Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Ok I'm back. Sorry about the delay, things kinda piled up at the end of the day yesterday.


Nothing quite so significant. Lots of meetings this week and next as we're currently doing the planning work to make sure we are all on the same page for the next few months, we didn't discuss ship balancing directly in any of the afternoon ones. Meetings simply ran over the end of the workday, then I had a social engagement, then I generally avoid making devposts while inebriated.
What I should have done was make a quick post explaining that the comprehensive replies were delayed until today, that's my mistake and I apologize.


So I've gone over the whole thread a few times, and instead of quoting people I've picked out a bunch of themes to address since so many people asked similar excellent questions. Gonna split this into three posts, first on the Tristan, second on the other two frigates, and third on miscellaneous stuff like lasers cap use bonuses. Walls of text incoming.

Why aren't we making a Gallente tech one missile frigate?:
Some of you have expressed concerns about our change of plans that will leave Gallente and Amarr without tech one missile frigates. It's true that both races have missile ships later in their tech two lines (Bombers, Khanid, Roden (kinda)) but they do not have any other tech one missile ships. We decided that the benefits of providing a missile frigate when the race does not use missiles at the tech one level was minor at best. Tech two and faction ships often require significantly more training to be effectively used, and each individual size of missiles are actually quite fast to train into. Getting new Gallente players to train rocket and light missile skills would mean that only the missile support skills would be of any use until they cross trained to another race. Giving a real droneboat option at the T1 frigate level and creating new gameplay with the Navitas were both higher priorities.
To a large extent bombers are a special snowflake when it comes to training, we have no plans to change the weapon systems that bombers use.


Will we change the model of the Ishkur to match the Tristan?:
No plans that I know of to change it, but as I'm not in the art department I can't rule it out forever. Progression based on base hull is nice from a lore perspective, but we consider it of secondary importance to good gameplay. Plus I love the way my Ishkur looks just the way it is.


Why does the Tristan have one less slot and/or less than 50m3 dronebay?:
Removing a slot is one of the tricks we keep up our sleeve for when we need to lower the power level of a drone ship. Since drone ships are gaining so much of their damage without highslots, it ends up being a nerf that both balances the ship and reinforces its role. Another prominent ship that got the same treatment is the Ishkur. Balancing the Ishkur and balancing the new Tristan unsurprisingly presented a lot of similarities.
The fact that we make you train Assault Ships 5 in order to get a full 50m3 on the Ishkur is also telling in this balance formula. Having spare drones is something we want, being able to casually carry full waves of multiple types of light drones on an already very powerful T1 frigate was too much. I completely understand how painful it can be to lose a wave of drones when you need to warp out, but every ship has tradeoffs in the end.
Drones are very powerful on frigates and putting 25mbits bandwidth on a tech one frigate is a very dangerous move in a lot of ways. I've been challenging everyone in the office to 1v1s with the new combat frigs, and let me tell you the Tristan is best described as redonkulous.


What is the intended role of the Tristan? Long range or short range?:
My favourite designs are ones where that choice is left to the individual player. The Tristan can work well as a kiting ship, and as a brawler. We intentionally made it slower than most Gallente frigates so it can't just stomp on everything else by kiting, but the advantages of its weapon systems still make kiting setups very worthwhile.
One of the great features of the design is that you can actually build one setup that can adjust its engagement range very well based on what it is facing. I have very good success in playtests with a AB/Scram/Web buffer tank fit using blasters that could either kite at the edge of scram range against a closerange opponent using the tracking blasters to kill opposing drones, or move in for the kill against longer range frigates.
You can rail fit it (although fittings are tight), you can even shield or armor tank it. I look forward to people exploring the interactions between the tracking bonus and sentry drones, although most people will probably choose to use light drones. The ship is very flexible.


What benefit is the drone tracking bonus for light drones?
Many of you have commented that the drone tracking bonus seems to not reach its full potential with light drones and you are right. The drone tracking does increase damage against small sig moving targets (especially for those who choose Hobgoblins over Warriors) but it's less powerful for light drones than a damage bonus would be and that is by design. With a damage bonus the Tristan would we far too powerful so we gave it a bonus that serves two purposes:
-It provides an effective damage bump in the most common gameplay that is significantly lower than the...

As a pure Gallente pilot, I fully agree with your line of thinking, both on the missile issue and the general perspective on drone ship fitting styles and ship progression.

Someone at CCP loves & understands Gallente <3

I am BEGGING YOU, give this some more thought.

In what way is it too much? And how does carrying 2.0 flights differ in a significant way from 1.6 sets?

