Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hey guys

Wanted to just drop and in and say that we're keeping up on feedback and appreciate all the input. We will probably slow down a bit here and look to wait awhile before sharing a new iteration with you. We want to do process a lot of the feedback, do some testing internally and have some more dialogue in the department and after that we'll come back here.

We're definitely running into some problems where these ships are showing potential for a wide range of applications which can lead to balance concerns for some things and obviously can lead to frustration about the ships not being strong enough for others. We want them to be awesome, just like you, and by the time winter comes I think we'll be in a good place.

In the mean time keep up the discussion and you'll hear from us again soon o/

Here's a hint for your departmental dialogue: do what I suggested like 50 pages ago. Redo the whole T2 battleship selection with a PvE-specialized BS; an actual PvP / direct combat-focused Marauder; and a revised, more stealthy / support-oriented blackops battleship. It fits your design philosophy (T2 ships specialized for one role) and actually has a hope of making the various crowds that have been posting in this thread happy. Whatever you do, DO NOT try and make a combination PvP/PvE ship and DO NOT end up making a "HAC" version of battleships that would make a viable fleet PvP ship.

E: I guess it was more like 70 pages ago. Here's a link: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=3559765#post3559765

If this is a critique of my old post, then perhaps you should read it again. The idea is to have a PvE-focused T2 BS (using the current "transformer" hulls that CCP's art team devised) that would cater strictly to PvE (this is not my area of expertise, but I imagine them as having superior active tanking numbers through a rep-amount bonus while having normal resists and smaller buffers than regular BS to prevent them from excelling at fleet combat), an actual "marauder" that trades tank and damage output over a T1 / faction BS in order to gain significant mobility and sustainability advantages, and a revised blackops class that would take up covert cloaks and focus on providing logistical (read: moving things around-- not, "space-priest") support to marauder / recon / bomber / covert t3 gangs. The blackops would trade tank and even more damage output (relative to T1) than the marauder in exchange for being able to fill this cloaky support role.

Here, I've made an infographic to help demonstrate what I mean:

http://i.imgur.com/02VPuei.jpg

Note that the categories in the graphic are deliberately simplified: things like "tank" and "utility" can (and should) mean different things depending on the focus of the ship... for example, if you wanted to get really detailed you would break "tank" out into multiple categories like buffer, resists, active repping, etc. For example, a PvE-specialized ship with a maxed-out "tank" bar should mean something that has normal resists, a small HP pool, and a large active repping bonus. T1 and faction tanks should be similar to T1 in resist profiles, but with bigger hitpoint pools (to give them greater EHP without making them any more proficient at receiving remote reps), while T2 combat BS could focus on achieving moderate EHPs through small buffers with a resist bonus, making them powerful in small-gang scenarios regardless of chosen tanking method (buffer or active) while rendering them useless to fleet work due to inherent vulnerabilities to alpha / bombs.

This is my point, this is my hull bonus (that is a x10 skill), and it gives me a head-scratcher of combination of Ewar bonuses. The thought of webs being kicked out to 42km is intriguing, but that seems too OP.

The velocity bonus to missiles from the bastion is cool, and compliments the hull bonus. Overall torps would go to 50km with T1 ammo. May heaps a little boost to torp range?

Hey, Rise;

I think we're all on board with 'we want them to be awesome', but you know, you've said in the past that T2 is for specialization, and in the rebalance, there's actual thought going into 'what role are these ships meant to fill?'

So how about we start there? What role are Marauders meant to fill? Because just judging by the vast majority of the comments in here, either we're not on the same page as you guys, or you guys aren't on the same page as you guys, or nobody has any idea of what the 'real purpose' of a Marauder is.

The idea of a ship that can go behind enemy lines and support itself on long-term deployments is great, but ultimately, in a game where nobody needs to eat, drink, or take a crap, every ship can do that. And the Noctis pretty much obsoletes the tractor bonuses on everything short of an Orca. So the original conceptualization of the Marauder seems to be a non-starter now - given that, I think it's pretty clear that we all would find it a lot easier to evaluate any proposed ideas if we knew where those ideas were supposed to lead.

