Player Features and Ideas Discussion

It's T2 ammo that needs the overhaul. It's better to fix what is broken than to break everything else.

T2 ammo is fine by and large maybe conflag could do with a buff and a slight nerf to scorch perhaps...
but you miss the point of talking about fitting meta guns which use T1 ammo

I might be wrong here, but isn't Scorch the only thing keeping Amarr ships viable in most contexts?

So bringing everything else in line with Scorch is a much smarter move than bringing Scorch in line with everything else. Just sayin'.

Very true.

Amarrs without Scorch is an heresy.

CCP Rise,

It seems to me that the original design intent for the Amarr was for lasers to be quite powerful. Instant damage, unlimited ammo, good range (with fast swapping optimals), and good damage. To balance this, they made lasers very cap dependent and gave Amarr ships cap bonuses for lasers, thereby insuring that lasers would only be effectively used on Amarr ships and we wouldn't see creative hulls from other factions mounting lasers and stomping everybody with them. So on one hand Amarr would have powerful lasers (bonus!), but on the other they wouldn't really have a secondary bonus (in other words, one of their bonuses was being able to actually use lasers instead of hybrids, missiles, or projectiles). This led to the 'less exciting bonus' (lower laser cap use) that you mentioned, which was a common bonus throughout the Amarr lineup.

Over time though I think many of the original advantages of 'lasers' have been matched or overshadowed by the other weapon systems. Lasers have limited damage types, powergrid issues (beam), and expendable tech 2 ammunition that is required for them to be effective (using ammo like other weapon systems). The game has evolved, but the enormous drain on cap has remained.

On paper, I think all of your changes are more interesting (Geddon aside, since I think that is more a nostalgia thing), but unfortunately they magnify the existing issues with lasers. You stated in a post in this thread that Amarr battleships are among the least used... and I believe the painful capacitor issues will continue the trend. Mandatory cap boosters (or loading your entire ship with cap rechargers and CPRs) are just not fun for most people. Effective in PvP yes (due to generally short encounters).

I may well be wrong but I think the Oracle will continue to be the PvP large laser platform of choice (faster, cheaper, and easier to fit and fire beam lasers over the Apocalypse), and PvE people who bother training Amarr ships will either jump straight to Navy ships (depending on your changes) or Pirate ships (or more likely, train a different faction line for PvE purposes).

of course they won't get any attention, as it is working as intended [/sarcasm]

Our best chance is to try things out with non-perfect skill cahracters over on SiSi when the changes hit. That and rising enough clamor to get this thing looked at before their internal deadline for changes hits.

I'm mildly optimistic about the whole matter. Can't wait to test and see what we have to deal with.



Armageddon changes are here to stay. They bear all the signs of a pet project and those are not easily abandoned, believe me. You can only hope the Navy version stays true to the lore and history.

As for other changes - there's a slight chance SiSi testing will give the sceptics enough leverage if there ARE actual issues present to push through more fundamental changes.

The fact that Fozzie did the test in Pulses, the ONE weapon platform we're not complaining about and the only thing keeping Amarr ships remotely usable, in presumably level 5 skills, when we're pointing out low SP BS players having major cap issues, makes me think they have no clue what the problem is, and aren't reading this thread very carefully as it is spelled out on every single page, or worse, they are fine with tach's being both unfittable without PG modules, and when you do they are cap unusable, and aren't going to change it even with SISI feedback.

Notice how CCP Rise ignored every mention of Tachyon beam lasers.. The fact that no amarr battleship can use them without totally crippling the rest of its fit, yet other races battleships can use their largest weapon systems without major penalty.

Even with max skills and implants, T2 tachs won't fit on any of the new amarr bs without wasting slots for PG mods. Then of course there is the massive cap they burn up.

Hm. So the overall tack of the T1 revisions is that it's a touch harder to get into battleships, battleships and battlecruisers won't really shine without good to excellent skills, but the cruisers and frigates are strong enough to support newer players. Cross-training has been whacked with a giant nerfbat but there are more weapon systems available within races.

These changes are growing on me now that I am looking at them in the light of the hulls being intended for higher skill players. They still need to be accessible to people without perfect skills: beams need work, and if Amarr cap bonuses are going out the window then lasers and the capacitor of ships that use them should be re-evaluated. If you can't put a full rack of tachyons on any Amarr battleship without fitting mods, the Oracle shouldn't be able to fit a full rack of them without fitting mods either.

The bigger T1 ships will demand better support skills. That's fine. It makes more sense than the way it used to be, where battlecruisers and battleships were better at cushioning a noob with poor skills than cruisers or frigates. But if this truly is where tiericide is heading, it needs to go hand in hand with improving the NPE. Noobs need to be educated about things other than missions, because getting into a battleship and running L4s is the be-all and end-all of what it encourages them to do. Now they're going to need to tread water in a cruiser for longer if they don't want to be that tiny noob in a big ship.

I understand that you all want to get the T1 rebalances underway before changing the rest of EVE to match, and I imagine you're functioning independently from the NPE team, but the rebalances are showing up some of the flaws of the design for a young player with no connections. But, as someone said in one or other of these threads, your team is basically doing God's work and I'm saving up my serious tears for the command ship rebalance. If your changes highlight flaws in other parts of EVE, at least there will be more attention paid to those flaws.