Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Ask yourselves this, What is the difference between an AFK cloaker and someone who is docked up in station and AFK?

Sure, you know where the docked person is, but do you know what ship they may pop out in? At least with a cloaker, the available hulls theyre in is limited, but someone whos docked could literally be in anything. Both of these people show up in local, but only one is the villain according to this game.

Now the same goes for someone sitting In a POS, only this is a little from column A and a little from column B. Are they truly AFK in those shields? They can easily swap to anything and come after you. They could even be D-scanning you down, from the safety of their POS, and you think " theyre AFK and not cloaked..no problem".

By Nerfing AFK cloaking, are you doing anything at all to these other 2 classes of campers who are equally as deadly? No, youre doing nothing at all. Congrats, you treated a minor symptom while the rest of the disease goes untreated.

Now, Local chat, its a free intel tool that is used by these campers to spread fear and uncertainty. If any change is to be done, its to this. But realize, that if this is changed, it wont be for the better for those risk adverse individuals who cling to local for intel (as all who complain about AFK cloakers obviously do.).

Many recommendations have been made on this, and im sure a perfectly good solution can be pieced together from them. I personally like when local was broken after one of the expansions (inferno? retribution? cant remember which one) You stayed in local no matter where you went, logged off or logged in. God that was fun. The enemy was everywhere and yet nowhere. You knew where people were or had been, but no real clue where their current whereabouts were until they talked. Fun times had by all! That would be a bit extreme admittedly. The solution to local will need to be different in the different areas (high/low, null, WH), personally I don't think WH needs to be touched. High will need to be different, only because of newer players. Yes, there will be those who cling to highsec because of the illusion of safety, but I think we all know by know it is only an illusion by now right? Making local instant for newer players only , and delayed for older players only serves to have everyone roll new player alts every 30 days to keep an eye on local (how many of THOSE will be cloaky and AFK? (ominous music plays)).

Whatever solution is finally made regarding local, im sure it will spawn daily threads of complaint as well, and Im sure that ill have some choice words to interject into most of them.

*que angelic choir music

Finally, a great solution to AFK cloaking!! Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!






























Only AFK cloaking isn't a problem. At least you didn't kill a tree to write all that stuff down which we don't need!!!!

Can we force you out of station while youre docked? Can we force you out of the POS bubble when youre there?

You say you want the chance to force a brawl, but only if the brawl is one sided (and clearly favors whichever side youre on)

You call it blueballing when they sit cloaked in system all day, then by what name shall we call sitting in station all day?

While outside cloaked up, there is still is a chance (albeit VERY remote) that the cloaker can be uncloaked and discovered by another player. While docked up in station there is ZERO chance that you can be forcibly undocked by another player. If you were theoretically able to be forcibly undocked, youd still have the undock invulnerability on your side to redock in, when someone is decloaked, well I guess that's all folks and tough **** for them.

Sigh. No, no a cloaker* cannot shut down an entire system by sitting stationary in a safespot with his cloak up. It is mechanically impossible for him to do this. What you MEAN is "we decide to shut down our own system because there is a potential threat". That's what the honest reason is, that's the reality. A bunch of bears see a potential threat, and react the same way Madagascar does when a man in brazil sneezes: SHUT. DOWN. EVERYTHING. That is not an issue with the cloak mechanics, it is an issue with your risk averse mentality, and nothing CCP could ever implement will fix your cowardice.

*I deliberately made a point of not specifying "AFK cloaker" here, as it is irrelevant. If I sit stationary in a safespot cloaked, but remain at the keyboard, looking at the client (lets say for example, chatting in corp/social channels) then I am essentially identical to an AFK player. So don't tag the term "AFK" onto your complaints because it is nearly entirely irrelevant. The only relevance it has is the fact you do not know whether I am AFK or not - not what I / my ship is actually doing or not. It's the uncertainty and threat that you can't stand, and thats what you want removed. Admit it. Man the hell up and be honest. You want to remove uncertainty and risk for yourself. Go on, do it. Say the words. We'll get further if you're honest with your reasonings.

First I want to thank you all for replying. We have started a conversation here that has been very informative.

The first thing I want to do is state an analogy. For those who live in the US you will understand this statement. Income tax is a voluntary tax. You do not have to have a job, and therefore will never pay taxes. The statement is true, but it is not practical. I have come to learn through this thread that the issue is local chat. It can be removed in nullsec, but will it be practical? Unsuccessful At Everything and Nikk Narrel seem to be hinting at the fact this may be the answer, but it may or may not be practical.

