Another Idea (sorry, Pseudo)

- If the suit already has a role, then we must not change that role unless absolutely necessary. I've seen this time and time again in multiplayer games with an iterative model of development: If you drastically alter or remove a niche that a significant portion of the playerbase already enjoys, then you have made a terrible mistake. I've been on the wrong end of this kind of change before, and it SUCKS. It's the kind of change that makes you want to quit the game, or at the very least makes you enjoy it much less. So that being said: Galscout needs to be the king of dampening, Calscout needs to be the king of range, and Minscout needs to be the king of hacking and knifing. If you change any of these roles there will be backlash, guaranteed. I think the Amscout's bonus can be reworked because, frankly, I doubt anybody but Amarr purists use the Amscout for anything.

So now we have our goals and parameters:

Goals:
- Bring racial balance to the scout class
- Do this without infringing on the role of other classes
- Bring all scouts in line with the minscout or calscout (?)
- Address galscout supremacy without drastically altering the suit
Parameters/Rules:
- Do not significantly alter or discard the niches of the galscout, calscout or minscout
- Do not alter non-dropsuit things unless necessary or for the best
- Do not implement bonuses which are not specifically focused on doing scout things
- Do not implement bonuses which only affect one weapon or equipment
- Do not implement bonuses which directly improve combat effectiveness
- No more than two bonuses per racial dropsuit (Rattati's Rule)

These are fair. I agree that we should focus on Racial Parity before Class Parity. Wouldn't mind seeing the 3 underperformers brought up to Gal standards. If that isn't possible, then perhaps knocking the GalScout down a peg is the appropriate course.

if you knock the gal scout down a bit, it will suffer, scouts aren't that good

If anyone wants to indulge my opinion on the matter of scout balancing:

I think that if you're going to want to make big sweeping changes like this then you need design goals. Goal-oriented design is one of the strongest methods in game design and it's the best way to keep on track. These suggestions are all over the place, and frankly I think they're pretty sloppy. I propose that we come up with some goals and parameters before we decide on any changes. By goals I mean intended final outcomes, and by parameters I mean rules that we can't violate with our suggestions. Shotty does do this a bit but I'm not sure it's enough. So let's do some brainstorming:

- I see lots of ideas here and some are better than others but a lot of them miss the point of the bonus system. ALL bonuses reinforce their given suit's overall role in its class. The sentinel bonuses all make the sentinels tanky and defensive, the commando bonuses all increase raw stopping power, the assault bonuses all increase combat flexibility, and the logistics bonuses all increase effectiveness with a certain type of equipment. Scout bonuses should therefore improve Scoutliness: Running, hiding, (passive) scanning, jumping, hacking, assassinating. Anything that doesn't pertain to that shouldn't be a bonus, and I think that also applies to bonuses that only apply to a single EQ or weapon. It's alright for Logis because that's the easiest way to specialize them, but it's not a good idea for scouts, and we already have a single-equipment bonus in the cloak bonus. Efficacy bonuses to REs or Shotguns or direct combat effectiveness are a bad idea full stop.

- I think that attempting racial balance and class balance simultaneously is a terrible idea. Establish racial parity within a class so that the entire class is evaluated at a similar/equal baseline, and then move forward with attempting to bring the class in line with the rest of suits (if it even needs to be brought in line at all.)

- If the suit already has a role, then we must not change that role unless absolutely necessary. I've seen this time and time again in multiplayer games with an iterative model of development: If you drastically alter or remove a niche that a significant portion of the playerbase already enjoys, then you have made a terrible mistake. I've been on the wrong end of this kind of change before, and it SUCKS. It's the kind of change that makes you want to quit the game, or at the very least makes you enjoy it much less. So that being said: Galscout needs to be the king of dampening, Calscout needs to be the king of range, and Minscout needs to be the king of hacking and knifing. If you change any of these roles there will be backlash, guaranteed. I think the Amscout's bonus can be reworked because, frankly, I doubt anybody but Amarr purists use the Amscout for anything.

- In the same vein, I think unnecessary sweeping changes to multiple things unrelated to the dropsuits is unnecessary. Cloak changes, dampener changes, scanner changes, etc should not be made unless they are absolutely the best option.

- Role bleed needs to be avoided. To me, this means ensuring that none of the scouts get any kind of bonus to direct combat efficacy, but the same probably applies to equipment bonuses.

