I have a sincere suggestion. Let the players tell you what’s bothering them.
These forums have polls. Use them.
Stick half a dozen of your candidate ideas in a poll and find out what the players want addressed first.
Going to state the obvious here:
That process may help as an ancillary sounding board, however only a fraction of the Eve playerbase use these forums.
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And all eve has to do is send a mail out saying “hey, we’re gearing up for another balancing pass. Tell us what’s the most broken” to get all of the people who’re most dissatisfied involved.
Take me, for example. I’m often on the forums, and thus relatively unrelated to the subset of people you’re referring to, but I would be FAR less disenchanted with CCP’s balancing passes if I had a chance to vote for what I hate the most.
I’d love to be able to vote for blops BBs, T3Cs, or T3Ds getting balance passes. I know the latter two did already get balance passes, but they’re still OP as ■■■■ and need another balancing pass. I’m happy they didn’t knee-jerk too far, but only so long as they revisit the matter.
I personally don’t give two shits about mining changes, industry changes, structures, or hauling changes. Other people obviously do care, and I certainly recognize that those changes affect me. But that’s where CCP can placate the vocal group of people who are most likely spreading their discontentment.
That’s what the CSM is for… and the forums, and Reddit, and…
Seriously, the players absolutely will not shut up about what’s bugging them and they haven’t for the last 15 years.
Plus you’re assuming that whatever is bugging people is a one-patch balancing effort. Something like Citadels is going to take longer than that. T3Cs were ongoing since like start of the year until they were released at least.
Oh and if you make what actually gets looked at dependant on an online poll you’re going to open up this massive 55 gallon drum of drama when either Goons point their entire coalition at it saying “vote this way” and then someone else makes a bot to register Alpha accounts and then have them vote on the forums, and the next thing you know the data is useless and everyone’s pissed.
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The forums and reddit are filled with noise. Hell look at most of the suggestions I’ve posted in the past how many years that have boiled down to “eh… I guess that won’t work”. You cannot gather a true consensus opinion without a massive amount of combing through posts, which I’m quite certain they don’t do.
The CSM is a political stunt that certainly represents specific groups, but it hardly represents the playerbase. Good example, not once has a CSM asked me what I think - hell, I’ve never even spoken to one. How can they represent my opinion if they don’t know what it is?
I couldn’t agree more, some things require multiple passes to be done right - who determines when it’s actually in a good place though? How often has CCP said “we’re happy with this” while the player base is left twitching and shocked?
Sure they can tell you to vote that way. How exactly are they going to know how you actually voted? You’re free to vote however you like… if the goons mobilize and skew the results, then that kind of makes me think that the majority has spoken.
CCP Forums are behind a login wall. It would be very easy for them to separate alpha opinions out.
Ultimately I’m not talking about “do you think it’s a good idea to give X a Y% increase of Z?” polls.
A perfect example of what I’m talking about was stated directly by CCP dev blog:
We hope this pass, while not addressing every balance issue, sets a good tone for the kind of changes we want to make. We haven’t nailed down the next set of changes in detail, but we are looking at Tech I Battlecruisers and Battleships, Pirate and Navy faction ships, and Tech II classes like Assault Frigates and Heavy Assault Cruisers all as potential candidates.
So… they make a poll in the upcoming features sub.
Which class of ships do you feel most needs a balance pass:
- T1 BCs
- T1 BBs
- Pirate and Navy ships
- Assault Frigates
- Assault Cruisers
I suppose ccp would have control of the options. So you won’t get people spamming afk cloaking lol.
Might be an interesting exercise if/when ccp are undecided in what to prioritise.
The biggest problem is that most Eve-players are not very good at recognising balance-issues. They just see what kills them and that needs to be nerfed as “it’s OP”
While I agree that’s important to consider, if 75% of players (random invented number) are complaining that something is OP, whether it is or not, they can make said 75% of their customers happier by proceeding as mentioned.
