Winter Expansion - Desperate times

[Kageru]

The end of year expansion should be a very interesting time. CCP has a lot of challenges to face including halting the slide in online activity (and I assume subscriber numbers), reviving null-sec and preparing the groundwork for Dust. Not to mention selling the idea that having Eve sovereignity be influenced by events in another game  is fun and desirable. The first tentative changes are beginning to hit the test server in that it is, apparently, quite broken at the moment. But it should lead to some interesting rumors and game changes.

The DD nerf has been hinted in the tooltip (unable to be used on sub-capitals) but here's another "exciting" possible change (from PL boards via Kugu).

Well straight from sisi, you can test it yourself

There is a new structure on the market under planetary interaction which builds the Customs Оffіce‚ and the office got some 10 mil shield / 3 mil armor or something

Shield recharge is bugged though, something sillу like 12500 shield/s recharge vOv

In lоw/highѕec the custom offіces are owned by concord.

[tgr]

Sadly, no definite news of any SOV system changes yet.

[eldaec]

In fact, there is no news of any sort about a winter patch of any sort.

[tgr]

There's something about some font or something, idk. And the other races are getting their own CQ stations, and shipspinning is making a comeback.

[Kageru]

Yeah, they're adding a font in which you can actually tell the difference between 5O and S0 and goes larger than 13 pt, massive advances. I don't think that's the winter expansion though.... but it probably won't be ready till then. They've also done a sisi test of the new time dilation feature.

[Gets]

Things got even more interesting as Hilmar, CEO of CCP, makers of Eve Online: a bad spaceship simulator, has written a devblog with an apology and general admittance that they are terrible at making video games.

I don't know what's more confusing about this piece. The fact that it is historical as not many game developers fess up to their erroneous decisions or that he keeps referring to Eve as if it was a woman.

Adding to the list of promising "good stuff" Zulu has unveiled the aspects being chosen to improve in the next expansion, with the addition of reallocating developers back onto the spaceship flying part and not vampires wearing Dolce & Gabbana.

EVE Online´s Winter 2011 expansion will be themed around improvements to warfare and PVP. We will be talking more specifically about each of the features and items in the coming weeks but, for now, here‘s an overview of what functionality, systems and gameplay we‘re going to improve and add to.

Hybrid weapons balancing

Factional warfare

Assault ships

Capital ship balancing

New T2 modules

Starbase logistics management

New EWAR-Drones

T2 Rigs manufacturing

Ship spinning

New font

More captains quarters

Time dilation

All great plans to find opportunities to fuck up and reasons for the servers to burn down.

[Kageru]

No moon mineral or Sov changes on that list which is a bit of a surprise.. Assault ship rebalance, squee.

[squirrel]

Fuck. Time to train hybrids I guess.

[Gets]

Like we discussed in the hot water thread any hint of mineral rebalance just triggers usury and people acting irrationally with their wealth. A tech nerf should come, but I'd personally would like it to be a stealth nerf and then bask in the glory of Eve's 1% blaming CCP for class warfare. The PI seeding debacle is just an example of how bad things go when people stockpile items with ISK, much of it from botting, with advanced knowledge making the new game mechanic less worthwhile to fiddle with for everyone.

Seeing accountability coming from a chief executive when things have gone wrong is a positive sign, but he also has to commit to excellence and not just make it a word on a poster. I'd like to see brutal rejection of mediocrity and "good enough" within the development of new features and in the rejuvination of old ones.

I think we - players and CCP both - have suffered under Innovator's Dilemma as other attempts at sci-fi MMOs haven't taken off. When a company has a lead in some area it becomes less likely to come up with new breakthroughs and successes.

[Kageru]

I tend to agree. Both the super-capital nerf and mineral change are something that need to be presented once fully formed. Since they're not positives to everyone in the way some of these are.

I would be very disappointed if they don't happen though. The Tech situation is clear broken and has been for a long time.

[eldaec]

Mineral and supercap Nerf are more popular than you'd imagine.

Everyone except PL with any significant tech or any measurable supercap fleet has come out in favour of both.

CCP would have work p hard to screw that up.

Even just picking a new bottleneck mineral would be preferable to the current position.

[ajax34i]

commit to excellence

They've done the "commit to excellence blog" a couple years ago; I distinctly remember it.  I think their quality has gone down since they blogged it.

[Sir T]

Well, they had an "excellence" video kicking off fanfest 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivdeuedajko

I think the Commitment to Excellence blog was actually a thread started by Diadra Vaal of Eve University that got people talking on the commitment to excellence meme

http://www.eve-search.com/thread/1327362/page/1

[Gets]

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=2674

Supercarrier nerf. Fighter bays. Logoffski nerf. Moros drone bonus changed to hybrid bonus. Dreads buffed. Aaaaaaa!

(Hel still shit)

[tgr]

Moros added to training list. :colbert:

[Thrawn]

Are Titans going to have any worthwhile uses except for jumping people and providing bonuses?

[tgr]

Well, there is the thing about structure shooting, but with an increase in dps bonus from siege, a 50% siege timer and 50% siege fuel usage, combined with a much lower cost ... no, I don't think so.

Maybe a few supercap ganks here and there, but nothing major I don't think.

