March rabbit wrote:this would be offtop but as OP mentioned Exploration....
i think Exploration in Eve Online is... well not broken. It's just never implemented to say simple.
What do i mean?
Exploration for me is travelling through space to find something new, interesting, useful.
What has Eve Online for Exploration? Not much:
1) all systems are the same (yes, there is effects in WH but it's very known and already found)
2) beacons in systems - already found. You just visit it like tourist.
3) Anomalies? There is a couple of already defined, measured, and wikied types of anomalies you can find. Every type gives you something ISK-valued. You can't find something really new or interesting.
4) action in anomaly - almost every anomaly wants you to kill NPCs. (Anyone use scanning ship or Zephyr for Exploration?)
5) new inexperienced player? He has almost nothing in Exploration:
- NPC - new player can only deal with lowest level of NPCs. He needs to ignore most of anomalies. WH? LoL
- ISK valued reward - new player cannot compete with ISK-farmers. He scans slower, he kills NPCs slower, he loses reward to more experienced players.
I remember my first visit of WH (2nd month of my Eve if i remember correctly). I had no idea what the type of WH and what will i find there. I just entered it and... it was INCREDIBLE. WH was crazily beautiful! I warped to anomaly i scanned down (something about sleepers) and found that this is far away for me to deal with these monsters. Some minutes after i got killed by some players in that WH. This made me understand that Exploration is not for me at that time.
Now i have skills and experience to go Explore but what will i find? ISK-farm.
I always though that Exploration should be different. I don't know what would it be but....
1) Exploration should be new player friendly. The problem: when you get enough SP to be able to kill NPCs you already use Exploration as ISK-farm. You know how to scan, you know what to search, you know how to run this anomaly and what anomalies to ignore. This is farming, not exploring.
2) Exploration should be interesting. No need to drop lots of ISK to every person entered anomaly. Make non-ISK reward which would be interesting and useful for new people (like skill book, standings increase, little SP bonus for delivering some materials you found to some NPC, whatever). ISK-farmers would argue but there is no need to remove this farm: adding new types of anomalies with lore rewards (or without) would make it more interesting. It will make Exploration more interesting for non ISK/hour oriented people who likes to explore.