Council of Ship Modifications

Disclaimer: This is just my thoughts. I write this as an conceptual idea for how the council should work, which is largely based on feedback I get from people as well.

This topic comes from the discussion there was in another post(Link here), about streamlining the process of raising “smaller” issues, which requires little debate.

Recently, we have seen a lot of discussion about balancing certain ships. It’s pretty obvious that it was going to be the case, but I think that the “issue”, as I see it, needs to be discussed.

So what is the issue? It’s what CSM it turning out to be. Right now, the community is concerned with ship balancing, which is quite fine. It just shows that people ARE concerned about the game. But there is a downside to it, as well: Whiners and people who wants their ship to be “FoTM”. And is this already the case? I tend to think so. Let me tell you a history:

I was recently sitting down on IRC and ingame, gathering feedback for an issue that was raised about ship X. The issue being raised was that the ship was underpowered and needed a fix. I ask these people(Approx. 10 different persons), whom I consider to be reliable sources, and ask them about their thoughts on the proposed ideas. And the response I get from large majority “Don’t listen to those whiners, the ship is fine”. Mind you, these are people who actually flies the ship. And knowing the community, I think it’s obvious that if there was an issue, they would have said so. So I went onto sisi, and tested the ship myself. The conclusion, in my mind, was that the ship was quite OK as it is.

This is just an example of how some issues, especially in regards to ship balancing, is a matter of personal taste and how you fly. They made some good points, but we are seeing an increased amount of EFT warriors, which doesn’t account for piloting skills of the individual.

So for the council to actually act on ship balancing issues, is a totally slippery slope. But if that is what is the concern of the community, surely that is fine?

I actually tend to disagree. If the council ends up just bringing forward ship balancing issues, we will forget what the council is supposed to: Set a vision for the game. That is what CCP expects us to do. If we waste all our time with ship balancing, which I’m sure CCP is already doing plentiful, we will become narrow-minded.

I think it’s much more important to discuss how we can make 0.0 sov. mechanics more interesting by adding more layers or how for missions to become more interesting. But if we focus on specific ships to get buffs, the collective creativeness in the community, will go lost. It’s, in my eyes, much more important to talk about “larger” mechanics, which affects a lot of people, than the ships itself. In my eyes, it’s much more important that missions are fun(For instance), than the fact that ship x should be able to do x and y.

While I’m setting a bad picture for ship balancing, that is not to stay it shouldn’t happen at all. Again, it’s important that IF there is an issue with ships, CCP should get informed. But I’m not entirely sure if the council is the best way, at least not in it’s current form. We need to focus on what is important.

But how do we fix this? The ideal way would be for a hands-off approach from the council, in regards to ship issues. But I think this will eventually be counter-productive, as well.

We need to stream-line the feedback channels for ship issues. An idea could be for the council to give CCP a document, a bit like the patch-notes we get, with the suggested changes to ships. But it’s obvious that some ideas, are not going to be good. So together with the attribute ideas, a “target effect” should be included. This means that if the idea that is being put forward sux, CCP can propose an alternative solution, that will fix the issue.

What do you think? Am I on the right track, for how the council should operate? I would like to hear what you think.