Ships & Modules

Despite the near constant howling on the forums for buffing this or nerfing that-- I say it's a waste of time entirely on pretty much every level.

First, obviously- is that no one really agrees on what needs to be fiddled with by CCP, and for every change made or not, there are valid arguments both ways. You please one group and anger another. No one ever actually 'wins'.

More importantly though is the grim, meathook reality about any MMO, and Eve is no exception-- that they are mostly just fancy calculators to it's playerbase. Call a ship or module whatever you want, give it tiers or tech levels....it's all just window dressing around whatever the math says is the 'best' at the moment.

Look at these forums for all the evidence you'll ever need of what I mean. From 'tell my what skills to train- in other words, play this game for me;-- type threads. To topics on how best to run 20 acct's at once. The reliance of EFT by so many. The flame wars begun over one person's opinion wavering from that herd's idea of what's right. My favorite are conspiracy theories about secret motivations of CCP or whoever.

People will just spam the new hot ticket until some faction complains it too needs nerfed. Take for example, the Drake- which so many complained about it's tank making it 'too good' at stuff. Nerfing that ship won't increase parity, it'll simply cause a recalculation of numbers to determine if it's still the one ship everyone spams the use of. If nerfing it makes another ship score better, then everyone will just use that ship to death.

If the notion of increasing choice really worked in practice, then maybe. But you simply run into the problem of making all the ships basically the same, just with different names for things.
So you WANT some ships to be better than others. But you also WANT them to all be equally useful.

DOESN'T MATTER. If a type of module is considered lacking it'll be abandoned. No one (at least PvP'ers) cares about anything but Meta 4 and T2 for everything- a tier one module is weak rat-loot. Sell it to buy the meta 4 or T2 of whatever you need. What's it's in-game name?? Meta 4 and T2, that's what.

Ships are the same. By making one no longer the best, you just nominate another to take it's place. This is how it works already with tiers- again using ships as an example- other ships CAN do the things the 'best' can- just not as well and so they go unused for that purpose. Anyone fly a Breacher in PvP??? Why would you when you can fly a Rifter?
This same model extends to ships and modules....I'm just saying the system isn't actually 'broken' to begin with. There is already a 'best' in each race for each class of ship (for each role) and then out of those four, one of them is the best, one the worst.

Eve's been around all this time and constantly tweaks and buffs and nerfs these things and no one is actually any happier. They are no closer to fulfilling whatever plan it is they have with these buff/nerfs. They don't even know what it is they want- do you want every ship to be the same but for window dressing? Or do you want ships to be better or worse than others?

But none of the constant buffs or nerfs have ever achieved either aim, and no one is sure they even want them to.

You'll have a standout. Always will if you want anything to have actual differences in them. Outside of a few RP'ers, there is no use for 'brand loyalty' in Eve, so everyone will just fly or use whatever is deemed the 'best' at the moment. Swapping what is the 'best in class' every once in awhile doesn't, and hasn't solved anything in practice.
It's a nice concept, but the reality on the ground is simply that buffs and nerfs merely serve to shift around what the masses will spam until the next round of nerf/buff shakes up the order again. The people invested in the last 'flavor of the month' will complain that you just screwed them with the changes, while everyone rushes to spam whatever took it's place.

Chasing some kind of perfection thru endless buffs and nerfs is just a dog chasing it's tail.

I think there are two issues which may be confused if one's not careful.

One is when there is linear scale. If there's game mechanics of the "best dps wins" kind then the maxed solution will be used most often. And as you said rebalancing will just cause player to use another, now maxed, solution.

But another thing is, and I believe CCP tries to achieve this one, the rock-paper-scissors kind of mechanics. And here balancing is required to ensure that for every scissors there is a rock and so on. I haven't tracked every (re)balancing in EVE but my impression is that nerfing was applied when for given solution there wasn't good counter except for "more of the same". And conversely buffing was invoked to things which were underwhelming in most reasonable cases.

