Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Complaint mode on. Step away if you have an aversion to whining.

I think exploration still needs tweaking. Years ago when I played before, scanning and probing was so tedious, I stopped doing it. Since then CCP simplified it and made it more fun to do.

BUT, it still needs a few more tweaks. It is mainly with data and relic sites. I have spent too many times probing down a site to a high percentage, sometimes a high at 94%, only to move my scan are ever so slightly and the darn thing changes to a very low percentage scan, like 5%. This is unacceptable. The scan results are too inconsistent and unpredictable.

Also the controls are terrible still. When you get close to your target, the rotation control stops working altogether and many times when you use the shift control, it manipulates the probe positions instead. This is not good. It needs work.

AND. Us explorers spend a decent amount of effort, the rewards should be better more often. I work in 5 sec systems and to spend the amount of time on tracking down relic sites due to the problems already mentioned, only to get garbage booty makes exploration a waste of time. If you are going to make the process of probing so unreliable, at least make the efforts worth the prize. We won't mind some work if you get rewarded in kind.

Whine region ended. Complaint mode off.

Exploration: working as intended.

OP: entitled as expected.

Your stuff: to me it should be contracted.

Just bump your skills a bit and you quickly lose that (intentional) unreliability in the scans.

I'm assuming that by “5 security”, you mean 0.5, which means nothing you will find will ever really strain a good setup. Now, granted, my perspective is a bit skewed since I have the entire skill group to V so I can readily skip 2–3 steps in the narrowing-down process without losing track of the signal, but that just means you should be able to do it fairly easily if you take it one careful step at a time. In the meantime, you could compensate a bit by using better equipment.

Tbh, the current scanning system feels fine for me. Can locate sites & stuff fairly easy. Also, a harder to scan sig is usually good news: harder to find: good stuff to loot.

The easier something can be scanned down, the less worth it is (there's alot of explorers out there!)

I'm not rubbing it in or anything..

But today, 1 combat site, .9 system, 72.1m.

:)

You're doing something wrong as I'm not having this problem even on a lightly trained character.

What are your scanning skills, are you using a scanning bonused ship, and Sisters probes?
Are you zooming in to be better able to adjust position?
Do you rotate your view so you can adjust horizontally, and then vertically?
Are you grabbing an arrow so you only move in one direction at a time to make adjustments?
Are you using the pinpoint icon?

What kind of sites are we talking about here? My probing skills are quite incomplete, Astrometric IV, Astrometric Rangefinding II, Astrometric Pinpointing II, and Gallente Frigate III, but I have yet to find a non-sleeper-cache site that I could not pin down with t1 equipment. If you need to get a final 5% or so, just hold the alt key and drag your probes in a little tighter manually. That's worked for me thus far anyway. I will grant you I am new to the game, but I have been exploring wormholes since my first week or so. If you want any more advice feel free to stop by our corp's public channel "EvE-Scout". Aside from being a recruitment channel it is also a place to talk shop about exploring and wormholes generally.

The problem isn't that CCP made scanning hard;compared to a while back it's almost "drunk-enabled" at the moment. The main problem I have is that during EVE busiest time, I usually have one to three people showing up at a scan site when I do and it turns into an Oklahoman landrush ( as intended by CCP). Either that or all the sigs get run so much they all eventually congregate in some far off backwater of the region. The most I've seen is 24+ anomalies and 8 scannable sigs in one system. Sure, I always tend to return to that system and check, but other players have caught on and usually only the dregs are left.

But, too hard?............

Probing is too easy.

They took the challenge out of exploration years ago. Now exploration discussions have come to be mostly loot entitlement rather than building the better pew-pew exploration ships to do sites. It's a no brainer now, cookie-cutter ships you load up with mini-game modules.