Personally I happen to like the new probe changes and the fact that any newb could jump into early exploration with a minimal of a weeks training.

I've noticed people complaining that the system is too easy.

Eve is a sandbox game, CCP develops a tool and it's up to the community to use these tools.

CCP has created a fun almost addictive Probing system thats accessible. I don;t blame players for using the system.

Seems alot of the players that are complaining are pissed that high sec is too crowded with explorers.

Imo they need to man up and get their asses to low and null sec.

I feel the changes were for the better and the Exploration Vets are just pissed that they have competition now for sites.

Anyway, what do you guys think of the system and do you think having a feature like this available to everyone with minimal training is bad or good? Did you like the older system better? 

Thanks for reading.

I like the new system for scanning down exploration sites but havent figured out yet how to pinpoint down a ship so well. If I can just get that happening I'll be happy I guess. Havent had much free time to play with probing down targets

Originally posted by PatchDay

I like the new system for scanning down exploration sites but havent figured out yet how to pinpoint down a ship so well. If I can just get that happening I'll be happy I guess. Havent had much free time to play with probing down targets

Yeah you have to be fast when Probing down ships.

When I first started I used 4 combat probes and it took almost two minutes to find a ship.

Now I use 5 I set my probes in a box shape with one in the middle, Using 5 i forgo the whole red ring process of scanning and get a red dot right away then i just shift and shrink then scan and do it once more and I have my warp point.

Takes about 30-45 seconds for me to probe down a ship out of a safe spot or mission site. I'm a pretty reliable scout for my Gang mates we have two or three other guys that could do it faster but it takes a bit of luck. Its also faster and easier if you rank a few skills.

Scanning down sites is harder than ships so if it takes you a bit of time to lock a site no worries.

My primary activity in eve was 0.0 exploration from very soon after it was introduced until the recent changes.

I'm over it now, I still probe when I have to but I don't do it for "fun" anymore.  The old system was long, drawn out, uncertain, and required a heapload of skills to do well.

The new system feels like nothing but mildly annoying busywork for me.  Living in W-space probing is a fact of life... but it is simultaneously so easy that there's no sense of discovery and so tedious (micromanaging probes) that it gets annoying quickly.

I know I'm in the minority but I really miss the old system. Hell, I scanned 22 sigs in a class V system the other day in half an hour... and it bored me to tears.

Hm man I am a failure of a covops pilot. Thanks so much for the tips I will practice this later tonight. I haven't dared to bring my covops for gang work since I didnt know how to probe down targets. This sounds really nice.

That fast to scan down a hostile huh? This gets me excited :)

The new probing system is 100000000000000000000000000000000000% better than the old one.

Yes, it's easier to find sites.  Who gives a shit - I certainly don't have any problems with more people out in lowsec and nullsec exploring.

As for probing people, it's give and take.  With the new system deadspace doesn't 'cloak' you anymore, so finding explorers, mission runners, and people who are safespotted is a lot easier.  If you can narrow them down to being within being near a planet with the directional scanner it's entirely possible to get a 100% hit on the first scan.  If they're in deep space it will take a while.  This is good because it gives you immunity to being probes as long as you're paying attention and removes a lot of the frustration of the old system.

And wormholes are great.  I'll be honest - I don't PvE in wormholes.  Every couple days I scan around my home system, if I find a wormhole I go inside and look for trouble, or an exit.  Once you get the hang of things you can kind of tell which hits are possibly wormholes and which htis are probably LADAR sites or something similar.

You never get omgwtfblobbed in wormholes ever - every fight is 1v1 or a small gang vs a small gang.  And they're not always totally one-sided ganks either.  Just yesterday in fact we caught an exploration op inside a wormhole that connected two very distant lowsec systems.  We chased them around a bit, got a kill in Lasleinur, then we took up positions on our WH while they got their crap together and came back and chased us back into Villasen and got two of our ships.  Was a nice, fun fight actually, losses ended up being pretty even after factoring in the cost of rigs on the BC we got.

Granted PvP in wormholes is great.

I'm glad lots more people are able to enjoy a part of the game because they made it so much easier.  For a subset of old "professional explorers" however, the new changes represent the loss of something that we enjoyed for a long while.

I'm fairly certain that we have a right to an opinion as well.

Edit- missed prior post

Originally posted by x_rast_x

The new probing system is 100000000000000000000000000000000000% better than the old one.

Yes, it's easier to find sites.  Who gives a shit - I certainly don't have any problems with more people out in lowsec and nullsec exploring.

As for probing people, it's give and take.  With the new system deadspace doesn't 'cloak' you anymore, so finding explorers, mission runners, and people who are safespotted is a lot easier.  If you can narrow them down to being within being near a planet with the directional scanner it's entirely possible to get a 100% hit on the first scan.  If they're in deep space it will take a while.  This is good because it gives you immunity to being probes as long as you're paying attention and removes a lot of the frustration of the old system.

