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New dev blog: Rebalancing EVE, one ship at a time

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Shin Dari
Covert Brigade
#381 - 2012-03-06 19:55:10 UTC
CCP Guard wrote:
Re-balancing is on our minds as many of you know and CCP Ytterbium is here to tell you all about some major changes we'll be seeing the start of soon.

Please go here to read the blog and as always, we're eager to hear your feedback.
I have been looking at the math of the current suggestion, and that seems to be a bit hard to implement properly. Racial specialization is good, but why not accept a matrix?

Axis 1: Frigate -> Destroyer -> Cruiser -> Battlecruiser -> Battleship -> Capitals
Axis 2: Racial ship skill (high rank skill)

Example "Amarr Ship" skill:
Amarr Ships 1: Amarr Small ships
Amarr Ships 2: Amarr Medium ships
Amarr Ships 3: Amarr Large ships
Amarr Ships 4: Amarr Capital ships
Amarr Ships 5: Amarr Super-Capitals ships

An Amarr Noob will start with Amarr Ships 1 and Frigate 1.

A reimbursement under a matrix system could require less SP (depends upon the ranks) and be far simpler to implement.
Mikron Alexarr
New Age Solutions
#382 - 2012-03-06 19:55:14 UTC
Ranger 1 wrote:
Mikron Alexarr wrote:
Erim Solfara wrote:
Mikron Alexarr wrote:
Scatim Helicon wrote:
Isn't it our job to define roles for particular ships, not yours?



Quoted for Truth. does the term sandbox mean anything to anyone anymore?


Lies and fallacy, CCP make the game, balance the ships, and give them bonuses.

If you want to fly one different to it's intended use, go ahead, but they should all have obvious intended uses. Today, I watched a video of an iteron taking out a megathron, which was awesome.

It was awesome because someone had taken a ship with an obvious intended role, and used it completely differently. If the iteron HAD no role, and was just another blank-slate hull, it'd have been completely meaningless, no different to someone using any other cruiser sized ship.

Your argument holds no water.


I'll try and make this simple.

The role of a blockade runner did exist before the t2 haulers (I fly the crane for instance). The best ship for this was debatable (sigil with speed mods in low, badger with ECM). Then it was decided that t2 haulers should exist. \0/

It was the players that defined the role. CCP can enable roles to form, but we the players decide what we like for a particular role.


Yes, player actions highlight (to a degree) different needed ship roles... CCP often designs their ships with this in mind.

Which, fortunately, is exactly what is occuring here. Smile


alright... another example then.

Before the days of the drake, there was only the ferox. Poor ferox wasn't very good with turrets. The players still needed something to run L3 missions with, but luckily, CCP had given the ferox unbonused launcher hard points.

The role of the ferox as designed by CCP was quite clear. The only reason the ferox ever peaked up above 10% market share of production was it's missile hard points that allowed it to be a very viable mission boat.

The whole point is that just because CCP gives a ship a role, doesn't mean that's what players will use it for.

Also, cormoront = salvager. Nothing else needs said here.
Mibad
Interstellar Security Assistance Force
#383 - 2012-03-06 19:55:22 UTC
Very "sound" changes ;) Will be great to streamline everything to make ship balancing much easier. I'm all for it.

Still amazes me how many people here rage about the skill change fail to read the whole blog. You know the very important part that says you will be fully reimbursed and still able to fly what you did before...
War Kitten
Panda McLegion
#384 - 2012-03-06 19:55:48 UTC
Akara Ito wrote:
Scatim Helicon wrote:
Isn't it our job to define roles for particular ships, not yours?


This is my problem with this blog

Skill lines sounds like an awefull euphenism for getting warrior ships, mage ships, shaman ships, etc



Great idea!

I want a Shadowknight ship!

I don't judge people by their race, religion, color, size, age, gender, or ethnicity. I judge them by their grammar, spelling, syntax, punctuation, clarity of expression, and logical consistency.
stoicfaux
#385 - 2012-03-06 19:56:06 UTC
+1.0 for something that is long overdue
-0.5 if we have to retrain for ships we can already fly (i.e. the BC/Destroyer skill makeover)
0.5
which rounds up to +1.

