Devblog: Spring Balance Update Incoming!

I know it got the PG buff and sig radius reduction but what are you actually going to use it for? Pls don’t say PVE.

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And the Capital success “embargo” continues!
Well done, bravo i guess? You just ruined it ounce again for smaller entities in general on the capital front!

Nerfing HAW by 50% on titan? a bit drastic don’t you think? Did you even calculate this?
Ill be using Torpedo Launcher II now instead of Rapid Torpedo launchers. There goes your effort!

SO when will something be done about the cloaking harassment? What about a cloak timer linked to a skill?

NSA, I mean having a regular carrier stuck from warp with the NSA is suicide now, GOOD JOB! Multi boxing bombers are gonna have a field day with this! So armor carriers with dubble sebo is the new thing!

20% less yield for Rorqs, BRAVO, they just started injecting an other account to compensate.
AS for the NEXUS change, WAUW useless change if your in a big alliance. Again the smaller entities are B… R.ped! Why is the excavater size change even a thing? Do you want counter booshers or punish players with 4 to 5 Bil in drones on grid when their nerfed tank gets broken? Pointing at smaller entities again.

FAX’s why even change this? Your TiDi sucks! Dual tanked Titans and DD away!!!

Long live your hedious skill injectors, more FAXs and Rorqs just got injected with your release notes. Bravo it has been counterred, here is a cookie for effort.

You want to implement change by addressing something that has a different reason. The reason why you have so many capitals in the game is because your skill injectors and skill farmers got abused. You honestly ddnt think this would not happen?

You try to counter organised players, yet doing so this whont change a bloody thing.
What you just did accomplish is punish and wrist slapp the less fortunate entities in the game. Three cheers for your common sense!

Sub Cap Changes,
Uhmm, sure i guess. Also have my own thoughts on this but reading the PROs and CONs I think most is already said about this.

So in a nutshell,
Most of your changes just implement a refit of your ship when we look at the capitals.
Tidi impact? When well this get fixed?
And when will something be done about harassment and AFK cloaking harassment?

My two cents on the matter.

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You mean like Titans?

Tbh what you said about the rorq being superior 1:1 is the bad thing, in my opinion. Having one on grid with a bunch of hulks would be way cooler rather than just X rorqs. Maybe change the hulk to have only enough ore bay for one max skill/implant/boost etc pull and make it have to dump into an indy command ship every cycle but when boosted actually outperform the rorq. Maybe this can be done by adding a role bonus to the hulk that increases its received effects from mining links? That way it would stay the same for people who aren’t organized enough to boost and fly together.

I feel like HS mining would be a lot more interesting this way too due to suicide ganks and the low EHP of the Hulk. To take it a step further maybe activating mining links should require you to be war eligable.

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Wow, congratulations on not understanding someone being facetious on reddit.

And yes, the Rorqual is the top end of all industrial ships. No, it is not the most common mining ship. Most miners are in highsec, after all. However, while I know it seems like a no-brainer that the cheapest, least-efficient mining ship should be the way most mining is done, that situation doesn’t last. It would be like saying that most mining IRL is done by hand, with a pickaxe. Once upon a time? Sure. Now, though, the majority of mining is done with pretty standardized, advanced tools. Not the absolute cutting edge, in most cases, but a hell of a lot better than bottom of the barrel.

And the really high-end gear… it’s not that uncommon. If it was, it wouldn’t be worth producing.

Worse though, for your purposes (game design): if the Rorqual is only being used by the few very rich people who can use it in safety, well, they’re just going to get proportionately richer than everyone else, faster, aren’t they? In fact, that’s what quite a lot of the people in the thread here are complaining about.

Mining. (just kidding)

You know that would disincentivize the hulk, right? Putting in more of a requirement for busy-work clicks (‘crap, I have to move the ore… again…’) means increasing tedium and annoyance, and pushes people to do the thing that requires less effort on their part.

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Idk I feel like if you want max effectiveness in any ship you should have to actually fly it. If it were up to people like me drones wouldn’t even auto agress. The middle ground I guess could be a hulk exclusive module or rig that reduces the ore bay and gives it my proposed role bonus, or just another mining barge.

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@Brisc_Rubal @CCP_Rise @CCP_Falcon

CSM: Could you poke CCP on this, or maybe clarify why they think adding drones is a good start to the CNI?

