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Dev Blog: Exploration Sites Statistics Post Odyssey

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Johan Toralen
IIIJIIIITIIII
#121 - 2013-06-28 11:59:41 UTC  |  Edited by: Johan Toralen
Paul Uter wrote:
How notion of cov ops oline is a personal agenda ??

What of someone personal agenda is interesting game and not maximizing isk/hour ???


Can you please rephrase your first question? I don't understand it.

As for second question. There is nothing inherently wrong with people having any kind of personal agenda. It always boils down to their enjoyment of the game. Even the most mind numbing isk grind people do because in the back of the head they have that with that isk they will finance fun experiences in the game. I don't consider maximizing isk/h a "bad" personal agenda. It's as normal a desire for the player as playing a game that is fun. CCP's job is to balance and weight the personal interests of all players against each other while providing an enjoyable gameplay experience.
Hazen Koraka
HK Enterprises
#122 - 2013-06-28 13:47:56 UTC
Lovely graphs! Thing about exploration, is it's about exploration 'innit?

I'm all for keeping the thread positive :)

Exploration is Random. Random is Random... or is it?! http://docs.python.org/2/library/random.html
Johan Toralen
IIIJIIIITIIII
#123 - 2013-06-28 14:00:41 UTC  |  Edited by: Johan Toralen
Idea how to fix the salvage market:
Have all t2 rigs use up the same calibration points as their t1 equivalents. This should increase demand by a lot and keep the profession sustainable for a larger number of explorers.
Sure some ships might become pretty powerful with these changed fitting requirements but then ppl also pay lot more for these rigs. Some tweaks can be done further down the line to other stats of the rigs should specific combinations turn out to be too over powered.

At least this could be tried out gradually on some popular rigs to see what effect it will have on the market.
Titan Ace
United Nomadic Navy
#124 - 2013-06-29 03:05:55 UTC
CCP Affinity wrote:
Gilbaron wrote:
how and when do you plan to address the price drop for pretty much everything found in these sites ? in your internal priority list, does it come before or after the increased complexity you have planned for the hacking minigame itself or after ?`

do you have any data on people dying in these sites compared to before the new mechanics ? (not paying much attention to local was something i immediately realized on myself)



It's prioritized very highly, in that I am already working on this :) I am currently looking at the income made for each site and we will balance accordingly if we see an issue.
Tell me how the balancing will help those who do the sites regularly. Any business looking to increase or maintain existing profit (Hacking is the business) will,
1; release a brand new wonderful product everybody just simply has to have. ( often at a higher price)
- won't work here, because the problem is not that the product is no good, there is just too much of it because it is too easy to get

2; Reduce available supply of an existing "everyone needs it" product. (forces prices up)
- This would create a problem as the whole idea of the "new and improved" hacking system was to encourage more use of the feature. Reduce the income from hacking sites you will very quickly see less use of the feature game play. Increase the difficulty of hacking sites, you will see less use of the feature unless the reward increases with difficulty. Increasing reward with difficulty will again see an over supply of product in the market place.

So; I see the problem as, CCP wanted to improve a feature in the game to encourage more interaction and shot all those who used to do hacking in the foot with the oversupply of hacking site rewards flooding a limited market place. Now they want to shoot them in the other foot by "balancing" (nerfing, increasing difficulty, decreasing the amount of sites, etc) the newly created "Career" of hacking.
Titan Ace
United Nomadic Navy
#125 - 2013-06-29 03:14:12 UTC
Johan Toralen wrote:
Idea how to fix the salvage market:
Have all t2 rigs use up the same calibration points as their t1 equivalents. This should increase demand by a lot and keep the profession sustainable for a larger number of explorers.
Sure some ships might become pretty powerful with these changed fitting requirements but then ppl also pay lot more for these rigs. Some tweaks can be done further down the line to other stats of the rigs should specific combinations turn out to be too over powered.

