Dev Blog: October Balance Pass!

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3070

Actually, it is. “Burn Jita”. “Monocle Gate”.

Like, I don’t need to have people rioting in their streets, but they are ways of quantifying it. And, “it sucks to be jammed” ranks right up there with literally everything else in this game that disenfranchises you in the moment. Disrupted, jammed, neuted dry, damped, awoxed, corp theft, hot dropped, endless bubble camps, podded by smartbomb, camped in station, etc.

Hell, even the wardec change had better reasoning behind it. You notice I haven’t been up in arms about that because they justified it and did the best they could with an urgent matter.

The ECM change was never justified nor was it urgent. It was pointless, reckless, and caused a lot of grief with the community to no discernible end other than, “Hey we did something!”, that I’ve already covered.

I also think you’re nuts for being in the camp of wanting this done to other EWARS. Not only would such a change further damage community relations and complicate ship balancing costing them untold amounts of dollars to fix, but it’s also to fix someone’s feelings of, “but ECM got singled out!”. Doubling down on your failure may make you an interesting artist in the history books, but it nets you no brownie points here.

And they still didn’t define the problem in a way that differentiates it from other “problems”. “Bad feels” isn’t a concern by itself. Does it become a concern when the problem gets large enough? Absolutely! Now tell me where that line is. Because we have a massive AFK cloaky thread, threads about local intel, and hotdropping just to name three. Tell me about your bad feels about ECM any day and I can show you about half the EvE population being upset at one of those three. So tell me where ECM had this defined “problem”, what made this “problem” worthwhile to address, and why failing to address it now counts as success.

1 Like
3071

What about the huge frustration with scrams? Gate bubble camps? Etc, etc.

Eve has always been rock, paper, scissors. In the case of ECM it’s not like the counters to it weren’t available. Design by ‘Doesn’t feel bad’ is an awful replacement for design by mechanics balance.

Being on the wrong end of anything feels bad. Are we going to nerf every offensive system?

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3072

The counters were not widely available to most ships/fits. Pretending that a ship could afford to fit a counter module simply to counter ECM is silly. We all know it wasn’t practical, and the RNG mechanic was a terrible mechanic that made for bad feels on all sides of the game.

Scrams do not rely on a single module to counter, there are a bunch of ways, bubble camps… well anchored bubbles are a terrible mechanic, so yeah… Dic/Hic camps are a different matter. So you are putting up a strawman argument here, trying to equate one widely recognised bad mechanic as equivalent to ‘any system’.

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3073

Your entire post is disingenuous.

  • Almost every combat ship does have room for a counter module. Almost every ship already does fit them.
  • It is practical. It’s done every day and in most fits.
  • It’s not just to counter ECM, it also countered both ends of damps PLUS is integral in the quick aggression types of setups
  • The only thing you managed to get right, the RNG mechanic, wasn’t addressed, as I already pointed out.

And you want to talk about strawmen but you commit one yourself. Read my post closer. Look, it’s long, so I forgive you for missing the point. But the point was that “bad feels” was the beginning and end of CCP’s reasoning, and bad feels are all over the game regardless of where they come from. I asked for someone to step up and really define, draw that fine line, at where bad feels and incredible frustration create a need for change. I even outlined an event where my frustration with ECM, as a user, was many times greater than my victims. Define why their temporary disenfranchisement a handful of times in an hour was more urgently acted upon, than my frustration at the EWAR being completely useless and ineffective the entire time.

So, burn your strawman and actually debate this, since you elected to wade into it. By the by, the “widely recognized bad mechanic” is also a meaningless statement because that part wasn’t addressed, and only one side of that equation was given any benefit of it. The change was also “widely recognized as a bad change”.

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3074

No strawman involved: I pointed out that being hit with something you don’t have the counter to ‘feels bad’, along with simple examples.

Any equivalence introduced is by the sudden change to game design by ‘feels’. They are by nature qualitive, not quantative. Two thing that feel equally bad in this new way of judging mechanics (hauler scrammed without WCS, permajammed) become equivalent by the measure used.

Making a change that you know will break various aspects of a specific system is bad. Asking the very people who’s system you just broke (who repeatedly told you beforehand how it would be broken) how to then fix the now broken aspects is ridiculous.

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3075

I need to hire you as my editor.

3076

I’m a DBA, my work life revolves around taking complex technical and logical problems and turning them into something a human can understand.

Then I turn it into bullshite for managers.

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3077

Well you’re quite good at it. You’re saying exactly what I’m trying to convey, but you do it in a fifth of the space and you’re a lot more concise. I understand your posts better than my own.

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3078

Clown…

3079

This is the problem - what you’re saying here didn’t happen.

The change didn’t break anything. What you all are arguing is “breaking various aspects of a specific system” was the fundamental intent of the change. It’s the equivalent of arguing that when you cut cancer out of somebody, you just broke the cancer. Well, duh. That was the intent.

