Were the old captain skills too "jack of all trades"?

[Figment]

Now, I'm not saying the current rework is good, optimal or whatever. I'm saying, let's look at it in another light.

 

 

It did occur to me that the cost of fully speccing out a ship as I used to have them is more expensive, so I have to make choices now. I'm wondering to what degree is this a bad thing really? Were we, as a playerbase, spoiled to be jacks of all trades? A lot of skills after all had multiple effects. +1 hydro +1 fog. Or +1 fighter +1 heal. AA damage and range upgrades were combined, etc. And many of the combis wern't really costly to add up. That changed now and people fume because they feel they lost something. Which is true, but the question is whether they were spoiled for having it. Was it good for the game to have it all?

 

And wasn't that the kind of thing that would happen in WoWs? Because you pretty much all specced in the same way for most of the things you needed for that class' playstyle. And without captain skills becoming more expensive, this would occur again after a split up. Yes, ships had some perks, but those were more tied to their specific hardwired core designs. Not so much the captain skills as those just amplified them.

 

Just... What if, this rework provides a basis to actually create unique, specialized playstyles? That will require constructive critique though, currently, it's just bashing due to how people gravitate to a handful of seemingly most powerful perks again.

 

And sure, dead-eye sucks, secondary builds aren't powerful enough, they're not available to all unit types, etc. Balancing issues. But what if we see this as a first step to proper differentiation with alternative playstyles that are actually viable on a ship by ship basis? Your ship being more unique and contributing its own, specialized part, is a good thing IMO. The problem is balancing completely different skills out and ensuring people need to make hard, meaningful choices that reward in one way as much as they penalize in another way. I'd even say the skillpoint increase is counter to this as it allows for a more complete build. How complete should a build be compared to stock anyway? Shouldn't stock ships have a decent chance? Should perks be this impacting just because you grinded more exp with this particular captain? Did we have too many jacks of all trades, or too many uber-specialists? Were certain captain skills not on par because of the ship they were used on, or because their impact is negligible or too situational?

 

I'd say we should reconsider how to approach the captain skill issue, than from a pure bashing point of view.

 

"PlanetSide 1 analogy explaining my view"

 

I'm a PlanetSide 1 player at heart. In PS1, certification choices, in what you could and could not certify into, determined your capabilities and the way you were forced to play the game by not allowing you to do things other people could. A FPSRTS game with a Rock-Paper-Scissors design, means that you get a bit of balance by the more advanced stuff you get in one specialty, the less you can do in other fields.

 

It made you more unique. It meant you had strengths and weaknesses to exploit by you and your opponent. Weapons wern't always per definition more powerful, they tended to have optimal situations to use them in and if used well, even the non-combat skills were vital, like hacking to open equipment, vehicle terminals, recapture spawnpoints faster, etc. Some people specced in vehicles, others were gunners since they specced in weapons, or were pilots, snipers, mech suits, medics, heavier bodyarmour, you get the idea.

 

After a number of years without any development, finally some new units, weapons and advanced skills were added. More units, more choices, more specialization, more uniqueness, right? Everyone happy because unlike the Battleframe Robotics (OP mobile suits that some tanks couldn't even damage due to the regenerating shield) and poorly designed maps nobody wanted to go to, this people could get behind. But, because of adding that, they said "Well, we'll just raise the cert points you can spend on weaponry from Battle Rank (BR) 20 to BR23. You get two more certpoints and the rest is cosmetics, okay?". Fine, we said. With two more you could already get extra advanced skills that opened up your abilities, like get one of: adv. hacking (faster hacking, vehicle theft), a fighter aircraft (high mobility across 64km2 maps) or heavy weapons (CQC advantage), cloak suit (invisibility) adv. medic (faster healing and reviving skills) or respec your extra points to get more vehicles or anti-vehicle weapons. Useful things which you couldn't do before and had to work around with depending on your choices, but it was fairly limited, so fair enough.

 

Then they raised the BR to 25. For dumping exp and getting a new skin. For my empire, we got black armour at BR25 instead of the golden one at BR20. People were nostalgic about their golden suits being gone ofc. Suit upgrades came with rank and people had been working on it for ages. But again, a few more cert points were added to placate some forum whiners.

 

Then, they added BR40. Up to BR39, every two ranks would give you an extra point already. But at BR40, you'd unlock ALL certs. Which meant you could create any load-out without any of the downsides of not being able to do something else, as long as you had a REK hacking tool to hack into terminals so you could change loadouts. Faced with vehicles? No worry, grab your own. Need to get somewhere fast across the continent? No worries, you don't need to drive a 1pt ATV, take an aircraft! Died? Don't worry about your vehicle reacquisition timer, just grab another aircraft. And another type. Or another type. Timers are vehicle specific after all! Need a tank? Sure. Here have one. Need to quickly hack and only have 15 seconds left? Well at BR39 maybe you had no hacking and it would take a minute. But now? 15s is all you need! And everyone can do it, so no point taking out just the hacking specialists in an overrun defense! No more need to pick off the medics first for attrition, because EVERYONE IS AN ADV. MEDIC NOW! Less strategy! YAY! LONG LIVE THE ZERG! Why would you use low grade weapons if you can use the heaviest for your situation? Here, everyone get a mech suit! Here, let's give everyone access to mobile spawn vehicles, so you can never lift a siege by destroying the key one. There's always another, somewhere nearby. No more locking defenders out of terminals and locking them into their spawnpyjamas with basic weapons, because where before sometimes nobody brought a hacking cert, now everyone could do this and it became a game of numbers in virtually all situations where before various forms of attrition was possible.

