Fade Toblack
Per.ly
The 20 Minuters
61
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Posted - 2013.06.21 14:57:00 -
[2] - Quote
CCP Rise,
First of all I'd like to explain why these changes are a bit meh for me...
Like many players I have to move stuff around New Eden. For large volumes I'd turn to a Freighter, for smaller volumes or more dangerous space a Viator is faster or allows me to offset some of the risk. There's currently a mid-ground where I want to move a reasonable volume of stuff, without the speed problems inherent with using Freighters. For those purposes I turn to an Itty5.
So currently of all the T1 industrials, I only ever fly an Itty5.
Now, as I understand things, one of the aims of tiericide or role-i-fication was to get away from the idea that's there's a single best ship. For example when flying a frigate, there was rarely any reason to fly something other than a Rifter/Merlin. One of the things that has changed massively when looking at Frigates/Cruisers is that there are now reasons to fly the other racial hulls in the class. Some of them I might only need occasionally - but you've attempted to give all of them a viable role.
Now looking at the industrials, and the proposed changes at this time - this just isn't the case. Yes you've given each race a hull that fits the role I'm looking for - but why would I bother going out and buying/flying any of them? The Itty5 still fullfils the role I needed and none of the other ships offer any other advantages. Even for a new pilot - there's little reason for them to ever fly other hulls.
So rather than taking a ship class with one ship worth flying, and making it have 8 ships worth flying - I'd argue that in actual fact for most players there's still one ship worth flying - maybe 2 if you haven't unlocked T2 industrials yet.
So yes the changes are a bit meh.
Secondly I don't see the problem with racial differences within a class. I can certainly fit damps to a Griffin, but if I decide that I want to specialise in providing damp support to my fleets, I really need to train into Gallente frigate to get the better bonuses. Likewise a Gallente pilot that wants to specialise into ECM will almost certainly need to start training Caldari hulls. In some cases the impact of this is worsened because there's additional weapon types/different tanking etc too.
I don't see why the same can't apply to the industrial ships. When I start in Eve I go off and train Caldari Industrial for all my general purpose hauling needs. When I start mining ice, the Badger Mk2 is a fine hull and completely capable of hauling my ice stockpiles around. Now if one of the other races has a bonus to ice-capacity, that doesn't affect the utility of my Mk2 - but the option is there for me to train that racial industrial ship and gain the advantage of the bonus hold.
Finally, having said all this - I can see where you're at at the moment.
As things stand on TQ now, there's no reason to train anything other than Gallente Industrial. So I can see why you would like to do a balancing pass now.
If you apply roles to different hulls you're not improving that situation as the differences in distinct hulls between races means that training Gallente Industrial is still the best general case as you'll gain access to more ship roles than training any other race.
So I think what most of the posters like me really want to hear is that this isn't the end for industrial balancing. That in the future you'd like to see additional hulls to give each race specialisations - maybe tied in with further work around industry.
Tell us that the long term plans involve doing more to the hulls - that in the future you will give me a reason to fly an Itty3 - just that this is a first balancing pass until other changes in the game (maybe outside your control) happen. |