Before we get into this its important to mention the bases of hardcore fans in their loyalties of the game. This is important to take into consideration, because there are multiple point of views within the topic. While some of these ideas might be relevant to a variety of hardcore types it might not be so relevant to casuals and some MechWarrior series veterans. The fact is that people come from all sorts of introductions of the Battletech universe depending on where they decide to get their referances from. This could be the tabletop, roleplaying game, and previous titles as a sort of heritage reference of the original creators that the series has grown from.
So, with that being said lets start talking about the Skill Tree that was added. It has been some time since the Skill Tree got implemented into MechWarrior Online with some lengthy debate that turned sour for the most part. This was to work in the idea of releases based on being caged by lore in the release of certain era mechs and a time where most people would have earned themselves a hand full of mechs over a really long period of time. So it would be a good time to discuss what was the things which made the Skill Tree fail and what things it had succeeded in. So what exactly is the Skill Tree system? and what are Nodes. A Skill Tree has categories of Firepower, Survival, Mobility, Jump jets, Sensors, Operations, and Auxiliary. These categories have nodes that are used as enhancements. These are within the skill tree to the d for the provided mech during the pregame. This would be before entering a match that players would have to take the time to augment the mechs abilities with nodes. Nodes could be purchased with in-game currency and real-life currency. Each node granted a small percent bonus in a specific category which stacked upon each other for grant even bigger bonuses. To change nodes there would be a penalty cost that would be paid in order to change up a mechs bonuses. Most of the times people would need to pay penalties if they wanted to change things up for a build or if a patch came up. The Skill Tree system had a big impact and people agreed with it or really disagreed with it which made it a controversial topic. The blow up of the arguments came discussions hit points like: (1.) in-game currency of time or the in-game currency for real world money was effected, (2.) by competitive necessity upgrading many mechs rather than an option (3.) relearning the game from such a big change. This means these players would be heading online to play MechWarrior Online to quick play, occasionally some faction play, and are placed in the tier system for a full enjoyment of the title with no major issues and some of the best balancing of most of the titles existence. Feeling the balanced play of the weapon systems that showed diverse and contrasting play styles in competitive play of short, medium, heavy, and assault, and a lessening of alpha strike boating load outs that specialize at certain ranges and have multiples of a weapon for predictable play. The Skill Tree had one of its gravest mistakes in its implementation in remaining to have a cost-to-play that effected both entry level, veteran level, and hardcore level player audiences. We will start by talking about where the system had its hardships and failures. It made it difficult and uncomfortable to try out nodes in a Skill Tree build and penalized when the choice wasn’t perfect the first time around and blocked people from spending points else where. While the high amount of experience is acceptable the pain of a skill tree comes from its high consumption of C-bills, being a chore of nodes and calculations with worry of penalization of costs, and regret in play style changing in between matches. This would also effect the variety of builds and length of time the developers themselves would need to wait to see player data, which means the developer would have data, but it wouldn’t be the data that is necessary to build a more efficient system that gets people into quick play faster. So its about time to get to talking about the cost additions. The Cost of the Skill tree would be another layer of difficulty for incoming players with its gained costs, and veterans who have taken investment in the game more than most titles out there were given additional passed on costs. It would feel like a harder game and a more expensive game with an additional learning curve that felt like being able to play the game needed additional investment to feel as if the game was forcing a cost addition to just play the game. To resolve the costs the Experience alone that shows devotion of playing the game to entertain paid players should be enticing. The C-bill costs make for less variety of gameplay with the available mech options, less information of play style variety of effective skill tree design builds, and less understanding of safe versus specialized risky play styles for further skill tree development. While the plan which was in place did reward those who stayed in the game, but many veteran players didn’t feel taken care of in the sense that the cost additions, added pregame time and in game adaptation, and competitive competition had made people leave altogether. Next daunting task was plan plotting nodes (aka. Skill Maze), while tedious, would be necessary to build an optimized skill tree for later. The data would have to be collected to see numbers that point at play style diversity to understand peoples design builds and what works and what doesn’t in node decision making to the exacts. It is good to the developer to have tools to make even better content it may also hurt the people who are looking for a quicker and cheaper way into match making. Players were worried though as time went on with minimal changes within the skill tree system. Eventually the players of MechWarrior Online began to find the safe-fist maximized builds with the skill tree. This allowed them to use node points carefully and with much less worry of losing their points, but in turn caused for low play style diversity with people not wanting to try riskier builds from the penalty system in place. Many players would look up Skill Tree builds and