A year ago, we got the long awaited Capital ship changes which finally revitalized the class as a whole. It was obvious that Capital ships were going to be very powerful, both in PVP and PVE. You gave us powerful end game ships to work towards - something worth commitment to Eve. Roughly six months later you did the same thing with the Rorqual. Now, a year after these changes, when most players have finally begun to benefit from them, you reduce the ships back to roughly where they were before.
Maybe that's a good thing in the long run, maybe it's not. Maybe it pisses off so many people who feel that you pulled another bait and switch with training. Maybe it makes Battleships great again. But this is a major change that affects way more than running anomalies.
Nine months ago, it was clear that this game was headed to "Carriers online." Carriers were going to be the mainline DPS boats for PVE and PVP fleets. These training and resource intensive ships were going to be totally dominant. And that is what we have seen these past few months in many major battles. Massive numbers of Carriers supported by FAX replacing massive numbers of Battleships supported by Logistics. There has been an arms race these past few months to get massive numbers of people into Carrier and Supercapital fleets. That's why everyone has been ratting and mining until their eyes bleed these past few months, because you handed the keys to the game to resource and training intensive ships. The group with the most wins. Just as it is about to come to fruition for the late comers, you announce a massive and fundamental change to Capital ships. It would be nice if you could be more agile with your development, but it is hard to steer a Battleship (or Carrier
). A small course correction here and there goes a long way.
Obviously, this will have profound impacts across Eve, but it won't fix the underlying PVE problem, which is that resources never deplete, no matter how relentlessly you farm. I could run a thousand anomalies and the Blood Raiders would never bat an eye. They never send different ships, they never escalate, they never stop flying right into my guns. If I run Incursions, the Sanshas would basically do the same thing, but at least they move on to a different part of Eve every few days. Maybe you need to fundamentally rethink resource generation in Eve? Get rid of the unlimited local ratting opportunities. Maybe people who log in to find that there are no rats to kill will simply log out again. Or maybe they will do something else and make Eve more interesting. If you pursue this, however, it has to be across the board. Everything has to be finite or people will just shift to continuous PVE in another part of space. Yes, that means the Damsel can only be rescued from Dodixie so many times a day...
Across the board, ISK-generating PVE should be more like wormhole space or Incursions. PVE content eventually depletes. Out of things to do locally? Leave home and go kill some dudes or crab it up some place new.