Wormholes

http://www.tigerears.org/2013/07/04/keep-the-unknown-unknown-deactivate-the-discovery-scanner-in-w-space/

I was minding my own business, floating in space, when a new signature pops up in the system. Neat, huh? No, not at all. I'm not in empire space looking to grab some loot from a site, but in w-space where the signature is almost certainly a newly spawned wormhole. Without any input or action on my part, I now know of a new connection in the system, likely to bring at least a scout, maybe a fleet, and can act accordingly. The discovery scanner makes it all possible. And the discovery scanner must die.

I have already argued that an automated directional scanner would change the fundamental nature of w-space for the worse, as it would introduce an asymmetric shift in safety towards those less-inclined to PvP interactions. Now instead of an automated d-scanner, we have been given something more powerful. The discovery scanner may not show when pilots are in the system, and new signatures may not be wormholes, but what it does is give strong evidence of a new wormhole opening before anyone has even jumped in to the system. And this warning doesn't even require a single mouse-click to be effective.

But more clicks don't make the game better, right? So the argument went for the directional scanner, so the argument is made for the discovery scanner. No, more clicks don't make the game better. Yes, not needing to mash the mouse button would be preferable to constant clicking. But that's how the directional scanner works, and that's how it was designed to work. The decision to gain intelligence with every update or to take a rest and trust in general inactivity is the choice every pilot makes, solo or in a fleet, in w-space. The same was true with scouts having to continually update their scanning probes.

The fundamental nature of w-space is the unknown. The space is unknown, the wormholes are unknown, the pilots in the system are unknown. If you wanted to know something about the system you had to uncover it, either through careful monitoring of the directional scanner or through the use of scanning probes. Now the discovery scanner shows you every signature, every site in the system within seconds of entering, and any new signature the moment it spawns. Even with probes launched and inactive, new signatures will be added to the scanning interface. Now there are fewer unknowns.

Fewer unknowns makes for less threat. Fleets engaging Sleepers in a fully scanned and secured system can now take a passive approach to safety. Just watch the scanning interface for new signatures and retreat if any spawn. There's no need to update the directional scanner, and the discovery scanner is already dynamic. You can't sneak up on even mildly experienced pilots through a new wormhole. And if the wormhole is old, well, mildly experienced pilots aren't likely to run sites in an insecure system.

The best a w-space hunter can hope for is activity through a carelessly opened K162, or pilots who aren't paying attention to the most obvious signs of intrusion. That's not only slim pickings, but picking on only the weakest, ill-prepared pilots in space. The level of threat you bring, and the feeling of being in threat, is drastically reduced when the discovery scanner acts as a beacon to any active pilot indicating that someone is coming.

I can see the reasoning behind the introduction of the discovery scanner, even if I don't agree with it. CCP wants scanning and exploration to be an obvious route for new players, but didn't see how capsuleers could stumble in to it. Clearly showing all of the 'hidden' sites in a system is to pique the interest of capsuleers in to finding out how to uncover them properly. But the same information is useless and irritating for pilots who, for example, know about and are uninterested in scanning being presented with useless information on every jump, which for haulers and roamers is frequent.

This is not to mention that the discovery scanner is the antithesis to the very idea of exploration. There is never any need to launch probes to see if there are any signatures in the system. New signatures automatically appear in the scanning interface, and on the HUD in space, and around the planet where they are closest to. Perhaps this is of relative unimportance for the site runners in empire space, but the notion of w-space being unexplored and unknown has been completely undermined.

Simply travelling through w-space now shows you what having to launch probes used to. Not only is a wormhole opening immediately obvious to any pilot paying attention, without even needing to update d-scan to check for a cloaked ship entering the system, but merely keeping track of the number of signatures in each connected system lets you check at a glance whether any particular system needs re-scanning for new connections. You don't even need to launch a probe to do so. It is intelligence without input.

If there is ever a feature that needs to be rolled-back, I think this is it. The game is wrongly simplified because of the discovery scanner, and w-space has been neutered, when the intention was to reveal the exploration option to those unaware of it. There are better ways to accomplish this goal. As for a solution: disable the discovery scanner for w-space. Tie it in to empire hardware, if there needs to be a reason. This keeps w-space unknown, more so for those entering from empire space, and further distinguishes w-space from null-sec, all without negating the benefits the discovery scanner has brought for pilots who weren't aware of exploration.

Wait...

Yes

Best possible route I can think of would be to simply remove the WHs from the discoveryscanner.

Have Wormholes only show up on the actual probescan and not on the "probeless" systemscan.
This would however make it far easier to distinguish WH from other sigs without having to resolve, bringing back a function of the old Deep Space Probes albeit in an different (slightly easier) way.

So far there has been an increase of people entering holes. I fair few leave right away. I mean just that: the junp straight out again. Others scan further and travel around. A few actually do anything.

I roam holes quite a bit. Personally I've seen fewer fights, and those fights I've seen is with people who thought that w-space is pretty much like hisec. On many occasions, an alarming number of them, all I see when I enter through a hole I opened are wrecks. The locals are behind their POS shields.

I agree the article Penny wrote wholeheartedly. The implementation is the death of non-concensual PvP. Just like local is in Lo/Null.

I would prefer to find the Discovery Scanner is unable to function in W-space... IE turn the damn thing turned OFF in W-space to give us BACK the reality of living in Unknown Space... I hate the gods damned Billboards screaming "HIDDEN **** HERE -->" all over the place...

Exploration Themed Expansion replaced 'exploring' with Roadside Billboards...

+1, new system is dumb.

Call me old school. I still pop probes. I don't trust the damn thing

it's funny how i predicted this thread and others like it the minute i learned about the probing/scanner changes...

Yeah I also proposed the idea that the discovery scanner in WH only updates upon a session change.

The only one opposing this idea are the carebears.