The other thing is that if CCP didn’t consider it a candidate it wouldn’t be on the list to vote for. Players don’t suggest the poll options, they just vote on what CCP lets them vote for.
Kind of like politics sadly… you don’t get to choose who you vote for, so you vote for the one that sucks the least.
Two Interdictor destroyers are very sad. The Flycatcher and the Heretic which both swap one high slot for another low slot, both cpu and powergrid remain unchanged.
The Hawk wants a different bonus than this minmatar smelling 7.5% shield boost bonus, +3 powergrid, +10 cpu, +76 capacitor.
Edit: The Hawk wants the missile application bonus the Flycatcher and Corax have or +4% shield resistance per Assault Frigate level.
The Harpy wants +2 powergrid, +4 cpu and +40 capacitor.
The Ishkur wants a different bonus for the drones and the 50m³ built into the hull. Gets +2% drone damage per Assault Frigate level.
The Enyo can live without a drone and gets +45 capacitor.
(The) Vengeance best serv- errm I mean fine.
The Retribution wants +62.5 capacitor.
What the minmatar want is not my concern.
The Phobos is very sad and feels really fat. She would like to go on a diet and get -15m signature radius.
The Blackbird wants a 4th launcher hardpoint.
The Rook wants much more capacitor.
The Nighthawk wants freedom of damage types and 50 more powergrid.
All command ships want the range bonus the battlecruisers got a while back.
The Moa wants her optimal range bonus back and decides, she didn’t want the damage bonus anyways.
Large railguns want to do 15% more damage with the same bad tracking.
The Merlin wants and optimal range bonus instead of the damage bonus.
The Apocalypse is very sad and wants to do 10% more damage and trades two turret slots for two utility slots.
The Abbadon is even more sad and wants 25% more capacitor.
Both the Gila and the Worm want to have 4 legs and 20 cpu each.
The Nightmare wants to go 5-10m/s quicker.
The Phantasm wants to go 15-20m/s faster.
The Apostle and Minokawa want more powergrid and 5-10 more cpu.
The “enduring” and “restrained” mwd have their benefits confused and the enduring doesn’t last longer as it should. That benefit is currently on the restrained mwd.
All t2 missiles launchers want a “smaller” launcher version for the same class. On a turret boat you can fit smaller guns of the same class. Launchers do not have that option.
Blackops want a balance pass.
Covert Ops probing frigates don’t need any kind of damage bonuses but would like a salvager range and difficulty bonus instead.
Stealth bombers want to feel very special and like to throw bombs and torpedoes at the same time if possible or viable.
The Manticore wants to deal much more (kinetic) damage.
The tengu wants to be a good boat again. It is very sad right now.
The Scorpion wants another launcher hardpoint.
blabla minmatar faction battleship wants to be as the tempest or something.
The sleipnir doesn’t want the ability to fit 4x captital ancillery shield boosters and doesn’t go on a diet and becomes fat. -300 Powergrid and -500 cpu.
New role bonus: Can not fit ancillery shield boosters or armor repair modules.
- 5% damage for polarized weapons
The hurricane fleet also must go on a diet and get -1 highslot.
Stay tuned for more action news on CB- no errm, I mean ideas.
Considering that most people only have their fun in mind, ignoring game balance, i don’t see how this would end well.
it’s not the same as asking them who they want to see killed the most.
Right, but what ruins your fun more than something being OP? Once again, this is something that CCP has already decided as a candidate for a balance pass; it’s less about “should it be given a balance pass”, and more about “what needs the balance pass the most”. Given time, all of the items on that list will get balanced, it’s just a question of priorities.
Perfect example, if CCP had created a poll based on agreeing with all of the above that @elitatwo mentioned, but they weren’t sure where they could satisfy the greatest portion of the playerbase, they create a poll. This is admittedly a very long poll, ideally they would make some internal decisions to shorten this list based on what they feel is the most important. All of the module references would be dealt with in the tieracides, or in the ships that use them, not dedicated items in a balance pass:
- Interdiction Destroyers
- Assault Frigates
- T1 Cruisers
- Faction/Navy Cruisers
- T3 Cruisers (fuck you the Tengu is still OP as shit relative to other cruisers)
- T1 Battleships
- Faction/Navy Battleships
- FAXes
- BLOPs
- Exploration Ships
0 voters
EDIT:
Looks like it pruned my poll for me. This was not the full list lol.
