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CSM9 - CCP Fozzie on Supers on Eve Downunder Podcast

Yesterday I started getting very, very upset super pilots coming to me and telling me that their supers were going to be nerfed into link boats. I was like, "What?" CCP Fozzie went on the Eve Downunder show and discussed sov changes, the EUTZ, supers, and Sov's future. Eve News 24 wrote a summary that has people very upset. I don't like summaries for something that important. I wanted a transcript. That means, I needed to take care of it myself.

I got up this morning and listened so that I could figure out what is going on. In general it is a good listen. I've never listened to Eve Downunder and I am not one to listen to podcast but this one was pleasant. They took questions from the audience and CCP Fozzie dove into the topic of the AUTZ that has been coming up.

But what about Supers? To try to help this entire thing I transcribed the actual discussion about supers and not just the summary discussions that are upsetting someone.
Time: 51:02 Podcast: Eve Down Under Episode #97 
Question: Is there a plan to look at battleships and capital ships
Capitals and supercapitals are used for structure grinding and occasionally a big fight happens where we get to release 50 titans on brave newbies and black legion. Is there a plan to look at say battleships and capital ships in this new system and how far away is that sort of plan.
Fozzie: There is. Capital ships are a class that is getting weaker with these changes. Where one of their big roles is to interact with the dominion sov system. And it decreases the need for them. It was already needed to be fair. Capitals have not been in a good balance place for a long time and in a lot of ways there just is not enough compelling roles for them. And some of the specific roles for them they are too strong and that is not the type of balance that we want.
Fozzie: We’ve been thinking for a while about what we want to do with them. What I can say safely is that we’ve been moving in a direction of wanting to shift them towards active on-grid but non-damaging effects. To have the kind of things that act as force multipliers that you really want to have in your fleet but that don’t just blap people. And that’s the kind of direction that we want to move them. And that means that I don’t have a kind of date. I know that can be frustrating. Some things like the T3 rebalance are higher priority. We want to be getting that out first. But this is something that we are thinking a lot about.
(from one of the other people) Bombers?
Fozzie:Yup there are bombers that we want to do. Yes, this is something that we are thinking a lot about and we are very aware that this set of changes basically makes the urgency higher for it.
From a host: And then following on from that the trailer from fanfest last year with the visuals of the fight going down. The centerpiece of the Amarrian fleet was an Avatar and then the other side had several supercarriers. That would be so exciting and I have no idea how you are going to do that with the proliferation of supercapital and Titans that has come in the pst times. But having one or two or three Titans as an on grid centerpiece of your field similar to have an aircraft carrier is in our current times and the fight rages on around those set pieces would be really cool and make me really excited.
Fozzie: Yup. As much as I will always caution against using our cinematics trailers as a hint of the future  because they are made to look cool rather than be realistic… yeah, that kind  of idea where you want to bring these things onto the field, where they really matter, where they have defenses but they are also a big vulnerable asset that the other side wants to kill and they do cool things that just don’t involve blowing people up. Things like building upon the ability that the supercarrier has right now with the projected ECM burst into some more interesting effects like that. Things like on grid strong effects like wormhole effects that affect everyone. Things that reflect mobility a bit more to build upon that foundation of the Titan bridge. Maybe some more in system mobility. There are a lot of cool ideas that we are playing with about that. A lot is being enabled by the tech work going on behind the scenes. I can’t give any specific dates or anything like that but it's stuff that we have been thinking about and are continuing to think about.
That is it. Then they comment about an early dev blog that wanted carriers to be featured in fleets and how reality and design don't always go as they may want.

To add again, no this isn't something that I have on my desk. Super rebalance has been waiting for technical work and it is well understood that this nerfs them.

(1) - The only thing I was not sure about is when Fozzie says, "decreases the need for them". I swear it should be "decrease" but I listened over and over and it kept sounding like "increase" to me. CCP Fozzie clarified for me that it was decreases.

Comments

  1. Thanks for the transcription, Sugar! There is a lot of talk about this podcast, and a lot of really angry pilots. CCP should listen very, very carefully to CSM. I don't think these pilots will be patient enough to shoot monuments in Jita.

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  2. At first glance, Fozzie's comments seem incredibly silly. It does read as if CCP wants to make carriers, supercarriers, and titans into huge link boats. I note they didn't really address dreadnoughts; I worry that CCP seems to have forgotten that dreads are capitals, too.

    Removing combat abilities from these huge ships is just pointless. If they want to get rid of them (and it sounds like they do), then just get rid of them.

    It's been one of my goals to own and use a carrier and a dread. Why in the world would I bother, now? If I'm going to be flying a 2 billion ISK link boat, I'd be better off in a command ship or T3; at least those can go everywhere in EVE.

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    Replies
    1. He said "don't just blap people". To me, it sounds like "they will do A+B, don't just B".

      "Don't just blap" =/= "Just don't blap".

      (All things said, I don't give a rat's ass of capitals. They can't be flown in hisec and so they all are useless to me)

      Delete
    2. Actually, what he said was "we’ve been moving in a direction of wanting to shift them towards active on-grid but non-damaging effects". But go ahead with cherry-picking what you want in order to prop up your straw-man arguments.

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    3. Sorry but Angry has point.

      "we’ve been moving in a direction of wanting to shift them towards active on-grid but non-damaging effects" != "We're definitely totally doing this"

      Also we have no idea what the effects they discussed actually were, there's a vague description of some ideas they had and a reference to wormhole effects. And that's it.

      Going from that to; "OMG SUPERS WILL BE LINK BOATS!!!!!1111!!!!1!" Is jumping the gun with rocket propelled boots.

      I guess owning supers makes people really paranoid and read way to much into things.

