EVE General Discussion

no... it is infact you who is missing the point.
complaining about the solo play aspects of an MMO is like complaining solitaire has no multiplayer, or that your horse doesnt do well in formula 1, or that you can't swim very well while playing football.

seriously, think about what MMO stands for and then consider that a game that has 'multiplayer' IN THE TITLE, probably doesnt play solo very well.

You are so wrong that it hurts.

The skill changes were as follows:

Astrometrics Rangefinding/Acquisition/Pinpointing lose 5% bonus per level.
Astrometrics loses +1 probe per level (speculation on my part.)
Astrometrics gain the lost 5% bonuses per level.

So if you currently have all Astro skills at 5, you gain the following bonuses:
8 Probes launchable (+5 from Astrometrics)
50% Reduced Scan Deviation (50% from Pinpointing)
50% Increased Scan Probe Strength (50% from Rangefinding)
50% Reduced Scan Probe Scan Time (50% from Acquisition)

Post-Odyssey, with all Astro skills at 5, you gain the following bonuses:
7 Probes launchable (This is my guess based on the new probe formation launching and what Soundwave said during the Eve Keynote, to paraphrase, "We're letting you launch 7 probes because it's mathematically the best.)
50% Reduced Scan Deviation (25% from Astrometrics, 25% from Pinpointing)
50% Increased Scan Probe Strength (25% from Astrometrics, 25% from Rangefinding)
50% Reduced Scan Probe Scan Time (25% from Astrometrics, 25% from Acquisition)

So as you can see, same bonuses with all level 5 skills, in fact, if your skills AREN'T all at 5, you'll actually benefit from this change, for example with 5 in Astrometrics and 4 in the Astrometrics support skills, you'd get 8 probes and 40% bonuses. Post-Odyssey, you'll have 7 probes with 45% bonuses.

This is actually better for casual players as they only miss out on 5% instead of 10% bonuses from not spending over 3 months training the Astrometric support skills to 5.

Couple this with the new modules and probing efficiency will be at an all time high.

Please learn to read before you make yourself look stupid for the sake of exploration players, I love exploring and I'm positively giddy about Odyssey.

If CCP should fail at solo content in this game, I would consider it a real failure to have attempted it in the first place and a good thing if the attempt fails.


If it could be said there are any solo players in this game, I can say I am one of them.

And the real challenge of solo play is not the content available for solo players, of which there is little beyond missions, but in taking the existing content and managing it solo.

This requires a heightened challenge in everything from travel tactics to fittings. Indeed there are limits to how far you can go, there's no doubt about that, but that's the challenge: making it work at all. Even without coming away with loot, escaping the situations (like that 9/10 nullsec drone site in a Cyclone escaping with an overloaded 100MB AB and half structure...) you find yourself getting into, is fun and excitement itself.

And yes, the solo players who take up exploration and solo PVP instead of mindless ISK-snatching bean-counting grinding are not into this for the ISK. They are deaf to those who say "I got (insert trillions of amount of ISK here) so I am winning Eve". No, you are showing that mind-numbing grinding is some kind of norm for you and that does not speak well for your character or mental state overall. What's the drug making this possible, Ritalin?


But that CCP has been hard on solo play, Incursions for example where dead mission drakes littered the space lanes for the first day, is always a good thing, and managing to work and survive around that has always been fun.


The fact that exploration is getting a boost and exploration is a form of solo play that just about everybody from ganker to missioner likes (hence why I always wonder why we never see a "exploration CSM" being more popular) does not mean CCP is giving on up for solo play, but I think they have figured out that it's time to address exploration as a career choice.

From the looks of it, the truly phat rewards of exploration are still going to require a team effort. So the 9/10, 10/10, nullsec and lowsec escalations, wormholes beyond class 3 - though I've heard of C5 solo command ships - etc., are not really going to change much. If they make more exploration options and content available to the high sec explorer, it's not changing much there since lower skilled players need to get their time in and skill up for their capabilities and high sec is the best place for them before taking those lowsec escalations or going to null for the top rewards.

