Take 2 ... New Skill Tree

I've learned a few things from my first attempt, so here's v2 with some new ideas (in yellow).

Skip to the highlighted portions for the short version.

OBJECTIVES:
Refocus resources towards value-added activities (like new content creation and debugging) by:

• Making balancing and MM adjustments easier, and
• Making new item and ship expansion easier.

While also:

• Unlocking content and creating more variety, diversity and strategy;
• And, giving new life to some dead items.

SKILL TREE v2 DETAILS:

• 7 training tiers (for now)
• Each Tier is unlocked with Ship Tier
• Each subsequent tier is identical to the first
• The player can select different options on different tiers, but only one option per item per tier.
• For each item trained, 1/4 or 1/5 of the "Tier Training Bonus" is awarded.
• New options: acceleration, reverse speed, damage resistance, and barrel cooling.

Thanks to: @super_sonic181 for the quick photoshop work.

**Base stats would need adjustments, so the percentages are not buff/nerf suggestions**

BHURT - Cannoneer
[Tier Training - All Cannons: 3% speed + 5% dmg]
Cannon (5% dmg • 7% range • -10% CD • 3% crit)
Sniper (5% dmg • 7% range • 4% crit • 25% crit dmg*)
Blast (5% dmg • 7% range • 3% crit • 20% crit dmg)
EC (5% dmg • 7% range • 3% crit • 20% crit dmg)
Carronade (5% dmg • 7% range • 10% slow speed/turret • 5% tighter spread? or -10% CD)

BROCK - Can you smell what the Brock is cookin?
[Tier Training - all shields 5%]
Bandaid (5% effect)
Small shield (5% HP • 10% Defense/Armor)
Big shield (5% HP • 10% Defense/Armor)
All Ship Defense/Armor (+1)
Resistance -3% dmg/effect

• Flame Retardant (Fire dmg),
• Frost Insulation (Frost dmg),
• Under Carriage Reinforcement (Mine, Torp),
• Electric Insulation (Rail, Tstun),
• Blast Padding (Missiles, Grenades, Mortars),
• Softspot Protection (reduce crit % or crit damage)

MORTY - Artillery Expert
[Tier Training - Mortar dmg 5% + 3% projectile speed]
STD (5% dmg • -10% CD • 7% range • 10% speed)
LRM (5% dmg • -10% CD • 7% range • 10% speed)
BP (5% dmg • -10% CD • 7% range • 10% speed)
BB (5% dmg • -10% CD • 7% range • 10% speed)
Mortar Area Damage (5%) + Direct Hit (5%)

BURNICE - Pyrotechnic / Part-Time Hibatchi Chef
[Tier Training - Hotter FFN Fire 5%]
Fire Bomb (5% dmg • +1 duration • 7% range • -10% CD)
Flare (5% dmg • +1 duration • 10% speed • -10% heal)
Napalm (5% dmg • +1 duration • 7% range • -10% CD)
Incendiary Cannons (+3% cannon burning dmg)

SINKLAIR - Bringin' the Thunda from down Unda
[Tier Training - all torps: speed 3% + 5% dmg]
SwiftT (5% dmg • 10% speed • -10% CD • 10% burn chance)
TripT (5% dmg • 3% speed • -10% CD • 10% burn chance)
BigT (5% dmg • 3% speed • -10% CD • 10% burn chance)
Rudder (10% effect • 10% acceleration • 10% reverse sp)
Torps Area Damage (5%)

BLASTIAN - Don't ask about the missing fingers ...
[Tier Training - MMG: Bigger Booms +5% dmg]
Mine (5% dmg • 7% range • -10% CD)
Missile (5% dmg • 7% range • -10% CD • -5% spread? or 5% speed)
Grenade (5% dmg • 7% range • 10% crit • 25% crit dmg*)
MMG Area Damage (5%)
All Range (+1 all weapons)

DR. B - The product of years of Shock Therapy
[Tier Training - Stun Heal Reduction 5% + 5% rail dmg]
Rail (5% dmg • -10% CD • 10% stun chance)
Tbolt (10% duration • -10% CD • 10% chain stun chance)
Tshield (10% duration • 10% HP • -10% CD)
All Weapon Damage (+2%)

