Jennifer Maxwell
Crimson Serpent Syndicate
Heiian Conglomerate
299
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Posted - 2015.07.28 19:23:52 -
[1] - Quote
Chance Ravinne wrote:All right let's face it: There are no meaningful differences between these skills. They take a significant time for new players to train, but don't offer significantly different risks or benefits, except that data loot is mostly garbage.
Yet die hard explorers feel compelled to carry and or fit both modules around, even though they result in identical minigames and mechanics.
Hell, some newer exploration sites, like Ghost Sites, don't even care which module you use!
So let's end the charade. Merge both skills into Hacking, make all current data and relic sites "hacking" sites and just make things simpler and less arbitrarily silly.
This means less arbitrary training time, fewer wasted ship midslots, and no need to explain why "archeology" is a computer hacking game. The side bonus is hacking "data" sites wont be as bad since the training and fitting requirements being halved adds some value to your day.
Give people Hacking to whichever level of the two existing skills is higher, and give them the lower skill's SP as freely distributable bonus SP. Whaddya think?
No.
So I take it you hate the exploration profession? Because this is a good way to **** it over even more. Rubicon really screwed it up by making it accessible to everyone almost at day 1. Before then, scanning took skill. I spent days learning to scan, and months learning to scan well. It was something to put on my resume: not everyone back then had the time nor desire to learn how to wrestle with the scanning system.
This created opportunity. Because it was hard to do, fewer people were doing it. Because fewer people were doing it, the gains from running the sites went up due to scarcity. ALSO, because fewer people were interested, there was actually a small market for being a cartographer. I got hired a few times in my early days to go around a chain of systems, scan down the sites, bookmark the ones my employer was looking for, and then sell them the bookmarks. I developed a skill, and turned it into isk.
Now, everyone and their dog can scan. It's trivial. And hence, the market for it crashed. You came into the game (if this is your first character, anyways) after all this happened. You didn't have to experience all your skills and knowledge becoming suddenly worth a lot less than before. You didn't really see the price devaluation of your loot hanger, nor that fewer and fewer people would pay for bookmarks anymore.
Having two skills is not "good difficulty", granted. It's an artificial barrier, since both hacking and archeology rely on the same mini game. But removing it would remove a further factor in scarcity, meaning someone who would have passed the sites over before now does them and gets the loot from them. The more loot being generated, the less worth it has. You might think archeology for T2 salvage is a good source of income, but before Ruibcon, it was a ******* gold mine. What it is now is a joke compared.
Instead, differentiate more between the two. Give better rewards, and tweak the mini game so that the hacking is noticeably different from the salvaging. Expand on it.
Salvaging should have the chance to give faction parts. And not just Guristas or Sperpentis or whatever pirate faction is in your area, you should also find Navy and NPC corporation wreck sites for variety's sake.
Hacking should have the chance to give faction blueprints. You're hacking secure databases, and you should have the potential to find much better rewards than now.
And for ****'s sake, make it harder to scan the higher value loot sites. Because right now, it's trivial. Make it harder and give better rewards.
To be completely honest, I don't think exploration will ever recover from Rubicon. Not in the direction CCP is taking it. But your idea is just one more nail in it's coffin. |