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Aright... Let's Just Discuss this...
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Trinkets friend
Sudden Buggery
Sending Thots And Players
#21 - 2011-12-09 04:10:54 UTC
Tara Read,

I think that Tanya Powers has hit the nail on the head. Its impossible often to get a warp-to zero on anything these days, resulting in ranged fights, which welpcanes, arty BS and Drakes do so well. Hence 'modern' tactics.

However, if you've been away you have missed wormholes. part of the issue with nullsec in pparticular is that you have Local. You can see when there's a gang, let alone a fleet, in system, which means you're on d-scan for probers trying to pin your sniper fleet down. It turns into a safe-bouncing exercise, and again, the warp-to-zero is a difficult thing to achieve.

Wormholes, however, are almost invariably the close-range bruising DPS fests that you seem to like. You're fighting within 20km of the enemy most times; your combat prober works without being betrayed by Local (if he's good, he gets off a ninja scan) resulting in warp-to-zero and pushing the envelope back in favor of blaster boats and killdozers like shield Astartes, etc.

There's also a few corps and people around who do try different things. For instance, Black Rebel Rifter Club excels in rifters, AFs, etc. We run RR AF gangs. There's a few people who perfect the sensor damp as a frightening weapon of war with 90km instalock lachesis/sniper gangs or res damping "lock me in a decade" DPS gangs trashing the enemy's scan res so badly they never get a shot off. However, its a niche.

If you want to fight with niche weapons, then getting out of nullsec blob warfare and alliance crap is the first step.

~~ Localectomy Blog ~~
Shivus Tao
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#22 - 2011-12-09 04:15:11 UTC
Trinkets friend wrote:
Tara Read,

I think that Tanya Powers has hit the nail on the head. Its impossible often to get a warp-to zero on anything these days, resulting in ranged fights, which welpcanes, arty BS and Drakes do so well. Hence 'modern' tactics.

However, if you've been away you have missed wormholes. part of the issue with nullsec in pparticular is that you have Local. You can see when there's a gang, let alone a fleet, in system, which means you're on d-scan for probers trying to pin your sniper fleet down. It turns into a safe-bouncing exercise, and again, the warp-to-zero is a difficult thing to achieve.

Wormholes, however, are almost invariably the close-range bruising DPS fests that you seem to like. You're fighting within 20km of the enemy most times; your combat prober works without being betrayed by Local (if he's good, he gets off a ninja scan) resulting in warp-to-zero and pushing the envelope back in favor of blaster boats and killdozers like shield Astartes, etc.

There's also a few corps and people around who do try different things. For instance, Black Rebel Rifter Club excels in rifters, AFs, etc. We run RR AF gangs. There's a few people who perfect the sensor damp as a frightening weapon of war with 90km instalock lachesis/sniper gangs or res damping "lock me in a decade" DPS gangs trashing the enemy's scan res so badly they never get a shot off. However, its a niche.

If you want to fight with niche weapons, then getting out of nullsec blob warfare and alliance crap is the first step.


In other words, local needs to be fundamentally changed to bring blasters back into the mix.
Julius SurJo
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#23 - 2011-12-09 04:21:19 UTC
The Snowman wrote:
I understand the post and what your on about.

The issue isn't about 'daring pilots' or even 'skillful experienced pilots' being more valued.

The issue is that 3 years later there is 3 years more experience, number crunching, guides, information... everything has been min/maxed, studied, extrapolated, tested, re-tested and everyone pretty much knows exactly the fits, layouts and tactics needed to be the 'best possible' they can be.

its just 'the internet' Im afraid, there is no more illusion, there is no more speculation or debate it all comes down to solid, hard, cold numbers that have been crunched, chewed, digested and shat out years ago.

There are one or two different 'fields of view' where it comes to large fleet setups (or even small fleets) but generally, they all fall into predictable and recognized setups that are simply 'the best' and anything else is 'not the best'

The only place where this might not be the case is where 'new corps' or 'new players' are pvping and still testing out stuff with their limited skills and knowledge... thats why, if I return to pvp then I think I'd be going Faction Warfare where things may be less serious a bit more light hearted and people undock with some crazy stuff :D


I feel he Problem is, is that CCP dosent realease enough (often) content like ships, modules, and what not. If we was always getting new stuff like that then there would always be guess work and experimenting with fleets and fits and there wouldn't always be a standard or at least it would always be changing.

