I was trying to do AIR challenges on my newer alt, specifically the hacking one. Took a probe and started from Dodixie.
The new alt has basic skills of new character and I was using the community AIR exploration fit. First I was scanning in highsec. In 30 minutes I found nothing at all besides wormholes and maybe two combat sites. So I went into one of the wormholes, scanned the wh back, then started scanning, out of 9 sites 3 were other wh, 4 were gas, 1 was sleeper data site and 1 was classic data site, I tried it, but I failed everything but 1 cache. Without higher skills (and thus omega), nullsec/wh caches are super hard to do unless you specialize into one type with rigs. Returned back, scanned bit more found a wh into lowsec. There I found 1 data and for about 6mil, was roaming the nearby lowsecs, scanning them, after about 30 minutes I found another one, failed the best can, so my cargo was 14mil at that time from 2 lowsec sites and 1 cache in wh. So scanned more, found 4 more data sites in 30 minutes, except it was: SCC data site, 2x AEGIS data site and then Minmatar Cryptosomthing site which told me that I canât hack it because I am not in militia. 15 minutes later I finally found a jackpot - standard covert site and I was suprisingly able to hack it fully, got about 160mil from that.
Still in about 2 hours the gameplay was extremely boring and just awful. I donât know if these new sites are âoccupyingâ the pool of the old data sites or why is it so hard to find a data/relic site in lowsec and highsec, but while we old players can withstand this â â â â , if CCP thinks that they will lure new players, especially the younger ones, for this kind of gameplay they are wrong.
I suppose that about 180mil in 2 hours is not bad result, but the better design would be lots of sites with smaller rewards that would combined gave you this instead of 3 sites in total which 2 are kinda â â â â and the third is jackpot. More sites would also mean more time the player is exposed to interaction, which he typically isnât during scanning, if he is hugging a station, freeport citadel, wormhole back to high, or simply being cloaked.
Since I was not able to hack 25 containers during this period I tried later that day, I scanned 5 highsec systems (just wormholes), 1 wormhole (4 wh, 1 gas, 1 sleeper data, 1 aegis) and 2 lowsecs (whs, combats and gas sites only). In 1 hour I didnât even find a data or relic and gained 0 ISK. Really fun experience.
I admit that I was âwastingâ a lot of time actually scanning wormholes to 100% sometimes and in the first round scanning gas sites to 100% (since I wanted to complete the gas sites AIR challenge) and my skills being low so it al took much longer that what would it took to someone with fully maxed skills flying Astero or covert ops. Still, this is not fun gameplay at all. Not even mentioning that the new player will likely get killed in wh or lowsec pretty much instantly (be it by player or npcs of guarded data sites or even triglavians).
CCP can refurbish the tutorial and career agents as many times they want, but new, younger players, will not accept the fact that the game is ultra slow where majority of the time you are looking at a screen where nothing happens (feels like filler really), requires almost no input (mining especially) and that is pay2win with highest monthly sub cost of all MMOs and where the free2play is just an illusion and alpha is really just demo. And the game basically promotes and forces players to multibox (hence pay even more) too.
My younger brother, excited by a space scifi book came to EVE (second time, he already knew some basic since I tried to get him play EVE with me when I started myself - unsuccessfully btw) and after 2 days he tried to do explo in nullsec he stopped playing EVE out of boredom, he said. And that I can imagine will be pretty common reaction in younger generation.