[ajax34i]

Moros probably still depends on whether they buff hybrids, which they said they'll do but have not blogged about yet.

[Gets]

Titans depend on if remote tracking links can be still used on them.

[Simond]

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=2674

Supercarrier nerf. Fighter bays. Logoffski nerf. Moros drone bonus changed to hybrid bonus. Dreads buffed. Aaaaaaa!

(Hel still shit)

ETA on Pandemic Legion trying to make friends with people again? 

[Kageru]

So basically you'd only field a super-capitals if you are confident you have the biggest blob? Seems the game-play outcomes are not very interesting other than super-caps being fielded a lot less.

[Thrawn]

So basically you'd only field a super-capitals if you are confident you have the biggest blob? Seems the game-play outcomes are not very interesting other than super-caps being fielded a lot less.

Seems like you'd be better off now just spending the isk for a Titan on multiple dread/carrier accounts with ships if you are capable of multi boxing them.

[Gets]

Regarding Titan gun tracking:

I am well aware of the issue and considered making changes to it. I decided against it for this balancing pass. We are still working on the winter release and this is not completely off the table. There will be public testing of these balancing changes on SISI and we are ready to consider further changes if needed.

[amiable]

So basically you'd only field a super-capitals if you are confident you have the biggest blob? Seems the game-play outcomes are not very interesting other than super-caps being fielded a lot less.

There are a whole host of dynamics that change when supercaps are fielded less.  You will see a lot of this filter down to fleet doctrines (eg I would expect to see some changes to welpfleet after the supercap nerf).

[Kitsune]

Nerfing fighters makes me sad.  Supercarriers were never all that much of a threat to subcaps, and I worry that a fighter nerf will nerf regular carriers into having even less of a place in any fight.  Given that fighters don't do the damage to be a threat to caps or structures, and now won't be able to hit battleships, what's the point of them supposed to be?

[tgr]

The fighter nerf was recalled.

[Kitsune]

Ah, good.  I can go back to not feeling bad about being in the middle of training Amarr Carrier V.  If the dread changes pan out well I may actually put down the money to train them too; I already have AWU V and JDC V, so I just need to train in the hull and the guns to be able to fly one.

[Kageru]

Somewhat of a shame they are balancing by spread-sheet tweaking rather than balancing by role or game mechanic. They're still going to be used as main line fleet-ships and / or be so weakened they spend a lot more time logged out. Either way they add little that is good to the game.

[slog]

I find it amusing that people are thinking that CCP is going to get this right (or close to right).

[Kitsune]

Anything that stops a titan blob from insta-popping forty of the other fleet's most essential ships is already a very significant shift in supercap warfare.  What emains to be seen is whether dreads and carriers will see a much needed resurgence.

[Stabs]

I find it amusing that people are thinking that CCP is going to get this right (or close to right).

Aren't they to some extent doing relatively easy fixes. Things like buffing Hybrids, isn't that just typing numbers in cells that are a little bigger than old numbers?

I'm not knocking it, good for them if they can work smart doing relatively simple things codewise that have a big impact on user satisfaction.

It's odd to me that people are so positive about the changes. Traditionally expansions have brought in new content that took a lot of design, the highlight perhaps being wormholes and T3. Still if it ignites nullsec war that will keep everyone happy.

[tgr]

For me, the fact that the people who are currently whining the hardest, and even doing things like unsubscribing 9 out of 11 accounts, are the same people who were adamant that the JB changes would bring about hitherto unknown levels of PVP and risk in moving around in 0.0, which would make actually living in 0.0 dynamic and fun, and stop alliances such as goons from projecting power, when in fact it had very little effect on any military aspect and, if anything, made the life of the average newbie member worse. The more they whine, the happier I get.

It still won't fix what I believe are the main problems 0.0 are stagnant as fuck right now, the SOV system, but god damn the schadenfreude is delicious.

[MahrinSkel]

Can I throw in an "I told you so"?  3 or so powers with supercaps maintaining large no-mans-lands they don't use, but don't allow anyone else to hold because of the strategic vulnerabilities it would create, is exactly where I said we'd wind up.  If they don't shake it up, the game stagnates, but the longer they wait to do it, the harder it's going to be (because the players who don't like it will become ever less of the playerbase).

--Dave

[Kageru]

I think a lot of people saw it coming. But CCP are both pretty bad at game design and distracted by all the money Dust is burning through. Which is why something so important as super-cap changes is being considered a minor issue of ship balance best addressed using spreadsheet tweaks by a single developer who only took on the role a couple of months ago.

I also think they'll find that it is much harder to re-ignite a dynamic environment in null-sec than it would have been to pay more attention to forces that drove it stagnant. An open-world PvP game with no reset switch needs to be constantly monitored for imbalance and they failed badly at that. Probably because they don't honestly believe anything can go wrong and that Eve will continue to grow.

[Endie]

I find it amusing that people are thinking that CCP is going to get this right (or close to right).

I don't know: there has been a pretty radical shift.  One of the CCP devs had a long chat with a couple of our directors about how to fix a non-controversial but game-wide system: he came into it with a set of ideas that would have snapped the system like a twig but after talking his suggestions are now really useful and look very realistic.  CCP are consulting like hell, adapting freely and seem to be really keen to draw on expertise where it exists.