Hi guy’s, the purpose of this thread is to narrow down Idea’s and paths to making Eve Epic again and fresh by adapting what we already have with some adjustment’s and game-play change’s, the notes on the meeting look good but at the same time, each section focus’s on different area’s of the game and only 1 has an overall effect (most effect for time spent doing changes):
• Nullification (Nullsec)
• Wardecs (Highsec)
• FW (LowSec)
• Fatigue (Nullsec)
• Dedicated balance team. (Overall)
These are all great topics, but they are missing something vital that eve has lost over the last few year’s and that is game play that enhance’s pilots power through skill (flying skill) Eve is one of the only games where the better you are the higher your chance of beating multiple opponent’s at the same time and this is what makes eve so great.
It inspires players to get better and to enhance their skill’s to one day be one of the great’s, remember when God’s Cold blood released his vindicator pvp video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPCuA5kMxuU (the original was a lot easier to see xD), it was inspiring it gave people a goal a focus and determination to be the best, there have been many video’s since that have been good but there has been less and less solo play over the year’s and that is because eve mechanic’s don’t give power to great pilot’s anymore, If someone tried to do that now with a vindicator it would be a video of someone sitting there perma jammed by ecm for 5 minutes while people piled on to whore on the kill mail. Other video’s including kiting and sig tanking, but that would not work in eve 2018 unless your in a Orthrus/Garmur but that’s not really skill.
The two area’s that take away from great piloting skill are:
Drone (Ridiculously good) tracking
Rapid lights (Ridiculously good) Projection
The effects of these two things is that one cannot simply fly well to avoid/reduce damage anymore, if these two things where brought back to balance, the state of PvP would rise drastically and be a lot more fun again.
The effect of these two things also force’s players to overwhelm players with numbers rather than tactics and strategy, and number warfare is no where near as fun as strategy.
My suggestion’s are to:
Change drone mechanic’s so that they don’t fire while approaching and instead wait till they start orbiting and gain angular velocity before they fire, this will have great effects on pvp. Players will be forced to use the right size drones on their target instead of a one size fits all approach, which requires greater skill and planning, a positive thing without making drones too weak.
Rapid lights just need an explosion radius increase so that they don’t overpower every single small ship in the game with oppressive damage.
Last night I used a 16k ehp svipul against an Orthrus, he jumped the gate and immediately started pulling range traveling at 4508m/s with a zor implant and 1 other this is without even using snake’s, this was confirmed with the Pinecone pilot in local, no chance in hell of catching it or holding it but the worst part was that in about 7 seconds I had to warp out becuase my shields where melting so fast, If I where using an Inti with less tank I would have melted even quicker even with the -75% sig reduction as Rapid light explosion radius is so low that you cant really get much damage reduction even with a full halo set.
The resulting effect is that you have a ship that moves faster than 99% of all cruisers except for the Cynabal, which means the only thing that can tackle it dies horribly to its weapon system (Rapid Lights) and anything that can challenge it Dps Projection wise, cannot hold it down and so it can warp off with ease no weakness’s.
The cerb using the same weapon system moving at only 2km’s is no where near as broken but, because of the weapon system smaller ships don’t stand a chance of landing tackle and holding it for a period of time, I understand that AF’s where recently released with Assault damage controls which might have been designed to hold tackle against these monster’s but I don’t recall a Single AF able to catch a 4508m/s Orthrus, 30 seconds will only delay its inevitable death.
A simple nerf to Orthrus speed + a nerf to Rapid light missile explosion velocity would bring things back into reality, it would still be strong without being oppressive.
One thing to note was that caldari was serverly lacking in PvP dominance before Rapid lights existed so to give them some more options, it would be great to decrease explosion radius of heavy assault’s as they already have the weakness of short range but have absolutely horrible projection, if this was balanced a bit I feel a nerf to rapid lights would not send Caldari back into the stone age’s but would leave them as a competitive race.
Drone’s are currently the number 1 method of effective PvE atm, putting guns and missiles to shame because you can unlease your drones and then AFK, and come back to a completed site, I suggest to counter this:
Drones could be grouped into a single squadron like carriers have, which makes them more susceptible to E-war bringing them a little closer to balance against Missile’s and guns. (I feel it’s better for Drone’s to not be the counter to E-war as this would force more people to fly drone ships rather than missile/guns in small and solo pvp situation’s, its better to rather balance E-war overall rather than say just fly drone ship’s.)
By grouping drone’s they can be made a bit more fun as well so that it doesn’t feel like just a Nerf to drone’s.
More suggestions would be that any remote repair would work on the whole quad at once instead of individual drone’s, this would be a nice Quality of life upgrade for drone user’s. Some future upgrades could include Drone formation’s as well which give different buff’s and to make it more fun they could have different targeting priorities depending on formation. The idea would be that to optimize drone’s during combat one would be constantly switching between formations increasing skill cap for drone user’s and giving masterfull drone users the edge over those who simple release drones and afk.
Some idea’s for formations:
Alpha Formation: Drones focus their fire better in short (Higher damage) bursts to try and break heavy rep tank’s at the expensive of speed. (Prioritizing DPS ship’s)
Beta Formation: Faster Drones with better tracking and Lower dps used for chasing off tackle a second bonus could be Web, tracking disruptor and ECM resistance so that it can handle e-war ships a bit better without having overpowering dps against smaller targets. (Prioritizing E-war ships and tackle)
Delta Formation: Slower Drones that stay within 10km’s and prioritize anything inside scram range of your ship, they would have higher resistance’s and use a turtling strategy in conjunction with your ships remote repair’s maybe some lower tracking to balance it out a bit. (Prioritizing close target’s)
These are just some Idea’s to bring back more options to fly better in Eve with better result’s, If anyone has any better idea’s please share as I feel CCP would benefit greatly from Upping the personal skill Cap (Player skill instead of actual skill point’s) so that there is more strategy in combat and players are rewarded more for strategy.
Thanks for reading this wall of text.
