EVE General Discussion

They are working with Sony as well so the facebook purchase isn't as important

CCP Fozzy said that,
because there was a pilot in a skiff (or multiboxing?)
obliterating a blackops gang
and because that's ******* hilarious,
they'll give the skiff a drone damage bonus
to make it more efficient at ass kicking!

I like it! xD

If you did see Fozzie & Rise presentation I think you know everything that was worth watching yesterday. Unless you find economy or 3rd party tools interesting. On that note economy presentation was pretty funny hence I didn't blitz it as rest of material.

They said they're going forward with it? Or is this one of those, "sometime in the distant future" wishes?

Yes, but the OP is already aware of it. The first day announcements seemed to be pretty much all about Valkyrie. Here is to hoping that we can have things to be excited about too today.

We've known that's been coming for about 2 years now, if only as a Soon™ feature.

Tweaking a bonus on one ship that should have been done years ago isn't really a fanfest worthy announcement IMO, it should have...just been done years ago.

And? A lot of things should have been done years ago, I'm just glad that it's getting done in the first place.

I guess it's not exactly problem with phoenix but rather with citadel missiles but I don't know much about cap level warfare to comprehend everything.

I loved how Fozzie burst into maniacal laugh before unveiling those new gurista ships :)
Him and Rise are great duo to watch and listen to even if there's no earth shake announced.

On the subject of the ship balance changes in the upcoming expansion, its starting to get a bit silly...

Yesterday we had two talks, one by Dr EyjoG on economic issues and balance in the PLEX price market. The second talk was by Fozzie and Rise on "Module and Ship Balancing."

In summary, I think Fozzie and Rise need a little more EyjoG in their lives. See, EyjoG presents metrics for how he makes every decision. People claim PLEX prices are high and that inflation is hurting the community, right? Well, before knee-jerking a reaction, he looks at long term trends and what the pain points are for different play styles. He uses clearly stated metrics for how he decides to intervene... and intervene he did.

Fozzie and Rise, with all deference to their brilliant intuition for PvP, appear to take a much more simplistic approach. They identify a group of ships that aren't being used (Succubus, Worm, etc...) and throw bonuses at them to try to get people to take an interest in them. They never 'nerf' anything because they never want to take away a capability that existing players have come to rely upon, instead making everything else more powerful (which is going to create DPS inflation if you think on it). This approach will never create 'balance.' They could more accurately have named their session, "Module and Ship Imbalancing."

Now, I know that the reality is that they do in fact have models for ship balance that help inform their decisions. I know this because Rise explained exactly this process in his recent developer spotlight interview. I'm not saying that have to show us their spreadsheet, but the community would benefit from understanding what quantitative metrics they are using to make their decisions. If they are referring to statistics for ship use, can they point to how fight outcomes are distributed? Why are the bonuses that they have applied to a particular ship representative of the niche that needs to be filled? Sure, it will get me to try it out the Worm, but that has nothing to do with the meaning of the word "balance." I do think that Rise and Fozzie helped create positive change early on, creating more diversity in 0.0 fleet compositions, but that model will soon run out of steam on the small-ship end.

In short, Fozzie and Rise need more EyjoG in their lives... or maybe just show us the data they are hiding in their back pocket.


Regards,

S. Santorine