Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I've been thinking about aspects of EvE that I find fun and aspects that I don't, and one area keeps sticking out as an annoyance: DSCAN.

Proposal: Change DSCAN from a passive (update on click) to active (updates automatically) function.

Background: DSCAN is an incredibly useful tool, and one of the most important PvP utilities. It tells you all kinds of useful information. Learning to use DSCAN properly is an integral part of moving to lowsec, nullsec, and wormhole space. There many nuances to DSCAN, and learning to focus a scan to find someone or something at a celestial is a fun and rewarding practice.

Problem: Because it is so important, experienced players quickly learn to get in the habit of clicking the "Scan" button every few seconds to keep abreast of any changes. The actual process, however, of clicking the button is tedious and makes virtually no difference to the skill involved in its use.

To use a comparison to gunnery skills, there is skill involved in piloting the ship to the proper ranges, keeping a good transversal ratio, and knowing when to disable weapons, overheat, and change ammo types. If you could not set guns on repeat or group them, however, it would add nothing to the skill involved, and instead create a tedious clicking game that would not meaningfully affect the skill involved in the activity. I believe this is how the "Scan" button in DSCAN is used; it's like having to click modules over and over to activate them.

Reasoning: If the passive scan button were removed from DSCAN, the actual mechanics would require little change. You would still have the ~14 au range, you'd still have to interpret what you see, you'd still have to reduce the scan angle and distance to find specific targets, you'd still have to pay attention to the list, and you still couldn't warp directly to DSCAN results. The only aspect that would change is that someone who forgot to click the button every couple of seconds might not see combat probes or a nearby ship, which would only affect those players who are still learning how to use DSCAN and will probably be caught anyway. Someone distracted by hacking or missioning is only slightly less likely to miss important data.

On the other hand, this will reduce a huge amount of tedium and increase the likelihood beginner players will start learning how to use DSCAN early on in their career. It's a huge quality of life improvement with very little gameplay impact; those inexperienced with DSCAN will still be caught, and those experienced with it will have to click less buttons over and over.

It might also make people more likely to risk missioning, mining, and other PvE activities in lower security space because you've removed one of the biggest annoyances of being there. Sure, clicking DSCAN is easy, which is why it adds nothing to gameplay.

In the interest of making mechanics more modern I feel that this is an easy change that veterans will appreciate (even if they grumble about how they used to have to walk uphill both ways in their spaceships...) and will draw more people out of highsec by reducing the tedium of dangerous space without meaningfully decreasing that danger.

Let me know what you think!

good idea :thumbsup:

.... that's the point of it's current state

Klick the button if you wanna infos if your to lazy thats non of my business.

A No from me.

-1

Next thread in this chain:

"I forgot to run my DSCAN from 5 degrees to 360 and died, please automatically reset the values for every scan!".

-1

Edit: to expand why this is a bad idea; you are effectively turning your overview from on-grid to a 14.3 AU pos trash scanner and this would be highly exploited.

Declining something with an exaggaration is a bad practice. Save your -1 if that subject ever appears because this has nothing to do with it.



OP doesn't mention any overview change. This is a all-troll answer. Did you even dare to read the OP really?

I beg you to tell me a case that creates a highly exploited situation when a code piece pushes your d-scan for you, without any functional change. Just one example.

Good idea, but with two changes:

1 - Like Mornak mantioned, it should have active/passive switch.

2 - It should "pulse" every 2 seconds (right now you have to wait 1 - 1,5 sec to push the button again)

-1 . Imagine sticking a cloaky alt in your system all day. Then just having them port out the dscan to some tool like dingo every 5seconds. Then have those fetched from some email server.

Wait wait! I have an idea! Deployable D-Scanner ;x

CCP loves deployables, right?

So your argument is that since there are some people who automate d-scan (illegitimately), it is thus a bad idea to allow this functionality legitimately? What bad thing would happen in your scenario? Would the cheater's little loophole suddenly give them more intel above the norm than it did previously?