Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Really?


This is also fairly silly. We constantly make adjustments based on public feedback. Some recent examples might include most of the deployables and all of the Sisters of EVE ships.


We aren't acting at all like something changed in Sentry mechanics. We also aren't talking about imbalance at all here. We are talking about how, partly because of changes to Domi and Ishtar, Sentries have become popular, and as a result assist has become popular. We think entire fleets of assisted drones is not good gameplay and so we are making a change to address that. I've already said multiple times that the actual power of sentries or of ships that tend to use them is separate and will be addressed, if needed, in a different way (and already has been somewhat by lowering the Dominix tracking/optimal bonus and by adding scripts to omnis).


The public feedback that you claim was so obviously telling us something we already knew - that the Dominix would 'break the game' - was actually mostly complaining the Dominix would be useless compared to the Armageddon. We knew the tracking/optimal bonus would be powerful but we also liked the idea of giving Gallente a fleet capable ship that used drones. We did not anticipate the server load issues but even if we had I doubt we would have scrapped the idea of letting drone users have a fleet ship.

We always open dialogue with players following CSM discussion which follows internal discussion. If you don't feel the CSM is valuable because of their affiliations or personal preferences then I'm sorry, but we will continue to use them as a resource. They are productive, articulate, calm, and they know a lot about EVE Online.

I know what you mean. Given the choice we would of course prefer to avoid 'arbitrary' caps.

In this case, there is so much benefit to a cap that we decided it was worth it. A cap is much easier to implement, in this case it's much easier to balance, and it's very simple to communicate to players. The benefit from all those things outweighed the cost of introducing something arbitrary in this case.

If we have the opportunity to to rework the user experience for drones I would expect us to look at this again and maybe find a way to avoid the arbitrary feel at that point.

Most of what you just posted I would support wholeheartedly.

The part about responding to feedback on the sisters ships, particularly the Nestor, is a bit of a stretch isn't it?

We told you very squarely that the Nestor needed to change or be much cheaper, but you have refused to act. I have no idea whether the CSM gave the same advice, I expect not.

As a result you have a broken market in a useless ship. The drone drop solution won't help this at all. Centralised price controls never do.

The perception out here is that you very much do not listen, even to those of us who are calm, informed and do our research.

With greatest respect, I appreciate that yours can be a difficult job sometimes.

As a counterpoint, I would argue that many of the players feel that their job is hard too - particularly when their advice and warnings are not heeded. This sometimes drives them to write in terms that you may perceive as irrational. What they are actually doing is trying to give you information.

I say:

I don't understand... why aren't you guys attacking the core issue? Instead of trying to treat the symptoms treat the disease.

Fix the drones themselves.

Inb4 400 fleets per large engagement

Actually this is another example of us listening. In the same release as the assist change we are adding Nestor BPC drops to Sentient Rogue Drones to lower the price.

The ship isn't very useful would need to lower it considerably

Sir, if the reward of achieving one of these ships in 0-sec was in any way comparable to the opportunity cost of not doing just about anything else in eve, people would do it.

It is not.

We, the player base, were most eloquent and vociferous in our arguments on this subject.

Why would a player spend time in sisters space to earn a ship that no-one wants, when he is better rewarded spending time in (say) serpentis space in order to get a vindicator that he can sell (and indeed use) easily.

Pointing me at a place on a map is not a reasonable response to this challenge.

The Nestor, no matter how it is achieved, does not represent a good use of (game) time. Drone drops will not fix this.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. BPC drops won't do anything to change the usefulness (or lack thereof) of the Nestor. There seems to be a fair amount of hubris present, and I don't know why it's so difficult to just acknowledge that the Nestor has been a colossal failure, redesign it for something useful and move on.

This is useless.

Devs are doing a quick fix to large battles by the cheap path, what is needed is a proper engine change, code rewrite or whatever is wrong that never gets fixed while CCP does vampires/FPS/Valkirye/Monuments/TV Series.

It must suck to work for a company that tells you to do crappy game design so they can take even more resources away from you.

In a sense, devs and players are on the same boat - we're all being farmed :(