ISAK - FroYo Enthusiast
[Tier Training - Frost effect: -5% healing + 3% projectile speed]
F launch (10% effect • 10% speed • 7% range • -10% CD)
F blast (10% effect • 10% speed • 7% range • -10% CD)
Frost Damage (5% mortar • 5% torp)
T Lube (10% effect • Cooled Barrel (-3% CD all weapons))
Turret Speed (5% all ships)

SWIFT - Has the cure for your Need for Speed
[Tier Training - TON effect 5%]
Turbo (5% speed • 5% acceleration • 5% reverse speed)
Overboost (5% effect • -10% CD)
Nitro (5% effect • -10% CD)
Ship Speed (5% all ships)
Ship Agility (5% all ships)

FEELIX - Favorite Movie: Flubber
[tier training: 5% repair items]
R Box (5% heal • 10% Range • 5% crit% • 25% crit repair)
R Pulse (5% heal • 10% AoE radius* • -10% CD • -5% effects)
R Bolt (5% heal • 10% speed • -10% CD • -5% effects)
Duct Tape (5% heal • -10% CD)
Ship HP (10% all ships - can be separated into individual ships and % adjusted, if needed)

 

NEW TRAINING, OPTIONS, TALENTS:
1. Resistance
2. Acceleration and Reverse Speed
3. Barrel Cooling
4. Carronade and Spread
5. Repair Items

Spoiler: More Details

1. Resistance:
I think "resistance" is an interesting concept for a few reasons:

This allows players to cushion themselves against the most popular metas. In doing so, players are helping to balance or self-police the game against what they believe are the strongest or most overused items.

Also, this should encourage more diversity in items used. And, this extra layer of customization could be fun. Do you want to turn your Defender into a torp and mine sweeper? You can set it up to do just that.

2. Reverse Speed and Acceleration:
Players can hit the speed cap on ships with a T3/4 epic turbo, so there is little incentive to level it further. This makes it more difficult to assign an appropriate gear score.

Likewise, the Rudder may be fun to play with but is underpowered in comparison to a Small Shield or Bandage.

With Reverse Speed and Acceleration options, players would be encouraged to max out their turbo to take full advantage of the new stats. Likewise, Rudder may become a more tempting option, although it may have to be renamed to "Propeller" or "Prop" to make more sense.

3. Barrel Cooling:
Similar to the Rudder, Turret Lube is underpowered compared to other blue items.

With "Barrel Cooling," the cooling barrel lubricant could reduce either item cooldowns or the global 1-second cooldown between shots. This change could make Turret Lube a viable option again.

4. Carronade and Spread:
The carronade should rejoin the rest of the cannon-type family - with all its bonuses. If, however, this makes it too powerful, the base stats could be adjusted. Also, if the carronade is too powerful on speeders, then one projectile could be removed.

Otherwise, a tighter spread (or choke setting) would be a tempting option for carronades and missiles.

5. Repair Items:
I have only briefly used the Fixer so forgive me if the options are a little off.

But, since the repair bolt currently removes stun and frost effects, it seems more logical for the pulse and bolt reduce the time of all effects rather than remove some completely and have no effect on others.

For example, for each time a pulse or bolt is used, the affected players' duration of a stun, frost, burn effect could be reduced by 5% for each "-5% effect" training selected.

Also, it seems like the option to increase the radius of the pulse AoE would be a good option. However, it would be easier for new players if they could see a floating green circle to show them the outer limits of the item's radius.

CAVEATS:
1. Item and Ship Base Stat adjustments/Conflicts
2. Number of Projectiles set
3. Perk Slots equalized
4. Talent Caps
5. Range and Cooldown adjustments
6. Tier Training Explained

Spoiler: More Details

1. Item and Ship Base Stats/Conflicts:
Will have to be adjusted to keep them at relatively the same levels as they are now - given the bonus difference in this ST. However, they can easily be adjusted at any point.

Conflicts: If a particular item is too powerful on a certain ship, that ship/item combo could have an adjustment without messing with the overall balance.

