It's worse than both those- we didn't lose any mechanics, we didn't lose any ways that provide people with an entire array of reasons to venture into dangerous space, it's worse because we are losing everything and getting it replaced with junk. Exploration exists- if it's old and known that's fine- I'm not bored with it! I go into null in a stealthed interdicted proteus and farm mag sites in enemy territory (admittedly, when those zones are at low ebb) but now? Now it looks like there wont be a reason to fit a t3 for exploration- they might as well drop the emergent scanning subsystem because you can't even grab loot with a cruiser.

When I heard the new expan was about exploration, I was stoked. I imagined a whole plethora of new sites, maybe old ones redone- but I never expected them to attack the value of doing the sites- making them unimaginably harder in a way that cant be compensated for by fitting or ship type- I wont be able to make money doing these out in null as the system stands and turn a profit, that much is clear.

When the name of the expan landed in my lap: odyssey, I expected galaxy-spanning escalations where the game wasn't killing ships but having to follow signals through a wide array of systems made hostile by the sheer variety of alliances in null. I imagined finding a site in a .7sec system that took me into lowsec then took me into goonswarm, then test, then back into highsec and in the end rewarded me with a deadspace module. The imagination boggles at the opportunities ccp could have to make the game fun in the best ways- timers could have made warp speeds important- new effects in system could cancel cloaking- giving the guy following the huge escalation something to deal with while also answering some of the complaints about cloaking while still leaving cloaking whole.

But no- Instead we have a mini game which is less fun and less intuitive than solitaire (which I've played beside eve many times) and not even as hair-raising as a game of minesweeper- which I expected when I saw it showed-off. Instead of adding new, easy to implement exploration chains, they change a fundamental mechanic, only for explorers, that is supposed to "make us want to group up." If people aren't grouping up for anything these days but pvp maybe there is a good reason- grouping should be willingly, not enforced, and certainly not enforced in such a hamfisted way.

EDIT: A bit of grim humor: Now when I think of odyssey I'm thinking (sadly) of the odyssey I'm going to be taking from eve, maybe when I return they will have added something new and not cannibalized something I enjoyed that really made the game worth playing.