EVE General Discussion

Well, they appear to be buffing destroyers. Something of a role overlap there.

If I were doing it I'd be leery of just making them generally OP, too. It's not as if they're never used at the minute.

Call me a heretic by all means. But just how long does it take one guy to tweak some numbers across 8 hull types in a single class in the database?

So what if its not absolutely perfect first pass - thats what you have "iterative balancing" for right?

Take an afternoon.
Read some threads.
Make up some numbers.
Give AF's the 4th bonus.
Add it to the patch.

Tell the players its a work in progress and may well be tweaked after release but we thought you'd like to play with them now and give us feedback from the live server.

Profit.

I honestly don't understand why this kind of thing has be such a huge song and dance routine every time.

This is a good post, even if I never had the pleasure of downing your Auga 3 Mach (because I'm **** at PvP)

The problem with the AF bonus is that the various AFs have widely differing capabilities, and a single buff to one attribute may make some of them OP and others useless. That said, with the dessie buff making dessies insanely OP, a simple buff to EHP on all AFs may be a good idea.

I know, right?

Like the whole rockets fiasco that involved changing two or three numbers, yet somehow took YEARS to implement when everyone knew exactly what was wrong and how to fix it and why it made sense.

Is there some bad game design here I'm not aware of? Aren't we really just talking about changing some numbers?

Meeting this winter expansion 'goal' would be so good for CCP and it could be a days work.

Just give them all a 5-10%/lvl Afterburner bonus (and make the Minmatar AFs slightly slower)

if you really want to get creative, give them 8 separate bonuses. With the destroyer buff coming, this should be a no-brainer.

WHY IS THIS SO DIFFICULT?

I'm sure its not just me that has a feeling of deja vu here

Pretty sure I trained Assault Ships 5 a full three years ago based on similar CCP "promises".

Pretty sure* I'll still be looking at Assault Ships 5 and thinking "oh yeah what about that bonus" in another three years.

AFs are fun AND good for certain roles - but that tends to be solo, heavy/hero tackle and not a lot else (yes you can have AF roams but they're rarer than iterated Eve content). Now maybe that's the way they were meant to be but seems to me that there's something missing.

To the average PvPr its not worth doing Assault Ships 5 - better off coming back to it when you have inties/cruisers/BCs/etc at a decent level.

*assuming both I and Eve are still around.

I get what you're trying to say, but it's bullshit and you know it. There simply isn't a realistic 4th bonus that could possibly overpower assault frigates as a group or threaten the roles of interceptors or destroyers. The AF buff has also been on the table for years, including this expansion, so at this point CCP has to have some rough ideas where AFs should fit in the big picture. Whatever it is, I don't think one lousy extra bonus on a a sub optimal frigate platform will unbalance the game.

I think CCP simply isn't touching them because they didn't have the time to do all they wanted and the other rebalance goals had higher priority and larger impact in the game. There aren't that many people flying Afs now and as you said AFs aren't in a horribly bad shape, so it was propably the easiest thing to cut. I can understand all that, but I hate to see another ship group fall in to further obscurity, because so few people fly them, that CCP keeps pushing much needed changes to the class further and further back. I know CCP might look at it right after the expansion launches as they say, but it's something I've heard before and years later AFs haven't seen any changes, so forgive my scepticism on the issue.

Hey now, I didn't say I did not want this to happen, or that it wasn't long over due.

I agree that CCP's way of making their priority list for updating ship stats needs to be looked at.

I also agree that when it comes to making adjustment to published ship stats, the actual steps require need to be streamlined (I could be mistaken, but I thought something came out not to long ago say that they were doing this).

On the other hand, I fully understand that there is a process they need to go through to help ensure that the content released to the test server is the right content, and that it is not as quick and easy as changing a number and pushing update. Nor should it be.

I almost exclusively fly frig hulls, and these changes are a bit imbalanced, and really don't promote a "role" for AFs. I think the first thing to do is examine why AFs don't really have niche in fleet or small gang warfare, especially given that they are supposed to be a more specialized frigate.

Maybe reducing the effectiveness of projected effects (neuts, webs, TD, ecm), or a shorter warp distance would give them a more Assault-like feel.

Let me guess, 18 months then?

Considering how long af's have been broken, i can not understand the "not enough time" thingy. Cause im damn sure you have had years