In addition, CCP never asked you guys how to “fix” anything. I asked for feedback as to what would help these ships be better in the new meta. There is never going to be a way to fix solo pvp with ECM, because that was a necessary loss when the overall issue with ECM was addressed.

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3080

They have also reduced the standup armor plating bonus by 5% and added stacking penalties, all in all resulting a big loss of armor points for POWERED structures. These were not discussed, announced or listed in the patch.

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3081

It clearly says in the patch notes they reduced the HP if structures but increased the multiplier for being powered. It also clearly says the result of these changes is that there is no difference in effective EHP for powered structures:

The combined result of these changes is that attacking full power structures will remain the same but that reinforcing low power structures will be about 25% faster.

If you really think it is not working that way you should file a bug report. It’s possible something isn’t working as intended but the patch notes clearly mention the change and say it doesn’t affect the final HP of powered structures in contrast to your complaining. I’m thinking you are not understanding how it was done or have done your math wrong, but if there really is a problem you should bring it to CCP’s attention with a bug report and maybe a petition.

3082

Ok, so the truth of the change is that the ECM pilots outside of large fleet actions were a sacrifice deemed worthy. The win was a quick and easy change that leaves a line of ships in a place where a CSM member asks the players for ways to fix them in the new meta where the solo ECM goes don’t matter.

Nice design. Or a full solution could have been thought out and implemented instead. ‘Quick and easy’ does not mean ‘good solution’.

ECM is now screwed for many people, but my larger concern here is the design approach that seems to have been followed. A half baked fix to alleviate bad feels is not what I expect from professional developers.

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3083

On a more pragmatic note, are CCP (and folks with easily bruised feelings) happy that ECM drones are still RNG ECM?

If so, why not switch the bonuses on the smaller, less fleet based ECM boats to ECM drone buffs? An affected pilot can still shoot the drones to break jams, and the ECM pilot can actually fit tank. This would allow solo use again without changing the fleet dynamic.

Basically make the smaller ECM boats the ECM equivalent of gallent drone boats.

3084

So 1v1 ECM is gone. Cool. What is it you all say, adapt or die?? Or is it HTFU. Seems a welcome change for most.

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3085

Fix what now?

I don’t think I brought up solo PvP. Did Corraidhin? Why are you talking about solo? I’m talking about a process and Corraidhin is talking about results, but I don’t see “solo PvP” in our recent discussion. Unless I just missed it?

More to the point, yes, that is what happened, and I’d like to refocus on the fact that it’s worse than what he said. CCP first said they were going to pair the ECM change with buffs at the same time, then conveniently forgot (like I called it). The change utterly broke several ships and weakened many others for a mechanic that at least one CCP dev has allegedly said was “already suffering”. The changes also never addressed the core problem that both you yourself outright admitted, and CCP indirectly implied - the RNG part.

So this was a failure all-around. CCP spent a lot of money and burned a lot of community goodwill enacting a hasty change that didn’t address the identified problem, completely destroyed the use for several ships and apparently the Standup ECM module too, then they enacted a change that inched back more towards that initial frustration in the first place. Remember, they boosted ECM strength and range to compensate - meaning jams are going to land more frequently and from hopefully outside your weapons range, meaning that ideally the entire ECM change was worthless to begin with since your newfound agency won’t do you any good.

I’m going to take a moment to address your analogy though. The problem with your analogy is that in this case, the cancer is still there, by your own admission. You cut the patient open, made them lose a lot of blood, they have this big scar at the incision site, and a bunch of medical bills from the operation. But you didn’t bother to remove the cancer. So what was the point?

We’re pointing out that you didn’t do anything to save the patient, you just weakened them, caused them grief, cost them a lot of money, and didn’t do anything to help them.

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3086

I mentioned it I believe. I’ll also correct my language, the change didn’t ‘break’ solo PvP for ECM pilots, it outright deleted it. Their playstyle was sacrificed at the design alter of ‘good feelings’. Probably whilst praying to the Gods of ‘agency’.

3087

Not fitting against ECM was the same choice as not fitting against Neuts.

If you don’t do it and meet an enemy using those modules you just deserve to die, and it’s only your own fault for deciding to not fit against it.

It is NOT the fault of ECM itself.

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3088

Already told you it is not the hp of the structures that was changed but the effects of the standup armor modules that was nerfed. Do you see anywhere in the patch notes a mention of changes to those modules ?

I cant file a but report because the description was now changed to mention the stacking penalties, so it is not a bug, it was an intended nerf that was made without announcing or consulting the structure owners community.

3089

Again, this is wrong. Small gang, BLOPS, large fleet engagements - all of which represent the bulk of the uses of ECM in PvP, are still viable. The only sacrifice was in solo PvP, where it is clear that the bulk of the ECM complaints originated.

I asked for feedback and ideas. If you don’t have any, then don’t provide any. CCP will decide what to do regardless of whether the community puts forward ideas, and they aren’t relying on the community to fix anything. That you keep harping on this like me asking for community feedback is a bad thing is absurd.

This isn’t accurate, nor is it something for you to worry about.