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Feedback for Hacking/Archaeology feature from 27/5/13 onward

First post First post
Author
Johan Toralen
IIIJIIIITIIII
#41 - 2013-05-28 12:11:56 UTC  |  Edited by: Johan Toralen
Omnathious Deninard wrote:
Sorry I can't take this part seriously, are you implying that someone would scan down a complex run the complex all the way up to the point the faction ships comes out, scan the ship and then warp off because they didn't like what loot was in there?


Yes some people collect escalations, scan the overseer, come back after the next downtime to scan him again. Rinse and repeat till jackpot is there. It works for escalations because the 24h timer resets every time you warp in and you have these sites for yourself. You can test this on regular ded sites but it doesn't make sense there because someone else will find the site and kill the overseer before you.
Has been like this for years and never was changed afaik. I guess because not too many ppl do it. Have to run quite a few anomalies to get enough escalations for steady income this way. farming 4/10 is more popular as far as i can tell.

Thread on reddit if you don't believe me:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/1aq9tv/free_tip_for_explorers_out_there/
Omnathious Deninard
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#42 - 2013-05-28 12:25:28 UTC
No need to provide evidence I believed you. I did not realize something like that was possible to do and it is almost disturbing that it is possible to do.

If you don't follow the rules, neither will I.

blink alt
Doomheim
#43 - 2013-05-28 12:25:31 UTC
NPCs still spawning after a failed hack. I thought the penalty was going to be more cans ejected?
Cordelia Mulholland IV
Hum Bole Enterprises
#44 - 2013-05-28 12:25:40 UTC
The actual piñata mechanics are fine and work quite well. Some niggly details that I concur with:

CCP Bayesian wrote:

- Collision is a pain, both with the size of the Data Sites and the positioning of some containers.

I've bounced off and got stuck on "invisible walls". That is always frustrating and sometimes bad for your ship. This is an EvE wide problem and not just in the new explo sites.

CCP Bayesian wrote:

- Picking can be difficult if you're blinded by the site contents.

Yes it is. White stuff on a white background isn't much fun.

CCP Bayesian wrote:

- The 'bad loot' is far too bulky so it is excessively penalising as you have to stop and sort it out.

This is a minor problem that people will probably adapt to.

The other points you have are IMHO either insignificant, incorrect or people being adverse to change. Don't take all of the moaning to heart.

If you're after stuff related to the new sites and not just loot spew...


  • There is no indication of which "cans" within the site you've already hacked. This is a step backward given we already have this functionality on TQ.


  • The rats that spawn in low-sec upon a failed attempt do not leave a wreck when you kill them. Is this just to upset people a bit more on top of their failed hacking attempt? If so, nice troll :-) If not, it's a bug.


I envisage the mini-game becoming tedious fairly quickly. But then a games company such as CCP probably already know that simple, luck based, non-strategic, low reaction, low skill, input heavy click fest mini games don't really hold long appeal to people who play in-depth, strategic and complex games like EvE.
Naomi Hale
#45 - 2013-05-28 12:31:14 UTC
I think what a lot of people are trying to say is this is about 'Tone.' The tone of this new system contrasts sharply with all existing content and that can make something jarring and unpleasant.

For me personally it's more about lack of depth and discovery. Odyssey's presentation at fanfest and it's own web page pitched it as exploration and moving away from combat sites, ship switching and sitting waiting for the module to hack a can. The new system does achieve those things but still doesn't feel like exploration. Hacking is good but feels out of place here and especially out of place in archaeology/relic sites, where it's a reskin of hacking rather than a skill of it's own.

I read this...

Odyssey Web page wrote:
EVE Online's nineteenth free expansion, Odyssey, offers new tools for exploring the stars, challenges you to breach the unknown for adventure and rewards, and to face what lies on the other side. A re-imagined scanning system, intuitive navigation and new exploration modules will aid you as you search the heavens for your next conquest. Some will encounter sites never discovered before, and others will be confronted with intriguing tests of skill and resolve. Ample rewards await those that return from their journeys with ships intact.


I expect something else. I know it's not any fault of the dev teams as I doubt one of you wrote that, but there it is.

'A re-imagined scanning system' is more of a change to the existing scanner system than a re-imagining, a good change but still just a change.

'Some will encounter sites never discovered before' they seem to be the same or very similar sites with three pieces of additional art assets added (looked up the models with TriExporter, two types of data hubs and an Ancient Battleship derelict, there is an intact version but as far as I know it's not used).

'Breach the unknown' we don't seem to be finding anything unknown as they are all labelled as pirate faction anomalies and pirate rats spawn at them. The loot is existing items (except some newer datacore variations) and even the junk loot is existing junk items.

