Greedy Goblin

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Greed is good once again

Despite being obviously overpowered, the nerf to bombers was changed into a buff. They don't receive penalties, they get new bombs instead. These ships cost about 60M and a dozen of them can exterminate a whole subcap fleet. After the buffs, they'll be able to engage capitals too.

Why CCP moved to an obviously bad design? Because bombers are balanced by the fact that unlike any other ships, a lone bomber is next to useless. It's a glass cannon that needs to kill its targets in a few salvos because it won't have more. But in a properly big (though still mid-sized) gang, it can exterminate fleets much larger than itself. The reason why players fly anything else than bombers is their high skill cap: you can't just put a drunken Goon into a bomber and expect him to live against anything that can shoot back (structures can't).

However if you can fly one bomber properly, you can fly dozens of them using a multiboxer software. A single player flying multiboxed bombers can win against multiple players flying a much more expensive fleet. A multiboxer has a wonderful property: he pays multiple subscriptions to CCP. Even if he PLEX-es those accounts, someone paid for those PLEX-es.

I wrote how I can make dozens of billions without any skill, risk or investment, just by multiboxing mining ships. The nastiest about it: I still can. With other mining multiboxers we can destroy whole markets, taking the income of hundreds of casual missioners, but CCP doesn't stop us, because we feed them with PLEX-es.

I'm afraid CCP decided to move to the pay-to-win way. They are subtle about it, there is no IWIN ship in the item shop. But by getting more and more accounts, you can buy power linearly. The PLEX price is already so high that the one hour in-game income of a solo player can be replaced by paying $1-2. They are better off accepting defeat and buy their ISK. The multiboxed miners were always here, now we see multiboxed incursion fleets and multiboxed AFK ratters. Please note that it's all legal, no botting, client modification or any other nastiness is involved.

With the design changes of bombers it seems CCP wants to extend this policy towards PvP: you can buy PvP power by getting more accounts. Soon we'll see other ships being multiboxed and then the casual, new or simply solo player have no place left in New Eden.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hate to say it, but welcome to the year 2014. I've been multi boxing since 2008.
It's not just an eve thing. I haven't played wow, but I've seen videos and had friends that something something chain lightning in wow with many toons, in pve and pvp.
The only difference is, in eve you can use in game money to pay game time.
Oh, right, in Diablo 3, you could sell for real money and pay for your wow account. (Recently this was removed I believe, I haven't played d3 in over a year)

With all your complaining, I'm not sure what your point is.
Should ccp change bombers, mining, mission running, pvp, everything, so you can't multi box? Is that your point?
No, if it is, you should move to a different game. Eve has always been built around multi accounts. It's part of the fun.

Nulli-Pilot said...

Just out of curiousity... how do you afk rat by multiboxing??

Anonymous said...

Isn't it a bit cynical to view all CCP's balance and design decisions around getting more purchased PLEX? When I see posts like this I just don't imagine developers sitting around their table scheming the best ways to make more money. I see them making balance decisions in a complex game where mistakes are made, things are missed, and power is designed to shift.

Anonymous said...

Bombers are not op.

Having a whole fleet anchor within bombrange of the anchor ship is stupid. Nerfing the bomber would be the same as ccp saying "we only want you to fly that stupid formation"

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: I am multiboxing. I just don't see any fun in doing it. Getting all the power and throwing titan-money on problems is fun. But running multiboxed mining missioners while writing posts is very much not.

@Nulli-Pilot: send a drone boat to an anom. Send another drone boat to another anom. Repeat until all your accounts are parking in an anom with a drone boat.

@Anon: no, it's the most natural thing. They are employees of a company that wants to make money. There are two reasonable approach however
- we make a great game that has many subscribers
- we make a shitty game where high-paying whales can pwn low-payers
I'm afraid they went the second way. And the fact that I'm one of the whales with 10+ accounts doesn't change that.

