My EVE

Good post. However you cover an interesting mix of statements that I agree and disagree with. Makes it hard for me to come up with a reasonable response, without looking like I am attempting to pick your statements apart on a needlessly small scale.

I think maybe you misinterpreted my general message (or I did not make it clear enough?) . I wasn't as much suggesting that the state of the game is perfect, as I was insisting that people are bitching and flinging excuses because they can and it's laughable to me. I lump the group of people who don't solo and say BECAUSE ASB into the same category as those who have been claiming "Solo is dead!" for the past... forever.

But despite that, I have been pondering your final suggestions and comments for a while, and I have to say all I see needing to happen is the following:

1. Nerf drake CPU some
2. Give us 90% webs back

That would do a lot of fun stuff to almost everything you complained about there. If you are really really concerned about dual ASBs, you could (with my above suggestions) nerf tracking and explosion radius/velocity (across the board) for obvious reasons.

Or alternatively I think I suggested at some point that they increase the cycle time of ASBs by a factor of 2 or 3, as well as increase the boost amount by the same factor. This does a couple of things. First makes you incredibly vulnerable to alpha, and also will likely lead you to 'overboost' on boost bonused ships. But still retains the heavy tank that I think is so inspring for solo.

How can anyone sane claim overtank to be inspiring for solo when you have to fight against it yourself, too? The thing is, small-scale PvP by definition means fighting against superior numbers and the only thing allowing to do that is gaining a temporal advantage here or there, which mostly comes from the maneuver. This temporal advantage may or may not be enough to get things done (that is: score kills), but in general it should be quite obvious that heavier tank means lesser opportunities to gain kills. Put it to the extreme and imagine ships in EVE having 10x EHP of today and also burst-tanking ten times as much - it would be just plain tedious, scoring just two kills in succession becomes pretty much a heroic deed.

I'm far from saying solo is dead and so on, but fitting an OP crap and fighting against the same crap to kill may be one or two ships at most when previously under the same conditions you could kill 5 is simply not what I would call progress or fun.

I do agree with EVE needing more frequent radical balance shifts, though. But still, these shifts should not consist of CCP introducing something so absurdly OP as ASB of today. An opposite example is The Great Nano Fix - instead of creating a single FOTM they created a diversion of ships, setups and tactics while previosly it was just nano or nothing. I was flying my Domi-web Abso and occasionally killing those nano abominations while succumbing pretty much to none, but that wasn't all that fun. It's more or less the same today.

There are so many things to discuss on this topic, but there is something in particular i want to lift out:

As you lapse back to bottom-line ships it just put so much more focus on what you can do with them. A mediocre movie in a risky setting will always be more appealing than a mediocre movie in a mediocre setting. Few of the movies that come out today, a good year later, have the piloting quality of "Podcat's Dishonour" for example.

That tie back to the whole "many things" part again. It's difficult being unique but there's always room for something unexpected or some sort of rarity (it doesn't have the be the ship or it's pricetag). When the solo-revival and the initial tech I frig movies of this era came out, they were just that. Today it's staple, and it is such within a very undaunting setting.

I guess you can see it as two sides of a coin. On one side i'd like to think that the solo-revival movement have been extremely positive for the game, and while it was more sorely needed when it first came out, i think it's positive that it continues to influence generations of newer or insecure players today, letting you know that "it's as easy as this - go out and PvP - transcend Amamake".

At the same time, other things are more exotic today and within standards you need to shine extra gleaming to stand out. Yet another Incursus-Merlin-Thrasher movie won't catch eyes unless it's extraordinary, and i think alot of us are also hoping for the current "class" and their teachers to take the next step and break into more small-gang dynamics (such as the scalability Fon touches upon) that are more of a rarity today. Wether it's their "responsibility" to do so, can't be said...

There's so much to say, i'll just silence myself not to run off-topic.

By all means, do it.

Forums lack intelligent discussions. Also, discussing problems associated with movie-making can hardly be treated as off-topic in such a thread and section. Where else could we talk, then?

Inggroth I am too tired at the moment to articulate an intelligent response to you.