Overall it's a good system for making Isk, getting certain items and as a spring board for future features and content.

The real problem is mine (and the explorer community's) for letting expectations cloud reality and what is feasible. I've been waiting for exploration to get attention again since Apocrypha and you never could have lived up to my wild dreams of wonder and adventure. Sorry for that. Sad

I'm Naomi Hale and this is my favourite thread on the forums.

Morgan Resnev
Blue Heart Industries
#46 - 2013-05-28 12:40:56 UTC
I got an awful lot of lag (during the fleet x/y operation) , to the point that I had to be fully zoomed out and on the lowest graphical settings in order to run in any capacity.

Not sure if a bug (No report submitted as of yet): During the capital cyno jump (I was in a Hel) the fitted module UI was still visible and i could still interact with it.
Kor'el Izia
#47 - 2013-05-28 13:07:08 UTC  |  Edited by: Kor'el Izia
CCP Bayesian wrote:

- Losing cans feels bad, particular after the effort of having to hack the container. This makes it feel like a penalty.

The more I watch this 30s clip commerical the more it feels like the old and new exploration system. Watch and feel

Why would I bother do something that makes me feel bad about myself? It doesn't matter if a fireman saves lives from a building, the ones he can't will forever taunt his memories, just like policemen with criminals that walks free due to lack of evidence.

If you wan't exploration to be more team friendly (which it inherently isn't) make it only throw up more cans when more ppl(+6/player up to max count) are on grid, you can't pick more cans even if you are multiboxing so it can only be used with other players. This will make one player able to get it all and not feel angry/depressed about himself/herself
Sven Viko VIkolander
In space we are briefly free
#48 - 2013-05-28 13:44:44 UTC
CCP Bayesian wrote:
For the people saying the 'loot pinata sucks' and the like could you vocalise the problems you have with it?

So far I've collated:
- It's not the way EVE has previously worked.
- Collision is a pain, both with the size of the Data Sites and the positioning of some containers.
- Picking can be difficult if you're not using a mouse.
- Picking can be difficult if you're blinded by the site contents.
- Loot haul seems low in comparison with how it was before.
- Losing cans feels bad, particular after the effort of having to hack the container. This makes it feel like a penalty.
- Not knowing what is any particular can so it feels bad not being able to make good choices.
- The 'bad loot' is far too bulky so it is excessively penalising as you have to stop and sort it out.


Mainly, clicking games are not fun. The push in the revamp of scanning seemed to be "less clicks for all," and that is a good thing. With the hacking game and esp. the loot spew, it simply reintroduced far more clicks into the system, and that's bad. If the mechanic is here to stay, I'd say put the cans on the overview at least. Collision is a pain, too, and a lot of the hacking sites could be moved away from the objects in the room a bit.
CCP Bayesian
#49 - 2013-05-28 13:48:16 UTC
blink alt wrote:
NPCs still spawning after a failed hack. I thought the penalty was going to be more cans ejected?


This is in the process of being fixed. Sadly it's a manual process and not easy to automate so it takes a long time! :(

EVE Software Engineer Team Space Glitter

CCP Bayesian
#50 - 2013-05-28 13:51:33 UTC
Cordelia Mulholland IV wrote:
The other points you have are IMHO either insignificant, incorrect or people being adverse to change. Don't take all of the moaning to heart.


Indeedy, I just want to make sure we have the main complaints noted so that we've not dropped the ball on user feedback.

Quote:
If you're after stuff related to the new sites and not just loot spew...


  • There is no indication of which "cans" within the site you've already hacked. This is a step backward given we already have this functionality on TQ.


  • The rats that spawn in low-sec upon a failed attempt do not leave a wreck when you kill them. Is this just to upset people a bit more on top of their failed hacking attempt? If so, nice troll :-) If not, it's a bug.


I envisage the mini-game becoming tedious fairly quickly. But then a games company such as CCP probably already know that simple, luck based, non-strategic, low reaction, low skill, input heavy click fest mini games don't really hold long appeal to people who play in-depth, strategic and complex games like EvE.


The first point is a bug which we're fixing. The second shouldn't happen as the failure rats are being removed. We're intending to increase the depth that hacking has as we go.

EVE Software Engineer Team Space Glitter

James Amril-Kesh
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#51 - 2013-05-28 14:13:59 UTC
And the god damn clouds are back. The only way to mitigate the effect these clouds have on my FPS is to zoom all the way out, but of course that isn't possible to do with the new loot mechanic.

So I guess I just can't run these ******* sites then because you insist on putting the clouds back even after years of people complaining about how pointless and stupid they are.

