Dev Blog: October Balance Pass!

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3029

@Brisc_Rubal
There were plenty of suggestions in the threads concerning the ECM change that could have been used as inspiration for CCP.

You should also remember that the CSM is part of the EVE community, so one has to wonder whether the idea for the current ECM change came from a CSM member. I do not know, but you would.

If the EVE community yields no useful ideas for CCP then they should just do away with the forums and CSM and spend the time, money, and resources on something else rather than wasting both their and our time asking for ideas and feedback.

3030

@Nevyn_Auscent
That may very well be, but I have a feeling that the discussion will continue for years to come.

3031

Just because we put a bunch of ideas up in a thread doesn’t mean they’re useful, or they are in line with what CCP thinks is the best way to go. At best, we can present concerns and give them ideas, but in the end what they choose to go with and what they choose to code is up to them, and it takes into account a lot of things that we don’t have knowledge of, like Dev time management, difficulty in coding, etc.

As I noted before, the CSM has been complaining about ECM for a long time - longer than I’ve been on it. That we were finally able to get CCP to do something about it was a good thing, but the fundamental decision on what to do was CCP’s, and they made their decision. As I saw first hand with the WH issue with the 500mn HICs, sometimes the ideas we come up with are good, but cause technical problems that make another solution more feasible.

That being said, what we want from CCP is not spending two years and massive numbers of hours rebalancing every system in the game at the same time, while the game stagnates waiting for these fixes. We want smaller fixes, faster iteration, and a willingness to tweak stuff that works or roll back stuff that doesn’t work. We also want them focusing on systems that impact large numbers of players. ECM fit all of these criteria, and so did how they did it.

And, again, I still take issue with the idea that this change “crippled” ECM - it made it less useful in one playstyle. It had no impact on most of the other playstyles, but it did give defenders an option that they didn’t have before. That’s not crippling it. It’s changing the mechanic. Yes, some ships got hit harder and needed to be rebalanced, and I expect that will be on-going. But look at what has already happened that people said would never happen - CCP made the change, and a month later came back with buffs to the ships affected. Everybody told me that would never happen, that CCP makes a change and then ignores what they did for a year or more.

Obviously, things have changed and I hope people can recognize that moving forward.

3032

ONE v ONE with the phrase “less useful” - Please correct to absolutely USELESS … It does not have a function that aids anyone using it 1v1 therefore it has been CRIPPLED for that area of game play.

  • No amount of BUFF to the tank of a ROOK will make activating the ECM module do anything detrimental to the enemy ship or benefit your ship.
1 Like
3033

You’re not saying anything I didn’t already say. What you just described is the fact that it’s less useful in 1 v 1 than it was before.

Buffing the Rook will make it more useful in the other applications that it has.

You guys seem unwilling to recognize that ECM is not viable in 1 v 1 anymore, and it’s not going to be anymore, and that was part of the point of these changes in the first place. I’ve explained this a couple zillion times, but some of you seem unable to grasp that point.

3034

AGAIN –
Ecm is NOT “less useful” IT DOES NOTHING = Its has no detrimental effect on the target and your ship does not benefit from its use - ERGO its USELESS

3035

Doing nothing means that it is less useful than it was before.

Duh.

3036

Thats SPIN and you know it

Name ONE way activating ECM in 1v1 combat does ANYTHING other than burning your own cap.

  • ONE THING
3037

It’s not spin. It’s how I chose to characterize the change.

Yes, ECM does nothing in 1 v 1 now. That’s the entire point of this change. Why does that seem hard for you to grasp?

3038

Actually that IS a great definition of “spin”

… and there was me thinking the point of the change was as a salve for peoples “feelings” when all along the real reason for the change was to make ECM do nothing 1v1

( A must have change if you have instanced 1v1 combat arenas tho )

3039

Then you’ve not been reading literally everything I’ve said from the beginning here.

3040

oh but I have - I notice the contradictory comments that counter any point raised.

So, the CSM have been complaining about ECM for years have they - which years were those ? - because they can’t have been in any of the actual meetings else they would have appeared in the minutes.
Or were these private complaints from CSM individuals to the Devs - in which case were you listening in or are you just psychic.

3041

Or maybe I talk to CSM members who have been on previous CSMs who have told me “we’ve brought this up multiple times before.”

3042

yeah - right … we’ve brought this up multiple times before and it was never mentioned in any of the minutes even when each year has scheduled discussions about modules, balance and game play

Was it like — we will have a quiet word about ECM but never mention it at any meeting we attend

3043

@Brisc_Rubal
As I have pointed out several times CCP can do whatever they want since it is their game and that we have to live with it, but that does not change the fact that I still think it is bad design based on a rushed decision. And so far I have not seen any information from CCP that seems to contradict this.