Little problem is that what is over- and what underpowered depends also on how is it used. In sniper fleets there are different nerf/buff considerations than in blobs.

I didn't refute my own thesis, but I see what you mean. Rather, I mean to point out the ideal versus the in-game reality.

Ideal- there is no one 'best' by a large margin so people will use a diverse array of ships/modules.
Reality- there is still a best and 'not best' by extension, and that is spammed to death.

Buffs and tweaks just shift around which is the flavor of the month.

I point out the double edge sword that comes into play- making them equally useful makes them basically clones of one another but for graphical changes.

The need for parity across racial types, for example ships and EW types, is pretty well pointless since anyone can train anything in Eve. There is no 'favorite' and no opverpowered anyone since anyone can use the same systems without bonus or penalty.
When someone wants a nerf it's for something they don't use, but can. When a buff is called, it's just because that player uses that particular thing (ship, module, etc) .

In the end I just have no confidence that nerfs and buffs really accomplish anything useful. Between just shifting around what is spammed by the player base, or making things basically clones of each other- it's not a terribly useful past time. One end result is useless, the other (at least IMO) a negative consequence.

Except this is patently false. The degree of fail is astronomically higher on some ships. Take the vigil, for example. Badass little ship, but it has a bonus almost nobody uses on it (tp) so it isn't perfect. That is a "not best," ship that would be fine never getting another look. People use it, and they will continue to use it. Now, go look at the eagle. Also a "not best," ship, but in this case it is so far from fine that it's almost never seen. People won't use it, and didn't even use it when hacs were fotm.

Furthermore you have provided no examples of buffs "basically making clones," as you put it. So "in the end," I have to write this off as a well-meaning but ill-conceived rant. I just have no confidence in your cognitive ability after reading the OP and personally, i'd rather see ships buffed and nerfed ad nauseum than allow for years of stagnating again.

You are prefectly lucid, it's just that your logic is circular and self-defeating.

You're proposing that nerfs and buffs don't do anything except (ultimately) negatively affect a lot of ships/pilots. The reality is that this is the case wether or not anything is changed. There are good ships, great ships, niche ships, and just plain awful wtf was ccp thinking ships. Approaching it from that basic reality you can see that changing absolutely nothing nets you the same long-term result that you proposed would happen due to homogenization: Everyone literally flies the same thing.

I don't think Blasters and Autocannons do the same thing. Blasters put Autocannons to shame at intimate engagement ranges while Autocannons make the better skirmish weapon.

As for Target Painting, Painting has its uses, and I'm sure if one worked at it, you could make a pretty awesome small gang doctrine or even fleet doctrine using painter ships. Problem is, nobody has that kind of patience for a EWAR buff that, like webs though less useful, is "I kills it with my guns/missilez" better.

I do agree with what you're saying but instead of nerfing and buffing, why not rework and buff the things that need to be reworked?

hybrid buff, rocket buff, rig sizes, void/javelin (and hail?) buff, sensor damp nerf, the incoming sensor damp buff are some examples of balance changes everyone supported. If you go from everyone to most people then the list gets very very long. Asserting that there are valid arguments on both sides of every issue is stupid.

tl;dr

Really mate, i'm doing my best to be polite about this. It does not "sound," circular. You are not having miscommunication issues. We are not missing the points you wish to convey.

It is circular. We get what you mean. We disagree with your entire premise because it is illogical.

One thing I will toss out there. I think that the nerf/buff cycle is actually a good thing. It's simply impossible to make everything completely balanced without making everything the same, there will always be something that is slightly better at the current metagame than other ships. However, what CCP can do is keep things mostly balanced and keep shifting things around to shake up the 'best' ship.

This lets some things be the inevitable FotM that are bound to emerge sooner or later, but it minimizes the FotY syndrome where you never see anything else again. And it keeps the people who are going to fly their favorite ship come hell or high water from being shut out of the fight, as long as it's mostly balanced between the different types of ships.

tl;dr: perfect balance is impossible, but the next best thing is near-balance with the 'best' thing changing periodically