Beitrag von: Aura am Juni 26, 2013, 01:03:13 Vormittag
CCP Rise announced his plan. To split the T1 haulers into two distinct roles. The first, big cargo hold, small tank. The second, big tank, smaller cargo hold. That would mean, eight primary T1 haulers. Which would also mean, four that would be (sort of) left by the wayside, with no specific role, to be wedged in somewhere under the primary haulers.
It was a solid enough plan. They're haulers, after all. There's not a whole lot you can do with them. A hauler for the impatient and a hauler for the cautious, it seemed like the best that could be done, balancing-wise.
The Gallente have five haulers, the Iteron Mark I, Mark II, Mark III, Mark IV and Mark V. The Mark I and Mark V would become the primary haulers, the rest would be wedged into some hauling purgatory in-between.
The Minmatar have three haulers, and the Mammoth was going to become the odd man out, mainly at the request of the art department, who don't much like the way it looks (even though they designed it.)
The Mammoth is what caused the problem with some in the community. They were a myriad of complaints. The Mammoth wasn't going to be the go-to hauler for the Minmatar. People also annoyed that they had rigged Mammoths and didn't want to switch to another hauler. Boo-hoo people. Imagine how annoyed Drake people were when the HML updates came down the pipe. Change happens. (Some people were also offended that the art department called it ugly, but that was a non-issue, since the Mammoth was still available and wasn't getting kicked from the game.) Personally, I didn't see the big deal. So the Mammoth wasn't going to be quite so mammoth. A shrug of the shoulders. They're haulers, after all.
But, the minor uproar did get a conversation started.
Even though CCP Rise's plan struck me a good one, I was still a bit concerned (but not enough to want to enter the conversation) about the four bastard haulers. CCP Rise didn't seem to want to do much with them, because he was worried about creating racial imbalance. Which struck me a bit odd, because CCP has never been all that worried about these sorts of small imbalances. It creates flavour for the game.
I was following the conversation, though. Mainly I was curious how CCP Rise would react to the community. This seemed like his first big solo project. This project is his puppy. (It appears that way, at any rate. since he's taking a lead on it.)
Some dude on the forums, don't recall who, made a long post of suggestions for the hauler rebalancing, that would allow all the haulers to fill specific roles, even if some races got a bit more than others. Again, this sort of imbalance is not a big deal to me. It's not like we can't cross-train. It creates racial flavour. Too much balance is boring.
Anyhow, his suggestion had such things as putting an ore bay onto one of the Iterons, so it could specialize as a mining hauler. Perhaps a fuel bay onto another Iteron, and it specializes as a fuel hauler. And the most interesting idea, a small ship hangar on the Mammoth, big enough to hold three destroyers, maybe four with Minmatar Industrial V.
As much as I liked and thought those ideas were interesting, I really did not think there was much chance CCP would implement them. They seemed more time consuming than they'd want to invest. And they probably wanted to be in and out of hauler rebalancing quickly. They are only haulers, after all.
Surprise of surprises. Apparently those ideas caught CCP Rise's eye, because he's rolled back all the balancing and he's planning to start from scratch. He plans to differentiate the two main roles a little more between the races, and he plans to incorporate special bays and other quirks into the four bastard haulers.
I have to say, I'm quite impressed with how CCP Rise is handling this project. (Not that he should care what I think. I'm sure he has people at CCP telling him he's doing a great job already.) All I ask is that he seriously consider the ship bay idea for the Mammoth. I don't think a small bay, that could carry around three dessies would be unbalancing. Rise can figure out whether it is or not, but all I ask is that he seriously consider it, sit down and crunch the numbers.
So what was probably to be a quick in and out task, well, it's become a little bit bigger and more interesting. Haulers might actually become a wee bit sexy.
Source: A Mammoth Task (http://)
Beitrag von: Tahnil am Juni 26, 2013, 01:15:03 Vormittag