Test Server Feedback

Tsubutai you have a point. That Proteus fit is pretty boss for the job.

I stand by my opinion that it would be silly if only frigs were good for hacking. The sensible thing for CCP would be to create an intermediate step. I've mentioned this a few times but so far looks i'm alone with that opinion.

The Force Recon ships look pretty good to me. What if they get a +15 virus strenght bonus? That would make them at roughly 200m isk price tag the best hacking ships. But they have neither the probe strenght bonuses of t2 frig and t3 cruiser nor the nullifier of t3.

The null sites could perhaps tweaked a bit so they emmit a smartbomb after failed hack so you have to fit at least some tank and not put all stabs and nanos in the lows or probe mods in the mids. That would mean you cant run them in frig anymore but the option to use Force Recon would make that aceptable imo.

I agree that there should be a bigger ship, but I don't think it'd be "an intermediate step." The T3s are supposed to be jack of all trades, it's not an end point to anything.

I still stand by my idea that Deep Space Transports are the ones that needs to get the overhaul to be the advanced exploration ship.

I like the idea of a transport exploration ship. Some of the useful loot can be quite bulky. Would be a nice incentive to not leave it behind. Don't see much room to iterate on that idea with the loot spew tho unless CCP makes an exception and puts bulky loot in the containers after the hacking. Otherwise it's gonna **** everyone else off.

*whispers* strategic cruisers

Twiddling thumbs is really just a choice. It doesn't take that long to begin with, and if your friend is whining about it taking long, then you'll just have to click faster. That's basically a timer mechanic with dynamic failure conditions and unpredictable (and yet not hopelessly frustrating) punishment. You can't program this stuff.

In the case you really cannot do it any quicker, if you're doing it in high sec, the second person can be scanning for the next signature or something. If it's low or null, the second person should be hunting down trappers and gankers. The hacking mechanic is not a silo, you're still interacting with others in space by virtue of undocking.

In any case, the mechanic has yet to be tested live on TQ, exactly how people are going to behave is still an unknown at the moment. If it really doesn't work, adjustments can be made in a point release.

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As for multiplayer hacking, as a mechanic in general, I wouldn't be surprised if they add that in later as part of advanced hacking. It's just that, these sites are still supposed to be solo-able. It's a good starting point, no need to make it too complicated.

I think at this point Sora has really made all the salient points I have.

The work over the last two weeks has taken this feature from a complete train wreck, to a playable new feature that could use some iteration, thank you for actually listening to the feedback and using it to make visible changes, I wish more of the dev teams did the same.

Three general feedback items on the current state of things;

1. @ccp prime sounds like he may not get to iterate on the loot scatter; if that is truly the case, please do not include it in this release, push it to a point release, it is much, much improved, but not ready yet to be left on TQ untouched for a year or more.

2. A bit off topic, but related to how I hack sites; I literally live in a ship with probes on it, right now on TQ all my scanning ships are fit to be able to do Radar or Mag sites should I find one ( Also with point for hero tackle ) .
With the addition of three new mid slot mod's That will no longer be true, it's a minor point, but if I want to scan now I will not be fitting Analyzer mod's by default. It would be nice if when i am using a dedicated exploration ship, fit for that purpose, I could still do the exploration sites.
TQ Exploration fit: 2H / 3M / 0L
SISI Explo. Fitting: 1H / 6M / 0L

It just seems out of place, I'm flying a ship fit exclusively for exploration, yet I must choose between scanning as well as I can to find sites to explore, or being able to do something with the site's I find.

3. Playablity... I have spent a lot of time testing this on SISI, however I don't think I will bother with k-space exploration post patch.
Despite what seems to have been a huge effort, some very good ideas, and a lot of really focused improvements on marginal ideas, the gameplay is still simply not rewarding enough to be worth it.
The old system was boring, but it was easy and fast, and could be done in the scanning ship I was in any way, so was worth the time to grab a friend or alt to kill rats, and go do quick, the new system is just falling short.
Though much improved It's still kinda boring , but it is now tedious and unrewarding feeling ( even if I get more loot ).

I think the big thing is coupling the very flat-land mini-game to the highly spacial 3D can explosion is failing.
Either one would have been a good stand alone change, but together they just fight each other diminishing both.
The hacking mini-game on incursion sites seems like a really good addition, Annoying in some ways, but all the complaints I can come up with for it are "change is bad". Need to get a real group to go test that in more depth.

