Player Features and Ideas Discussion

These Trial Account Scout Probes would display the following from any target system: the system local, the overview for any location in the system, and the dscan results, exactly the same as if you had created a trial account to watch those pieces of intel, except without actually having to bog down CCP with the trial account. The probes would operate 24/7 even if you were docked in a station. The only difference is that they would not register in the local of the target system and they could not be intercepted by player ships like normal frigates could be. The probes could be named Trial Account Scout Probes, or we could just call them a more politically correct name, Remote Monitoring Probes.

With the speeds and agilities of normal T1 frigates these days, getting low skillpoint scouts into position is pretty easy, and if there are any issues, the only affect is to delay the positioning as the scout is sent back to the desired position. Players need the ability to monitor remote locations without being forced to create trial accounts for this task. On the flip side, a player will never know if they are being watched by another player unless they do a dscan within several AU of the Remote Monitoring Probes. These probes could be limited to 8 with each one at a different target location and could be connected to the scanning skills for the number of probes allowed in space at a time and other characteristics. The probes would have no expiration time, would not cost anything, would not be destroyable or targetable, and could be set to monitor key locations automatically, like the station grid of the nearest station or the other side of all stargates in the system, depending on the player's settings. There may be fewer surprises for those who don't use trial accounts for scouts, but everyone would be on a level playing field and players would engage in battle with a better understanding of what they were up against and with better preparedness.

Even if you feel strongly that trial accounts should not be able to be used for scouting, please calmly consider the advantages of allowing all players to have the same intel without having to use such tactics. The assumption going forward would be that your potential victims already know about you and that they know you know about them.

Disagree strongly. If people are going to use trial accounts for scouting, that can be countered by tracking the scouts down and killing them. The fact that people are simply able to make more scouts should not mean that intel is magically given out to those unwilling to put forth the effort.

The effort ties up a player, though. Maybe it means that a guy is scouting instead of bringing another ship to a fight, maybe it means he's multiboxing, and paying less attention. Either way, it requires active participation, and things that require active participation are to be preferred over sending magical cheating ghosts to scout for you from the absolute comfort and safety of a station.

Indeed. "Limit of 8" means "8 per account", which means they'd get spammed. Instead of 'trial account scouts', you'd have 'remote monitoring alts', which would render all other scouting efforts completely obsolete.