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In addition to the points mentioned: Exploration income was already random based on finding and scanning down a site and its contents. Now you add another layer of gambling with the RNG when a hacking fail explodes containers. As if that was not enough, we get to play the lottery again with the loot piñata. Compare that to the target rat, press F1, receive ISK of ratting.

This coincides with drastically raising the time spent at a profession site and increasing the visibility of the sites in the overview - both raising the risk explorers have to take.

For every thousand that like it, a million will hate it. So far the pinata has received a 98% negative feedback with 1.5% of the remainder being indifferent because they find it nifty.

As someone whose main job in EVE is to explore during my off hours at work, I hate the feature to the bone.

I'm sure a lot of effort went into the Hindenburg, doesn't mean Hydrogen was ever a good idea in a dirigible.

There are very valid critcisms of loot pinata, but income isn't one of them.

Why?

The market sets the prices for the items got by archeology/hacking (many of which are unique to the profession). Which means that more or less loot recovered means lower or higher prices for the indivual items. Overall, this will tend to approach a certain ISK/hour. Acutally, less loot dropped is probably beneficial for the profession, as it can lead to some specific bottlenecks (lets say with invention), driving prices up more than needed to compensate.

If the looted amount drops, prices will rise, meaning you still get roughly the same ISK/hour. Usually, you should be worried about too much dropping...

Now, regarding solo vs. groups: If group-exploration becomes a significant thing, then yes, it'll hurt the ISK/hour of solo players. But, as you noted, almost all professions scale with the amount of players, and exploration should't be better than most (actually, it'll be quite a bit worse), so I don't expect much group-exploration (because running missions, etc., will usually beat it ISK/hour&account). So the market will adapt to the amount of loot recovered / hour by a solo explorer. Meaning: income will be fine.

Doesn't mean the loot spew isn't somewhat unattractive in other ways (basically FEELING like you are losing out on sth., like you are apparently feeling - even though obj. it doesn't make much of a difference because it effects all players).

You know, as much as I like to whine in my current rage-filled state (induced by losing cans I know should have at least 2 BPCs), your post sums up my sober feelings about this forum and CCP as a whole right now.

The pinata DOESN'T nerf solo income, read my post above. If you still disagree, I am happy to elaborate.

The TLDR-version: ISK/hour is market-based. Groups have other income that scales better per player/account. Therefore exploration income is still set by the market based on solo-explorer loot recovery.

It DOES favor the guy who can figure out how to get more cans, though (but I don't think there'll be much difference).

The Pinata can also make you FEEL as if you have lost income (the vanishing cans), but as that happen to all players it doesn't effect prices negatively - it sill FEELS sucky though.

Even if we disagree on the loot-pinata (solo-income) issue - even though I hope I can convince you - I agree with you there.

The mini game is a good fit for hacking, but it would be nice if Archeology had a different "mini-game" that felt a bit more explorer-like (involving travel most certainly).

No, having a non-scaling profession scale with people always hurts the solo player. I'd mine more if I could compete with orca-boosted fleets by myself. Hidden belts used to allow me to do so and hacking too.

Right now you're basically telling me receiving 1/4 as many BPCs for 4x price would be Ok, and I understand. But having the OPTION of guaranteeing that BPC drop gives the advantage to corps as the prices would scale down with there being more BPCs on the market. Hurting the little guy and quartering his isk income. Not to mention the solo player now wastes a respawn timer, angering the corp hackers and can looters.

EDIT: You know, most of my frustration would go away if I couldn't scan the freaking containers and know what I'm not getting when compared to someone with a gang of friends picking up the cans...

Exploration has always been a scaling profession, even now your income does take that into account.

Even now you obviously get more total income if you do exploration as a group (either by doing the sites faster with more DPS or doing more than one site in parallel). So more people/accounts running exploration now means lower loot prices. I don't see a change insofar.

So, more accounts will get more total income after the expansion as well, but I don't see that it scales better for the group than it does now. Actually I think they'll get less ISK/hour&account (e.g. not scaling linearly) beyond two accounts (well, they can simply do the sites in parallel, but that's like it always has been). And for two accounts it'll be double the total income which is okay and roughly as it is now. It simply doesn't deviate much from linear scalinging.


They cannot guarantee that without actually having the other accounts present, so their ISK/(hour*account) won't be higher than the solo player's.

Guaranteeing the BPC drop with more accounts doesn't in the long run change that, as a solo-explorer will get a respective chance for every site done. Again, the TOTAL income will always be higher for multiple accounts, but that guaranteed BPC income needs to be split for the relative income if you take the number of people/accounts into account.


TLDR: Absolute income (loot got per time) scales roughly the same as it did before for mulitple people/accounts. ISK/(hour&account) shouldn't change due to loot pinata for solo vs. group.

What you're not taking into account here is that the supply of radar sites between downtimes is limited. And it is overall more profitable to do so in a gorup than solo under the proposed system. Especially on a per-sovereign-system basis for null corps. As it stands on SiSi my corpmates won't let me solo the sites because they KNOW I'll be wasting 1/3 of the loot on every timer.

I do agree that the isk/hour for highsec solo probers will likely remain the same, though.

Okay, now I am starting to get what you are getting at.

You are talking about limited supply of sites (while I mostly assumed a limited amount of time). Probably a function of where you live and explore & your game-time (me: lowsec, not that much time).

Assuming limited amount of sites to explore, running it in groups will be a good idea, yes. But I don't think that'll apply for most explorers, so I'd assume the prices will be mostly set by solo-explorers.

I suspect solo income won't change much even for your case (in terms of ISK), but if run in groups ISK-income should rise for that limited site-supply pocket in null/wspace(?)

Therefore you might feel forced/pressured to run those limited sites as a group, to make the most of it.