It's been suggested that there should be 3 T2 battleship classes - a dedicated PVE hull, a dedicated PVP hull, and a dedicated BlOps hull. Does the dev team have any thoughts on that? Is it a mad, mad thought? If the Marauders were to be the PVE hull in that scenario (which seems like how they'd best be used, since it's where they currently are anyway), what about leaving them largely intact, but adding a single high-slot for a salvager, and giving them a salvage bonus to take back that 'in-mission salvager' role from the Noctis?

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of Bastion. More ships with visible transformation animations will always get my attention, but the first thing that has to be asked is: what is this ship supposed to do?

Translation: Oh sh*t! The can's open and there are f*cking worms everywhere!



This is meant kindly. I think the dev team have the best of intentions, but creating a super-awesome-pve-but-not-too-op-at-pvp ship is going to be very difficult.

I think it's going to be a lot easier if the team focusses on just making marauders good at pve, and leave pvp to the pirate ships.

This a concept I could support, it is like everyone wins here. But without the power creep.

Hi,

Here is what worries me: speed is much bigger part of tank in shield method than in armor method.

If you build a shield tanking ship you do that at a price: bigger tank, bigger signature. This is balanced somehow by mobility.
Armor tanked ships build their tank at a price of speed keeping signature size.
If you stop both these ships armor tanked has huge advantage. It loses not so big speed so not much difference if that ship moves 50 or stops. At the same situation shield tanked ship looses crucial part of it's tank (all speed).

My questions are:
- did you considered that difference ?
- how do you compensate it ? Unfortunately I didn't noticed that.
One more question is:
- Caldari has two paths to go - hybrids and missiles. At the moment turret path ends on Rokh.
Why not give two weapon types bonuses to Golem ? This will let Caldari pilots who spent time to skill hybrids
natural path to advance. Up to now, they are abandoned somewhere and fastest way for them to progress is
to crosstrain Galente or Minmatar. Three other races don't have that problem.

I think correct way to go is:
- consider differences between t1/t2/t3 hulls ships should have (define resists values, armor and shield sizes)
- consider different tanking methods (define number of slots ship must have to carry that tank)
- consider different weaponry ship is carrying (ranges, dps, alpha, application)
- consider difference between t1 battleship and t2 battleship (define bonuses for tank, weaponry, other).
- look if what you get here is good. If yes it's time to add some fancy stuff like turning marauders into minidreads.
- look at the ship price, if there is a ship capable to replace marauder in his role for less than half of the price
start over.

I like that idea but it needs a lot of work to get good result.

Good luck,
Gazz

I didn't mind the first version at all, from a pve point of view. The pve in question was low sec plexing (5/10 & 6/10). MJD tactics are awesome for these and bonus to cycle time is SUPERB. Bastion mode would allow very light tank etc...

Terrible players will cry about being unable to move but seriously with local & d-scan and the fact that you're 100km from warp in, one truly has to be a massive derp to get caught in a plex. And if you can't get around low sec safely, in a ship of this size, it is not the ship's fault. It is YOU.

At least this second version keeps the MJD bonus.

---

My actual suggestion is to stop listening to pve exclusive points of view. Bastion+MJD is a GREAT idea to build upon but you need to stop trying to please everyone. Rethink the actual bonuses for these ships purely from a PVP perspective.

Before people get all upset about the above statement, please admit that PVE is easy and people adopt any ship to their bearing needs anyway. Why castrate something that could be so great by listening to incursion or mission opinions.

If the marauders get redesigned with a complete PVP focus, people will work out if they can be used in PVE effectively and either use them or not. If you redesign them with the mindset of pleasing incursion runners or whatever other player of limited perspective, they will just continue to be unused in PVP or used only by bored pilots for laughs.

No, that was me misreading, thanks for catching it.