Player Features and Ideas Discussion

A: Local chat.

Also, Oh, boy! Everyone's favorite thread! Now, with ISD stamp of approval!

I have an actual idea that I can't remember seeing suggested. What if your contacts list showed whether or not a person was online, offline, or AFK, instead of just on/offline?

Also, I think that if you are cloaked, you should not show up in local. But what if the cloaker could no longer receive local channel updates?

let me ask you something? and let me ask it the same way you do, because i have some bold and cursive letters left.

If there would be no local, but you know there is someone in your system, because you use guards, how would you act to counter him, compared to mechanics WHs provide?

I answered for WH, where i live. In eve should always be counters.

Cloaky problem is a complicated one. We have a good example of this with d-scan immunity. How will it affect gametyles? Solo, fleet, ganking? Hard to balance solo vs fleet playing. Everybody will fly recons now? Does it show the ship trait is success? It will generate some fights for start and after that ppl will become even more paranoid. I would rather see different d-scan range with different ship classes. Why frigates have same d-scan range with BS?
IMO cloaky ships shouldn't have splendid combat capabilites (after all its "cloak and dagger" not "cloak and minigun") and be capable of doing scouting job. Hard to do scouting if everybody in the system knows someone entered it (by scouting i mean scouting not scouting and carry cyno - this should be a job for recons).

Players are complaing about two things with cloaks:
-AFK- put an alt in system and nobody will be ratting there;
-alt can carry cyno so hotdrop may be incoming (connected with above).

This is it? Like the other guy, you couldn't address or even try to rebut any of my arguments?



A player doesn't have to know he's being interacted with by another player. It isn't tied to local because it isn't simply limited to k-space and it would still provide to much reward for too little risk even if local were removed for numerous and clear reasons I outlined in my last rebuttal.



Yes, you can (separate local from cloaking), because indefinite cloaking still occurs in w-space, which doesn't have local.

More specifically...

No, you can't. Afk in space in a ship and I'll blow it up. Sit in a station and your knowledge about the activity and opportunity for strike at the other residents of the station is much more limited. Essentially all you know is who's in that station, another station (you don't know which if there's more than two in system) and who's in space. Compare that intel with that available to a cloaky alt. Leave the station and anyone else watching knows you've left. Build a pos, sit in it, and use it for spying long enough and I'll make a fleet to blow it up.



If you've got cloaky eyes in a system, and you've use him before, there's a good chance I know if you're going to use him or not. If I've seen a cloaker make a move one time, I've watch listed, cataloged, and made notes on every other person on the killmail they produce, if any. By correlating this information with killboard histories, I (or potentially any player) am able to discern, with a resonable chance of success, whether that character is active or not. It's hard to have a psychological effect if the people your trying to affect know that you're impotentently sitting afk.

I think you have less of a grasp on the game mechanics than you claim. Dealing with afk cloakers and establishing system security, for those whom are interested, is a mixture of activities that requires correlating details into a bigger picture with the intent of understanding the risk posed by a situation. Cloakers are less threatening than most of the people here believe because we have the tools to understand when they're going to be active or not when they've been used. The problem is intel, more specifically, the quality of the intel relative to the risk that cloakers place themselves in.

The problem with AFK cloaking is that it's the only thing in game where a player can generate an unintended impact on the game without being actively logged in while not being identifiable as active or inactive.

The issue stems from when that player transitions from passive to active. Unlike all other features of the game, you cannot determine the nature of when someone changes over from passive to active, and therefore become part of the game. If you look at wormholes or any other part of the game, the transistion between systems or the act of logging in or undocking all provide ways of scouting out an individual to know if they are active or passive with some level of certainty.

Roaming cloaking gangs have to uncloak on a gate, which is an indication of activity, even if its brief.

Black Ops Cyno gangs have both the possibility of scouting the home system, and the possibility of scouting the cyno alt moving around.

A player who logs in to system has a brief window where they can be actively scanned or visualized in some way even ignoring local chat.

Any active player outside of cloaking always has some visual indication possible of when they transition from passive to active.


Here's the problem with AFK cloakers... There is no way of indicating that transition from passive to active. A guy who log's in straight after downtime and sits in system all day cloaked provides no indication. The complain stems from this and most players just want some way of knowing if that player who's impacting the game actually is active or passive even if it's incredibly small.

It's totally different from a player who actively sits on his/her computer waiting to pounce. In that case though, at least they are working for that illusion of passivity. But if that's the case, then something should be required to indicate the difference between a player earning that illusion, and a player not doing anything, if for no other reason than to provide the opposing players some small window of how to indicate threats.

I think the best solution is a pop-up screen that requires a code to be typed in after ~ 30 minutes of inactivity or a disconnect after an additional 30 minutes. This way the player has to do something to keep his illusion up, and get's an hour of afk time, but can't have any advantage over the other scenarios listed above that actually have some vulnerability to being scouted out for their activity level.

No you really can't separate the two. AFK cloaking isn't strictly needed to achieve surprise in w-space. Whereas there is no counter to local other than AFK cloaking.

If you agree to delayed local in null- and low-sec, then changes to cloak mechanics are fair game. Otherwise you're seeking a rent.

My own personal issue with cloaking is the fact that I cant hunt a cloaky. Once a camper is in a system, they can stay as long as they want. You have to bait the player out and often that doesn't really work.

I know people dont like this idea but I have always liked the idea of a frigate class ship that can hunt cloakies. It would take some balancing, likely the removal of local.

Though the above idea is unlikely to happen, I do think a simple solution could be to simply remove the color coding of players in local. Make it so that only colors show up on the overview. This gives the PVP player more time to get to a target, and makes it so that a PVE player must pay more attention.

Just some thoughts.

Involuntary watchlist is another broken mechanics - it is a free, perfect and undeniable intel that promotes station/pos hugging.
Now the part I underlined is important - that's where imbalance really is. Jump changes bring back some sanity here. Perhaps they are not yet sufficient. But the fix is to balance hotdropping.

i would somewhat agree that watchlists are very powerful in an intel sense but ive seen some very novel ways of undermining watchlists that im sure may eventually become common practise. But watchlists lack a very important part of data and that is where the contact is. Locator agents obviously help with that and in the post phoebe jump fatigue world cap and supercap hunting using locator agents have become too easy.

The mechanic needs to be mixed up by say incorporating faction standings to the accuracy of the results (high standings to caldari from the target will broaden the accuracy of any locator requests from a caldari locator agent for example)

in terms of the covops cloak cyno hotdrop problem i think making covert cynos and covert ops cloaks fittable on one ship only if one of those mods are online at a time would be enough. its a relatively easy tweak to do.

You could also make any form of bridging from within 'x' number of metres of an NPC station in violation of a New Yulai Safety Directive, signed by all navy and pirate factions (or whatever roleplay details you want there) to stop careless loss of life every time a artificial hole in space-time is created mere metres away from a stations bulkheads.

I'm not talking about "surprising" careless bears (if you can call that surprise). I'm talking about ambushing (semi-)decent players. In w-space that is possible and it happens. In k-space local will give me up before I even came to their system. And they don't even need a scout to spot me.

Also

- What will you do with an unwanted K162 in your k-space? I say you will roll it.
- What will you do when a new sig pops up and you see a scout in your system? I say you will dock.
- How would I know which anom you are at, when I have no time to scout?
- Are you seriously suggesting I should log off for a surprise strike, because you want a perfect local?

Yes, you basically want a safe heaven in null. And no, you can't separate local from afk cloaking.