EVE General Discussion

First. Appologies, I posted this in the wrong forum, should have gone into the Eve General Discussion and not here. So if any passing mod could move it I would be greatfull.


OK, today I had a rubbish day down in null sec doing my exploration thing. I must have scanned a good 100 sites, of which 90% were Combat, which I can't do as my ship is set to be slippery and hard to catch so can't fight. 4% Gas clouds, again no good to me, my cargo hold is not big enough to bother with the stuff. 4% WH, when I am in null sec I'm not looking to raid WH systems, I can do that with greater ease from HS. Finally, 2% Relic/Data sites.

Now don't get me wrong, this is far from a complaint. At the end of the day I did manage to find a tasty Data site that while not having mega loot in it made my day worthwhile. I made enough to pay for a days fuel for my POS back in high sec and then a little profit. So in my book a successful session, well successful when I get back to High Sec that is.

But what did happen is that the penny finally dropped today. I know what those guys in RL must feel like. You know those guys who you see out panhandling for gold, not the big businesses, the guys who do it for a hobby, or the guys who you see walking about with their metal detection kit buzzing away.

99% of the time they end up with squat, or worthless drivel. But every now and then you hit the 'big one' that makes it all worthwhile, or you have that need to press on in the hope that the next site will be 'the big one'.

For me that is how exploration should be. No guarantee, no magic formula; you know the sort of thing, you harvest so many anoms and you make so much iskies.

And you know what, exploration as it is actually offers something for 'time limited' players. I had a good day today. For the next couple of days I'll be lucky to get an hour in each day. But in that hour I can scan down a couple or three systems, and who knows, I may well 'hit the big one'.

Many of us bitched like hell when CCP changed exploration, and I am ashamed to admit that I was one of the most vocal. But you know what I love it now. It has pushed me out of my comfort zone in High Sec into Null Sec space, just to get away from all of the 'Johnny comes lately' who suddenly got into 'exploration'. I am not making that much more isk in null, I only have a 300m3 hold so have to run back to High to empty out now and then, along with jettisoning most of the junk and low value stuff.

But I am enjoying my game so much more now. What with being the 'bad boy' in somebody else’s patch, or trying to work out if another 'freelance' explorer is worth chasing off, or if I am better off leaving them to it and hunting elsewhere.

Yes, it still needs tweaking, but I can more than just live with the new exploration, I am enjoying it more than I ever did under the old system.

I am very pleased you are enjoying this activity. For you the Odyssey patch is working as intended. This is good. For me it has also changed although my change is different from yours; not bad, just different.

I live in null as an independent and have been doing the exploration thing for years. The scanning changes have some good points and the scanning categories listed are reasonable. Some of the mechanic changes are questionable. But it is another poster (I forgot your name, I'm sorry) that has best described this new era of exploration. This poster has described it as treasure hunting.

For me, this new exploration content is best described as treasure hunting.

Odyssey was sold as exploration, or the discovery of the new: "The act of searching for the purpose of discovery of information or resources". For me that has not been delivered. It is entirely possible I took the promise of Odyssey too literally therefore shame on me.

I continue to do the data/relic sites for a living and because of the changes I have now expanded my experience into the PvP realm as a crop of new explorers insist on not being prepared for PvP. So I am making the best I can of the changes. So, I suppose the new content is working for me too.

I am simply disappointed that this is treasure hunting and not exploration. I hope exploration content will one day make it into EVE. In the meantime I hope we are both able to continue making the most of the content delivered thus far.

Treasure hunting is indeed a more fitting description then calling this exploration. After Odyssey i checked out the data and relic sites in all pirate faction spaces. I have more or less settled now in two regions where i get the highest average income. Good for grinding isk but exploration it is not. I think this should be much more random. The loot tables shouldn't be defined per pirate faction and the sites should have an equal chance to spawn all over New Eden. Have the explorers go out and find remote systems that arn't visited often where sites might have collected over a few days.



That's not really how doing data and relic sites feels to me. "The big one" that would be a large faction pos tower bpc but it's so rare it's far from the main driving force to me. By the time i find one it will be a fraction of the income that i made from the sites. Also disagree with the finding 99% squat notion. In nullsec ther's something half decent in every site. It's pretty steady income. There are fluctuations. Sometimes crystal quarry doesn't give much and then a monument site has some nice stacks of t2 salvage. But this luck or bad luck evens out quickly if you just keep running sites. I know roughly how much i'll make if i just keep doing it for 2-3 hours.

That said as far as pve grind goes i like the new exploration. Enjoy it more then shooting red crosses but the sites still need work. Loot tables can't stay as they are as devaluation is a big problem right now. Minigame needs work and some more advanced/difficult content would be nice for skilled out explorers.

You know guys; so far there has been nothing at all that I disagree with in the replies to this thread.

Tzar, you are spot on. It is treasure hunting and not true exploration. We are all Eve versions of Indiana Jones or a BP oil resource search team. Not the Dr. Livingstone or Ferdinand Magellan as exploration should have been, though I guess there is only so much you can put into a game that can be discovered for the first time.

Likewise, I agree with your words to Johan. The reason I go into null to do exploration is to provide materials for my new T2 rig production, so it is just harvesting like many other parts of the ‘industrial’ game.

For me it has been the ‘kick’ I needed to get my ‘ass’ out of the High Sec carebear seat that it has pretty well occupied for the last two, three years, and back into null sec to do something that is viable and fun, but doesn’t need you to be a part of a massive alliance doing what others tell you to do. Lol it can get a bit tense at times, especially when you jump through a gate, just as a huge battle fleet comes rolling past, going the other way. Thankfully they must have been too busy to notice my lil bird slip from jump cloak to cloaky cloak before we scuttled off out of the way.

I also agree that there needs to be a lot more variety in the loot drops, just to give more flavour than anything. The only thing that I disagree on is that I do think that the mega high end loot drops should stay really rare. It needs to stay as that one thing which as soon as I get my grubby hands on it, has me scuttling back to the high sec markets as I am trying not to ‘wet myself’ with joy because it is so rare.

I also agree that Exploration needs some skill putting back into it and that scan down Grav sites need re-introducing fast, and also decreasing in the frequency. A Grav site in high sec used to be a nice treat. Now you see them all over high sec, and all the do is promote a new level of ‘scum play’.

Sorry, by ‘scum play’ I am talking about the swarm of mining fleets just swanning about High Sec until they find one, then they swarm in, gut the good stuff and leave the rubbish for others to clear, knowing full well that the site may not die for several days if there is so much as one rock left. No risk, no effort on their part.

*Gets off his soap box and hides it away*.

As I said, it is working for me, but it still needs working on.

I know that there has been some unconfirmed muttering of a possible expansion of the number of star systems in Eve. If that is the case, we may yet see something that is closer to true exploration, though I won’t hold my breath on that one. Yet!

Yeah, it was definitely a step in the wrong direction.

Its the most enjoyable pve I have had for years.

That's what worries me with this game, how much more material will become spoon fed.