Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Balance - yes or no?

There's always something raging in the GalNet forums on why some ships appear to be overpowered and others too weak and therefore useless. At the moment, there is a ranging argument of changes to capsuleers ability to handle more than five fighters as well as the optimising the code for drone bandwidth that will mean the mighty Myrmidon can not field heavy drones anymore.

My thoughts on balance is that - first and foremost, the game needs to be fun and full of flavour. I believe that each race should have some advantages and disadvantages. Each race will have ships that are unbelievably DESTRUCTIVE, while other ships less so. If all ships were balanced, they would be the same except in shape and colour. Where would the fun be? So a bit of imbalance is not only inevitable but required. It will probably suck for those disadvantaged but am hoping that there will be alternatives in place or that the system is responsive enough that workarounds get discovered.

Take for example the Myrmidon. It can't (or soon can't) field more than five heavy drones and a smart enemy pilot should be able to take out the drones quickly and easily. It's not as if it's drone bay is the same as the mighty dominix now is it? However, there are arguments that heavy drones should only be fielded by battleships. What utter crap. Field whatever drones you want, providing you can fit them into the bay. Same argument goes for the EOS - is it the solopwnmobile? Nope. I fly one and while I have ganked a lot in it - I don't think it's that strong. It's good mind but only because it is so poor as a Command Ship. It should have a buff for the warfare link and gang bonuses. Pilots use it as a front line solo combat ship and not as a gang warfare vehicle precisely because it (and all it's counterparts) is relatively poor at the gang link shuffle.

Boost the gang warfare stuff!

Another related issue are that pilots appear to be having issues with thinking outside the box in many case. I am worried that as the clamor increases that we will be faced with a complete leveling of all ship types. That combat will become a matter of luck....as all ships are the same and probably fitted the same, where is the edge? I can see all races having a generic 'omni-cruiser' a vessel with five high-, mid- and low-slots and the ability to fit the same modules. Ahhh balance. Don't you love it?

New Eden's races each have their flavour and history. These differences make New Eden come alive.

Caldari have the edge on shield, missiles and ECM.
Amarr have the edge on armour tanking, capacitor management and lasers.
Gallente: drones, armour tanking and hybrids.
Minmatar have speed, autocanons and versatility in all drones, shields and armour. Their strength is in their versatility.

Mixing up the abilities and having some ships with odd abilities and out-of-race abilities (meet the Eris with missile bonuses!) is a beautiful thing. Not horrible like some pilots say and if you have a problem, the solution is simple: train up something else!

The carrier's now (or soon will) have a restriction on how many fighters they can field directly. Anything over the fifth fighter needs to be delegated to another pod pilot. This is a good move as it doesn't remove the ability of a carrier to field fighters but it means that the pilot needs help to do it. Certainly, the carrier is meant to be a support vessel and it would be good if they can increase the number of fighters fielded by a carrier but that each fifth fighter needs to be delegated or something. That would be a thing of beauty.

Anyway, whatever happens - things will change and I believe that the following needs to apply now: 'adapt or die'.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

i also think ballance is rubish and that the specific race difffrences adds depth to the game i wouldnt want to play eve if all races where the same, im not one for asphetics but more for content depth and playability.

take for instance their tryng to blanace the races does this mean that galante will get all the diffrent ammo types that the other races get to compensate for the lack of dmg types they cna put out, lets face it all you have to do to beat galante is tank therm and kenetic and the galante pilot is screwed. i believe these so called dev teams and balance sqauds need to think about not balancing and instead introducing new modules to compensate for weakness or genrally giving the pisspoor ships more power calibration and maybe even drone space, or possibly add lots of diffrent ship types like 1-2 more battle ships and try not to have such a huge diffrence between them,

take for instance domi hyper and mega domi crap shields crap armour crap tank but lots of drone space, still it can only fly 5 at any one time although it can have diffrent types in its hold other than that its pretty much toast if faced by any of the other two with dps fittings.

the mega has an amazing tank and great cap regen and can permo run 3 t2 reppers and still get great dps with b/s lvl5 and decent gun skills and 5 heavy drones wow! kick ass or what and the hyper is about the same tank is not quite as good but the dps is close.

so i think this quite the same for other races too so maybe some new battle ships like e/w b/s and ecm b/s or support specifc b/s somethign that is tech 1 not as powerfull as the t2 varients or faction ships just need standard b/s to do the standard jobs and have the bonus to reflect that same with cruisers and battle cruisers and im pretty damn sure some one can device a few more destroyers their is enough frigates at the moment and i think that some kind of point defence module for carriers and motherships too and pleas please do not take away the ability for a carrier pilot to field a max of 15 fighters just make it so he can asign them to individual players up to a max of his dron band width in space maybe increase the bandwidth to allow for more fighters, after all a carrier is called a carrier for what reason exactly oh lets see is it because its a carrier i think it is so ask your selves how many fighters would you usually find on a carrier in real life....


or take away the fighters completely and allow the frigate classes to literally dock inside the carrier and be transported to where ever the carrier jumps and then the pilots in the fighters can undock and enter the battle now that would add a little diverse ability to the carrier and mother ships also inside the carrier a pilot would find repair facilities and fitting arrays button and the usual corp hangers or his own limited hanger to say like 800m3 or something and take away the carriers cargo hold.

do this to the carriers and moms and then you have a reason to fly them a carrier will realy really become a corp effort maybe even allow destroyers to use it too and moms can dock cruisers and battle cruisers obvousl;y limit how many can dock at any one time and be tranmsported but it is an exciting idea i would say it would mean it isnt about skill any more but about team players.

so let me know how this fits

please excuse the grammer and spellings im not that good in these areas.