Could you please reconsider your “rebalance” on the Caracal Navy Issue?

Adding drones doesn’t really fix the issues with the CNI. It needs fitting/slot/trait tweaks. Putting 25m3 of drones on it just feels like an afterthought for balancing. It has less fitting than an Orthrus, yet an Orthrus only needs to fit 5 launchers while the CNI needs to fit 6. I’d rather you guys wait on putting 25m3 on it and look into this further for a future patch, or if you have time, adjust it before the patch goes live. Unlike the nosprey (which got a similar treatment, plus improved damage bonuses) which has 6 mids, utility highs, decent fitting, the CNI will not see an improvement from this.

Please reconsider modifying the CNI in this way:

5% RoF -> 7.5% RoF bonus
-1 Low, +1 Mid
+60-65 PG
+20-25 CPU

This fixes almost every issue the CNI has without losing its flavor of being a pure missile boat and gives it some niche that isn’t currently occupied by other missile ships. It makes it a much stronger fleet ship (since you can add more tank/missile comps etc) and small gang/solo since you can actually utilize your mids for dual web without gimping your tank and taking advantage of the application bonus.

Losing the low slot means most of the time you’ll be double BCU, instead of triple. This compensates the extra 12.5% RoF you get compared to the original version. If you go triple BCU then you lose tank or speed mods, which i think is a fair sacrifice for some extra dps (which again is all pure missile dps and not missile+drone dps).

Edit: Wanted to add some extra numbers/comparison to help paint a better picture. The Orthrus alone may not be the best comparison

Couple quick comparisons to illustrate what i mean.

CNI fitting stats:

Number of launchers = 6

PG: 893.8MW

CPU: 581.2 tf

Scythe Fleet Issue:

Number of launchers = 4

PG: 931.2MW

CPU: 500 tf

Nosprey:

Number of launchers = 3

PG: 912.5MW

CPU: 562.5 tf

Orthrus:

Number of launchers = 5

PG: 1000MW

CPU: 575 tf

The Nosprey has ~20 more PG but only needs 3 launchers! While double the launchers, the Navy Caracal is at 85% PG utilization with HAMs+Prop and 80% PG utilization with HML+prop Before tank

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Yes, you should have to fly it. There’s a difference between ‘have to fly it’ and ‘here, let’s toss in a whole lot of clicks you don’t really need to think about or engage with, just to keep your mouse moving’.

Tedium is bad. Tedium drives people away from the game.

I believe the opposite. Just sitting there for X minutes before having to do anything is boring. High APM should be rewarded, low APM should yield less results.

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You sir get a 5 five !
There’s many ppl thinking like you, but does CCP listen ? …NO

Except that’s not the opposite. You’re missing what I’m saying, and that’s on me. Let me try again:

There is a difference between interesting, engaging activities, and tedium. If I introduce busy-work, something that serves no real purpose in your actual performance of what you’re doing, but exists only to slow you down with rote repetition, that becomes tedious. It is something all of our normal processes work to avoid, for exactly that reason. An example:

You work on an assembly line. Only, you’re not on the line itself, you’re the guy in the booth watching the robots work. Every time a car is finished, you have to fill out a form, by hand, recording the date, time, which robots were active, and which ones worked on that car. Despite all of that information already being in the computer. You still have to fill out the form. Why? Because someone somewhere said so.

And when you’re done? Shred the form. Trade secrets, after all, can’t have that getting misplaced.

That’s what you’re talking about with the ore hold reduction: more busy-work that ultimately doesn’t improve either the hulk’s performance, or the user experience of the person at the keyboard. It just makes mining—playing a game—more of a chore.

Interesting, engaging gameplay is not tedium. Interesting gameplay is fun. You do it because you want to, not despite not wanting to. Reducing tedious, boring gameplay is good for the game. An example of this reduction: when Hilmar tried out Planetary Interaction, he realized what the rest of us knew: it’s damned tedious to set this crap up. And Lo! PI got an overhaul to reduce tedium. It’s not perfect now, but it’s a damned sight better than it was.

