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I tested the new expansion yesterday and focused on the scanning and exploration side of it? After all; it was promoted as an exploration expansion.

The scanning changes are an improvement, It worked fine. I was able to scan down the sites faster not having to rearrange and relaunch my probes all the time. Good job, there.

The minigame was a mixed bag. It feels repetitive after ten sites. Sometimes the sites I did (most of them were in lowsec) were ridiculously hard. Even with max skills in a covops and a t2 module it was impossible to get through. That's not a lot of fun. Give me at least a chance. I'v lost games due to wrong choice I made. I can live with that, that's part of the game. But sometimes your choices do not matter, you're screwed anyway. But anyway, it is better than the click and wait of before.

The loot scattering!I cannot say with enough words how I dislike it. It sucks all the joy I had out of exploration. I once just barely finished a hacking game and my joy for it was instantly replaced by frustration as I had to chase some stupidly small cans. It is the bridge too far. If it was the intension of forcing group play into a mostly solo game aspect. You failed. It's boring as a solo player so imaging how it must be like when you're in a group. Make scattering a aspect of failing a hack or scatter the loot after a your second attempt was succesful. But this is so stupid. Why lasts the same salvage hours in a wreck but only seconds in this can?

You specifically said the income would be the same. Maybe I've had a bad run but I did 12 data and relic sites in low sec and I found 1 (one) decryptor and 0 (zero) T2 salvage. Total value around 7 mil. (and a cargohold full of crap) Note that I did not take any scrap containers as I know these contain scrap. Look at your loot tables!
As a second remark, it takes a lot more time to clear the sites so I cannot do as many as before in the same timeframe. That also cuts into my income.

Thanks for fixing the POS anchor arrow magnification scaling. Finally can anchor with out kill my eyes or punching the screen out in frustration after the 10th module anchor.

This brings up my point: If the devs had actually even put up one fully equipped POS while using a monitor something less than the wall size units that you have you would have immediately known that something needed to be changed. Another nail in the "CCP Dev's don't play the game like the customers coffin". Go out and buy some small monitors as part of your QA process. Get the CSM to use them when you demo new ideas.

I realize CCP announced the ship skill change info in advance. That being said, yesterday I was less than 2 days from plugging in the Command Ships skillbook. Today, it will literally take me the same amount of time to plugin the Amarr Titan skillbook as it will for the Command Ships skill (just around 2 months) which makes me a saaaaaaad panda.

I thought that any unfinished progress towards the original BC 5 skill would turn into unallocated SP when the conversion was made from BC 4 to Racial BC 4, but I was apparently mistaken and tossed in my own assumptions while reading the devblog about it. Had I put everything together that it would now take an additional 2 months of training to get into an Abso or Damnation, I would not have bothered training towards BC 5 for the last month in the first place.

I guess I just don't really see how it would have hurt to unallocate SP in unfinished progress to level 5 when doing the skill conversions; had this been the case I could still allocate that SP in a way that feels effective rather than having it sit unfinished, having no intention of flying Command Ships now on this character after actually seeing the changes live.

Oh well, I fail at reading comprehension apparently and it was just a few weeks of effectively wasted training. I feel better having complained about it though

So just read to the end here and not much to add outside one item that only one person partially mentioned, the new gate fire graphic.

I'm fine with the new gate graphic always being blue looking (i.e. perm gate fire look) but then "gate fire" replacement is some hard to see minor electrical effect that is easily missed unless you are glued to the screen. That might be fine for those ADHD kids at a high traffic gate with instant lock inti's but some of us gate camp as a relaxing activity out in the middle of BFE where you might have one jump an hour or two and we aren't looking to stare at the gate non-stop for hours. For us Eve is up on a second monitor and it's the PVP equivalent of mining. You all REALLY need to made the new affect "flashy" or something where we can notice it out the corner of our eye just like the old graphic.

Other than that, ditto bring back the undock button, getting rid of the new camera follow affects by dealt, an option to disable the gate warp transitions (and the new radials buttons which actually take more clicks, not less, which is a MASSIVE UI FAILURE), etc.

I'm fine with never hacking again and some of the other changes I'm indifferent to but the crap around the gates has a huge effect on the way I play and to the point I'm probably going to unsub one of my two accounts (both of which I pay for with hard cash) as he is a full time BFE gate camper.

Moar skills...

Well I love the fact that getting in to certain dreads will now only take me one hour but i think there has been some confusion has to how the "fly it after patch" has been stated.