At least this could be tried out gradually on some popular rigs to see what effect it will have on the market.
It may well increase demand of T2 rigs but may not see more use of them as cost is a major factor in rig buying. I don't know anyone who will fit T2 rigs to a T1 ship due to cost. Decrease cost of T2 rigs you kill hacking as a profession.
Titan Ace
United Nomadic Navy
#126 - 2013-06-29 03:38:03 UTC  |  Edited by: Titan Ace
Indahmawar Fazmarai wrote:

And by the way, to the developer who made those diminutive fast moving tick boxes: I've been minding your family thoroughly each time I ended a hack and lost the loot struggling to see the cans with my eyes 10 centimeters away from the screen (compared to the usual 20 centimeters), and then turn that I picked the wrong can because the labels are so unreadable. Ugh

Maybe they should be affected by the UI settings, as 110% zoom was the best thing the EVE UI did for me in a while...

My eyesight has become a huge factor in not doing something I used to enjoy (and make my primary income from). I have been unable to read any tags on the fast moving little reward cans and simply grab what I can before they simply expire.

JD No7 wrote:
Tzu Tran wrote:
Gotta agree with others, the loot scattering thing is just horrible. I don't mind the mini-game thing much, but only getting a little carbon and some data sheets when my scanner said there was some great **** in the container? Balls. Very much balls. Explo isn't worth my time.


You are really doing it wrong. You can 100% guarantee getting the good stuff. And that's solo.

http://neural-boost.com/minicontainer-loot-distribution

With less than perfect eyesight, your friends site is nothing more than a way of seeing what you won't get doing hacking sites.

The new mini game is somewhat interesting the 1st 4 or 5 times you use it, then it just becomes mundane and boring.
Johan Toralen
IIIJIIIITIIII
#127 - 2013-06-29 14:43:16 UTC  |  Edited by: Johan Toralen
Titan Ace wrote:
It may well increase demand of T2 rigs but may not see more use of them as cost is a major factor in rig buying. I don't know anyone who will fit T2 rigs to a T1 ship due to cost. Decrease cost of T2 rigs you kill hacking as a profession.


T2 rig prices decrease as we speak because of the t2 salvage price crash. This killing of the profession as you call it happens before your very eyes right now.
The change of the fitting requirements would increase demand. How often do i sit in front of EFT messing around only to find that the t2 rigs don't fit. Now obviously nobody's gonna fit them on cheap t1 pvp frig. But ther's enough hisec dwellers with too much isk who wouldn't mind to put t2 rigs on any of their missions boats or whatever as long as it fits.
This is the increase of the demand. What then follows is more producers will hop on this train, buy more t2 salvage from the market and salvage prices go up.

CCP thought the capital rigs would offset the incoming flood of salvage from Odyssey. Obviously that didn't work out for t2 salvage. The t2 cap rig market is so niche a handful explorers and a single producer could cover it.
But that the thought wasn't completely naive can be seen in the t1 salvage market where prices actualy went up despite the loot flood. That is because t1 cap rigs actualy get produced and a lot of salvage is necessary for that.

Now i don't see t2 cap rigs to ever become more then a niche. So we have to look what other ways to increase demand for t2 rigs. And as i see it the biggest limiting factor are the fitting requirements.
Without this fitting small, medium and large t2 rigs suddenly would be viable on a much wider scale.
Titan Ace
United Nomadic Navy
#128 - 2013-06-29 16:09:57 UTC
Johan Toralen wrote:
Titan Ace wrote:
It may well increase demand of T2 rigs but may not see more use of them as cost is a major factor in rig buying. I don't know anyone who will fit T2 rigs to a T1 ship due to cost. Decrease cost of T2 rigs you kill hacking as a profession.


T2 rig prices decrease as we speak because of the t2 salvage price crash. This killing of the profession as you call it happens before your very eyes right now.
The change of the fitting requirements would increase demand. How often do i sit in front of EFT messing around only to find that the t2 rigs don't fit. Now obviously nobody's gonna fit them on cheap t1 pvp frig. But ther's enough hisec dwellers with too much isk who wouldn't mind to put t2 rigs on any of their missions boats or whatever as long as it fits.
This is the increase of the demand. What then follows is more producers will hop on this train, buy more t2 salvage from the market and salvage prices go up.

CCP thought the capital rigs would offset the incoming flood of salvage from Odyssey. Obviously that didn't work out for t2 salvage. The t2 cap rig market is so niche a handful explorers and a single producer could cover it.
But that the thought wasn't completely naive can be seen in the t1 salvage market where prices actualy went up despite the loot flood. That is because t1 cap rigs actualy get produced and a lot of salvage is necessary for that.

