Take a note: CCP never advertised Exploration as “short 20-minute PVE activity”. In reality you don’t need to find filaments. You just buy as many as you need and have a go at Abyssal.
I agree with you but this is low-sec… People provided various ideas like to make neutrals jumping to FW site a suspect but it didn’t take off.
There is a machine in the room that does this. Not meteors.
Anyone who has done more than one site has seen them.
You’re kidding, right? Every time I undock at Jita it’s like I’m being pinged with several sonar systems…
Actually didn‘t know there is sound with the scanner, lol, always watch for the scan rays.
It’s now an even fainter than before short chirp, not any longer the geiger counter sound.
I just undocked at Jita and I definitely heard the chirp (more like a click, to be honest). I’m still trying to figure out what that other sound I constantly hear is.
I had significant issues hearing it when zoomed out a bit.
My “20-minute PVE activity” reference was to Abyssal deadspace pockets (which were definitely advertised as such), not exploration. Also, the exploration was required initially and/or if one was not eager to risk ISK buying filaments at either earlier or even current prices. Getting out with the loot is not guaranteed while one is still trying to find ship fits that can survive.
For many alpha players and/or omega, Abyssal is likely to prove to be an expensive learning curve. For some grinding out their first few filaments through exploration may be preferable to shelling out 10-20 million isk per filament on top of ship loss for each attempt at an Abyssal pocket. Or they can do both: earn isk and filaments via exploration.
The Abyssal content really places a lot of stress not just on ship fits but also skills. Weaknesses in the latter increase the risk of ship loss, which leads back to the grinding issue for access to this content. This may eventually become less of an issue if prices continue to drop for the lowest-tier filaments, but right now it’s going to be a concern for some players.
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OK, I’ve extensively run these sites over the past few days, and had a look at the PI changes, here is my detailed feedback:
Graphics
- The art assets in the new sites look fantastic! Great job on that, I’d like to see similar environments introduced into missions and exploration sites (possibly with further content release in those areas, hint hint).
- The new ships look great too, the animations for spooling up the weapons and reconfiguring the ship look awesome. The Leshak looks a little chunkier than I’d prefer, but being a battleship, this is understandable.
- I quite like the new PI interface as well, the only issue I’ve got with it is that the new colonies window takes up a little too much space for my liking but I like the way it confers information. The new node graphics on the planet are an improvement.
Abyssal Sites
- I think these have turned out just about right in terms of difficulty. I did quite a lot of testing on Sisi prior to launch, so I came in with a bit of an advantage. On Sisi the excessive RR ability of Leshak battleships caused issues where ships with ~600DPS were locked out of T3 site completion if enough Renewing Leshaks were present. I’m glad the Leshak RR got a large nerf. Difficulty and progression = good.
- The procedural generation gives a good variety of spawns which requires players to use different tactics each time they enter a new room. I like the concept, and would like to see this implemented in missions as well to give a bit more variety.
- Support Pylons and clouds are an interesting addition to the sites, they promote manual piloting and often provide a quicker method of clearing a room. There is a slight lack of variety here though, I think additional pylon and cloud types which increase / drop resistances and a type to boost missile explosion radius / velocity would have been a good addition.
- I like the innate penalties and boosts of the site however Dark Matter sites are downright more difficult than all others regardless of the weapon system used. The Scan Res bonus in Exotic Particle sites is also a weird one which doesn’t seem to help of hinder anyone much.
- Completion or Death. Its certainly an effective way to enforce consequences for failure, and it also encourages use of cheap but effective fits over excessively shiny ones, and functionally introduces a minimum DPS cap. I honestly thought that I’d hate the pressure that this puts on, and I might of if I didn’t hone my tactics on Sisi first. I’m a bit worried that newer players may shy away from this content due to that pressure. You shouldn’t have to go to the Test server in order to get confidence to do this activity for the first time.
- The most controversial aspect, is of course the fact that these are effectively instanced PvE sites which goes against the traditional design philosophy in EVE. Personally I don’t mind this, but as an ex-ninja looter and suspect baiter, I can see how some could have strong objections to this.
Mutaplasmids
- Interesting idea, I know that the suggestion to have some variety in module stats has been floating around for a bit, but I never thought it would actually be implemented, and not in this form. I don’t think it will kill the market for any particular module group, since these will still be required as base modules if Abyssal becomes the new standard.
- Drop rate seems fairly balanced, and highly skewed in favor of decayed mutaplasids, so I don’t think theres too much danger of Abyssal mods taking over in the near future.
Triglavian Ships
- First impression of these is that they have some interesting potential. Their weapon system obviously makes them sup-par for most PvE applications and fleet PvP where the target is expected to die quickly.
