Ruined/Central sites loot completely broken

Exploration Gameplay Center Known Space
1

Hello, I’m a new player, jumped straight into omega and joined a nullcorp and decided from the very start I would do exploring because I really loved the idea of it. After about 1 month got my hacking/archeology skills V, all others IV ,thanks to the starter pack and the 14days skillpoints bonuses ,and upgraded to Astero.
I have read pages and guides on exploring ,mini hacking game (which becomes click spam with lvl V skills)watched youtube videos ,all that for a while then went out exploring daily for a few hours at a time.

Now the thing is, everywhere I look in these guides/official info, it says the red hacks are the hardest an the most valuable cans to hack. Also that Crystal Quarry IV sites are some of the most valuable relic sites in null.

In a bit over 2 months of daily exploring, I have found that either your loot system is completely broken or it’s simply the other way around and confirmed this with several other explorers/people I met in local and talked with. It’s not that some items devaluated and some red hack cans might contain items that are now worthless, unless carbon used to be a most valuable thing.

Over 80% of my red hacked cans in these two months,contained either pieces of carbon/ 1 unit of spacial atunement or plain EMPTY,sometimes stuff up to like 1m isk(relic sites). It’s common for me to find level III relic sites with both ruin cans EMPTY or carbon pieces inside.
Also there were just ONE crystal quarry site that I found with an orange can of 60m loot. One site out of about 30+ , despite being told they are the most valuable and hardest to hack. Most of them fall below 20m and that’s a good site, usually between 5-15mil , I’ve become used to find both cans with red hacks PLAIN EMPTY or carbon.

It’s common to find level 1 DATA SITES worth more than level III-IV relic sites in loot. DATA sites red hacks actually contain stuff, not just carbon/empty. I do all the data sites, even level I.
Also I saw there is a clear constant here. Level 1-2 relic/data sites often are worth double or triple than level 3-4 sites. Also 90% of the weight in loot is found in green/orange hacks not reds.

Now you might say I am new I am an idiot troll who doesn’t know a thing but that’s my pristine observations in 2 months of daily exploring, please don’t tell me the loot RNG can be that consistently bad just for me.
There is a clearly something broken in the loot tables of your game and you just leave it like that, simply do not care about your paying customers who do other than pvp ?
Broken loot tables, I’m talking about finding 80% of the red hacks (hardest ones says on your official wiki) , to be PLAIN EMPTY or pieces of carbon or stuff worth about 20-50k just thrown in there . Not that the items devalued over time, unless as I’ve said, carbon used to be worth 20m a piece or something.

The only sites I’ve found to be consistent are the few covert ops I’ve ran into, they are never empty cans, at least you got that right .
Hope someone sane in the programming department takes a look at their code. IF red can hacks are most of the time empty, at least make them the easiest or something.

1 Like
2

Yeah, the thing you are missing is that you are not the only explorer out there.

What you are experiencing is that other explorers sometimes cherry pick sites for the loot. They use a Cargo Scanner to pick and choose which cans to hack, taking the good loot and leaving the bad stuff like carbon. There is nothing wrong with the code, just that you are being beaten to the loot!

These picked over sites eventually despawn, but not for a while meaning there is plenty of chances for you to find one.

Blame your fellow explorers, not CCP.

3

No, I am talking about fresh sites, I am not blind , I am talking about sites with full white cans, that means nobody looted there yet. I admit I have thought of it ,that some weirdos might cherry pick cans and still leave stuff in the cans to look as if it’s an untouched site and if that’s a thing people do then lolme but I doubt it . I do encounter cherry picked sites,with 2-3 cans empty, and clean them up to respawn and it’s a clear difference, the cherry picked ones are left with cans that are either empty or carbon or crap inside. Sometimes cherrypicked sites with 5-10m loot still left behind, I think bcs prolly someone ran away being hunted and didnt finish it its okay.

It would be completely counterintuivite for ppl in the same corp or even neut explorers who rely on exploration income to just cherry pick relic sites and leave all cans with junk in it to fool others cause they would sabotage themselves aswell, they all want more relic sites to respawn.
Also a looted can shows gray, empty on the overview. What I find very common is white cans as if not looted yet, being EMPTY anyway , but with red core hacks defended .

2 Likes
4

I don’t think it is happening as much as you say so. I am not doing explo anymore but I spent 2 months in null sec doing relic and every data except superior sleeper as well.