 

It made the game awful. Nobody was unique anymore. Nobody could outwit another anymore based on their limited set of available tools to make due with, because they'd bring the counter to your counter to their counter to your counter.

[DFens_666]

5 minutes ago, Figment said:

Was it good for the game to have it all?

 

I dont think it was bad at all. Now they just added some situational skill, which might not even be good, and increased price for other skills, artificially creating the need for us to pick skills.

For playing BBs, you can still pick AR/BoS + FP/CE/extra heal - same as before, only now you need 2 more points and you dont get the benefit of having an extra charge of consumables. Now, if you pick dead-eye, obviously you need to give up something else. Does that matter? I dont think so, because picking deadeye means, you will hang back more than before. So if you sit further back, you can give up the extra heal or FP.

For Cruisers, i actually dont see any difference to before, they still dont have any variety at all. New skills are situational and/or useless and something like heavy AP shells has barely any impact imo.

DDs might be a bit different, alltho i think gunboats basicly got nerfed. No BFT (or basicly a worse one). New skills often come with downsides, or provide questionable benefits for 4 pts (Dazzle).

 

The way i see it, WG has decided to provide 2 different playstyles with builds:

- Playing for team / win

- Playing to farm damage from safety.

Atleast this is true for BBs and Cruisers (probably for CVs aswell, atleast in theory, but i think the team benefit skills are actually worse). BBs can farm damage from the back with Deadeye, or go for a tankbuild or even a close quarter build (cant really blame the meta here for the "usefulness" of secondary builds). Cruisers can do the same, ignore concealment, and spam from maxrange with extra DPM/alpha damage. Or go concealment build, maybe even take AA skills and support your DDs, get the caps and win.

Since we know, majority of players doesnt care for winning, we will get stuck in a meta of longrange damage farming, where it will be both frustrating and boring for either side. One of them will win because they get the caps, and the others will lose while having the illusion to farm more damage.

If you want to play for objectives but end up in a team full of damage farmers = you are fucked. That just happened to me while playing Kagero. I got a cap, spotted enemy DDs. They bullied me away together with Cruisers, while my team sat at the mapborder, dealing no damage. I ended with 30k spotting damage, while Cruisers were pushing with full health and i had no backup against enemy DDs.

I was on the other side with my Albemarle couple of days ago, which ended with me having 40k damage. Enemies never left spawn except for their DDs, which got slaughtered by us Cruisers helping our DDs. We held all caps, enemies were borderhumping. Only positive thing was getting a win out of that.

[22cm]

29 minutes ago, DFens_666 said:

If you want to play for objectives but end up in a team full of damage farmers = you are fucked. That just happened to me while playing Kagero. I got a cap, spotted enemy DDs. They bullied me away together with Cruisers, while my team sat at the mapborder, dealing no damage. I ended with 30k spotting damage, while Cruisers were pushing with full health and i had no backup against enemy DDs.

I was on the other side with my Albemarle couple of days ago, which ended with me having 40k damage. Enemies never left spawn except for their DDs, which got slaughtered by us Cruisers helping our DDs. We held all caps, enemies were borderhumping. Only positive thing was getting a win out of that.

For damage, you have to play a Thunderor these days...

[Figment]

50 minutes ago, DFens_666 said:

 

I dont think it was bad at all. Now they just added some situational skill, which might not even be good, and increased price for other skills, artificially creating the need for us to pick skills.

For playing BBs, you can still pick AR/BoS + FP/CE/extra heal - same as before, only now you need 2 more points and you dont get the benefit of having an extra charge of consumables.

I'm not saying it was that bad, I'm just saying we did get a lot of perks quite easily.

 

To the point of which I'd say some builds were spoiled (not secondary loadouts though, that's way too situational to use in every match to its fullest extend).

 

 

What you indicate here though is that you now have to make a conscious choice between two appealing things, which you didn't always have to before. Either improvement is worth a lot in terms of competitive edge, so was it really that necessary to give two perks for the price of one? Like extra (super) heal on top of an extra hydro use.


That said I also don't agree with all the costs, but by putting the extra heal as a 4pt skill, it does make it easier for stock ships to compete overall as there's fewer people with that extra heal. Which isn't per se a bad thing for the game's health either as it makes it more competitive and accessible for perk deprived captains. Playing stock is often hard enough for many people, on top of which captain skills are inactive or you have fewer points... How big an advantage does the grinded up player actually need to have a unique situational or general advantage over another player?