As such, the simple, cynical analysis from my point of view still is that this solution was chosen in order to show “we do something”, it was rather quick and easy, it did not take too many resources, and it silenced the “bad feeling” complaints.

As for the CSM complaining (dare I say whining?) about it for several years, it just proves that people that do not like the current change should keep complaining since this seems to work in the end. As for the term “whining” I am not going to use it further since the use of this compared to complaining mostly seems to be a matter of timing and the point of view.

As for resources, I think CCP will spend quite a bit of resources on balancing the Caldari EWAR ships for a very long time. Frankly, when the ECM change was introduced, I am not sure CCP knew how to balance the Caldari EWAR ships because the buffs that were kind of promised in the original dev blog were not included in the original release. So I am not sure that if it all is summed up that many resources are saved based on the current solution vs. reworking the ECM mechanic.

As for the current state of ECM:

  • Module based ECM for solo players is DELETED from the game. Period.

  • It severely weakened an already “suffering” EWAR (ref. CCP Rise). And it is changing and crippling the mechanic at the same time since the jam on the target basically always fails.

  • It left a whole line of ships forced into a role they were not designed for.

  • There is still a very long way in terms of balance since to compensate for the severe nerf the ECM change caused. The current buffs included in the most recent release seem quite insignificant. As far as I can tell there is really only one very minor general buff to tank (the insignificant reduction in signature radius), whereas the other buffs are more related to tradeoffs between tank and jamming power. The way CCP Rise presented it on the EVE Vegas stream it seemed that CCP wanted to improve both tank and jamming strength of the ship, and I do not see this happen with the current buffs. So with the current pace the buffs are coming and the ship line CCP need to review, I think this will take many months of balance work.

  • More significantly, CCP seem to deviate from what otherwise seems to be the general design that the 4 empires should have similar ship classes with comparable capabilities. All empires EXCEPT Caldari seem to have 2 EWAR types (cap warfare not technically being EWAR) AND all these ships gain an advantage from their own EWAR. Not so for the Caldari – they have 1 “suffering” EWAR type where the user gains no advantage and, therefore, can only be used in fleets in a meaningful way. Some will say “but you can just cross train”, and while that is true the deviation from the what seems to be the general ship design would also make it ok for CCP to introduce a ship with a unique capability only accessible to one empire because “you can just cross train”.

One way to balance ECM and the imbalance between empires’ ships is to actually to give the other empires’ EWAR the same treatment as ECM – the most likely candidates being target painters, gun/missile disruption, and remote sensor dampeners – and add another EWAR type to the Caldari. The imbalance in the EWAR ship lines of the empires is is just another imbalance the ECM change created.

And yes this will take some balance to do. However, if it was a quick and easy solution to exclude the target from the jamming from the jamming itself the same would probably not be too hard to do for the mentioned types of EWAR? Furthermore, it would probably reduce the need for balance of the Caldari EWAR ships by some degree since this puts all the EWAR ships in the same position. And yes, I know there may be other ships such as the Golem that may need to have its target painter bonus changed to something else, e.g. a “built in” bonus or bonus to missile guidance computers, but I think these are minor issues.

And while I certainly recognize that things have change and that I have to live with it, it does not mean that I have to agree or need to stop complaining about it.

Therefore, I think (maybe not by me, but by someone else) the ECM discussion will go on for a long time.

2 Likes
3044

In both of your defenses, it seems like there’s simply a disconnect stemming from differing frames of reference.

It is routinely brought up that you have a political background. I think that you might be used to addressing things in a “toned-down” fashion. Like a doctor might advise a patent’s family, “I’m sorry, the surgery was not successful” instead of “He dead”. It’s just the way that profession conditions its participants to address the situation. In that vein, a politician might say, “the legislation was less than successful” with the understanding being that “it failed”, but laymen may interpret that as a dodge.

So, in your mind you were always saying the truth because that’s how you’ve been conditioned to present it, while Iowa might come from a more skeptical background making him/her believe such a statement represents dodgyness instead of forthrightness.

Just a thought.

3045

Honestly, the ECM nerf was really great. Now I can get even better ticks from the Rock Havens and all other anoms that used to jam me. I like it. CCP doesn’t care about collateral damage, I don’t either. More ISK for the ISK gods.

2 Likes
3046

This is correct. I don’t see the point in using all the hyperbole when for the most part that stuff is unnecessary.

3047

In this case it wasn’t playing it down, it was outright misrepresentation (I’m not one for hyperbole either). This was a binary change, ECM worked in 1v1, now it doesn’t. Yes that’s ‘less’, but that’s just using semantics to pretend it’s less of an impact.

3048

Regardless of the words I use, it’s obvious to everybody that it’s a big impact. You could do something before, now you can’t.

I really don’t get why you’re hung up on my word choice. It seems a stupid thing to complain about.