The goal is engagement; people doing a thing because doing that thing in the skinner box gives them a dopamine release. If the activity triggers a positive reaction, in and of itself, then the outcome of the activity can be more malleable without raising a great hue and cry. When the activity does not, then the in-game results must offer the rewards the performance of the activity doesn’t. Or people just don’t do it.

Tedium is bad. Engagement is good.

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I completely agree. But I know CCP aren’t ever going to make some kind of mining minigame that greatly affects yield. I can’t think of any other way than that. The difference between afk and active mining should be so great that one person doing it should beat three or four people that aren’t at the keyboard.

You could say mining only two loads on a hulk is tedium and only serves to annoy the player with more unnecessary clicks. There’s a reason it can only hold two, nd that’s because it mines more. Scaling it up to hold only one but mine even more is just going further into a direction that has already been explored. People already use Hulks now and deal with the extra clicks. I think if a new barge was even stronger with even more clicks they would switch to that too.

PS sry I’m trigger happy with edits:)

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Won’t happen, and won’t matter. Here’s why:

Why It Won’t Happen:

It would be great for the devs to be able to make changes in a vacuum where reason and logic were all that mattered, but they don’t. They have to deal with human reactions. Whenever you make things harder for people, you automatically engender a negative reaction. Automatically. Shockingly enough, people don’t like it when you do that. Who knew? Take a long, hard look at this thread. Notice the sheer number of miners complaining about their yield, safety, and performance being reduced. Now scale it up about 20-30 times.

People would get mad[1]. Many might even quit. How many? Dunno, but it’d be a lot. Worse, it might be enough to get bad press. That’s something no game company is going to open themselves up for if they can help it. It wouldn’t even need to be the bad press of ‘omg the devs did this thing’, because people who don’t play EVE would be more reasonable in their reactions and say ‘yeah, ok, good’… and let’s face it, that’s not interesting copy, so nobody’s gonna write that story.

No, it’ll be the bad press of ‘EVE is undergoing an exodus’ and when the media goes to explain why, what will leap right off the screen is ‘because the gameplay is boring as hell and has been for over a decade’. It doesn’t even need to be true. It’s the easy read, it’s a complaint you’ll hear a lot when nosing around for the story, and it’s got enough truth to it to make it hard to refute.

CCP will not make the mistake of inviting that kind of coverage. So it won’t happen.

Why It Won’t Matter:

Because it won’t happen. Duh.

But that’s not the only trade-off, is it? The Hulk is also the most fragile of the Exhumers, and that factors into decisions. And, just for the record, I think you’ll find that in terms of actual usage… Mackinaws are pretty competitive with Hulks. Why?

Gigantic. Freakin’. Ore Hold. And when I say ‘gigantic’, I mean ‘gigantic’. The Hulk’s at 8,500m3. The Skiff’s at 11,500. The Mack starts at 28,000 and then gets bigger with skills.

That’s the big advantage of the Mackinaw, now that it’s not the specialized Ice Miner it used to be. CCP actively recognizes that reducing tedious gameplay is something to be chased, and the simple fact that the Mackinaw, in its current configuration exists is proof that they know that forcing the tedium will not get them good results.


  1. And they’d be right, just like they’re right now. These changes are necessary, and they’re good for the game. Ultimately, they’re good for those miners in the long run, because a healthier game is good for all of us. That doesn’t mean their feelings are invalid, it doesn’t mean they’re wrong to be angry about this. CCP knew when they made the Rorq as good as they did that they were making it too good, and they openly said so in the discussions on these forums at the time.
    They did it anyway.
    This is a perfect example of why you don’t overbalance in terms of generosity: it’s always better to give your players more in a slower, more controlled way than it is to have to take back some of what you gave them. First, it prevents things like ‘oh my god, there’s how much ore being mined?’ from happening when you’re clearly not expecting it. Second, it prevents early adopters from getting too far out ahead of everyone else who didn’t realize how horribly abusable the new balance is. But third, and most importantly: people like you for it.
    Example: Mining Ship X gets its yield doubled.
    Method 1 [The Right Way]: You increase the yield by 25%. See how it goes. Not enough? Do it again. Repeat process. Again. You’ve now given the players something 4 different times, showing both generosity and responsiveness. People like this.
    Method 2 [The Rorq Way]: You triple the yield, even though you know that’s too much, because you want to incentivize getting people to use this ship. OK! It works! You’ve got a whole lot of people in these shi-oh my god that’s too much ore. NERF IT! Crap! Still too much! NERF IT AGAIN! CRAP! HIT IT AGAIN, HARDER!!
    As we’ve established, people don’t like it when you take things away from them… especially when you pulled a bait-and-switch in the process to get them into those ships.
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As long as the changes make forming capital fleets as a counter to sub-caps no longer a thing. These two ship types should strive to keep their combat apart from each other. I strongly feel capitals need to focus their combat around sov and structures. If dropping 50 caps on a sub-cap fleet of 150 favors the caps then you need to nerf them some more.