 

 

The rest of your post is more about the specific choices provided by WG in this instance of the game. So I'll treat those seperately. :)

 

Quote

Now, if you pick dead-eye, obviously you need to give up something else. Does that matter? I dont think so, because picking deadeye means, you will hang back more than before. So if you sit further back, you can give up the extra heal or FP.

IMO the general perks should be weaker than situational perks, but situational perks should be more powerful as the situation is less common. Hence why Dead-Eye is so poorly balanced too easy to create that situation and not to the advantage of the game either. It should thus be weaker and certainly not a near default pick.

Quote

For Cruisers, i actually dont see any difference to before, they still dont have any variety at all. New skills are situational and/or useless and something like heavy AP shells has barely any impact imo.

Pretty much agree on the specifics from what little I've delpthed into the cruiser perks. Now, situational is fine, but very questionable indeed whether it's valued properly or if its'the right type of skill to add as an option. If it's too situational, or if too complex conditions are applied to understand for some players, is it the right skill to add in a tree? Or at this cost, or this strength? But, as I havn't really looked into them much, I can't really say much about these specific skills. I can say that pretty much all my cruisers used to be specced very similar.

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DDs might be a bit different, alltho i think gunboats basicly got nerfed. No BFT (or basicly a worse one). New skills often come with downsides, or provide questionable benefits for 4 pts (Dazzle).

Downsides isn't a bad thing if the skill is very powerful, but it seemed to me like they were grasping for straws with DDs. The torp upgrades seem reasonable, but yes, the range extension and all is comparatively very expensive for gunboats. Then again, unlikely they'd invest in torps, so would have more points extra. And how much extra on top of range should they get is a matter of balancing.

 

That you can take a more completely different approach to perks to improve DD performance compared to the old situation for different types of DDs is IMO a good thing though. Whether it's the right perks or if they're balanced right isn't my point though. I'd rather there'd be more ways to spec a gunboat that each are situationally or in general effective, giving interactions between these DDs be more than first to hit in a duel wins most the time.

 

 

The rest of your post is basically a rant about Dead-Eye, so I'll leave it at that But I agree, Dead-Eye is too powerful and placed in the wrong hands this leads to unwanted gameplay. That's a consequence of poorly thoughtout balance and lack of "design for abuse" though and isn't an argument for whether or not perks should be more specialist and/or expensive. I think it's safe to say that the design team on this lacks some experience in balancing or just put stuff in certain tiers to make a nice lay-out rather than balance it all out.

 

[DFens_666]

8 minutes ago, Figment said:

What you indicate here though is that you now have to make a conscious choice between two appealing things, which you didn't always have to before. Either improvement is worth a lot in terms of competitive edge, so was it really that necessary to give two perks for the price of one? Like extra (super) heal on top of an extra hydro use.

 

But here is the issue: Even if i want an extra hydro/plane/reloadboost/speedboost - i cant get it anymore. They just removed that option and now its "just" a heal. TBF, it always was just a heal really, except for russians it was also an extra DCP, and they still get that. Like, i didnt take SI on french BBs because i got an extra reloadbooster, i took it because i got an extra heal.

If we are honest, for the vast majority that extra heal is actually useless. It even was so under the old format. If they overextend, they die without using that heal. If they hang back and dont tank for 10 minutes, that extra heal is useless. One could even make the arguement, that not using every heal to its full potential in the first place the extra heal useless, but it also isnt (kinda). If you press your heal always when you can, you can use 5 heals - even if they are only worth 2 heals. But i think you know what im getting at.

Just to sum up when the extra heal is actually useful:

- Need to tank the entire game, and the game needs to last atleast 15 minutes or so

- Every heal needs to be used to its full potential

- Getting citadelled might make an extra heal irrelevant

Even many good players wont use all heals all the time, mostly because games dont last long enough.

THinking about it, SI always was a situational skill, which gives you the feeling that it always gives you a benefit (well, now it actually does by improving every heal by 10%).

 

19 minutes ago, Figment said:

IMO the general perks should be weaker than situational perks, but situational perks should be more powerful as the situation is less common.

 

Yep, that would make sense, but WG didnt really get that one right at all (imo). And overall, thats the issue with the rework, atleast for me. The new skills are too situational and bad, or are not that strong if they work all the time. Only deadeye seems to slipped through, which just makes it better almost every game, while providing huge benefits.

 

20 minutes ago, Figment said:

If it's too situational, or if too complex conditions are applied to understand for some players, is it the right skill to add in a tree?

 

Look at Outnumbered as an example. Its extremely situational, and profits questionable benefits. More speed is usually not necessary, and having better dispersion is kinda useless for Cruisers, as they already have good dispersion. Would make sense for BCs, but problem remains, that the situation almost never occurs, so its just a waste of 4 points really.

[Figment]

3 hours ago, DFens_666 said:

But here is the issue: Even if i want an extra hydro/plane/reloadboost/speedboost - i cant get it anymore. They just removed that option and now its "just" a heal. TBF, it always was just a heal really, except for russians it was also an extra DCP, and they still get that. Like, i didnt take SI on french BBs because i got an extra reloadbooster, i took it because i got an extra heal.

