EVE General Discussion

The mark of a theme park mmo is the constant rebalancing efforts engaged in by their developers to achieve the mythical land of perfect balance between their various characters. These efforts, however, never work and always lead to the rise of a new flavor of the month which in turn leads to new rounds of whining on the forums by the fans of the various classes of characters and ultimately new rounds of balancing by the developers. Hence, an endless cycle of nerfing and buffing is engaged in that usually leaves more people dissatisfied then happy.

Eve as a sandbox type game should be immune from this sort of nerf/buff cycle, and yet the dev's have jumped into a full scale round of re-balancing. This re-balancing is fundamentally anti-sandbox. CCP is going so far as to actually tell us which hulls are for tank, which dps, which hulls are for null (eg the hulk), which are for afk mining (eg reteriver), etc. . . Ultimately, none of this balancing will work as all it will do is create new flavors of the month, which will, in turn, force new rounds of nerfs/buffs.

Eve is a unique game and its approach to balance should be in keeping with the spirit of the game. As such, imo, ccp should forego any effort at balancing the various hulls. Instead, CCP should consolidate the hulls and give the players more freedom of design. Freedom over slot layout, hardpoint numbers and types, engine types, etc.... Of course there have to be some limits on the designs; hard rules to govern the players, but ultimate choices of how a hull should be fit and used should be left to the players. By giving ship design over to the players, ccp breaks free of the balancing trap and frees up developer resources to actually focus on content. Hence for both the players and ccp less hulls equals more freedom.

Edit:
As was pointed out here http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2012/09/comment-of-week-homogenize.html folk have really begun to howl now that ccp has moved passed the low hanging fruit of the frigs and on to popular ships such as canes and drakes. Even if these ships arguably are out of line with the rest of the similar ships, by nerfing them CCP is antagonizing significant portions of its player base, i.e. creating bitter vets, which of course impacts subs. Moreover, at the end of the day, the bc's as a class will not be brought into line with each other, rather one will stick out and be the fotm. Which will ultimately setup those players to be turned into bitter vets when ccp gets around to swinging the nerf bat at them. In short, nerfing always results in an endless cycle of player angst and rage, which impacts CCP's bottom line.

Clearly, the better way of handling imbalances is to give the power to the players - trust the sandbox. Let the players make the decisions. And for all you folk below, who want the dev's to make the decisions for you - well its clear that sandbox games are not really your thing. Truly you want to be able to say that you play in a "sandbox" game, but really you want your hand held and decision made for you. Hence, might I suggest that wow is that away --> You all will feel much more at home.

You are correct in that MMOs are constantly being changed and rebalanced, but what CCP is trying to do is to get the balancing into a place where things are less lopsided. No, the balance will not ever be perfect, and it will always be getting small tweaks and changes, but we can get into a lot better of a place then we are right now. Tiericide, fundamentally, is to mechanically even the ships out with each other. Prior to tiers there was a very linear progression from bad ships to good ships with the good ships costing more. This was built into the system, automatically making the lower tier ships obsolete. That's not FOTM emerging from the sandbox, that's coded right in. By changing levelling the ships off, yes, there will still be best ships at certain things, but the other ships will actually have a chance.

npc corp

Quoting this reply as it has as much logic and intelligence as the original post.

I think I understand what you are trying to say but you conveyed it in a way that won't garner much positive feedback. Have some changes been needed? I believe so. Was the mining Barge/Exhumer change kind of silly? Probably. Is it too early to vomit all over the forums about 16 ship tweaks + upcoming cruiser changes. Absolutely. Lets wait for the changes before we lose our ****.

Yep, because without balancing and new ships everyone would have been flying stabbabonds for the last 7 years. Except they wouldn't cos no one would play that broken crap and the game would have died in 2006 or something.

in any case your premise is entirely flawed, all ships in eve have been designed with a role always. If you had actually read the ship descriptions you would know that. All that ccp is doing with this rebalancing is refining them. Post balancing people will be just as likely to use fits outwith the role as they are now, the difference will be that some hulls will not be automatically worse to use regardless because they are a lower tier. Balancing the ships while removing tiers will actually make it far more likely players will try new fits and new ways of flying a ship.

And the "against the sandbox" stuff is crap as well. Eve is a sandbox, ccp provides us with the sand and the walls. If they change the amount of sand or the height of the walls its still a sandbox.

The thing is we pay CCP to make these changes, and having looked over the new ship fits, I really feel your idea sucks. Not to be offensive mind, but I do not think you understand * Game Play May Change*. Anyways, I like change and that is what keeps people playing.

Your way would be doomed to fail period. You can prove this by making a game and never changing. :) Want to bet you do not hold on to people?

The current ship rebalancing is not to equalize them, rather it is to make ignored and otherwise unused ships actually useful, "adding more sand to the sandbox".

CCP loves throwing wrenches into the works to promote conflict and keep things interesting, example: ASB.

CCP Soundwave: "Why Balancing Is Bad and Monkeys Are Good".

Terrible idea from another npc alt poster.

tl;dr - We're the monkeys.