EVE New Citizens Q&A

It's gonna be a little bit of a rant, but please understand I'm a noob and as such I see things differently. Things in this game are harder then they need to be and for all the info, the in game messages aren't informative. Ok about the tutorial:

So I'm scanning for cosmic sig and looking for a data sig. I've been at it for awhile because the mechanics for moving probes and pin pointing are hideous, but I'll come back to that. As I said been at it for awhile when my probes seem to shut off/ disappear . What's happened? Where'd they go? I don't know. I click on the core launcher and get a message that the "module is out of charge" what the heck does that mean?

Not knowing what's going on and there is a time limit if you want the bonus cash I high tail to a base and buy 8 more core scanners probes. I check my inventory and there are the ones I've bought. But wait. There's the original 8 from the tutorial?? WTH. After 3 hrs of trying to pin point frustration, and now having no probes and work in the AM, I call it a night

Here's what I think has happened and you folks can let me know if I'm right. The probes have run out of energy and need to be recharged? If that's it, why don't I get a message saying so? That's informative. It lets me know I have to do something. Hellooo. TECHNOLOGICALLY ADVANCED CIVILIZATION HERE. Some things should be automated...... Recall the probes and plug them in all ready.

Which brings me to the probe movement. Manually moving, expanding, collapsing, probe spheres in a 3-D model is TEDIOUS, not fun. I think I'm moving the probes closer to the red spheres, but on a re-scan my signal is now lower. And trying to undo what I've done only makes matters worse. Why not allow the singling out the probe that found the low data signal I was looking for and then by moving just it around, like my ship, in conjunction with a signal meter, home in on that signal. Then leave that probe there and re-deploy the others towards that probe? Easier, simpler. Still requires some work, but I think it's better then moving 8 spheres around. Better yet just send that probe on the hunt for the source the signal and notify me when it found it.

Ok . I'm done . This isn't the place for this. It's my hope that you more advanced players will empress upon the designers that making things simpler will not take away the intellectual aspect of the game, but make it more fun. Tedious does not equal fun.

It hasn't happened yet but I know I'm gonna get killed because I forgot to turn my weapons on. Really!! Highly advanced being killed because he for got to turn on his weapons. You' d think we'd have a computer to do that.

Your probes are only good for a certain amount of time in space, if you look at the probing window there's a countdown timer for each probe, you need to recall them, reload the launcher and then launch them again before it runs out. Out of charges simply means that there's no probes loaded in the probe launcher, if you have some in cargo, right click the probe launcher and select reload.

See reply above, as for automation, that's a filthy dirty word here

There's some really good probing tutorials on youtube, there's also the Eve Uni probing tutorial. With reference to making it simpler, probing requires practice, it's one of those things that you get better at over time.

For example wormhole dwellers have it down to a fine art because probes are their intel network, the first thing they do when they log in is to probe all of the things. They do it so often that they can probe entire solar systems and lock down every signature in a matter of minutes.

As long as they have ammo loaded your guns will fire when you activate them, subject to the target status and safety settings. If active they will reload when they run out of ammo as long as there is ammo in your cargo hold, once reloaded you'll have to activate them again, you can also reload them at any time unless they're firing.

I may be reading it wrong but if you're suggesting automation of gun activation, it will not go down well with either CCP or the community at large as it falls under the category of "dumbing down".

Eve is hard, and it should remain so, it's a game that is very specifically aimed at a small niche in the MMO market, not a mainstream audience.

Well, yes there was an option to adjust all your probes at once, it just wasn't the *default*. Holding shift while moving a probe would move all your probes. Holding shift while adjusting the scan range of a probe would adjust the scan range of all your probes. And holding alt while moving a probe would cause the entire probe formation to expand or contract while maintaining its shape and center point. You did have to make your own formations, though. And your skill with Astrometrics (required for scanning and you *didn't* automatically start with it) determined how many probes you could fly. At Astrometrics 1 you could only have four deployed, which made getting a good fix all kinds of fun.

I know.

But now that is default, and in the old system it wasn't explained by the game that shift and alt were your friends.
You had to read/watch other player's guides to find that out.

