Surgical Strike Update Follow-up

EVE Technology and Research Center Upcoming Features & Changes
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@CCP_Rise You guys have mentioned before that you have great tools for gathering and looking at data. In fact that’s how you arrived at the “stark” fact that Wardecs needed changing.

Does your data show you that there’s probably a grand total of 3-4 people that gank freighters? Once the bumping changes went into effect you saw a large number of players that led fleets in that sort of activity either quit the game or migrate to another activity.

I’m wondering why you think buffing Freighter EHP is justified when so few are even victim to ganks today? Can you clarify on this?

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308

Anyone making noise about t2 ammo changes helping gankers doesn’t know what they’re talking about; that’s utter bunk.

Mass suicide ganks rely on t1 guns and ammo to improve KM efficiency, since a blaster cat or talos costs 5x-10x as much as a t1 meta fit. It’s less of an issue with the Talos or Tornado than it is with a Catalyst or Thrasher, but the principle holds true for ganking meta everywhere.

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Nope.

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Rough math:
12 taloses 100m each with T1 guns will do same DPS as 10 taloses 120m each with T2 guns.

After the patch 10 T2 taloses will do DPS of 14 T1 ones for the price of 12.

So in terms of ABCs T2 is more ISK-efficient, especially if you account for recoverable guns/fit that dropped (even before patch).

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Well, unless you’re a PvPer who just wants to see things explode, this balance patch is all stick, and no carrot. I speak here from a non-PvP point of view, so please keep that in mind when reading this. Excluding docked-up activities (Industry/R&D/Planetary Interaction) there is now less incentive to climb the ladder of wealth and capability by investing in creating badass mining and PvE ships over your months and years in EVE to de-stress with after IRL work. My partner and I PvE and mine together; we don’t consensually PvP (but are fine with the risk of it). We also like to feel truly invested in EVE by saving up to get the next highest meta tier modules to help us strip more belts or kill more rats quicker. At the moment there’s still an appropriate risk-reward balance for us in that the advantages resist modules give us make them worth grinding for and investing in. Many PvE players invest heavily in and get attached to their ships. Blapping NPCs in a ship you’ve built up from tech 1 to blues-n-greens and watching the results is a really enjoyable and relaxing pastime! I don’t even mind the odd gank because the ship I built up still felt powerful.

This next part is the crux of the post:

This upcoming resistance nerf will make every activity I enjoy that requires me to undock and increases my chances of interacting with the EVE community less appealing and riskier without a corresponding reward or opportunity. Making players feel less powerful and removing choice and agency without some other balancing factor is never a good move, as I’m sure you’ve seen in the forum and Reddit responses.

We do Industry, R&D and Planetary Interaction so we can make money to afford badass ships we enjoy upgrading, undocking and flying among the EVE ecosystem. Now, everything feels less rewarding and I’m less enthusiastic about playing EVE. In fact I haven’t undocked since the patch was announced. Why put in the effort when everything you’ve built up and paid for loses a limb to the nerf bat?

I feel like the PvP aspect of this game, whilst extremely important and great fun for those that love it, automatically pushes aside all the other playstyles of smaller groups and more casual players. The nerf to resist modules wasn’t needed, and unnecessarily makes life harder for casuals and PvErs. I didn’t even mind the announcement for a damage buff to short-range ammo, as it makes players feel like they have more agency, not less. A buff to all weapon damage (and maybe NPC EHP to keep it consistent outside PvP) would still have created the desired effect of more things exploding but not have kicked everyone else so hard in the grapes by punching a hole in our resist modules. In the end, a complete restructure of PvE is needed to adjust a major ISK faucet, yes, and the excitement of that new and dynamic system will far outweigh that smaller faucet, but I don’t think a blanket resist nerf is a positive intermediate step that increases the enjoyment of all players.

Why not something like the Sansha’s Incursion system effects that temporarily reduce resistances or increase weapon damage or something that increases things going ‘boom’, but roaming or in certain parts of space or when certain numbers in local are reached due to (((sci-fi reasons))) or a subcap burst module that temporarily lowers resistances? Any of these would have been more exciting and engaging than blanket nerfs that hurt people who aren’t even part of the problem.

At an educated guess, I would say this patch is a part of deflating the EVE Online economy and creating massive ISK sinks to reduce the amount of ISK in the game. There are other ways to achieve economic deflations without making non-PvP players feel less important, and hurting the small and casual guys the most. Everyone that chooses playstyles where they aren’t the aggressor is feeling worse off with this patch.

I’ve been playing since 2009, and I can’t say I’ve felt as negatively about any other broad-stroke change as I have this one. I hope the resist nerf is reconsidered, because right now I really don’t feel like undocking.

Sorry if this was a bit rambling, but I wanted to get all my thoughts down before I forgot them.

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Even if the math is right on paper, the situation doesn’t check out. You’re not going to be able to reliably get the same number of kills in a given time frame one time with t2 guns that you are with t1 guns, and that’s not even factoring in the failure rate for pulling off a successful gank in the first place.

Unless you’re top-notch at organizing regular fleets with members who log in consistently to gank cabbage-brains who don’t change their routine to fight back or avoid getting ganked, losing a t2 fit ship is still going to hurt your efficiency worse than losing a t1.

