Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
In the interest of fairness
Enkindu
Member Posts: 1,098
I am an EVE fanboy.
Have been for years.
I figure it would only be honest on my part to post when I have something not so positive to say.
I love exploration in EVE and have made a living with it for a long time. I was very excited about apocrypha and got a tower up in dangerous W-space the week of the patch. But I've just hit burnout for the first time in my EVE history.
The new probing systen STINKS. It was fun for a few days, and it is so simple any 3 year old could master it in a couple hours (lots of people seem to love it for this reason... I don't).
But my GOD is it TEDIOUS. Perfect prescription for simultaneous migraine and carpal tunnel syndrome.
Still solidly believe that EVE is the best game on the planet (I am a fanboy after all), but they broke my favorite thing to do in the game and as a result I'm suspending my accounts for a while.
deviliscious: (PS. I have been told that when I use scientific language, it does not make me sound more intelligent, it only makes me sound like a jackass. It makes me appear that I am not knowledgable enough in the subject I am discussing to be able to translate it for people outside the field to understand. Some advice you might consider as well)
Comments
I've been having a problem since the last patch. I get a 100% signal but can't warp to 0. The signal just shows up as a red sphere in each of the probes, even with 4 probe triagulation.
As for the new system itself, I know what you mean. I think it comes down to finding a way to make an educated guess about what to scan. Scanning down every signal in multiple wormholes is to much. Of course this is real problem when you make a decision and can't scan the site down to a warp to 0 signal
you saying that you would prefer the old system of "push butan in 5 minutes"?
i disagree.
Overall I have to agree with the Op. Keep in mind if you hold shift you can move/resize all your probes at once. Cuts down on some of the "simultaneous migraine and carpal tunnel syndrome".
If it took you 5 minutes to scan you had the wrong skills and equipment for exploration.
My scan time was something like 88 seconds. The fact that scan times were so long for untrained players actually made it worth it to train the relevant skills.
I see this response a lot on forums, and it's pretty obvious that most of them are made by people who either didn't do exploration before the patch or who have never been good at it.
There was actually much more of an art to placing probes (midwarp bookmarks etc) before the patch. The current system is basically a grind. You know how many signals there are, and you know where they are.. you just have to track down each one by using signal strengths on a standard scan. I'n a system with 20 sigs this is so simple, and yet so TEDIOUS that it broke eve for me.
By the way, thanks for the shift-resize and shift-move tips- my good friend and I figured that out on day one.. without these features I wouldn't have bothered with the new system for more than a day or two.
Actually while writing this I've realized part of why I'm so unhappy is that this is the first time I've ever felt like I was grinding for anything in eve.. and grinding in a game is moronic in my book. Paying someone to do busywork? No thanks.
I have always loved eve because the devs waren't afraid to let the game be complex and intimidating. The new probing system is the worst (perhaps only?) "dumbing down" event I've ever seen in the game.
deviliscious: (PS. I have been told that when I use scientific language, it does not make me sound more intelligent, it only makes me sound like a jackass. It makes me appear that I am not knowledgable enough in the subject I am discussing to be able to translate it for people outside the field to understand. Some advice you might consider as well)
If it took you 5 minutes to scan you had the wrong skills and equipment for exploration.
My scan time was something like 88 seconds. The fact that scan times were so long for untrained players actually made it worth it to train the relevant skills.
I see this response a lot on forums, and it's pretty obvious that most of them are made by people who either didn't do exploration before the patch or who have never been good at it.
There was actually much more of an art to placing probes (midwarp bookmarks etc) before the patch. The current system is basically a grind. You know how many signals there are, and you know where they are.. you just have to track down each one by using signal strengths on a standard scan. I'n a system with 20 sigs this is so simple, and yet so TEDIOUS that it broke eve for me.
By the way, thanks for the shift-resize and shift-move tips- my good friend and I figured that out on day one.. without these features I wouldn't have bothered with the new system for more than a day or two.
Actually while writing this I've realized part of why I'm so unhappy is that this is the first time I've ever felt like I was grinding for anything in eve.. and grinding in a game is moronic in my book. Paying someone to do busywork? No thanks.
I have always loved eve because the devs waren't afraid to let the game be complex and intimidating. The new probing system is the worst (perhaps only?) "dumbing down" event I've ever seen in the game.
Are you using the deep space probes along with the core probes, they are useful for far more than just finding out how many signatures are in a system but if that's all you're using them for I can see how it will be an exercise in frustration. I really should start writing that guide I was planning on doing.
I believe I read something last week saying that they are working the probe interface to make things a little list click click click.
You are probably just suffering burnout from doing too much scanning. Too much of anything gets annoying no matter how fun it is at first. Drop the scanning for a while and do something else.
Thanks for the tips guys. Yeah, I know all the tricks- have two alts with astrometrics V and pretty much every skill/ buff except a virtue set.
