Trinkets friend
Obstergo
NEM3SIS.
222
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Posted - 2012.03.19 01:35:00 -
[1] - Quote
The recent PL titan loss shows a few things about how the game has evolved.
EVE tragics who have spent 5+ years in the game and skilled into supercaps, and actually got a supercap, are likely to band together into one of the large power blocs with other supercap pilots, for safety and synergy. This has resulted in a handful of alliances and organisations with double, and in a few cases, triple-digit supercap numbers.
This is a natural endgame scenario for any collective of groups within a population; consider the IRL current geopolitical situation, with several powerblocs, two superpowers, and nascent third-tier powerblocs forming. Plus of course, pirate powerblocs. That nullsec (and to a lesser extent lowsec) in EVE should begin resembling the real world is not surprising; humans play the game, at least outside the DRF.
This kind of group-organising behaviour was forseeable, but not part of the dev brief for supercap balancing (if there was one). CCP balanced (i know, bear with) supercaps on the basis of them being rare special toys, which they are; they gave them abilities beyond normal caps, power off the charts in some cases, and some drawbacks (eg, no docking). They did not think of them being deployed in blob numbers and hence, the emergent game of EVE destroyed the balance.
So now they have to consider balancing supercaps in the game, for the game's sakes. Odda's titan loss shows what the superpower blocs of EVE are capable of; dropping 140 caps and supers on the field within 5 minutes, to blob a suicide dread fleet. That Odda lost his Erebus, well, he was pushing the envelope of what a Titan is supposed to do, not only by having a luls smartbomb fit but by camping a lowsec gate to clean up the peons. Wolfsbrigade, all props to them, knew what they were getting into and pulled it off despite Odda/PLs cries of lag, disconns, blah blah.
The PL response to this hotdrop shows the problems CCP has to address in balancing not just titans but supercaps. I'm not saying you shouldn't lose 33 dreads to take out a titan. But clearly the emergent game has progressed to the point where 100-man-plus supercap and cap fleets are common, where such fleets can project across large pats of EVE, instantly. PL has the organisation and discipline to do this; many others do not. Good on PL.
Removing the Titan's abilities to shoot subcaps does address the problem where the superpowers can wipe out vast numbers of ships with a handful of superweapons. If a small alliance (like mine, luls at it is) tries to carve a niche like the CCP propaganda splerg would have noobs believe is possible, then we could field 150 ships and get vaped by a couple of guys in supers. That's not good for the game - even if we kinda know we are down the food chain and being roflstomped by the big guys is coming. We can deal with being bitchslapped, but corps shed members, people shed accounts, the game suffers.
After all, as various people show on their blogs, max logons haven't peaked past 45K for months (Crucible honeymoon), representing a shrinking of the player base; having Odda camp Amamake forever with total impunity won't encourage anyone to play the game. Having small powers instagibbed by bored powers, etc, isn't good for the game.
CCP has a lot of work to do in rebalancing the supers to the new realities of EVE. Hell, they are soon going to be faced with the need to tweak the tier 3 battlecruiers now people are figuring out how to use them, and deploying fleets of them in true nullsec blob numbers. Its part of the cycle; CCP makes things with set attributes, people theorycraft and experiment, and accumulate wealth and skills to fly them, and then some smartass nut comes along and begins exploiting particular peculiarities in the maths or attributes, and makes it broken.
Raiden/ has built an empire on a business model of the titan blapfleet. Maybe they need to work on their social skills and engineer in a subcap support blob. Either way, the cycle goes on.
The skilful employer of men will employ the wise man, the brave man, the covetous man, and the stupid man.
Sun Tzu
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