Consider this: Currently I could carry 5 lights, and 3 EWAR. With a change to 50m3, I would carry 5 lights, 5 EWAR. There is a difference, but is it crippling? Considering I can only deploy any 5 at any one time, and they have to travel to and from target?

Also consider that this comes at an increased cost. A ship with one flight of drones, when it dies, costs a lot less than a ship with 2 flights of drones. EACH flight of T2 lights adds another 1,000,000 ISK to the price of the ship! It is pure risk vs reward. I risk an extra 1mil ISK for flexibility. IMHO, it makes absolute sense to allow drone boats to carry a minimum of 2 flights, preferably 3 flights like you've done on the Crucifier.



Name me a ship, any ship, where if you are forced to suddenly warp out in combat, you HAVE to go back to home base and restock, because you are now at 60% efficiency? Would any of the other frigates have to deal with this? The answer is - no. Only drone boats.

This is not a tradeoff. Having to abandon a roam and go back 10-20 jumps to reload, and 10-20 jumps back (and if the fleet moved on by then, even more jumps) is not just painful. It is THE END of your roam for all intents and purposes.

People already starting to dislike me flying drone boats with them for a number of reasons. One is what I outlined above, that a single hot warpout means I'm either no longer fully combat-effective, or have to leave them and go back to reload. The other problems are the standard drone issues - how long it takes to deploy drones, how long it takes for them to apply damage. Etc., etc. Bottom line - drone boats, IN USE, from usability standpoints, are still vastly inferior to turrets/missiles.

Bottom line, if you want to keep the status quo, which is almost nobody using drone boats for anything serious, this 40m3 stuff will certainly do it. I'm currently training turrets and there's no way in holy heck I would be flying this on a long-range roam precisely because if anything happens to drones, I'm crippled permanently.



As long as you can only deploy 5, there's no excuse not to allow them to carry more. Also you had no problem giving a Crucifier 3.0 drone flights. Why not do at least 2.0 on a DRONE boat?

I'm sorry, but this just absolutely makes no sense from USABILITY point of view. Balance doesn't even enter into it yet. If I can't reasonably use it, I'm not going to use it, balanced or not. If a single hot warpout means you have to abandon and go for a reload, no matter how amazing and flexible the ship is, it is just not usable.



That's fine, but once again this is not balanced from usability standpoint!

Simple example:

A non-split-weapon-system frigate engaging me does what?
CTRL+Click to target.
F1 or click to fire weapons.
_______________
Total: 2 clicks

A split-non-drone-weapon-system frigate engaging me does what?
CTRL+Click to target.
F1 or click to fire weapon system 1..
F2 or click to fire weapon system 2.
______________________________
Total: 3 clicks.

A split-drone/hybrids-failure frigate engaging me does what?
CTRL+Click to target.
F1 or click to fire hybrid turrets.
Left-click on "Drones in Bay".
Right-click to open contextual menu.
Left-click "Launch Drones".
F or click attack icon to send drones to attack.
______________________________________
Total: 6 clicks!

How is this balanced?! A drone user already has to work 3 times as hard (which takes time to do, by the way, as UI is still not lightning fast and responsive), on top of the other drone shortcomings. This is the reason not many people fly drone boats. Also the reason why drone boats are not part of any fleet doctrine, as evidenced by EVEKill. They're just that much slower compared to a single weapon system.

Now for the other two frigates.


Does the Kestrel buff seem minor?:
To a certain extent yes. We have technically reduced the maximum potential dps of the ship by dropping the 10% kinetic damage bonus down to 5% like the others. However in practice I believe that the ship will be much improved. The extra midslot means the ship can control range much better with rocket fits, and the extra CPU means that it's much more viable for those rocket setups to fit two BCUs. The fittings also make light missiles much more viable, and the ship will be released alongside the already announced light missile changes:

It is very possible that the Kestrel may need some more tweaks as we go forward, and we're keeping a close eye on it.


Why not give either ship a rocket ROF bonus?:
I did consider it, since a ROF bonus would give a slightly higher dps increase than the damage bonus. However rocket rate of fire bonuses have been avoided for a long time due to server load issues. I asked CCP Veritas if the improvements CCP has made in missile load were enough to allow the introduction of new rocket ROF bonuses, and he gave me his "If I have to choose either our servers or you to burn in a fire, it won't be the servers" look. So I dropped that idea.


Why did you nerf the cyno Kessie?:
The cyno kessie is a point of nostalgia for many players including myself, so my initial plan had the Kestrel keeping its cargo bay. ASB cap charges and issues of balance within the class convinced me to level it out though. I know it will never be quite the same, but cyno Herons will be pretty awesome after the patch.


