Myrkala
Royal Robot Ponies
Happy Cartel
65
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Posted - 2013.06.26 19:53:00 -
[1] - Quote
This new exploration has retracted from my alliances gameplay which is a small group of players in NPC 0.0 space.
Before, the sites required some staying power meaning if you wanted to get the loot you had to protect yourself from being attacked from rats and other players, you had to take an active role in your safety and ability to make isk in the space.
This for us, this meant that we could enforce actively the space we occupied ("exerted control") over by our presence and constant threat of catching and killing anyone that tried to do these sites in our area, it also meant more conflicts as the ships needed to do the sites were not the single most evasive ship in the game...
Now there are NO rats present in these exploration sites, they are all the same, there seems to be no difference between the data and relic site mechanics which means all you need to do them is a Covert Ops and five modules, Cloak, MWD, Relic and Data analyzer and a Cargo Scanner.
Generally, sites only have 1-2 cans that are worth anyone's time meaning they are completed in a short amount of time.
This means more traveling Covert Ops ships, yes. But they are very hard to catch consistently on gates using cloaked Interdictors and interceptors.
In my opinion this feature is a failure because:
1. There are too many sites, they are everywhere, so finding one isn't a problem.
2. They are TOO EASY, once you get the hang of it you can quickly complete most hacs in under a minute AND
they can be done by one person in a fragile frigate.
3. The best ships for doing the sites are also one of the most evasive and hard to catch ships in the game.
- To catch them you either have to sit cloaked in a stealth bomber or interdictor in a site waiting for them.
The only ship that has a chance to catch them unawares are stealth bombers that warp in cloaked and get a lock before they cloak. (Because of no locking delay after decloak.) That is if they don't cloak as soon as you enter the system, or have already finished it by the time you land.
OR
- You sit on a gate cloaked in an Interdictor, and decloak them in a bubble to kill them. Not the easiest of ships to catch in a camp, they are right up there with covert ops nullified ships.
Something that would improve gameplay would be to make it impossible or hard to cloak when close by the cans (but please don't use those stupid resource hogging clouds, people will definitely complain!).
Make them more scarce, I know you think the number of sites completed is a "good metric" for a "successful feature" but that is not the whole story, you need to consider what other implications it will have, you have basically turned exploration into risk free mining...
Another thing I want to mention is the risk vs reward factor, because these sites spawn consistently throughout space the supply/demand will eventually even out and be nothing more than glorified mining while harder exploration combat site require much more risk and effort.
For example a DED 10/10 plex practically requires 2-4 ships in a specialized and coordinated fleet, all of whom will cost significantly more than a Covert Ops, that have to be exposed to more risk for longer periods of time.
Because they aren't all frigates that can warp cloaked and they stay locked and perhaps warp disrupted by NPCs throughout the process of running the combat complex and at the end the reward may not even have been worth the effort, with only 133 million isk being guaranteed to drop (23rd Tier Overseers Personal Effects) and anything else being dropped is left to randomness. Even if you complete that in an hour, with three people you will barely break 50 million isk for each. Then it bec
Now, there are other combat sites that seem to give better rewards for lesser risk, but this was just to make a point of how disparate the risks vs rewards are considering exploration vs combat sites.
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