Test Server Feedback

You know, after 3 years of talking and hundreds of pages of feedback seems they were not clear enough.

Also the supposed hybrids balance announced for this expansion AND announced IN the expansion video is not there.

So has you can see, it's still not clear so you have to repeat it again and again and again until someone (?) that can do something gets it.

^this
Some general new framework or direction as to what is currently being looked at could make the discussion refreshing.

yay i had a feeling you were on a hiatus untill january... i just did not want to tell anyone cuss i am bitter...

Thank you for your feedback, it is good to read from time to time that you are working on it.
Good things need their time and as long as you feed us here and there a little bit we will be patient and we will also try to help you as good as we can :)
Let us know what direction you want to balance and we will deliver you free bug testing even before the changes are made on Sisi. We have many well experienced players here that will give you good ideas and thoughts so that you can improve your pre-balancing even before the changes go live on Sisi and later on TQ.
We all know that the whole game is very complex and changes have many effects, some as intended but some aren't. We are more than happy to give you any support :)

You can not 'have it done' without addressing core issues. And if one keeps boosting hybrids mindlessly they will easily become OP after he fixes:

- TE's
- EHP values provided by shield extenders and plates; also base EHP values
- shield extenders not imposing speed/mass penalty (which is just stupid and results in overtanked ship being as fast and agile as active tanked one - wtf)
- base range of heavy missiles (80 km before any rigs - wtf)

That's why I say we'd better start doing small steps in many directions rather than try achieving a mythical balance between bare weapons.

-EHP. I'd leave as is. It seems a lot until you fly in a fleet, and then it's not enough to prevent you being 1-volleyed. It'll never be possible to alter it to be able to suit all styles of play from solo to large fleet, so if active tanks get a bit of a tweak (where it currently makes no sense with certain ship bonuses) we have tanking for both ends of the spectrum that actually works well enough.

-shield extenders shouldn't impose mass? why not?
--For 'realism': Aren't they generated by massive machines you install?(Check armour repairers, armour repair rigs, etc which don't add any hp at all) Why should adding mass even slow you down in space? It just reduces acceleration, not achievable velocities.
--For game play: Because it makes good sense in trying to balance the current trend for shield buffers that leave your speed unaffected and skew game play heavily away from armour being viable at the same type of game style.

I'm generally in either Faction or Tech 1 Bships. My megathron's are performing adequately with the new hybrid changes. Doesn't seem like anything too unbalanced IMHO.

I would propose that if additional tweaking is needed, it be made on a ship by ship basis in terms of racial bonuses, turret/launcher capacity... not to the whole hybrids class in uniform.

on a side note, perhaps it would have been more interesting to tweak "hybrids" by not tweaking hybrids at all, but rather increasing the unique racial personalities of ships that used the hybrids. AKA, giving more drone space to the Gallante, or giving more launchers to Caldari with misile damage bonuses added into the simultaneous hybrid damage bonuses.

just my 2 cents (isk)

So blobs aren't "proper PvP" now? Jesus.

I agree with you entirely on this point. We should either have the situation where the penalty to armour rigs is changed from speed or the penalty to shield rigs is changed to speed, or they rearrange the rigs to be ehp classed for shield and armour with speed penalties / resist classed for shield and armour with sig bloom penalties / armour repairer or shield booster effectors with some other (non-speed) penalty.

As for reducing ehp from current levels though - all this would do would be to broaden the effective alpha to even more weapon types than artillery. Currently artillery is the one weapon type that poses this problem for a fleet (unless numbers are so overwhelming) and as such I really don't mind it being unique. What we need are unique traits that offer advantages to the other weapon types similarly - lasers have this to a degree with instant ammo change, and also with scorch. Hybrids have no such feature and this is what rails desperately need as blasters will never ever be able to compete in large fleets from what I've seen to date.

Armor plates and shield extenders seems fine to me - The problem is armor repairers and shield boosters doesn't repair/boost enough hitpoints even in small scale pvp as well as. A straight 25-50% boost applied to cycle time and hitpoints pr cycle at the same time changing the bonus on Slave and Crystal implant sets... This means the average active tanks will be much better, but without the implants people no longer have the super insane active shield tanks or monster buffered ships.

About the speed of shield boats the problem is mostly minmatar. Tbh the minmatar and angel cartel ships are too generous with the fitting. Look at the Hurricane easily being able to field biggest autocannons, 2 T2 medium energy neutralizers, mwd, 2 extenders and all the lowslots with gyrostabilizers and tracking enhancers - And still having spare powergrid and especially cpu without any fittting mods or implants. Some minmatar ships need a more balanced aproach to cpu/pg (Hurricane could easily lose 160 powergrid and 65 cpu while the fits stay almost the same as now).

Also it is a shame to have minmatar not only the fastest, but also the most agile, lightest and having plenty capacitor for MWD'ing. As I said before I think a lot of issues would be sorted by reducing the agility and mass on specific gallente blaster ships making them faster accelerating and benefitting well from MWDs, and while minmatar will still be the fastest ships they should have mass added and agility decreased. Also the armor rig penalties should definately have another drawback.

TL;DR =

• I agree last blaster changes should be made primarily on ammunition and ships
• Plates and extenders are fine
• Boost active repairing a lot but nerf slave/crystal implants to prevent monster tanks
• Review and decrease powergrid/cpu on Hurricane + other minmatar ships
• Make blaster ships more agile and reduce mass equal to 1 plate
• Make minmatar ships less agile and increase their mass - but they will still be the fastest
• Change armor rig penalty

Pinky