Nothing being OP.
Look at history. There always has been, and always should be, a ship that’s OP. The reason simply was, and hopefully still is, that there’s a base for that. there’s always people, across all ranges of skillpoints, who will go for what’s OP. in the past they’ve skilled to it, now they can also inject SP towards it.
Fun is a short term feeling meant to distract whoever seeks it. The more we ask for the game’s parts to be more fun, and the more people only look at fun, the more the game and its people, over the course of a few ingame generations, will degenerate. EVE ONLINE has been built and designed as a game which delivers satisfaction, not fun. this is actually important to consider at all times.
i’m not going to link to my huge post about fun vs. satisfaction. 
As the base of your point has a huge crack, what do i do with the rest of the post?
I’d like all ships to be weaker, in terms of firepower, by 20%. i’d like the RoF of all weapon systems to increase by 10%. i’d like the old way of blasting through half of a ship’s hull back, where blasting from tiny armour through to around 50% hull made the ship explode instantly.
I’d like an additional high slot on the Tornado, so i can fit an expanded probe launcher without having to sacrifice a turret’s high slot.
i’d like the Magnate to have an additional midslot, so it turns into a better scanning ship for gankers.
i’d like the Thrasher to have a higher RoF bonus, to allow gankers a fourth volley under sentry fire.
i’d like to have a dedicated probing ship that works like probing did in the past, where one had to engage himself into it, by actually triangulating his target.
What is fun? In this context, fun equals specific changes to specific ships. “fun” will always be those changes, which benefit the one you ask. That’s why OP ships are good for the game, as silly as it sounds. They draw attention, they provide stupid fun, they give those in need a feeling of superiority and they piss off everyone else, which - according to history - works really well for the game, actually.
See it as CCP’s weird way of catering to the modern customer, who is mostly instinct driven and seeks to boost his low self esteem with ■■■■ in a videogame. see also, as example: the ads for the pancake battleship, back when it came out.
i like your idea. in theory its great, though in practise it’s modern democracy.
The list I made is not complete, since I left out some minmatar oddities and focused more on the classes and the ship I can fly.
I am in the process of investigating them all on the test server, so in case I lose a few I can just dock and try again or change the fit completely. Though the process is slow and very difficult because all the kids are flying are capitals and marauders.
SiSi as testing platform for the devs and us to get an early look on things was supposed to be as close to tq as possible but it is highly inaccurate that everyone fly 5-300 billion ships and losing them all day.
Anyhow I said before that making EVE pay to win is bad for them game and catering to the “I want it naow” crowd is wrong and the monetary gain short sighted.
If you have something minmatar to add to the list, please do so. The list is long and doesn’t have to done in one day. I am listing things to look at and put some not unreasonable changes on the table which the CSM can look and bring to them meeting minutes.
@Suitonia @Big_Miker @CCP_Fozzie @CCP_Lebowski @Stitch_Kaneland @Mizhir
Please have a look and tell me if this is something doable. I don’t really ask for much.
Hijack much? Piracy belongs in-game, get your own thread 
It’s all fun and games until you’re the one in a cruiser getting your ■■■■ pushed in by a T3D. Or a T3C. Or one of the million other things that were OP at some point.
Sure it’s fun to play godzilla online and roflstomp things, but that gets old quickly and then you get bored. The thrill in Eve is the risk. The thrill in Eve is the loss.
How many pre-nerf T3C cyno hunters were actually worried about losing their 200k EHP nullified covops cruisers? Yea it happened, but not nearly as often as it deserved to happen. They had cheap thrills dropping on people with little to no risk to themselves.
