EVE General Discussion

T3 destroyers are a huge mistake, they are ludicrous overpowered.

Power creep at its finest....

Definitions:

Over-Powered (OP): Anything (item or ship) that killed ME, preventing me from winning because don't they know who I am?!?

Under-Powered (UP): anything I like to use, especially if I was using it when I got killed by that Obviously OP thing that CCP should nerf so I can win

Unbalanced: See OP

Perfectly Balanced: Ishtars (especially if you're in an alliance that flys nothing but Ishtars, or you own an Ishtar Blue Print)

Power Creep: New things that ccp makes that kill ME because don't they know who the F$%^ i am???!

TL;DR version: Abloobloobloo I died

Actually the EVE power cycle is unusual:

1. new item/module/tactic is introduced and is possibly a touch powerful

2. new item/module/tactic becomes popular and makes it into doctrines

3. forum haters hate and forum whiners whine

4. in response CCP nerf new item into uselessness

All fine and dandy, but for one thing. What's this forum have to do with any of this?
The game, if you actually play, isn't played here.

With regard to the youtube vid in the OP... I really felt that using WoW as an example of a game with endemic power creep whilst citing it as a -bad- thing was not a great choice... sure you could class it as power creep but it's really just standard RPG progression, the gear at level 30 for example is just as irrelevant as it's always been because it's purpose, by design, is to be only used temporarily, and that goes for stuff at 60/70/80, it'll go out of date next expansion. Heirlooms would have been a better example but still not perfect. Also there's plenty of ways to continue that sort of system whilst making it sustainable... stat squishes, etc.

Not only that, but I've never known anyone to return to an MMORPG and then quit because they found that their "gear was now worthless"... what the hell did you expect? that everyone in this persistent, ever expanding world would wait for you?

There's nothing wrong with things becoming old content, otherwise, if you take it out of context, human culture is subject to power creep: medieval texts for instance are only studied by a (relatively) small field of specialists, akin to the people who go out of their way to revisit old outdated content for nostalgia's sake. Does that mean we should limit the development of our culture to ensure that everything from this point on is the same and that information created would always remain relevant? no... that would be terrible... our culture and the speed of our development would stagnate overnight (IMHO of course).

The digital TCG example used was much better and is more relevant to Eve, in that in most TCGs the idea, at least in theory is to keep everything relevant and useful, like the wide varieties of ships in eve, and relatively speaking I'd say that CCP is definitely one of the better developers at managing it. Someone already mentioned the recon rebalance, another good example would be the mining barge rebalance, and although it's taking it's time to arrive, the T3's will eventually get hit by the New Eden Role Fine-tuning Bat (NERF bat for short). Pretty much every ship is useful for something barring one or two ugly ducklings; Eve's version of Fugitive Wizard if you will.

Anyway, TL;DR I disliked the way power creep was characterised in the video as always bad. sometimes it's there by design. Sometimes it's just simply not a problem. Eve's power creep is nicely managed IMO.

Edit: oh and sorry, that ended up as a bit of a rant...

I have to say, I love how this is stated as if it's simple, yet involves multiplying Isk per hour (which differs greatly based on the player and the economy) and adding it to fun (which is subjective) multiplied by the imaginary unit.

Arguably though, this means that as people keep saying how mining is boring and that's why nobody should mine (with Sabriz going as far as to suggest that people who like mining do not exist) that means mining is vastly underpowered compared to most other activities, so x should be increased drastically.

Removed some off topic posts.

The destroyers who sport cruiser level damage, usually do so at the expense of tank. Hence the most feared destroyer, the "gank" Catalyst, having no tank modules at all, and sporting barely any EHP. They get one-shottted by the WKs and such all the time. A Catalyst that was tanked properly wouldn't have nearly the DPS of a cruiser, nor the EHP of a properly fitted frigate either, hence why Destroyers are balanced.

Same goes for the ABCs. The "gank Talos" once again sacrifices all manner of tank for maximum DPS, and can be easily dealt with. Once again, when properly tanked, a Talos sports less DPS than a properly fitted BS, with less EHP than a properly tanked cruiser.

Well, the EC guys have a certain attitude. In another vid they also classified skinner boxing as an entirely bad thing, though in my opinion it's probably the only rigorous scientific approach towards defining what "fun" in games is. But, as with Marx, it's not about whether they are right or not, they just opened the discourse.
In defense of their stance though, and to answer question two in #11:
They don't criticize power creep as a side effect of game expansions, they criticize it as the sole purpose of game expansions. If you now have to fight red slimes that don't really differ from the old green ones to get competitive gear again, that's not really that exciting. This fact has given birth to the whole culture of pushing players, and to whose who do that it's not an "ever expanding world", but a world that stays the same size, just the end bit changes now and then. A negative side effect of power creep can also be that you're dividing your playerbase when it comes to multiplayer activities. I've seen enough games where e.g. the vets constantly complain about not being able to find opponents for pvp combat, when everybody else is simply still getting their gear up.


For competitive players they set new standards in their respective fields when they were introduced. If left undisturbed they would've e.g. led to "you either have a T2 BPO or you're not doing industry".


That's a given. I'm actually still awed by the way everything's interconnected and no isolated instances of anything are left in this game. But i do believe to get to this point CCP had to walk down a rocky road, so i'd like to get to know about some of the outrages of the past.