems like this should be somewhat feasible from an engineering PoV? All existing Skill Tree configs would still carry over and work as-is. And it's not power-creep because if you wanted to take advantage of some deeper portion of the tree, you'd have to make a corresponding sacrifice elsewhere and de-activate nodes in another tree.

We'd just have to be careful not to overly deepen certain trees which offer increasing returns (every additional node is worth more than the previous node), such as the Heat Gen tree.

Yep, thanks for explaining it better.

Edited by Nightbird, 11 July 2022 - 06:41 AM.

[LordNothing]

new stand alone nodes don't need to be refactored and no reset is required. powerful nodes like the ones that get buried to make them "cost more" are probibly off the table.

[Vorpal Puppy]

I'd settle for at least trying to make all the nodes we have viable. Seriously, no one is taking those 5% hill climb nodes. I'm not asking for a Direwolf to go up hills on Canyon like a Flea, but if you invest in those 4 nodes they should let a 100 tonner climb hills like an average heavy mech. And the 1.5% Reinforced Casing nodes --- 8 nodes gets a 12% reduction that only matters once your armor is gone. No thanks. You spend 8 nodes on that, your Gauss rifle should NEVER get critted out.

Fixing the numbers should be easy. Let's start there.