Wouldn’t it be great if you could really explore something interesting? The occasional wormhole to Thera is nice, but exploration feels more like farming. There are no risks involved except other people that try to catch some poor explorers. And after you have done hundreds of data sites it just feels shallow.
Are you feeling the same way?
I think it would be nice to see some general changes to exploration. Maybe a dynamic system to create more unique sites or something else 
Just remove the name/type of site from the scanning window. Make it so that you have to actually warp to the site to discover if it is a wormhole/ore anomaly/whatever.
Let’s be honest. Pretty much all PVE in all MMO’s feels like farming. Even with a somewhat dynamic system it will eventally feel like farming.
I mean what can you really do? Modify the site name? Change up the structures or number of cans in a site? There are limits in a game like EVE to how many variables they can change up and still have a site spawn that doesn’t look like the computer just threw in some random assets.
And even then you will eventually feel like it is shallow.
That is pretty much true of all PVE. Anything that needs to be made repeatable will eventually feel, well, like something you’ve done already.
Release Godzilla!
For example you could use certain punishment mechanics for failing a site… we have sites, that spawn some drones, sites that have minefields, sites that explode after a limited amount of time…
The mechanics do exist, but all in different sites… If you don’t know what you are warping into, or what will happen while you are in the site, it would create a nice sense of danger and exitement in my opinion.
A system for spawning dynamic sites seems very simple but can add so much with already existing mechanics. Just imagine a randomly generated site with mines, triggers for drones or sentrys to spawn… would be very cool
Many of us have been trying to get CCP to add both a dynamic exploration site generator and mission generator, but were repeatedly told over the years that both were “Good enough”. Their criteria was that their data showed that both were popular and being done in large numbers, therefore nothing needed to be changed or added.
So, they slowly bled off those players interested in either activity.
Typical CCP logic.
This thread reminds me of a long-ago dream I had. I imagined an Eve universe with lore and developing storylines. Long ago, 10+ years past, this seemed to be happening. We had GMs online personally hosing events; we had unique items being introduced to the game.
Even now, I can imagine that we could discover the history of the Takhmal (or whatever) by finding tiny pieces in extremely rare exploration drops. These items would be entirely lore-oriented and would not have an economic purpose. Explorers could discuss and share what they had discovered and continue searching for additional pieces of lore by exploring. This would require only the most minimal programming effor on CCP’s part, but would allow a unique segment of the Eve population to participate in their preferred gameply.
Of course, in the current philosophy of the game, all that roleplaying and lore stuff is considered useless sissy stuff. Even the Trigalvian invasion, which seems like an epic storyline, is reduced to triviality because CCP wants it all to be a chaotic surprise, rather than allowing the players to relate to it at a human/social level.
And do it enough you will get the same farming feeling. I’m not saying it isn’t a potentially cool idea, but PVE is called farming for a reason.
Basically same answer for @Buoytender_Bob.
@Xeux Events are cool and fun. Aside from EVE my favorite MMO was an old one called Asherson’s call. It had monthly events and an overall story. It was aweome. But even that game the daily PVE content became a farming grind.
I have yet to find an MMO where the repeatable content doesn’t become a farming grind. It’s the nature of the beast.
What motivates people to do PVE if they find it boring? It isn’t as though Eve requires a huge amount of isk to play.
Who knows. Who constantly grinds in any game? Yes EVE’s PVE is bland and static, but most MMO’s Ive played have PVE content that ends up bland and static, even if it is dynamic and random.
See, the storytelling screwup with the troglodytes is that you can’t run a storyline for long on the ‘it’s a mysteryyyyyy!’-angle. In the short term you can get away with nebulous hints and broad strokes, but they left it for long enough that people either went completely to fanfic, or started viewing the trigs as a purely game mechanical idea. When the average ‘what do trigs really want’-thread immediately concludes that they’re mainly there to discourage botters and afk play, there’s a serious flaw in your storytelling.
I don’t know what they were thinking when they decided to let people pick sides without explaining what the stakes are, or what directions were possible. Pick a side! One side doesn’t really want anything, and the other does, but we’re not telling you what.
One of the most impressive things about Eve used to be the accompanying stories they pumped out. Like they gave a crap about making the universe seem populated and relevant. It’s a real shame they’ve neglected that side of it.
People do PVE for the ISK. That’s why CCP doesn’t really bother to change PVE to be more interesting. EVE lore is actually pretty deep, but the gameplay itself, and how many players play for years, mean that grinding is the way to go in EVE.
In EVE, the primary focus is still the people and PVP. If the PVE is full of lore and fun people might not get into PVP. I know, that’s not a good reason to make PVE boring, but still…
With the technological advances of today, we can craft realistic fights and NPCs, and even have NPC fleet members ETC. It could be done. The procedural generation of fights can also be done, and having actual fittings on the NPCs can also be done. There is endless possibility to making PVE less boring (let’s start with making our NPCs spawn in different places, shall we?).
Looking at exploration, there are already solved guides for nearly all sites, and lore wise it has all been decrypted. It’s not the absence of lore in exploration, but more like we know all the lore, and CCP hadn’t released anything new. Try the new Triglavian content if you just want something like exploration.
To the Dev’s, it’s just a job now.
1968 was a terrible year for humanity…
And were any better off now days…
Does anyone remember when CCP removed “exploration” from “exploration” ?
We’ve been complaining about how they’re putting everything to explore into The Agency,
removing any sense of actually feeling like exploring, aka finding something previously unknown.
We’ve been complaining about how that turns into into farmers’ content.
Before I respond to you, let me check the Eve University wiki pages. I’m sure the answer is in there.
I think the issue with ‘exploration not feeling like exploration’ is, that no activity can feel like exploration when you’re doing the same thing for the 10th time or more.
I mean, after hundreds of exploration sites it may still be fun to find valuable cans or optimise your hacking skill, but it won’t feel like exploration anymore, except when described to people new to exploration, or as the EVE university wiki puts it:
"The main object of an explorer is to track down hidden areas found in systems across all of the EVE universe. These areas contain valuable items or other points of interest, but cannot be warped to initially. Instead, a player must use their ship’s scanner and their Probe Launcher to track down the “signals” of these hidden areas through a process generally referred to as “probing,” or “scanning,” or “exploring.” If you’ve ever heard someone mention that they are going to “probe down a site”… this is it! "
Exploration is still exploration as much as mining is the act of shooting rocks in EVE, but it won’t actually fulfill the needs of the explorer gamer type when they have already seen it a hundred times.
Instead, explorer players will be the type of players to immediately dive into any new piece of content, figure out abyssal fits and new playstyles. Luckily EVE does cater to those players, but EVE’s implementation of exploration is not one of the activities created for explorer players, sadly. Not for repeated gameplay anyway.
I think that one little change could make exploration feel more like real exploration: add random and incredibly rare new exploration sites for players to find. They don’t even need to be valuable, just interesting sites.
That could make exploration feel like exploration again.
Given that the purpose of Eve ‘Exploration’ is to find mother-lodes of isky loot, perhaps it should be called ‘Prospecting’ instead.