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Sunday, 1 August 2010

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Miniprofession analysis

'sεrεndıpıtıng contrast catabolısms . .' by jef safi ('pictosophizing)Right now, miniprofessions in EVE get boring quickly. Sure, I love scanning down sites and taking lots of screenshots, but when it comes time to use my codebreaker or analyzer modules, basically it comes down to sitting and waiting.

Pilots can’t actively do anything to reduce that waiting time, as we have a classic geometric distribution here. With Hacking IV, a Codebreaker I module, and no rigs, you have a 25% unlock chance and thus will take an average of four tries. If you have Hacking V, a Codebreaker II module, and an infrequently-used Memetic Algorithm Bank, you have a 52% unlock chance, which takes an average of two tries (or median of one, if you want to get really precise). The same calculations apply to Archaeology and its modules and rigs.

If the only way to improve things comes down to skill training and equipment, then what the pilot does when actively out in the sites doesn’t feel as fun. Maybe CCP could do something about that, though.

Personally, I’d like to see some sort of mini-games implemented. Skills and equipment should still matter, but perhaps a small mathematical puzzle or cryptogram could speed up the process. Alternately, success could improve the quality of the loot or discoveries. Due to EVE’s international nature, some of these might prove difficult for localization into other languages, but no doubt those dedicated and professional game designers sitting on top of the world can come up with something appropriate.

How would you improve the exploration miniprofessions?

Related posts:

  1. Scattershooting suggestions
  2. Codebreaker research
  3. Dominion patch notes review

Date: 2010-02-15

Categories: OOC

Tags: , , , , ,

  • cchance
    i got to agree, basically just a small dialog window, that can be moved out
    of the way or closed if u dont feel like figuring it out.

    Perhaps the harder drops / hacks as well as requiring a high level of skill
    ingame, would also be a required puzzle... and the puzzles wud be randomized
    as to not be downloadable or cheatable from online sources.
  • That could work, yes. One thing I liked about that system over the system in the first game is that the action carries on while you are hacking/overriding. If you start hacking a computer in the middle of a fight, you're probably going to die.

    But it would need to be slightly different, because modal windows in an MMO is widely regarded as a Very Bad Thing. It would need to be a window that comes up once you initialise the module or whatever it is, and stays until a) the time runs out, b) you complete the 'puzzle', or c) you move out of activation range. As long as the player still has ultimate control while the hacking/archaeology is going on, its cool.
  • cchance
    I'd say add variations like the Mass Effect 2 hacking and code breaking, where u have to find and connect leads etc, and matching code snipets etc... something of that nature, that cud reduce the time and increase the possibility of high end loot.
  • I like your idea of mini-games for them. The difficulty is tying that into the UI without locking the user out of the ability to 'get the hell out of dodge' should something - or more likely - someone nasty show up and start shooting at them.

    It definitely needs an overhaul though, since I don't think its changed much (if at all) since COSMOS was implemented in 2005. I think for a long time they talked about COSMOS 2.0, but afaik that never materialised and after a year or two it stopped being mentioned.

    Anything skills-based, rather than skillpoints-based would be appreciated - much like the triangulation of exploration sites. You can train skills and fit rigs to make your life easier, but in the end you need a technique that makes that scanning process more efficient, and it would be nice to see that sort of complexity in the other mini-professions.
  • Puzzles can be designed dynamically such that there is sufficient randomization in their presentation that a rote solution won't work. Harder to design them that way but it's perfectly (and fiendishly) possible. I would love to see puzzles incorporated into the game in a more direct fashion but the problem with placing solving them as an obstacle to achieving an in-space objective is that your exposure to being found by other players is increased while you are focused on the puzzle. Not a terrible bad thing for those it benefits (yarr!) but sorta unfair when you factor in all the variables that might cause people to take far different amounts of time to solve a puzzle. Therefore, maybe puzzles could have a generous timer and until you solve them or the timer expires, you are unseeable by d-scanners.
  • If your puzzles are just trivia questions, then sure. If they're actually logic puzzles (think Sudoku, though that might be a little more involved), then that won't help a bit. And for other minigame types (e.g. the Minesweeper example above), that doesn't even apply.
  • felipevolta
    Useless. In a week EVE players will have all the answers to the puzzles in a wiki, thus making like any other thing in EVE, a mater of search what you want on the internet. Players did that with missions, wh, plexes, everything. There is no other community of gamers that feel that much pleasure in debug a game like they do in EVE.
  • I think minigames sound fun - they don't have to be anything too difficult… I mean codebreaker sites you could make a mini 15-20 square board of minesweeper. If you hit a mine (or trip the circuitry) the can blows up and you lose the loot, not sure what you could do for archeology, but I'm sure there's another small type of game that could be used.

    You could even set those up so if you cleared the game in a record time it halves the chance to get a 'common' drop and increases the chances of a rarer drop like bps, T2 stuffz, or even officer/faction mods *dribbles*
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