Beitrag von: Aura am September 30, 2012, 04:02:27 Vormittag
There have been a lot of good comments (plus an whole additional blog post by Kirith Kodachi) on the boost pilot post from yesterday. But there's one type of comment in particular that deserves to be addressed in its own post. Siiee put it most concisely by saying:
I have to say that "it takes a lot of time/isk" isn't the most convincing argument for why everything is ok.but then emphasized the point by adding "And that's why Titans with remote AOE DD are fine, LTP." It's a great point because it re-frames the entire question. The argument is "Jester, if on-grid boosts do get nerfed and you want your year of training back, what's the difference between that and when X got nerfed?" where Siiee chooses "Titan AOE Doomsdays" for X.
And when I responded to the comment, I was a bit dismissive and just said "That's a false comparison." But really, that's kind of unfair and I should expand on my thinking.
It's a false comparison because when when most nerfs to ships are applied, there are almost always several other roles available for the ship in question. The various Titan nerfs are a great example. By my count, a Titan does about six things well (in rough order of importance):
- it creates moving jump bridges for fleets;
- it rats like nobody's business;
- it's a damn good on-field gunship;
- it can blap some capital ships in a single shot;
- its presence alone on a battlefield sends a strong message to both sides; and,
- with its links and boost bonuses, it's the ultimate home defense fleet booster.
So, if one element of what a Titan can do is nerfed I'm not going to get overly excited about it even it takes a lot of time and expense to train for that. It can still do a lot of other things well, and will retain some form of whatever it is that's been nerfed. So if its ability to rat and blap dictors is nerfed, it can still create jump bridges, blap capitals, et cetera.
Similarly, if Strategic Cruiser boost bonuses are nerfed at some point, I'm not going to get overly upset about that because a strat cruiser does so many other things well. That's another ship that takes a great deal of time and expense to get trained into.
Alternatively, if a single-role ship gets nerfed it doesn't excite me too much either as long as the training and expense needed to get into that ship are not too excessive. Or if the time and expense are excessive, a nerf won't upset me as long as the ship is compensated in some other way. Jamming ships and dreads are single role ships. When Falcons and Rooks were nerfed, I was upset but it wasn't a big enough deal to get me to stop flying them because the commitment I made to get those skills didn't take an extraordinary amount of time. When dreads were nerfed, I wasn't too upset about that either because they received buffs at the same time that gave the ships equal value in other ways.
In this way, Command Ships are unique. They are single role ships that also have an enormous time requirement and large expense commitment.(1) If you heavily nerf a Command Ship, what else can they do? Other than the Sleipnir and maybe the Absolution... not much.
That's why I differentiate the class and that's why comparisons linking potential boost nerfs to other nerfs in EVE over the years are false comparisons.
Thanks to Siiee and everyone else who's commented so far!
(1) Anyone who says Command Ships aren't expensive probably isn't fitting them right.
Source: Comment of the Week: False comparison (http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2012/09/comment-of-week-false-comparison.html)