And wormholes are great.  I'll be honest - I don't PvE in wormholes.  Every couple days I scan around my home system, if I find a wormhole I go inside and look for trouble, or an exit.  Once you get the hang of things you can kind of tell which hits are possibly wormholes and which htis are probably LADAR sites or something similar.

You never get omgwtfblobbed in wormholes ever - every fight is 1v1 or a small gang vs a small gang.  And they're not always totally one-sided ganks either.  Just yesterday in fact we caught an exploration op inside a wormhole that connected two very distant lowsec systems.  We chased them around a bit, got a kill in Lasleinur, then we took up positions on our WH while they got their crap together and came back and chased us back into Villasen and got two of our ships.  Was a nice, fun fight actually, losses ended up being pretty even after factoring in the cost of rigs on the BC we got.

oh no they got the falcon huh? my friend just lost his falcon other day he was one sad bear. Nice story. W-holes are sounding better and better.

Originally posted by Enkindu

Granted PvP in wormholes is great.

I'm glad lots more people are able to enjoy a part of the game because they made it so much easier.  For a subset of old "professional explorers" however, the new changes represent the loss of something that we enjoyed for a long while.

I'm fairly certain that we have a right to an opinion as well.

Edit- missed prior post

I dunno.  I think exploration is a lot more accessible now.  I've had exploration skills on my alt since forever but I know I never actually used them much until the new changes went in.

Under the new system, you don't need a dedicated exploration ship (I do pve exploration in my alt's Thrasher, I offline my cloak and online an analyzer or codebreaker as needed), and everyone has access to nullsec sites as you will eventually find your way to 0.0 if you go through enough wormholes.  As the overwhelming majority of nullsec is totally empty you can explore, rat, and mine all you want and when one of your WHs is getting close to being dead just pack up and go home.  As your entrance into nullsec isn't near a celestial you have zero risk of getting ganked as long as you pay attention to your d-scanner.

I can understand how this might be a bit off-putting to the old exploration pros but I'd figured those would be the people putting up POS's in class 6 WH systems and making the big bucks.  I dunno though, I haven't been big into PvE since I got into factional warfare a year or so ago.

Originally posted by PatchDay

Hm man I am a failure of a covops pilot. Thanks so much for the tips I will practice this later tonight. I haven't dared to bring my covops for gang work since I didnt know how to probe down targets. This sounds really nice.

 

That fast to scan down a hostile huh? This gets me excited :)

When I first started I was a complete newb scanning Sites. I would lose the sig and it would take freaking 10-15 minutes for me to find anything.

I worked at it alittle bit everyday.

Im kinda active in Eve on the weekends so If I slack with my probing speed my mates will just use another Cov Ops pilot and I'll miss out on my pay day.

I usually get a good percentage of the Isk total on kills, Cleared WHs and Sites.

Personally I think a respectable time for Sites is under 5 mins and ships under 2.

I just scanned a Drake out of a combat site in game and it took about a minute, which is good. You need a bit of luck to be faster.

Sometimes if you shrink the orbs too fast you lose the sig all together which sucks ass.

Check youtube for some scanning tutorials, you'll find both 4 and 5 probe scanning.

Yep with more and more combat ships fitting for probing WH is getting a bit hairy. I never really need to worry since im Cov Ops but my mates will get dropped on if I'm not quick with scanning a system.

My point was that "probing" isn't really an activity in itself anymore. It's an afterthought.. anyone can do it.  That makes the whole process kind of boring.  When you can jump into a 0.0 system and have all the sites pinned in under 5 minutes it takes a lot of the danger (and therefore the fun) out of it.

Even with pretty maxed skills it could take you an hour to nail down a hard sig under ther old system.  Hanging out in hostile 0.0 you attract attention.  Never had so much fun as I did running high end radar sites in hostile 0.0 with a blackops, then porting the covert ops out and jumping the loot out while a 10 man gang was trying HARD to scan us and kill us.

In eve, just like in mountaineering, speed is safety.  The less time you spend somewhere, the less likely you are to have unfavorable encounters.  I like eve because it is hard.. requiring both patience and innovation.  Anything that "dumbs it down" makes it less interesting to me.

It is much more accessible and iteractive which is good.

But it mostly boils down to wrestling with the clumsy UI EvE is notorious for, which is disapointment for me. There is not much else to it.

Originally posted by Enkindu

My point was that "probing" isn't really an activity in itself anymore. It's an afterthought.. anyone can do it.  That makes the whole process kind of boring.  When you can jump into a 0.0 system and have all the sites pinned in under 5 minutes it takes a lot of the danger (and therefore the fun) out of it.

