Let’s start off with the biggest flaw.
1. Hard cap on submissions per minute, which is 5, should either be removed, or increased. First of all, unlike previous project discovery, this one is way too easy and we all know it. Analyzing samples takes mere seconds, and drawing polygons depends on speed of your hand. While some samples require drawing more than two polygons, which means they might actually take around 12 seconds to draw, it’s not always the case and most of the time the samples we get can be done in less than 6-7 seconds. I understand this is done to prevent bots and submission spammers from farming, but it could be done in a different way, with a “soft cap”. Basically, in case a player submits several wrong samples fast one after another, there should be a cooldown activated. However, if a player submits accurate samples fast, there really is no reason to stop the player from doing so. After all, Project Discovery is supposed to assist the researchers. Slowing down the players that are capable of doing this fast and accurately goes against those principles.
1b. Daily submission limit. It’s currently set at 300, which combined with 5 samples per minute rule, allows players to only do the project for one hour a day. If not removed, this should at least be doubled, because many players (including me) do the project while doing semi-passive game activities, like industry, mining and traveling. There really is no reason to limit players there though, let us do the project as much as we want, especially if we submit accurate results (you can cap it for low accuracy players instead alone). This again, goes against the principle of supporting the researchers. Let those that do it fast and effectively, spend their time as they wish and support the project.
2. The interface window is severely flawed. The submit button is way too large and there’s no way to make the window smaller. This causes problems because it becomes extremely hard to do this project on small single screen while doing something else. For example, when I am mining in highsec space (yes, I’m a scrub), I always have the local chat window open separately to watch hostile ganker presence for precautions, and use dscan if I spot someone suspicious, while mining and doing PD. However, this is hard to do now, because the PD interface is impossible to be reduced in size and takes most of the screen. There’s a picture as an example attached.
What I’d suggest is removing the right side of the interface, and putting it below the analysis screen, just like it was in previous project.
- Connecting the lines is buggy and they sometimes are gone if you click on the wrong space. The polygon drawing needs polishing and connecting one end to another should have a shortcut key (if there’s one and I missed it, let me know), or the “hitbox” of the end should be made larger so that we can click it faster and easier.
Extra: There seems to be a 1 million SP requirement to do the Project Discovery above level 10. This is fair and easily understandable as to why (nearly every normal player has 1 mil SP from recruit link), but if there’s another SP cap on higher levels that I’m not aware of (let me know if that’s the case), it should be removed to let new players do the project to the fullest.
As for the rest, the project is fine, it’s moderately fun to do, but compared to previous one, it doesn’t really fit Eve nor is fun enough, or feels like doing actual research. I hope we get another exoplanets project in the future.
P.S. It’d also been very nice if previous PD wasn’t entirely removed had had a legacy mode without rewards to do, for those that liked it.