CCP Fozzie
C C P
C C P Alliance
14268
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Posted - 2016.07.27 14:26:30 -
[1] - Quote
Obviously the role of unique ships in the AT has been a fairly controversial topic for a few years, and I think people have such different views partly because there's a couple different sets of competing goals involved in EVE tournaments. How you find yourself along each spectrum matters a lot here.
Firstly, the spectrum between normal esport patterns and the EVE sandbox.
The extreme version of normal esports would be running a tournament on a test server with free items, max skilled characters and no spying or "metagaming".
The extreme EVE sandbox side is essentially just normal EVE pvp, without limits on movement, ship types or player numbers.
Exactly where the AT should fall on this spectrum is a question we've been working through for years. It ties heavily into questions of how much we should restrict ISK spending in the tournament. There are plenty of advocates of both sides and some tournaments (such as EVE_NT Collides) are further towards the "normal esports" side of the spectrum since they take place on SISI.
The "pure esports" perspective on unique ships tends to be that they need to be restricted so that pure pvp skill can shine vs ingame wealth and alliance assets. The "EVE sandbox" perspective tends to be that unique ships represent a way for entire alliances to invest in their teams and that the economic shockwaves of expensive ships exploding creates gameplay value.
Secondly, the spectrum between the AT as a game system and the AT as a spectator event.
This one can be a bit hard to see sometimes since AT pilots themselves tend to fall on the "game system" side. Concerns about making a quality spectator event are the reason we tend to intentionally increase point values of very tanky ships. From a pure game system perspective it would be nice to get extra variety by lowering the point cost of ships like marauders, but we get spectator event value from encouraging faster-pace fights.
From a game system perspective it's easier to argue for banning or heavy restrictions for unique ships. They impact the results of matches somewhat by sitting outside the normal power/point curve.
From a spectator event perspective on the other hand, unique ships are pretty amazing. They make exciting viewing and memorable matches for the people at home. They are good focus point for hype from commentators and discussion of tactics. They provide a touchstone connecting each tournament with the history of the EVE universe.
For this tournament, we have decided to provide some extra restriction for unique ships to try and minimize the issues while preserving as much of their value to the event as possible.
Increasing the point values of unique ships was considered, but at the end of the day we think that increasing the point values would do more to reduce the number of matches that contain unique ships than restricting numbers. It's a bit subjective, but I believe that a match with X unique ships isn't X times as exciting as a match with one unique ship. Since these multi-unique setups are both hitting diminishing returns in excitement and provide the most obvious cases of overpowered impact, we decided to go with the "one per setup" rule. We hope that with this rule we'll continue to see unique ships brought out on the stream while keeping cheaper setups competitive.
Game Designer | Team Five-0
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