progodlegend
101st Space Marine Force
Nulli Secunda
4
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Posted - 2012.03.08 07:03:00 -
[1] - Quote
I'm really worried about the changes you guys are considering. A lot of them sound great in theory, but CCP has a long track record of not understanding the finer details about the PVP that is happening in EVE, especially large scale fleet combat (why alliance's choose certain ships over others, how exactly fc's use these fleets in combat, etc. etc.).
I know you were probably just throwing ship names out there, but your "EVE examples" of long range bombardment, calvary ships, and pretty much everything on that list worried the **** out of me. Maybe you were saying what those ships would be used for after the changes were made, but even if that's true i'm still worried because some of the roles you defined don't even make sense in the context of how EVE combat works.
I would hope that the players get a significant chance to test out all of these changes you are considering and I'm confident you will follow through there, but this worries me as well. It is very important and i'm vehemently hoping that you also get a smaller group of more experienced players together to consult with on these changes independent of the public forums or mass testing(mostly FC's preferably), because a large portion of the general EVE population does not understand the finer details of what is going on in the fleet fights they are themselves participating in. I know the CSM is there, but they are only 9 people, and I think only a few of them even have more than a small amount of FC experience.
A great example of how the EVE population's opinion for pvp can be dangerous is the "Drake is overpowered" rage that came out at the end of 2010-2011. People whined constantly about how OP drakes were at the end of 2010, because a few alliances were using them in large fights and winning. What most of the pilots didn't know is that drakes were getting a significant advantage in lag because missile launchers were cycling significantly more often than guns in lag instead of getting consistently stuck. Once a few improvements were made to gun cycling thanks to team gridlock, a lot of this complaining went away as drake fleets were getting properly murdered again.
Now the Drake whine is slightly there again, but not nearly as loud with the CSM is suggesting a few changes that are at the very least much better than the old changes that were suggested. Even now though, the drake is not as good as people make it out to be, and maybe in need of only some very minor tweaking here and there. (By the way here's a hint, drakes get a lot of there OP from heavy missiles, if you are going to consider any changes to the drake, looking at heavy missiles is a better start than the ship itself.)
So yes in conclusion, Fleet combat has evolved significantly and very quickly over the past 2 years despite there being only moderate changes in balancing. The number of competent FCs in this game who can win at the highest levels of combat has been dwindling due to innovations in fleet combat building on one another. So it's important that CCP talks not only to the general eve population but also to a certain group of people who understand fleet combat, because minor tweaks and add on's to pvp often end up creating new dominate fleet comps or obsoleting other parts of the game, and it sounds like yall are trying to avoid doing that this time.
P.S: Another thing that needs to be explained, is that a lot of changes have occurred to fleet combat over the years, despite very little changes in mechanics, and it's important that CCP understands why this has happened (and is still happening.) Once again for example, the drake has not changed at all since quantum rise (I think that expansion was 4 years ago now, can't remember) changed missiles and signatures etc.etc., yet the drake was widely regarded as a terrible pvp ship for years. It is only over the past 2 years that drakes have really become regarded as a viable pvp ship by some people. Despite having the same bonus's, attributes, slot layouts, everything the same 3 or 4 years ago, no one would have thought to start up a "nerf the drake" thread during that time, and in fact many people were saying that missile PVP needed to be buffed. Now there are multiple caldari based fleet concepts that use missiles as their primary weapon system. Missiles 3 years ago were regarded as useless because fleets of the time were almost always made up of ships from all races, and did not rely heavily on logistics. This meant that high resist ships were not as important as they are now, and that a mix of gun's and missiles from having ships of different races meant that the guns always hit first, giving the missile ships their "useless" title at the time.
P.P.S: No i'm not making this post just because I'm an FC, but being an FC has allowed me to see some of the fallacy's in what the EVE population occasionally calls for when it comes to PVP balancing, which is why I felt the need to make this post. |