Surely one should be discussing why any changes need to be made, or if they even do, before discussing what may need changing.
And that’s the bit JJ and others never get to. No case is ever made. Certainly not one that presents any evidence. After all…if a person is going to argue that ganking is bad for the game, surely it is incumbent upon them to present evidence that that is actually true.
No such evidence is ever provided. It’s all just anecdote and personal opinion…infused with intransigent agenda that just ignores actual facts.
One cannot have a ‘discussion’ when nobody has provided the slightest bit of evidence that there actually is anything to discuss !
The change was that only one warp core stab could be fitted, and they have a +2 affect in other words they will negate warp scrams which have a point strength of 2, this is why faction scrams are the I win as they have three points of strength. Some ships such as the DST have +2 warp strength which means that the tackler has to bring 5 points to the table. The change was a nerf to warp core stabs in that people used to fit a load of warp core stabs to their epithals for example making them difficult to catch on the gates and more importantly at the customs office which was the place where ceptors could nab them but would fail because of the large number of warp core stabs, so there was a lot of whining.
I had this as yet another one that favoured so called hunters. Now all they have to do is fit a warp and scram and they will be able to catch everything that does not have an additional warp core strength built into the ship without risking much, they just have to get in scram range. Yet another dumbing down and cheapening of Eve hunting.
ganking is more accessible gameplay for new players
greater demand for other ships and ammo types, benefitting diverse industrial activity
greater skill spread for identifying gankers, which rewards more skillfully attentive miners
greater punishment for multiboxers, as the current too-short time window means there’s not enough time to punish all their ships
greater diversity in viable offensive and defensive fleets, so more player creativity
It also makes freighter hauling more dangerous. This is great as now local economies can spring up as islands of productivity, where they don’t have to compete with Jita, which can foster new/more-active market hubs, as Jita stifles everything. Jita’s projective market power is measured in successful M3 hauled to and from it.
Overall player interaction increases and who doesn’t want that in an MMO?
This is another side effect of the EHP buff, before I would fly solo to Hulk in 0.5 and if he had stabs, and that happened few times, he would be able to escape.
Now we need more ships so not gonna happen.
But I really like the warp core stabilizer changes. It brings a skill and new tactics into the game. I am saying this from a hauler’s perspective.
I feel compelled to point out that Destiny identified this line as being kind of cheeky because we know why some people don’t want more player interactions in an MMO.
Unfortunately that post got swept up in some mass deletion of off topic stuff.
A major problem with the word ‘balanced’ in general is that it is one of those words that means different things to different people. Even if everyone agrees that we want it to be balanced, we would have no concrete idea of what that balance looks like, thus anyone, no matter how ill intentioned, can say they want balance and have it sound good.
The debate hinges on whether, and how easily, other players should be able to interfere with what you’re doing, particularly in highsec. Wherever other players can interfere with you, you will not be able to turn your brain off and that’s what some players want to do.
To a degree, I sympathise in that I don’t want to always be on high alert while I’m playing. However, I think this is a solvable dilemma in that I can choose to fly something that would be trivial to lose should my lack of awareness bite me in the butt. It only becomes unsolvable to those unwilling to make any compromise. If you’re dealing with people who are not willing to compromise then there’s never going to be a balance as long as there is more than one side, their side, to argue on.
The idea of balance is thrown at ganking to disguise forcing another concession as something more palatable, and that’s about it, I think. However, the ganker marketing campaign probably plays into enemy hands here in that the boastful assertion of always winning would make asserting a balance issue fairly easy to do since that’s the natural conclusion if you take the claim at face value.
I can assure you that this is not what I am doing, read what I wrote above in terms of my intention to create more interaction especially in terms of people wanting to oppose ganking. The nerfs to AG play are significant and very damaging, there is a very good reason why hardly anyone does it now, that long time stalwarts no longer play, and there is no real organised activity.
Those people who say that people wanting better balance are just wanting to end ganking are being disingenuous to protect the current balance. And don’t forget that they talk about balance when it suits them, like for example their whining about the tank of mining barges and exhumers, but they ignore the fact that when fit for yield they can still be easily ganked. To claim that they should be able to blow even a moderately tanked one up by a solo catalyst is poor balance. Remember they are attacking in protected space, never forget that.
