EVE General Discussion

I'll give you a hint.. the difficulty of finding a site in high sec hasn't changed in Oddessy. The only thing they improved upon is the ease of which to use the probing interface. When I just started Eve, I was making 50-100M in an evening of probing doing data sites in a T1 probing frigate.
The only things that they changed in oddessy are:

1) When you enter a system you know howmany sites there are to scan, so you won't waste time launching probes and sending them out in an empty system

2) Immediate launch of all your probes so you don't spend 20 seconds just sending probes out.

3) Added formations and made it easier to control and move those formations without having to use obscure commands to do this easily.

The actual mechanics of finding sites themselves haven't changed, only the ease of using the UI to do this.
As for the minigame, I like that they added it, it means that doing a data/relic site is now more engaging than probing it down, fly to a canister, activate module, collect loot while you probe down another site in the system.

Also, you obviously haven't done much low and null exploration. In low and null, the game gets progressively harder than in high sec. When oddessy hit, I trained up my hacking and archaeology skills because Null sites ( and I would guess W-space sites too )
are almost impossible to do without good ( read maxed out ) hacking/archaeology skills. With these skills maxed, I have found that high sec sites are now ridiculously easy for me, and I can do these blindfolded. ( literally, I pretty much cannot fail the game in high sec )
The rewards for these sites are also progressively better. Yes, in high sec the rewards have gone down a lot, because so many more people are doing it. Which is a good thing imho, because this will send more people down into low/null space and showing them there is much much more to Eve than just farming stuff in high sec. As well as showing them that low/null aren't all that scary as many carebears believe it is.

Anything that might bring higher value to your hard learned skills will obviously make high sec mission/incursion runners and market bots cry.
This is imho one of the reasons why Eve "logic" often made me laugh for the "pathetic" side of course:
-high sec being less safer than null (true in many regions)
-specialization in Eve means you specialize your character in training skills, not one race because of its specifics, modules or ships.

"Much" silly stuff indeed.

Oh please! Because repetitive actions + clickfest = complexity? Sorry to break it to you, it does not. Even the original probing system was not complex. Wow, specific probes for specific results. Yes, stimulating........

If only there was a checkbox in game that would allow you to do the signal strength calculations based on relative positions of all 8 probes instead of the client doing it for you. I will pray to Bob to make it so.

Its well known that in an open world pvp game, pvp "follows" pve -- meaning that if you want open world pvp content you have to seed the world with pve content that people will go do -- if the pve content is compelling enough then fights will naturally follow as players try to access and/or control it. The fundamental problem with low sec is that there is no compelling pve content to draw players away from the gates. Ask yourself - what exactly is the pve content in this game that can open you up to pvp? There is mining, missions, ratting, exploration, and pocos. Thats pretty much it as for reasons to move around a system in lowsec. Well, the mining and missions are not all that great - most eve players are trained to stay away from them like the plague (I'm not saying i agree with this sentiment, just that it exists). As for pocos that is largely group pvp content driver. Which leaves ratting and exploration. Well exploration has now been nerfed into the ground from the perspective of creating interesting conflict. Sure people are running the sites, but ccp structured the sites in such a way that it removed the potential for serious conflict from the equation - unless of course shooting helpless t1 frigs is your thing.

Well I guess you believe everybody should be given a cookie just for showing up? Why should a game reward work and effort? Dont want anyone's self esteem to suffer? "Apply your ignorance statement to yourself."