EVE General Discussion

I think you're over exaggerating. What if originally 5 items were to jettison out and you were able to collect all 5 before the 5th one expired into space? So you essentially received 5/5 and I would assume you be happy. But in reality CCP jettisons 10 items but you still can only get 5 before they all expire into space, however, now that you know there were a total of 10 you were unhappy because you couldn't get the other 5 items but you still managed to get 5 out of 10. So you still got the same amount in both situations. But in the 2nd situation since you know that there were 10 items you feel you should be entitled to get the other 5 you missed out. Where as, I honestly just see it as "hey there are more items available, you could bring a friend if you want to get the rest but it's not necessarily needed."

The player just used his skill to succeed at a solo activity.

He then watches 50% of the resulting loot disappear, giving the impression of a failure. It's not about entitlement to the other half. It makes you feel bad for doing the site when no friends were around. Making a player feel bad for succeeding = bad game design.

For that matter, it IS a failure. He should bookmark the site and wait for a friend to become available to come with him.

Will tractors work?

Time to dust off the exploration Noctis.

Overall, the idea sounds really dumb. But that is my opinion.

Man, I'm really looking forward to my solo exploration roams on my 14" laptop on ****** hotel wifi now, NOT!

I'll be lucky if I can get anything from this pinata system


Seriously folks, exploration is the one piece of PvE that is optimised for solo play. Mostly anyone else tagging along gets bored out of their minds waiting for you to finish scanning. Now the plan is that every now and then you'll hit a site that requiires you to have a friend with you (preferably one with a nice big screen, a good connection and very good reflexes) if you want to 'complete' the site.

Am I missing something?

Pretty much everyone who's posted in this thread should read this post.

I remember what scanning was like before scanning was scanning.

So STFU you whippersnappers.

I somewhat agree, but you have to consider things from the other perspective as well. ATM to be profitable in lowsec and time-effective requires at LEAST a Cloaky recon. It also requires a decent amount of tank and firepower to clear through the rats and not get pushed out of sites. I used a pilgrim for a while, but I've upgraded to a Loki in the last few months, having finally decided it was worth the risk.

Highsec exploration is kind of worthless due to the sheer number of people doing it, and is also incredibly easy(with the exception of plexes). Lowsec exploration requires a massive investment of resources, in the range of several hundred million and months of training to really become a viable income source. There's a HUGE barrier of entry for those newer explorers to make the jump from high to low. And on top of that, MOST of the barrier here has nothing to do with exploration, or scanning, or even gankers. It's the difficulty in fitting a competent ship that has the damage and tank to deal with the rats in radar and mag sites.

Now understand I'm not saying lowsec exploration is hard. It's actually pretty goddamn easy. But I ran a solo w-space operation for a year and a half before I 'retired' to lowsec. Most of the lowsec explorers are older players. Maybe not vets, but you look at us and you see a pretty old group. We've earned our place as explorers, but how much of that was our own skill, and how much of it is simply waiting for our character skills to climb up?

This new system lowers the barrier of entry for lowsec to be sure, but it ALSO moves the focus of exploration sites away from combat. If I wanted to shoot things I'd be missioning, not exploring. And on top of all this, the removal of rats makes dives to null for us lowsec dwellers not only viable, but potentially very lucrative. In the current system null dives require fitting up a T3 with interdiction nullifiers, warp stabs, covert reconfiguration, and the "usual" subsystems. But the null radar sites put out mission level dps in many cases, which requires a full refit to a mission running setup. It simply doesn't feel like exploration anymore.

As you go "deeper" into null and w-space, exploration sites, ratting, and missions all blur together. You need a heavily capable combat ship either way. In w-space it makes sense, and the nature of sleepers actually makes it rather fun. But null has no excuse. It's boring, and I quickly stopped my null dives to explore in lowsec instead. This new change means that as a solo player I can start looking back to null dives for exploration. It means greater risks and greater rewards.

It also means that when I want to teach my friends to explore, I can do so without seeing my profits fall through the floor. This is the beginning of a new era for explorers, solo or otherwise. You can cower in fear, or you can start looking to the future.

Actually watch the relevant video before commenting people.
It is not 'twitch based gameplay'.
When you actually watch it rather than raging over a rumour you see how it works.
A bunch of green objects appear.
You click one, on the demo, CCP took several seconds to actually click one.
The rest turn red, while your ship pulls the clicked one in with a tractor beam (Appears to be a free beam, not a module)
When your ship has finished pulling one in, they turn green again.

If they go out of range, they turn white to say out of range, you can still chase them by moving at this point.
CCP video'ed for about 30 seconds, and the loot hadn't 'exploded' though most had gone out of range of the stationary ship.

So this is not 'twitch' game play, it's still fairly slow paced, though a little faster than before, and yes, if you are actually physically impared in some way, exploration may not be the right game for you. Of course, for all we know you can click on the objects via the overview, so you don't have to hunt the cross in space. But if you are capable of targetting a ship in space rather than via the overview, you are capable of doing this.

ooooo

I just recently started playing Eve and was instantly drawn to the idea of exploration. The current scanning system seems archaic compared to the beautiful visuals throughout the rest of the game. From what I can tell an update was certainly overdue. Though I'm really skeptical of what I've started to term "Loot Barf".

I recently finished playing a couple of games that used the "Loot Barf" mechanic and find it frustrating, though I believe I understand the thought behind its presence. I know for a fact that I'm going to be hard pressed to convince some of the people I play with to tag along with me while I explore. Strangely enough, removing the NPCs will make it harder to convince them to come along since they will have less things to "make go boom".

It seems too early to make judgement calls on how it will be handled in this game.