And no it is not happening unless it is specific to a region.

You are overexaggerating either willingly or maybe even unwillingly. Unwillingly because peoples tent to focus and remember the bad things more than the good. So you will remember the times when you found carbon or nothing, especially because that situation is connected to an emotion “■■■■ again nothing”, but you will not remember the times when you found okay loot or good loot.

I also hate the fact that sites containst carbon, nothing or and this is what I saw the first time this year a metal scrap in them. In my opinion it would be far better if the total loot value of the site was appropriatelly distributed between cans - it would also reduced the urge to cherry pick. But it is as it is and CCP won’t do ■■■■ about it I am pretty sure about. And at least relic sites are providing a really good total loot value (on average) and you can make some really decent ISK doing explo in null.

Data sites on the other hand… Except covert and sleeper sites they are waste of time and you would do better to ignore them to maximize your profit… That is the main issue that needs solving in exploration imo.

Anyway, if you disagree and want to keep claiming the loot tables are broken, you should keep track of the loot and write it down for a whole month. This is just your memory screwing you. Btw, how much did you earn by explo in that month?

5

I’m not complaining about sites having no loot overall, the issue is that the distribution is way off and misleading. As I’ve said, and it’s not an exageration, roughly 80% of red hacks are empty/carbon/20-50k isk junk,rarely 1m or more, try it yourself… the bulk of the loot is in the green/orange cans. Before reaching lvl V to hacking/archeology, for t2 modules,to actually hack red cans it is a complete pain and torture, half of them fail because the minigame spawns baddie after baddie. Also overall, level 1-2 sites contain almost double/triple the loot ,than level 3-4 sites. Crystal quarries are simply broken, they should be renamed “worthless quarry” , It’s not my rng it’s just ONE out of 30+ sites that actually had 60m+ loot in it, most have below 20m. For the time it takes to scan it down and hack all site, it’s equal to running two level 1 data sites anyway.
But new players like me, that dont make it a second job to explo 10hours a day or bot, having read that those are the most valuable ,just as me, would waste more time to hack a red can than all the green/orange combined and if they dont fail it, they find out its mostly empty/carbon and get frustrated to death over and over hoping the next one would actually be worth wasting 4 minutes on it… I’ve had a cargo scanner aswell ,that might help to decide if it’s worth scanning or failing twice and move on but that’s not solving the issue, its just more time to do the site and it encourages cherry picking, some people wont fly 50km to a can that’s empty/1 carbon worth ,even tho it would be the right thing to do, for respawning , I’d go as far as saying the cargo scaner should be banned inside these sites.

I don’t complain about loot overall, my two months of casual exploring got me about 5bil in loot, after doing some market trading above buy orders. The few covert ops sites alone were worth almost a bil in blueprints.

And data sites are totally worthwhile,from my pov, if we all hunt for relic sites, you are much less likely to find them anyway. I’ve had data sites worth 10-20mils in decryptors alone, I never skip one ,their red cans contain actual loot more often than not.
Bottom line, I find it very discouraging, roleplay wise . I’m not farming or making it my second job to plex through exploring, I pay sub and try exploring for fun, the excitement of finding those “red hard valuable rare stuff” that have been advertised and got me to play,yet the reality is that I often foundd 30-40m worth of materials in green/orange cans in the same site where the red cans were empty/carbon ,after wasting most of the time to hack the red hacks named “ruin” or “mainframe” or whatever. That simply screams broken loot table all over. It’s less of an issue with lvl V hacking skills but I was crying out in pain most of the time whenever I would actually hack red cans to find out they’re worthless, before that.
The only reason this would be acceptable as is, I could think of is that the bulk of explo loot comes from bots and nobody really cares if the loot table is broken as long as they get it effortlessly anyway. For me it totally killed that fun idea of exploring to find really valuable stuff in the rare and hard sites. Yea, what am I complaining, noobs can get their loot from the easier hacks and dont bother with the hard ones, sure ,if that’s an improvement and not broken loot tables, then whatever.

2 Likes
6

You answered your own question and you are in denial. Honest answer.

