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I think you're thinking about it wrong. The problem is not that people "are used" to getting all the goodies on success. The problem is that when you're looking at these cans fly out, you're going to be thinking "I'm losing that one, I'm losing that one, I'm losing that one..." and so rather than a "what did I win?" it's "well I won this, but I lost all those other things". The same gains, presented differently, can feel very different. Nobody's mad when they're ratting when they warp to a belt and there's no officer there - but they sure would be mad if they warp in and a second later the officer warps out. It's about what you interpret as a loss vs a gain. Once the you "win" the minigame, you interpret all that loot as yours. It's set up in a way so that this last part doesn't feel like it's about seeing how much loot you get: it's about how much you can avoid losing. People won't like that.

I'm not sure if there's alternative ways to do it: one idea is making the cans scatter far away but not expire for some time, so that a solo explorer can "win" everything - but at the cost of spending much more time at the site and therefore lowering their loot per hour. People who work together can make more money because they can chain sites and complete them faster. However I'm not sure how well this can be balanced (especially if running these things actually becomes profitable enough people start doing them again).

Now, if the hacking game goes multiplayer (including both options for cooperation and opposition) then there really is a good reason to bring friends.

I also like the proposal upthread that some times the game is about repair. Perhaps even both (you have to use repair to even get to the defenses that you have to overcome to get to the core, etc.).

But this looks like a good start.

[EDIT: EvilweaselSA, I'm not convinced that that's a bad thing. "The one that got away" is the basis of any number of stories; it would keep players hungry, and make a minigame out of identifying the container types and pulling them in as quickly as possible, instead of "push button, receive bacon." I'm fond of the idea that EVE is more complex than those games that are carefully engineered to give you reward sensations as often as possible.]

The thing that confuses me about this system is that it doesn't fit into EVE game play. EVE is supposed to be about commanding or ship. For me whenever I hacked a can I was sitting at the helm of my ship sipping my coffee while I commanded my nerd in the basement of my ship to hack the can.

I'm a new character and have solely been an explorer since the start of my playing. I'll save my judgement of the system till i try it out myself. Unfortunately lately I have been trying to look elsewhere in the EVE universe for a more profitable profession. If this loot'splosian turns out to be as infuriating as opening up a hacked can that drops nothing now is and if the mini-game is just there to lengthen the time in site I'll most likely just start running only the combat sites. And it's not about getting the most isk/hr, exploration has always been fun for me and the isk was a nice bonus, but still i want to sustain my capsuleer with some pvp ships to learn(get blown up) in and the occasionally shiny ship that's just fun to fly around from time to time.

Mirajane Cromwell, we call those things other players. In this instance failure is penalised by NPC spawn and the hacking site self destructing if you fail too often.

I've asked this before, but could we get a clear explanation of exactly what the radar/mag site ihub upgrades do and the degree to which they do it per level? The lack of information about what these upgrades do (if they just pull sites from the rest of the region, pull sites from everywhere in that pirate space, create the chance of new sites, or just are plain broken) means they're very underused and it's not something we can really work out for ourselves.

Since you're redoing these sites, it seems relevant.

stop trying to make yourself invulnerable to pvp tia

After having watched the prototype presentation from fanfest all the way through now, I see you're fond of the "RPG" elements you've created in the hacking game. Let's carry the parallel a little further...

So you've played a mini-game of find the cores and destroy them via the RPG game, avoiding or surviving the traps along the way. At this point, in most RPG games, you get the "loot all" option to strip the corpse of anything valuable in one click. Game developers have learned that players detest tedium, *but will go through it and complain loudly*, in order to gain their rewards.

CCP is taking the opposite direction here and not only forcing you to run around and pick up all the rolling bits of loot off the floor one by one, you've also got to be quick about it before the stuff slips down a drain in the floor and is gone forever. Is this wise? Does it fit within the expected behavior of the game based on current mechanics? Or are you going over the edge and adding arbitrary difficulty after the player has completed his quest?

I urge you to consider your direction here and how far you're taking it. Simply hoping that it will drive more people to work together in exploration sites to overcome arbitrary game mechanics is optimistic. Put people in the exact situation and see how they react to it, and make sure it's not the people who designed the feature as it stands - they're predisposed to think its cool already. Is it really going to be fun for multiple people when only one is doing the hacking?

If someone in my corp said, "Hey, I'm running a hacking site, and I need you to come wait next to me and help scoop loot once I'm done", I'm likely to turn him down to keep belt ratting, running anomalies, camping a gate, or spinning my ship. If you want multiple people running the sites, make it engaging for all of them, not just one of them.

Yep I have to agree with this sentiment as well.

I can see this loot explosion being fun at first but irritating later on because its not much fun to chase after the loot that you've spent all this time to get in the first place!

Compare this to the new belt ratting 'tags4sec' business, the mechanics consist of:

1) Warp to belt [No fun]
2) Find rat that drops tag [No fun]
3) If no rat, return to 1 [No fun - repetitive]
3) Kill rat [Fun]
4) Get tag [Result]

Now lets look at running an exploration site

1) Warp to system [No fun]
2) Deploy probes [No fun]
3) Scan down x number of sites [No fun - repetitive]
4) Hack Site [Mini-game, fun-ish, repetitive]
5) Run after loot [ARGH!]

I'm sorry but I dislike the idea of having to go through all those steps, take all that time to get my reward only for it to quite literally RUN AWAY from me!?

Potentially if im not fast enough to react (or most likely be playing pinball against a structure) I could walk away with nothing.

Also bear in mind that we're now adding more elements to delay the player (ie, chasing down cans) and direct their attention away (ie, mini game) from checking local & Dscan and those elements will only further discourage players from going into lower sec space if they feel like they have to jump through more time delaying hoops and expose themselves for longer in more dangous space.

Once again, what about Ladars?

Don't do drugs.