EVE General Discussion

I can stand the hacking, and it even feels like a fun addition to the game.

However, the loot spew is ridiculous. It feels like a carnival game, where you have to grab something of value before the time's up. If you successfully hack a can, you should be rewarded with it's contents, not a chance to grab two or three before they all disappear in 10 seconds. I expect this kind of poorly thought out, unrewarding minigame from something like World of Warcraft.

I applaud CCP for taking risks in their game design, but this was was a bad idea from the get go.

You could just cut out the middleman and play some of those stupid gambling services they're always ranting about in Jita local.
The game should reward intelligence, planning, and experience, not dumb luck.

The game is not one monolithic thing. The game, as a whole, to be successful must appeal to many different people.

The exploration re-vamp is intended to make the game appeal to a different player interest. It may not be for you anymore. It went from being a sure thing to being a gamble. That's not a mistake. It's an attempt to diversify.

Actually, that's exactly what casinos do.

In fact, there's a lot to be said for the rush of finding something and winning it with a little luck. That often keeps people coming back for more. It's exciting never knowing what's going to be in the next system, signature, game, or can.



To be fair, it's more like Blackjack than a slot machine. Only the loot spew is really like a slot machine. In Blackjack, you do benefit from some skill, like counting cards or knowing the odds. Skill matters in exploration too. But you win or you lose in Blackjack by what cards you get and the dealer gets... luck. Mitigated by skill, but still luck.

The new mechanic is idiotic, at best.

When people salvage wrecks today in the real world, the hard work is finding the wreck, and the planning stages. It can be dangerous work, but every bit of salvage is analyzed and judged for profit. Salvagers don't start work on a ship unless they have a pretty good idea of the payoff. I am not talking about before they actually locate and board the wreck, but after.

The gamble is the amount of effort and time required to find the wreck, and if submerged, the logistics to get everything of value off of the wreck. They don't worry about stuff disappearing once it is identified.

Exploration should be about the thrill of location and the thrill of analyzing what you find there, not some twitch game to grab as many cans as you can.

This new exploration was designed for kids, and an insult to anyone who did exploration as an Eve profession before this abomination was release.

I keep hearing you are supposed to be more people now, when doing exploration, so you get a chance to grab all the cans.

All good, except only 1 guy gets to have "fun" while playing the minigame. The other(s) in the fleet can just sit there and wait until the hack is done.

Thats the actual poor gamedesign right there if you ask me.

I play the slots. What's nice about them is when I actually win, my winnings fall into the hopper, where I can transfer them to my cup. The slot machine doesn't explode, sending my winnings, mixed with a bunch of random takeout menus, all over hell and gone to vanish if I don't pick it up fast enough.

The rest of your analogy is quite correct; although I would liken the new exploration to a carnival midway more so than a casino.

Except they'd have to be operating both accounts simultaneously. Not something that you can get around with alt-tab.

Unless they had two adjacent computers and had a mouse in each hand or something.

Just tried it today and I loved it.

-okay but before that it was a treasure chest waiting to be discovered, opened (with enough skill), and looted. I have nothing against slots, but certainly feel they would fare better in say-- I don't know-- a space station you could walk in maybe?

"It's funny how people don't understand what the loot spew is or why it was done. Virtually everything about the exploration re-vamp was intended to make exploration like going to a casino."
-I try to keep up with the dev blogs and haven't read any references to making exploration into space Vegas. I understand what the loot spew is but if I explained it as I've experienced it most of that explanation would be unreadable due to too many expletives.

"It's all about luck and payoffs. You look for a system with signatures - find system? Lucky! You scan down the signature - right kind? Lucky! You play the little game to break the core - core broken? Lucky! Loot comes shooting out of the slot - grabbed the right thing? Lucky!"
-When wasn't it about luck and payoffs? I dare say all of EVE is about that at some level. There was more luck (and skill) prior to the patch. There was no "Hey here's some hidden stuff!!" alert every time you entered a system. You are not lucky when you "find a system" because almost every system seems to have something. As it stands the luck is now in finding the easily located site before everyone else.

When probing prior to Odyssey you were definitely lucky if you found a data or hack site, now you just probe by numbers. I don't mind the mini-game-- it has potential, but if I win just allow me to take my goods. If the spew were fun I wouldn't have an issue, but it's not. It's lame. I could get on board with the concept if EVE as a whole had other examples of this mechanic, but it does not and hopefully will not in the future. Why introduce such a frantic and frustrating experience for what amounts to little or no reward? I almost feel like it's PvL (Player versus Loot). In fact that's exactly what it feels like.

"This is intended to appeal to a certain type of player experience."
-Clearly.

"If you don't like it, you should probably try some other game experience in EVE."
-I used to like it immensely because it actually felt like exploration and to be honest I was more likely to partner up with other players to find sites prior to the patch, because it was much more of a challenge to find them. I guess I could just as easily say "If you don't like challenges you should try exploration". Trust me on this one I have tried plenty of experiences in EVE and will continue to do so, but thank you for the unsolicited advice.

"This one is modeled on slot machines at a casino. If you wouldn't play slots, you probably shouldn't play this."
-Noted and yes the loot spew is completely random and very slot machine like which is a shame. The entire experience and process used to be more modeled on searching a vast expanse for something that was hidden, determining it's value, and applying your skills and experience to gaining access to it.