Find the best ratio and balance to make capitals NOT the “go-to” counter for everything sub-cap.

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I think the better philosophy there is that capitals should be force multipliers for subcaps, not a force in and of themselves. A single capital, or a small number of them, at the heart of a subcapital formation, would be the best thing to shoot for. Don’t make them something where you spend a massive amount of time and effort to not use it, but at the same time, don’t make it something that, once they hit critical mass, can’t be opposed.

Capitals without support should be too slow and ponderous to really respond. Subcaps without capital command & control should need large numbers to be a threat. The two acting in concert (ideal mix: 1 capital for every 20-50 subcaps, with the subcaps themselves of mixed size and function), should be flexible, powerful, and fun to use.

Yeah, I know… How dare them expect the developers to test this ■■■■ before they decide to deploy it. As someone who has cleaned up the mess an overzealous development team created that crippled 65000 servers globally i believe that responsibility rests firmly on the dev team. They should have the tools to simulate most anything and its potential impact on the game, whatever that may be.

Edit
Keep in mind these are the same people that brought you the new and improved chat system. Sooooo… I’m going to say I doubt anything was tested beyond a cursory level.

  1. Considering they’d need to be able to simulate the behavior of thousands of people over multiple years at like a dozen levels of causality in order to get any feel for the ‘potential impact on the game’, you might be expecting a bit much.
  2. The new chat system is made and run by a 3rd-party group, not CCP. CCP ran the old chat system.
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Are aware of what you are implying there? That CCP has something capable of predicting the end result of mass human behavior? Especially considering they don’t want to entirely control their sandbox (making CCP a very ironically named company).

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After 16 years, and many nerf/buff cycles they have more than enough data available to them to simulate within a reasonable degree of accuracy what this playerbase will do when forced to “adapt” to a new ruleset.

They chose it over the old one. Plain and simple. That is enough information for me to draw my very logical conclusion.

Yes, I am. See my first response in this post. For the record it has little to do with control, manipulation is vastly more likely. They should, however, be able to determine what new meta will arise from the ashes of what came before. The outcome, that seems obvious to me, is people buying more plex to sell for isk. It seems they are doing at least some predictive analysis, because I think it will work in the short term. After that, who knows?

I do believe that is a gross oversimplification of the process.

One good example is the balance changes to the Ishtar, the machariel, and the Gila. Those ships have gone through numerous balance patches. One thing they all have in common: a low slot was moved to a mid or vice-versa. For the Ishtar, this was one of the last changes they made before ishtars online finally gave out and the meta moved on. You would think that would be a very effective change. However, for the machariel, it ended up being only moderately successful, and for the Gila they clearly had to give it another hard pass.

I agree they do some predictive analysis. It’s obvious in some of their changes in how they attempt to try and cut off certain undesirable outcomes with their changes. It’s very obvious in this change that they considered what was going to happen, based on how often they mentioned why they chose rep amount over amount of reps.

Even then, that is still a very limited scope of predictability. Let’s not pretend that they have tools that can cover all the possible fittings, tactics, and use cases every change they look at could generate.

Balance and change in Eve is like predicting the weather or the economy. It’s an extremely complex system with many interacting variables. I would argue that eve even has its own unique variables, since they have to actively try and introduce new features in the game to keep it active and growing.

If anything has become evident over the years, it’s that CCP has learned quite a bit from their attempts to change things. It’s probably the reason why they are so conservative when it comes to many of their changes, and why so often they have to caveat everything with “we’ll come take a look at it again, afterwards”.

A lot things become obvious in hindsight, but it is an analytical fault to try and simplify the results into too few key variables.

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