In other words fleets as well as fits should always be changing and evolving and if thats not happening then we're all just playing Tic-Tac-Toe
Wylee Coyote
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#24 - 2011-12-09 04:26:46 UTC
Zarnak Wulf wrote:
You returned at the right time in at least the sense that CCP is refocusing on spaceships. Here are a few of my thoughts...

I'll point out that <[what]> is a real pet peeve of mine is the focus on killboard efficiency. It makes cowards over the bravest of souls. I don't mind kill mails per se. But the whole point system behind it is demented. The HAC and the BS cost the same, for example, but the HAC is only worth 140 points while the BS is worth 400?? And don't get me started on faction frigates and cruisers.




I could not agree more.
Smiling Menace
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#25 - 2011-12-09 06:24:08 UTC
Wylee Coyote wrote:
Zarnak Wulf wrote:
You returned at the right time in at least the sense that CCP is refocusing on spaceships. Here are a few of my thoughts...

I'll point out that <[what]> is a real pet peeve of mine is the focus on killboard efficiency. It makes cowards over the bravest of souls. I don't mind kill mails per se. But the whole point system behind it is demented. The HAC and the BS cost the same, for example, but the HAC is only worth 140 points while the BS is worth 400?? And don't get me started on faction frigates and cruisers.




I could not agree more.


Also agree.

People play to 'win' and will stick with what's tried and tested and proven to win fights.

It is kinda annoying to see cane/drake/mael/geddon fleets virtually everytime you are in space and nothing else. But they win fights so it will continue regardless.
McRoll
Extraction and Exploration Ltd.
#26 - 2011-12-09 08:27:27 UTC
I agree with your observations and want to answer in a general way regarding PvP and "feel" of it:

The biggest "problem" with PvP (imo) is that player knowledge has increased over the years. People know how to fit their ships in the right way, they know the tactics and they know the strengths and weaknesses of various ships. This leads to less fights happening because people only engage when they have a good chance of winning. This happens at large, small scale and solo, there is less risk and experimentation taken, it comes down to numbers and it reduces the fun.

Also, fights become more boring because there are little to no fits and tactics flown that aren't the norm. People who try that get killed and become discouraged. There are so many factors that you cannot mention all of them, general increase of players leads to blobs, tons of guides, tips and help from older players prevent newer players from making mistakes and so on.

I have a direct comparison from experience: My old corp and me did quite some highsec wars and we decced RvB for 3 times in the time period of 1-2 years I think. In the first war I had a blast with my arty thrasher, warping around the systems and stations, taking out single targets and escaping the "blobs".

In the second war, I noticed that people became more careful, after the first couple successful attacks they mostly flew around in groups, broadcasted where I was and didn't let me come to them in general. I also lost more ships due to them being more coordinated.

In the last war, there happened nearly nothing except one big fight where they came to our system and which was the only fun to be had when we decided to fight outnumbered ( I lost a Sleipnir during that fight EvilP). Other than that, there was no opportunity to get a fight or gank for both them and our corp, because they knew where we hung around and didn't come out and vice versa.

Now while that trend was "better" for the newer players in the sense that they didn't get ganked might be better in terms of saved money, it remains the question whether they had more fun. Whether camping for hours without a single kill and nothing happening is better than losing a cheap T1 ship even when ganked comes to the individual point of view I guess. For me at least, I'd rather have lost a couple of Thrashers in an attempt to gank someone, rather than camp in a gang, be safe and then fly away without something happened.

This, in a nutshell, happens all around Eve I think, starting from a solo situation to a 1000 pilot blob.
The Snowman
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#27 - 2011-12-09 10:09:40 UTC
When I used to do a lot of PvP in guildwars, there was a lot of frequent changes to skills which saw many 'builds' come and go, so yes... constant 're-balancing' is very important for pvp games.

The trouble being that 'adapt or die' is something that eve players are very very good at, they will quickly adapt, take what they already know and have huge amounts of experience with.. tweak it slightly and voila!

What needs to change are some fundamental mechanics, not so much 'more modules' or 'more balancing'. The last major 'fundemental change' to PvP was the introduction of wormholes, with no established stable 'gate' and with no 'local' things in there were exciting, for a while.

In fairness, CCP do try their best to radically change things, but they encounter a lot of resistance and so have to carefully and slowly creep these changes in.