Enjoying the rain today? ;)

Random Woman
Very Professional Corporation
#52 - 2013-05-28 14:31:52 UTC  |  Edited by: Random Woman
Bah forum ate my post....

anyway.

Why change it until you have something that works? I d say the chnge from clicking once and watch bored, to click a lot bored is not a good one.

Maybe CCP can rethink their realease strategy, whenever you can answer the question: why are we doing this with "No idea, but it looks different and you can click stuff at random", well lets say, give it a bit more work then before realeasing it.
blink alt
Doomheim
#53 - 2013-05-28 14:34:20 UTC  |  Edited by: blink alt
I see that the solution to Central [Faction] Sparking Transmitter was to just move the spew containers away from the structure entirely. Even though it is a 100km burn from the warp in to get to the spew containers the site is doable now.
Vladimir Norkoff
Income Redistribution Service
#54 - 2013-05-28 14:36:03 UTC
CCP Bayesian wrote:
Cordelia Mulholland IV wrote:
The other points you have are IMHO either insignificant, incorrect or people being adverse to change. Don't take all of the moaning to heart.


Indeedy, I just want to make sure we have the main complaints noted so that we've not dropped the ball on user feedback.
So you will deign to listen to the feedback, even though you agree it is just insignificant, incorrect, or people adverse to change.... awesome.
Sheena Tzash
Doomheim
#55 - 2013-05-28 14:37:30 UTC
I guess you guys should probably lock the old thread then to avoid duplication or redundancy of posts.

Since this is the new one I'll just re-post my comments from the other one:

Tried the hacking mini game yesterday and I all I can say at the moment is that when the expansion comes out I simply won't bother with exploration anymore because its just not fun!

I tried with a Probe with hacking rigs, and reasonably high hacking skills (4s) and found the sites to be frustrating and boring.

1) Its a MASSIVE click-fest with no clear goal or objective that I can see other than 'click on all the pretty dots'

2) When a firewall comes up it seems to disable the other 'helpful' modules (like the spanner) so I can't click them.

3) The strength values on a firewall don't seem to relate to anything - I have around 70 points available and if I click a firewall with say a value of 10 I sometimes lose more or less than 10 points? So how can I decide which firewall to click if I don't know what the results will be?

4) If I just click on anything and everything and run out of clickable nodes and all I'm left with are firewall nodes (say 3 for example) but not enough points to do all 3, which node do I click? I can't see an 'end' node I need to reach so I don't know which node is best to click on. So its either take a random chance, run out of points and not be able to do the next one, fail.

I was fairly happy that the rats that spawn after a failure were only small and I could easily run away from them and use some drones to take them out.

The loot spillage affect to me is also very annoying simply because you put the work into getting this far to only get 10% of what your after - and most people won't be glad of the loot they got, they'll concern themselves with the stuff that they MISSED and so it'll seem like whenever you do exploration you'll LOSE something (or not gain 100%)

Even if you bring a friend the chances are that they'll be bored out of their minds waiting for you to scan down a site and then hack it just so that maybe they can click on some boxes that spew out and run away with the good stuff.

Personally I think the whole thing needs to be re-designed; at the end of the day you're taking an activity that before required ZERO skill (ie, click a can and wait for the module to finish) to now require some skill, understanding and a LOT of luck to finish.

You're also making an activity that before was done automatically within a decent time frame (less than 1 min) and 100% chance of success into something that can now take MUCH longer with no guarantee of success.

Basically this means you're EXCLUDING all the players who are bad at mini games.

1) HALVE the size of the mini game so that is short and quick (less than 30 seconds from start to finish)
2) If the hack is successful then the loot is left in ONE container for the hacker to access.
3) If the hack FAILS then you get the 'loot spawn' as before with SOME loot (but not the best).
4) If the user exits the mini game or the module ends then its NOT considered a failure
5) A failure only occurs when the hacker loses all points their in the mini game

At the end of the day the player has put in the time, effort and skills to FIND the site in the first place and therefore deserve SOMETHING for their time; especially if they've risked going into dangerous space to do it.

Giving loot upon failure means that the hacker now has a choice of action to take:

1) Spend more time (and risk of exposure) in completing the mini game for the best loot and 100% chance to full retrieval. Even if this means that they go so far in the mini game, find they can't complete it and cancel and try again. The additional time it takes to re-try is the risk they take.
2) Run the site quick and dirty to get SOME loot thrown out all over the place but not the best.
Zeta Kalin
Large Rodent Hunters
#56 - 2013-05-28 14:43:41 UTC
I haven't been exposed to the new explo system before today on SiSi. I must say that save a few minor problems (like some default overview not showing the right items) it's a huge improvement and very enjoyable.