Yes, but you got both. It can be a choice now. If the in-game competitive value differs, then the choice could be made for different levels. If you'd say "you can get either a heal for 4 points, or extra reload booster for 3pts + 1% fire damage for an additional point", then you got more of an actual choice to make than you used to at third level perk.

 

If you just get both, you're pretty much "spoiled". You don't need to make a choice and it's a clear better option than the alternative point expenditure. The thing with meaningfull choices is that they're each worth something in their own right.

 

Wanting both, having had both, may just have been too much value in one perk to get people to differentiate in playstyles on the same ship, have different competitive edges on the same ship and do well regardless of setup just because it suits your playstyle. We did not have a lot of choice for different but "equal" competitive edges with different setups for various ships in the past. I'm not saying what WG did this time is the correct implementation and execution, but I can get behind their more abstract goal of creating diversity and different challenges or playstyles on the same ship or at least the same class of ship. 

Quote

If we are honest, for the vast majority that extra heal is actually useless. It even was so under the old format. If they overextend, they die without using that heal. If they hang back and dont tank for 10 minutes, that extra heal is useless. One could even make the arguement, that not using every heal to its full potential in the first place the extra heal useless, but it also isnt (kinda). If you press your heal always when you can, you can use 5 heals - even if they are only worth 2 heals. But i think you know what im getting at.

Just to sum up when the extra heal is actually useful:

- Need to tank the entire game, and the game needs to last atleast 15 minutes or so

- Every heal needs to be used to its full potential

- Getting citadelled might make an extra heal irrelevant

Even many good players wont use all heals all the time, mostly because games dont last long enough.

THinking about it, SI always was a situational skill, which gives you the feeling that it always gives you a benefit (well, now it actually does by improving every heal by 10%).

In cases where you need to carry because your team explodes or you got yourself in over your head, the heals allow you to be less careful, even if just in a non-conscious way. This could be great for some players, others may prefer to use something else. But it wasn't so much of a choice as it was a default in the past. Of course, SI for the extra spotter aircraft was useless what with the reactivation time and again, situational use. But if the perk was an extra spotter and shorter reactivation time, even at shorter spotting time it might become a useful perk on its own.

 

Perks should never be game breaking, so I would hope they'd never make something so powerful it becomes a default. In fact, the whole point of speccing out differently, but still be useful, should be that they only give situational boosts. The way in which you play + maps tend to determine which those are.

Quote

Yep, that would make sense, but WG didnt really get that one right at all (imo). And overall, thats the issue with the rework, atleast for me. The new skills are too situational and bad, or are not that strong if they work all the time. Only deadeye seems to slipped through, which just makes it better almost every game, while providing huge benefits.

 

Look at Outnumbered as an example. Its extremely situational, and profits questionable benefits. More speed is usually not necessary, and having better dispersion is kinda useless for Cruisers, as they already have good dispersion. Would make sense for BCs, but problem remains, that the situation almost never occurs, so its just a waste of 4 points really.

Yeah, but of course it's not got any balance patches, such changes always get things wrong the first time. Which is why constructive feedback is important.

I get what they were going for though, but I don't think they understand the game as well as they think they do and that they're not too familiar with how to balance this right. The fact that each tier has an equal amount of perks, some of which used to be cheaper and some seem very non-sensical suggests there was a point where they were just coming up with stuff for the sake of filling in slots and getting nice collumns, rather than really balancing the net worth of each perk against each other.

[Aethervoxx]

To respond to your topic question, OP, "probably" (is my response).

It appears the old Cpt Skill table actually offered more Cpt skill choices.

[DFens_666]

12 hours ago, Figment said:

Yes, but you got both. It can be a choice now. If the in-game competitive value differs, then the choice could be made for different levels. If you'd say "you can get either a heal for 4 points, or extra reload booster for 3pts + 1% fire damage for an additional point", then you got more of an actual choice to make than you used to at third level perk.

 

If you just get both, you're pretty much "spoiled". You don't need to make a choice and it's a clear better option than the alternative point expenditure. The thing with meaningfull choices is that they're each worth something in their own right.

 

Wanting both, having had both, may just have been too much value in one perk to get people to differentiate in playstyles on the same ship, have different competitive edges on the same ship and do well regardless of setup just because it suits your playstyle. We did not have a lot of choice for different but "equal" competitive edges with different setups for various ships in the past. I'm not saying what WG did this time is the correct implementation and execution, but I can get behind their more abstract goal of creating diversity and different challenges or playstyles on the same ship or at least the same class of ship. 

 

There is also one other thing to concider, which i didnt really think about before:

SI was a 3 pt skill, and you always had to pick 1 of those to get to the 4pt skills. Now, what were those options actually if you got a benefit from SI? BoS was definetely the 2nd best id say. BFT might have been an option if you wanted to go FULL secondaries, and Vigilance if you are afraid of Torps. Only a full secondary build would prevent you from taking SI aswell (ManSec, AFT, IFHE). Usually even if you wanted to take BoS or Vigilance, you would still take SI first.

