Test Server Feedback

As a person who does exploration a little more I felt like I should offer my 2p

1) Running the system scanner ONCE is fine. More than once is a nice graphic but after a while becomes very annoying, especially since it doesn't seem to actually DO anything (sites may come and go but its hard to see / notice them)

2) If the system scanner IS running can we PLEASE have a constant D-Scan. It doesn't make any sence that my ships sensors are looking for sites on the edge of space and yet if I want to see if someone is creeping up behind me I have to manually click a button every 10 seconds or so.

3) Re-sizing and altering a single probe didn't show the others being changed, but then did - I think this is on the list to be fixed.

4) Hacking - I assume that this is mostly unfinished as it seemed broken in more than a few ways:

- I had the option to both open (with the mini game) and (open container) which bypassed the mini game and I got the loot?

- Even when I failed I got the message about loot being dropped?

- The cans themselves rejected the use of data analyser module as it wasn't needed - yet the little 'splash' screen as I warped to the site did say I needed one?

To be honest I'm not a big fan of the mini game - so far I haven't managed to understand HOW it works - but even if I did it seems to act more as a distraction than adding anything to the game. I can see more people getting ganked as they were busy looking at the mini game to think of checking Dscan.

For me the tension is the waiting around for the modules to finish - keeping an eye out and checking for theats while my modules are working adds to the tension and excitement. If I now have to jump through all these annoying mini game 'hoops' 5 or 10 times in a site then its going to make the mini game VERY annoying to deal with.

Can't we have an option where the mini game is potentially a quicker way of hacking the node, but using a module has a minimum time so that someone who is good at the minigame can hack them quickly while someone who doesn't will have to wait for their modules to finish.

5) Exploration Missions

I would imagine that its a little too late to add any new features before the expansion, but why aren't there exploration missions?

Wouldn't it make sense to go to an agent who says "We need you to find and hack an angel installation and recover something".

Same would apply with 'relic sites' where the agent could say "We've heard rumours of a relic in the system 'xyz' and we need you to recover 'something important'"

If you want carebears to come to lowsec they need consistancy - some of the problem with exploration is that its 'feast and famine' and can be very inconsistant. If you take a mission they will tell you the system and the signature name so you can scan just the ONE. Obviously the site spawns when you enter the system and once it has its available to all to see (much like a regular combat mission)

Even with reduced rewards I think exploration missions can act as both an extended tutorial for new pilots and a nice PvE content addition where lower level agents can offer 'high sec only' sites and the higher level agents can offer low sec, null sec and far off systems.

We are aware of the problem, the system isn't telling you that I was attaching these to existing reports :) There are quite a few submitting reports (hopefully they are getting emailed that I'm actioning their reports )

Also, your reports were nicely written. Thanks! It makes a nice change

I have been mislaid by the fact that my only BR that wasn't about scanning (T2 production) was attached to a defect with a "we are already aware of the problem" statement. Anyway, glad to know that there are others testing the system.




YW. I know how painful is to hunt bugs without sufficient details.

And while you are at it. Is it possible to change the GUI to actually keep non 100% scan results? I have never quite understood why those where not kept in the overview.

I know they might be off, and yes, if I do a new scan and get the same sig as a result on the next scan it should only keep the newest result. (Yes I know that many times you would then get a point downgraded to a circle or sphere when scanning down two close sites, but I can live with that, just keep my results, ok?)

Thank you.

Edit:
In a more advanced version we could have a checkbox on non 100% scan results to mark them for persistence. Then I could select any result and have it persisted between scans. Even multiple results on the same sig if I really wanted to. Now that woul be really handy. Even for combat scanners I would think. ("I think he has a safe around here." *Check*)

Was it intentional to make scanning so easy that there is no need to train anything beyond Astrometrics 3?
Wi you consider adjusting signature strengths to compensate for the new system and modules?

Great Work CCP welldone I like the changes so far!!!

We probably will not touch existing signatures all that much, but with these changes we're opening up the possibility for new signatures in the future. We have some plans in this regard, maybe for winter (can't promise anything tough).

Really a matter of opinion on this, but I am pretty sure people will adapt fast with combats, so nothing much to say about this. Personally I believe that the scanning overlay has much potential to be integrated with the directional scanner, and thus become an intel toold that could take the place of local. Hope you want to work along those lines, at least, becasue it really does not make sense to have an overlay that shows every site, but then doe not show the content of the directional scanner, which works exactly in the same way....



This is where I believe you are dropping the ball, hard.

What you are doing here is to give a working UI to people who use the method YOU like, and a clunky interface to people who do not. From my standpoint it really looks like a child that bring away the ball if the other children don't want to play with the rules he wants.

I hope you realize what you just said: we give you formations if you scan like we tell you. If you don't, even if your method is potentially better than ours, you will have to waste additional time fighting the interface, so our method is better.

Seriously, I DO hope I am not understanding things correctly, because, if I do, this is the most unsandboxy thing that I read since the Incarna debacle, and the most themeparkish addition that I have seen in a LONG time in this game. I really really do hope you'll think long and hard before injecting a theme park approach to scanning. And the way to avoid it is straightforward, just add one or two customizable layouts...

Well, if that was the case, we would only create a single method and prohibit all others, which we are not doing.



All I'm saying is that we only have so much bandwidth and we chose to focus our attention on one method, while still aiming to keep as many of the others possible as we can. The key difference here is that while we can strife to keep the options possible, we can't promise to keep them viable. For the most part they should be - the fact you can launch many probes at once for instance should speed up any method you use. Moving your probes into a formation of your own making should also in most cases be no harder or more time consuming than with the current system. You should not be fighting the interface any more than you do currently, etc.



We're not telling people they HAVE to scan in only one way. There is still plenty of wiggle room to improvise and do things your way. On the other hand, the lack of focus of the system is one of the major pain points people have in learning the system and providing them with easier way to learn it is very beneficial IMO. Also, we do plan to allow people to save their own formations at some point, we just don't have time to implement it for Odyssey, but its been in the design from the start. We aim to add it in a point release if time permits.

This is a major flaw in your software development process. This relationship with two separate features should have been addressed from the beginning.