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Iteration

I noticed some changing to scanning since I did it last, four days ago that caused Naoru to say, "iteration? in my eve???!!!" He was teasing me. I may have sounded shocked and appalled. I was not. I expect them to keep tweaking the system. Some of the changes were just unexpected.

I know that the changes to scanning are a big, world changing event. Odyssey did a lot of structural changes to Eve. Every day has micro patches. I appreciate these as an attempt to fix, correct and tweak. Some become angry at them and the blasting of a Beta game and etc starts. I'm normally rather easy going about these types of things.

The first thing that startled me is that I can no longer launch 7 probes using the preset formation buttons. I use 7 probes. Not one bit of my testing done has been done with fewer or greater than 7 probes. Now that option is grayed out for me and it tells me that I need eight probes to use it. I was actually using it to quickly get my seven into place and than adjusting the lopsided formation it created. I guess they decided no. Let me make sure that it is clear that I can launch seven probes at once and use them in every way that I could before except for the two preset formations in the probe menu.

My launches probes seem to randomly decide where they are going to show up as icons in the system. Sometimes it is on my ship. Sometimes it is at the sun. Sometimes it is off in a random chunk of space between celestials. I think that they are positioning themselves at the last place they were in the previous system. I do not remember that doing that before.

After five or six jumps it tends to forget my probe formation and launch them like the old system used to so that I have to separate and format them one by one. I don't mind it. I'm used to it. It just seems to be a bit random in its happening. Once I reset them, they stay that way for a while. Also, if I accidentally grab an arrow for the formation and cause it to slam all the way to the edge of its range and back, the probe formation collapses upon itself and I have to set back up again.

I believe loot drops have been tweaked again to give a bit less. Not a huge nerf but the first two days I did sites it was ridiculous how much I was getting. The sites I have done today feel a bit more balanced. I still get stuff but I am getting more in low than in high and not as much as I was right after the launch.

The loot spew cans seem to have changed speeds depending on the difficulty of the site. The harder the site is for me to do (more high level things to click on) the slower the cans appear to be and fewer of them. The ones that I can zip through without though have the fastest cans. It sounds silly but I was doing cans of different difficulty back to back and the speed differences seemed noticeable.. My tractor beam also feels a tiny bit faster.

I believe that the signature spawn rate has been increased across the board. Before, I could go a dozen systems without seeing any signature of any kind. Now, I stumble across more of everything but the DED complexes.

Cans seem to eject in two rounds with a 2-3 second delay between the ejection of the first spawn and cans and the second.

The mini-game.  I don't love it. I don't hate it. I don't find it fun. I don't find it interesting. I don't have any strategy. I am deathly afraid of the reinforcement node things. I just had a map where I got six of them. I guess those are automatically no win maps. Maybe I am supposed to feel challenged and the desire to win push me into greater enjoyment. I don't know. For the most part I manage to win 90% of the time. I'm not sure what it is supposed to add to my life. I guess I am neutral about it. It is just something that I have to do to reach my goal. I guess it is like shooting red crosses. it is something CCP has decided I need to do as part of this activity.

The crash in the decyptor market is good for T2 production and bad for explorers. There are exploration tears here. I think it will bounce back a little bit once the exploration flood wears off. Also, there is a little bit less loot coming out than there was the first few days. People will grow tired of it and a new balance will take place over the next few weeks. Soon enough, people will start sniffing around for new information and we will have the summer rage that CCP is out on vacation for most of the summer, ignoring and neglecting us with new stuff. It also seems that T2 BPO holders are sad because the new decyptors are decreasing their profit margins.

There are other little things. Gates are bigger. I remember proposing a change in gate size if they wanted to break up gate camping. Normal system to system gates, the small ones, are mostly the same size. All of the larger gates are bigger. Gate flash is so subtle as not to be there anymore. The small gates kind of sparkle when someone jumps through.

Tracking the changes has been interesting. However, I agree with the fact that this is no longer exploration. It is now treasure hunting. The system scanner shows you the sites. Map view shows you what celestial they have spawned around. There is no question of "is there something here" and "where is it at". I don't see how finding the details about what is already known qualifies as exploration.

Comments

  1. Hmm, maybe too late getting into the exploration wave. Damn you, real life!

    I'm sure there is a lot of variation - the first night I tried exploring in highsec I got a lot of Relic sites but not much value. Last night I must have been two steps behind another explorer as every system was cleared down to the wormholes.

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    1. Best capcha yet in posting that comment - next Eve character will have to be "RLDisco Studley"

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  2. I don't see how finding the details about what is 'already known' qualifies as exploration.

    IMHO, it doesn't.

    ex•plo•ra•tion [ek-spluh-rey-shuh] noun

    1. To travel for the purpose of discovery [syn: geographic expedition]
    2. The act of exploring, penetrating, or ranging over for purposes of discovery, especially of geographical discovery; examination; as, the exploration of unknown lands
    3. A careful systematic search

    The system scanner shows you the sites. Map view shows you what celestial they have spawned around. There is no question of "is there something here" and "where is it at".

    This is also not an Odyssey... or at least, not what I would describe as "adventures" filled with "hardships, etc." (possibly, but not due to the mechanics) and "notable experiences"... not so much.

    od•ys•sey [od-uh-see] noun

    1. a long series of wanderings or adventures, especially when filled with notable experiences, hardships, etc.
    2. an intellectual or spiritual journey

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  3. When I went through my character creation for the first time, and knew nothing about the game, I thought to myself "I want to be an Explorer". So when I saw the career missions I focused on those first. I ended up doing all the career missions because they helped me learn the system, but I still focused on "exploration" for the first week or so I think.

    From a newbie perspective I learned that finding those sites in my Imicus, having to fly back to wherever my combat ship was, fly back to the site, and hope that someone else hadn't already cleared it, clear the site of NPC's, fly back to get my Imicus so that I could salvage, data analyze, or code breaker whatever was there.

    This was quite a hassle that turned me off to the whole exploration aspect. I do like that there isn't an combat in most of the sites anymore, although there are some sites like "Data Circuitry" sites or something like that, that have multiple rooms, with NPC's, and are actually rather difficult to solo but well worth it.

    I don't think showing me that there is "something" in this system and generally where it's located is considered exploration though.

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