And there were also only 2x4pt skills worth to take: CE and FP.

 

Now, everything is different. You still have to take a 3pt skill, but it cant be SI any longer. So you take something else, but now you actually have to pick from 4 different 4 point skills which you might want: Dead-Eye, FP, CE, Extra Repair party.

But lets assume, WG would move the extra heal back to be a 3pt skill. If you would want Dead-Eye, FP and CE, you could take a maximum of 2 3pt skills, which could be: Extra Heal, BoS OR AR. AR previously was a 2pt skill, so this changed aswell.

 

I think i have to clarify one thing for me tho:

I dont really mind having to choose between skills, but the problem for me was the way WG did it. They said, they wanted to give more us more options, which they maybe tried, but generally failed. In the end, if you want to take the same build as before, you need 21 pts instead of 19. Strictly speaking, i cant get both PT and EM, because they are both 2 pt skills.

Moving AR up is ok for me, as it was just too good for a 2pt skill. But i dont think nerfing/changing SI AND moving it up to a 4pt skill was the right way.

[Figment]

Oh certainly, I don’t think they’ve valued these skills correctly. Which is hard to do right in any case since they’re so different from one another and situations to be used in differ as well in frequency, context and impact. I presume they’ll revalue at least some of them sooner or later.

 

IMO not all the top certs need to be 4pts either. 3pts for an additional secondary upgrade could be fine as well for instance.

 

You could also set a prereq perk at level 3 for a specific level 4 perk. In that case basically it becomes 6 total, rather than 7, but you couldn’t opt for just the most powerful, forcing a more specialist role, at slightly reduced overall cost, but with less “cherrypicking”.

 

To me the perk system just feels rudimentary as is. But then I was used to the extensive PlanetSide 1 system.

 

The PlanetSide 2 system works a bit differently again. There you can cert into everything by grind and you can enhance  skills in multiple steps to unlock advanced abilities per class. From holding more ammo to being able to use items or skills. I never liked that system.

[Figment]

 

Here's a video showcasing a bit of how the PlanetSide 1 certification system worked (post BR40, though I'd say the guy is slightly underinformed on some things, it shows well how people had to make choices - and less and less impacting choices the more certs they got).

 

You had trees in certain key categories that would allow you to do more.

 

Take the Hacking skills:

 

Basic Hacking (0 CP)  - Access to Remote Elektronics Kit (REK): hack open IFF doors (slowly), hack base/tower control consoles (slowly) 

|
Hacking (2 CP) - Slightly faster hacking, new ability: open friendly locked terminals and lockers

|
Advanced Hacking (3 CP) - Significantly faster hacking, new abilities: steal unoccupied vehicles, open locked enemy terminals and lockers

|

|-> Expert Hacking (2CP) - Very fast hacking, new ability: steal occupied vehicles, remove Data Corruption viruses, install/upgrade painfields in generator rooms/spawn rooms, upgrade cloak generators with healing and radar

|

Data Corruption Hacking (3CP) - New abilities: T-REK (virus installation weapon), install viruses in bases to remove specific base benefits (radar, faster energy drain, disable terminals, etc), install viruses to temporarily turn enemy turrets to attack their own team, virus to reverse vehicle controls, install pain field in enemy cloak generator

 

OR: From Adv. Hacking -> Electronics Expert (combi pack of Exp. Hacking and Data Corruption) (4CP). I don't think this was needed, but it basically saved you a cert point to get the package deal.

 

 

Similar trees and cert packs existed for engineering equipment, weapons, infantry suits and vehicles.

 

Light fighter (3CP) - dive bomber (2CP) or AA fighter (2CP)

Air transport (3CP) (cluster bomber + vehicle carrier/repair unit + troop carrier) -> Gunship (2CP) (anti tank bomber + carrier gunship)

Buggies (2CP) -> AA buggy (2CP)

Light tank (2CP) -> medium battle tanks (2CP) -> Battleframe Robotics (BFR) (3CP) (think mechwarrior) (2 player) -> Scout BFR (1 person light BFR) (2CP)

 

And that's just half of the trees.

 

With just 20 points to spend, you can see how you quickly are forced to make some hard choices. Most had just a few vehicles, two or three support certs, weapons and suit certs, but it also meant most people had very unique setups and you'd reach out to your allies for specific support actions, transport or counters to whatever you were facing. Team dependency and sense of community was therefore great. But at low cost and increasing the amount of cert points, you can also see how quickly such a system inflates to the point of get all counters you might need and become a jack of all trades.

 

 

 

Now in WoWs we don't need to go that extensive, but the basic premise of perk trees, rather than individual stand-alone picks could easily apply.

[Hugh_Ruka]

20 hours ago, Figment said:

Now, I'm not saying the current rework is good, optimal or whatever. I'm saying, let's look at it in another light.

