Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This is another one of those top line metrics that can't be trusted for overall game tuning. It has the same problems as above, except instead of looking at raw damage you're looking at kills (an improvement, at least). We still haven't broken it out by location, timezone, security status, weapon type, or fleet size. Another problem with this is particular site is that it's exceptionally deceptive due to the multiplicative effect of how it counts fleet kills.

-Liang

I think that, while the intent of the changes are heartfelt and decent, how they were executed leaves something to be desired. Before going into details I would like to say that to my knowledge, this is the first time since Inferno that an armor tanked ship has been specifically suggested in a rebalance thread to be flown as a shield ship. While there is nothing wrong with suggesting it from an after the fact "here's a setup that could work" style, you have suggested it in the initial core design concept. You made yourself famous, in part, by not sticking with whatever the ship was "designed" to do and making your own unique setups based on creativity in the fitting. What astounds me the most is that you are giving it the same mid-low slot layout as the Hyperion while at the same time changing the Hyp by saying that it isn't good enough at brawling, how then do you expect the Mega to do the same thing WITHOUT a rep bonus? My suggesting would be to leave the 7th slot low and let players make up their own minds in it's current form when.

Hyperion:
This change will work wonders with the single rep versions by granting resists and room for more DPS. Triple rep version is totally out and dual rep version will be unlikely with out the extra mid I fear. As has been also mentioned, I don't think it will find much use in fleets without either having the rep bonus be for both received and local reps while also not having a turret bonus that is useful for range (optimal, tracking, falloff, etc). For changes, I would suggest either a larger rep bonus (assuming that most of the changes stay as they are) or granting a vastly increased cap and cap recharge. I think that would go a long way towards helping with all of the "need more boosters" concerns.

Mega:
As expressed above I think the current line of thinking is terrible. You want to give it more mids for dual propping or shield tanking but only give it 25 more CPU. You want to make it a larger version of the Talos but only give a minor speed bonus and no mass reduction. I do like the ROF bonus, but without addressing the above concerns, I doubt it will do much good.

Dominix:
Once again my beloved drone boats are getting "buff...NERFED!" One of the few redeeming qualities of the dominix was flexibility, you could have a viable blaster focused, drones focused or even a neut focused, ship. With the changes, I like how you want to make the drone race a pure drone battleship. That said, I think you should also give your preliminary thoughts on the sentry changes since you are expressly stating that is how you think they would be viable as a fleet ship. I would also like to point out that because sentries are so vulnerable to a firewall BS, the ability to completely remove a fleets DPS should be countered by said ship having something to fall back on, which ironically, you HAVE given to the Amarr: a neut bonus. Even if the geddon loses all it's drones it can still be useful in the fleet. Without a hybrid bonus, and assuming I'm fitting the domi for drones (i.e. drone damage augmentors, drone range, etc.) then I will likely be missing a turret and have no magstabs or anything else with which to boost my turret potential. Thus my turret damage will be anemic at best, irrelevant at worst.
My thoughts to fix this, currently without knowing the sentry rebalance thoughts, would be to either A: make the domi a PURE drone boat; remove the turrets, give it a larger damage bonus, give it a larger drone bay and throw in another low and mid slot for tankability or B: give it another useful role in fleet warfare. EWAR (could be anything from ECM to point range), remote assistance via reps or some other fleet bonus, SOMETHING to give it something to do when the inevitable firewall kill off all the drones. In no other weapons system can a foe specifically eliminate your DPS without requiring warfare on your ship. As such, if you want to make this, as stated, a sentry/drone fleet doctrine, there needs to be something giving it a fair shot at doing so.

Unlike an autistic nerd like you?

Sorry bro but fear of change is =/= to fear of poorly thought out balance changes produced by incompetent grey matter.

Hey Rise,

Ok, that's great. Again, top line metrics are somewhere between misleading and dangerously misleading. Have you broken this down into regions, sec statuses, fleet sizes, or any other kinds of metrics? Have you excluded damage that didn't result in a kill? Have you excluded structures?

-Liang

Ed: BTW, I don't just "understand SOME statistics". I have a *deep* understanding of game analytics - and I am offering you professional game analytics advice. Feel free to evemail me (or email me) if you want to make the discussion more private. But seriously. Top line metrics are bad for your health.

For the love of god, please get rid of the active armor rep bonus on the hyperion already, it is marginally used in very specific situations and is sub-par with all the other armor tanked ships. It's a great looking ship i always wanted to fly, give it a proper bonus.

Also, not only you did not fix the hyperion, now you ****** the megathron aswell. Make at least one ship on the gallente line-up viable for large fleets. If you started adding mids, you might just aswell add another so we can properly shield tank it.

As for the Domi, who in his right mind would fly a potato when one of the best looking ships in game does exactly the same thing (geddon).

You guys at CCP really hate gallente don't you?

As a huge Megathron enthusiast, I'm....



...not sure how I feel about this! I like the idea that you're giving more ships the ability to use MJD, as the Megathron sorely lost out on that due to the 'necessary' mids (Point, web, mwd cap booster) along with the fact it's more mobile. I'll be interested to see how it actually goes with armour honeycombing etc.

I don't think it'll help it out in big fleet doctrines, but then not every ship SHOULD be made to fit big fleet doctrines. Got to say though, losing that 7th low is going to hurt, as the lower drone DPS combined with the removal of a (likely) damage mod will bring it's damage down, and that's where the Megathron shone. The wonderful glass canon.

I'd flat out say that given the 125 drone bay/bandwidth back, this would be a fantastic ship for solo and small gang. Maybe even 150, so you can carry a round of lights, too. Remember, it's still paper thin. Oh and to hell with the launcher, nobody should care. ;)


Could be (read: Probably am) wrong, but time will tell!

You just killed my shield brawling Hyperion :(

Rofl wtf?

I'm pretty sure that CCP Rise is Kil2. Feel free to go watch his PVP experience on his old Youtube channel. I may not agree with him, but do try to give him (and the rest of the CCP team) a break from the "You don't play your own game" stuff. :)

-Liang