Great change, but I'm going to loathe having to train multiple BC5 skills.

Pon Farr Memorial: once every 7 years, all the carebears in high-sec must PvP or they will be temp-banned.
Nick Bison
Bison Industrial Inc
#386 - 2012-03-06 19:56:54 UTC
Mibad wrote:
Very "sound" changes ;) Will be great to streamline everything to make ship balancing much easier. I'm all for it.

Still amazes me how many people here rage about the skill change fail to read the whole blog. You know the very important part that says you will be fully reimbursed and still able to fly what you did before...


This.

Seems some folk need to brush up on reading comprehension ... or just read the fricken dev blog to begin with.

Nothing clever at this time.
Jada Maroo
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#387 - 2012-03-06 19:56:58 UTC  |  Edited by: Jada Maroo
Yay. More things to train.

Whenever I think of opening a 3rd account, I'll be sure to consider how much fun I'll have... training more stuff.

I'm sure that will motivate me.

By the way, what are you gonna do for all those people who trained BS5 just to fly carriers? This is kind of a "Haha ****-you" to them, isn't it?
Yasuhiro Shoe
Perkone
Caldari State
#388 - 2012-03-06 19:57:27 UTC
Quote:
Bombardment ships: provide heavy fire support to pin the enemy down with constant barrage of ordnance.


I would like to point out once again, that heavy fire does not in fact pin the enemy down: in Eve movement / warp are not restriced nor hindered by explosions. Barring further changes in the mechanics, this concept is fundamentally broken, as it's simply a delayed dps/alpha role with no clear advantage over turrets' instant effects.

Apart from that, interesting if controversial blog. Keep it coming.

I don't care about nor see much point to the skillbook changes. It seems like a waste of effort.

The emancipation of tiers is very much welcome.

Will production be impacted by this change?
Right now weaker tiers cost less to manufacture.
Are you going to rebalance that too?
Liang Nuren
No Salvation
Divine Damnation
#389 - 2012-03-06 19:57:36 UTC
stoicfaux wrote:
+1.0 for something that is long overdue
-0.5 if we have to retrain for ships we can already fly (i.e. the BC/Destroyer skill makeover)
0.5
which rounds up to +1.

Great change, but I'm going to loathe having to train multiple BC5 skills.


Fortunately, you won't. It helps to read. ;-)

-Liang

I'm an idiot, don't mind me.
Onnen Mentar
Murientor Tribe
#390 - 2012-03-06 19:58:47 UTC
Finally \o/ I've been waiting for a balancing blog that shows some vision for years. I'm glad to see you have the guts to make EVE better, even in the face of a lot of complaining about the difficulties involved with crosstraining. If it means certain people get an outrageous amount of "free" SP in comparison to those of us who have pretty much trained just one race for 6 years, so be it ;)

Minmatar Balancing, 3 suggestions.
Temmu Guerra
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#391 - 2012-03-06 19:58:48 UTC
CCP I think you guys should give up trying to comfort people about the skills being replaced. You can shout until you are blue int he face (or in this case fingers are numb from typing) and no one will listen.

Everyone bitches about not enough communication from CCP with dev blogs being not frequent enough, however when they tell you the first idea and some details that they are still trying to work out everyone throws their hands up in the air screaming about it because the details haven;t been set yet. Seriously f**king make up your minds already (towards playerbase)


Still happy with these changes and looking forward to the next dev blog about it once changes are solidified.
Aarin Wrath
Dominion Strategic
#392 - 2012-03-06 19:58:58 UTC
CCP Ytterbium wrote:
We have a "if you could fly it before, you can fly it now" philosophy, that means properly reimbursing/giving skills not to leave people stranded in ships they could fly before the change. Again, nothing is fixed yet.

Fewf. Having done some extensive cross training this was my only real fear.

