EVE General Discussion

For sure probing needs to be looked at.

Eh, no. Things have to be grindable. EVE players are too fond of industrialising things for anything else to really work.

Well, what options do you have with your ship. Jump, shoot, scan, salvage, loot.

...Maybe if there was some kind of prototype in the works where one could explore abandoned stations for loot while dealing with hazards, exploration would feel like exploration. Hmmm

They completely overhauled probing relatively recently. That being said I agree with the OP that a rework of exploration would be great. As it is right now it's sort of just a lazy mechanic in that it's exactly the same as missions, but harder to find and with random loot instead of a reward.

Now as for ideas:
(The key with these is that they need to be randomly generated, so they can't be listed on a website telling players how to optimally run them, forcing them to be actively enganged)

- Take the idea of an escalation and change it. Instead of getting a blunt message saying 'the escalation is here' make it so that it leaves some sort of clue instead. "The sansha's leader couldn't have fled too far in this short amount of time... His second hideout must be within 3 jumps." or, "As the gurista's leader fled you intercepted part of a transmission, the small part you're able to decipher suggests he's hiding in a system called 'G-static-I'.

Has anyone else here played 'The Secret World' ? Best part about the game was the 'Investigation Missions' that required problem solving and exploration. You could easily turn escalations into something that required thinking and searching.

- Make some exploration sites just a massive field of ruined battleships and stations (without brackets). Due to some sort of interference in the field your sensors aren't much help so you have to navigate around the field and investigate wrecks yourself. Some of the old power cores from the station could explode and damage your ship as you approach. Rogue drones could poor from the hulk of an old battleship and attack you as you get to close. Maybe you even find the cause of the disruption to your sensors, a malfunctioning ECM Burst module, and blow it up, causing points of interest to finally come up on your overview.

- Make some sites time sensitive competitions. You find a notorious pirate's loot cache, and he's pissed. He activates the destruct sequence and flees the scene. You've got 10 minutes to loot what you can but wait... he also activated the distress beacon before he fled and everyone in local has been notified of the site and it is now warp-able to them on their overview. In highsec it'd just be a loot grab, black friday style, with soccer moms in their bestowers bumping the **** out of each other. In low/null sec it'd present real danger in the form of drawing attention... or opportunity depending on how you play it.

TL;DR - instill a sense of adventure and 'randomness' with exploration. I don't think you can feasibly 'discover new systems or tech', but there are plenty of ways to make exploration fun.

Suppose they did everything you asked for.


How man days would elapse before the playerbase discovered every single system that was added for exploration? I imagine the 'uncovering technology' bit would last all of a few hours before every single discovery was nabbed. (Eve players simply won't wait a second when it comes to the possibility of cornering the market on new tech)

That would be fun and explorationy, up until the point 1 single person ran it. Then the thinking and searching part would be replaced with Google and whatever Help channel you have open in your game client.

Even if that weren't the case, it would involve thinking and searching exactly once. Then it becomes rote memorization, exactly what missions are.

Sure google would still tell you what to do with which ever random event happened to you, but it wouldn't be nearly as strait forward. Also like I said these are just the first few ideas I came up with. Was just trying to prove there are a few ways to improve exploration, and several other aspects of EVE for that matter, with limited work required and creativity. A dev could come up with better I'm sure.

I currently do exploration and I have no real problem with how it is atm. After finding a few sites I do not want to do I may find one I want to do and get nothing from it... Could go on for hours like that but then you get something that just makes you all warm inside and makes up for all the bad luck you have had that day.

My thought is if you want to spice it up a bit go to low/null and spend ages down there or go into the wormholes you find with friends and take everything from the people that live there...

wtf is wrong with probing?
it's probably the single best working mechanic in eve.

what the op is describing is pretty much exactly what WHs are so I don't see your problem.

Some sort of 'Gold Rush' in a specific region would be cool.

Just a vague hint of where to find the cheddar.

And the vultures would soon come circling.

Fun times for everyone!