Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Come on dont play the card "Data says". You know the old saying, "never trust a statistic which you didnt manipulated yourself"?

What Kind of Metric do you used?
- Average income
- Average wealth
- Average assets
- Average ISK spend

Did you tried to seperate ppl for the professions?
Did you checked why they got more income?
Did you count plex as income too?
Did you exclude alts?
Did you used different time intervals?
Did you excluded the super rich?
Did you checked for easy modes to earn isk, like FW (before it was nerfed)
Did you checked for multiboxing?
Did you checked the groups, who want to buy a BS or did you checked all groups?
Did you checked for patterns, combinations like Missions + Salvaging?
Did you checked the average play time or ISK/hour radio?
Did you checked for there loses too (ISK spend on PvP or Got blown up by NPC's)?
What kind of equipment was used

You can even check on more stuff if you like to, there are no bounds.
Before you showed us what you did, i wont believe you a single word on metrics.

Edit: added - What kind of equipment was used

Adapt or die. Things happen, things change.

For individual players, sure. It depends on what CCP wants, but I'm struggling to see the appeal of the new attack battleships at that price.

CCP Rise asked us for feedback in his OP, and he is getting it.

"Yes, master, thy will be done" wouldn't be a very constructive feedback, no?

It might be dangerous to think that way, but I sincerely believe that as far as battleships are concerned, their role needs to be looked at as a whole.

If I go buy a car, I want to know what I'm getting, as a consumer I care about how well my car performs, what kind of functions it has, does it have air conditioning etc.

Adjusting the price soley based on "Mineral value" Is also dangerous for this game. There needs to be a justification for someone to purchase a battleship. I don't want just a "Better hurricane" that performs only slightly better than a hurricane in terms of damage, and can't do so well in many combat situations. As I've already said before, why would I want to spend that kind of investment, when a battlecruiser, and other ship classes of smaller size, can do almost as much damage, handle more combat situations and potentially survive more battles and cost less or for the same price, offer more.

What does a battleship do? They do more damage and in some cases fulfill support roles, but they become big targets on their own, so if you want to use battleships effectively you have to use them in larger numbers or with support, but then if your just looking for damage there's no need to have one. You can just use an ABC, and it's easier and more effective to field them than it is to field battleships. If you want tank, being buffer, battlecruisers and command ships can fill that role easy, and with logi support you almost don't even want to waste the time. I rarely even see roaming fleets using battleships because of the agility needed to get from one place to another quickly.

They are used in alliance wars, but they have hundreds of them and that's where I've seen most of them being fielded. So it's hard to find these in small gangs often when you just see T3 cruisers, and drakes, and hurricanes, and ABC's. Sure the new changes are nice, but it doesn't give them that much of an upgrade, the only ships getting real changes I've seen are the typhoon, the armageddon and the megathrone and the hyperion. The others are only having their stuff slightly adjusted.

They still don't offer much value for what they are worth, which is why for the most part I don't bother using them even now. Lasers are only ever good against things weak to em thermal, large turrets don't hit very well unless you have ridiculous bonuses, and most skills at level 5 and even then you can still have trouble oh wait your nerfing tracking enhancers, now that makes me want to use battleship guns even less, unless of course I'm in a Mach or a ship that can track as good.

Secondly, getting into a battleship for a new player isn't a big deal, it never was, it was being able to fully utilize the ship, training the skills and enhancing your ability to fly the ship. That doesn't just happen over night, and ultimately as battleships are now, just the tech1's are outperformed, majorly by their faction counterparts, and marauders. They are utterly eclipsed, sure I can make a bunch of money farming missions, but I use a Machariel, that's not your everyday battleship.

Simply put, t1 battleships are becoming phased out, because they don't perform their roles as well as they used to, and every time you can get them into a role, there are other ships that can do a better job, for the same value or less depending on what you are trying to achieve.

Hull cost only admittedly, so fair point.



Doesn't matter. If it stays in null, it's used in null. If it's used in null, that's one less thing we have to buy in empire and ship in. If that's one less thing we have to buy in empire and ship in, it's one less thing that has to be built with trit in empire, which means one less demand on trit in empire, which means prices drop by some small amount. Combine that small amount across lots of things being built in null instead of bought in empire, and the net effect is an overall drop in price.

My opinion on this is - f...k you.

During the so-called balancing all you do is make cheap, crappy ships more expensive. The whole point to T1 ships was for them to be cheap. Right now they are not and when these changes hit, there will be no such thing as a "cheap" BS.
You're saying it's ok because "we looked into some metrics around player wealth and income and found that EVE players are making money faster and faster". Ok, SOME players make money. I don't, I make YOU money, most of my income comes from buying Plex and selling them for isk. Right now, for one GTC, I'd be able to but 3 (THREE) Abaddons and fit one of them. Sorry mate, but that's not enough. About 8-9 fitted would be ok but not 1 fitted +2 hulls!
As far as I remember, this rebalancing thing was to make every ship useful and used. To make sure that pilots are more eager to engage in PvP activities. Well this is the entirely wrong path! Ships have to be cheap and disposable and not hugely expensive as they are now. Nobody will fight if they need to grind some idiotic plexes only to have crap-for-loot drop from the overseer. Nobody will fight if they need to grind forsaken hubs for 7 hours to fit a damn BS. They will ONLY engage in PVP once they are sure of victory. It is the prices, the out-of-this planet prices, that make people so very risk averse. This is what you want to achieve? Because this is what you will achieve with constant price increase.
Of course you may say that there will be people who will be able to afford it - sure, botters will. They can afford to fly anything they want. They will thank you for it. Good job.