Now i don't see t2 cap rigs to ever become more then a niche. So we have to look what other ways to increase demand for t2 rigs. And as i see it the biggest limiting factor are the fitting requirements.
Without this fitting small, medium and large t2 rigs suddenly would be viable on a much wider scale.
May be just me but being someone who builds both T1 and T2 rigs I have noticed most of the commonly used items I use have gone up in price for T2 and T1 salvage. For instance, pre odyssey Tripped Power Circuits, I had buy orders for 125k average market price of 140k. Post odyssey the prices are now average buy order 140k market price 160k.. Current T2 salvage prices have added an extra 12mil to the cost of building 1 T2 medium shield extender. I can't build enough T2 rigs to keep up with demand, I have never had to put a T2 rig on the market as they are generally prepurchased.
T2 capital rigs will be a very specialized niche market, with estimated costs of over 1.5 bil each, I see them only being built to order and not fitted to anything other than supers. Where pre odyssey I was building a substantial number of large T2 rigs for for capitals this market will now completely dry up as no-one (unless stupidly rich) is going to fit T2 capital rigs to a T1 capital. In most cases the rigs would cost more than the ship itself.

Ps; if you have noticed a crash in the prices of T2 salvage I'd be interested to know what region you are in. I'll go there and buy as much as I can carry.
Laura Gannon
EDGE Alliance Holding
#129 - 2013-06-30 14:04:47 UTC
Site Nerfs, Sov wars and the like causing a reduction in ratting overall,

The extraordinary amount of time required wasted for little reward these days after successive Loot nerfs,

Not to mention the sheer boredom of salvaging, not really surprised salvaged component prices are on the rise really.

Pre-update few people I know salvaged anything, not enough isk for time consumed to make it worth it, unless they had a need for there own production, since the update there still not salvaging, but there is little to salvage as there just not ratting as they used to anyway.
Zeera Tomb-Raider
Vega Farscape
#130 - 2013-06-30 17:01:49 UTC
Exploration !!! ther is none explorations added bay oddyssey only remowal.the only thing that was needed to gett more peopol in to "exploration" was the the only good feature in oddyssey the option to juse a pre fixed probe formation,making the probe scanner task better for neew people to juse shud hawe been your most importent task.and not making exploration in to a mundane farming game whid no feel of accomplishment.what you hawe don to exploration is to remowe a grate nich in the game and redused more of your content in the game to just farming as the so called hacking game is based on trained skill and just pure luck.and no player skill !!!!javascript:insertsmiley('Sad','/Images/Emoticons/ccp_sad.png')
Zeera Tomb-Raider
Vega Farscape
#131 - 2013-06-30 18:17:16 UTC
ghosttr wrote:
Epsilon Knight wrote:
Johan Toralen wrote:
Hope the diving income gets adressed soon.
Looks like you expect the number of explorers to stay higher then before Odyssey so i think what's needed is a much wider range of loot so the market doesn't get flooded with the same couple items from everyone. Or more jackpot items to set off the lower income from the regular loot. Tho i'm not so sure what it could be because i sorta expect everything to dive that will be put in these sites :/


Something something free market. Prices are going to get hosed until people start saying "this isn't worth doing", or "this is barely worth doing." Then they will stabilize. You're pretty much right in whatever they put into these sites is going to drop in value, and any fix other than letting the player economy come up with the value for for the labor performed and risk taken is going to flop.

The only alternative might be expanding the hacking game so that arch V and hack V are required for some sites, or so that the sites with high value items are extremely difficult to probe down without high skills. Changing the time sink for becoming moderately profitable will stem the number of people who pursue the profession, and limit the item flood. More people will still train to do it, because probing and hacking is no longer brain-hemorrhaging-ly boring, but it'll shave off some of the mission-running interlopers who can't tack a month onto their skill time before cruise missiles V.

But then, limiting the exploration crowd is exactly what CCP doesn't want to do. You've seen their trailer for the expansion, right? All bets: get ready for new, permanent lower prices on salvage, blueprints, etc.


