Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I know that there is already a group that is supposedly representing the Eve players, but I have been with Eve since 2009 and still have yet to see many core mechanics fixed. On that note, it seems appropriate that there is a thread which details this list of broken mechanics without getting caught up in whether specific fixes are balanced or not. Without further ado, it is time to recognize the things that Eve needs to get right. In no particular order from the top of my head (open to additions):

1. POS mechanics
2. Doomsday
3. Drones
4. Gate camps
5. Triage
6. Remote hull repair
7. Wars

Pos mechanics: What is the longest a dead horse has been flogged without CCP giving any serious effort to fix the problem (besides fuel blocks and a couple great talks at EveCon aka FanFair)? Have we crossed the decade mark already? See for yourself: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=194625 and https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=9543 Nothing player-owned about it really, because of corp roles, it should really be called corp-owned station (cos) which is hard to setup or take down or even use in combat. This is why they play a very small role (or almost no role at all) when they are attacked and why they are not moved very much and are oftentimes merely abandoned in place to liter space with their remains forever.

Doomsday: First it was AOE and now it is just single-target carrier and dread insta-death. Of all the carriers and dreads, only the Archon can be fit to actually tank one DD and after that, there is no room to fit it for any meaningful purpose like dps or remote repair. Which makes the primary purpose of the Archon in combat is to simply be one more ship to be fired at and absorb enemy dps.

Drones: So many calls for "drone love" Drones are the only weapon system that is targetable. They are also easily lost when emergency warp-out is required. While fighters and fighter bombers are exceptions to the warp-out issue, they can still be easily lost to emergency jump out. Conventional turret and missiles systems can neither be targetted, nor lost without waiting for the drones to be retrieved, yet calls for drone nerfs rely on a direct comparison between drone and turret/missile performance while ignoring the primary drone drawbacks completely. Lots of players love the idea of drones even though drones in Eve have serious drawbacks, especially as a primary weapon system. https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2317391#post2317391

Gate camps: Blobs ambushing unsuspecting, lone travelers have been the primary reason that most work is only done in blobs (or friendly territory) or in a medium fleet with a scout to avoid the blobs. Gate camps are also the primary reason for the recent Ishtar nerf, as a reaction to the player-developed content (which CCP sometimes claims to love) of assigning sentries to insta-locking tackle at gate camps. Players would not have used ishtar, domis or even slowcat carriers in this way if the current mechanics did not promote gatecamping blobs as they do. Instead of fixing the underlying problem of gate camping mechanics, the Ishtar takes the hit with the nerf ax; following the domi nerf (just when things were starting to look up for drones). Meanwhile, the same gate camping issues which brought about these nerf calls continue.

Triage: Triage is not used nearly as often as siege, and for very good reason. The carriers cannot be remote repaired in triage, and their dps drops to near zero. Yes, we all know about triage juggling and no it doesn't change the fact that siege is used far more often and effectively; dps indirectly protects a fleet just as well as remote repair, except that dps protection does not care about whether any ship is in siege or not.

Remote Hull Repair: Simply put, remote hull repair is almost never used and that is one of the best signs that it is not "loved" enough. What ships has bonuses to remote repair like remote shield, armor or capacitor? None. Ignoring combat altogether, players would rather destroy a pos or other structure than remote repair it; seen it happen many times over.

Wars: Neutral logistics alts, neutral scouts, neutral fleet boosters, neutral remote insta-locking support, neutral everything makes high sec a nightmare for anyone at war who is not dedicated completely to fighting wars in high sec. Those large low and null sec alliances with the resources to fight potential high sec war dec blobs are much more interested in avoiding high sec altogether and staying in low sec or null sec where there are much fewer neuts running around and much more interesting targets and operations anyway.

In a way then, Eve really isn't right for most of the player base. Those who refuse to accept that major portions of the Eve population have long-standing issues with core mechanics problems are simply and blindly protecting their own turf. Titan players fighting to keep their doomsdays as powerful as possible for their own purposes. Gatecampers fighting to keep their gate camping as strong as possible for their own purposes. War deccers fighting to keep their war deccing mechanics as strong as possible for their own purposes. You get the point. Suggesting that Eve might not be right for anyone that has an issue with the list posted above suggests that you may be fighting to protect at least one of those points in order to maintain your advantage in using them against others.

It is pretty clear why the points above have not been fixed. Players who benefit from them have managed to influence CCP enough to either ignore them or to limit their fixes.

The real solutions are the ones that look at the root of the problem in order to determine why it is that a particular mechanic is consistently used for a decided advantage by the same groups. When the opportunity to win lies primarily on one side, then balances are required. Pointing to one of these cases, I completely reject that a mere 5% drone bonus on a heavy assault cruiser is the root cause of the issues observed in insta-locking gate camp blobs. The same logic extends to all these issues, that the root cause must be accepted before a meaningful fix can be proposed. I think you get my point.

The plot twist here is that I have no advantage from doomsdays or gatecamping or wardeccing. This isn't a forum alt; I post with my main and spit in the faces of those who don't.

I just don't like the idea of pantywaist carebears watering down EVE into the pillow-fight simulator that most other games are.

And what is flawed with this? This is exactly how EVE should be. You are supposed to go there, not come back from there. And if more capable people went there, these areas of space would fix themselves.

as for #1, CCP has already amdea list, POS's are being completely remade after Corp/alliance roles are redone hopefully early next year (which puts pos's either early 2016 or early 2017). theyre doing this because right now POS's are reliant on corp roles/functions, so until corp roles are redone, redoing POS's would just need them to be redone AGAIN after corps are.

Drone fittings make your ship's CPU literally melt.

LOL. That's what they said last year, and the year before, when we were given fuel blocks; again a good idea for fuel blocks, but far from the complete solution which has been overdue for at least a decade. We'll see, I suppose. Good intentions .. and two quarters .. get you a Coke, if you are willing to wait many years for it to be delivered.

Limiting myself to short responses now..

A few of any battleship or curse/pilgrim fully dedicated to neuts plus dps will work quite well. Not instant of course. Hard to alpha a cap battery, but with patience and enough neuts, it is easily doable.


[Ewar immunity is ..] another reason that triage (and in that case Siege also) is broken. ewar immunity ideas in siege, triage and supers are probably a relic of the broken ecm era.


Fine, tell your fleet carriers what to do, but not the Eve mechanics and Eve carriers what to do thus stopping emergent play.


That's substantial against frigates. And it is authentic drone dps.


In fact, there is nothing you can do with your tank to fit bigger drones... an even bigger drawback when combined with the max_drone limit. They are not comparable, but these continual attempts to make comparisons have kept drones broken for over a decade.

These issues are real, substantial, and fundamental to basic Eve mechanics. They are evident both in game and in the forums. I have seen and know many people and friends, who exclusively love pvp, leave Eve because of these fundamental issues. Rationalizing away the problems just leaves us in denial of the forum posts and in-game issues with faulty logic leading us to create more fundamental mechanics problems as bandaids for superficial perceptions of imbalance. This thread aims at the heart of the issues by looking at the underlying issues with fundamental Eve mechanics.