Player Features and Ideas Discussion

From a philosophical standpoint, I really do not understand the purpose for these types of posts. Each race and weapon system has strengths and weakness, which have been pointed out throughout this thread. For the most part, when CCP buffs or nerfs a racial hull or weapon system, it usually serves to homogenize game play, which in the end most players do not appreciate or care for. Maybe some people want to jump in any ship and have it go toe to toe with any other similar sized ship, but this is rather unrealistic. I say no. I want the game to be hard and challenging. I want to have to build the knowledge and skill base of any real world military professional. Fighter pilots and naval commanders spend most of each week studying strengths and weakness of both enemies and friendlies, trying to maximize their advantage and stay sharp with the equipment they have to work with.

Homogenization also defeats, to a greater or lesser extent, the purpose of doctrines and tactics. Every doctrine fit has a hard counter whether solo or in a group and it is up to the individual or FC to determine if they should take the fight. Every weapon system has its most useful range and tracking characteristics which is why range control and radial velocity control is the most important aspect of pvp, most especial in solo and small gang work, but still useful to larger fleets. Know thy enemy and know thy self.

Perhaps the biggest reason why this is a never ending cycle of game ruination is this... The logical conclusion to buff lasers is to buff / nerf the rest so they are all equal in terms of damage, range, etc. This is the only logical conclusion to these arguments because then other players would want their hull or weapon of choice to receive the same treatment. Furthermore, each race has two main and one minor weapon type that can be used depending on the specific hull. The end result is that it is not very difficult, but does take planning to get into the skill level 4, meta 4 variety of each variety. And no race optimizes for two different types of turrets, meaning turret, missile and drone support skills are important for every race. Therefore switching between races to counter others doctrines and fits is not as hard as many people seem to think. Get the basics down and the rest follows naturally.

I say stop trying to make the game uniform as it oversimplifies the game. Instead, make it all more pigeon holed and more complicated. This improves the game by requiring knowledge and creativity and therefore challenging game play. Even the drake of old, was not end endgame ship.

I hope more people draw this line in the sand, stand up and say CCP please do not make the game more simple but more complicated. Philosophical musing complete.

Lasers are fine doing EM/ Therm...

If there are any problems with lasers it's that the T1/ faction ammo of pulse is really cruddy so they are only really usable when you get T2 and Scorch ammo. That pretty much forces newbros to use beams which have horrible fitting and makes amarr very poor for PvP for new players due to a lack of damage projection (ie. they are like really bad versions of blasters until you get scorch). Without scorch lasers would be horrendously bad.

Oh and getting a capacitor bonus on a ship just so you can fire your weapons without capping in 30 seconds. That also sucks when other races are getting tracking/ falloff bonuses.

Don't get personal. Effective range is massively important. Even slightly inferior range to an enemy fleet comp has resulted in mothballing of many fleet concepts.

Anyone remember HellCats? Pulse Abbadons unable to fire much past 60km or so? Well doctrines shifted, drakes went away and the new dominate opposing fleet concepts where all much more effective at ranges outside of Hellcats firing range, at which point Hellcats got bent over until they were mothballed.

Or AlphaFleet? High damage at long range, ineffective damage at short range. Anyone notice what has replaced it? Megathron with Tracking bonused Railguns capable of effectively laying out damage at both long range and relatively short range as compared to Alphafleet.

Or the incredibly archaic RR blaster mega fleets from years ago? (May it never rise again)

TLDR: The reason you think range is unimportant in PvP is because your FC has done a good job of bringing ships effective across whatever distance he is willing to engage at, and will not engage fleets outside of that flexible window.

Edit: Since I Apparently forgot I was catching up on the thread and replied to a post 2 pages ago:

I personally prefer lasers to remain stuck in EM/Therm, and Railguns stuck in Kin/Therm. I believe it provides an important distinction in ship racial weaponry and that the game would be negatively effected by permitting either system to deal damage outside of that profile.

Especially if that switch was restricted to t2 weapons and unavailable on a t1 ammo platform.