EVE General Discussion

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rebalance
http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/rebalance
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebalance

Funny. Seems every dictionary that I check, online, or even the two I have on hand for school, all seem to be convinced that rebalancing, rebalance, or to be rebalanced, are all quite real words. I wonder how much CCP paid them all, to start using that made up word, huh?

Now, even though I'm sure my clearing that misunderstanding up for you has made your day, and allowed you to say to yourself; 'Gosh, how could I possibly have been so foolish? What a silly little man I am', I will be so kind as to even answer your main question.

Rebalancing, as it applies to ship design in Eve, is the matter of reducing the abilities, or boosting the abilities of ships, relative to their own performance, but also relative to the performance of other ships in the game at their class, as well as above and below it. When a ship is dramatically overpowered, it invalidates similarly tiered ships, and makes them not even worth playing by comparison. Take the hurricane for example. as a battlecruiser, it was so powerful, cost effective, and versatile, that not only did it heavily outperform ships in its own ship class like the brutix, ferox, and harbinger, but it made much more expensive, role specific ships, like the muninn, not worth using most of the time.

Now, as you've probably guessed by now, this is a very bad thing. When a ship is overpowered, or out of balance, because of all the other ships near it that it makes not worth playing, it effectively removes those ships from the game as playable ship classes, so when CCP rebalances something like battlecruisers, they aren't simply nerfing one or two classes of ships, they are, in effect, adding 5 or 6 ships to the game. Look at the frigate, cruiser, and battlecruiser rebalances so far. Even the mining barge rebalance. All of these saw lots of ships now getting used, that never used to be flown in any noticeable numbers.

More ships would throw the game out of balance, and REDUCE the number of playable, viable ships in the game. Look at the last time they added ships, tier 3 battlecruisers. Sure, they are cool ships, but they were, and are simply too powerful still. I love flying them, and that's because I know that they outperform battlecruisers and battleships alike, for a middleground price-point.

You're welcome.