Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I am going to tell you something, having a system that shows afkers in local for a period of inactivity would ruin a tactic of psychological warfare that Black Ops Corporations use to make their enemy second guess whether or not they are afk, when in fact the black operation happening is pretending to be afk.

To the ones who claim "HTFU", and "nullsec shouldn't be safe". Well that's quite easy to say while you sit behind your cloak and wait for defenseless targets to blap, isn't it? Let's be honest here, cloaky camping isn't exactly the hardest thing in the game to figure out. It's actually pretty low on the totem pole when it comes to skill requirements. Stop acting like you're the god of pvp because you found out how to use a cloaking device to your advantage.

To the ones who claim "HTFU", and "nullsec shouldn't be safe". Well that's quite easy to say while you sit behind your cloak and wait for defenseless targets to blap, flawlessly avoiding all the targets that might have a chance at killing you, isn't it? Let's be honest here, cloaky camping isn't exactly the hardest thing in the game to figure out. It's actually pretty low on the totem pole when it comes to skill requirements. Stop acting like you're the god of pvp because you found out how to use a cloaking device to your advantage.

This is a broken mechanic for multiple reasons that I won't go into. You know what they are, I know what they are, anyone who's spent time in nullsec knows how broken it is, and why.

Here's a simple solution. Implement an in game module, function, or whatever, to detect when a player is afk. Maybe have an icon next to a player when he's afk, that indicates that he's afk.

You could even go further and add this to the watch list feature. IE: you can view whether people on your watch list are afk or not. This would prevent people being able to see if half of local is afk at a glance. And it would require some preparation (adding a cloaky camper to watch list) to use.

This has no major drawbacks like some of the other proposed solutions. It fixes something that is slowly but surely killing nullsec as everyone and their brother gets more and more cloaky alts, to camp more and more of the ratting systems. It requires no mechanic changes, so there are no potential balance issues.

Problem solved.

Do you like botters? I'm going to assume you said no.
Why don't you like botters? Because they're getting some sort of in game benefit while not actually playing the game?
Guess what? A cloaky camper gets in game benefit while not actually playing the game.
What benefits can one have while afk you ask?

Well say I wanted to start a war with someone. We all know the best way to attack someone is where they make their money. AFK cloaky camping does exactly that. Without you being at the computer, you are stopping someone else from making isk.

I already know your argument to this, "If I'm not at my computer, I can't kill you". True, now how do I know whether or not you're at your computer? I don't. You know when I'm at my computer though, because you can see me ratting. Therefore the advantage is 100% in your hands. And there's nothing I can do about it.

That is a broken mechanic. It's as broken as tracking dreads. It's as broken as the original doomsday was. It's as broken as the original FW changes were.

If this broken mechanic is not fixed, one day I will be able to failcascade an entire alliance by myself with my army of cloaky alts. An alliance that makes no isk is a dead alliance.

No, actually it would help if anything. Of course, that would require crap ops corps to think outside the box. It wouldn't just be sit in system until idiot decides to rat, light cyno, blap, anymore.

To the ones who claim "HTFU", and "nullsec shouldn't be safe". Well that's quite easy to say while you sit behind your cloak and wait for defenseless targets to blap, flawlessly avoiding all the targets that might have a chance at killing you, isn't it? Let's be honest here, cloaky camping isn't exactly the hardest thing in the game to figure out. It's actually pretty low on the totem pole when it comes to skill requirements. Stop acting like you're the god of pvp because you found out how to use a cloaking device to your advantage.

the cloak isnt the real problem. its the threat of a covert ops cyno dropping 25 dudes on you and killing you before a single ally can even land on grid.
With these blops changes this week i feel all its going to do is make cloaky camping even more effective than before.

I was going to put this in a new thread but this one will do.

The problem as i see it is not that cloaks are broken in what they let a player do, or that a player can cloak all day safely.

The problem i see it is that a player can interact with eve with out actually having to be involved with the game.

a 23/7 cloaked pilot allows intel to be gathered, psychological warfare to be enacted in eve, all with no risk to the cloaked pilot while they are not even looking at there eve screen.

The solution is to still allow all of this to be done, however require the player to be at there keyboard to do it.

having discussed this extensively on other forums there were 2 main suggestions brought up.

1. add a fuel/timer to cloaks

this option had a couple of different implementations discussed, one was make the cloak permanently in a state of overheating, to long cloaked and it breaks, potently along with the rest of your high slot mods. the other was to add a fuel requirement similar to ASB using a low volume fuel source (to avoid major impact on the cargo hold of covert ops ships)

both of these revolve around the basic premise that every x minutes the player has to do something or his cloak turns off, making him vulnerable to all the existing ways of killing people you don't like. this has minimal impact on covert fleets and active intel gathering (the suggested fuel was about 0.1m3 per 15 mins allowing stealth bombers to carry enough tuel for extended stays in hostile space, or use small enough amounts of cargo space as to not severally impact its ability to hold ammo for fleet operations.

2. add an active counter to cloaks.

this came in the form of t2 probes that can detect cloaked ships, to grid wide pulse that uncloak them, giving the hunters and option to find the ships. this was not my preferred option but its defiantly viable.

the main point though is to define what the issue is here and taret your fix at that specifically. in this case it was defined as above (i.e. being able to interact with eve while afk, through intel gathered from local, and intimidation) once you have defined the problem finding a solution is much better.

now troll on!

I was going to put this in a new thread but this one will do.

The problem as i see it is not that cloaks are broken in what they let a player do, or that a player can cloak all day safely.

The problem i see it is that a player can interact with eve with out actually having to be involved with the game.

a 23/7 cloaked pilot allows intel to be gathered, psychological warfare to be enacted in eve, all with no risk to the cloaked pilot while they are not even looking at there eve screen.

The solution is to still allow all of this to be done, however require the player to be at there keyboard to do it.

having discussed this extensively on other forums there were 2 main suggestions brought up.

....Snip to cloak nerfs....