EVE General Discussion

I am talking about statements such as this:



Popularity has little to nothing to do with a weapon systems or ships actual balancing problems. If a weapon type or a ship get used a lot then that does not in any form mean its op or even good.


People use ships they are familar with (cane is quite bad now, yet it still is the 6th most used ship) or weapon systems they are used to ( hmls still see some use yet they are utterly terrible in reality and as all medium long ranged weapon system could use a healthy buff, yet as the only one dont get changed in 1.1).

You could also argue that light blaster and railguns are better then small lalsers since they see more use (and that rockets are horrible since they see little use in coparison) but we all know that that isnt the case.

Most used ship atm is a talwar yet it by no means is the best destroyer, nor is it in any way op.



What im getting it is that the popularity in itself should not be used as a tool to balance. If you for example were to notice a hypothetical weapon system that is vastly under powered yet that is by far the most used ones of all systems you should not go, its fine it gets used a lot, it would still need a rebalance. Polpularitiy is no true measure of the state of balance.


Stop treating it as such.

Vagabond is so popular because its unique, lets Face it, the Main Problem is Most ships are just dull and average because they cant do anything special.

Look into the Command Ship Thead they all the same, same Bonuses, same Slots, same EHP, the only differents are the weapons.
Thats the Problem with balancing it ruins the uniquiness for the sake of the Community, because all the whiners want their cheese.

That's not entirely fair - consider the things are all but completely unused, gathering dust, station paperweights/collectors pieces then you do have a case for something being rotten.

A recent case prior to the 1.1 changes would have been the Eagle.

Performance is in no way equal to popularity. Those are quite different.

Also my opinion is far from uneducated, at least in matters of subcapital performance not that that has anything to do with my opening post.



Please dont turn this into another ahac thread. This is about ccp using popularity as a important figure in balancing (or it coming across as such) while its really not.

I agree with the notion that statistics alone do not solve problems. However, some problems show themselves as an imbalance in the statistical data, like the number of ships flown, and on a scale far beyond what a single player is capable of seeing. As such is it a valuable tool. It is important for the variety and richness of the game to avoid imbalances of this kind or else some ships could get ignored completely by players.

In the end will CCP need to talk to the players and look directly at the ships to understand exactly why one ship is more popular than another. It is what they have always been doing. They only cannot confirm each and every problem a player has, but spend their time on fixing these. This is what we as players need to understand.

The results of the recent balancing changes show that there is nothing to be afraid of this process in my opinion.

No (well they could tbh, or they have a internal killboard database) but they use something very similar.

That doesnt mean much tho, that tells you nothing of the ships actual state. 99% of this games user are terrible (yes sound very elitstic, but its true and if you think about it you would agree just think of all the failfits and misinformation out there) at it and cant be relied on, they reflect actual balance very badly. And sadly those 99% bloat the number so they are not really usable.


I dont want them to do something dumb, i just want cpp to realize that high usage ≠ good and low usage ≠ bad.



Im quite sure they already know that yet commenst as the quoted one in the opening post make me wonder.

Their braisn, eft or some similar fitting tool and extensive testing.

TBH it should be rock, paper, scissor balancing. Even if you base that on popularity.

Every system should have an ideal counter to that system and people should realise that.

Say you're roaming around in an armor brawler gang and you run into a shield sniping gang.
If they have some long points in the shield gang and the armor gang tries to fight, they're going to lose.
This doesn't make the shield gang overpowered. It makes it a fight that the armor gang should withdraw from.

The stated plan was to equalize the ships then skew them into unique things.

Sort of like making equal sized balls of dough then creating cakes and breads of interesting and exotic flavors, but you still have to make them equal in comparison.