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    4. I don't own, and probably never will own, a super or capital, but if Fozzie didn't mean he wanted supers and caps to not deal damage, then why did he say that? It's not a huge leap, in any stretch of the imagination, to interpret that as meaning exactly what Fozzie said.

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    5. Yes, actually it is, because he didn't say that at all. Because is the next sentence he says; "but that don’t ***just*** blap people" (emphasis mine).
      Ignoring that second sentence completely alters the context of what he said.

      They way I read that transcript the reasonable interpretation of what Fozzie said is; that *they're thinking about maybe* reducing some of the damage from capitals and replacing that with other effects of an as yet speculative nature but it might be something in the spirit of wormhole effects or remote ECM burts. He never even mentions links.

      Nothing more nothing less. In no way is their any justification in what he said for the extreme hyperbole currently being thrown around by some EVE players about what might, maybe, possibly happen capitals.

      Angry might often be a negative nancy, but he's a lot better at actually reading what Fozzie said then a lot of people.

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    6. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    7. By the way, the damage of capitals *is* an issue. Capitals were built in large amounts because of the need to inflict massive damage, and their presence called for bringing in more capitals to inflict the damage needed to kill capitals before they damaged structures.

      By removing the need to damage structures, the purpose of capitals as damage dealers is made redundant (and they never were intended to be "cost effective") so it would make sense that capitals did something else than just shoot stuff. But that needs a counterbalance.

      From a cold hearted POV, capitals should be easier to kill with subcaps (say, inmune to reps?), should be a bonus to the fleet (space effects à la Fozzie?) and be an effective capital killer weapon (that would justify their high damage output in a world without structure grinding).

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    8. There are still structures to damage... towers... pocos... other capitals attacking said towers and pocos...

      Under the new system, towers and pocos will be the final thing you have to do to really get rid of people. Or the first thing you do.

      Delete
  3. I'm disturbed to hear that there is no plan to rebalance these ships already in the pipeline. I thought it would have been part and parcel with the sov changes.

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    Replies
    1. They plan to rebalance ALL ships. They just don't announce the details because, well, in effect, they'll get around to rebalancing when they get around to it, at which point they announce it.

      Delete
    2. But CCP has already directly rebalanced every subcap except for blops during tiercide over these past 2-3 years. Caps are the only thing left on the list.

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    3. They haven't rebalanced EAFs, they haven't rebalanced black ops, not sure they're done with bombers. Plus, they also are looking at all ships continuously.

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    4. Uh, CCP very much rebalanced EAFs: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=283119

      Bombers have received numerous tweaks (skill changes / bomb tweaks / cargohold increase).

      Blops obviously still need work, but they all got fuel bay buffs at the start of Rubicon, and were spared the full smack down of Phoebe.

      I'm just pointing out, aside from the phoenix tweaks and un-fucking of the nag, caps haven't been touched for years.

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  4. Sounds good to me. Supercaps have been a balancing PITA since they were introduced. CCP never expected more than a few Titans to ever be in the game and designed them accordingly based on the Death Star, with that ridiculous AOE doomsday weapon that insta-blapped every subcap on the field. They really should just be moved to another game altogether like DUST -> EVE Supercaps Online.

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  5. I'm really excited to become a 0 damage dealing on grid booster..... after spending millions of SP on fighter and fighter bomber and other drone skills, Fozzie might be so kind and let me to fit at least some smartbombs on my Aeon to reach 100 DPS......It's something that would totally worth me plexing that account for.....thank you Fozzie.

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  6. The problem is not whether supers get to shoot stuff or just get to cycle warfare links but whether there will be a future for 95% of existing super pilots.

    It doesn't matter how interesting gameplay is for supers if there is never any need for more than a handful of them.
    These days alliances can field entire fleets of supers - people are angry because it sounds as if for the vast majority of existing super pilots their ISK and SP investment will have been for naught as they will be out of work.

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  7. It sounds like capitals could get new unique abilities that you would most certainly want in combat with you. If you also make their dps mostly anti-cap then you can still have a need for n+1 escalations of caps.

    But think of the potential for capitals becoming targeted AoE effect ships. 10k web sphere; 10k area signature bloom (aoe TP); already has the burst ECM; target speed booster all ships within x get 20s speed boost of xxx%.
    Think about a ranged, targeted warp bubble like infinity point but has an aoe around the target. Fleets would need to separate from the target if friendly or blow it up if an enemy to get out of the effect.
    There are ton of cool things CCP could do with a redesign giving powerful effects to capitals instead of high dps. Again I think it would be good to keep caps with good anti-cap dps to keep capital escalations a thing.

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  8. I did not go through all the time and effort into flying a 30+ bil isk ship to sit on grid and do nothing but provide boosts. You are like taking my newly bought Ferrari back on recall and changing it into a Prius. The thing that made supers so appealing is essentially being taken away. My idea is to implement capital ships that will be good at taking out sub capitals which would have the need of other capital ships that are good at killing those capitals. So fleet compositions would require a good balance of both sub capitals and capital ships.

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    Replies
    1. If there are capitals that easily kill subcaps, and other capitals that kill those capitals, why bring subcapitals?

      If you want a better balance of caps and subcaps, then caps need to be more vulnerable to subcaps, not the other way around.

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    2. Bring subcaps for their mobility. Im just thinking up a way to give a purpose for having caps on the field. As it stands with he new changes, there is absolutely no reason to fly anything larger than a cruiser. Maybe have an anti-cap class of subcaps that are very effective at killing caps but weak against other subcaps. Add that along with a capital that is effective against sub caps.

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  9. I would love to know what he is considering for changes to dreads or regular carriers and how they would impact wormholers who rely on those mechanics.

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  10. Friend i want to know what is ant-cap..?

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