@Last anon: Even if the ships spread out, if a bomber wing just kills two battleships and gets destroyed (which is a terribly bad bombing run), it's already killboard green.

maxim said...

I am inclined to agree with Gevlon on this.

Ranged "hit fast don't hit back" units have innate balancing properties that make them easy to go OP.

That being said, is it really the case here that whomever buys the most bombers wins? Because i can see how it is possible to spin this as a move by CCP to discourage use of blobs, imposing upon them a special requirement to account for bombers.

Sams said...

"Soon we'll see other ships being multiboxed"
We already do.
"Wrong Target SorryXY" with XY being 1-18 is ganking freighters with his broadcasted multibox fleet. He stopped uploading his kills as far as I can tell, but one week ago I watched him while he ganked two freigthers in Uedama.
https://eve-kill.net/?a=pilot_detail&view=kills&plt_id=1965506&m=2&y=2014
And we have "AmmXi" with X being a letter... so Ammfi, Ammgi, Ammhi, ... doing the same.
https://eve-kill.net/?a=pilot_detail&plt_id=2373700

On a side note, talking about CCP changing game mechanics: multiple accounts using an input broadcasting software do avoid the drone assist hardcap as all of their drones follow one command.

Anonymous said...

I would like to spin maxim's thouight further: Boosting a certain ship always means also boosting its hard counter. If a change means we will see more bombers, then we will a little later see more fast-locking destroyers with ~60km targeting ranges added to fleets, orbiting the main fleet at 17 km. Will we not?

daniel said...

"- we make a shitty game where high-paying whales can pwn low-payers[...}I'm afraid they went the second way."
so you want to say that eve is a "shitty game"?
sorry if i ask, but why exactly are you around?


" I am multiboxing. I just don't see any fun in doing it. Getting all the power and throwing titan-money on problems is fun. But running multiboxed mining missioners while writing posts is very much not."
but cn you understand that there actually are people to whom it is fun to multibox a 20acc mining fleet?

"However if you can fly one bomber properly, you can fly dozens of them using a multiboxer software."
uhm, not speaking from my own experience, just hearsaying, but, as far as i understand, using isboxer properly is really difficult.


btw, you are not differentiating between multiboxing (manually running several clients), and isboxing - as always it is bad style to not give a proper definition about what one is going to write about.

personaly, i do not have an issue with people using 3rd.party software to enhance their gaming experience and or success in the game.

Anonymous said...

Multi-boxing by other players doesn't bother me.

Besides, as you said, bombers are glass cannons - and it really only takes a single player, with a single bomber, to wipe out an entire gang of them, which are flying that close together.

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: bombers have no counters. While several ships can kill them, it's irrelevant, as they have green killboard if they just hit 1-2 battleships. If fleets were guarded by anti-bombers, bombing would be just a profitable suicide mission like ganking a Hulk with 2 catalysts.

@Daniel: I didn't say EVE is already shitty. I'm saying that devs might decided to go that way. EVE would be a shitty game if Incarna plans come true.

No, I can't understand why multiboxing 20 miners is fun. It's profitable, but it's just as boring and repetitive as mining with one ship.

Using ISBOXER or not is irrelevant. The point isn't the tool, it's the activity: getting insane power from having lot of accounts.

Anonymous said...

Damn it Gevlon, you made a post I have to agree with... you bastard.

Jokes aside, I've been seeing for the last year a clear move on CPP to enhance all aspects of the game that require Alts.
This is destroying player collaboration:
- 1 man mining fleets
- 1 man incursion runners
- Most FC's have their titan ALT
- All cap and JF pilots have their own cynos
- Marketeers control all regions
- "Solo" PvP'ers all have their own links

All made easy by:
- Power of 2
- multi-training

Most null alliances beg for players to be able to "take care of your own shit" and don't beg from other players.

Alt proliferation is going to be a growing problem going forward into Phoebe.