I'm not frustrated- I can find every sig in a system.
I just HATE the new probing system because it is not fun.
Allow me to make a fishing analogy:
The old system was like figuring out the best place to put your line and casting in every 90 seconds. The water was deep, you couldn't see exactly what was down there but when you got a hit it was BAM! Exciting!
The new system is like staring down into a kiddie pool full of fish. It's shallow and you can see everything that's there. Only now instead of a fishing pole you have a large pair of chopsticks to grab each fish with- definitely doable, but awkward, labor intensive, boring, and completely without a sense of mystery or discovery.
Add to this that everyone else has also heard about the kiddie pool full of fish and has arrived to get in on the action, regardless of their skill level.
Analogy may be a little bizarre but it's the best I can do on the fly here.
Meh, no worries anyway.. just may be time for a break.
deviliscious: (PS. I have been told that when I use scientific language, it does not make me sound more intelligent, it only makes me sound like a jackass. It makes me appear that I am not knowledgable enough in the subject I am discussing to be able to translate it for people outside the field to understand. Some advice you might consider as well)
Actually that analogy is great. I understand where you are coming from but I do still think you are burnt out on it right now because you went hardcore on it didn't you ?
Like I said before, go do something else in the game. Let the new rush of people to probing get bored with it and then come back and do it again but a little but less than before.
I rarely log in to the game and do the same thing more than 2 days in a row. I'll switch it up between probing, killing things I scan out in low sec systems, some light weight pvp like solo low sec roams in a frigate or cruiser. Other times some group pvp is happening or a wormhole op to join in on. Just gotta change it up a bit sometimes and give yourself a refocus.
Hehe... yup, I did go all hardcore on it. Main reason though was that I put up a tower in W-space (was planning on putting up a second, larger tower in the same system to run polymer reactions) and as a result ended up having to pin down all of the sigs in the system every 12-24 hours to keep access to the system.
I was looking for a nice fat WH in NPC or non-cyno jammed, accessible 0.0 to bring in a rorqual full of fuel and equipment... but out of maybe 25 WH that I scanned only one led to a non-jammed 0.0 system, and that was 7 jumps from my base in the CARRIER (forget the rorqual) with jump drive calibration V.
Even though I got to the point where I could tag all the signatures relatively quickly, I just hit a point unknown in my experience where all of a sudden I just didn't care. If doing all of that scanning were somehow interesting I wouldn't have an issue.
I never got bored of exploration the way it used to be. Those of you talking about "pushing a button every 5 minutes" must have had a different approach. I did most of my explo in hostile 0.0, frequently "racing" another explorer to the sites, being chased by hostile fleets all the while... often on the giving and receiving end of smartbomb vs probe warfare.
The blackops- covert ops team was great for sneaking into hostile space, running sites, and escaping with loot... I lost a lot of ships doing this, but made enough isk to pay for losses 10 times over.
::sigh::
I sound like an old fart talkin about the good old days already. Maybe after a break I won't hate the new scanning mechanic with every fiber of my soul : )
deviliscious: (PS. I have been told that when I use scientific language, it does not make me sound more intelligent, it only makes me sound like a jackass. It makes me appear that I am not knowledgable enough in the subject I am discussing to be able to translate it for people outside the field to understand. Some advice you might consider as well)
See now running from hostile forces would certainly add a little fun, but for 99% of the explorers out there exploration consisted of:
1. Jump into system
2. Drop probes at pre-bookmarked full coverage locations
3. press start scan button every few minutes x 20-30 until signal shows up
4. move down to next smaller probe and repeat step 3
5. finally track down that radar/mag/ladar site you've been scanning down for the last 45 minutes.
6. switch to combat ship after bookmarking site
7. spend 10-15 minutes running the site and collect pitiful amount of crap loot with the occasional decent find
8. Start all over again on a new signature or in a new system.
The old system was immensely tedious compared to the new one when you consider how long it took to run most of the sites after you found them, the only exception was the rare multi-stage plex you would find that could net some big returns.
With the new system in the same time it used to take to scan down 1 site in the old system, I can scan down and bookmark 6-7 sites in the new system, which leaves me with enough sites to last me hours of fun running them.
Minsc-
Yes the old system was very tedious for people with crap skills. I think it was supposed to be. There SHOULD be a reward for training appropriate skills for a "profession" in eve. The few sites that took me longer than 20 minutes to find in the old system were actually quite valuable- the hardest I found was a large arkonor/ bistot/ mercoxit belt that refined to 100k megacyte, 80k zydrine, and 5k morphite. I thought that was a reasonable return for the 4 hours it took to nail down the site.