1 Like
7

  1. no, loot is not broken for me. You were unlucky, or sites wre cherrypicked etc

  2. are you aware that the loot value in null depends on the NPC type? Blood raiders relic sites are pretty bad , providing often 10-15M, whereas guristas/serpentis/sansha can be much better
    are you aware that the probability of good loot is higher if the security index of the system is lower? In my experience,the probability of getting good loot is lower in NPC null sec than in players owned null sec

  3. i my experience, the red/orange etc status of the can you are hacking has not a huge influence on the loot. But who cares: loot everythg, and check the total value of the loot at the end of your hacking process. or use a cargo scanner, and destroy the cans with bad loot (activate twice your relic analyzer)

8

I don’t destroy them, I leave them there unhacked to waste other explorer’s time, making those explorers less likely to hack the sites I haven’t got to yet.

9

Yes, that’s the main issue . It should . If the red hack is the hardest and most time consuming/skill requiring/ and there’s only 1-2 of them out of 6-7 cans in every site, you SHOULD expect it to contain a decent amount of stuff everytime, whereas the green/orange might be empty cause they’re easier hacks.

If you do combat sites and you run through trash frigates for an hour to get that end boss spawn which has been advertised to drop the 1 bill isk blueprint, only to find out, say but 50% of the time it drops metal scraps and is most likely that one of those frigate wrecks dropped it 30 minutes ago ?

I’ve actually came to the conclusion that CCP developers made it on purpose, probably to attract new players more and I’ll just leave it be .At some point they completely nerfed the red cans and moved the valuable loot to the orange/green which is like a publicity stunt, quantity over quality . Do like a week worth of exploring and statistics. You see almost no enhanced wards or logic circuits or anything priced 500k a unit or up, in any meaningful amounts in the red cans, besides the rare exception here and there but plenty in the orange and green cans. It’s either this or some patches simply messed up the loot table and they don’t care about it.

1 Like
10

Whenever I find cherry picked sites I have a routine, pray that whoever did it on purpose gets ganked by someone and then clean the site. Fortunately they only do this in relic sites,for some reason everyone says data sites are worthless. The result of that is that some decryptors I sell for up to 3-5mil a piece, quite easely ,since everyone thinks data sites are not worth doing ,there some level I data sites net me as high as 20 mil sometimes.

3 Likes
11

Shut up! The Data sites are worthless. (and all my) :smiley:

12

to dravick: cherrypicking is stupid, since you prevent a new site from appearing somewhere, which could benefit to all explorers INCLUDING you. Furthermore it is disrespectful toward other explorers. Like using the last toilet paper sheet in the toilets and not putting a new roll. But, in eve, you can behave as a d.ckhead. Be what you like: pirate, scanmmer, cherrypicker…

to Adrian: 1) loot value is driven by the market, not by devs.
2) you are paying too much attention to the red/orange difficulty level, because you are a new player. Believe me, soon, you will hack everythg easily and won’t find red cans “the hardest and most time consuming/skill requiring”
3) do explo if you find it FUN, not for the loot value. Eve is not a job. For a new player you seem very focused on the isk/h value of your activity. You are wrong

3 Likes
13

There’s nothing wrong. Especially new players need ISK for everything. (ISK = IS KING :smiley: )

2 Likes
14

Not really… unless you are flying way too expensive ships. Focus on cheap t1 frigates, and the loot from a single good relic site will cover dozens of new ships.

2 Likes
15

Exactly, or just use free corvettes for pvp if you follow this logic. :slight_smile:

You probably want to fly and own and do something else, ever thought of that? Nothing gets past ISK. Yes, one should not think exclusively of SIK, but how do you say? Money does not make happy but less sad.

1 Like
16

PvP applies to Exploring as much as any other aspect of the game. If I can find a way of inconveniencing other Relic hunters I will do so, up to and including killing them. This is Eve, not Hello Kitty.

1 Like
17

mode rp on: “man, explorers form a brotherhood, which removes frontiers between factions. We want to appreciate the real nature of space and reach immortality. That’s why we don’t do cherrypicking. Stay classy” mode rp off. I fully agree: eve allows you to behave the way you want.

18

My only Eve ‘brotherhood’ is my Corp (and Alliance), anyone else is fair game.

19

I kept a log of relic cans I hacked in Serpentis space a few years ago, and found that the value of Remains and Ruins cans to be about the same (10m isk vs 10.5m isk). Ruins cans are more variable than Remains cans. You either get nothing, or you hit the jackpot (upto 200m isk in Sansha Ruins). The loot in Remains tends to be more consistent, but lower value.

1 Like
20

Making ISK is the only reason to play EVE…