2. Number of Projectiles:
Like the triple torpedo, the carronade and missiles should always have their full number of projectiles to prevent large jumps in power at random points in the game.

3. Perk Slots:
All item rarities should be given an equal number of perk slots to keep the item (and GS) relationships as even as possible. However, when the slots are unlocked should be changed slightly. The 4th perk slot should be unlocked at T5 for cmn/uncmn, T4 for rares, T3 for epics, and T2 for legendaries.

4. Talent Caps:
Just as there are Speed and Defense caps now, some of the crew talents may have to be capped as well, e.g, crit chance, crit damage, or cooldown reductions.

5. Range and Cooldown Adjustments:
Certain items are limited by range (Grenade) or cooldowns (Rail Gun/Fire Bomb/Mines) in the early game, but these base stats should be adjusted closer to their end game levels to avoid large disparities in effectiveness between the early and late game.

6. Tier Training (explained):
For each item trained in that section, the player would receive 1/4 or 1/5 of that tier's training bonus. This gives the player a little global bonus for each training completed even if they don't currently use the item they are training.

Currently, I would guess that somewhere around 2/3s of the training options are meaningless steps towards options that the player actually values.

Why use tier training bonuses?
This breaks down the bonus received at each level into two parts.

The first part gives the item an automatic 5% increase (once all items in that tier have been trained).

The second part makes the choice more interesting. A 10% damage increase would be too difficult to pass up, but giving up 5% damage for an extra tile or two of range could be worth it. Is an extra 21% crit chance on your EC worth 35% in damage?

 

While playing, my ADHD brain is going through the issues I see, running through the possible solutions and how they would play out .. so what you see is only the final product of a thousand other ideas that didn't work (or didn't work as well).

But ... if you're curious as to why I view these things as important, or more specific details on how they would work, see below:

I. Current System:

Spoiler: More

Currently, certain items are not given crew bonuses until mid to late-game, and the amount of crew bonuses between items vary drastically. Also, the difference in cooldowns and number of projectiles lead to large jumps in power at random times.

A small change to balance the late-game dominance of an item could make lower leveled versions severely underpowered. In order to compensate for this, different balance changes have been made at different levels. This method of balancing is both time consuming and makes it difficult to accurately predict the consequences at each stage of the game. More importantly, this makes gear score weights less accurate.

Additionally, players are encouraged to play (and are restricted to) one set of items and one ship by the ST. This speeds progress to the end-game drastically, makes the game boring faster, while also limiting the player's need for resources (items, leveling gold/sugar, item perks, etc.) (i.e., fewer epic crate purchases, ad-watches, VIP subs, event coin purchases, etc.).

In other words, the current ST is not only restrictive and uneven, but it also encourages the wrong type of behavior (for entertainment and revenue-generation purposes alike).

II. New System - Why straight-forward relationships are important:
Players want to see balance changes, shifting metas, more gameplay variety, and new content.

Spoiler: Relationships, Scaling, Variety, Strategy, and Mk Upgrades

The main idea is to make it as easy as possible to make the adjustments that players don't notice or don't care about so that more time can be devoted to new content creation and debugging - or the things players notice.

A. Standardized Relationships:
With each item increasing at the same rate from early-game to late-game - keeping the same relationship with other items throughout the game - balancing adjustments are as easy as making an adjustment to the base stats.

B. How items, HP, damage, and speed should scale?
All item stats should increase at the same rate from common to legendary. E.g., a L25 rare will be equal to a L50 uncommon and a L1 epic.

In the skill tree, weapon damage has the potential to increase by 12% per tier. The player's ship HP and shield HP are each increasing by 10% while also building a 3% resistance at each tier, but this is balanced with rarity of item sets increasing. Likewise, with increased ship speed, item projectile speed should also increase.

With base stat adjustments for number of perk slots, projectiles, cooldowns, and range, items will become equally viable in the early game and the relationships will stay more constant - and easier to rate.

C. More Variety, More Strategy:
The current Skill Tree conflicts are often arbitrary and only serve to limit content. With a less restrictive skill tree, devs would receive better data about use rates and player preferences for balancing purposes, and players would have more content available to them.