On the whole it honestly sounds like an incredibly good change. I just hope those of us who cross trained a lot, or have a huge amount of SP in flying space ships don't get short changed by this whole process.

Keep it up CCP. You guys are kicking ass this expansion. Big smile
Guttripper
State War Academy
Caldari State
#393 - 2012-03-06 20:00:20 UTC
This thread is moving way too fast to read every reply so I'll throw out my idea for redicule...

CCP leaves the current version of the Destroyer and Battlecruiser skills to allow people trained to fly all four racial versions. But then add a new racial designed skill book to be trained to boost additional specific properties for those ships. These racial skill books are side skills to the main skill books and are not required to fly the ship, but again, to boost some "special" bonus to the ship in question. Or better still, the racial skill book's effect can be utilized on any of the four racial ships instead of strictly to the racial ship in question.
Morar Santee
#394 - 2012-03-06 20:01:01 UTC  |  Edited by: Morar Santee
Okay... where to start. How about:

CCP Ytterbium wrote:
For example, why does the Amarr drone and tracking disruption line ends with the Arbitrator? Or the Gallente drone and dampening abilities stop with the Exequror? Can’t Minmatar use short range missile platforms to make use of that target painting bonus?

I can completely understand your concerns. If I was not aware the Curse and Pilgrim do carry on the Amarr drone and tracking disruption line, I would also be miffed
The other word you are looking for is "Celestis". Incidentally, it also has T2 variants that carry on the drone and sensor dampening abilities, along with the extended point range.

And turrets also profit from target painters and extended web range, by the way. In fact, there's entire fleet doctrines built around this.

It's great to know you are in charge of redesigning the core gameplay of EVE. I don't see what could possibly go wrong. It also explains:

CCP Ytterbium wrote:
That means finding common themes, or lines that fit ships with the same purpose, then adjusting slot layout, HP and fittings within each class to support this goal.

I'm sorry, but I don't want you to decide how I have to fly my ships. I want to decide how I fit and fly my ships. I don't need you to place artificial limitations on my ships that only allow for one possible purpose. I'm sorry, that's ****, and it's ruining the sandbox game I signed up for. But wait, you already took that into account:

CCP Ytterbium wrote:
It groups vessels into easily identifiable lines for each race and allow us to add new skills to support them. That is the purpose of the ship line skills mentioned above, which could further boost respective advantages. Combat ship line skills could give a bonus to defense, while attack ship skills benefit offense and mobility for example.

Oh, okay, you're shoveling sand out of the sandbox on purpose. Players get WoW-esque gameplay by being forced to fly one single ship to fill a certain role, and CCP gets additional revenue because in order to fly that one ship, you have to train new support skills. It's a win-win situation!!


Really, I can't begin to say how disappointed I am by this. I'm not even going to get into the skillpoints/crosstraining issue. CCP has promised current players will be able to fly all ships they can currently fly. Works for me. Frankly, I don't care about people who will have to work with the new skill-tree anymore. I hope they use their free month to have a good look at it, and simply quit. If they don't - they signed up for it.
But why the **** is it impossible to simply fix current issues with gameplay? Why can't you fix the Overview and have a look at hotkey behaviour / modifier keys. Why can't you give us a working text editor in-game, that doesn't eat all formatting - and maybe fix all other bugs related to notepad and eve-mail.

There's so many things that could be done to simply reintroduce functionality you broke with every other patch over the last years, and instead of doing any of that, you want to revamp core gameplay. You want to mess with the one thing that keeps EVE going, and that you probably shouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole, given your track record over the last two years. And signed up the guy who can't tell a Celestis from an Exequror, and doesn't know Recons even exist.
Zabir Kal'Uragan
Sanguine Cabal
#395 - 2012-03-06 20:01:01 UTC
Simply appalling.
Granix Uvelian
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#396 - 2012-03-06 20:01:07 UTC
I gotta be honest, I disagree completely with the 'make BC and destroyers racial' line of thinking.

