T1 Tiericide has been going a long while and I would expect T2 to last at least as long.

I'm guessing that BC rebalancing will probably take an expansion of its own - and will probably include Command Ships and command subsystems simultaneously.
The next round can then cover the BS leaving only the industrial ships and special purpose vessels in the T1 lineup. Whether these can be done at the same time... Probably not.

So we're then looking at (what? eighteen months?) the same for T2 and then a final session for Capitals and anything else which needs tweaking.

2015 sounds quite realistic from my perspective.

Truth is: ship balancing never ends. At least it should never end in an ideal world.

When we are done with the current cycle we'll most likely need to go back at the beginning to have a look at power gaps that formed up in the meantime.

With all due respect, there have been a lot of logs thrown on the fire in a very short amount of time to be drawing firm conclusions. For example, the Rifter may be subpar now, but the Rifter + a SAAR + a utility high may be quite good.

Truth is: ship balancing never ends. At least it should never end in an ideal world.

When we are done with the current cycle we'll most likely need to go back at the beginning to have a look at power gaps that formed up in the meantime.

nevermind

Cultural victory.

(And I did get to read what you originally wrote ... I was hoping you'd explain further, rather than just the snippy little troll.)

At that point it's just tweaking.

Why play semantics, Poetic? It is all tweaking and it is all rebalancing, regardless if it is a role redesign or +/- 1 powergrid on a specific hull. The point is that CCP is acknowledging that this is currently planned to be an ongoing process, and that is and should be the only acceptable solution for the developers of a decent PvP game. I am personally very excited and hopeful for the future of this game when I see devs like Ytterbium and Fozzie (who have certainly earned my trust lately) saying that they don't believe a 'one pass and done' approach will be enough.

Time will tell.

The rebalancing that's been done so far has been revamping entire classes of ships.

Tweaking would be adjusting a ship here and there.

I agree ... balancing never stops ... but at the end of 2014 (or 2015), CCP isn't going to need to make adjustments to every single ship again. It will only need to make adjustments to to individual ships, not their entire class.

The rebalancing that's been done so far has been revamping entire classes of ships.

Tweaking would be adjusting a ship here and there.

I agree ... balancing never stops ... but at the end of 2014 (or 2015), CCP isn't going to need to make adjustments to every single ship again. It will only need to make adjustments to to individual ships, not their entire class.

The idea that at a certain point all that will be left is "tweaking" is no more true today than it was 5 years ago. Such is the nature of a live game, especially a mature sandbox like ours.

They actually did do a lot of balance changes before hiring Fozzie. And also, it's not as though they would have hired him if the business side of things hadn't decided to prioritize ship rebalancing

There's more to game balance than making sure the players find everything to be EZ mode.

Completely ******* imagined them.

What is this strawman? How did an easymode argument make its way in here?

You're apparently imagining the speed at which these changes were made.

It's actually not a straw man argument at all. I wasn't kidding - there's more to game balance than rotating game balance. There's more to game balance than making sure that every number lines up on a spreadsheet exactly. There's this crazy concept called "fun" which really needs a surprising amount of attention. For instance, there's this constant argument that low sec and null sec should be more rewarding than high sec. And truth be told - they already are. And really, if the players got their way it would actually be worse off for the entire game.



Not at all. But they were doing changes, and fairly frequently. Perhaps not to the breadth that everyone wanted, but they were there and working. You make it sound like the CCP devs literally let the game sit and languish for years, and that's absolutely false.

-Liang

I disagree. We'll need to remain open to large revamps on every balance pass. Whatever we come up with will always need more changing, either in response to unforeseen balance issues or just to shake things up. Add to that the fact that we plan to keep adding new ships now and again, as well as the areas where EVE's core formulas will eventually need tweaking, and I think the time for drastic changes will never be completely behind us.

The idea that at a certain point all that will be left is "tweaking" is no more true today than it was 5 years ago. Such is the nature of a live game, especially a mature sandbox like ours.

Apathy is death, as a character we don't own the trademark to would say.

Just please - no T3 frigates or even more tank and gank subcaps!