Hello, I usually don’t type anything here but I hope that someone from the devteam picks this up.
First of all I would advise CCP to rethink their strategy in how to implement these changes
Let’s get some common ground.
Most of us agree that the current way in using ships is not optimal. So don’t take me wrong I am all up for Titans not being able to kill off the small ships like kikimoras, cruisersized and even battlecruiser sized ships that’s fine.
But the approach CCP is trying to achive here has many sides. Ecenomy, player experience, and feeling of danger aka risk reward, PVE content and ofcourse to make Eve a place of battle.
This patch is not just hurting the nullsec players but it hurts wormholers and smallgang players even more so.
Making ships brittle and switching the game meta to volley damage only is only contributing to the numbers game.
Those that fields more raw DPS wins. Skill or upgrading your ship is less viable as the expensive modules don’t have such a big impact anymore wich leads in players not using them.
Many small gang pvper’s have relied on good FC’ing, bringing better ships than the larger masss and even been able to beat superioir numbers wich is the way it should be.
Now after the change it will be more just volleying stuff from the field and with the logi not being able to catch up the FC’s will be less willing to take fights that can be predicted and trust me many actually think of welping a fleet to be a bad thing especially with the depletion perioid being felt across new eden.
Also Wormholers are usually fighting an uphill battle especially when defending against subcapital fleets and are relying on FAX,Carrier, Dread defense fleets (or the batphone from the notorious frighole lol). Since the mechanic really prevents or atleast makes it hard for the attacker to bring a large capital fleet to evictions wich leads to the fact that carriers, faxes are less viable in defence and they are not able to follow the escalation plan or willing to commit assets to the field that will just be evaporated under the massive DPS and inability to catch reps to anything on grid.
This will most likely lead into smaller groups just pack it up. Especially if they don’t have a batphone for that ridiculous frighole.
For nullsec these changes mean less people are havig an insentive to field a super or titan as there is no ingame content for them at all…no use whatsoever. You need to think the current state of ingame
PVE content that let’s players wanting to invest in a big ship like the titan or supercarrier.
If there is none PvP or PVE wise you will see less of them in space, wich leads to noone being able to hunt them and that leads to even more stagnation.
Supers and titans are dying at the moment almost every day. After this change I would be surprised if we see anything anywhere anymore. We saw that in the blackout era aswell so the lesson should be learned by now.
Yes 50 man bomberfleets chasing in the space of emptiness…what ? dominixes ? how long do you think that will last for any player as an endgame goal?
Also lets have a quick look at the escalation progress.
So since the supers/Titans have been a way until now to be dropped on basically anything I agree with some of the changes you already implementent and even the supercarrier tube change is understandable. The thing is that if dreads are fielded no alliance will put their supers down to defend against that. The reason being that you wont be able to replace them because
1.) no ore
2.)steep prize
3.) well its cheaper to lose a structure than 10 supers. And also Dreads being really cost efficient wat to dish out a lot of damage. That’s it.
Also changing now the resists and EHP on ships will make some sites and PVE content really tricky. Who in their right mind wants to commit their asset for a poor risk/reward system ?
So first of all I want to say that blackout has tought us that if the risk vs reward is too high players wont undock. That is just the way it is in any game really. And also CCP has stated they have learned a lot in the past year on how to approach changes (they stated this themselves). So my advise is to take this back to the drawing board and first look at the bigger picture.
1.) Make sure there is a way to use these huge ships you want to call “endgame” ships so attackrs and defenders alike keep having content
2.) Make sure the ingame PVE environment is suited for these changes and iterate accordingly
3.) Check how the escalation process work with ships
4.) Also take a look how small gang pvp looks like.
5.) Don’t make this gankers paradise and bombers online more than it is
6.) Let the economy go into recession first then rebalance it and then check for the PVE content again
7.) After that stage make the EHP changes if you still feel that is the right way to go in a manner that suits the larger goal
8.) Don’t pollute the statistics again by announcing Serenity at the same time while implementing a blackout caliber change in the game so you can analyze the impact.
9.) Realize that highend ships require a LOT of isk and skillpoints. Making them obsolete is just not the right path to go.
At the end I just want CCP as a company to succeed and get the revenue stream from players having their accounts subscribed to that money can go into hiring great staff to make new eden even a better place to be. Also te keep up the good work in player number that seem to be increasing for now so we all can see new eden flourish and a great place to PVP and PVE in.
So I hope people don’t read this as a bitter rant. In 17 years of eve im way past that and ive seen worse. But I am genuenly concirned that even if the intention is good with these changes it actually breaks something really fundamental and is not to be considered “brave” to embrace change but rather just bringing the stupid into the game.