 

 

It did occur to me that the cost of fully speccing out a ship as I used to have them is more expensive, so I have to make choices now. I'm wondering to what degree is this a bad thing really? Were we, as a playerbase, spoiled to be jacks of all trades? A lot of skills after all had multiple effects. +1 hydro +1 fog. Or +1 fighter +1 heal. AA damage and range upgrades were combined, etc. And many of the combis wern't really costly to add up. That changed now and people fume because they feel they lost something. Which is true, but the question is whether they were spoiled for having it. Was it good for the game to have it all?

 

And wasn't that the kind of thing that would happen in WoWs? Because you pretty much all specced in the same way for most of the things you needed for that class' playstyle. And without captain skills becoming more expensive, this would occur again after a split up. Yes, ships had some perks, but those were more tied to their specific hardwired core designs. Not so much the captain skills as those just amplified them.

 

Just... What if, this rework provides a basis to actually create unique, specialized playstyles? That will require constructive critique though, currently, it's just bashing due to how people gravitate to a handful of seemingly most powerful perks again.

 

And sure, dead-eye sucks, secondary builds aren't powerful enough, they're not available to all unit types, etc. Balancing issues. But what if we see this as a first step to proper differentiation with alternative playstyles that are actually viable on a ship by ship basis? Your ship being more unique and contributing its own, specialized part, is a good thing IMO. The problem is balancing completely different skills out and ensuring people need to make hard, meaningful choices that reward in one way as much as they penalize in another way. I'd even say the skillpoint increase is counter to this as it allows for a more complete build. How complete should a build be compared to stock anyway? Shouldn't stock ships have a decent chance? Should perks be this impacting just because you grinded more exp with this particular captain? Did we have too many jacks of all trades, or too many uber-specialists? Were certain captain skills not on par because of the ship they were used on, or because their impact is negligible or too situational?

 

I'd say we should reconsider how to approach the captain skill issue, than from a pure bashing point of view.

 

I do get your point and in general I do agree with it. The problem is, the choice is still not there even now. Yes you are forced to pick skills in a different way, but you can only pick so many for the given role and there's still a basic skeleton build valid for each class.

 

So the result is different builds that should in theory achieve the same cost different amount of points. Thus people will take the builds that they see being most effective. Just compare TANK BB build to a Dead-eye build. The effectiveness is vastly different for the amount of points spent. Same for secondary build.

 

Cruisers ? There's only one build people are going for now and that's the no-concealment damage build. And some cruisers (RN CLs) don't really have any skills to pick after basic skills that all the other cruisers pick.

 

DDs builds are varied because the DDs are the only class that has variety forced by main armament (torpedoes, guns, hybrids). But even there some variety was removed (you cannot build around consumables anymore - Germans and hydro for example).

 

And don't get me started on CVs ...

 

[Schtroebchen]

improved size of smokepuff is also missing btw. but maybee cuz the skill is gone

[DFens_666]

49 minutes ago, Figment said:

but the basic premise of perk trees,

 

I suggested that some years ago, and they told me, they dont want skill trees... i think it could be interesting.

[Figment]

2 hours ago, Hugh_Ruka said:

I do get your point and in general I do agree with it. The problem is, the choice is still not there even now. Yes you are forced to pick skills in a different way, but you can only pick so many for the given role and there's still a basic skeleton build valid for each class.

Agreed, the current execution is lackluster, I'm more looking at the concept and 'overhaul need' behind the change, than how well the change was done in this instance. :)

 

2 hours ago, DFens_666 said:

I suggested that some years ago, and they told me, they dont want skill trees... i think it could be interesting.

They'd rather see the cherry picking that results in all the same builds for most ships.  Likely based on an assumption of what the greedy player (who'll stay and play longer) wants.

[Hugh_Ruka]

2 minutes ago, Figment said:

Agreed, the current execution is lackluster, I'm more looking at the concept and 'overhaul need' behind the change, than how well the change was done in this instance. :)

 

 

I have outlined this in one of the devblog comment threads but, the system should work like this:

 

1. Common skill tree - things relevant for all classes - consumables, concealment etc

2. Class-specific skill tree - as the name implies

 

Then you can set a quota on the common skills to unlock the class specific and done. Flexible system that offers the option for deep specialization for each particular class...

[rustyfeeder]

Yes, this might be just a start for future changes. They made this small step being afraid to piss off manchildren. Or they didn't have enough funding to do something proper. Or they didn't know how. Make ur pick.

[Karasu_Hidesuke]

At least half the BB captain skills are rubbish now unless you opt for full secondary skill which itself may be complete rubbish if you do it with the wrong ships. On the plus side, it makes selecting skills easier at least there BB's are considered IMO. DD's are a little trickier, haven't yet figured out what my optimum DD build is going to be. With the old system, I usually only needed to figure out whether I needed torpedo acceleration or not.

[22cm]

It is worse. If increasing the cap for XP was the cause for this rework, they could keep the old system and just add 2 more points. 

