Test Server Feedback

I want to give you my first impression before reading the rest of this thread. I only had a short amount of time to look at the test server so there may be many details that I have missed.

Initial general impressions
1) Impression after 30 seconds: Gack! This is confusing and horrible.
2) Where did that colored thing go? Having the colored site locators disappear may make sense from a design prospective, but it looked like some random thing disappearing from my screen.
3) Everything else looks bland. The planets and stellar features are distinctly nondescript in comparison to the brightly colored sites.

Attempts at using
4) I want to try scanning down that orange site. Where is it? When I go to the map I do not see the sites that I see from the system scanner. The 100% sites are not there. The sites to scan do not have an approximate location, even though you gave that to me in the ship view. Please provide an approximate location for those things so that I can orient myself when switching between the two views. The information can be very inexact since I know that I need to scan it down.
5) I am losing the sites that I did scan down? This is a cruel joke. I should have those sites identified in both the map and ship view as green with 100%.
6) I must have seven probes? Why didn't you sell me a seven in one probe, or why not let me launch what I have? You know sometimes I just want to launch one probe to see what is around. The seven probe thing neither makes sense, nor is functional.
7) Warp to, but not align? I should be able to align to the sites as well as warp to them. I can align to nearly everything else in my ship's view.
8) Have I found everything? I missed one site because of it's orientation with respect to my ship. I want a list, but I have read that you don't. At the very least I need to be able to go to the system map and see all of the sites at once. That might be a replacement for the list.
9) Which direction is that? Orienting in space and making certain you are viewing all of the space is a special mental peculiarity like color blindness. It is especially difficult in a computer game because you do not have a kinesthetic sense or sense of balance. The system should have multiple methods of identifying the locations so that they are accessible to more people. You should also consider the needs of the blind community. Again a list would be good, the map should be populated, and you may be able to think of other options.

In your hunter case, the dsp is completely irrelevant and exposes you for a longer period of time. Just warp around and dscan. If you want to see if anyone is hidden somewhere, drop combats, set to max range, move them above the ecliptic. Takes the same amount of time.

In the prey case, again, dsp is unneeded. Just use a group of combats.

The only thing it gave you was relative signal strength, but you can get that now by hovering over the signal in the overlay. You could even be really sneaky and triangulate an estimated location to get a good guess on a presumed wormhole in one scan like you can with finding ships now.

I do like the probe charge idea, and wonder why that wasn't done to begin with.

Would be nice to know if we have to wait another 3 years for the next probing change. Or if you will actually fix the instant probing of ships.

+1 expacially for - Please stop making us all equally good/bad at this game. Currently you need to know how to use a DSP, make a good probing setup, launch probes out of d-scan range of the enemy etc.. After Odyssey we all just hit a button and then it's only skillpoints. Bah!

Reading strength from a spreadsheet is now a special skill?



Reading a guide on probing is now a special skill?



Nothing changed?

Scanning wasn't too hard before, more of a boring work. Now it will be fun.

moving probes around when not in those 2 formations is bugged now and the modifier keys that used to control grouped sizes distances from convergence points etc... i know have been sidelined so that it works without modifier keys but in the situation where you're NOT using the 7-probe overlapping pattern its breaks and you cannot control the probes size or distance from each other in a group AT ALL.

http://i.imgur.com/FDrTLRl.png?1

also as shown in the picture above the movement arrows for the group are faaaar away from the pack fo probes, so thats another thing to sort out.

in simplifying it, so far it seems you've made it idiot proof for novices whilst essentially putting us more competent probers out
to the back of the farm ready to be shot in the head. its extremely hard to use probes in an non 7-probe formation.

*slow hand claps*

And as you have heard countless times on this thread, many of the better probers in the game use the 2 groups of 4 probes in a pyramid formation.

if anything allow us to group probes and be able to apply things to that group in order to manage them (ie turning off and on / applying formations / recovering etc...)

Sure, it's absolutely necessary for bombing to be successful; however this affects any FC that uses probes in an engagement, which is fairly common. This is a huge nerf and complete lack of understanding the complexities of fleet vs fleet combat.

I only had a quick play last night so I'll probably post some more feedback later but the one thing that really frustrated me was re-positioning probes.


Finger Twister
While I love that I only need to worry about one representation for my probe group (seriously, can't thank you enough for that one), the alt key shouldn't require me to hold shift as well in order to adjust relative position. Just make holding alt pop all the probes up and behave as it does in TQ atm without the shift modifier too please!


List View
With the map open it doesn't give us enough feedback about the scan results. Hovering over the blips we get in the map view is unreliable (hard to hover the right object in a cluster without zooming, sometimes doesn't display tool tip at all) and, if I remember correctly, doesn't show information about the sig ID making co-ordination with other probers difficult without constantly switching in and out of map view to hover over the sig in space view.

Also, the list view is really useful for heavy use probers (i.e. living in a WH) as it allows copy + paste out to a 3rd party tool to share info among corp members. Removing this ability won't stop people sharing scan results but would make it even more of a PITA than it already is.


Location, location
I've not had a chance to try combat probing with the new system yet but I did notice that launching probes seems to just dump them out at the star. Same if I change formation. Please fix it so they drop at your location - I don't want my targets to know I have probes out until the last possible moment! (is this just using or changing to spread? Will test further tonight)


Multiple Launch
Being able to drop probes straight into pinpoint formation is brilliant.

I do like that 7 probes are dropped at once although it would be nice to have the option to use less. It's easier to miss a couple on dscan, particularly if your targets also have probes out.

I have, after a long period of being in a WH, (and admittedly rather careless) ended up with only 6 probes left (it's perfectly possible to recall and not get all back if you're close to the timer and I'd already lost a couple of sets of spares). Will be frustrating to know that it's most than possible to probe an exit with 6 probes but the game won't let me launch them. May as well just sell them as a single item if they can only be launched as a set and ensure they all recall as one.


Overall
Overall this feels OK for casual PvE probers atm but needs more work for power users in WHs and combat probing.

The physical probes actually dump at your location - it's only the positioning object that starts at the star.

Good to know, thanks.