But it will take someone at CCP who has a fat set of brass ones to do something really radical like remove local and ignore the critics. Especially as they have set the precedent of halting WiS work in the face of such resistance. The community now knows that it simply has to complain loud enough and any radical change can quickly be halted.
Khrage
#28 - 2011-12-09 18:42:09 UTC
Trinkets friend wrote:
However, if you've been away you have missed wormholes. part of the issue with nullsec in pparticular is that you have Local. You can see when there's a gang, let alone a fleet, in system, which means you're on d-scan for probers trying to pin your sniper fleet down. It turns into a safe-bouncing exercise, and again, the warp-to-zero is a difficult thing to achieve.

Wormholes, however, are almost invariably the close-range bruising DPS fests that you seem to like. You're fighting within 20km of the enemy most times; your combat prober works without being betrayed by Local (if he's good, he gets off a ninja scan) resulting in warp-to-zero and pushing the envelope back in favor of blaster boats and killdozers like shield Astartes, etc.


I would just like to thank you for reminding me how much fun my wornwholing days were...
m0cking bird
Doomheim
#29 - 2011-12-09 19:00:32 UTC
m0cking bird wrote:
You allude to some mythical time where hybrids were awesome. Apparently superior to the way hybrids were before the current expansion.

I don't remember it the way you do.
In late 2008 I was soloing 0.0 with Drakes and Brutix's. I also had fun engagements with my close friend Josh, @ the time. We often only used Gallente cruisers, frigates and battle-cruisers.

I had the same difficulty I have today. I did then, before the nano-changes. Honestly, even more so. However, in our dual Thorax's. Josh and myself often caught vagabonds and curses by surprise. Using overheated modules under specific circumstances. (I'm really focusing on cruiser and battle-cruiser class ships here.) Frigates were alot easier to destroy with 90% stasis webifier's, but for engaging cruisers and above. Many ships could use mobile tactics that left Gallente and Minmatar battle-cruisers wanting (Drake, Harbinger).

Frigate engagements were alot more static than it is now (Honestly alot like how battleship engagements are today, but still ended quickly). Gallente frigates range limitations was not a serious issue then. So 90% stasis webifier was greatly effective here.

With battleships. No one has ever argued that 90% stasis webifier was not beneficial to battleships. Battleships had almost no issues dealing with ships of lower classes. Even frigates. However, the Tempest was still able to use it's mobility to effectively stay out of a Megathrons range (stasis webifier range = 13,000meters). The Megathron was loved because so many pilots used them to engage ships of lower classes.

It's alot easier for Gallente ships to catch mobile ships now than they ever did in the past period. Once I catch a vagabond now. I'm overheated (Thorax), often catching a mobile ship off guard. Stasis webifier has the same increase in range with heat it did in the past. Once applied the Vagabond has a velocity decrease. @ 10,000 meters I apply a warp scrambler. The Vagabonds micro-warp-drive is deactivated (caught). His propulsion module cannot be turned on (as long as my warp scrambler is active). Most Vagabonds do not use warp scramblers. So, I have mobility advantage (Thorax). (Damage output and defence)

This is the same tactics you had to do in the past. Although, one module had a more significant ability to limit another vessels mobility. Instead of 2 modules for the same purpose (warp scrambler and 60% stasis webifier).

So this mythical fantasy time were Gallente was popular because apparently they worked (I often pointed Gallente ships were popular for no reason @ the time). Did not exist. In fact. That was the time I switched to MInmatar because I believed Minmatar ships had more options to deal with the environment @ the time and coming changes. Even though. I had no answer for the Myrmidon, Brutix, Vexor, Taranis, and Ishkur @ the time.

All battleships were superior with 90% stasis webifiers. Amarr battleships were still superior to all other battleships @ the time as they are now. Maestroms and Rokhs were still tanking like a boss and killing sh!t even without a stasis webifier. The whole back in the Gallente hayday argument is deluded and fanciful. Good luck with it though. Also, dual propulsion cruisers have been a way to counter the current warp scrambler and stasis webifer mechanics. Not to mention, not even a Hurricane using dual tracking enhancers can track a cruiser orbiting close range with a afterburner. That is not going to be limited to Gallente ships only (also welcome to a year ago when I mentioned this on the forums).

Also, the problem is the weapon system (blaster). By virtue of blaster range. it limits certain hybrid ships to a sub-optimal concept. And make no mistake. Close range weapons are sub-optimal. All of them. No matter if it's auto-cannons without the benefits of tracking enhancers or ship bonuses to range or Heavy assault missiles and blasters.
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