I’m not trying to call you out, nor was I thinking of you in particular when I wrote that text.
I disagree with you about where the balance ought to be, but at least I believe you have a line somewhere in the middle that you don’t want crossed. Even if I give you credit for that, though, you would be the exception and my posts are sufficiently wordy that I think it is to everyone’s benefit if I don’t go on at length trying to acknowledge every possible exception I can think of and just let the general idea stand on its own.
I know that you don’t think I was being dishonest. But because I have been singled out by certain dishonest people as my desire for balance being wanting the removal of all ganking I thought it was wise to clarify my position, thanks for your understanding.
I keep seeing reference to EHP buffs, but that was never my experience with the Procurer. EHP was actually lowered ( two mid slots were removed ) and align time was almost doubled ( though I think they since reduced it a bit ). Some barges got buffs, but really all that did was bring them up to a similar level that the Procurer used to have…I used to be able to get 80K EHP on mine.
The last thing I’d ever have done would be to fit a warp core stabiliser to a barge. Complete waste of time…as most ganker fleets that gank barges will have a half a dozen or more Catalysts and defeat the stabiliser anyway. And the stabiliser takes up valuable low slot where I could fit armour.
Yes, the EHP buff only applies to other ships than proc and skiff who gained a nerf possibly for CCP to “balance” these two ships and make them more gankable. Or maybe they disliked their combat performance. So what we got is that the amount of catalysts needed to suicide-gank barges/exhumers is on average lower if you are targetting all 3 variants indiscriminantly. Which didn’t happen before and procurers were in past the biggest deterrent to gankers. And it doesn’t happen now either, although Safety. does gank procurers and skiffs sometimes probably to make a statement.
Few weeks ago, I agreed with Drac that the barges are more balanced than they were before after the changes.
Not that sure about it anymore.
Was it not healthy that only 1 catalyst was needed to kill untanked or badly tanked Hulk? Probably yes. But the EHP buff went too far. Retriever now cannot die to normal rats in highsec no matter what, which is bad design. And Mackinaw can have basically the same EHP as marauders. It really kills small-scale gankers like me who don’t want multibox. Which was probably the main goal anyway, to force more accounts to be subbed/plexed I have no illusion about that.
The issue is that gankers seem to think that the balance has to be around being able to gank with one catalyst in what are protected systems with a limited time to kill their target based on CONCORD mechanics. They cannot see that this is quite frankly a ridiculous expectation. No matter how often I point it out.
In lowsec that single catalyst will kill all the mining barges and exhumers, though it might have to remove the drones first with the Skiff and Procurer. That is the balance that is important.
The time limit is because you are attacking in protected space, therefore it should cost more in terms of ships and pilots.
Did you do a survey and come up with these results?
Probably not.
Here, let me help you get started.
Ganker: Ax’l Thorne
Question 1) do you think a single (1) catalyst should be able to destroy a mining barge and/or exhumer in a high sec system (defined as systems with a security status of 0.5 to 1.0)?
Yes or no
Answer to question 1: No
Please add additional comments that you think will help clarify your response here:
I think it’s important that balance is maintained in ganking. And part of the excitement is calculating out the amount of dps needed to pull off the gank and putting it into action and finding out the results. Success or failure. It makes it so there is risk for the ganker, just as there is risk for the miner.
Careful about paying too much attention to EHP it really is a guideline and doesn’t always translate to reality.
That said it’s a little disingenuous to call this a buff or a nerf. It was a rebalance across all the barges and it wasn’t just their tank that changed it was their roles that changed too. They are to all intents and purposes different ships that carry familiar names.
You can still absolutely gank these ships solo though! You just have to be prepared to commit the appropriate resources. If you want isk positive pvp go join a big corp with srp. if you want to fly solo make a statement or see lots of green on your kill board then just invest the isk you need to realise your goals.
There are other tools available to you, passive ship scanners to see what the ships are fit with and so on. If you want to still gank successfully solo there is plenty of opportunity but you’ll occasionally come up against the same thing everyone does in pvp. An opponent whose fit counters yours. That’s half of what makes pvp thrilling isn’t it?
