Missions & Complexes

Bad news is, that exploration is now a sport for masses and not for some lone rangers like me. But .. that is the only bad thing i encountered.

The good news is, that exploration makes so incredibly much more fun now, probably more than ever before. I really have to take back all my opinions and fears about the changes and congratulate CCP, on a awesome job. Thank you for that, CCP.

What changed for me?

During the last months it was very very time consuming and a pure question of having luck to generate income. 2 years ago i was only out for Radar and Magnetometric sites. As the last years patch came the income sunk dramatically and i had to more and more venture through combat sites and do expeditions and escalations to have the big fish in the net. This was not very motivating and cost me a lot. I had to fly T3 and T2 HACs to get the sites emptied and find some rare piece of equipment.

Now i m flying an unarmed frigate and only do the Data and Relic sites. I enjoy to be somewhere out in 0sec space and find the stuff after hacking the gas containers. I would have preferred more logic behind the hacking itself, but hey, it is OK the way as it is. I can focus on my hacking job and don't have to deal with those just interested in PVP and even if i have to, i can easily escape them through my electronic skills. Never had so much fun in low and null sec before.

So the new tactic for me is: fly a small and quick vessel and be picky about what i leave in my bay, so that i don't need to jettison all the data cores. So my corp buddy now flies a blockade runner with lots of bay room and again we are deep in null sec and both of us, never felt so safe while doing our job. And still the thrill of traveling through enemy space is existent, that's like the spice in the soup.

Im thinking of reactivating one of my carriers as a station deep in null sec with possibilities to change vessels as needed, while only traveling with the quick stealth frig to there. Another point is that i could use the stealth vessel for covert cynos and bring my black ops in to make some combat sites.

So many new opportunities. CCP, you really brought so many new things, that i bow deeply.

And you, fellow explorers? What are your new way to harvest the treasures?

As i said, everybody can scan now, it is a mass sport. It is good that there are no NPCs inside the relic and data sites, except in WHs. Before the patch i always needed guns to protect myself, now i don t need that anymore and can focus on what i loved so much before :) getting treasures :)

Cheers

Op is an example of future generation EVE players that feel good when instantly gratified.

This is said news.
Eve maybe is not dying via subscription drop butt its soul is almost dead.

People need to give it time to settle down....a large portion of the "explorers" will quit...another portion will stay.....and if you're highly skilled you should go do "end game" lowsec\00 higher rated combat sites..some dude in an imicus is still not capable of doing the harder stuff so nothing changed.......in any case chill out....wait a month or 2.

I do too. But I also think it misses the point.

Professional sites are... ok. I'm not happy with their current despawn mechanic and I still think the minigame/loot bukkake combination is pretty dumb, but it works and I'm able to make it profitable for me, so I guess I can't actually point to anything to complain about other than a tedium that makes PI seem pretty wonderful by comparison.

My main complaint? Scanning is way too easy. It's absurd. I used to spend at least a minute or two per system with a DSP; now I'm flying through entire regions in no time flat. No, I'm not scanning everything down, but I never was before either. Yes, I'm probably missing some loot in my rush to get to high value sites -- but see above. You've made this incredibly trivial.

Oh, and 4/10s and T3s. Why was that ever considered a good solution to... wait, what was the problem in the first place?

Overall, billing this as an exploration expansion makes me cringe, not because it's particularly bad for exploration -- but because it's not particularly good for it either. If this is all CCP has in store for the profession, I'm worried.

There are 2 problems imo:

1) Null and low prof sites: ~6x more people running professional sites = serious price drop

2) High sec combat sites: Scanning is so easy (I can scan down 4/10's with no problem in a HAC, with less than perfect skills) that you have far more people doing it for the same amount of sites -> less sites -> less profit

Now it's easy to say "Go to low or null you old farts". The problem is that running combat sites in neutral/hostile low / null is completely different from running sites in high, or professional sites in low / null.

So you now have people seeing a serious reduction of high sec combat site profit due to heavy competition.
And you have people who made their profession "low / null prof site running" who seriously see a cut their profit.

I reckon it's a good thing that there's fewer players running missions now, however, missions have an infinite supply, and not so much depend on competition. Exploration is all about competition, and it was seriously messed with.

Have you tried to scan down boosting ships off grid with small signature? -try it out and tell us you don't need implants.