Rewards seem on par with what it was before (but I only did a data site, so not significant sample size). Expected doom and gloom, left pretty confident, good work (and that's a from a monument shooter).
Rob Crowley
State War Academy
#57 - 2013-05-28 15:06:59 UTC
CCP Bayesian wrote:
- The 'bad loot' is far too bulky so it is excessively penalising as you have to stop and sort it out.

The biggest troublemaker in regards to bulky loot is part of the "good" loot AFAICS. As I noted in the old thread interface parts (e.g. for Guristas: Spare Parts, Power Couplings, Electronic Links, Armor Blocks, Computer Chips) drop as "good" loot in data sites often in stacks of 50-100 and are 1m³ per unit. This can fill up a cargo hold really quickly.

IMO there should be no loot bigger than a couple m³ at most in those surprise cans, neither good nor bad.
Raven Solaris
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#58 - 2013-05-28 15:29:03 UTC
CCP Bayesian wrote:
Cordelia Mulholland IV wrote:
The other points you have are IMHO either insignificant, incorrect or people being adverse to change. Don't take all of the moaning to heart.


Indeedy, I just want to make sure we have the main complaints noted so that we've not dropped the ball on user feedback.


So you didn't actually care about our feedback, you just wanted it so that you could check a box saying "we listened."

Nice, thanks.
Kahns
Ixion Defence Systems
#59 - 2013-05-28 15:46:18 UTC  |  Edited by: Kahns
I would echo some comments/complaints and add some of my own. Sorry if this is kind of long.

  • My biggest complaint is that radar and mag were already not great isk makers, and now they're set to be worse. Even with the newest version the average seems very low. Particularly if you consider that many will be doing this in random systems in low-sec and null, where you will occasionally get jumped. If you want to get people to explore low and null sec for exploration, there's going to need to be some real reward to do so, as the barriers for most are high. You're barely going to be able to pay for the occasional lost ship!

  • I actually enjoy the mini-game as it stands. The newest version that changed anti-virus helped substantially. Before they were very binary-- depending on the layout, you either won or lost. Now your decisions at least seem like they could alter the result. I definitely want more depth, but imo the minigame is not the problem at this point.

  • Can gathering is hard and frustrating. If you have tracking camera on, which I think was defaulted on for me, it's damn near impossible as your camera veers towards things you didn't intend. Things got better once I turned it off, but it still wasn't great. I got stuck on things, I couldn't tell when I was going to tractor and when the object was just out of range (no feedback), and the icons were small and hard to get... Even some of the new geometry seemed intended to frustrate. The trap circle thing around you in radar sites may have seemed like a good idea, but often you wind up stuck on it in very broken ways. It would be better with fewer cans, but that won't really solve the problem. My suggestion for the time being would be to give us something closer to the fanfest video, where the cans do not float far enough away that you have to move. Instead, they simply disappear before you can grab them all. Also, make the tractoring faster and more responsive. While this is even less eve-like than what's on singularity now, at least it wouldn't seem broken.

  • I have yet to find any truly exciting drops. One of the things that draws people to exploration is the randomness of it, and yet what I found on singularity has seemed very even and disappointing. If there are great drops happening, they're too rare to entice anyone. Again, please consider the danger of doing running these sites in low and null and how poorly this compares isk/effort wise to selling/doing complexes, running anomalies, mining post patch, ratting in belts or even salvaging. We're talking less than half the reward at the moment for a fairly risky and involved activity.

  • Some of the frustration with the new sites is that we're losing the old versions, and the new ones kind of pale in comparison. And for people who liked them, it's even worse that the new sites are just some objects tacked onto the old ones. Radar/mag sites weren't brilliant, but they offered a nice alternative to ratting that had OK isk payouts on average. I'm sad that these sites weren't added in as a lower level, with the old sites being left as a higher level where both combat and hacking was required.

  • Just to be straight with you all, very few people are realistically going to team up for this -- it's just not that cooperative an experience...

  • Last, to end on a positive, In my opinion scanning process itself is improved. I disagree with most forum posts I've seen complaining about the changes.

  • I don't hate it as much as that all makes it sound, I just think it's not going to be worth the effort and risk for most outside of hisec.
    Kahns
    Ixion Defence Systems
    #60 - 2013-05-28 16:03:45 UTC  |  Edited by: Kahns
    CCP Bayesian wrote:

    Indeedy, I just want to make sure we have the main complaints noted so that we've not dropped the ball on user feedback.


    I gotta say, after taking the time to test this and give feedback, this is pretty disheartening. I never thought I would write something this pithy, but at least pretend you're taking our feedback seriously.