Frankly the main thing I wanted to do here is stop the excessive time some people sit cloaked in a system. Forcing the cloak to expire every hour and take fifteen minutes to reactivate is another option. For 15 minutes every 60 minutes your cloaking ship has to move around system. This is an easy response to it, and similar suggestions have been mentioned a thousand times. I did not want to rehash that, but that is the attitude some took towards my post. This is a new and I thought unique idea.

The other side of it is people claiming that afk cloaking is not the problem, but local chat telling everyone who is in system the second you enter. The reason behind having this aspect I believe is to increase combat chances. If you know a potential hostile is in system you can hunt them, and if they are in a cloaked ship try and bait them into combat. The flip side here is if the hostile is afk there is no reasonable way to find them. Therefore this is the response to local chat being present announcing their presence in system. Removing local chat may be an interesting idea. Perhaps remove local chat from nullsec (make it like wormhole space) unless the sovereignty owner installed a module on the TCU to interact with CCP's communications systems and show who is in local. This may be a better idea. It may not stop the afk cloaking ability, but there are advantages and disadvantages to having local chat and the sovereignty owner would have to decide which they preferred. A more interesting thought is making it so even if the sovereignty owner chooses to install the local chat module, a hostile warp bubble on the TCU disrupts local chat causing it to go offline.

People have also claimed if you expose cloakers to attacks then you need to eliminate all safespots. In other words force people out of stations, and force people out of pos bubbles. Frankly I am all for being able to dock up, search a station for the hostile pilot quarters and taking them out if you are able. What I mean here is that the pilot can have security on station to protect them, so they are not always reachable. As a normal citizen try and walk in on your countries president unannounced and armed. It will not work in real life, so if the pilot has security on that station you will not get access to them. As for a POS, well those should be safe spots. It is a shield, and if you want the pilot inside you have to destroy the shield to get to them. Here you could say well they can warp out, but you know the direction they are going and can follow. They may also log off, easy answer here is you cannot log off in a POS that is under attack. If the POS enters reinforced mode any ships and pilots inside are stuck there until it comes out of reinforced mode. If they log off their ship and pod does not disappear. They can still warp off of course, but once again you need to be watching so you know the direction they warped in to follow.This however is another discussion, and is a tangent of the original post.

Risk is an interesting thing. Cowardice on the other hand is something else altogether. TheGunslinger42 claims I am a coward because I do not wish to risk my ratting ship worth more than a billion with a potential hostile in system. I don't care if the hostile is cloaked, uncloak, afk, or fapping to madonna. The risk of losing a 1 billion plus isk ship is not worth the 30 million (50 if you count loot and salvage) I make for clearing a combat site. Mining... Do I want to risk losing a 200 mil mining ship for 30-40 million in ore or 15-20 million in ice? This is a more reasonable risk if the potential hostile is afk. Either way though it is not cowardice. When this happens in the system I am located I move my ratting ship someplace else to reduce the risk. Plain and simple. It is not cowardice. Cowardice is never undocking my ratting ship because I have no idea when a hostile will enter my system unannounced, and I am too scared I will lose my ship. I have met people like that, and they don't last long in nullsec.

As for the one-sided brawls mentioned by Unsuccessful At Everything. I do not think it is one-sided, if and only if you are ok killing a mining ship with zero defenses. That is a one-sided fight. I mean this is what you are advocating staying in the game. The counter to that is local chat giving the miner a chance if they are paying attention to get away. Remove local chat and if the gate is more than 14 AU from the mining site the solo miner would have no idea the cloaked ship entered system until it was on top of them. That is not one-sided at all. Here you are forcing the miner to not to play the game solo because they need someone to watch the gate or defend them yet you can play the game solo because the mining ship cannot shoot back at you. That is not one-sided? These are some of the problems you will run into if you remove local chat. But what do you care about miners, they are just carebears right?

In the end though I am not sure what the right answer will be. I suppose that is the reason for creating this thread in the first place. Thank you all again for your great input, and keep it coming.

I have a question, you nerf my cloak....What do I get in return? What will you nerf to keep the balance?

Indeed.

You don't NEED to use a 1 billion ISK ship to run complexes when an insurable 100 to 200 million ISK battlecruiser or battleship will be 80% as effective.

You don't NEED to use 200 million ISK mining barges when you have the option of using an insurable 10 million ISK barge that can mine 80% as effectively but with a VASTLY better tank (hint: Procurer).

It IS cowardice if you sit in a station/POS and refuse to employ different tactics (like teaming up with others or creating reactionary counter-tactics) to ensure your defense.

I sincerely hope this is an attempted troll.

Everyone in EVE deal with cloack ships, and they're perfectly fine with it.
Insisting on the argument "yes, but in sov 0.0 we're r etarded so we need special mechanics" isn't that great.