And for all of you that are going to say "then start doing (insert whatever) to earn isk" my answer would be - p... off.

To sum up:
CCP Rise - I absolutely hate this change. Not going to cancel my subscription - don't have one.

Back when i started playing this game in 1950 we did not even have such things as a raven or tempest, but you could still go to the store and buy one for about three fiddy. Now look at it today, when the patch hits they will cost around 500bil and you have to sell your first born into slavery! Think of the children! They will be the ones suffering from this, as they have to fly 4 more lvl 3 missions in order to buy a BS now!

Here's a little suggestion: set a flag for every battleship that was put in production before the patch. Then when someone reprocesses that battleship make it reprocess for the amount that it took to build it before the patch. And every battleship built after the patch hit just increase its base mineral amount. None of this 'extra materials' bull dung. It doesn't make any sense lore wise and the production efficiency skill doesn't factor into it, and you can't reprocess it for its newer build cost after the patch hits.

Doesn't that make sense?

Whelp... I guess I'm going to have to break my fan boyish trend of teiricide love and hopefully argue against these changes. This'll be new...


now while I could sit down and quote-war this whole affair to buggery I think it would be better to just try and cover why I believe this may be a mistake for the rebalancing effort. In previous teiricide effects it should be noted that ships, as a whole, have seen an upward trend in power, performance and efficiency. Condors are very much as worthwhile as merlin now, while before the changes the condor was barely more useful than the minerals it was built from, mainly as a means to invent and produce crows.

The battleship line however... has not seen these kinds of changes. Unlike any other class within eve the battleships were VERY close to being internally balanced with only the caldari and gallente really suffering from “worthless” ships in regards to pvp, specifically the Raven and the Hyperion, while both the minmatar and amarr had a solid and dependable line of battleship class vessels. There were issues with these other races as well of course, the typhoon had significant issues reaching its full potential needing not two but three separate weapon systems brought up to scratch while the amarrians tended to decide which ship they would use not on purpose, but on price.

Overall, I'm very much in favour of the new battleships statistics and intentions, however I would also suggest that the biggest balance issue inherent with battleships is not the distinctions between teirs 1-3, such as with previous classes of ship, but the clash of roles, purpose and effect the battleships have to fight with against the battle cruisers.

Now don't get me wrong, I’m not going to sperg out about how battleships should be the end all of combat, they most certainly shouldn't. Battleships certainly have advantages in terms of tank and raw fire-power, large guns give them a significant edge in terms of reach which easily make them the premier fleet damage platform available in the game. Combined with stiff tanks and ample room for the odd bit of support module the battleship has its place as the stalwart ship of the line... or at least it did. The impact of the attack battle cruiser class has sadly seriously impacted this position in the eve ship line up. As the size of an engagement increases, the unfortunate demand for alpha begins to outstrip the need for tank and the battleship's durability becomes a hindrance as the reduced speed and agility they have to surrender for it become more crippling problems, something attack battle cruisers have in ample supply, even after the changes. When battle's reach these inordinate sizes the combat admittedly becomes less about tank/gank as much as alpha/reload. Its rather unfortunate and something we can only hope CCP is working on.

Of course this is only talking about large scale combat, but what about smaller engagements? How about roams? Not much better here really. Outside of its natural environment, the fleet, the battleship finds itself in need of smaller escorts to protect it against craft its unable to escape or hit. The battle cruiser is simply a much more favourable platform in these instances, the attack battle cruisers have the straight line speed and massive damage to be effective at this level while the more standard combat battle cruisers bring a blend of speed, durability and fire-power the battleships simply can't compare to. This is natural and I believe a solid balancing point, however this is also where the issue arises, the battleship class has steadily been marginalised as newer ships have been introduced into the game, the attack battle cruisers were the first step but the new line of navy battle cruisers are going to encroach on this even more so with their excellent damage and superior application via tracking and explosion radius bonuses.

My other major concern is the explanation provided for this “price range”. I'm a firm backer of the teiricide movement but the decision to balance future prices based on current market performance seems a bit absurd. I've got a couple of questions about this.

1) Why has the decision to change prices been based on current market performance and not ship performance? It seems counterproductive to the concept of the rebalancing project which is intended to ensure that all ships are useful, pricing based on current trends is based on current balance layouts as much as anything else.
2) Has the crossover in tasks and the predicted prices of the new battle cruisers been taken into account in these decisions?, and if so can you describe this in what you believe we'll see in isk efficiency?

OK technically 2.5 questions but you get the idea.

For the too long/didn't read explanation it seems highly questionable to be basing a balance decision on the current state of the market rather than the value of the ships as they will be come odyssey.

I want these changes to go through, but I want to try and ensure that these decisions are being made from a balance point of view rather than one born of economic pressures. The economy should react to the nature of the ships, not the reverse.