So just because it's not going to be a WoW-ish "it's all about you here's your epic set" kind of result (good God, no please no) does not mean that Odyssey is going to fail. Since everybody enjoys a little exploration even once in a while, the improvements to the mechanics and hopefully more so the interface will be good for everybody. Long have I argued that boosts to exploration is content for the entire player base, and it's good to see that come around.

I'm a solo player in a player corp with 20+ members that interacts with the community. I do solo activities like hauling and mining to provide for the PvPers. I rarely fleet up (although I enjoy it when I do). I rarely PVP (in the pew pew sense of the word).

However I am not anti social, I just prefer to do activities that don't rely on having others there because my timezone (and available time) don't work well with that. There should be content for solo players, who enjoy the game and community, but for other reasons cannot take part in organised fleet ops with other players.

Players generate content in Eve... we don't get it handed to us on a theme park tray...

As a solo player you are generating content for others... mostly by providing something to stop their rounds with...

If you haul or mine or do anything solo then you are having the content of your game generated by others...

That's the best thing about Eve;
CCP provides us with a universe and a set of mechanics... We, the Players, set about creating content to go in the universe.

Dear Mr Stark.

I have not mined for some considerable time, once in the last 5 years.

However, I must take you to task for stating that mining promotes being anti-social in game.

For me, and I am sure many others, mining is one of the most social forms of game play Eve can offer.

My old corp used to organize and run what we called Mining Mondays, which were not compulsory in any way.

All corp members would turn up and take part for at least some of the time, either mining or standing guard, depending on their time-zone.

We chatted, talked about corp matters, how to fit ships, Eve in general, we were all new players and could share what little knowledge we had, and talked about any other nonsense we felt like.

All the ore mined was donated to our corp.

Still think mining is anti-social?

your old corp?
let's look at that, corps.
you join, they offer you nothing, and in return you get wardecs and awoxers.
ore buyback programs tend to give you less than you'd get if you sold at jita (essentially cutting in to your profits for no reason what so ever, but if you're lazy and don't care i guess that's fine).
mining ops? great you get 8 other guys mining your asteroids so you have to increase your non mining time finding new belts etc.
orca boosts so your orca can mine instead! well, no, he can't because some one still has to haul so he's still not an extra miner.

the very simple fact is corps have no way of offering you anything other than a chat channel (which, you don't need to be in a corp to use a chat channel). and in return you just have the constant risk of war decs and awoxes. there's no incentive to this drawback.

and that's pretty much your whole argument; I HAZ A CORP!

so yes, i think mining is very antisocial. that's why i spend so much time posting on the forum and in 1-2 of my favourite chat channels. so i can get the social interaction mining doesn't promote.

I think you can still launch 8 probes, so the scan strength increases because of math

base * 1.25 * 125 is higher compared to the old base * 1.5

And now you can do those Ladar / Radar / foo / bar sites with one Ship/fitting without guns.

And again ... the famous quote nobody seems to understand ...

Most of the players have solo playing characters ...
... which is different from most players being solo players.

This doesn't mean the majority of people are *casual* OR solo players,
it means that the majority of people have at least *one* solo playing *character* in their account.
I've read the quote. I can read it, without reading what i want to read.

I felt ashamed for having no clue about currency exchange,
but you people really make me feel much better.


Anyhow ... CCP is the law. CCP makes the game.
You don't like it ? Guess nobody cares.

The content you want is for babies,
compared to what can be pulled off in EvE on a daily basis.
Nobody really cares about people who need easy stuff to
boost their fake self esteem, except you babies.

Yes, i accept that you babies are in the millions, but CCP wants more
*real* players, who *create* content and not dumb *consumers*
who rely on others to make the game fun for them.

If that wasn't true, the last three expansions would have been different
and much less of a success than they were.

This game isn't for babies.
And that's what you are.

And that's all there is to it.

You are *accepted* in EvE, because you fulfill the usefull roles of the victims !

Accept the new tools and you can realize that there is lots to do for solo playing characters.

Don't accept them, okay, then cry all day about it ... who *really* cares, except the babies ?


Most of you are just *victims* ... and that's all you are there for.