I am always thinking about this game even when I am not playing it, mainly because this is the only game I play, though I have many other titles, on both ps3 and pc. One of the things I have thought about lately is balance, I hear it all the time, what does it mean?

To me it mostly means strengths and weaknesses for any combat suit, weapon, module, or situation. One of the stats commonly thrown around with the topic of balance is dps, ehp, and a myriad of other 3 letter acronyms, usually they are followed by a whole bunch of math that no one will ever verify.

It kind of reminds me of that one guy we all know at work who constantly comes with and quotes ridiculously obscure baseball facts that one no one knows if its true and two no one cares. These numbers are typically used to support a position on one side of the fence or the other of a nerf/buff topic. The problem is the people who come up with these numbers do not have the ability in their minds, mathematically as inclined as they may be, to understand all of the diffrent dynamics involved in combat that make up these strengths and weaknesses.

To often their numbers and the amount of crying nerf/buff threads create, combined with a lack luster know nothing cpm filled to the top with Eve players and not combat shooters, tends to push a very timid and gun shy ccp toward action and inevitably causes a greater domino affect to which I have yet to see an end. Ccp has convinced themselves they are balancing, they are not, they are running in circles.

I believe much of this could be solved with some education, and perhaps some creativity outside the box. First let me illustrate my point somewhat more graphically, not long ago there was a Caldari Logi nerf of 40 cpu, they also changed one of the bonuses the suit recieved to regulators and took away the efficacy to shield extenders. Now ccp did this because they became aware that people were doing what is known as dual tanking, which is very easy to do on a cal logi, this is where someone takes a suit and uses both shields and armor as opposed to using the strength of the suit (shields in the case of the cal logi) and then making that strength better with say regulators, energizers, and rechargers, so you sacrifice how quickly the suit comes back but it has enough hp and damage mods to hands down beat most suits.

So the brillant idea was the aforementioned nerf on cpu, the problem is that most of us who, chose that suit (myself included) did so because we seen it was the best combat suit available provided you had the accuracy to kill with a single clip, and that was our intention when we selected it. So this nerf comes along and what are the consequences? We stopped carrying as much equipment, simple as that, and the suits stayed the same,, yet the op threads went away? It didnt help that many of the top players in the game were running these suits. This nerf was a reaction to meaningless crys, and it was not done with balance. As a logi let me say to ccp if we want to keep roles in their place which I think is foolish, I love the way the logi suit was adapted to smash by some of us, then we have to think diffrently about defining roles. To me the way to, ensure we logis full fill out duty as logi and not killer if that is what you want is something other than the types of nerfs previously proposed. Here is one alternative, you could only give logis a sidearm as this would still allow us to fullfill our duty and protect ourselves to some degree and restrict us from frontline combat. Now let me be clear, this is NOT a position I am advocating for, I love my suit and I care nothing about healing people, but my point here is simple, balance means more than cpu, pg, hp, and dps.

Therefore the way to, create balance is by looking at more than those things. Another example is there are people who say that right now scouts are op, others are saying the opposite, how do we ensure scouts fullfill their role? I dont know, but one way could be with modules, for example what if the scanner module were only available to scouts? What if the scout suits made the as better? Speed, or, stealth modules that are only available for the stealthy scout? These are some of my ideas for future balancing of roles, I am curious about your ideas and hope you will share them, when thinking about these things consider all aspects of game play, dont be limited by what is. Think about speed, stealth, ehp, dps, stamina, recovery time, how high you can jump, dampening, modules for our weapons, we have damage mods, what about rof modules, extended clip modules, etc etc, you have to consider everything that makes a player combat effective, noise suppression on our suits or weapons, I look forward to brillant, witty,, dynamic, sarcastic, sour, trollish responses. Happy hunting.....