Even with pretty maxed skills it could take you an hour to nail down a hard sig under ther old system.  Hanging out in hostile 0.0 you attract attention.  Never had so much fun as I did running high end radar sites in hostile 0.0 with a blackops, then porting the covert ops out and jumping the loot out while a 10 man gang was trying HARD to scan us and kill us.

In eve, just like in mountaineering, speed is safety.  The less time you spend somewhere, the less likely you are to have unfavorable encounters.  I like eve because it is hard.. requiring both patience and innovation.  Anything that "dumbs it down" makes it less interesting to me.

I dont know imo even though probing is easier to get into you still need practice to acquire a target quickly.

I'll find sites three times as fast as some newb just starting out. that's where the skill comes in.

I like how the system is easy to get into but takes practice to get Down.

I never liked how exploration was all about trained skills and a waiting game.

Originally posted by Tyrrhon

It is much more accessible and iteractive which is good.

But it mostly boils down to wrestling with the clumsy UI EvE is notorious for, which is disapointment for me. There is not much else to it.

 

Ehh the system is fine, sure maybe the first 24 hours you struggle a bit moving shit around but after that for me personally I couldn't imagine it being any different.

I know lots of people like the new system and that's cool.

Best analogy I can make for you is this: Imagine you spent the better part of a year training to fly a HAC well.  Then they changed the game so that a noob could train up to fly a T1 cruiser with almost identical DPS/ resists in a couple weeks, and to boot they added a few more controls to the combat interface while making it "romper room" simple. 

You'd be bummed, especially if combat was your favorite thing to do.

I know your skills give you an advantage in probing.. but just as an experiment I trained up my hauling alt as a prober- after a month or so there were only slight differences between my main and my hauler as far as probing.

It doesn't matter, it's no big deal.  Eve always evolves and we all have stuff nerfed that we've trained a long time for.  I'm just answering the question that was asked in the OP.

Originally posted by Enkindu

I know lots of people like the new system and that's cool.

Best analogy I can make for you is this: Imagine you spent the better part of a year training to fly a HAC well.  Then they changed the game so that a noob could train up to fly a T1 cruiser with almost identical DPS/ resists in a couple weeks, and to boot they added a few more controls to the combat interface while making it "romper room" simple. 

You'd be bummed, especially if combat was your favorite thing to do.

I know your skills give you an advantage in probing.. but just as an experiment I trained up my hauling alt as a prober- after a month or so there were only slight differences between my main and my hauler as far as probing.

It doesn't matter, it's no big deal.  Eve always evolves and we all have stuff nerfed that we've trained a long time for.  I'm just answering the question that was asked in the OP.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I understand, You have alot more experience with the older exploration system in Eve than myself.

I got into exploration a tiny bit back then but I became addicted to the new system. Kinda like how someone would be addicted to minesweeper or tetris. I just enjoy it.

Originally posted by Enkindu

My point was that "probing" isn't really an activity in itself anymore. It's an afterthought..

Yeah seems to me that probing has been replaced by wormholes. Wormholes add a whole new dimension to the game and I personally think it's great. You can go from null sec to low sec to high sec in the blink of an eye and have countless ways to make isk or engage in PVP. It's really a whole new lifestyle for some pod pilots.

Of course this change has come at the cost of the old scanning/exploration system that I did truly like. Still, being able to jump in and out of the whole EVE universe is worth it to me 

Over 8 months into the game, never tried probing until 2 weeks ago so I can't compare it to the old system. While the system sounds like it is more accessible I do sympathize with veteran explorers. I suppose CCP wanted WH-space easy to enter and under that old system they feared people would not bother.

I do like the system personally, now that I have pretty much got a really good handle on it. Big thanks for all the YouTube tutorials people have made! Bugs still need fixing however so hopefully something will be announced soon. Now I just need the balls to get deeper into WH-space exploration!

Originally posted by JGMIII

Originally posted by PatchDay

Hm man I am a failure of a covops pilot. Thanks so much for the tips I will practice this later tonight. I haven't dared to bring my covops for gang work since I didnt know how to probe down targets. This sounds really nice.

 

That fast to scan down a hostile huh? This gets me excited :)

 

When I first started I was a complete newb scanning Sites. I would lose the sig and it would take freaking 10-15 minutes for me to find anything.

I worked at it alittle bit everyday.

Im kinda active in Eve on the weekends so If I slack with my probing speed my mates will just use another Cov Ops pilot and I'll miss out on my pay day.

I usually get a good percentage of the Isk total on kills, Cleared WHs and Sites.

Personally I think a respectable time for Sites is under 5 mins and ships under 2.

I just scanned a Drake out of a combat site in game and it took about a minute, which is good. You need a bit of luck to be faster.

Sometimes if you shrink the orbs too fast you lose the sig all together which sucks ass.

Check youtube for some scanning tutorials, you'll find both 4 and 5 probe scanning.

Thanks your advice worked perfect!!! Just did it like you said :)