The Breacher does too little damage!:
On paper and EFT the Breacher definitely suffers next to the other combat frigates, however when you consider the utility of being able to use any damage type, as well as the better real-world damage application of frigate missiles and light drones, it ends up looking a lot better. I've been having a lot of fun with it on our internal test server, and I think you guys will enjoy it as well.


Ok one more post incoming with responses to general comments.

Ok now to cover some of the other discussion.


Laser cap use bonus on Amarr ships:
So this became a pretty heated debate in the thread, and I'm going to address it even if it is a bit off topic.
The original design of lasers was that they essentially had a built in damage bonus, being more powerful in base damage than any other weapon system. In the time since launch however that specific damage advantage has diluted somewhat, as most of the buffs lasers received over the years were to tracking. Pulse lasers tend to have good damage and excellent range for short range guns, and Beams have good damage, fair range and excellent tracking compared to other long range options. There are a lot of Amarr ships that need help, as well as many that are working well. Certain problems are tied to the weapons themselves, for instance fittings on small lasers need help and many of the problems with beams are tied to the weapons. We're taking our first steps towards improving the fitting situation for frigates in the already announced changes for winter:

Expect more tweaks to many weapon systems, including lasers, as we go forward.

That being said I do not think the solution to the problem is to build the cap use bonus back into the guns. The high cap use is a defining feature of lasers, helps create interesting player decisions on Amarr ships, and I believe it provides us more balance tools than it removes. There's a lot we need to fix with many Amarr ships, but I do not currently expect that the solution is going to be removing the cap use bonuses across the board.


Repair paste on drones:
I like that idea, maybe someday (no promises).


Why are these ship balancing changes coming in one big lump in Winter?:
It's a very valid question since it is a slight departure from our new usual of smaller faster releases. There are two main reasons for it. One is that our release schedule for the rest of 2012 is a bit unusual, as the CSM minutes described:

The other reason is that we're in the process of increasing the pace at which we can do ship balancing. The ship balance team has been at one person for a long time, but now that Ytterbium has backup from a returned CCP Tallest and myself, we are getting used to having more people to share the workload. The end result will be faster paces of redesigns (not going to take until 2020, don't worry).


When can we test these changes?
As soon as we can. Details are being ironed out. Hang with us as testing changes this early isn't something we're used to yet.

so when can we expect the big unveil of the navitas/other combat frigs? everyone is thinking logi frigs mm..

Two best things I've read about EVE this year. Maybe last year too :)

Well if you want to add a base damage buff to lasers or more tracking or something that sounds fine too. (j/k)

Thanks for the reply. Its nice to know spamming the forums works eventually.

I still think the cap use on lasers is out of whack, but appreciate the work you all are doing. Looking forward to December.

Think the new Destroyers are going to make it in?

To expand on the previous post from an hour or so ago, higher up #185 (the big wall of text), I was just talking about these issues with someone and some things leaped to mind.

Small Drone Bay (under 2.0 flights)

This is kind of like making a gun in an FPS game, where you can only carry one clip of ammo. As soon as that's spent, whether you use it up effectively, miss or just drop the clip 'cause you're clumsy, you have to run back to the spawn to reload. Would this gun be popular, compared to a gun where you CANNOT drop the clip, and where you can carry a hundred clips? I think the answer is obvious.

That's the issue with drones. Drones are, in a way, just ammo. While using them it doesn't mean you'll use them up, but things happen. Hot warpout, smartbomb, direct enemy fire, enemy drones, etc. Without ability to repair them in hold on the move, there's really nothing you can do, they do get "used up". By the way I love the idea of nanite paste repair on drones, but first we have to be able to see drone HP in bay.

Bottom line, with currently proposed Tristan, we are carrying 1.6 clips of ammo. Once those are gone, we are done. And the rate at which the drones get used up can range from never, to instant loss of 1.0 of 1.6, because of a hot warpout. One warpout, you're down to 0.6, two warpouts you're down to 0.0 and 2 turrets, which is to say you're done. Which brings me to usability.

Usability

This whole issue reminds me of what CCP Soundwave said earlier in the year, around FanFest, regarding Bookmarks and sharing. Basically, until he moved into Wormhole space, and started living there, he had no idea just how horrible it was, being unable to share bookmarks with a corp easily. It was only AFTER he started USING the mechanics that he realized how broken they were, and (partially in self-interest) that's where he pushed for the changes we all enjoy now.

I'm afraid that it will take something like this to actually make drone boats viable. Until one or more of the Devs begin to use drone boats, and ONLY drone boats, for whatever it is they're doing, I don't think we'll see any changes that improve real-world (within EVE) usability of these ships.

Yeah it's the top tier small lasers. CCP Foxfour is working on getting those confusing names fixed as we speak.