Btw, the bomber changes retraction was not a buff to bombers. The changes would have left multiboxing bombers almost unaffected while making human bombers much much harder to coordinate. That was why the community was protesting.

Provi Miner said...

its not time efficient: I don't know your skills with bombers but in anything other than a huge tide fight bombers have to be lucky to have an impact. By the time you get your bombers in the right place, by the time they get aligned, by the time they launch and now add 12 seconds a whole happens, only slackers and morons (or extremely well led fleets) sit there and go "oh look at the pretty semi-squares coming at us). Two examples one I was a part of the other I watched from a cloaky ship: Sitting on a gate in a fleet of battlecruisers a lone bomber launched we took the hit while our interceptors killed the bomber, ten min later a whole square of bombers launched and it was this simple "bombs…… Jump" no damage. The other is watching severance deal with whole fleets of bombers: "assault frigs orbiting at 10 k" 20 bombers in system 10 frigs on gate five minuets later no bombers. It is that easy to counter bombers.

Anonymous said...

"If a change means we will see more bombers, then we will a little later see more fast-locking destroyers with ~60km targeting ranges added to fleets, orbiting the main fleet at 17 km. Will we not?"
Which will nicely sit there and perhaps catch 2 newbie bombers. Competent bombers land in so they can alight through their target to a warp spot, decloak, launch bomb and warp while at speed, meaning you get at most 2 ticks before they are away.

"uhm, not speaking from my own experience, just hearsaying, but, as far as i understand, using isboxer properly is really difficult."
It's not. Setting up the config yourself is pretty easy anyway, but you can also download prebuilt configs. After it's set up it's as easy as controlling a single client.

"only slackers and morons (or extremely well led fleets) sit there and go 'oh look at the pretty semi-squares coming at us).'"
Most ships that are heavily affected by bombs are unable to align and bail before bombs hit, not to mention a single interdictor can stop you warping, so no, it's got nothing to do with morons and slackers. In actual fleet fights you generally can't remain constantly alined to a warp point, and you definitely can't guarantee you won't get bubbled. The result of this is that the only viable fleets are low sig fleets, meaning there's no point in relying on shield tank for a fleet doctrine.

Bombers have way too many positives and not enough negatives. If they are to remain as powerful as they are, then their cost should be increased tenfold.

Anonymous said...

the provi guy is really funny.

he might not have seen good bomb runs.

please try to warpout in <10sec with a BS in a big brawl.


maybe you should go out of provi were some things are handled differently. maybe the bombers in your example were M&S?

Unknown said...

Gevlon: The thing is, talking to multiboxers, the "Bombers decloak eachother" nerf wouldn't have affected Multiboxers all that much. They'd merely need to adjust their settings in ISboxer so that they could land perfectly and not decloak. On the other hand, normal bomber groups would require the discipline of multiple players to make sure they flew properly and didn't decloak eachother.

So if CCP had proceeded with the "bomber decloak eachother" change, it would have been a nerf to multiple player bomber groups and effectively a buff to ISBoxer multiboxer bombers since the only thing needing to be changed are their settings.

Anonymous said...

"So if CCP had proceeded with the "bomber decloak eachother" change, it would have been a nerf to multiple player bomber groups and effectively a buff to ISBoxer multiboxer bombers since the only thing needing to be changed are their settings."
Complete and utter rubbish. There is no isboxer setting for "keep my ship away from other ships". Isboxer fleets work well because you can fleet warp in and out and stay cloaked at both ends. A real fleet scatters to random bounce points then to a grid at random distances to keep people away from each other. An isboxer fleet would not be able to do this. Either each player would need it's own safes set up in system in advance on the same grid but distant enough to not land on each other, or the fleet would land together remaining decloaked.

Personally I don't think it was a strong enough change, but to say it would hurt non-isboxers more is disingenuous.

Crow said...

@anon 19:02
I have no experience with ISbixer but a simple delay in the "warp to" and align commands given to each ship would do the job. If ISboxer can do this Mirkalis argument is valid.