Aeon Amadi
Negative-Feedback.
Negative-Feedback
11
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Posted - 2015.07.05 15:21:00 -
[1] - Quote
I get the feeling that there are a lot of misguided views and misunderstandings about what Tiericide is, what it hopes to accomplish, and generally why people are for it. So, I decided to throw an explanation for it in a thread so that we all [the community] can be on the same page. I feel that the best way to explain this is through quotes from where it originated: Eve Online Dev Blogs.
From Rebalancing Eve, One Ship At A Time
"Tiers, mainly used for tech 1 and faction ships. In each class, it influences how many slots, hitpoints, fitting options a ship has next to others, and is theoretically used as a progression system for players climbing up sizes."
"In practice however, after assessing ship slots, EHP, speed, fitting potential and role overlap, we estimate almost half of our currently available ships to have suboptimal use, or are just be plain not worth it at all for pilots looking to min-max.
There are many reasons for that, one is due to the way we balance ships according to the tier system. Indeed, because the tier system dictates raw slots and hit points, it directly impacts ship performance, and thus affects balance. This is most obvious with the tier 1 versus tier 2 battlecruiser comparison, or even with the cruiser class as a whole. Battleship hulls, for having comparatively more base slots to play with, are less affected by this problem than their smaller counterparts.
That is why we want to remove ship tiers altogether, then refocus our balancing philosophy to be based on role. That means finding common themes, or lines that fit ships with the same purpose, then adjusting slot layout, HP and fittings within each class to support this goal."
From No Brakes - Ship and Module Rebalancing
"Crucially it introduced the concept that would come to be known as Tiericide; that we would be phasing out the old GÇ£TierGÇ¥ system of balancing ships that had mandated weakness from many of EVEGÇÖs ships and endeavoring to make every ship viable and fun to fly in its own right. "
I want to make it clear that one of our goals in this rebalancing pass is to somewhat narrow the gap between higher cost and lower cost ships compared to the canyon that existed in the past. We are not planning on buffing the high cost ships to the same degree that we did with the T1 Frigates and Cruisers, as this would simply create direct power creep and leave us right back where we started. We want to reach a place where cheaper ships are more than just something you fly when you start the game, but instead present a viable and interesting option to be chosen by people of many levels of experience.
As you can see, the overall objective behind the Tiericide rebalance treatment was to lessen the disparity and gap between 'tiers', the levels at which the ships progressed, so that each was fun and viable to fly. This was done through balancing based on role rather than simple power-levels ('x' is simply better than 'y' because it is a higher tier). Tiericide can be best described by asking yourself a singular question: "Why would I ever use Standard gear again, if ISK is not a factor?"
And while ISK -is- a factor in Dust 514 that affects players, ISK is frequently regarded as a poor balancing factor. There will always be players who are constantly broke and there will always be players who are constantly rich. Henceforth, we can't rely on it as a traditional balancing method (otherwise protostomping wouldn't be a thing  ).
A method of 'soft-tiericide' that seems to have a great deal of favor is the implementation of Power-Cores on suits, which would effectively give all suits that same slot layout (which is a major benefit) but the power-core would determine the PG/CPU values. This narrows the gap between Standard, Advanced, and Prototype, by allowing more freedom to fit a suit. They would still be limited by PG/CPU, based on their respective tier, but it would essentially make 'Standard' and 'Advanced' suits more competitive by comparison, and give their use more of a fighting chance.
There are a lot of benefits to narrowing that gap as well. Players become less frustrated as they feel less 'gypped' out of a successful fight, corporations are more likely to take on newer players as they aren't restricted by an artificial barrier of power level, and we're more likely to retain newer players as they would feel that the fights were less reliant on mechanical gimmicks than player skill.
So, hopefully that explains what Tiericide is a bit better and why it is necessary to provide Dust 514 a more fun experience 
10% of US schools no longer teach Cursive. A decade from now, 10% of the US isn't going to understand all the squiglies.
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Aeon Amadi
Negative-Feedback.
Negative-Feedback
11
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Posted - 2015.07.05 16:17:00 -
[3] - Quote
Mejt0 wrote:Simplier put it will give more versality to Std and Adv suits.
Basically, but this explains the reasonings why.
10% of US schools no longer teach Cursive. A decade from now, 10% of the US isn't going to understand all the squiglies.
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Ripley Riley
Incorruptibles
11
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Posted - 2015.07.05 16:18:00 -
[4] - Quote
Mejt0 wrote:Simplier put it will give more versality to Std and Adv suits. Correct. Prior to tiericide, the only way to fit a STD or ADV dropsuit was eHP with a side of eHP. If you were a new player and tried to fit for anything other than eHP then you would get destroyed quite easily. Once tiericide gets implemented we can expect to see a little more variety among STD and ADV fittings; a dampener here, a kincat there, you get the idea.
@Ripley_Riley CPM2 candidate. Ripley.Riley on Skype!
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KEROSIINI-TERO
The Rainbow Effect
2
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Posted - 2015.07.12 13:33:00 -
[7] - Quote
One question sums it up nicely:
Aeon Amadi wrote:"Why would I ever use Standard gear again, if ISK is not a factor?"
Also, the other reason to be excluded in balancing discussion is the challenge, or 'sports' reason of running purposefully gimped suits in order to make things more challenging for oneself. Personally I like that, running with a small resource and budget fitting trying to slay protos.
But still, having that as an interesting sport is not reason enough to balance assets.
KERO-TRADER is my official Eve character for Dust trading.
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