What is the best place to announce a change that will completely turn economy upside down, change the way nullsec empires and highsec industrialists operate? A fanfest panel? A dev blog signed by Seagull maybe? An expansion dedicated to it, with its own trailer?
Well, CCP picked a "better" option. A dev post in a subforum! Instead of announcing that the age of "build it in Sobaseki, sell it in Jita, JF it to your base" is over, they just "rebalanced" freighters and JFs.
"Rebalance" means "changing some ship stats to make them in line with others". Well, lawyer-wise it's what they did: changed some ship stats. But in a way that sentry dominix fleets after the drone assist "rebalance" will be more common than Jump Freighters. The new stats made JF-hauling a niche (like getting in an out some rare special item that no one makes locally). Red Frog prices will likely double (in the form of same price, but half cargo limit) to keep them in business.
Of course the players are raging on that topic. Why? Not because they are right. The new game direction is better. But because they learned it from ship stats. It's like learning that your department is closed and you are fired from the new corporate restaurant bulletin where your tables are no longer listed. Wouldn't you be mad?
Well, CCP picked a "better" option. A dev post in a subforum! Instead of announcing that the age of "build it in Sobaseki, sell it in Jita, JF it to your base" is over, they just "rebalanced" freighters and JFs.
"Rebalance" means "changing some ship stats to make them in line with others". Well, lawyer-wise it's what they did: changed some ship stats. But in a way that sentry dominix fleets after the drone assist "rebalance" will be more common than Jump Freighters. The new stats made JF-hauling a niche (like getting in an out some rare special item that no one makes locally). Red Frog prices will likely double (in the form of same price, but half cargo limit) to keep them in business.
Of course the players are raging on that topic. Why? Not because they are right. The new game direction is better. But because they learned it from ship stats. It's like learning that your department is closed and you are fired from the new corporate restaurant bulletin where your tables are no longer listed. Wouldn't you be mad?
10 comments:
I dunno, I was just looking at the JF changes. Align time's worse, but with the right rigs, cargo capacity increases, and the ships are decidedly more durable w/the shift of 22500 points of hull over to 10800 points of armor/shield - the armor/shield has resists, the hull doesn't.
About the only 'big' hit the JF is taking is the increased fuel consumption, but that was coming independent of these changes. People are just bitching because it's the single most common reaction to any change.
CCP say they are using Scrum as the management model for their development. And from the looks of it they are. To make this work every team inside CCP to be a complete corporation in itself that knows marketing, sales, PR, project management, architecture, development, testing, support and so on. It isn't surprising that not all teams are the most elegant representatives for all disciplines at all time.
The Armor/Shield resists of freighters are low. For example Charon has 0/20/40/50. Against Catas, that 10800 shield HP is about 15K EHP. Also, capital rigs are expensive and non-insurable, increasing your risked asset, while freighters were already ganked empty. There are no "option", you go full tank or go wreck.
A full tank rigged freighter has about the same EHP/ISK as now, with half cargohold.
I haven't done a full analysis, but it definitely feels like it's a nerf. Using rigs can allow you to somewhat improve at the cost of most other aspects being worse.
But with a freighter you can't just care about one single aspect - you are so sluggish that you just *can't* ignore your tank. And to get the same tank, you are going to have a ship with a lot less cargo space.
P.S. And YES, CCP is NOT doing a good job at communicating with players. The way the CSM election was promoted was half hearted at best.
while i agree, ccp's communication skills arent the best,
your portrayal of this is incorrect.
they announced it first on fanfest,
now there is the forum post, and once they are further along the line there will be a dev blog, and then right before they publish the patch it will be in the changelog as well.
usually you don't get the fanfest part for a change like this, but forums->devblog->changelog->live is pretty much the common way, and frankly its enough.
Yeah, like Anon said, their SOP for the rebalance has been to post it in a forum thread, gather feedback, do a bit of tweaking, then when its totally finalised post a dev blog.
LR, it will be a bit of a nerf, since to get what you had befroe you'll have to spend more isk, but it's cuh an important change. It's not about making freighters more or less powerful, it's about adding choice to freighters. Now people have to decide how they want to fit it. full tank, full cargo, half and half, single resist, split resists, hull buffer, etc.
One benefit freighters will have with these is that gankers can't scan rigs, so unless the amount of cargo makes it strikingly obvious, they'll have to assume the worst. Again, this is a good thing, since it means ganker have to think about the target, perhaps research past losses, calculate worst case, etc. It's not going to be "look up freighter to sec status on list, I need exactly X catalysts.
There isn't a real choice, unless you consider putting small lasers on a Rokh a "choice". You go full tank, or you go dead. And even with full tank, you are barely stronger than you were before the "rebalance", just with half cargo.
And you can ship scan rigs.
As Isaid in many of other post on this blog, CCP knows shit about balancing.
After doing the maths, it is just a crapnerf. Of course it aligns well with the new industry mess-up.
CCP badly wants to drive casual players away and they definitely do not want any "interaction" between Hisec and nul. therefore, industry now takes place in nulsec, but with further limited ways to haul it to hisec the hisec demand won't be satisfied by nulsec production empires...
So, nulsec haulers will get out of business which isn't too bad for them as they can now rat 24/7, without having to plan much how to put their logistics up.
as everything needed in nul will be produced liek 2-5 jumps away...
But even with this nulsec pampering, RMTers in nul won't be happy! Casual players will wait for the new Chris Roberts game to leave EVE once and for all!
With regular subscribers dropping and plex prices raising to no limit, the market for RMT will vansih as well as the already dwindling player base!
Instead of promoting EVE as a sandbox, which it isn't really, it should at least provide a guideline for beginners other then trust no one! As we have seen from various abysmal CCP events, even abysmal CCP FC'S mustn't be trusted...
I will give Star Citizen a try and when I like it, I will tr to forget EVE asap...
And NO, building Hisectitans is an idea as crappy as possible, it could have been from CCP Fozzie...
Rather then giving some pointless ships (we already have too much of them in EVE...) the casual players should be given some sort of awards system (so that he can get feedback over his "progress")
And there really should be a better ingame system to help find newbies into the game mechanics...
If the main activity is missionrunning, why not invest time in it, give out new nice missions, focus a bit mire on these players. As long as CCP treats these players as scum and neglects their wishes, these players will leave, never zo come back and they will do a negative viral PR campaign for CCP.
That would be the ultimate metagaming, if someone managed to give EVE such a bad reputation that people would rather not begin with it...
EVE has so many great ideas and a complexity, but it does not deserve the shitty, fucked up game devs that CCP has...
The Armor/Shield resists of freighters are low.
And for Jump freighters, the resists are not quite so low. They're still better than the 0/0/0/0 resists on the hull.
Jump Freighters are not going the way of the Sentry-Assisted Domi fleet - too much of null relies on them more or less exclusively. The option would be titan-punting your shipping, and that's not gonna happen.
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