Now I know I can still fly an Archon, even though it states I have to train 32 more days on the jump skills (which imho is worth forcing for the future) but I think many people were believing that they would see their jump skills also be changed to match these changes as a part of the "still able to fly it after patch". I was one of them, then again is this work in progress? as I haven't seen a Dev reply to this.

As for the launcher, dunno what everyone is on about. I used it only for patching then kept my normal short cut to the exe file to use the normal login through the game app. The launcher from my experience makes logging in alts a pain in the damn neck. Personally I feel like you copied Microsoft where they removed the start button by re-adding the eve launcher.

Also undock/captain quarters buttons... too damn big and I agree with others that it should of been optional.

You are my hero, thank you sir

After reading all the changes and what people have said so far, this expansion is very anti-bot schemed.

Hacking mechanic, non static ice belt belts etc.

I like that

Non static, respawning ore belts please.

So far I have done missions with my Typhoon Fleet Issue and has been amazing . So far I'm enjoying the new things and adapt myself to the new content.

Not everything can be good, while my Typhoon was better, my Machariel lost certain capabilities, but will adopt new tactics to these new challenges

Was told by Maximus Aerelius this would be the place to post this.

There are obvious frame rate spikes with the new jumping effect (and also undocking). My PC is no slouch but turn on the frame rate monitor with ctrl+F and see if the game is significantly dropping frames during the animation. Low frame rates in games can make anyone get headaches or slight motion sickness. This is heightened by the fast animation through a tunnel. When a person gets motion sickness while driving a car, there are symptoms such as if there are rows of trees on either side of the row, it will start to look like a slide show. I'm pretty sure this has a relation to low frame rates in games visibly simulate motion sickness, and can cause it by this affect. Another note is the ear is in tune with what the eye sees. The sound effects for traveling through the jump gates is smooth while the visuals are not. It must be mentioned that no one has said anything about undocking. The first couple seconds of undocking I notice frames dropping as well. I'm not a game designer so I don't know what is causing this or how to improve it but this is surely one of the reasons why people are getting headaches/nausea.

I for one love the automatic camera and jump animation. It definitely seems like getting to the next system is quicker. I find myself going a few jumps and before I realize it I'm at the destination. Also having the automatic camera makes it easy for me to look at things in space that are on my overview by clicking them, instead of waving around the mouse trying to find stuff. However I understand why some people are getting motion sickness. On my older machine I tried running 2 clients across 2 1080p monitors which was rendering similar to 4 full-screen clients at the same time. It didn't pan out the way I wanted because going through warp the frame rate was not smooth and caused me to feel sick. This is similar to what the new jump animation does.

I'm happy with the changes and additions but it must be noted the frame rate drop during undocking and jumping sequences.

My specs are i7-2600 @ 3.4GHz 8 GB DDR3 RAM 180GB SSD NVidia GTX 650 Ti BOOST SuperClocked

The frame rate stutters several times through jump tunnels and also noticeable after undocking. Main reason why some people don't notice the frame rate drop is because of the high speed of the animation in the tunnel. Once you notice it's very obvious.

Really like most parts of the expansion so far, especially the ship balancing! (Please put Fozzie and kil2 in charge of a lot more features!)

However I have found a few things very annoying.

First off some exploration site still have the super annoying dust that was suppose to have been removed according to your patch notes...

I found a few sites that were listed as either relic or data site that were in fact full on combat sites... luckily I knew they looked like combat sites and made sure to cloak. I feel sorry for the poor noobs that will die to these sites cause someone just made all mag and radar sites into relic and data sites without test to make sure they were in fact those sites and npc free, like your patch notes say. (Submitted bug reports on the ones I've found so far.)

The hacking mini game... anyone who has played a recent AAA title knows how annoying they become after the 100th time playing them. I really don't understand why they were added to the game. But if they are here to stay please at least make them somewhat entertaining, people seek to master things but right now its all luck, I'm tried of playing the minigame only to lose because I got an impossible to pass board.

The most annoying feature, and one said over and over on test server feed back is the loot spew... I don't like wildly clicking. I was told that the loot on the test server were just place holder ... only to find out its the same loot table on release? WHY IS THERE COAL AND USELESS CARGO FILLING PI IN THE LOOT SPEW?! This whole feature is fail in my opinion...

Thank you for removing combat ships from the relic and data sites though.