Being the one flying the OP ship sure does have “haha fun” written all over it. But every pilot you crush you risk sending one more player out of the game “because CCP wouldn’t fix their ■■■■”. Maybe you’re happy to see them leave, maybe not. All I know is players leaving is generally not good for Eve.
The noise is kinda the point, that way you don’t just get a slim majority of vocal people dictating direction. The devs know they need to listen to something when it’s very obvious and dominant, otherwise it’s all a dev looking at something and going “that seems reasonable”.
Overall this is a much more reliable method than polls, also harder to game.
This seems more like a failing on your part than anything. If you want the CSM to know your opinion then send it to them.
And to counter the inevitable “it’ll get lost in the noise” style rebuttal, from what the CSMs have been saying for literally years it won’t, because not that many people take advantage of the fact that in Eve your elected reps have to read their own mail… seriously, if you want to share something with the CSM send it to them.
Just about every time, because no matter how perfectly something is done there will always be someone who is dissatisfied with it.
The important thing to remember, especially as forum dwellers, is that happy people rarely both with complaints so unless there’s a lot of complaining it’s probably nothing. Case and point, the T3C re-balance. Overall that was very well done. The Loki is a bit out of whack, but the class as a whole is doing much better. The last like 50 posts in that thread are people yelling about how CCP killed T3Cs.
The CSM has amply demonstrated that if told to vote a certain way by leadership then players will absolutely take the 2 minutes required to go vote that way. A group like the Goons (or Test, or Pl or…) does not actually represent the majority of players, but for something like a forum poll they can absolutely manage to make up the majority of voters if they’re invested enough. That makes the results of the poll questionable at best.
At which point you’ll instantly have 20+ posts proposing an option that’s not on the list, another 30 of yelling about something or other, and probably at least one major faction pointing their members at the poll to vote for whatever ate their latest fleet comp.
I’m not saying this is worthless, I’m saying the likely value isn’t worth CCP’s time or the drama it would cause.
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It’s the gear that is fit on them that makes them overpowered. If you look at a t2 fit Legion or Tengu, they explode - stat.
look, i suggest you don’t argue against a tried old way of creating balance, because that’s silly. i also suggest not arguing against something that is not fixable. perfect balance is boring, having an OP ship creates a FOTM. that hot air in your post doesn’t really change anything about the reality of the situation.
you use the “makes people quit” argument, besides history showing that it’s nonsense. when you apply carebear logic, just to get a point across, then you should be ashamed of yourself. you have zero proof that it makes anyone quit, and you have zero proof that OP ships don’t make people come back. you have zero proof that “it gets boring fast” (that’s actually some screaming nonsense) and i suggest you leaen how not to talk like a carebear, because tnat post of yours was nothing but hot air.
you mostly ignored what i said (can’t comprehend?) and think you can weasel around it.
shame on you. you can do better.
ps:
All I know is players leaving is generally not good for Eve.
that’s incorrect. in general, people leave all the time and others join. what matters is quality > quantity. sheesh, you’re a carebear now…
This is way off base. Perfect balance isn’t achievable, but OP ships aren’t what create FOTMs. That’s going to happen even with things very close to perfectly balanced as people see something being used successfully or pick something that’s relatively easy or commonly trained for their line pilots to use.
Plus in a game like Eve good balance generally means different ships being good at different things, so the FOTM is going to different from Solo Lowsec PvP to Null Fleet PvP to High Sec wardeccer PvP.
Seriously YP, lay off the insults. Right or wrong I’d rather debate this stuff with Old_Pervert any day of the week because at least he’s respectful of others and their opinions. Right now you’re being anything but.
Honestly not sure if serious or troll or what.
Regardless I can’t find any threads you’ve started in PFaID recently, I’m always happy to comment but at the end of the day I’m not a dev or a CSM, I’m just an opinionated stickler for coherent logic.
Which is more or less my advice to anyone posting on these forums. Have a logically coherent argument for your point with as much basis in hard evidence as opposed to opinion as is possible or practical.