Moreover, this unlocking of content instantly expands the readily available content by over 80%, thereby increasing the number of playable hours (or time it takes to hit their endgame) exponentially.

Similarly, this skill tree is more strategic IMO. It would encourage more strategy discussion. I can already see the litany of YouTube vids about how to best set up each item.

D. Mk Upgrades
The current Skill Tree does a great deal to boost ship stats, but the Mk ship upgrades themselves are negligible - often less than one shot's damage worth of HP. This negligible upgrade immediately forces players into tougher matches, often decreasing their infamy and making them regret their decision to upgrade. As such, players are encouraged to train for crew bonuses, but keep their lower Mk ships for easier infamy and event matches.

Under the proposed Skill Tree, the ship Mk bonuses would be limited to their respective level in the Skill Tree, e.g., a Mk2 is limited to Tier 2 and lower bonuses. Thus, players would be encouraged to upgrade their ship levels to take advantage of more of the Skill Tree bonuses.

Additionally, as each ship level (with its respective tier bonuses) would be a much more significant upgrade, players would feel as though they are progressing and getting stronger - and should increase their infamy.

This change should also decrease the range of infamy between players using the same ship level - which would appear more "fair" to the players that have an issue seeing ships two Mk levels above theirs in matches.

III. Better Matchmaking
This system should eliminate the need for Power Score adjustments and make Gear Scores calculations standarized (and more accurate).

Spoiler: Power and Gear Scores

A. Power Score ("PS"):
PS adjustments are the most difficult to make. Each crew and item bonus has a different value to different players.

With this skill tree, PS adjustments would no longer be necessary. Each ship (and equipped items) could be limited by its respective ST training tier.

As an example, a L50 captain using a mk2 will only receive the T1 and T2 ST bonuses. Event MM would balance item strength purely with gear score.

B. Gear Score ("GS"):
Each item of the same type, rarity and level will have the same GS (assuming the number of projectiles and perk slots are equalized as well). If an item is too strong for its GS, a simple adjustment can be made to its base stats.

E.g., if a legendary L1 sniper had a GS of 1000, so will every other red legendary L1 item.

However, equal level blue and yellow items may have lower GSs than red items to prevent event matchmaking ("MM") manipulation (by using weaker blue/yellow items with stronger weapons).

IV. How this system adds value?

Spoiler: More

This system makes life much easier when balancing, adjusting MM formulas, dealing with seal clubbing issues, and expanding ship tiers, etc. Many of these areas are constantly complained about on the forum, yet even significant improvements are consistently undervalued or go unnoticed by players. If these areas are easier to address, more time could be spent on content that is properly appreciated and valued.

Moreover, this system encourages the right player behavior. Players are encouraged to level and use more items and ships, and speed their crew training - meaning more ad views, VIP subs, crate purchases, and event coin purchases for perks. The additional gameplay variety leads to more interest and much higher threshold for getting bored, since they can easily switch over to a new ship and items (which is great for streamers).

Also, if they see a particular player-type often enough one night, many top players would be encouraged to spend the pearls to switch their resistance talents to even the odds. Thus, pearl spending in the skill tree should increase.

 

Very well written mate. I know we differ in opinion on a few things, and that's cool - this is possibly one of the best suggestions I've read on the forums.
Love the tree idea where all items have their own trainings, rather than the current situation. (Example - my Brock still has 2 days left to train, so until then I'm locked in with my weapon training until he's finished. With this idea, we wouldn't be stuck waiting for days to switch weapon training over)
Well done bud!

 

Thoroughly elaborated and penned down!

Much love from guild leader

 

Glad that you are Glad from my work! Always Wecome

 

Edit - changed some of the range and cooldown percentages in the OP.

The Fiery event's legendary perks made me realize how hard damage or duration is to pass up.

But, let me know how the flight time perk works out on the FB though ..

[Bc there's no way I'm spending 960 coins (or 8-10+ match hours) for the 12.5% chance to get one perk that I might use, since the uncommon-epic versions would be instant scrap].

 

Always like when you post that gif, their cheesy smiles make me laugh

 

The new parts sound good to me, really like the idea of resistance for fire/frost/stun etc. Really hope the Devs take a peek at this tbh