- I think they will find use primarily in solo and small-gang PvP, the Leshak will probably become a valuable anti-structure and anti-capital battleship.
- They also have an odd series of roll bonuses, which are evidently designed to give a number of options for the utility high slots. I like the versatility that this brings, but I also think that the Smartbomb bonus is going to be ignored in favour of Neuts (solo) and RR (small gang).
That’s it from me, overall I like the expansion, keep up the good work!
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So I finally tried some tier-2 (F2/T2 ??) pockets with my Zealot. Went OK, but I’m glad I took so much time testing out my ship fit on the tier-1 pockets (25+). It improved the fit and also provide valuable time in learning both the behavior of the different rats and navigational shortcuts to reduce time needed and fend off the 20-minute hard limit.
It was also fun optimizing my fitting for the electrical pockets. I was able to drop all cap-stable mods except for two T2 capacitor control rigs. This is definitely an uncommon thing to be able to do with a laser-fit Amarr ship.
I did not get there all in one step: I first confirmed the cap recharge rate within the pocket environment and reduced the fit to something cap-unstable and tried this again in another pocket. I then tested dropping the cap-related modules by offlining them before leaving the last pocket encounter. It’s worth noting that offlining the modules is the only direct way to observe the capacitor impact for these pockets. The simulator is not affected by the pocket environment; only the base fitting window is.
Although ship fittings are key throughout much of EVE gameplay, the Abyssal content seems well-suited for fitting geeks.
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Exactly. Advertisement is technically correct.
Well. These factors are outside of Abyssal space itself. Exploration is not required for any particular player.
I’m not quoting other part of Your post. I agree with anything you wrote. Just note that this has nothing with “wrong Advertisement of short PVE session”.
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The issue is not whether exploration is required for any particular player but rather that it may effectively be a barrier or unwelcome cost for some. And for the first few days in this case it has been (especially day 1).
Compare this to the normal cost in accessing PVE content that is aimed at the more general player base: usually it’s just your ship, weapons, etc. Also this can come in a variety of forms, T1 cruisers and battlecruisers are among the most common requirements. We see this in the typical event content.
As I indicated earlier, this may rapidly become a non-issue if low-tier filament prices continue to drop, but it did not create a good first impression: heavily-advertised new feature for 20-minute PVE gameplay, but first at least some players had to grind it out for several to many hours finding filaments to get access at all, and then more had to do it to get prices lower so that many others could just buy. That’s the point: either you get it or you don’t.
You are complaining about something that happens every time a new feature gets added to Eve. There is a slow start as everyone tries to get the new things and it will then start trickling down to the general public.
It’s a feature of the sandbox-style MMO. CCP wants the players to decide the prices, availability,etc. Patience in Eve is the key. Give it a week or 2 and the prices will settle and the availability will improve.
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Besser PI ? Wohl nicht !
Fraglich wer dafür verantwortlich ist, denn diese Person spielt offensichtlich kein Eve,
schade das es mal wieder daneben ging.
Clicks heels…Yolp.
Are there any drops from the Spacial Event Tower Generator?
A strange thing happened in one Abyssal encounter: my ship’s capacitor suddenly was getting drained with no apparent cause. None of the NPC ships were causing it, and I could not see any effect being generated by a pylon, gas, etc. There was no effect symbol other than the base pocket environment, just my cap draining toward zero all too quickly.
Luckily, none of the rats were dealing any significant damage, and I was able to recover cap quickly by shutting everything off. After 30 seconds or so I was cap-stable again for about a minute, but then the cap-drain reoccurred briefly before disappearing again. I was able to finish off the rats without a third recurrence.
Since this was the last pocket, I took a few minutes to look around for any structures or gas that I might have overlooked, but I could not see any. I might have tried maneuvering around for a bit to see if I could trigger the drain effect again, but I had some pretty shiny loot in cargo and wanted to get out with both it and my ship without some further mishap.
Has anyone else encountered anything like this?
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@Nakaara_Adahsa Yes - it puzzled me as well. I’m not sure if you experienced the same thing that I did, but there’s an orange cloud that doubles your shield booster capacitor usage (I suspect there may be something similar for armor repairers). This takes a cap stable fit to cap unstable in literally seconds (especially if you’re cap stable but in the low numbers, ie: <20%).
I found that it usually spawns directly between you and your objective and that the NPCs try to lure you into it. A strategy that I’ve found works is to angle slightly away from it while still heading towards either the Triglavian gate or stash. It seems to draw them out just enough so that you’re on the fringes of that cloud with being impacted.
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