Test Server Feedback

DSP is now not needed for signature sorting. Now it can be useful only if you want to search for ships on deep safe spots far beyond the last planet's orbit.

I don't post very often, but I've been in EvE a fair while.

I've been testing the new scanning system, and the new sites. As far as these alterations go, I can see the underlying reasons why CCP wanted to shake up the exploration system, but this is not the way to do it.
Exploration was another career stream that players both new and old could take to further their enjoyment of the game. It was a career that required some SP training, practice, and a fair amount of player ability and knowledge. This new system will eradicate that potential completely. It's been dumbed down so much that it is no longer another challenging part of the game.

Exploration used to be fun because of the sense of achievement that you would get from scanning things down. You either came up with your own methods of scanning, or you researched online to find them. The new system has removed any ability needed - the diamond being a preset makes it idiot proof. The resizing and aspect ratio movement being automatic has also made it idiot proof and boring.

We used to try and train up our SP to use a decent cov ops scanning frigate with DSP's. The training time to use these was part of the build up of anticipation in our career mini stream. The rewards were that we got to see a whole system all at once - brilliant. We would practice for hours and days on end to get faster and faster at scanning things down, using finger skills and mouse skills to get more dextrous. The faster we scanned, the more chance we had of getting into and clearing a site before others arrived. It was all a fun part of the game....


Where's the sense of achievement or fun in this new system?

You enter a system and it's scanned for you, the results are gifted to even the most stupid of players. That is no challenge or fun.

A blind donkey with only 1 leg could use the new probe system to scan down an site in seconds. That is no challenge or fun.

The probe formation at all scanning ranges is adjusted for you with one simple mouse drag, as though we are infantile children! That is no challenge or fun.

When you arrive at a site all of the relics are grouped together? So, now there's no using MWD's or AB's and zipping around avoiding structures to try and frantically clear a site before others arrive! That again, is no challenge or fun. (granted, I hope that may just be on the test server for testing purposes. I sincerely hope so)


All in all, I hate to say it, but this new system completely sucks in my opinion. I can't be positive about a single aspect of it. It seems to be "change for the sake of change". Perhaps someone in the dev room is trying to justify their employment, idk? What I do know is that in one fell swoop, you are going to remove a complete segment of mine, and many other players playing experience. I use exploration currently to continue my enjoyment of the game when I am bored with other aspects of EvE. The process of flying around, and the scanning system was a good part of the fun, finding sites quickly and getting in there before others was an immense challenge.

I appreciate that changes might have been needed for the combat scanning side of things. I appreciate that devs didn't necessarily like the DSP charts with sig numbers that many of us used. This, however, was not the way to fix it. Not in any way, shape, or form. This new system is something that will turn many, many players OFF exploration in the long term, not encourage it. I implore you CCP to have a good rethink about introducing this new system. It is going to take out of the game one of the integral mini-professions that we have come to enjoy. I know certainly that this is going to reduce my playing time. The time I would have spent exploring as a change from normal activities, I will now simply spend offline, playing something else.

Maybe you are right, could not test it myself tho, because my mirror on Singularity is somehow old (like almost 4M SP less), do not have the scanning skills (and all-in-one ship) I posses on Tranquility now :(

Well actually they do, cf. : my post

With this, the training of the acquistion and the pinpointing skill to level 5 was in vain, as this is a nerf of 12.5% (at skill levels of 5). So 1.654 million SP are lost.

Ok we get a buff of 4.2 % on scan strength, but I could do without that if the deviation would stay the same. CCP could adjust the modifiers of the skills:

Astrometics: +4% scan strength, -6% deviation and -6% scan time
Rangefinding: +5% scan strength
Pinpointing: -6% deviation
Acquisition: -6% scan time

This results in the following multiclipators (compared to the old values) with all skills at level 5.
Scan strength: 1.2*1.25=1.5 (was 1.5)
Deviation: 0.7*0.7=0.49 (was 0.5)
Scan time: 0.7*0.7=0.49 (was 0.5)

Thereby, those who had trained all skills to 5 will still get the same bonuses after the changes.

Why? Kind of defeats the purpose of having a DSP for most cases. You can easily use the DSP scanning method now with the onboard scanner so CCP haven't nerfed it at all, in fact they've made it available to everyone now.

And you think that is good? I am ambivalent about this. I am somewhat leaning to the thinking, that filtering by sig sizes was not intended by CCP, but that it is rather emergent gameplay. And lets face it kspace (especially highsec) is crowded with 'explorers' that just mindlessly trawl for their favourite site, i suspect mostly blindly using the dsp charts (and its not an issue of DSP, regardless of what ppl say). While emergent gameplay, it also 'dumbs down' exploring - and that i personally do not like.

My bad, then this was a misunderstanding. Nevertheless the effect changes lead to more or less lost SP.

Some feedback now I've played with things:

* The shift+alt combination is very annoying, I shouldn't have to hold two keys at once for any reason

* I am glad you are allowing us to launch any number of probes, this keeps our gameplay options open. This could be best implemented with a slider that defaults to 7, but can be moved.

* The greatly reduced complexity of the new system is not a good idea. It would be better to make exploration sites which are aimed a new players easier to scan down, rather than making the scanning of everything easier.

* The Deep space probe removal is bad. They are currently used for checking a whole system for PVE signatures, which the new scanner replaces, but they are also used for checking a whole system for ships and structures which the new system does NOT do.

By removing deep space probes you are making it nearly impossible for me to use my wormhole safely, because I'm not going to spin my camera around looking for a new wormhole that spawned amongst 20-30 LADAR sites, and I'm not able to use combat probes because they only have 64 AU range, which is much smaller than my wormhole's radius.

How do you plan to let me discover new wormholes or ships as and when they appear?

A feature request while you're working with this section of code:

* A hotkey to start a probe cycle

Could you please let the colors be adjustable!

There are different levels of colorblind people out there!
Yes, I'm one of them.

E.g. the difference on the safety button between partial and full safety is barley visible, i.e. I may recognize a change in color when changing, but I'm not able to determine which kind of safety is currently on (at least for those two).

Unacceptable blindspots in the 'Spread' probe formation


My entire concern can be best summarized with this single image:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/78696860/MiniSnaps/Static/EveOnlineSpreadProbeBLINDSPOTS.png
The bottom half is where I properly fixed the formation. Having it further spread would once again create small blindspots on the upper/lower portions in between the probes towards the center probe.


There are blindspots in this formation. The pinpoint formation is fine, however if the spread formation isn't changed then I don't see it ever being used.