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The more I see of this expansion the more it looks like the expansion that will kill exploration. Right now I can say hands down I'd rather have the old over the new. The really nice changes to the dscan and such are great- but there is some kind of irony going on if you really want this expansion to be about exploration. The idea behind the little hacking minigame could have been great, the changes offered in this thread all dwarf what looks to be implemented by miles. The explosion of junk... my god. It had me grimacing before, now it has me thinking up other things I can do in eve to make isk/entertain myself.

Imo this game has always been about how you fit your ship, and what ship you pick. Right now it looks like you're doing the smart thing with scanning- giving it more modules so that your ship matters just as much as your skills. Yet in the same expansion it looks like you're moving away from ships and modules- I'm really hoping hacking/analyzing have booster modules, but I have no idea why the loot explosion was added. It seems like the worst way to try to get people to group up for sites.

I'm not going to offer ideas for changes, there are plenty enough good ones floating out in just this thread. I will say though that when I saw the name of the expansion and the focus of it I did not expect my current feelings at all to be this grim.

We should have gotten more sites, not nerfing and re-doing current sites. I can only cringe at the time already put into to all these fairly horrible changes, time committed that will probably mean despite an overwhelmingly negative reaction they'll be implemented in tq (I mean whew, I didn't see one comment that rested squarely in favor of even a fair amount of these changes).

I like the new hacking mini game so far, though of course it needs work, but I can see how it might be fun in the future. The biggest issue is that if you make it too challenging, or give it a time limit or something, well, people will be so drawn in it will be really really hard to avoid hostile players.

I'm looking forward to seeing the more difficult versions though (since it's currently unloseable).

As for the explosion of cans, the biggest problem I have with it is that no matter what cans you get, it's absolute junk. I'd like a confirmation that the itemization isn't in, because fitting up an 80+ million isk ship and flying it into nullsec, avoiding gate camps and bubbles, and scanning down sites is something that is going to be really challenging, and there needs to be an incentive to do it. The bigger the potential payouts, the more risks people will take to get them, and the more things explode. As it stands now, it's just completely boring, and there's no thrill of discovery since there is no big payout. There's nothing to be thrilled about.

Since payouts are so low, every missed can is painful because you can't help but wonder if the thing that would have made all the effort that went into finding that site worth it was just lost forever.

I've done 3-4 sites in null sec (which was a substantial time investment) and came away from it with around ten million isk.

Adding the cans to the overview is something that needs to happen too. EVERYTHING is on the overview. Besides, then you can order by range, and have a less irritating time tracking and following cans.

The closer we get to 4-June the more critical I find my self getting of the entire release process.

The Hacking mini-game; Huge Potential !, but not even close to ready to go live in 10days, the current state i'ts just not done, it's a first sprint demo, not a release ready feature.
Unless you have something supper in the build queue, Hold it off... pull this from OD. and finish it, do it right rather than do it for June.
Your players are not WoW munchkins... we will wait for good content. ( and rebel over poor un-finished content )

Spew cans: They are an awesome idea on paper, I loved it, as other have said it does great things with it's design principals, encourages fleets, is hard to impossible to multi-box, wonderful ... till I tried it.
They are close to un-usable, poor rewards, too clickiy, not enough skill involved ( In game SP .. as opposed to human skill ) , too much twitch, interface dependent, client machine dependent.
Others Have proposed good changes in this thread, both ways of improving the current system, or rehauling it to somehting else; I like most of them, and will throw my 0.02isk in as well.

Have the hack skill and result of the mini game reduce the number of cans... If you win completely, really dominate the hack with a specialized ship, good modules, high char. skills and good play by the human, then a few cans drop with all the loot ... if you blow it and just barely win, or tie ... 40+ cans scatter out. and you can try to grab some of the loot still, and if you fail the hack... no loot for you.

The Bring a friend idea is great, but it has to be needed for the full process, work it in to the min-game, not just the loot grab, and if it is not fitting ... drop it for this release, scale the # of cans, and contents back for a single person, and iterate on the # of mini-cans, and the way others help once we have this on TQ.

I tried a lowsec Relic Site yesterday with a Gnosis, for trying out how it was. And...