Why Johan? Why is it blasphemy to ask for things to be simpler. Simpler is not dumb! Simpler is eloquent. And my rant about this tutorial is a perfect example. I'm made to fit and then load a weapon where I really learn nothing , and in this tutorial about using probes there's not one mention of those timers. Maybe it's just me but I think that's pretty important thing to know. And the only message that there's a problem is "module has no charge" What module?

Why not a message like: Probes are down to 10% power. Recall them. Oh, information. Why look there's a timer connected to the probes. It guides you down the path to help you learn the game.

And yet I'm sure that these same people who balk at AUTOMATING aspects of the game have AUTOMATIC coffee makers, drive cars with AUTOMATIC stability control, etc, etc. they'll automate their RL but don't you touch my game.

And no J 'Poll. I don't want the game to to everything for me. But I do want it to (to the best of its ability) immerse me in the world it's trying to create. In this case that I am a citizen of a technologically advanced space faring race in the distant future. And having to do most everything manually doesn't cut it. You know I bought an item at another station and I can't believe there's no type of delivery service. Really? In the 24th & 1/2 century?

I've been a gamer since the early 90's and one of my favs was Star Wars-X-Wing. To lock on to the closest enemy? Space bar. Want to cycle through all the enemy ships? Up/Down arrows. I could divert power to my aft or forward shield with a keystroke. Or to my engines for more speed.. Easy. Simple. Fun.

This is probably the most cerebral game I've come across. A little simplicity wouldn't hurt it IMHO. Games that try to be hard just by making you do (almost) every minute detail are boring and can't get you into the fantasy. I'm not looking for a second job.

What I think happened is you mistakenly hit the "recall probes" button, right next to the scan button. That will indeed make your probes "disappear" into your cargohold.

Probing at the moment is the simplest it's ever been. Try clicking the pinpoint formation button first, then moving and resizing them from the system map screen, making sure you regularly rotate and zoom the map to get a better grasp of the 3d space.

Hey Progamer with ~20 years of gaming experience, just one question: What do you think will happen, if they change probing the way you would like it?

There is, but it is entirely player-operated, like - as far as possible - everything else in EVE. This does mean it's not as useful as it could be, because it is a delivery service run by avaricious sociopaths.

(In all fairness, the Courier Contract system is a very poor fit for small deliveries; given an unlimited development budget, which of course doesn't exist, one can imagine some sort of small package system where when you punched in a route you were shown available parcels to transport.)

However, I don't think the objection that the OP wants the game dumbed down is really valid. I don't see any utility in making the player do something for actions that don't require any thought; an empty probe launcher, set to auto-reload, could reasonably notice when probes arrive in the cargo bay and load them. That's not dumbing down because it's not removing a hard decision or any kind of decision, just a bit of makework.

What did you think the timer was for? It's there in the probing interface for a reason, the reason being it tells you how long until your probes become inactive. The module would be the thing you clicked that threw up the message.

A space faring race that has been disconnected from the rest of humanity for generations, whose space flight tech is based on the wrecks left behind by others, cannibalising somebody elses tech generally results in something that works but lacks the finer things, like automation. Delivery services, like most other things in Eve are handled by players, CCP give us the tools to create our own content, which includes mundane things like delivery services.

Congratulations, some of us have been computer/console gaming since the late 70's. It doesn't make you, or us, an authority on what direction CCP should take with Eve, there's a reason that Devs are CCP employees and we're not.

A lot of us play Eve because it doesn't have those things and is challenging. Eve has a reputation for being complex and hard, it lives up to it.

That's fine, you're entitled to an opinion, that doesn't make it right.

Neither are most of us, if you find Eve boring because of its depth and complexity, play something else.

Eve is a game that rewards effort and dedication, it's one of the few games that doesn't give you cookies for participating, and if you were silly enough to bring your own cookies, then CCP or another player will steal them from you.

Also it's JONAH not Johan, you probably wouldn't like it if I spelt your name as Almond.

The one thing I'd like to add to all the "EVE is hard" comments is this:

Skill is rewarded, and I don't mean skillpoints.

If probes were to do their thing automatically, or if probing were further dumbed down, a player with a good spatial sense (possibly developed by years of probing, or in my case by years of studying mathematics) would do just as well as a newbie who is just starting. This would not be right, a player's skill should matter! Some people will find stuff easier than others, some people will have a natural talent for certain aspects of the game that others do not. Without this, there will be nothing to learn, to improve, or to take pride in.