[Prophecy82]

On 1/26/2021 at 5:59 PM, Figment said:

 

That you can take a more completely different approach to perks to improve DD performance compared to the old situation for different types of DDs is IMO a good thing though. Whether it's the right perks or if they're balanced right isn't my point though. I'd rather there'd be more ways to spec a gunboat that each are situationally or in general effective, giving interactions between these DDs be more than first to hit in a duel wins most the time.

 

No, you cant. Infact the Rework really butcherd some (overspecialized) Builds I ran. 

My Marceau for example was a pure DD Hunter Build (CE, RPF, BFT, Reload Mod). t doesnt work anymore since WG made BFT the worst pick ever and the stupid "Fearless" Skill debuffs concealment. 

So you have to play it like any other Gunboat now, which is boring af. 

 

Regarding DD Skills: You go Torp or you go Dakka and these are the only viable paths. Hybrids or Specialists are dead thanks to this Rebork.  

 

And the worst part is: even if you recreate your old build with a 21Pter, you get less effectivness out of it then before. In a class that already has the lowest avg. dmg!

 

What that rework did is just a scam: You get more Points but less viable builds. WTF? 

Sure, you can run nonsensical builds like Kitakaze without CE, but whats the point of that? 

IF WG wanted variety they would have made (speaking of DDs here) CE and Last Stand 1 Pt Skills. THEN we could have tried diverse builds and by doing so they would have reduced the Powergap between Vets and Newbies.... but Im repeating myself...

 

[Figment]

2 hours ago, Prophecy82 said:

 

No, you cant. Infact the Rework really butcherd some (overspecialized) Builds I ran. 

My Marceau for example was a pure DD Hunter Build (CE, RPF, BFT, Reload Mod). t doesnt work anymore since WG made BFT the worst pick ever and the stupid "Fearless" Skill debuffs concealment. 

So you have to play it like any other Gunboat now, which is boring af. 

 

Regarding DD Skills: You go Torp or you go Dakka and these are the only viable paths. Hybrids or Specialists are dead thanks to this Rebork.  

 

And the worst part is: even if you recreate your old build with a 21Pter, you get less effectivness out of it then before. In a class that already has the lowest avg. dmg!

 

What that rework did is just a scam: You get more Points but less viable builds. WTF? 

Sure, you can run nonsensical builds like Kitakaze without CE, but whats the point of that? 

IF WG wanted variety they would have made (speaking of DDs here) CE and Last Stand 1 Pt Skills. THEN we could have tried diverse builds and by doing so they would have reduced the Powergap between Vets and Newbies.... but Im repeating myself...

 

You seem to have missed the point as you look at what was done by WG this patch and I’m talking about a situation that could be.

 

As I said, the current implementation is an example of implementing a perk system, as was the old system just an example. You can’t argue it can’t be done because of a build neither of us may agree with as the right way to implement such a thing.

 

If you reread the section you quoted you’ll find I’m explicitly not talking about the current update, but more generally. So bringing up the current built as evidence of anything other than how not to balance pers is irrelevant to me.

 

However, you touch something else I predicted in an earlier post, where removing abilities from people who relied on getting multiple benefits without downsides or real choices will be felt and not accepted as easily. It also touches on whether cost is acceptable or not. Furthermore you claim that a 1pt CE and LS would result in more diversity, while in reality this would become default picks for destroyers then because they are so powerful and important general purpose combat edges and you just made them incredibly cheap. One could not afford to not get these. That is not going to create diversity at all.

 

If you’d want meaningful concealment skills differentiation, then you could split CE up in for instance two or even three 5% concealment distance reduction steps, worth 2, 3 or 4 skillpoints. Then you could opt to save points for something else. Go full concealment at full cost at the cost of some other upgrade or save points in order to get for instance more range.

 

 

I would personally have skillpoint trees in various fields for DDs. The availability and strength may vary per nation. At higher levels, extra benefits or stronger effects may be unlocked. Categories could look like the following:

 

- Repairs and maintenance (cooldown time, active repair time, passive module repair, passive recuperation from fire/flooding, fire chance, amount of fires)

- Health (time recovering hp, cooldown time, amount of base hp, amount of hp recovered)

- Gun turrets (range, damage, rof, accuracy, fire chance, penetration power, IFHE, delay)

- Torpedoes (range, speed, spread width, rof, damage, flood chance)

- AA (range, damage output, call in fighter air support)

- Stealth (detection radius, situational awareness of being spotted or fired upon, time of being detected by radar, speed of radar info passed to other units, reduced enemy accuracy)

- Smoke (duration of smoke before disappearing, cloud radius, amount of puffs, density of fog for visual stealth buff in fog)

- Mobility & hull integrity (base top speed, engine/rudder protection, engine boosts, acceleration, rudder shift time, ramming damage mitigation and buff)

- Scouting (view range, radar, info sharing range, hydro, rpf)

- Inspirational captain (additional crew efficiency effects for engine, weapons, etc. under certain combat conditions like damage taken, being within close proximity of an enemy, being fired upon, etc.)

