On a recent podcast, Ripard Teg put forth the opinion that ship balancing (including capital ships) won’t be finished until the end of 2015. I personally believe that to be a pessimistic outlook on the schedule.
I would imagine that the end of 2014 (the entire Winter 2014 expansion cycle, which includes the point releases, which does stretch somewhat into 2015) is a more realistic expectation.
CCP Fozzie and the ship balancing team, probably have their own timeline, but I can’t imagine they see their job stretching to the end of 2015. They’ve been going gangbusters up until this point. There’s nothing to believe that they’re going to slow down on their output substantially.
Time will tell. If the end of 2015 is the schedule, as Ripard predicts, then that’s a little depressing.
Summer 2013 (including updates)
Battleships will be done and T1 rebalancing will be over. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the team hit on T3 battlecruisers here as well. They’ll also start putting their toes into the T2 waters, particularly black ops. Maybe electronic attack frigates are tackled here as well.
Command ships will require more than just shuffling about the database numbers, especially if the plan is to move off-grid boosting towards on-grid boosting (or to at least limit off-grid boosting from inside POSes.) Some of that code work might begin during the summer expansion cycle.
If Ripard Teg is correct, and piracy becomes the theme of the summer expansion (which isn’t a crazy prediction since we’ll be seeing the introduction of pirate faction rookie ships), then we might see all of the pirate ships given the rebalancing touch-up. I don’t think anything radical needs to be done in this area, for the most part, so the workload here should not be enormous.
Winter 2013 (including updates)
I would hope that this is where we see command ships finally given the balancing touch, along with whatever codebase is required to support the new changes.
We’ll probably see a whole thwack of T2 rebalancing. Again, I see the balancing as mostly touch-ups. These ships already have their pre-defined roles, so rather than the more generalized balancing requirements of the T1 ships, roles direct the touch-ups into specific areas, which should reduce the workload requirements for the balancing team. I’d expect that half of the T2 ships are balanced at this point.
I think the conversation on capital and super-capital ship balancing begins here. The actual balancing won’t take place for another year, but the conversation should begin early, especially if codebase changes are required. All ideas will need to be discussed and thought through carefully. Capital ships is not a four-month conversation. Hopefully the community is involved (not just the CSM), to some degree, in that conversation.
Summer 2014 (including updates)
I would expect that nearly the rest of the T2 ships are balanced by this point. Also, faction ships are begun, if not outright completed as well.
The capital ship balancing initiative continues, and the options are very much narrowed by now. If there are any agreed upon options that require additional codebase changes, they may be begun at this stage.
Winter 2014 (including updates)
Finishing up whatever subcaps remain.
This is probably where capital ships are balanced. This may include all new roles. Maybe even the introduction of some new capital ships. (If new ships are introduced, the artwork was probably begun in the previous cycle.) If the work load is much larger than expected, this may stretch into the Summer 2015 expansion, though hopefully not.
The Combat Codebase
In that same podcast, Ripard also suggests that CCP could (and should) revisit the combat code base. Reevaluating all of the formulas, and perhaps recreating them from scratch. The aim: to breath new life into the combat system, and to remove clunky old mechanics.
Whereas the combat codebase is probably in need of a rewrite (given what we know of CCP’s past coding methods), changing any of the combat calculations is probably an idea that CCP will avoid. Altering the algorithms will likely have unforeseen side-effects on many of the existing ships, throwing previous balance out of whack. CCP would then need to embark on an entirely new round of ship rebalancing. After spending the last three years balancing, the appetite to go through it all again would be exceptionally low.
You can read more of Poetic Stanziel’s opinions at his Poetic Discourse blog.
Balancing: the art of making every ship in the game the same.
Fuck ships I want a jetpack in my captains quarters.
Fuck jetpacks, I want more fancy boots to buy with Aur!
Fuck boots I want hats!!!
Fuck hats I want tinfoil
Fuck hats I want those table top executive toys that make me look like a cunt
Fuck table top executive toys I want jetpack's… wait a minute.
LOL
fuck lols i want exotic dancers in my quarters <3
Fuck Exotic Dancers. I want a a fucking front LIVE view window of the Undock in my Captain's Quarter. So i know what asshat is waiting outside to get popped and podded by me.
Fuck you all i just want to be able to watch porn on the big TV in the captain quarters
fuck me this goes on and on ^^
fuck?
Fuck ya
Fuck that! Where is the POS revamp!?
Fuck we lost track of the subject
cant you mod that screen anyway? isnt this do-able?
Fuck boots, I want to walk outside of my captain's quarters. Maybe another room that's a trophy room with a nice big window to look out into space from.
I just want a cat
great answer to that Schmock CCP Fozzie
It would be nice to see less 'rebalancing' and more 'fixes'. In other words – how about a little less 'gee we thought it'd be cool if ship 'x' could do such-and-such and more 'yeah ship 'x' was way OP so we re-balanced it to be more in line with others of it's build cost and skill requirements.
This is all staged. there is no way this just happened.
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players
Balancing= nerf= more monie for CCP, all it is.
Please, do tell how nerfing is profit for CCP? I've never heard anyone want to play a game because 'they just nerfed everything'. In fact quite the opposite. So go on child, please, do tell.
Again I'm stunned about how stupid this post is.
On-grid boosting is just stupid.. When did you last see general fighting in first line.. ??? They will be primared the second hey show up on field. Kill ing one ship will weaken all ships by % boost
Sounds about right to me…
Otherwise, why not just give everyone the buffs without even needing the booster pilot?
Because it rewards working as a unit and sacrifices a toon on the field. Typically a booster has to safely make it into system. Meaning that defenders have a better chance of receiving boosts. Gives homefield advantage to those who have taken the time to control the system.
