I figured this would end up happening at some point, but it did kindof screw with me a bit, as I wasn’t expecting it, but now it appears that the academy is retaining soldier perks as you level them up, so using orders is rather worthwhile now, it seems.
It also means that you’re less likely to get top-tier perks across the board for your higher level soldiers, I guess, outside of gold order soldiers and the lucky 4-5 star pulls.
whoa whoa… in order to retrain perks now you need to use orders at the accademy? If thats the case im glad my premium time is up
If your soldier is lvl max, you can retrain a perk each time you level up, so it is easier to get the top perks since you can just reroll your only movement perk, for example, until you get the one you want with a tinier pool of perks to choose from.
Not re-training perks, rather your soldiers now appear to keep the perks they had from lower levels after they come out of the academy. Before, they reset to having no perks at all after they came out of the academy. (at least for me.)
Wait really, I trained like 5 level 3 dudes yesterday, it took a lot of grinding to get them all to three perks again… to bad I didn’t wait lol.
It took a lot of grinding, but it also meant that you had more control about the end perks soldiers had. Now I’m going to have to pay way more attention, especially as you can’t look at soldier perks from the academy screen and have to check soldier perks individually before training them.
How can you possibly spin this in a negative light… normally lvl resets so you get an empty dude. Now you keep your level when it gets out of academy. NOTHING has changed regarding receiving perks or perk points.
Not only the trained soldier retains previous perks, they also get awarded a new one, making new a 4* soldier have a fourth perk, plus the possibility to get a fifth, and a new 5* soldier to get a sixth perk.
Behold: Timofey Basov here went from 4* to 5* in just an evening …
I see this as positive and negative.
A couple positives are; less grinding to get to put soldiers back in the academy. If you were to roll some good low cost perks in the beginning of leveling up a soldier then you keep those, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had soldiers just roll useless perks relative to their combat role. Also it kind of helps makes the soldiers more… unique and meaningful because they retain the perks chosen, so in the long run you might remember the name of one guy because he has a bunch of good perks. So as he goes through the meat grinder (Academy) and comes out again and again, you’ll be happy to see him.
Negatives though; this is lengthy, but I’m trying to break down the particular reasons why this is a negative in a broader sense. Your pool of skill points to choose perks is limited in the first 3 levels, so if you’re hoping to get higher skill point cost perks on a level 5 soldier, say you wanted the perk for a higher likelihood being downed but not killed, you need 10 yellow skill points, but levels 1/2 you don’t have enough, and depending on class you might have enough starting at level 3, but that means you might skip on reload speed buff or something else useful to save those points for later. So the obvious solution is saving points by picking zero skill point cost perks at low level, but this can lead to you missing perks you could’ve taken, because your next roll might not have the perk you have your eyes on or even cost the skill points your saving. In the end this could actually increase the grind time in some cases because you really can only pick from the largest set of perks at higher levels, so to really maximize that benefit, at high levels (mostly at 5) you’re going to be using the accumulated experience to retrain perks. Before, you had a fresh 5 star guy coming out of the Academy having a blank slate and getting to choose from the best perks with 5 rolls against the best selection of perks (because at 5 you have the maximum amount of skill points to use), instead with this change, now you have 1 roll and if it doesn’t pan out, then you’re grinding away to get free exp to retrain less than desirable perks from earlier levels.
Now, is that really a bad thing? No, not necessarily, sometimes it might work out for your soldiers that you always had the right perks to choose from when leveling up and you’re happy that guy made through the Academy (meat grinder factory) and came out at level 5 with 4 useful perks. But other times you’re going to have guys who had a bunch of bad rolls and their perks are subpar so you’re going to need to retrain them.
In reality I think this change is to better monetize the Academy and make it more impactful (giving soldiers a sense of permanence in your campaigns). That’s why it’s not in the patch notes. It’s a free to play model and I’m fine with it, personally I don’t mind either way but I can see both sides of it and say there is definitely positives and negatives to it, I would just prefer they were more transparent when it comes to the development and changes to the game, with a more detailed changelog.
Only thing that changed is that you already get levels. No need to get all theoretical. Free xp is the only change.
@ElqueFatalba,
That first perk is passive from his class, notice how there isn’t an associated skill point cost next to it. That’s not new, that’s been there. You can actually see on the campaign screen what types of soldiers get what passive perks, as you gain campaign experience and unlock new soldiers.
In the Moscow campaign as the Soviets you’ll notice your first tank crew all has the same passive perk, but if you look at the T28, they have a different passive. Same with Trooper One and Trooper Two, and every type of soldier.
Look better at the picture.
He has a lvl 6 soldier.
I think they hotfixed that one out. Had that a moment after patch as well but it was gone after I leveled it.
Ooh! You’re right, I was looking at the top and didn’t see the bottom picture with 5 complete stars and an empty 6th.
Oh shit its still there. Got a lvl 6 tanker now.
The lvl 6 assaulter I had yesterday became lvl 5 when I had one retraining perk though.
Pretty neat, can you update the thread with another screencap after you’ve chosen that last perk, I’m curious to see if any other surprises are in store.
Wait… so the 6th level assault became 5 when you picked your last perk or when you retrained a previous perk?
When I got the first retraining perk. So when technically it would have filled the 6th level it just went to 5 stars as intended and 1 retraining point. Its just a visual bug.
This change makes sense because previously it did not matter what perks you assign to low level soldiers. They were forgetting all that after return from Academy which was stupid.
Now however it is important to see what soldiers sent to Academy have, it suddenly does matter - and there are no tools to observe it at Academy screen. It must be improved.
Yes, that’s my experience as well. It’s weird, it’s probably a bug, although of course I like them retaining their perks after training (and would be totally realistic and logical, even thought you lose two other soldiers for this!) …
I just tried and it’s all the same on lower levels as well …