While the minigame is simple and quite funny, it isn't very variated or challenging. I think different kinds of minigames, while posing perhaps a slighty bigger challenge, would improve it. I understand it's not easy to transform the waiting-for-the-module-to-hack into a more interesting thingie, and that it's still in development and will be improved in future patches and expansions, but as you asked for feedback, that's mine :)

About the minican piñata, while the idea is quite funny you end up a bit stressed when trying to get everything. Good thing I toggled off the camera tracking (for those who don't know how it's done, simply press C), because it would be a madness. Also, the bright nebula that happens to be right on the relic drops FPS too much for being just decoration, making the can gathering even more dificult (I love decoration and gas clouds, but I'm pretty sure there are better ways of doing it that don't drop FPS or blur the icons on its brightness).
Moreover, I'd like the number of cans to be perhaps lower, or at least variable between different sites. Since they fly away in waves, each in one direction, gathering everything, especially with a Battlecruiser as the Gnosis, becomes impossible. In fact, if you can only gather about 15-20% of the total rewards on your own, I don't find it a good trade (I think I shouldn't have to necessary bring a mate to be able to take everything in a site, which I can do now with the current sites). Oh, and I wasn't very impressed with the rewards, being a lowsec site. Yes, I know this is still in development.

To sum up:

- Minigame idea is good and funny but might need more variety (different kinds of games).
- Minicans are also funny but they private you from getting 100% rewards on your own, which we can do now. Lowering the number of cans and/or spewing them in more or less the same direction would help, as well as perhaps: longer tractor beam range/drag speed, being able to tractor beam more than one can at a time, adding higher reward loot...

Critic mode away, I'm very very excited about everything Oddysey promises. Keep up the good work CCP, you're all awesome!

I actually like the new hacking system because:

1. It leaves the explorer unprotected during the looting. What I mean is, you can't D-scan and also loot. So exploring now also has a higher risk. But with risk should also be reward.

2. I like the actual hacking part, but it seems a bit too easy now. I'm sure this can be tweaked and it's not in the final form, but I don't even have to pay attention to anything, just spam click until the loot pops out.

I don't like:

- The loot: It is incredibly pointless to do any exploration as most other professions offer more ISK. I've done around 15 exploration sites (data + relic) in nullsec, with an avarage of ~13 million / site. Now, if you take into account the time it takes to travel through systems, to scan them, to loot them and the high risk of travelling with the loot to a point where you can sell it, 13mil is incredibly low. So low that nobody will bother with it, which is a shame. I was REALLY looking forward to something new other than shooting red plusses.

Please make this a viable main profession, by increasing the loot value.

I have two ideas for the hacking mini game: One is the addition of a logic game to disabling defence subsystems and the other is to add alarms that can be disabled or triggered. (This is with my other post in mind about hacking.)


To stick with the roguelike parallel, navigating through the network is walking around the dungeon and finding a defence subsystem is a monster encounter blocking progress. Disabling the defence subsystem right now is a simple investment of points to get it done, or not. My proposal is to add a logic game to it that.

In this game the defence subsystem has a certain amount of resources and you can decide how many resources you invest, depending on how comfortable and good you are in the mini game. Yes, I am thinking again of Paradroid. In that game, the better you are in the mini game, the greater the difference between droids numbers could be jumped, you were even able to beat the 999 with your basic 001 if you were lucky with the layout and knew what you were doing.

If you lose the mini game, the monster ate you, permadeath, transmission terminated, game over. The system is locked down, you get kicked and all the stuff you collected so far is tucked away out of reach.

A logic game like this would put weight on player skill for getting higher rewards. The virus coherence is limited and you decide how to use it, greater ability and greater risks should yield greater reward.

Sure, such a mini game will take your attention away from your surrounding, but that's why you bring a friend along, or two. You're a Decker in the Matrix, meat reality is a no can do. If you abort the hack, the system locks down but at least you can keep everything you collected so far.



Second thing were alarm subsystems. They work like defence subsystems but they can be triggered without locking the system and throwing you out. You can even lose the mini game against them without getting kicked.

Instead they will spawn rats in the site or automated defences, like turrets or drones. And you being busy with the hacking will have issues killing them. If you move outside the 5km range of the module, hacking fails, system lockdown, all is lost. Same should you get popped.