 

How exactly the order and values would be would differ greatly and IMO could be tuned per nation for balance and diversity reasons. But you could have far more heavily tuned builds to your personal playstyle this way.

 

Thing is, a skill like preventive maintenance doesn’t need to both reduce fire chance and amount of possible fires. Making people choose here results in a different play style. If you get both the choice is easier to make and the diversity lower.

 

I would say give people up to 20 points to spend and then vary cost according to general purpose or situational strength and to force downsides if you pick an good combination by not being able to select too much other stuff as well. In fact “Entrance” (level 1) skills might in some cases actually be the most expensive within a tree. That though is a highly subjective balancing discussion.

[Prophecy82]

1 hour ago, Figment said:

Furthermore you claim that a 1pt CE and LS would result in more diversity, while in reality this would become default picks for destroyers then because they are so powerful and important general purpose combat edges and you just made them incredibly cheap. One could not afford to not get these. That is not going to create diversity at all.

 

I have the past and the present skills in mind, I havent thought of any new skills. 

 

Lets face it: CE and LS ARE default picks on 99% of the DDs. Personally I can ignore them on Haru and Khaba. So yea, pretty much all DDs cant afford not to get these. Thats a fact.

 

4 Pts for CE is just a c0ckblock for DDs since they need it. Just go sealclubbing in a Clemson with CE and compare your result to the sad scrubs who dont have it. It is that powerful, so make it 1Pt and you close the power-gap between newbs and vets. 

 

Making both skills 1Pt would free up 5 Points and thats where the diversity would come from... given the rest of the skills allow diversity, which is not the case atm since they practically force you to go down one path. 

[Prophecy82]

1 hour ago, Figment said:



If you’d want meaningful concealment skills differentiation, then you could split CE up in for instance two or even three 5% concealment distance reduction steps, worth 2, 3 or 4 skillpoints. Then you could opt to save points for something else. Go full concealment at full cost at the cost of some other upgrade or save points in order to get for instance more range.

 

So you want even more skills that reduce concealment?! That would just lead to even less diversity since most DDs would have to pick all of them, just to have a "balance of power", since vision control is still a winning factor. 

[Figment]

9 minutes ago, Prophecy82 said:

 

So you want even more skills that reduce concealment?! That would just lead to even less diversity since most DDs would have to pick all of them, just to have a "balance of power", since vision control is still a winning factor. 

You don’t understand much about trade-offs then. And you can’t do maths. Because you think it is equal to pick one four point skill to three skills that may cost 7 total. At some cost it becomes too interesting for someone to get something else instead. If you think spotting distance is the only thing that matters to a DD of any kind, I would suggest you stay away from Marceau completely.

[Figment]

21 minutes ago, Prophecy82 said:

I have the past and the present skills in mind, I havent thought of any new skills.

That much was obvious, hence why I stated I’m having a more fundamental discussion than an evaluation of the current built.

21 minutes ago, Prophecy82 said:

 

Lets face it: CE and LS ARE default picks on 99% of the DDs. Personally I can ignore them on Haru and Khaba. So yea, pretty much all DDs cant afford not to get these. Thats a fact.

 

4 Pts for CE is just a c0ckblock for DDs since they need it. Just go sealclubbing in a Clemson with CE and compare your result to the sad scrubs who dont have it. It is that powerful, so make it 1Pt and you close the power-gap between newbs and vets. 

LS is surplus. It is handy but not a necessity. Don’t use it on everything myself, often prefer fog upgrades and got high winrates on those, so there goes that argument of yours.

 

Concealment is nice, but skill is more important. It is inconvenient but just requires a different approach as it means you don’t get the first shot in, unless you come from a direction that is unexpected or they are engaged already.

21 minutes ago, Prophecy82 said:

Making both skills 1Pt would free up 5 Points and thats where the diversity would come from... given the rest of the skills allow diversity, which is not the case atm since they practically force you to go down one path. 

Why even have these skills if you are making them default picks? And then claim it increases diversity because you can pick more stuff and more stuff? You don’t get what diversity and specialization means, do you?

[AndyHill]

Simply having a lot of skills to pick from doesn't add diversity unless there are several near enough to equal choices between them, so that it all come down to personal playstyle and preference. That's a very difficult goal to attain and so far I'm not convinced the rework is very successful in that regard.

 

Having optional builds and having to make hard choices isn't necessarily a purely good thing, either. In this game pushing is dangerous and difficult, it places you in a rather precarious position as ships kiting away always have the advantage in shooting and positioning and of course the first one to go in tends to get a lot of attention, which is why people generally don't want to do it. What makes the current implementation doubly bad is that the cursed Deadeye skill not only entices you to hang back and snipe, it's mutually exclusive with one of the tanking skills, which makes it more difficult to push in. 

 

The actual main goal of the rework was to make captain training more expensive and elite XP harder to get and it succeeded. I can see why they would want that, especially for experienced players it was pretty easy to get lots of fully skilled captains and print all the elite xp they might want. Doesn't mean that we shouldn't be up in arms about the insane retraining costs, though.