Instead I think you should make them full fledged classes. Continue the connection grid that can be seen in the first diagram, and make the consistency STRONGER.

For example Assault Ship frigates scale into Heavy Assault Ship cruisers. This makes sense.

However, you skipped the destroyer sub-class, therefore you should skip the BC subclass and go to an Assault Ship version of a Battleship. OR.... create an assault ship version of a destroyer and BC (the BC is implied as the Field Command ship).

Similarly, connect the Electronic Attack Frigate with it's Cruiser size and Battleship size counter parts as you did with the Assault ship classes. Basically making the diagram you show a complete grid instead of a half-baked grid.

This allows the pilot to pick a race (amarr), and then pick a Tech 2 specialization (electronic warfare), and follow that through as high as they want in the ship size department (Frigate, Cruiser, Battleship). The destroyer and battlecruiser, T1 subclasses should be expanded into full classes, ESPECIALLY if you want to make them racial like the big 3.

Regards,

G
War Kitten
Panda McLegion
#397 - 2012-03-06 20:01:08 UTC
Temmu Guerra wrote:
CCP I think you guys should give up trying to comfort people about the skills being replaced. You can shout until you are blue int he face (or in this case fingers are numb from typing) and no one will listen.

Everyone bitches about not enough communication from CCP with dev blogs being not frequent enough, however when they tell you the first idea and some details that they are still trying to work out everyone throws their hands up in the air screaming about it because the details haven;t been set yet. Seriously f**king make up your minds already (towards playerbase)


Still happy with these changes and looking forward to the next dev blog about it once changes are solidified.


This.

Very much this.

I don't judge people by their race, religion, color, size, age, gender, or ethnicity. I judge them by their grammar, spelling, syntax, punctuation, clarity of expression, and logical consistency.
Andre Vauban
Federal Defense Union
Gallente Federation
#398 - 2012-03-06 20:01:26 UTC
CCP Soundwave wrote:
Smoking Blunts wrote:
CCP Ytterbium wrote:
The skill requirement changes for destroyers and battlecruisers is very tricky to tackle indeed. We fully acknowledge having to re-train for ships you can already fly is not appealing at all.

As said in the blog, nothing is set in stone yet, we are considering various reimbursement options as this is still quite a high level change.



it not just not appealing its crazy.

pre patch i can fly all cs's and all dic's. post patch im ******. i either pick to fly a claymore or damnation or a vulture (eos is **** anyhow) and then im screwed for the next 80 odd days retraining for ships i could already fly.

you either reduce the ranks of the destroyer and bc skills so reimbursed skill points from the old cover all 4 races, or you just give people all 4 races.




We'll find a suitable reimbursement that makes everyone happy. I'm not terribly fussed about giving away a little extra if it moves we move the ship progression system into a better place.


I would suggest you give people skill points for the Interdictor, BC, CS, etc based on what they can fly now. In other words, if I have BC IV and Gallente Cruiser and Caldari Cruiser I can currently fly Gallente and Caldari BCs. Give me enough SP so I can train Gallente BC to IV and Calardi BC to IV.

If you decide to do this, you can freeze the SP that will be given based on when you announce the change so people don't train to max their free SP.

Other than that, I really like the change especially getting rid of the tiers and moving to the functional roles. I'm not sure I agree with all the functions, but its pretty good.

.
OfBalance
Caldari State
#399 - 2012-03-06 20:01:40 UTC
*rushes to train bc requirements on every alt for free sp*
IHaveCandyGetInTheVan69
Crouching Woman Hidden Cucumber
#400 - 2012-03-06 20:01:49 UTC
Just to confirm if I currently can fly all 4 races BC with BC5 will this new system still give me all races with lvl 5 bonus, or a suitable reimbursement such that I can achieve lvl bonus on all 4 races.

Or will I go down from 4 race BC 5 to 1 race BC 5?



Also capital requiring BS 4, lol. trying to find a new source of alt accounts for when the gang boost nerfs start landing?