Your post leads me to believe that you either haven't done much exploration or that you never got out in to 0.0. A typical outing in Outer Ring running a couple radar sites (pre apocrypha) would usually net 100-300 mil in decryptors plus parts/ BPCs for ship interfaces that were selling for 50-60 mil each. When I had the time to spend on it I was easily bringing in a couple billion each week doing exploration in NPC 0.0.
As far as combat sites/ escalations, I got some decent core B-type and C-type stuff but probably made more isk from bounties alone. I remember clearing just over 300 mil in bounties on Serpentis Provincial HQ (the shadow lord admiral, of course, dropped crap loot).
I had invested in the profession, including training cov ops (rank 4) and what is now called astrometric rangefinding (rank 8) to level 5. For people with lesser skills, finding the tough signatures would have either taken days or been completely impossible. This served as an effective and appropriate barrier to the impatient, and to those unwilling to invest in "boring" skills.
You speak as if it is a good thing that people with mediocre skills can now run lots of sites really fast without "wasting" all that time scanning. That time was what made training and technique worth it. You can't tell me with a straight face that the new system takes more "skill." If you passed third grade geometry and are reasonably proficient with a mouse you can nail down any signature in the game within a few minutes as long as your scan is strong enough to get the sig to 100%.
The profession has quite simply been dumbed down, opened to the masses. Eve is about adaptation however, and those of us that have been with the game for years have been through this before. It's just sad to see something that was so much fun for so many of us ripped to pieces.
By the way, I have to add that I could certainly see your point of view if all of your exploration has been in 0.1 - 1.0 space. The returns on empire exploration are borderline non-existant. If that's where you're coming from I can understand why you might find the new quick and simplified scanning process appealing.
deviliscious: (PS. I have been told that when I use scientific language, it does not make me sound more intelligent, it only makes me sound like a jackass. It makes me appear that I am not knowledgable enough in the subject I am discussing to be able to translate it for people outside the field to understand. Some advice you might consider as well)
I understand and agree with you to certain extent Enkindu. But at the same time one of the areas in game play that Eve was severely lacking in was new player solo friendly play and exploration is a perfect choice for opening up a trade in this way. Your skills are still very important, newer players with low skills are gonna have a very difficult time pinpointing a wormhole. I notice a big difference going from a rigged out cov ops with skill level 5 into a just a regular ship with some probes.
I have cov-ops level 4, astrometrics to 5 and all extended scanning skills to 4. Also running a rigged cov-ops. I did the majority of my exploration out in fountain and scanned down approximately 40 radar/mag sites in the month or two I was there. Out of all of those sites I never got a ship interface bpc so maybe I was just unlucky, but even the decryptors I found only ended up netting about just under 1 billion isk at jita prices. Maybe fountain sucked for exploration but my experience was certainly not based on empire exploration, since the new system has been put in I've been doing low-sec exploraton and I agree the payout is almost non-existant compared to lowsec, but i've still been able to make some decent money at it with my limited playtime. It's much better when I only have an hour or two to play that I can spend 15-20 minutes scanning down a couple of sites and then the next 45-60 minutes running them rather than spending 40+ minutes scanning down 1 site under the old system and 15-20 running it.
Also because of the sites are much easier to scan down now the churn is going to be higher meaning sigs will respawn faster. One thing I've noticed since the changes is that I can scan a different times during the day and find new sigs in systems I've scanned down earlier.
Yeah Minsc, fountain should have been fantastic for exploration- maybe you were really unlcuky or someone else was working the same space regularly.
Just a few things I remember- the stolen formulas decryptors were selling for 80-100 mil, the symbiotic figures decryptors for 24-26 mil. The others I never sold because I use tem in my own invention runs. Also most of the core B-type gear I got came from running those radar plexes ("digital fortress") in pegasus in fountain.
When I would jump the carrier back every 5-6 days I'd typically have 5 of the stolen formulas, 15 symbiotic figures, usually a ship interface BPC or two and enough parts to build them out.. so call that an additional 250 mil. Every so often you'd get a decent T2 rig BPC or faction POS module BPC that could be built out for additional cash from the mag sites.
I know lots of people like the new system and that's cool. I'm just pissing and moaning because my favorite thing to do in eve doesn't exist anymore.. at least not in any recognizable form.
deviliscious: (PS. I have been told that when I use scientific language, it does not make me sound more intelligent, it only makes me sound like a jackass. It makes me appear that I am not knowledgable enough in the subject I am discussing to be able to translate it for people outside the field to understand. Some advice you might consider as well)
I found a ton of the stolen formulas decryptors but they never sold for even close to 80-100 mill...I'll see if I can dig through my history to find the sell price but I think it was closer to 20-30 mill a piece.
I found that I sold 18 of them for 22.5 million a piece. That was back in october of 2008 when I sold them. I still have 7 or 8 t2 rig bpc's sitting in a hangar somewhere because I can't sell them for as much as the components cost to make, the 2 that I did get worth selling I ended up making about 160 mill profit on them which was pretty good but that's it, so maybe I just had terrible luck, but of all the exploration I did out there I'd say I was lucky to make over 1-1.5 billion.