copy them. This leads players to build for Firepower and Survival for lasting effects in game winning conditions over the other options of Mobility, Jump Jets, Operations, Sensors, and Auxiliary. The reason being mobility and jump jets don’t have significant differences in mediums, heavies, and assault class mechs which makes it useful for 25% of the mech selections of lights that depend almost solely on maneuverability. Nodes took a whole lot of time that people were not enjoying, but knew they needed for their experience that absolutely needed the addition of nodes. This brings us now to game time. The reason it is important to measure the time into the game is that people want to play and have fun. This would mean to have a good and quick pace with visuals like icons and interface components to make other parts of the pre-game faster, selection boxes that are organized and can be placed in a specific order, and more that can be properly explained in another article that solely focuses on that. But for now lets get back to the importance that is the skill tree. It should be asked that why the node selections take so long, which is because the reasoning of penalty whenever you change one, so what could help this is by making them penalty free and when you purchase a node it stays with you. The way the skill tree has the panalty system as you collect nodes just wants people to never change play styles or change their nodes and then the skill tree becomes horribly stagnant. It brings then the question of why it exists if its not going to be the change of play style it was designed to be. It is one of the bigger issues that would help the game data immensely for a faster pregame skill tree selection system. So, why is pregame speed important for picking nodes and the skill tree? It needs to be quick, since people want it to assist whatever customized build they have. Because people who came from the MechWarrior franchise of the past most enjoyed of the time spent into the Mech Lab where it would be pretty fun to load out a mech and make serious decisions that are a little bit of the slower side, which is what fans of the game don’t mind due to the focus on load out selection. This doesn’t mean that the nodes and skill tree lose their effects or meaning in the game on the play style effects, but it is just not that interesting in the passive bonuses as it is to select what load outs are going to be used and interacted with in the match. Where the Skill Tree Succeeds, is its changing of play styles to add play style variety to load out builds that made boating a option instead of a necessity. It was necessary for Mech Warrior Online to move forward in the companies vision while also cooperating with people reaching out for a need for in depth game play past pinpoint aim and shoot. This had arisen, because at one point of playing the game the matches would become stale and predictable from being load out dependent. While this was at first from the large amount of players boating... this had continued even with the balances, since there was such a high attention to skill shots and not considering passive effects, a variety of lock on effects, and play style specialized effects. Skill Tree had left the old model of buying three of the same mech that are not wanted and not suited to their play style or choice of wanting but more boxed in to get to complete the skill chart. The feeling it gave players was nothing less then baffled, some felt the game was wasting their time by making it a mech grind fest, and saw junk filling up their selection windows for a necessary slower pregame to hinder the overall experience of getting matches or spending money forcefully and not out of wanting to. Even though it was a choice by the player the incentives were so big that it no longer felt like it was a choice anymore and just made it harder to play the game. By leaving such a bad system in the dust was great because people knew that it was holding the game back. Performances of mechs that were obscure or obsolete and deemed junk had become anew. The introduction of the skill tree was able to passively transform most mechs into viable options by improving it's firepower or survival. As a result there were much wider varieties of mechs being played, while not all mechs were seeing play it still raised the amount of mech variety in games. The nodes acted as Global Quirks that apply to all weapons, speed, armor, etc in a class and not forced to one customize specialization, but it also made the need for quirks to be a question of unnecessary complexity since the Skill Tree fixed apart of the problem Quirks were originally made for but limited players to one or two particular play styles. While the Skill tree offers much more than that. So now if a mech lacks in the radar and its radar sucks it can be an okay radar, got a build for energy? then there are firepower nodes for energy or ballistics or missiles, lacking in targeting then add that too! Some even jokingly called it the “Real Quirk System”, since it resolved certain mech issues that quirks couldn’t. While it still didn’t work with the differences in Clan and IS Technology contrasts it did begin to make people wonder why there couldn’t be an overall list of available equipment to both sides for a better game and placing lore in a much better place like (1.) game flavor of interactions- audio, and design, (2.) quality of life- trial mech rotation number, client performance, and lore immersion. There are always those who leave, but maintaining as many people in the game should be considered, especially with such a large effecting change to the game. While some may think it might be opening an old wound the topic discussion opens up the analysis and understanding of peoples feedback to the situation. This allows for more priceless ideas to enter the circle for people to be taken seriously for a possible change that could get some old players back into the game like the good old days, while making things even better for those joining for the first time. What are people worried about, what are people excited about, what are people thinking about...
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