Its not the items that are the issue its the demand, demand was already relatively weak prior to odyssey.

CCP needs to create more demand for exploration related materials. Add bpc merging that uses some materials, shift datacore to supply from passive research agent farming, make data interfaces have finite amount of uses (so that people need to purchase more than one).


I if they just ad a smal amount of salvage parts needed for tech 1 productions the demands for low lvl salvage will go up a lott.i dont think its a good ide to lett production be dependent of explorers !!!
Indahmawar Fazmarai
#132 - 2013-06-30 21:49:10 UTC
Titan Ace wrote:
Indahmawar Fazmarai wrote:

And by the way, to the developer who made those diminutive fast moving tick boxes: I've been minding your family thoroughly each time I ended a hack and lost the loot struggling to see the cans with my eyes 10 centimeters away from the screen (compared to the usual 20 centimeters), and then turn that I picked the wrong can because the labels are so unreadable. Ugh

Maybe they should be affected by the UI settings, as 110% zoom was the best thing the EVE UI did for me in a while...

My eyesight has become a huge factor in not doing something I used to enjoy (and make my primary income from). I have been unable to read any tags on the fast moving little reward cans and simply grab what I can before they simply expire.

(...)


Heh, thanks for sharing that. I was beginning to wonder wether I was the only player with poor eyesight playing this game... it's very frustrating to try to click those diminutive moving tick boxes and be unable to tell which ones are trash and which ones are supposed to be your reward for playing the game.

Certainly if I was to implement the idea my way, I would make the tags 2x larger and clicking on the tag would select the box too...
Salaphiel
L'ove
#133 - 2013-07-01 13:15:06 UTC
I'd say at least part of the reason for stuff going uncollected is that it spreads out and disappears too fast. Or maybe that after you click something it's not collected fast enough.

No one plans to fail, some fail to plan.
Blue Absinthe
Wardec U
#134 - 2013-07-01 22:31:01 UTC
CCP Affinity wrote:
Gilbaron wrote:
how and when do you plan to address the price drop for pretty much everything found in these sites ? in your internal priority list, does it come before or after the increased complexity you have planned for the hacking minigame itself or after ?`

do you have any data on people dying in these sites compared to before the new mechanics ? (not paying much attention to local was something i immediately realized on myself)



It's prioritized very highly, in that I am already working on this :) I am currently looking at the income made for each site and we will balance accordingly if we see an issue.



Could someone adjust the loot tables for the drone sites? Right now that's a lot of content that you've already created and have sitting their that is pretty much totally ignored due to awful loot. A simple change to the loot table for drones would open up a lot of content that already exists.... Seems like a quick win!
Hazen Koraka
HK Enterprises
#135 - 2013-07-02 09:49:45 UTC
Indahmawar Fazmarai wrote:
Titan Ace wrote:
Indahmawar Fazmarai wrote:

And by the way, to the developer who made those diminutive fast moving tick boxes: I've been minding your family thoroughly each time I ended a hack and lost the loot struggling to see the cans with my eyes 10 centimeters away from the screen (compared to the usual 20 centimeters), and then turn that I picked the wrong can because the labels are so unreadable. Ugh

Maybe they should be affected by the UI settings, as 110% zoom was the best thing the EVE UI did for me in a while...

My eyesight has become a huge factor in not doing something I used to enjoy (and make my primary income from). I have been unable to read any tags on the fast moving little reward cans and simply grab what I can before they simply expire.

(...)


Heh, thanks for sharing that. I was beginning to wonder wether I was the only player with poor eyesight playing this game... it's very frustrating to try to click those diminutive moving tick boxes and be unable to tell which ones are trash and which ones are supposed to be your reward for playing the game.

Certainly if I was to implement the idea my way, I would make the tags 2x larger and clicking on the tag would select the box too...


You do realise that the "camera drones" have a zoom option? On a two buttoned mouse, hold down the right mouse button, then move the mouse up and down. Makes for some funky filming effects if you like taking videos of stuff.

Exploration is Random. Random is Random... or is it?! http://docs.python.org/2/library/random.html
Hawke Nolen
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#136 - 2013-07-02 10:42:10 UTC  |  Edited by: Hawke Nolen
[quote=Indahmawar Fazmarai]I still think that the way the hacking minigame has been implemented has been a terrible loss for solo and casual friendly content. CCP may disagree and maybe they don't like soloers nor people with a life, but I regret that nonetheless.

