Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hey Fozzie - I have a few questions about the motives of these changes:

1. What emergent gameplay will result from trying to nerf bombers or make them harder to pilot?

2. How do you think these changes will affect ISBoxer bombers?

3. How do you think these changes will affect 1person per char bombers and their FCs?

Bombers are a result of people recognizing that the only way to beat the blob is by using better tactics to do so: coordinated bombing runs from different directions, on grid warp-ins/pings, timing, etc. The reason people die to bombs is because they are bad. There is really no other excuse. Every single time I have been in a fleet and it died to bombs was because there was some simple mistake made by myself or the FC: warp to gate with bubble on it and enough hostiles in system to represent a bombing threat, sitting on a grid NOT INSIDE A BUBBLE, warping to a ping during a fight without having bubbles up when you land (warping to a hic with a bubble up). Every time I have killed people it has been because they made the same mistakes listed above. Last night HERO warped to the same ping off their station 5 times, I bombed them on the 4th and missed, but got them on the 5th. Like wtf. On the flip side, every time I have lost a squad of bombers it was because the opposing side did what they needed to to kill the bombers. It's not hard, it just requires effort and a litttttle bit of coordination.

Bombers are an essential way to even the playing field when people bring N+1 dudes and don't use basic defensive tactics. To make it even worse, now when they do bring their N+1 dudes and tidi is at 10% they're going to have an extra 2s of non-tidi time before bombs go off? In Tidi it's already enough time for any uncoordinated fleet to react to the bomb run - but now the bombers will get decloaked by eachother when they land on their bomb position giving extra time for the hostiles to react, +2s of non-tidi time (like 20s of real world time??)... lololol.

I like the dictor change as it requires someone to do something to counter the bombers. I would look to more changes like this and the bomb HP nerf so it gives people options to counter them rather than just making them so bad that no one brings them except the dedicated ISBoxers.

I'm not a fan of the return the cloaky ships decloaking each other. This is going to be a real pain for other ship classes. Especially annoying for something like Recons.

Continuing from https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=5123470#post5123470


Lastly, for the vocal minority of a mob that is currently attempting to blame everything and their mother on this topic, multiboxing is not cheating. ISBoxer is not cheating. Get over it.
Because a player enjoys a different style of gameplay that you do not agree with , does not make the said player a cheater. The definition of a cheater is defined by the masters of the game. This can be changed by appealing to said masters. And this appeal was made. ISBoxing was a bannable offense in its infancy, but this ruling was changed , not because the corporate heads came together and decided that ISboxer generates more revenue, but because ISboxer's functionality is no different than a hardware set up that mirrors keys across physical computers. The difference is that it does it via software instead of hardware.

People have their own play styles that they enjoy to each their own as long as it does not break CCP's rules they should all be welcomed in this sandbox that we play.

People complaining about ISboxer pvp is equivalent to players informing all hisec players that they are no longer allowed to run missions because those players are a detriment to the economy. After all, they do not add content to the game and even CCP is quoted saying that hisec mission runners tend to quit after a while anyway.
Mining in hisec is now banned. Mining should only be done in nullsec, since mining has no risk involved in highsec.

These are all opinions and arguments about ISBoxer sound as ridiculous to me as these 2 silly examples I have given above.
I have come across players who do not agree with ISBoxer and that it takes away from the emergence of the game, but then I turn around and ask them how many accounts they have, and how that is any different from an ISBoxing multiboxer.

They are all different styles of play and they all have their place in New Eden. Everyone is welcome to have an opinion, but please don't try and force those opinions on others and try and make it law.


In closing,

Please address the actual reasons why bombing has become to prevalent and fix those rather than attempting to bandaid fix something that does not address the main issues.

sig radius penalties, bomb damage only relying on sig radius, bomb "alpha" being too high with 8 bombs per wave, and lastly to the players that share this great world of New Eden with myself and many others, please stop trying to define what is cheating in this game based solely on your own narrow view

Really?!

i'm leading one corp based on our bomber bar and i have experience over 10k kills with bomber bar. we italian and i'm not heavy skillled in english, sorry for my english.

first of all, i dont see really nothing in re-balance side but the direction is nefing completly a doctrine, a gameplay style, a community and people enjoyin in a unique gameplay style.

One single aspect of these change are enough to make bombing bar extremly difficult, all togheder made this almost unthinkable for human communities made of real people with veterans and newbie.

*the 12 second align destroy the chance of wiping the best-bang-for-buck cormorant rail fleets. most of the nado, naga, bct3 and othere usual kiters can take simply a fleet warp even not aligned.

*smartbomb use will be deployed in some doctrine fit and , except making a mess in battle result at the end of the day, will simply wipe the entire volley. In 0.0 i will espect a medium smartbomb (1 slot) in almos every doctrine fit and will be simply impossible attacking powerblock in subcapital deploy.

*the mass decloacking effect will make very slower , togheder with nerf of align and warp, at the point to allowing only very few (if possible) runs in a night. nullifing the launcher bomb lvl 5 bonus.

the only option in action at moment looks the goku but killing completly the steath side of the ship, nothing more of stealth just a in field wing. Goku doctrine used the signature to tank but the boost of +20% make the dps incoming unsusteinable.
The locking time in traditional bomber bar with greater signature and lower agility will reise follish level the risk of being wipe.
I will remember a bomber wing is over 400m for every squad of 10 real man and really at moment istalocked and istashotted.
instead of , like sandbox manifesto, helping people finding new way to think a solution or approach for a fight this nerf kill many of the new tecnique i had seen in last month like voiding cruiser, double or triple point ista bomb or simply the classic 1 wave every 6 seconds..... do u want only these people join main fleet and bye bye to creativity, fantasy and think-different approach to battle?


the +10% rof even for a whole corp trained to 5 is in real unapplicable because is unthinkable stay in field for over 1 min of enemy dps with a faster locking and faster alphaing of these bomber. The signature was the focus on our tank and the plate mixed with lower agility will kill us more than everything else.
A side of that the smartbomb will complete the job.

the capital bomb is quite smart to create a link between capital and subcapitals.

i think all these nerf togheder will headshot not only casual bomber team but even experienced community playing eve and trying to do many tecnique since months and months.

Imagine all the unsubs if ISBoxer would be forbidden. All the highsec ISBoxer mining alt fleets to fund subs would go extinct.

I have they bubble themselves, but a throwaway cloaky, or a permacloak bomber on a wormhole, or gate. We use sabre's in this way.

I'm a little disappointed with the changes, in general. Not because of ISBoxer -- while I would agree that it does offer a significant power increase for bombers, it affects way more than bombing and probably deserves its own thread -- it's because the damage formula was, essentially, unchanged. As it stands, decloaking change aside, bombs still have an outsized advantage against shield ships. I think a lot of people were expecting these changes to tweak the damage formula so that signature was not the be-all, end-all bomb damage mitigation stat. Was this considered in your (internal or CSM) discussions on the topic, and if so, why did you decide not to change things in this regard?

CCP Fozzie, do you know very well, i suppose, the great impact of bubble for bomber bar. Taking position, warpin and warpout is mainly disrupted by the wise use of probes and i agree with this improvment.

But in other side i think headshotting us with the align time, 12 sec bomb, smartbomb vulnerability, mass-decloack is a too heavy nerf. The name itself of the class ship is to nerf: nothing more steath for the mass decloack and no more bomber for the vulnerability to istalock and long align...

I agree we may need a rebalance but allow the intelligence of the hostile to disrupt us. The new interdiction probe is a good idea and will defend actively a hostile fleet but, i repeat, reconsider the whole nerf to avoid headshotting entire corps.