Player Features and Ideas Discussion

So I have been reading for years about how some people want to get rid of the Local Chat and others insist it's needed.

There seems to me to be a reasonable compromise.

In High Sec Local would act as it always has with no option to opt out.

In Low Sec and Null Sec you would have the option of closing local. In the event you close it, you would no longer appear in local yourself, however you would also not have the benefit of seeing who else is in local with you.

In wormhole space there would be no change.

If this were to be implemented there would need to be some option of pre-selecting your status for local so that you would not have to select it each time you were changing region types.

So you have an alt docked in station/citadel or cloaked with local open and perfectly safe, while you have your main in space, with local closed?

Not saying it's a bad idea, just not sure what it achieves in the end, other than encouraging more alts.

Just replace local with Constellation.
It avoids giving away perfect intel while still providing a way to see who is in the area, and to talk to them
With the idea behind new sov being to spread fights out being able to smack talk your enemy from anywhere in the constellation also makes sense.

Right up until the point that there are 6000 or more in the constellation at which point loading Local Chat itself could crash some clients.

True 6000 people may not crash a client. The number itself is not really the point. It could be 600 or 60,000.

The point is that every time you add a player that's one more host (player computer) that needs to be updated regarding some detail of all of the other hosts. In this case the constellation would have all player names required to be broadcast to all other players in the constellation adding unnecessary stress on the servers.

In a slow constellation perhaps this would not be a problem. But consider a situation such as the battle of M-0EE8 where local peeked at 5337 pilots. In this situation with local alone, all 5337 Hosts need to be updated with every player and message sent in local to each of the other 5337 Hosts. In a system that's already under 10% TiDi, this is just extra server load that's not really needed. Especially when in such a large battle, focusing on local is not really what's important.

Now add to that everyone that was in the constellation at the time. It's just more stress on the server that does not need to be there.

My suggestion has the potential of alleviating at least some of the stress on the server in such a scenario. FC's could instruct their pilots to close local. Even if this only had a 1% effect on the strain the server is under it's still better then nothing. Doing the reverse by adding everyone to Constellation chat would just compound the already frustrating issue of TiDi.

You are side stepping the real issue here which is the complaint that local provides too much intel too easily. But to address your points.

First, why do you think there is a delay cap on the number of users? Could it be to keep server stress down? And how do you think that cap is imposed? Could it be using a filter?

The more obvious downside of what you suggest is this. Have you been to Jita lately? Why do you think all of the spam happens there? Is it perhaps that it's because that's where the largest audience is to see it? What do you think would happen if you allowed a single person to spam an entire constellation? It would potentially be be turning all of Eve into Jita Local. Do you really want that?

And I am not sure how you would consider my suggestion "Convoluted" Seems rather simple. Close local you don't show up but you don't get to see it either.

Now as to the point of separating out chat. This is your one valid point and one that I had forgotten about. So yes, this is going to go a long way to lowering stress on the server. It still does not solve the issue at had about local being used as an overpowered source of Intel which is where all the debate extends from.

You argument makes no sense at all. You are attempting to convoluted the conversation at hand by pointing "But what about this? What about that?" It provides no conversation about the subject at all.


However, seeing this conversation is about the local side of chat, or the intel side of chat, I fully support the removal of local, however only if the local tool is replace by intel gather tools that require skill an effort to gain said intel, an in turn, tools be provided to lie, or deceive those said intel tools.

Once again I am the bearer of bad news but the "intel-tool" is what you made of it because some folks thought they could "lose" stuff if someone that doesn't have that magic "blue" or "dark-blue" tag on the name must be the doom-bringer that will destabilize the economy, disband your alliance and kill all your sooper-doopers in the process.

But in fact it was really just one pilot who had the audacity to enter "your" space and violate everyone you know be her / his sheer presents.

By posting about this unbelievable powerful tool of "intelligence", the folks that thought they knew betterererer than everyone else made this public appeal to everyone and anyone new to the game the horror stories of simple gate travel a nuisance and people stopped talking to each other entirely.

Skip ahead a few years and the horror stories of gate travel persist and continue to "scare" everyone.


Now let me ask you this, how did the "Band of Developers" even "band" together when they didn't even talk to one another?


Yeah, that's right, they did - in local.


But nowadays everyone is an alpha of an alt of a spy alt of a gank alt of an awoxer-main right?

Firmly against any changes to local, because I have yet to see a reason other than 'situationally it's inconvenient as a PvP'er', which is not a convincing argument or a gameplay issue.

I for one agree with original poster, local chat provides to much intel with zero effort. Using it in together with tools such as pirates little helper often allows you to instantly judge what you are up against and if a potential target is a trap or not. On that matter i'd honestly also like to see killboards gone or at a minimum delayed with t>24h.

As some of you mention constellation local i belive this would only benefit cloaky campers. While the excact location of players would be unknown it would provide free intel about hostile fleets aproaching, current gatecamps etc. A sure way to trigger a response in nullsec is to tackle a capital, note however that I do not call it a fight. Even if all gates are outside d-scan range local lets you know aproximatly how many to expect, if this number is to high agressors simply dissengage and leave before the battle has even been fought. Rather than increasing the influence of this stupid mechanic it should be removed completly. It would surley be easier to catch afk ratters but it would also be easier for defenders to engage an agressing fleet on their own terms.

Less free intel could perhaps increase the occurance of sporadic fights not just based on direct counters or n+1 fleet members (this also occurs to some degree in wormhomles without local due to excesive scouting tho). The added risk to null and lowsec could perhaps also stop the unhealthy (perhaps subjective) mass injection of faction stuff, minerals and isk to the market.

Anyways, death to local chat!