Posted 04 March 2017 - 03:04 PM

It was a while after reading, experimenting, and digesting the new skill tree before my opinion on what was bugging me about it finally had a word to succinctly describe it.



Granularity.



Or to put it in another way, how fine, small, or precise something is. Something with a high granularity would be a 0-100 slider in increments of 1, while that same slider with low granularity would only increment in units of 25. Put in the context of MWO’s Skill Tree, we are confronted with something with an inordinate amount of granularity.



There are 229 individual nodes, by my last count, and of them we are expected to finish with 91 choices. There are only 55 distinct skills as well.



=Firepower= (73)

(10)Range

(10)Laser Duration

(5)Velocity

(11)Cooldown

(8)Heat Gen

(5)High Explosive

(5)Missile Spread

(2)Missile Rack

(5)LBX Spread

(5)UAC Jam

(2)Magazine Capacity

(5)Gauss Charge



=Survival= (22)

(5)Reinforced Casing

(5)Skeletal Density

(5)Armor Hardening

(5)Shock Absorbance

(2)AMS Overload



=Mobility= (40)

(5)Kinetic Burst

(5)Hard Brake

(5)Torso Pitch

(5)Torso Yaw

(5)Torso Speed

(5)Arm Pitch

(5)Anchor Turn

(5)Speed Tweak



=Jump Jets= (20)

(5)Heat Shielding

(5)Vent Calibration

(5)Vectoring

(5)Lift Speed



=Operations= (25)

(5)Quick Ignition

(3)Speed Retention

(3)Hill Climb

(4)Improved Gyro

(5)Heat Containment

(5)Cool Run



=Sensors= (27)

(5)Target Info Gathering

(5)Target Decay

(5)Sensor Range

(2)Target Retention

(5)Radar Deprevation

(2)Seismic Sensor

(2)Enhancd ECM

(1)Advanced Zoom



=Auxiliary= (22)

(4)Consumable Slot

(4)Capture Assist

(2)UAV Range

(1)UAV Duration

(1)Extra UAV

(2)Enhanced NARC

(2)Enhanced Coolshot

(1)Coolshot Cooldown

(1)Coolant Reserves

(2)Extended Bombardment

(1)Expanded Reserves

(1)Enhanced Spotting



As an example, laser duration increments at a rate of -1.5% for each node. On the laser with the longest burn time, that’s only 0.0225 SECONDS of reduction. For cooldown, it’s 0.8% rate increase per node, shortening a 4s cooldown to 3.968s. UAC Jam chance reduces it by a paltry 1%, that reduces the chance of a uac5 jam from 15% to 14.85%. These choices are far too granular.



No choice, if it is to be a meaningful one, should have an effect that is too small to be noticed by the player in the course of a game. It cheapens the experience choice is supposed to represent, as well as making it many times more tedious to actually use.



The solution is both simple in practice as well as in design. Reduce the number of nodes throughout the tree and the number of selections to the player by a proportionate amount. As a corollary to this, certain nodes would serve to be combined into the same node to bring their value up, and in the case of the firepower tree, making it less prone to boating singular weapon types.



As an example, I’ve provided suggested number of nodes for each skill.



=Firepower= (15)

(2)Range

(2)Laser Duration & Velocity

(3)Cooldown

(2)Heat Gen

(1)High Explosive

(2)Missile & LBX Spread & UAC Jam

(2)Missile Rack & Magazine Capacity

(1)Gauss Charge



=Survival= (8)

(2)Reinforced Casing

(2)Skeletal Density

(2)Armor Hardening

(1)Shock Absorbance

(1)AMS Overload



=Mobility= (10)

(2)Kinetic Burst & Hard Brake

(1)Torso Pitch & Yaw

(2)Torso Speed

(1)Arm Pitch

(2)Anchor Turn

(2)Speed Tweak



=Jump Jets= (4)

(2)Heat Shielding & Vent Calibration

(2)Vectoring & Lift Speed



=Operations= (8)

(1)Quick Ignition

(1)Speed Retention

(1)Hill Climb

(1)Improved Gyro

(2)Heat Containment

(2)Cool Run



=Sensors= (13)

(2)Target Info Gathering

(2)Target Decay

(2)Sensor Range

(1)Target Retention

(2)Radar Deprevation

(2)Seismic Sensor

(1)Enhancd ECM

(1)Advanced Zoom



=Auxiliary= (15)

(4)Consumable Slot

(1)Capture Assist

(1)UAV Range

(1)UAV Duration

(1)Extra UAV

(1)Enhanced NARC

(1)Enhanced Coolshot

(1)Coolshot Cooldown

(1)Coolant Reserves

(1)Extended Bombardment

(1)Expanded Reserves

(1)Enhanced Spotting



Again, this is just an example spread of reduced node count, and this is assuming the total bonus provided from maxing nodes is roughly the same. This reduces the total number of nodes available to around 73, and the number of choices to be made on this tree somewhere between 25-30 Skill Points. A huge deal friendlier to the player and also makes it easier to do TRUE balancing on the skill tree. Because at the end of the day, for it to be a choice, picking one node needs to be just as worth taking as any other node for it to be a real choice, and not the illusion of one.

