I don’t necessarily agree with the obsoleting of barges by the Orca, but I see what you are saying.
To me, the Orca is the natural progression of the ORE line, mainly because there are not that many ships in that line. As a class comparison, I see the barges as cruisers and the exhumers as HAC’s maybe, though they don’t make the same leap in power on the barge/exhumer side. I feel like the Orca is a BC or Command Ship (with extra bells and whistles). It does not mine more than an exhumer but has other benefits. Same progression as combat ships.
Now if they added a mining battleship, you very well might see the obsolescence of the barge/exhumer as people naturally progress to the next best ship.
Yeap, that is the problem. There is so many things that the Orca may be too good or too bad at.
As for you barge–cruise, exhumers–HACs comparison, I also think it is something like that. But then again, what exactly the Orca is? BC or CS, It is not a bit of logi too, and DST?
CCP need to decide on a role for that ship and stick to it. If that people will cry about “lost” SP allow then to recover it and if some of the things the Orca lose is necessary for “whatever” job consider introducing a new whatever-ship/class,
I think CCP kind of agree. That’s the whole reason the OP started the thread, because CCP have been hinting at additional changes to the Orca, and specifically CCP Rattati has indicated that the high-level goal is to return the ship to primarily a boosting ship.
However, it looks like they also want to keep something unique for the ship, because currently it’s one of the most versatile ships in the game and it doesn’t really hurt the quality of the game in it’s current form.
Whatever CCP do, I hope the unique role that they keep for it, keeps it’s wide appeal.
Personally, I’d love to see CCP remove the mining drones, but add a covops cloak or give it dscan immunity so it keeps it’s usefulness as a support ship; and becomes a platform of choice for players that want to use it as a “mobile home” more or less (or give it something totally new and allow it to be cloaked without a pilot in it when it is in space - so it isn’t just relegated to an alt).
Those are just my bad game design ideas, but it would be sad to see it relegated to a ship only used by alts again. That wasn’t fun before and I don’t think it will be fun if it regresses in that way.
It is indeed a jack-of-all-trades ship, but it happens to be better at many things than specialised barges.
Bigger survivability, higher damage, bigger ore hold and a higher yield than solo Procurers. On top of that it provides fleet support, shield repairs and a fleet hangar.
It’s great that the Orca can do many things well. It’s not good that the Orca does many things better than the ships that are supposed to be specialised for that role.
You’re looking at Catalysts from the viewpoint of suicide ganking, I assume?
Because in my experience all destroyers are useful in their own way. I’ve had a lot of PvP fleet fun in Talwars and Cormorants, I’ve used the Algos a lot as a more agile cheaper Vexor and have blown up a lot of structures with Coercers.
As far as I can tell, most if not all destroyers are good in some way.
If you limit yourself to one specific purpose such as “efficient zero range maximum dps” scenarios that apply for suicide ganks, then you may find that certain destroyers are better at it than others. And that is perfectly fine. Not all destroyers are supposed to have an engagement profile that puts them at less than 500m of their target.
Each of the destroyers has their own strengths and weaknesses and none of them is better at roles that other ships are supposed to fill, like the Orca is better at mining than the Procurer.
Dude. Something will always be the best and nerfing things out of fear of what amounts to old technology becoming outdated isn’t a bad thing. It’s natural to want to be better. So protesting against “powercreep” is to go against human nature which is also something else that pushes customers away. At the end of the day you need to have a sense of progression to create a sense of attachment to the game. Introducing new hulls or modules that increase things slightly is okay. They’d be better off introducing new content as opposed to nerfing ships which no matter who it is, if they use it and CCP attacks it people take it personal.
Then it switches more to the Coercer or Thrasher for “regular” ganking and more stealth bombers for more valuable kills.
If use is going to be “a guage”, then barges and exhumers should be nerfed for mining, covops ships should be nerfed for exploration, T1 industrials and freighters nerfed for hauling, etc.
Using usage as a guage does nothing but make a rod that needs to be applied to all types of use, and then it becomes nothing but a hindrance to the game.
Not to say changes shouldn’t be made, but just not on the basis of usage, especially when there are alternatives that will just be switched to.
Introducing new better content will invalidate the old content and leads to powercreep. This is not a good choice for a perpetual game like EVE where every ship and region is ideally relevant.
To get a balanced game you need both buffs and nerfs. Skipping nerfs in favour of more and more buffs only leads to powercreep.
Here’s a nice explanation of what powercreep is and why it’s dangerous:
Invalidating peoples content doesn’t keep people in the game. On the contrary it invalidates them as players.
You complain about players training into something and then having it nerfed. But that also applies to someone training into the next big content and then watching it get neglected as the rest of the game receives buffs. With powercreep, only one area of content is relevant at a time, the latest one and players are chasing the ‘fit of the month’.
Changing the outliers, like nerfing overperformers and buffing underperformers, means fewer changes are necessary, more content remains relevant and fewer people are neglected.
I remember as a new pilot the excitement I had training into an orca. Hitting that goal and spending months saving for my first large ship, I quickly learned no one needed an extra orca pilot. I felt like all of that training and investment was for nothing - and I actually stopped playing for a year! It wasn’t until the orca received boosts and mining that it became useful and I have been flying one ever since.
I do agree there is an issue with the stacks of orcas on ice belts (not me), but I would like to see the mining capability stay.
I think there are two sides to every story. I think it’s important to remember the orca is a huge skill and isk investment, and should provide unique value, equal to it’s skill and isk investment toward fleets. They added the mining capability so the orca pilots could make isk as well.
There is no point in fixing one problem and returning it to one they had to fix before. So i’m more in favor of the one orca per fleet/belt concept.
Each profession should have the capability to earn isk. So if you remove the mining, how does an orca pilot earn isk? I don’t recall getting paid much for boosts, and whatever it was it was certainly not worth the risk as a solo orca pilot.
Personally I would like to see containers added in the ore hold, (or something like that) so fleet members can actually use the ore hold to keep their ore separate.
I agree, invalidating peoples content does not keep them in game. As a solo orca pilot, if mining is removed you would have nothing to do in the game 90% of the time
Does not justify it making other ships redundant or being an afk power house. And that’s the problem.
There are two sides to every story, but sometimes one side is wrong, ignorant, selfish or all three.
The orca buff was much more than a mining yield boost. We aren’t asking for it to be changed back to exactly what it was. Literally no one has said that.
How you negotiate pay is upto you, but orca boosts almost double strip miner yield amongst other benefits.
It already does have limited mining capabilities. It can only mine with drones and none of the mining boosts it provides gives zero benefit to any mining drones be itself or others.
People hate it because it is the tankiest high-sec miner.