So bring friends along or disable the alarm subsystems. Friends mean they can both deal with the rats and keep you alive should the rats target you. And thus allow you to save virus resources for more important stuff, like getting deeper for more loot. You're a Decker in the Matrix, you need friends to keep your meat safe.



These are ideas to reinforce team play and emphasise player skill over simple number counting and adding a risk/reward equation to the whole mix. And all that by keeping the 'hacking' concept and theme intact (loot piñata doesn't).

[maybe I should make a thread in F&I with this]

So I gave the piñata game another shot, and it still sucked.
I can say this with quite a bit of confidence, No one wants to have to get a random chance for a site, evade gate camps, and then get a loot piñata party and then get a random chance for random loot.
I like the idea of a multi layered hacking mini-game, after each successful hacking it would give you the option to quit, if you do it spits out 1 can, per layer you completed, with your loot. If you continue it opens another layer of the mini-game your virus coherence will carry over from layer to layer. At any time should you fail your hacking attempt the site will explode, destroying al loot, and maybe triggering a rat spawn.

do you really think that exploration is place where botters very common?

This is really silly. Exploration sites can't be bottet anyway. So why ruin the fun for explorers?
And the pinata so that it can't be multiboxed? Ugh without the pinata there wouldn't even be a reason to think about multiboxing these sites. And why force teamwork on such an established solo activity in the first place?
If CCP wants more team activities they should have buffed team mission running. Or perhaps a new mining gun that explodes asteroids and then the miners can pick up ore pinata. (actualy that would be great for mining in low/null/wh to reduce the time of being exposed in a vulnerable position and fix botting as you pointed out)

First off... why are we trying to defeat multiboxers? The only REASON we had so many duos running exploration sites was because of the fact that to scan in serious places you HAD to have a special kind of SHIP. If you didn't have the ship bonuses to scanning you were never going to get the best sites, and with the exception of t3's you never got a ship that could scan with even a basic amount of combat ability- and even t3s often had to use the stealth subsystem, suffering hits to the damage they needed to pop the bships and such that clogged hacking and mag sites.

We removed rats, we've added scanning mods- why would people still mutlibox?

Why should scanning, among all things, be the "group up" profession? FFS man, incursions = forced groups, isn't that enough for pve? Scanning by its very nature doesn't meld well with 5 people flying into local just to do some junky site.

Mentioning botters- in the same thread as exploration- It almost throws everything else you've mentioned into doubt, because it's clear you have no grasp on what exactly a bot can do- and what scanning requires.

A goal should never be "stop something" it should always be "promote something new!"

Rewarding teamwork? Why? This game is all about trusting only yourself- why is the most dangerous pve profession now also the one requiring you to trust more people? I mean did ANY thought go into your post, and of course into the implementation ideas behind these changes?


My posts are always pretty negative- but it's because these are feedback threads. Sure, the hacking minigame MAY change, but right now? Right now we need to look at what they are showing us- not what MIGHT happen- and reflect only on that.

Right now? Right now it is unplayable.

1) exploration should be dropping the same amount of loot as pre-odyssey, and it shouldn't be ejected into space.

2) loot explosions should be scrapped, or added to mining- have some kind of charged up mining device that you can charge in hisec then fly into low and mine for 1-5min and have the asteroid "explode."

See what I did there? That is a profession where being in a group would be VERY useful, in many ways, and which could turn lowsec mining into something worthy of training for and forming a group to escort you for.

3) the hacking minigame should be windowed

4) the hacking minigame should feel like playing minesweeper, off the top of my head that's the right attitude- have a timer, have a small window of those nodes- nodes show you numbers, your virus strength lets you hit X amount of 'bombs.' Where X is like 0-4 and based off your hacking/archeology skills respectively.


I just don't understand at all why exploration is the testing ground for all these completely counter-eve mechanics- a window in dangerous space that completely blocks your view of threats (wtf? scanning is the riskiest business in pve already! if anything this makes me want to have an alt in system just to overwatch!). Why is scanning the testing bed for loot explosions? since when has this been in design?!

Of course this is the test server- I'm taking salt- but at the same time what is it you're testing? none of the solid mechanics for the professions seem in a position where testing gives us anything but a feeling for what they will be- and so far I'm not getting satisfaction from any profession sites!