Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Apologies if this is not the best place for this.

Ironically, the Odyssey update, which is about exploration, has ruined exploration IMO. For me, exploration was fun because it was a good solo activity with appropriate risk and reward mechanics. Summary of what I don't like:

1. Auto listing sigs when you enter a system takes the mystery out of what may or may not be hidden there. I believe clicking the system scan button to list the sigs was better. Also, the auto listing feature continues to be buggy, requiring me to check and uncheck "show anomalies" to get the list to appear properly.

2. There isn't a lot you can excel at in eve as a solo player and exploration was certainly a good solo activity. What was the point in making it a two pilot activity with the loot explosion? The loot explosion is just more time wasted after already waiting to finish the mini game (I don't mind the mini game though better than waiting to kill the rats guarding the can IMO).

3. At first I thought the unguarded sites would be great because I could ninja all the null sec sites in a covops ship. However, now that we see everyone has the same idea, it's clear that exploration in covops makes the whole thing too easy. It's turned from a risk/reward scenario to a scramble to see who can clear all the systems first. Taking a combat-worthy ship into low sec to clear sites was where all the risk was in lowsec exploration and now that's just a scramble too.

4. Lowsec site loot nerfed? I've gotten nothing but junk from lowsec sites since Odyssey. Exploration was the only enticing thing about low sec but now it's not even worth it. What has happened here? Have the sites been nerfed all around or are there more sites now, each having less loot? Whatever the case they aren't even worth running now (or have I been unlucky?).

Sadly Odyssey has made exploration worse and not better. I'm hoping there will be an overhaul and we can see appropriate risk/reward levels again.

I know how it works. It's still silly. Thanks for adding nothing to this discussion.

If you want to do your mags and radar sites with rats go explore wormholes. There is plenty of rats on them and plenty of money for you to make

I live in a wormhole.

Yeah I hadn't really thought about it that way but you are correct: where is all the new stuff to discover?

I live in a wormhole so I can make plenty of ISK farming sleepers. Sleeper sites are boring though as you are just doing the same grind over and over. I preferred to explore in my connecting lowsec systems as exploration had elements of the unknown and thrill of discovery. Now I'm back to grinding sleepers and wondering what new thing I can do to replace my exploration activities.

YOU ARE THE ONLY OTHER PERSON TO POST WHY DO YOU QUOTE THE OPS 5 PARAGRAPH ESSAY?

The "elite profession" factor won't return - as much as I'd love to.
I am not saying that any of us should "move on", but that's the way I guess CCP wants it.

Not a good crowd control product move right there, as I'm not doing such pve stuff anymore - but that's me.

I wonder if CCP thought that making exploration easier would get more people into the sites, which would encourage pew pew to happen because the competition for the sites was so fierce and the reward so plentiful?

No to this, regardless of why or how or when. Newbies need to understand from day one that their hands will not be held in the sandbox.


For those people, there are games exactly like that. They are called theme parks. Blizzard makes one, if you wish to go try it out.



For all the simplicity and ease-of-use that Odyssey has brought into exploration, the activity has been cheapened by at least that much as well. I applaud CCP's vision with regards to exploration. When you hear them talk about it, you get the sense that they really know what exploration should be like. Unfortunately, when they tried to commute that vision into game code, nearly everything was lost in translation and we end up where we are now. Adding more depth that the casual treasure hunter will miss completely and hiding difficult, advanced things to do (true difficulty, not merely fighting the UI) are the absolute minimum they can do.

Odyssey was supposed to be about the unknown and discovery. Instead it's about easter-egg hunting and stealing all the candy before someone else can get to it.

As much as I enjoy the hacking minigame and as much as I have no particular complaints about the loot spew (I can understand the complaints of others, though), the entire process now feels like it has indeed been thoroughly cheapened and made common. Whereas before the cold dark cosmos offered up no secrets unless you looked for them, those same previously-hidden mysteries are now rendered into a notice automatically given to your scanner, telling you that there is busywork to do if you are feeling so inclined as to do it.

In their haste to generously and benevolently inform the player that there are interesting things out there to see and do, they've stepped beyond the hinting mentioned at Fanfest and perhaps have come a little too close to veritable spoon-feeding.

Don't get me wrong, I continue to periodically run sites. I enjoy the activity of scanning them down and it's something to do when I want a bit of easy money that doesn't involve talking to an agent or cycling extractors. It is, however, not the same at all anymore as it used to be.

I thought the changes were going to be good. I thought that making it so people had to do it in groups might be good but in actual fact all that the whole floating can thing has done is to make multiboxing necessary to do hacking sites effectively.

I don't know what it's like anywhere else in New Eden but where I am I have yet to see two actual players doing hacking sites together. I've either seen one character who misses half the loot or two characters played by the same person (I know most of the alts/mains in my area). It doesn't seem to me like it's actually made exploration into a group activity at all, merely penalised those that play with only one account.

This doesn't affect me, I have multiple accounts but I don't like the fact it does penalise those without multiple accounts for what I see as no actual game benefit.

I would personally like to see them halve the loot cans so one person who's quick can pick them all up or just remove the pinata thing entirely (I really don't see what it adds to exploration other than frustration). I would like to see another layer of exploration sites appear that are harder to scan down and have a combat element to them. It would also be nice if there was something that actually resembled the exploration rhetoric we've been hearing from CCP although I do understand that is somewhat harder to implement than what they actually did implement for Odyssey.