WITH that said, you are right specifically about the attack battlecruisers like the Talos, so I was wrong in that area. This is significantly LESS of an issue with attack BCs because of the hull prices, but in regards to small gun ships like the Catalyst, Atron, and Thrasher, it isn’t going to make a measurable enough difference for everyone using t1 guns for KB efficiency to suddenly jump on the new higher-damage t2 ammo bandwagon.

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T2 gank catas/thrashers are already used. The most valuable resource in EvE is manpower and if T2 fits can let you bring couple people less - thats a win.

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Look, being wrong or mistaken is one thing, but being so biased that you would analyse things differently depending on the results you want to obtain and completely ignore the things that invalidate your “analysis”, so you may “prove” what you want to make others believe, is another entirely different…

Again, that’s no justification at all to give special attention to freighters, precisely because of the very reason you said. You’re doing the “anaysis” wrong. Precisely because there was little difference in the ISK/DPS cost between T1 and T2 Talos fits before the change, it made a lot of sense to use T2 fits to gank freighters before the change already in order to reduce the number of gankers needed. Hence, the change is going to make no difference to freighter ganking other than the 15% DPS increase.

If you did the analysis right, it’s precisely the cases where the difference in ISK/DPS between T1 and T2 fits was significant before the change that should be more of a concern, not the other way round, because it’s precisely in those cases where you may see a shift towards T2 fits after the change, not in the case of freighter ganking where the use of T2 fits was more than justified to reduce the number of gankers needed before the change already.

This is actually what I mentioned in a previous post as the only explanation I could come up so far for CCP to pay special attention to freighters, that freighters are typically ganked with T2 fitted brawlers, whereas most other targets are typically ganked with either long range guns (e.g. arty Tornados) or T1 fitted brawlers, and hence they think freighters might be more affected by the T2 ammo buff than other targets.

It’s still not a satisfactory explanation, though.

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315

Don’t bother increasing freighter hp… just let them die. People neither don’t have to nor should haul untold billions in their freighters.

As far as state of ganking in general … it is on downward trend. Value of kille dtargets is up but mostly because people have far more isk nowadays. Just look at recent minerbumping posts - a story of over 40 parts on… what exactly? The channel is also quite empty.

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316

Fitting room, dual heavies take up way less pwg and cpu than one cap

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I’m a little worried about Tier 4 & 5 abyssal deadspace. The resist nerf means a lot here, and I hope that running tier 4 & 5 abyssal deadspace will be still possible without a full officer fit cruiser.

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That has nothing to do with ganking. That is a separate thing.

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Was this a calm down boomer post from CCP. Are you?

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If you want to nerf the capital game, just do the capital resist.
1 . You are reducing x-type hardeners to T1 hardeners. Double hardener battleship is going to recieve 100% more damage!
2. Double buff on all the ganking with resists nerf and close range ammo buff!
3. Abyssal deadspace, Invasion, Incursion, DED sites, L4 missions… how ??

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Embrace the change.

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322

I don’t think Marauders are finished, but this wasn’t about fixing marauders they just gave them a nice boost in passing - don’t forget +15% dps with short range ammo too. As for the smaller subcaps with the exception of the gila and a few others that i can’t think of right now - they’re used for pvp. resists are important in pvp gangs with logi, and it will affect them but it will affect them all equally so it washes out, mostly. the exception i suppose is bling fits which are going to be slightly more effected than t2 fits but cry me a river. Other than that for the kind of fast cheap pvp i enjoy small ships don’t use any kind of resist mods so zero negative affect on us, only a nice positive with the close range ammo buff which is some of the easiest most fun pvp in the game - especially for new players.

Cap pilots are pitching a fit, maybe they have real grievances, i dont’ know anything about caps but sub cap pilots have nothing to complain about.

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Excluding T4/T5 Abyssal: some high end content players are doing now solo should be done in fleets, and these nerfs promote fleeting between players. This is an MMO, and disruptive changes that encourage fleeting over solo are generally a good thing, especially when it comes to very high end sites.

As for T4/T5… personally I have zero love for Abyssal space, but I believe these will need to be tweaked on a standalone basis simply because players are already investing a stupid about of money in the fits as it is to run solo. On the other hand, Fleet Abyssal is less risky, the value of the fleet is frequently less than the value of an individual solo ship, and the loss of one member doesn’t compromise the total worth of the fleet, so these changes promote fleet Abyssal over solo.

So while I believe Abyssal will need some tweaks post change, I don’t think the direction of the changes are bad and like that this will encourage fleeting in higher end PVE (including abyssal) changes themselves are bad in direction.

:point_up_2: something I said earlier

:rofl:

It’s almost as if the intentionally disruptive changes were actually meant to encourage people to do other things, or to even invite those vehemently insisting on engaging only in undesirable behaviors to leave the game.

(Definitely more than 3-4 people btw. More with the upcoming changes.)

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“undesirable behaviors” what do you mean by this? Do you happen to be saying that someone ought to not be vulnerable to player interaction? Players should be able to choose when and where they have players interact with them?

That’s fine, but don’t advertise Eve Online as a sandbox if you’ve been making a habit out of systematically removing portions of the gameplay.

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no comment has been made on the Reactive Armour Hardner or the Damage Controls.

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this related to another question about HP increases.