Test Server Feedback

Luckily I was in a T3, otherwise I would have lost my 2,500 isk ship.
Please look at this one also, Bug Report ID 158937

Great! What about Hacking/Archaeology rigs? Seems they have no bonus to Coherence too.

I was under the impression that NPC were eliminated from exploration sites, thus enabling us to use Exploration Ships (like the Covert Ops) and not fit guns or tank modules.

If a Cruiser spawns and I'm in a covert ops, I would be forced to leave the site...

I hope this is a bug, no NPC should spawn ever. If I fail to hack a can, my punishment is that the can loot is lost forever, not that a NPC comes and forces me to leave the site forever as I'm not able to kill it with a covert ops.

Doesn't seem like a bug. If you fail a hack attempt once it spawns a single rat, if you fail it twice the can blows up.

Which the blowing up part is cool. I don't mind the rats personally since it sets some bar especially in low-0.0 sites.

All right,after a long search for one I finally ran one. I've done exploration for a long long time, so how to go about saying this…. everything in this new experience is awful.

After warping to a site I found the comm towers will not let you hack them (I'm guessing not competed yet?). But I start in on the data shards and well, the mini game is one big ball of frustration. First off, it takes far longer to do the mini-game then it did before to let a module hack. So sites now take a lot longer to do. And most importantly in lowsec that's time I'm not on the Dscan. My skills in game before this allowed me to hack any container rather quickly with only a really small few that took a long time, every mini game now feels like it takes longer than that.

On the first attempt at the hack I failed. This is after finding two tools to help and not wasting any points on hacking blockers before finding the core. Nothing like random number generated failure to put the explorer in a good mood! So now that a rat has spawned I have to fly back and get a combat ship just like I did before anyway, so thanks for removing the rats. So that annoyance is still there, all because? Something, something, "punishing failure", "rewarding success" yada yada, that in the end just all felt like I had to deal with a huge annoyance all because of random number generator. Great gameplay.

So after getting back, killing rat and starting new hack I got it. And then the loot pinata! To say the this is awful to do on a laptop trackpad is an understatement. It feels like it was designed with only a mouse in mind. I was able to grab only 4 containers. It was a chaotic, frustrating, clickfest. Too hard to click on them while moving quickly, and overshooting them was common. Even with no MWD it was hard to click on the right point, and just not fun. After all that then I get rewarded with the most awful loot and the sense of failure at what got a away. Good job guys.

On to the second container, now that I'm at 4x the time it used to take me to run one of these sites. The second container was all blockers in the mini game. Like 6 of them. So after failing that game when the new rat showed up strangely while fighting him the container blew up (I never activated a gun on it). So yea, more strange random failure or frustrating design? So in the end I took 4x-5x longer to do a site, and got a few thousand isk in rewards compared to an average of 12-30 million before (the loot was random data sheets and small arms… you know junk).

All in all now that I ran one, I feel frustration born dread in having to do these again for isk. Do not like at all.

I think the ammount of spammed cans should be reduced. I just found guritas data site in lowsec. There was 3 data cans. When I've scaned them with cargo scanner: I've got: first and second has only 1 decryptor, third has 1 decryptor and about 40 datainterfaces parts.
How many containters are spawned after successful hack? 15? 20? I wasn't count. But if it is 20 there is only 5% chance to catch this one with good loot. Inside other 95% are data sheets, small parts and so on.

Relic sites has a little better. Inside cans are 2-3 kinds of loot, the chance is then better. The best is in nullsec when is 5-6 types of loot in one can.

It should be repaired.
I have 2 ideas:
1. An amount of containters spawned after succesful analyzinn should be based on amount of proper loot.
2. As told ew posts above.There shouldn't be worthless loot (data sheet etc), but in every spawned containter should be loot worth of sale. Let it be 1 or 2 cheapest exploration/salvage parts but let it be useful.

Did run 3 low sec guristas relic sites:

The containers still were on top of each other in each site. Loot was abysmal (little over 1m isk average).
Hacking difficulty felt well balanced (125/30 on my site), about 70% success rate. Rat spawns are easy enough to run the sites in cov ops frig. The minigame still feels very random but there is at least a little bit of strategy involved now.

The loot spewing i find still horrible. It's by far the least enjoyable part of the new sites. The symbols are too small, too many cans - it really gets ridiculous after hacking the 3rd or 4th container (nevermind running multiple sites after another...), tractor beam feels painfully slow, keeping an eye on local and dscan is very hard because you have to focus so much on the cans. I really wish you would reconsider this mechanic or use it for what it feels like: a punishment. Trust me you'll get a lot of flack for this come Odyssey because it really isn't fun.

All in all i think these sites could be much more enjoyable if they were centered around the hacking game not the loot spewing.
My idea would be to have in each hacking game not just a system core but also a node that leads one level deeper in the security system. So player can choose between hacking the core or consider to to take a risk and go deeper with remaining virus strenght to find even better loot. And then should this fail the loot spews as punishment and rats spawn.

I just don't see the logic behind the loot explosion after successfully completing the mini-game... It's not a reward it's a hindrance.

Fail the hacking attempt you get the loot explosion.
Succeed the hacking attempt you loot the container like you would normally.

The loot explosion is not rewarding and if it is introduced when patch day comes I will purposely just de-spawn the site for something better to spawn.. and this is coming from someone who does exploration every single day.

Why do the cans scatter after SUCCESS??? I don't understand the logic behind this. As an active explorer it makes me sad to see this implemented..

Regarding the balancing of these sites - it looks as though the T1 exploration frigates will be the optimal ships for running radar and relic sites in lowsec (and possibly 0.0, depending on what kind of rats spawn in response to failed hacking attempts) due to their hull bonus to virus strength. Assuming the rewards for the sites are buffed to match or exceed current SiSi payouts, this seems to present a rather lopsided risk:reward ratio, since a minmaxed hacking-fit heron costs around 10m at most but can potentially be used to farm faction tower BPCs, decryptors, and the doodads needed to manufacture the new T2 scanning mods...