As for exploration itself, in my experience it has moved from being difficult and unrewarding to become easy, boring and unrewarding.


I agree. (apart from the fact that pre-odyssey mag site were valuable IMO)

CCP doenst want you to be able to solo and make enough ISK in game to fund plex. Before odyssey doing the MAg and Radar sites could rake in upwards of 500mill worth of t2 salvage in a slow day..

CCP WANTS you to spend money on your credit card to fund your plex.

The loot spew ensures that you have less chance of decent loot and increases useless crap to essentially spit in your face for the effort you have put in.
Which means you scurry around to find more sites to get the EXACT same outcome.....

Add the market depreciation to the whole mix and you end up with a useless endevour.

Might as well find another way to try fund your plex , that is of course until CCp finds a way to screw that up as well Lol
Ralmar Kimnot
Okorer
#137 - 2013-07-02 12:41:42 UTC  |  Edited by: Ralmar Kimnot
In the dev post CCP say "... what on earth happened to null-sec Combat Sites? We'd need to gather some more information to find out exactly but clearly people are much less interested in them now."

It might have something to do with the war in Fountain. The CFC are deployed and spend their time grinding structures and fighting TEST and friends while TEST and friends spend their time defending their space.

It would be interesting to see if there is correlation between null sec PVE stats and null sec PVP stats. You will probably find that PVE stats dropped at the same time PVP ship and structure kill stats went up.

The moon resource rebalance has caused major changes that ripple through eve and the stats.
Johan Toralen
IIIJIIIITIIII
#138 - 2013-07-02 14:18:34 UTC  |  Edited by: Johan Toralen
Titan Ace wrote:
Ps; if you have noticed a crash in the prices of T2 salvage I'd be interested to know what region you are in. I'll go there and buy as much as I can carry.


Please tell me you are a troll. Rig producer who hasn't noticed crash in t2 salvage?

http://i.imgur.com/uRMusJo.jpg

Something needs to be done about that. Income is now down to l4 level on slow day. Couple bad drops and bad luck with cherrypicked sites and i made only about 50m/h last night in Sansha nullsec (which is the most profitable). It's pissing me off.
This forces me to go back to other activities which i grew tired off (trading, producing, mission type stuff).
Krystyn
Serenity Rising LLC
Controlled Chaos
#139 - 2013-07-02 14:20:49 UTC
CCP Bayesian wrote:
The changes to scanning aren't something I worked on directly or commented on apart from as an obvious confounding factor in the devblog, so it's not really a topic I can actually address.


But you can pass them on to everyone you know at CCP and tell them about the things we hate so far.

Loot spew lame.
Auto scan upon entering a system, very very very annoying.
Kalenn Istarion
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#140 - 2013-07-04 09:03:40 UTC
CCP Bayesian wrote:


what on earth happened to null-sec Combat Sites? We'd need to gather some more information to find out exactly but clearly people are much less interested in them now.


Shocked

Using Forsaken Hub activity as a measure of overall combat site activity ignores the fact that F-hubs were specifically rebalanced to make them less attractive relative to other sites, so probably isn't a very informative statistic. Would be much more useful to look at total combat site activity. Much of the activity lost from F-hubs has just switched to Havens and Sanctums given the more balanced risk/reward tradeoff. I'd be surprised if overall activity has declined much if at all.

CCP Bayesian wrote:


I'd be inclined to hypothesize that people are typically out exploring null-sec in cloaky frigates as rats have been removed from the Data and Relic sites and they are reasonably effective for avoiding other players, so the Combat Sites in null-sec are out of most ship capabilities without having to multi-box or reship.


Ugh

I can't speak for NPC null, but this is just flat-out not true in most sov space. The clicky loot lottery set-up and generally higher effort to isk ratio of the exploration sites means that it remains less attractive for even newbie solo ratters. The need for relatively good probing / hacking skills is a significant barrier to entry for the more difficult nullsec sites, while much of the ratting skills are part of the key training path for new null players in any case.

Try Harder.