Hashi Lebwohl
Oberon Incorporated
Morsus Mihi
   |
Posted - 2011.04.23 12:21:00 -
[1]
The fact is that CCP, except when the game first launched, have not cared too much about balance. Admittedly at first there were some really broken features such as hardeners and damage modules stacking without penalty.
They have had all the information available to them in real time but apparently chose not to use it. Every time a player buys a ship or module in Eve they are voting about the relative merits of that object. So for instance the Eagle is demonstrative awful because its selling at less than it costs to produce, the Dramiel is over-powered because its price indicates that is the case.
My recommendation is that the developers acquaint themselves with the bell curve. A class of ships should be valued on the market within a range of prices, or perhaps, better profit over build cost. If a ship type moved more than a standard deviation of the mean it should be flagged for review. That flagging perhaps should be published on the forums and suggestions invited for its nerfing or boosting.
If a ship class moves two standard deviations from the mean the expectation should be that the next patch will address the issue of that ship.
The same process should be conducted for modules and there should be a look for patterns within the market data. For example, I am sure you can use something more sophisticated than venn diagram, but the poorly performing Eagles and Ferox are also members of the ôuse railsö set. And the rail set is notable because a lot of its tech II types are trading a low to negative profits. So perhaps a solution would be to give a small boost to rails and see what happens.
The key is that these adjustments are continual at each patch û not done and forgotten. A complete revision would be signalled by the failure over a number of patches to move the target group back into the central part of the bell curve.
The advantage of this system is that the developers need not themselves be ôleet pvpersö, even though some maybe, because they are using the market and therefore utilising the collective knowledgebase of the players.
|