- Finally, I think the consensus is that the order of effectiveness is Galscout > Calscout > Minscout >Amscout. Also - and this is obviously much more opinion-oriented so I'm open to debate - I think the balance of the minscout is the standard that the scouts as a whole should be balanced around. If not the minscout then probably the calscout, but I think it would be a lot harder to bring all scouts to the level of the calscout than it would to bring them to the minscout's.

So now we have our goals and parameters:

Goals:
- Bring racial balance to the scout class
- Do this without infringing on the role of other classes
- Bring all scouts in line with the minscout or calscout (?)
- Address galscout supremacy without drastically altering the suit
Parameters/Rules:
- Do not significantly alter or discard the niches of the galscout, calscout or minscout
- Do not alter non-dropsuit things unless necessary or for the best
- Do not implement bonuses which are not specifically focused on doing scout things
- Do not implement bonuses which only affect one weapon or equipment
- Do not implement bonuses which directly improve combat effectiveness
- No more than two bonuses per racial dropsuit (Rattati's Rule)

I think this is a fair list. You guys are fair to dispute any of the items on the list, though. In the mean time, my next post will be suggestions for balance with these goals in mind.

Goals:
- Bring racial balance to the scout class
- Do this without infringing on the role of other classes
- Bring all scouts in line with the minscout or calscout (?)
- Address galscout supremacy without drastically altering the suit
Parameters/Rules:
- Do not significantly alter or discard the niches of the galscout, calscout or minscout
- Do not alter non-dropsuit things unless necessary or for the best
- Do not implement bonuses which are not specifically focused on doing scout things
- Do not implement bonuses which only affect one weapon or equipment
- Do not implement bonuses which directly improve combat effectiveness
- No more than two bonuses per racial dropsuit (Rattati's Rule)

You make some good points, however I do think bad roles should not be necessary kept. Some of these roles were not the same before and many other classes have been iterated on to reach the point are at currently.

Another Idea

CalScout:
+X% Zoom Fidelity to Scoped Rail/Hybrid weaponry

^ Is Scoutly. Is not a direct combat bonus.

Would include Sniper Rifles, Rail Rifle, Bolt Pistol.
Would not include Assault Rail Rifle, MagSec.

This is an interesting suggestion, but I think it would actually hinder some calscouts. Extra zoom isn't always a good thing, and there's literally no way to turn it off other than using a racial basic or respeccing.

@ Pseudo

What makes the GA and CA more competitive than MN is that the former can beat 21dB Scans with 1 less damp. That's pretty much it. If the three needed the same number of damps to beat 21dB, they'd be very close to balanced.

The more I think about it, the more I think the key the Racial Parity is (A) elimination of or (B) duplication of the profile bonus.

This is an interesting suggestion, but I think it would actually hinder some calscouts. Extra zoom isn't always a good thing, and there's literally no way to turn it off other than using a racial basic or respeccing.

I figured as much, but I wasn't sure whether this was a thing so I neglected to mention it. It's kind if ludicrous though, especially on the calscout. It's not even part of its bonus, it just gets it for free. I do agree though, the ability for some scouts to avoid scans straight up better than the others seems like the biggest obstacle in the way of scout balance.

Rattati normalized Scout EWAR with Hotfix Charlie. If AM, CA or GA ran straight damps, they'd have similarly competent profiles. If AM, CA or GA ran straight precision, they'd have similar competent scan precision levels. If AM, CA or GA ran straight range extenders, they'd have similarly competent scan range. Each EWAR Scout had a slight advantage in his respective department.

The 2-low CalScout needed the profile bonus for normalization to work as well as to beat baseline scans.

Better to have good ideas and clear goals than to be blinded by details.

I figured as much, but I wasn't sure whether this was a thing so I neglected to mention it. It's kind if ludicrous though, especially on the calscout. It's not even part of its bonus, it just gets it for free. I do agree though, the ability for some scouts to avoid scans straight up better than the others seems like the biggest obstacle in the way of scout balance.


Well technically that is a way of turning it off, but I think it goes without saying that forcing a suit into using a weapon that might be suboptimal just so it stops getting screwed over by its bonus is just bad design.

Disagreed. Mercs are bright enough to know before they deploy whether or not they'll be fighting in close quarters or at range.

Looks like matchmaking was added to next release (April/May). A new playmode was also mentioned at the round table. He mentioned that matchmaking improvement will involve segregating new and old players.

... performance improvements ...
... Planetary conquest is also getting a new UI and more reasons to contest districts, including a new currency which unlocks unique items. ...

(Provided I can find anyone willing to field a scrub like me)