Misanth wrote:Just had 5 accounts expire, another one will in two days, can't really see myself reactiving them either. Will just keep a few combat pilots running for skill training.. so why do I post that as a reply to this dev blog?
Well this is about the winter expansion and ship balancing, right? Ok, let's talk about balancing:
* CCP have done a great job boosting afterburners and letting scramblers shut off mwd, while nerfing overall speed. Credit to those involved in this.
* CCP also did a good job ages ago when they fixed the overpowered dampeners, nosferatu etc, i.e. the ewar balancing. I see the changes that are being done for this expansion as an 'extention' to that. The added skills doesn't make much sense, other than to give us something to train, which is nice for us approaching 150mil SP (getting dull getting all rig skills, and useless t2 ships lv5), but - for younger pilots that is just a nuisance. And I can't really see any sense and logic in it, we had skills adding lock speed and range already, the +strength skills for the offense ewar is for offensive ewar. If that is too strong, nerf it, don't add in skills to counter it. That's just a poorly disguised time-/isk-sink.
The real issues tho, comes here:
* No considerations has been taken for the proper balancing of the "issues" with HML. Which, namely, was two folded: a) blobs. Drakes or Tengus was never too strong in small numbers, while in blobs they were, that's an issue with blobs and not the weapon type or ship itself. The Tengu got a bit too high damage with combined engineering/offensive subsystem, which still leaves all other setups (cloaky, for example) at extremely low damage output. Closer or lower than the other t3's. You going to nerf those too? At the same time, other HML ships (way more of those than the two nerfed) is getting shafted beyond belief. The Nighthawk was already bad, the Caldari cruiser and HACs was already suffering badly, and the Sacrilege etc suffers too. This is a great example of poor game balancing, not addressing the issue at hand but instead doing a blatant nerf over certain over-used shiptypes.
-> The nerf should have been to scale down the RoF bonus on Tengu's offensive subsystem (or removing the +1 launcher on engineering sub), and Drake should have had less buffer potential as that is what makes it so strong in blobs. HML should've been left the way it was.
* The ship balancing has been done on frigs and destroyers and cruisers. Only the third of those types really needed a major overhaul, the other two had it recently. What badly needs love a look at right now is t2 cruisers. HACs in particular, Recons have been quite alot weaker for years now with the increased damage/tank of players in general, solo killing a ratting Raven/Tengu/Drake in any Recon used to be common, but now it's damn hard. They all suffer from weak tank and horrible damage output, and the short warp range makes (even with max skills, obviously) a 2-300 au system a five to eight (yes, 5-8) jumps just to cross ONE system. Command Ships have needed massive love for years now, and it got worse with t3 introduction, as now the CS can barely be a fleet booster even.
* Blobs in general is a major focus for CCP, which at least for me personally (but this is obviously a personal comment, unlike the factual ones above) is massively offputting. EVE always catered everyone, and finding your own fortune and fights was always possible. Having people gather up to be stronger in numbers was always a strategy. But that was completely different when fleet sizes barely escalated past 20, or hell even past 200. But now that they easily go past 2000, and people live in upgraded sov-hubs (no belt ratting, no belt mining, jumpbridge access, titan bridges everywhere, etc) this is completely redudant. I spent hours and hours on a daily basis just to find someone to kill, getting few ones here and there. I regulary (yes, regulary) had people run from me when they were "only" 10-20 vs me and max +1 corpmate. FW is also blob hubs (and making FW emulate the nullsec behaviour is really the worst thing you can/could do, it should and could have a unique role as a smallscale part time easy-access PvP zone).
The day CCP starts to balance ships based on all kind of useage, not just blobs, and the days CCP starts to cater all players and not just the nullsec blobs and highsec carebears (let's face it CCP, the only reasonable semi-small and midscale PvP you still have in this game is in wormholes, which has it's own limitations - mainly massive time comumption compared to null- and lowsec), then perhaps you will have small- and midscale PvP players like me want to play your game again. It's been some great near-decade, and thank you but I'll keep my stuff. Who knows, maybe someone at CCP actually cares about PvP. And maybe, just maybe, I could dream, they will read this and actually think about what they're doing with the game.
+thanks to all the guys at the floor CCP, you had great staff helping me with petitions through the years, they deserve a future, give them some love.. i.e. incentitives for us PvP-interested players to reactivate our dying and dead accounts.