Not exactly what Gloria is talking about though, they’re talking about being able to fully customize their ship and also being able to make it as powerful as possible with (almost) no restraints.
With astute regards
-James Fuchs
Yea but what Glotia wants, a game without restrictions, is unrealistic for a game.
A good game has restrictions within which you can try to optimize. Without some kind of restrictions there is no game.
Even TTRPGs, which are mostly fantasy between players, will follow some level of restrictions called ‘game rules’, even if loosely to keep the game fun.
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Why is it never boosting or improving the others in a similar sense?
A game without restrictions would make me too powerful. CCP has to draw limits or else someone like me will come along and just dominate everyone.
Why not both?
If out of 5 one is too strong and 4 are bad, a nerf is a good option to accomplish balance with the least amount of change.
If out of 5 one isn’t used while 4 others are, a buff is your best way to achieve balance.
Always buffing everything else to catch up to a single outlier is a bad idea as it not only leads to powercreep, it also isn’t objective which change is a ‘buff’ and which is a ‘nerf’ in a competitive game as a nerf to resistances is a buff to kill potential and the other way around.
That Rorqual nerf for example was a massive buff for barge pilots.
In other words, it’s best to bring the outliers in line with the rest and stop being afraid of nerfs. Balance changes are a sign of an improving game.
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I think EVE is a sandbox. I feel I have freedom to do whatever I want. Nerfs don’t particularly change it. They change the way I might go about achieving one thing or another, but they don’t take away the possibility of doing what I want to do. And I think the sandbox aspect applies to the picture at large.
I was a trader before the tax changes, I am a trader after the tax changes. My strategies for selling some particular items may have changed a bit, true. I had to adapt to the change, absolutely. But my option to do trading is still there, nobody took it away from me with the ‘nerfs’. I don’t feel nerfs change the nature of the game. They change the minutiae.
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Trained into a Rorqual → nerfed.
the rorqual has gone through 4? versions now, one of these essentially destroyed the mineral market and needed to be dealt with (ideally 2 years before it did get dealt with, but hey ho)
Invested months if not a year into carriers, dreads, supers, and T2 fighters → nerfed
there have been multiple patches within the last year to make capitals cheaper, T2 fighters have not been nerfed, superiority fighters specifically have been nerfed vs player ships
Maxed out resistances → nerfed (only recently partly reverted).
the surgical strike changes have been fully reverted (with respect to resistances, the T2 ammo buffs remain)
Invested heavily in missile and ship skills → missile range nerfed.
you are likely referring to HACs which were nerfed, not missiles, after years of a stale HAC meta and people begging for change
Built a dedicated trade alt → nerfed with increased taxes.
Taxes were originally 8% base until July 2024, it was temporarily reduced to 4%, it has since reverted to 7.5%, which is still a buff overall
There is a point where developer interference does indeed make it no longer a true sandbox, but the examples you have cited had either been needed for the health of the economy, or at request of the playerbase, both, or you have misrepresented what the change was
A truely static unchanging world only works if everything in it is somehow already perfectly balanced, which itself is impossible in any game with any amount of complexity, let alone eve
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Gnosis was ages ago….these days I have all four T3 ships. My new omega char has all the Gnosis.
No I’m not arguing for no restraints. I’m arguing that the constraints should be natural and persistent…just as things are constrained by the laws of physics…rather than being artificially tweaked every 5 minutes by the hand of ‘God’.
Thus a ship with 45 turrets and 29 million EHP would face consistent natural constraints, just as a sand castle does. It would not ‘need’ specific nerfing, but would face inherent flaws…just as Howard Hughes huge plane was not practical.
There would be natural optimal fittings, rather than them being handed down from above.
This is how it is. You are lagging and chasing the newest and shiniest thing and getting nailed for it instead of leading and innovating and forcing the changes after banking tons off market and other swings. When enough players have saturated a market, niche, etc then CCP nerfs it and moves on to the next for game balance.
As for it being a sandbox… thats laughable imo as its never been one. Game designers let you do things within the context of the game and control the entire world and will script it at will to get you to participate and play how THEY want you too, nothing in this world is a true sandbox and never has been. You are their paycheck and hopefully you enjoy the game enough to play it, if you do not enjoy it anymore there is the door. Enjoy the real life game instead.
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I think You confuse term “sandbox” usually used with games and real world object “box with sand in it”.
Because you are completely correct: if you talk about RL box of sand where small kids can play with sand then this object and place needs a lot of parents attention and ruling.
At the same time term “sandbox” is different: it is applied to virtual spaces where “grown-up“ people can play and meet each other. Like some people in these very forums say one cannot be hurt, offended or angry by anything what happens in online game (it’s only pixels, right?). Then one cannot use the same reasons to make strict rules about player behaviour in these places as they use with RL sandboxes.
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Yes it’s a sandbox.
You keep chasing the “feature of the moment” and something many others are already doing. Just as you skill up to do the same thing, that thing explodes out of balance because everyone and their mother had the same idea as you and are farming it to oblivion, thus creating disbalance.
Do things that you like to do. If you keep chasing what’s already popular, you’ll get nowhere.
Wormhole exploration was never a ‘feature of the moment‘