Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I've not had a chance to run any of the 0.0 or low sec exploration sites.
I have run numerous sites in my C2 and various C3/4 connections. The loot has been underwhelming, to say the least. The sleeper rats in those sites are far more valuable that the loot coming from the cans.

This is bad. For something that takes as much time and as many clicks as the minigame and loot spew does there ought to be more value for the inherent riskiness of this in w-space.

Also, I really dislike the "in your face and can't miss them in the scanner window" sig list.
1) it's buggy - hide/un-hide checkbox is getting almost as much use as the poor abused d-scan button
2) it has removed the "unknown" from what is supposed to be unknown space. There's no need to drop probes periodically to maintain situational awareness. Simply wait until the UI tells you there's some new thing to go do somewhere
3) Absolutely zero reason to bother mining the ore sites (which is slightly less reason than prior to odyssey because the refining at a POS is still terrible)
4) There needs to be more diversity in the types of exploration content available.


I began playing EVE because of friends, but I kept playing EVE because of Apocrypha. Odyssey was being hyped another boost to exploration a la Apocrypha. This is a far cry from Apocrypha levels. There needs to be some bone thrown to the people that spent time developing scanning skills (the skillbook kind) but there needs to be an entire skeleton's worth of bones thrown to the people that spent time developing the real scanning skills (mechanics). Because what we have currently, to be kind, is underwhelming.

I used to spend an entire evening doing exploration sites. I'd have my Orca along with me providing me ships to help remove some of the leap frogging of ships from system to system. For a while I stopped doing missions, stopped doing industry, stopped doing everything available in EVE except do Exploration. That was my profession and I took it fairly seriously. I had everything I needed between myself and my alt. I even streamed hours upon hours of my exploration endeavours as well. I remember all the time people asking me how I was able to scan things down so fast and so efficiently and tricks to find sites and scan them down as fast as possible to beat out some other explorer first.

Then came Oddysey.

I've put in only 15 to 20 hours of exploration since that expansion was released. My Orca has become just another mining support vessel that serves no other purpose then that. The scanning system has been so incredibly dumbed down (ie: showing how big you need to make your probes and where to put them the second you warp into system, how many there are, and pretty much on the first scan of the system with the probes you know what signatures are which) that I just quit doing it. Now I just fly in my Hawk and hit up the combat sites for an hour or so that are automatically shown when you enter a system. There has been no other reason for me to take exploration as seriously as I once did.

What was a profession to me before Odyssey that I took somewhat seriously has become nothing but an RSI enducing click fest. All of the hours I spent out side of the game reading up on tutorials on scanning and learning my own tricks to do things fast and efficiently have been effectively removed from the game. I know I'm not the only one either. EVE used to be hard and to do things well used to be hard and now... well... EVE is Easy.

It was put on the test server and we were asked for feedback, we told tem all then problems and issues. Things we didn't like thing we liked and things that were not going to go live well.
They still pushed it through.

I'd say they were successful if that was their goal. I've killed 3 or 4 people since Odyssey in hisec exploration sites, due to them stealing loot from me and opening themselves up to pew pew, or vice versa. And I'm a carebear who rarely leaves hisec exploration and never killed anyone or stole anything before Odyssey. Not only are there more people in the sites, but since people aren't in shiny T3s I think they are more willing to risk their ships.

I also see people posting covops kills in low/null data/relic sites all the time.

It seems very half-baked and poorly realized now.
From all the pre-release information CCP gave out and all the hype I was expecting new kinds of sites, an inprovement in the UI without effecting how the sites are actually run, and some new backstory/epicness.
I can pretty much just summarize the entire effort with:

• Radial menu
• Rats removed from sites and hacking.
• Probing easy mode.

The ship rebalances, although I disagree with some, I think are okay.
(And the Radial Menu I really like.)

Scanning is oppressively repetitive now. It was before Odyssey too, but I actually had to pay attention and try (I can't tell the spread probe formation to gtfo hard enough).
I put a probe launcher on a vengeance for lols and it works just fine. The sites are cookie cutter and very samey.

The scanning overlay actually puts me in DANGER, because if there is a sig icon over a place I need to warp to, I can't warp to it until that sig goes away(Seriously, what the ****, It is absolutely disgusting design). It also bugs out and requires me to click my overview a bunch after jumping EVERY single time to make the UI respond again. (So the UI was made even WORSE.)

The "Big" Odyssey expansion was pretty small in hindsight, which is good, because it only ruined one part of eve, exploration.
The rest of eve is still there for now, and still hard, which is why I play.

Hate new exploration want puke when see relict or hacking site on scan.

Well in CCP's defense (as far as exploration goes) they did put it out saying that it was just the initial stage and would get further reiterations "soon". Which is pretty much admitting that it was half-baked. And the Dev team Prototype Rocks (now dissolved) were of course told that was a horrible horrible idea. They still went thru with it. Of course. And the lack of Dev comments (as usual) is rather telling. Only response we got after bitching in the Test Server forum is that they are "discussing it". So much for the great promises of "oh there will definitely be cooler stuff coming!".

If any Devs wanna hop in and salvage a small portion of your companies reputation, now would be a great time to do it. Give us a heads up on WTF is going on with Exploration. If you are ditching it, then give us a compelling and rational reason why you are doing so. Take some cues from the ship balancing team. While we don't always agree with their choices, we do tend to respect their decisions because they give us feedback, logical explanations, and actually re-evaluate based on constructive criticisms. Just an idea.

Nice analogy! It is pretty much dumpster diving.

I have felt the same way as all of the posts here.

My introduction to EVE was through a friend who felt I would love the mechanics of the game.
I found out fast that he had zero intention of playing with me as I was a noob in the game....he liked to kill ships and I was just going to be in his way........
I had to learn the entire game on my own and I found that exploration was the best solo activity available.
I trained for exploration exclusively so I could get to the point that I could run the sites I found and do so without having to switch ships and such.
I enjoyed helping people to explore.
This new system pretty much sucks in every way.

I had some ideas that others have found agreeable in this post.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=268777&find=unread

.... Is that sarcasm? It must be. Minor Probing fixes are not improvements to Exploration, much less actual content.

90% of what this discussion is about is the state of exploration, not the details of probing. Although not perfect, probing has improved under odyssey in general.