Shadow of Cerberus EVE Community Forum

Failure of imagination

I'm still deeply engaged in the discussion about rebalancing T1 industrial ships.  Now that CCP Rise has made public a lot of his concerns and objections to issues that I've raised privately, I've feel more comfortable making public my counter-concerns, which I've done on the EVE Online forums, but reproduce here as well:

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I've Liked so many posts in this thread I've lost count.

I can understand Rise's position here.  He's saying, among other things,

• "The haulers have never done anything particularly special before, why do they need to do special things now?"; and,
• "If you wanted a max cargo hauler, you had to use an Itty V and nothing else; I'm giving you three other options."; and,
• "For every other ship class, each race has exactly the same number of ships, why should it be different for haulers?"; and,
• "This isn't the last word. We'll be revisiting the outcast haulers when we know what we want to do with the industry career long term."

I get all four of these points.  But right now, I have to say that I'm with the players that are a little frustrated with the lost potential here.  We see only two types of haulers because that's all it looks like we've been given: a fast tanky hauler for each race, and a max cargo hauler for each race.  Whereas even within the same slot of the same ship type for other ship classes, there's lots of racial variation.  If I sit in a disruption frigate, I can jam with one race, damp with another, track with a third, paint with a fourth.  Attack frigates have some that specialize in rockets, some that specialize in blasters, some that have to go in close, and some that specialize in kiting.

But for all four races, I have a fast tanky hauler and a max cargo hauler and that's all.  There are color differences and shape differences, but they all do pretty much the same thing the same way.  That's why these players are frustrated, and why I'm among them.  We were wowed by all the new potential and all the new options when the other ship classes were rebalanced and were looking forward to some new options when this class was.  Zaxix put it nicely:

I certainly respect your opinion, Rise, but there is a group of true haulers in EVE, and what may be boring to you PvP types has been the focus of many an EVE career.

Rise has done great work so far as he's gone... but I feel like not a lot of imagination has been put into this compared to other ship classes because it's "boring."  It's hard to put our faith in an uncertain future for these ships because there's no telling when or if that uncertain future will ever come to pass, particularly with past evidence as a guide.

Thanks to everyone giving feedback on this!

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Feel free to jump into the discussion if you care to...   My thanks to those of you that already have!
Source: Failure of imagination