A big downside of any game-defined player matching program is that this heavily undermines the personal connection between players.
Once upon a time I played World of Warcraft in an early stage. Creating groups to tackle dungeons took effort and required players to talk to others, travel half the world to the location of the dungeon and wait on other players. While ‘looking for other players’ took time, it also created bonds between players. You got to know other players, recognise people you enjoy playing with and people asked those other players again the next day.
Fast forward a few years, World of Warcraft then makes grouping up with other players as easy as the press of a button. You get grouped with other players, you teleport to the dungeon and you can immediately play. Good right? Well, downside is that because the game now made connections between players, players didn’t care about those other players at all anymore. People regularly behaved like an ass, left dungeons for any reason, just because they knew there were no consequences for doing so: they could simply let the game make them connect with other random players.
Because the game connected the players, instead of the players themselves, the player connections meant nothing at all anymore.
I much prefer the current situation in EVE. Yes, finding a corporation and people to play with and mentor you takes some effort, but the connections you do make, good or bad, they mean something.
Through my years in EvE, the people I was privileged to help out and introduce them to game aspects at an early stage of their EvE careers did stay in contact, . If anything, mentoring is just a step in finding the necessary pointers to endure the initial stages of the learning curve, and a first contact in a new environment. I assume that helps with retention in the short term (which is the crucial period, if I remember a few ccp slides correctly). After that - or even during -, getting embedded in a larger group with similar interests will help even more with longer term retention - if people make it through the first weeks/months.
Not to mention that a good mentor will have a network of useful contacts as well.
I’m not saying mentorship is a bad idea. It’s good. I love helping newbies in my corporation and we have channels in- and out of game to help answer any questions they might have.
I just don’t think the game should couple people with mentors, with some semi-official mechanic.
Sorry, got you wrong the first time. With “semi-official” I was thinking along the lines of ccp supporting/advertizing such a mentoring program in some way (like they do with skins for streamers, or skins for recruiters), not a (automated) “mechanic”. Has to be on voluntary basis on both sides (trainee, mentor), for obvious reasons.
It seems like all your probes are on exactly the same spot. This isn’t helpful, you want them to spread out a little.
The first preset probe formation is a good starting point. (The second preset has the probes spread out more, to more easily get any hit on signatures, but to scan the signature down you’ll need ~4 of the 8 probes within range of the object).
Next, if no signatures are detected, you may need to scan with a larger probe size. Currently you’re scanning with a 1 AU probe size. Try 2 or 4, see if you get a hit then.
The red dot is only an indication of where the signature may be, but it isn’t exactly at that point. In fact, the real location of the signature may be 4 AU away from that spot that you have currently centered all your probes on.
That’s a typical “bone” result, that means two dots connected by a red line. Only one of them is correct, so if your scan says no, you should try the second one.
And as already stated, you should leave the probes in a regular spread scheme to get proper results.
On the probe launcher window, use the leftmost button (pinpoint formation)
The pinpoint formation is used in the majority of cases when you start out probing
as long as you have a signal consisting of one red dot after probing (not the red sphere), reduce the radius of the probes with one step (more of you have higher skills), re-center the probes on to the last signal in 3D !..
use both buttons
for centering your probes (or rather the center of your probe cluster) in 3D.
if the result of your probing is a hashed line with two “dots”, use the buttons again, and rotate the map to see which of these two dots is covered by the fewest probes. That’s usually the correct signal. Re-center your probe cluster on to that dot and probe again (without changing the radius of the probes). If you lose the entire signal, increase probe radius and try again from scratch.
Pierre is right (as usual) on this case, even if others gave some good tips about scanning. You have two dots and a red line.
small tip: in that case, the proper dot to choose is 95% of time the furthest from the center of the screen
after probing (not the red sphere), reduce the radius of the probes with one step (more of you have higher skills), re-center the probes on to the last signal in 3D !..