Almost every single null sec alliance has on-grid boosters. Mostly bc the best skilled boosting pilots are the FCs themselves or their alts. Bring more logi if your on-grid booster is getting deeps'd.
LOL safely make it into system? It's nearly impossible to catch a nullified, cloaky, multi stabbed T3 that just jumped thru a gate. You would need 100+ dudes orbitting the gate at 12km to catch that.
This real world analogy of generals fighting in teh front line and Eve is great.
Of course in real life, the general sits at the base, turns his links on and makes the jet fighters fly faster as well as be more resistant to enemy fire.
They will probably be primaried a lot yeah. But isn't that how it should be? Should we let logistics remote rep other ships off-grid? WOuld that be a good idea?
You realize the grids are 250km+ in most cases right? If the enemy brings a 250km Setup to a fight and kill`s a command ship that can simply step off grid every time he is primaried, then they deserved it.
making stupid rules like that just limits ship diversity, but if groups need to bring a new ship [or more] just to engage command ships thats great, maybe we can get a "Anti CS" ship. It just offers more rolls and allows more than just bringing an Alt and boosting off grid with him mwd`ing through the system.
when we fight the fcs always in command ship on the field, just put enough tank and reps on it and youre fine
Good things to come at theyr own time. slowly but efficiently seems the right way. Its also the obvious proff they want to end once and for all the ship balancings to focus on other projects besides eve online.
They fucked up t1 ships…….they don't have race bonuses anymore and are all the same exact ship just different shells across the races……jita riot time
plz do this, moar killz to whore on 4 me <3
Wow… I'm stunned about how stupid this post is
I've never heard so much complaining about something that will bring a net benefit to the game in almost all aspects. IMO, all these bittervets are just bitchin about having to rethink their metas–god forbid you actually have to stay current in a game, right? Or are you fags just mad that newer players might actually have a chance against you in an even (hull-wise) fight?
Command ships should be in the fight taking the same risk as their Comrades. I have lost a few in battle, but I have survived a lot more battles. If the FC requires me to be off grid, I just don't fly one. As wing command is my favotite thing to do, I would love to see some command ship changes.
I may be in the minority that likes offgrid boosting, and field command ships are already good imo at being on field in the fray. Cheaper alternatives to t3.
As long as each ship has its own natural predator. Im one of the so called "Bitter Vets" who doesnt like Cloaky Fags only because it discourages fighting, now if you could track them [all be it totally difficult and easier as the meta of the cloak goes down] then I would be all for it.
I am same with off grid because it can be so easily done. These things like Cloaky camping and off grid need to take skill and take someone being non AFK. Everyship should be able to be tracked EVERYONE, only diff should be difficulty of said tracking, that said I want to remove local as well, so local would depend on probers, My system would have a blank local where you could drag pilots names who have been tracked down, basically posting a warning for those who stay on there toes., this would be cool with off grid boosting IMO also.
If CCP is going to require Wing commanders on grid how about first fixing the boosts for Wing commander position?
This has been broken how many years now?
And worse its a very simple [maybe not super easy] task, with a huge outcome. TBH this should have been done first instead of bringing new shiny content.
"Maybe electronic attack frigates are tackled here as well" – I see what you did there
The likelihood of CCP touching the combat codebase is slim at best. It's the core mechanic of the game, and is attached to every other system in the game at some level. Fucking up even one part of it would have potentially disastrous effects not just in the combat mechanics, but possibly elsewhere. With as many algorithms at play as EVE has, the odds of NOT screwing the pooch at some point are low.
As old as the combat codebase is, it's probably the cleanest code because the mechanics haven't changed drastically for a very long time, and because the mechanics have to be clearly defined. It's not as labyrinthine as the crimewatch codebase, which was never meant to support as many features as it ended up being burdened by. The combat mechanics still only support shooting things, or showing your fitting stats, with minimal hooks into the inventory system or kill reports.
CCP would be better served by trying to build a new UI/UX to bring some modern features into the game, or going through the code to try to strip out any x86 or windows specific API calls, for easier porting to other platforms. Or by shifting some dev resources into the Crest API so that we can do some of the more tedious management aspects via remote on our phones, tablets, or browsers outside of the game.
With kill2 joining CCP, he might be tasked to help ravi with the ship balancing.
Do we know what position he received? I hadn`t heard about this, but I havent been as informed as I have been out of my country.
This is great news though, he really understands PVP and better yet he was as unbias as you can get, unlike Goon Darius [not Ex-Goon, Darius]
GRRR GOOON
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AmiXiddZc8
I will be working with fozzie is the design department, not sure what I will be doing"
I don't want "balanced" ships. I want the different races to be… DIFFERENT!!! Each race should have it's own play style to reflect the different play styles of it's player base.
We had this before. That balancing is in need just reflects the issue with it.
The problem is, NOT balancing ships leads to exactly the problem you are trying to avoid. If all the ships are "different" but one is plainly just better than the others, everyone will fly that one ship. If they are all different, but in balance, than you have many viable options leading to a variety of ships being used.
If the end of 2014 is what you predict, then it can easily become the end of 2015.
"we might see all of the pirate ships given the rebalancing touch-up. I don’t think anything radical needs to be done in this area"
Haaaaaaaaaahahahahahaha
There are 5 pirate faction frigs in the game. 2 are fairly common, the other 3 hardly ever get flown.
There are 5 pirate faction cruisers in the game. 1 is flown a lot, 2 less so, the other 2 hardly ever.
They are just as unbalanced as all other ship classes were. Ever flown a worm Poetic? Ever even seen one?
that rebalancing making me want quit
You are both retarded because CCP fozzie has already said, "[his] job will never be done".
When can we deal with 24/7 afk cloaky campers?
You can deal with them in several ways, 2 of which are:
1, move to rat / mine into another system
2, bait and kill them