I understand there is a plan to get rid of the agent finder soon. Please don’t let this happen
I do a lot of PvE and this tool is indispensable.
The new “The Agency” finder:
Is buggy: sometimes close and available agents are missed
Needs to filter by locator agent
Needs to filter by hisec/losec
Needs to return ALL results… not just 12
Needs to filter by available/all
Needs to be in a smaller window/more compact list
I will file a bug about the first, but recent response to bugs is slow-to-never.
Hopefully they’ll make sure that the substitute will do ALL of the the things the Agent Finder did, in addition to whatever else they’re adding. There’s nothing quite like someone taking away your tools and expecting you to be fine. “Screwdriver? No, all you need to use is a sharpened spoon to get the screws out, you’ll be fine.”
Yes, but it’s a rechargeable, wireless spoon with multiple skins, Internet connectivity, and convenient interchangeable covers, made of stylish chrome and hi-grip rubber; it’s shock-resistant and functions in a wide temperature range. Now available to you for the exclusive introductory price of [some unnecessarily inflated figure many times more than the cost of a decent screwdriver, which is what you actually needed]
This is my biggest concern (though the rest are valid, too.) With the current Agent Finder, it is possible to “research” agent availability Eden-wide, and to plan a missioning strategy accordingly. Maybe CCP want to encourage people to “roam and discover” more, but if one can’t see the scope of what’s available that could vastly hinder one from engaging in their desired game-play, and then some people will simply “roam and discover” themselves some other game to play.
Huh? What are you on about? We are here talking about change that is to be forced on us - no one is “buying it”. Unless you mean CCP themselves, in which case I’m with you, except that it’ll not just be their problem, but ours too (and then, once again, theirs once some more people stop playing.)
" Unless you mean CCP themselves, in which case I’m with you, except that it’ll not just be their problem, but ours too (and then, once again, theirs once some more people stop playing.) "
Yes, but they are the ones responsible for the problem of paying for it.
I’ve had more than my fair share of tools removal, something that went as far as refusing evidence for national security.
Not that much fair at that level I’m afraid.
Trying to encourage people to roam and explore would end up with old agent finder being re-created in a web app somewhere, and everyone srs using that.
Or that, yes (I know I would - and I generally loathe using external crapplets, so that’s saying something.)
EDIT: Additional:
I’ve just been tinkering around with The Agency’s agent finding capabilities, and I have to say they’re definitely anemic. 12 results, as previously noted by others - not enough. Space bloat (this is also a problem in the existing Agent Finder, to a lesser extent - it only shows a certain number of agents regardless of how large the window is expanded, so compacting it as much as possible is the most practical option.) The biggest issue for me: lack of control. For one thing, one can’t filter by security level, so the measly 12 results are partly wasted by unwanted ones, meaning that for those with sec-level preferences, the number of results is in fact much more limited still - argh and yuck!
Some of these issues are not insurmountable - fixes to them can be coded in. (The space-efficiency issue, however, will likely demand a substantial redesign. It’s all very cute and yet, I find, of relatively little use, to have a local and badly signposted portion of the starmap in the interface, but using that space for more results would, I think, be far more useful.) I just hope that this happens, and BEFORE the legacy Agent Finder is retired. If the “beta” galaxy map is anything to go by, though, maybe we have a couple of years or longer before this becomes an issue…
A replacement tool that does LESS than the old tool, with more bling / animation, and more bugs, actually.
… that will be released in its initial buggy state because “we’ll do iteration later and fix the bugs in a future patch” but then CCP’s plate is always full so they never re-iterate.
And let’s not forget that omitted (ie. downgraded) functionality is not technically a “bug”, and so that gets left by the wayside altogether… I can just see some thumb-sucked nonsense such as we got when the advanced audio controls got butchered into their present sorry state: “not enough people (according to us) were using many of the features, so we went to the trouble of removing them - you’re welcome” (and too bad, sorry-for-you to those who were in fact using those customisations…)
There are legitimate bugs. If you compare the search results from the old tool to the new tool you will find the new one misses close and available agents in favor of agents that are farther away. Maybe there is some method to the madness, but I looked at it for an hour or so and I cannot find the logic in their algorithm.
Yes, I didn’t say there weren’t - I merely pointed out that truncated functionality is not typically viewed as one, so tends to get left out of bug-squishing expeditions and relegated to “redesign” or “enhancement” efforts, which usually have lower priority than bug-stomping. I’m with you regarding the mission selection I also don’t see any pattern (though to be fair I haven’t looked all that closely.) Overall, I don’t mind (in fact, rather like) The Agency as a sort of centralised PvE portal, but it needs to be implemented without reduction to functionality - in other words, as it stands it’s still quite a ways from “ready”, in my opinion.
Agent Finder is a great tool when you need it. If it’s got bugs, fix them CCP. Please do not dump it. The original and still true brilliance of Eve was in the latent tools available to players, who had them if they’d only known to dig them out.