But briefly touching back on the larger discussion, I, as some may recall, have a pretty serious love for frigs. I discovered over years pvping though that it is for a primary reason. In a game where losses actually mean something, it's stressful for me to fly an expensive ship, granted expensive is relative, but still. For someone like me, coming home from a stressful day at work/class the last thing I want to do is stress myself out further flying something expensive. Thus frigates (or maybe BC or two on a good day) let me relax while pvping. This is often the largest factor in the ship I choose to pvp in for the day.

I am not sure if anyone else experiences this, but I would certainly be surprised if I am the only one.

I do really have high hopes for this thread, keep the thoughtful discourse up

We should just go back to when i started playing and everyone was in armor and the drake was a joke. And why stop there? We should do away with sheild tanking altogether. I mean its not like it was any good before asb's unless you had an absurdly healthy wallet. Wow! I just rebalanced EVE! If you appreciate my efforts, send me some ISK. I just spent 100mil on a frigate.

EURIPODES, judging by this particular character alone you started playing in late 2009 and thus long after armour tanking had really been the way to go. In case you're interested, armour domination dates back to pre-EW nerf times, when a multispec of Doom had double the strengh of today, webs were 90% and so on - thus med slots actually meant something offensive. After the nerf - and after Dominion which made Tracking Enhancers utterly OP - the game has been favouring shield over armour in so many ways that it's not even funny. Superior mobility, superior range, superior burst tank, ease of bait tanking - you name it.

As for isk, well, they should give you an edge, shouldn't they? Otherwise we would be playing WoT in space, with each tard being able to freely field the very best gear, even if his skills are far from utilizing it at full capacity.

Laktos, I'm afraid that restricting ASB to one per ship, despite being such a common idea among the community, is utterly flawed itself. By doing so, we pretty much admit ASB is OP on its own. Apart from the DC with absurdly good bonuses and newly released adaptive hardener, ASB becomes the only module with such an artificial limitation, which is quite telling on itself. This approach can be justified for speed mods, since you can't really balance ridicilous speed values anyway, but if it applies to mere tank, then something is really wrong.

I'm a firm believer dual ASB setups are much more balanced than single one. In the first case trade-offs come into equation, while fitting a single ASB is never a problem. There are 2 things actually: single ASB > any passive setup, dual ASB > any active one. Neither of these is balanced.

Mate to be honest, i think you just hit the nail on the head.

My 2 cents......

I for one, used to be a vid maker of Battleship PVP. As the game is today I will never make another video...... why you ask? Well lets look


1) My Nightmare fit - xlsb / sba / 2 hardeners / tackle / cap booster. (We will ignore the highs and lows since they are irrelevant for this post). So with this fit I would get 1800 DPS tank out of it. Heavily rely on cap and usually die to neuts. However If I spend 100 mil on a maelstrom instead of 5 billion isk on a nightmare fit with dual ASB..... I get a cap stable tank that tanks 7000 DPS 3500 per booster / does more DPS and has more range, with only 1 hardener and full tackle gear. ASB's are broken. You cannot deny that.

How can we fix them, my idea is that we restrict 1 ASB per ship, or be able to fit multiple ASB, but it somehow interferes with the ships computer so that you cannot fit an MWD at the same time you fit an ASB. So nano would still have to use extenders but it would give brawlers an advantage if they could catch the nano.


2) Ship cost........ My faction Battleships only cost the same as 2 Tier 3 Battleships..... what a joke! CCP fix the market.

3) Go back to the days of cheap hulls and expensive mods. This would actually make pvp profitbale again. And an occupation more than a hobby.

4) Give back the 90% webs like so many others have said. This afterburner kiting Bullshit needs to stop. If I scram you and have three webs on you, you should not be able to outrun anything!

5) Nerf ECM drones, Come on this is still the most overpowered module in game. ECM in general needs to be a hard measure and not chance based. If your sensor strength is higher than the ecm strength you dont get jammed period...... if it isnt you do. Which would then make eccm viable and level 5 skills relavent. Also add a skill for sensor strength to your ship please.



But yeah I could go on forever but it is only one mans opinion. Like I said this game has gotten extremely worse over the years and now that a t2 cyclone has a better tank than my 5 billion isk Nightmare, I have called it quits except for the tourneys. CCP has a lot of fixing to do. This game was so much better back before they added so much crap. "Less is often More!"

PROBLEM IS SIMPLE : ISK.otherwise i would fly everytime i log in a mach or vindi or something shinny and very expensive