Keep in mind though that I only had a few hours to play a week.
having never done exploration prior to Apoc....i must say, i am addicted to it. finding sites, wormholes, etc are extremeley fun.
Look at the market history for the stolen formulas next time you're in jita.
The only T2 BPCs I built out for profit have been CCC 2 and drone scope chip II, also built a large shadow tower and sold it.
In my hangar now I probably have 100 each of the data interface and tuner interface BPCs, as well as assorted T2 rig BPCs that I can't even give away.
I also made a lot of profit inventing/ building/ selling black ops.. exploration made that a lot easier.
deviliscious: (PS. I have been told that when I use scientific language, it does not make me sound more intelligent, it only makes me sound like a jackass. It makes me appear that I am not knowledgable enough in the subject I am discussing to be able to translate it for people outside the field to understand. Some advice you might consider as well)
I have to say I am sorry that things have turned out this way for you. It is clear that exploration has been opened up (or dumbed down if you like) in a way it was needed as part of the WH exploration content but it sucks to be you in this case. Taking a break might be the key, maybe you find some inspiration to do something a bit different.
I have yet to try the new system, but I guess you can't please everyone. As far as I can tell, the feedback on it is good so far.
Thankfully, there's still plenty to do in EvE.
i dont know how the new system work but i hated the system old
BestSigEver :P
Case in point:
I just logged in and did my daily routine in the WH sytem with my tower.
Scanned all 19 signatures in the system down. 2 WH leading to other W-space, 3 ladars, and the rest grav sites (which by the way are very nice.. too bad I'll never be able to get my gear in to enjoy them apparently).
It was not hard. I scanned them all down with an alt that had no training for exploration pre-apocrypha.. including the 4 sigs that started out under 1%.
But I swear to god I would have had more fun organinzing my sock drawer. How in gods name to people find this system fun? Anyone could do this... there's no art to it whatsoever.
couple more days of this and I'm gonna pod my guy and offline the tower and mods- I'll post the system and moons where I'm leaving the stuff in case somoeone else wants to play "brain dead online" aka "romper room exploration" aka "something that will make you want to clean your house to relieve boredom" aka "the new probing system in eve"
bleh.
deviliscious: (PS. I have been told that when I use scientific language, it does not make me sound more intelligent, it only makes me sound like a jackass. It makes me appear that I am not knowledgable enough in the subject I am discussing to be able to translate it for people outside the field to understand. Some advice you might consider as well)
who said the scanning part was the fun part, the fun part is actually running the sites once you find them. To me the new system just makes it far quicker and less mind-numbingly tedious. It's functional and it's far more interactive and if they ever put in a way to filter out certain signatures once you identify them it will be just about perfect. There was no more art to the old system than there is the new one, it's just a difference in functionality. The only moderately difficult part of the old system was making full coverage bookmarks and that really wasn't that difficult at all. Beyond that it was a question of 'how much do I want to spend' on implants/sisters gear, rigs in order minimize the tedium.
Oh, and as an added comment I'm almost positive that they boosted exploration content in lowsec, either that or providence just REALLY sucks for sites, lucky to find 1 sig in 10 systems and no anomalies to be found anywhere....or maybe I'm just not getting up early enough to run them right after downtime.
Minsc, you don't get it man.
The best thing about the old probing system was that it made the profession unappealing to restless kiddies with short attention spans. There are already enough options in the eve for those folks (like shooting everything they see).
It makes sense that the moronically simple repetetive actions of the new system would appeal to the same crowd.
ooh.. shiny!
deviliscious: (PS. I have been told that when I use scientific language, it does not make me sound more intelligent, it only makes me sound like a jackass. It makes me appear that I am not knowledgable enough in the subject I am discussing to be able to translate it for people outside the field to understand. Some advice you might consider as well)
Sorry man but I cannot agree with this opinion. Something that keeps a new player from wanting to do it game is not a good thing in any way. Like I said in a previous post what CCP did to probing ended up opening it up as a very good no make that an AWESOME career choice for the solo and casual game play types which is something Eve was lacking severly in. This makes it so new players can actually do something fun and productive in a non combat way.
It's just time to move on to something else in the game or take break til Ambulation comes out and then you can open a shop or bar.
I think you make some very good points Enkindu and I agree with many of them. At the end of the day, though, I think it say's more about how good the old system was than it does about the new system being bad. I'm just not seeing the big difference, one all bad the other all good. It seems to me both systems have good and bad points. As for me, I like the fact that I don't have travel through countless systems only to find there are no sites, or that they have already been run. I also like the sleeper drones. I know if I'm engaged with a sleeper BS and someone else finds me, I'm probably dead.