Player Features and Ideas Discussion

It's a perfectly valid question, because you are the one wanting local to simply be removed. (replaced with WH space local) So the onus is upon you to provide the reasons how and why, you think this would be balanced.

As a denizen of null for the vast majority of my EVE life, I have accepted these cloakers for what they are: an annoyance.

They're the EVE equivilant of that creepy guy who stands on the street corner, staring at everyone with 'that look in his eye'...you never know if he's just going to walk up and punch you in the face or ask you for change/food/cigarette...or just stand there and creep you out.

No, he doesnt have the right to be around; its our space, and "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone"

That's the problem, it shouldnt be easy to evict someone with a cloak, but it should be possible! I mean I could have the entire solar fleet or all of goonswarm trying to evict me, but no matter how hard they try, no matter how many man hours they pour into it, they can never get rid of me, ever!

There is nothing else like this in eve, because its terrible game design.


you mean you have to be paranoid except if youre cloaked right? because for some reason cloakers are allowed to be 100% safe in hostile systems with dozens of people looking for them?

If cloaked ships are so effective, as you seem to imply, you should mine, rat, and mission with them then.

Why let everyone else have all the fun?

That way, when someone else shows up, they will think everyone is docked up at the outpost, since they can't see anyone...

Of course he has the right, it's not your space. You are merely claiming sov, that in of itself does not preclude other players from that space. In fact CCP have created mechanics, to allow others in and take sov from you.

It is also already possible to evict a cloaker from any space, by pressing F1. What you're asking for is more intel power, on top of the already powerful local intel channel. That is not a balanced approach.

if any of you can give me a way to actively seek out and kill someone who is cloaked then ill cede the point . . . Oh wait . . . it cant be done

Thats the point; everything in this game has consequences, and someone (with enough time and effort) can dissuade you from doing anything in this game except gathering intel from a cloaked ship; fleet locations, ship types, safe spots, defense compositions, locational strategies, all to be had with zero risk.

I dont have a problem at all with cloaked ships, the problem i have is that there is nothing I can do about them even if i know its coming in advance! this is unlike any other module in the game

I challenge you to show me another module like this.

At the very least, a cloaked ship should not be able to move, use the directional scanner, scan with probes, use the ship scanner, see local, see their overview, in fact they shouldnt even be able to open a window and look outside without some risk

Risk is part of the game for cloakers as well as non cloakers.

This has come up in every thread about cloaking, and im not surprised to see it again. People conflate balance and counters

Balance - rules the game has in place to prevent a given game element from being too effective/ineffective
An example would be the MWD; the balance of that module is that it uses a lot of cap, PG and inflates your sig radius when using it, this makes it balanced.

Counter - Something another player does to subvert the things you want to do.
An example would be the warp scrambler; i want to go really fast with my MWD, you can counter me by using a warp scrambler to prevent me from doing that.

I would submit that the cloaking device is fairly well balanced; it takes a lot of CPU, it lowers your scan resolution, you cant do anything active (except provide intel) when its on, it slows you down etc.

What cloaking lacks is a counter. Everything else has a counter, why not cloaking? In fact, if cloaking got a counter, I think it could be buffed; remove the scan res penalty and raise the minimum speed, maybe even lower the decloak distance.

My point is that cloaking needs to fall in line with everything else and if you dont want me doing it, you should have some way of preventing me from doing it.

You are fundamentally confusing two concepts.

1) Status quo
Status quo is how players behave and how power is distributed in a system currently. Game design changes do not have any particular obligation to maintain status quo. In fact, most game design changes are proposed or implemented with the express purpose of changing the status quo. Removing local chat is an example of this. The whole point of removing local is to disrupt the way that players have settled into the current status quo, and to allow smaller alliances a chance to stop all of eve's nullsec from being swallowed up by one group of people.

2) Balance
Balance is about people of different types and playstyles, yet equal skills and intelligence, having roughly the same chances to succeed in the game. E.g., making roughly the same amount of isk, or having roughly equal chances in combat. Local chat is currently a massive IMBALANCING factor, insofar as it allows the "large alliance" playstyle to have a massive advantage over the "small alliance" playstyle. It does this because it does not allow any sneak attacks at all, really, and thus the only way to win any battles is to have a massive blobby fleet of doom that can only be fielded by drawing from dozens or hundreds of corporations at once.


Since local chat is very much imbalancing already, you can in fact simply remove it without changing anything else, and improve the balance of the game in doing so. At the same time, you will disrupt the existing status quo, as you point out. These, again, are separate concepts, these two effects are NOT mutually exclusive, and in fact, both of them are intended.

Your logic of "everything that is nerfed must have something buffed to go with it" is only true IF you assume that the game as it exists currently is already perfectly balanced. In fact, it is not balanced currently, and thus there is no reason to assume that a nerf has to be accompanied by anything necessarily.



Lol, lots of people whining != actual problem. It just means that a lot of noisy people have a vested interest in something. And people being noisy is not and has never been evidence that what they are saying is reasonable or a good idea.

In this case, what the whining people are invested in is neither fair nor reasonable. It is extremely unrealistic and imbalancing, in fact, and encourages stagnation: the ability to have magical instant information delivered to them on a silver platter.

Thus, not only should AFK cloaking be left alone, but this magical, imbalancing info whould be nerfed (local chat), to improve game balance, regardless of how many people complain about it.



Perceived risk doesn't blow up your ship. ACTUAL risk blows up your ship. Thus, game design and balancing should focus on ACTUAL risk, not perceived risk.

If you are perceiving things incorrectly, then you are making a mistake, and you need to learn to stop doing it. That's not an issue for game designers to worry about. It's an issue for you to worry about as you learn to be a better player who perceives things accurately

The cloaking module does have a counter, it's called local intel.

[sarcasm] Also I purpose that we set up a new system where I can force people to undock from an outpost and eject them from pos shields. This way the cloakers don't need to spend endless amounts of time in a system to get a kill, they'll just eject an afk person docked and gank them. Yes that is fair i think and nothing you say can change my mind, logic doesn't matter. [/sarcasm]

Hmm... sounds a lot like something I read in the OP

so using local you can prevent me from cloaking and delivering risk free intel to my fleet?

insert obligatory condescending wonka pic here

please tell me more about how local counters free intel

#1 is usually an option if you have enough space, and that is legitimate

however I want to focus on #2 for a second . . .

How much of a defense fleet would you suggest I have with me? Enough to kill a small gang? enough to kill a 50 man fleet that could instantly bridge into system on a cyno that was opened from a cloaked ship that you had no way of telling was right next to you? enough to kill the 10 carriers and 5 supercarriers they have waiting to escalate with should you field a defense fleet?

just how many people need to be protecting this one guy ratting?