Test Server Feedback

Took a Heron with a virus coherence/strength of 90/30 out through nullsec this evening and eventually found a relic site (Ruined Serpentis Science Outpost) and a data site (Central Serpentis Sparking Transmitter). The five cans in the data site were over 100 km away from the warpin point, which seemed like an odd nuisance. The hacking and loot chasing took around 15 minutes; I was able to access four of the cans successfully and got a total of 37m in loot plus an interface BPC that the game can't price accurately. That seemed OK to me. I then did the relic site, which had six cans, and was able to access all of them. The hacking and looting took around 20 minutes, and I got stuff with a combined value of around 14m, which is not so good.

I don't actually find the spewing and can-chasing mechanics to be all that bad, they just require a slightly different fit than you might otherwise use. As long as your ship is reasonably quick and agile, it's fairly straightforward to nab the cans, and I think that the people who are criticizing it as being twitchy are being excessively hyperbolic - it's a bit more fast-paced than other forms of pve in eve, but quake 3 it is not.

I've now run a fair few of the new relic sites on SiSI but none have dropped any of the Spatial Attunement Units that are required to build the new T2 scanning mods. Obviously, you can't generalize too much from a small number of sites, but it may be worth making sure that the drop rate on those has been tuned to ensure a reasonable supply if the mods are intended to sell at a prices that are comparable to those of other T2 modules.


edit: as an aside, the Restoration Nodes in the nullsec hacking minigames are pretty nasty/annoying because if you can't nuke them as soon as you uncover them, they can very quickly make the game unwinnable. It might be worth toning down the rate at which they boost the coherence of the other defensive nodes, or capping the amount of coherence they can restore - the first time I ran into one, it ended up pumping a firewall up to something like 400 coherence, which is ... not pleasant.

I haven't had time to catch up with the thread, so just throwing some feedback quickly.

Ran a few data and relic sites in lowsec today.
Some were "finished", others were still with containers one on top of another. All were Angel sites (not the best ones there is, but heh, didn't have much time to travel)

Hacking minigame needs a less opaque window. The minigame was more challenging this time, but overall quite boring after the 3rd session. I hope the "improvements" will get in soon, otherwise it is just clicking and hoping you don't uncover a strong defence mechanism. I'm not really a fan of it in its current state. And as stated by others, it makes the sites longer to clear.
Overall, I managed to open almost all the containers, the few fails only happened on mainframes/remains (damn virus suppressors!) with stats 125/30 and 70/20 for my data analyzer and relic analyzer respectively (no access to my fully skilled exploration char until mirror is completed.)

Spewing cans is still the most tedious and aggravating thing there is in these sites. It's just a pain. Looking forward to testing it with a frig, once the NPC spawns are removed. I was in a Gnosis, it was hell to move around the collidables. And this will have to go with D-scan spamming in low and null sec !! It's just plainly irritating (and I mean it, it's not just annoying. I was perfectly calm before logging into Sisi, and it got on my nerves... That's a sign something is wrong with a game.)

Loot seems still completely off to me (maybe I was really unlucky though), but I barely grabbed 16 M once, and all the other sites were just crap (say 1-2 M tops) Very frustrating, that's a LOT of mouse clicks for almost nothing. Combine this with the increased time needed to clear the site, and the income vs time spent is just going down the drain all the more.

I've liked exploration a lot until now, but I don't see myself going on with this activity unless the loot far outweights the excessive frustration of this spewing mechanism. At least, until now, it wasn't really "fun", but it wasn't tedious neither. From now on, it will just be a painful clickfest. I can only see some potential of fun in the minigame, once it has been completely fleshed out (not yet there though...)

Loot has never been consistent in exploration sites, unlike combat where you can put a consistent isk value on them.
The draw is the rare jackpot: I have sat near hack cans for 10 minutes, to get nothing. The new method can reward me with nothing much faster, so that I can move on to another site more quickly (and easier scanning helps, too.)

So far I think they've said potential loot - if you could scoop all of it - will be doubled compared to today, plus will include new rare items such as capital rig T2 BPC's and faction POS BPC's.

That's a pretty big load of worry removed, to be honest.


I am still wondering about Grav sites though, and if you're intending to make them anoms in WormHoles as well. I can't shake the feeling that this is just going to cause them to be much, much too dangerous to actually use.

I suppose I'm fairly strange. I must be the only person on the test server who actually likes the new hacking minigame compared to the old "run module, wait, get bacon - or not" mechanic. I much prefer being involved in the hacking mechanism than passively waiting for the module to cycle and the RNG gods to say "You are worthy".



The scattering mechanic... well.. I don't hate it. It's not completely awful. I do agree though that it would be better as a failure mechanic instead. FAR better, indeed.

Soundwave said that there will be no NPC-Spawns in those sites at release. NPC-Spawns only in Wormhole-Space.
Also they want to implement a mechanic that if you failed to hack container #1, for example, there will be more containers spewed out if you succeed in hacking the next container.

Then it's bugged. Hacked 2 sites in hi and low sec, booth spawned a npc cruiser on fail, so I had to get out as I had no defence modules on my Helios, only a single lame drone.

Where do you guys find all the sites? Wanted to do a test yesterday, but had not much time and couldn't find any sites. It's really not optimal that we have to waste so much time on finding the sites we're supposed to test... there should be several of them in every system on Sisi.

Then I must have been unlucky, scanned two systems and didn't find any so I just assumed they were still as rare as on TQ.

It seems that for the most part the pinata/spew/vomit of loot is not a welcome change. Unfortunately CCP does not seem interested in dropping it nor the player feedback on it.

The mini game appears to be improving and with the hope that this hacking game could be used for additional purposes (hacking POS passwords, hack jet cans etc) CCP appears to be on an interesting track. Especially since this mechanic will likely not be dropped either.

So if the hacking could be used in many other aspects of the game it seems the loot spray should also be shared with other activities too. For example, pvp sees a lot and i mean a lot of violent decompression of ships unlike what could be controlled decompression of exploration sites. It seems appropriate then that loot spew mechanic be added to player ships that blow up. Come to think of it, all ships, player or rat, pvp or pve, should spew their contents due to their violent ends.

Yes, this would add a great deal of sense and realism to the game. Actually, with each explosion should come a pre set particle cloud based on ship size. The more explosions the more particles adding to the chaos of battle. Frapsing those battles would be spectacular!

CCP, make it so!