(This is in-game terms to provide narrative structure)

When you attack another ship (player or npc) you are causing it to explode and leave behind a twisted and burned wreck. Some of that ships cargo, modules, rigs and objects survive that explosion and that's what you loot. You don't get 100% value of the destroyed ship back as loot, there is a lose as objects are destroyed or are flung off into space. Salvaging and salvage drones remove the twisted remains and collect anything of value as they go. The can that is left is the battered cargo hold or jet-can with the loot.

(Now I will admit that the wreckage should have momentum and that the new mechanic could be used to try and capture those smaller items thrown into space as additional loot, but that's up to CCP in the future.)

However, hacking implies that you are attempting to access a structure or system that you were not meant to access. Maybe that is why the mini-cans degrade so fast, you are exposing them to a scenario outside their original design, maybe these cans are used for internal storage within structures and stations, moved by human dock workers and specialised loading equipment. They aren't meant to withstand micro-tractor beams and in space transfers.

Now you could fire on the data/relic sites but you run the risk of destroying the very items you're seeking. But then you are no longer a hacker. There must be a reason we are hacking these structures rather than blowing them up, that applies to both the new and old hacking mechanics.

The frustration with spew cans is itself a symptom.

A symptom of these sites being utterly WORTHLESS.

I'm sorry, I want to be positive, I really really do. But I've just spent four hours flying through null sec on the test server. Four long, horribly horribly boring hours. Before that I spent another hour and a half with a buddy in low sec. In low sec, our biggest find from a hacked site was a grand 10 mil worth of data stuff (mind you we were able to collect all the cores).

Seeing how pathetic the haul in low sec was, both today, and when I tried it in the past couple of weeks, I decided to check out null sec. Surely that would be worth some isk?

So, after four hours of flying through I don't know how many null sec systems, half of them NPC null sec, and half player, I found a grand total of one data site and no relic sites. In this one data site, due to the absurd difficulty and my own bad luck and poor skills I managed to blow up four of the five cans / structures. Each of these hacking points was about 50kms + away from the others, making each one take a small eternity to get to. The one I did successfully hack awarded me with less than 1 million isk of loot.

After that site, I could not find another. I searched, for hours, through empty systems, and not a one showed up on the system scanner.

So at this point, I'm a bit pissed off, and a bit worried. Pissed off because of the colossal waste of time the entire frustrating effort was. Worried because the reward is NOWHERE NEAR high enough to justify the risk. Spending that much time in null sec on live would be incredibly dangerous. You would have to dodge gate camps, bubbles, and hunters. You may have to abandon a site mid hack, blowing up or abandoning precious loot to escape a hostile. There is no guarantee you will be able to get your loot back to high sec to sell it off.

About the only thing I could imagine funding with exploration at this point is an imicus. With my glorious findings, I could afford to buy an imicus. An imicus with all T1 fittings, and no faction probes. There is no way I would doom one of my beloved proteuses with low or null sec exploration when this goes live. Maybe there's a magic jackpot hidden in some data site somewhere, but the chances of finding it are so frustratingly low, with luck coming into play in so very very many places, it's absolutely absurd.

If gold was worthless and impossible to find, there would have been no gold rush.

The reason the spew mechanic is irritating is because the player can't help but feel that the loot that might have made all the trouble of finding that site, hacking the data mainframe, and clicking on those little cans worth it just despawned somewhere.

Maybe I'm just being stupidly, absurdly unlucky. Maybe most people are pulling 100+ mil out of each data site in null sec, and are finding one every two to three systems. Maybe even low sec sites are worth 60+ mil on average. But I can tell you that that has not been my experience, and I've been deeply frustrated by the entire ordeal. And it was an ordeal.

It can be fixed. Increase the frequency of sites, and increase the worth of all the loot. Don't bother spewing cans that only drop a freakin' hydrogen battery, because sucking in something worth a grand total of 1 isk is NOT rewarding. Give people a REASON to risk their ships in low sec and null sec. I WANT to do exploration. I want to enjoy it! But it's just plain painful at the moment.

I mean, here's a suggestion for a test you could run, Bayesian. Book some time on Singularity, or if you can't do it on Singularity use Duality or Buckingham or whatever. If loot is at 2.0 right now, dial it back down to 1.0 or perhaps 1.2 (since you said you wanted sites to be a little more profitable), and give us the new hacking mechanic but with no loot pinata. See how people take to it.

What you (and others) are after is this.

A ship that is dedictated to exploration with matching bonuses, large cargo hold (cruiser or larger), has a good but not overpowered defense, little or no offence, can only be gotten from an LP store from a faction that has most of it's agents in low or null sec space and finally looks good...

But sadly doesn't exist... there's always a catch.