Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Oh, how I laughed at this. You sir, hit the nail on the head. I sometimes find it amazing that people don't consider that massively multiplayer games, played in no rules pvp areas, might be a hell of a lot easier played as a group. Complaining you can't play it solo is just plain stupid.

If you want to play solo, don't carebear in nullsec. Simples!

I propose that we force everyone who complains about afk cloaking to afk cloak for a week.

That ould end all of those petty complaints immediately.

Still better than that one wanting to force people to mine isotope from the sun to keep their cloacking device running :)

Not pointing at the OP, per se, but a good number of those complaining about AFK cloaking would probably do it inside their own systems... too much risk in other places.

The funny part would be if they used an out of corp alt.... think about that for a moment....

Put alt in blue system
All the blues dock/pos up
You run the sites
They make the tears on the forums
Everybody wins

I fly a faction BS. The first BPC dropped when I was ratting in my 30 mil battlecruiser, mined up all the minerals myself, made all tech 2 modules and rigs (tech 1) myself, so the only real isk I have in the ship are the faction modules most of which I traded for or bought with LP. I don't have anywhere near 1 bill in the ship, but the killmail will put the value around that. On the exhumer it is the same deal, I produced everything there so I technically have zero isk in that ship, but again the killmail will show around 200 mil.

Do I need to fly a faction BS to rat, no. Do I need to fly an exhumer to mine, no. Do both make ratting and miner easier than the low end cheaper ships, yes by a very large margin. With my battlecruiser it took on average one hour to clear a site, with the faction BS I can clear it in about 20 minutes. Similar with the exhumers, more potential isk per hour over the barges. Do I care if I lose either ship in a fight where I failed to pay attention to intel, or local chat... No that mistake would be mine and frankly I would just build another. I have had three more faction BPCs drop while ratting, and invented a half dozen more exhumer BPCs. This is not the issue. The statement was I was a coward for not continuing to rat with a hostile in system. My point was it is not cowardice, just a good risk assessment. The risk is not worth the reward, period. It does not mean I sit in station all day crying on these forums. Frankly that would be cowardice. No I left system and ratted somewhere else where there was no hostile in system. When I got bored with ratting, I joined a fleet and did some PVP in a logi, then later a destroyer. I also tried to bait the hostile afk cloaker with a retriever, but after about three hours the hostile finally found me (obviously coming back from afk) and just insulted me in local but would not engage. When the insults got old, I went back to ratting (in another system). So yes I guess by your reasoning I am a coward for abandoning the system when the hostile decided to stay cloaked forever in it. I however call it good risk assessment.

Someone else posted about how the cloaked afker gets nothing for sitting in system cloaked. That they can effect and do nothing while sitting afk and cloaked in a system. Here I disagree. The locals or residents of that system worked up the military and industry level of the system. By a cloaked hostile sitting in system for days on end as was happening, those levels drop. The hostile cloaked afker is effectively negating days of work by the locals to get better mining sites and annons. Especially when the locals tried multiple times to bait them, and they refused every time to take the bait.

What saddens me is to see people on this thread focusing on one aspect I expressly stated I was not advocating, but stated instead that is how some posters are taking my original post. I never suggested, or even think it is a remotely good idea for the cloak to expire every 60 minutes and force the cloaked ship to wait 15 minutes to recloak. I just believe that or really a similar attitude was how my original post was seen. Yes no matter what change you make it will affect other aspects of the game. Every change does that, you cannot get away from that. What my original post was trying to do was reduce the amount of affect this change had on the rest of the game. Some people saw that, most did not seem too. Either way though I personally have moved away from my original position, and now I am more in favor of removing local chat as the solution. That still does not change the fact that the original post might be an interesting idea, if for a whole different set of reasons.

TheGunslinger42 makes a good point... of course he insults me some more, but I have thick skin...



Before this post was even written we had tried with conventional means to remove this afk cloaked ship. I mean this hostile confirmed they came back from afk every few hours to type in local chat, but they would not engage or drop cloak for any reason. All the locals could do either mine/rat in cheaper less effective ships hoping they were not targeted by this hostile, or move systems with their more affective ships and rat/mine where they were safer. Easy to see what most choose. I did not run to CCP asking mechanics to be changed until the current mechanics would not allow us to remove this hostile threat.

That is not a cowards action sir.

I've run into your replies in basically every post made on this topic, and you have precisely this same imperious "you're just afraid!" attitude in every thread. It's tiresome. You're just making everyone that disagrees with you on this topic into a strawman, presuming it is fear of conflict/desire for easy ISK that motivates these posts. And you're dead wrong. I love the uncertainty and constant threat in this game. Safe is boring.

That being said, something IS wrong in terms of the game design not punishing AFK-style behaviors. You are right that the inhabitants of a system make the choice to dockup, etc...the cloaked player can't make them do that. Idon't want imbalanced fights where cloaked players are beset upon with perfect anti-cloaking skills. But if someone is AFK for 4 hours, they should be logged out of the damn game or something. The ability to park a cloaked ship in a system and then go to work, relying on presence in local to create the purely psychological disruption, is obnoxious. Which, frankly, explains how a person with your personality traits would defend it so much. There's some ad hominem to counter your pathetic strawmen. :P

What I think is funny is that if everyone really think this was such a massive problem then how come just about everyone else (Cept for a select few) never complains about it? The only one that is causing this fear or anger is yourself?

If you want a tactic on how to boot a cloaker from your systems, build up before you grow out.

This is actually a terminology that came from an old game I use to play, the SimCity games, you always want to build up, before you expand out, think about it for a second. If you have a crowd of people all on different time zones, you can do constant gate camps, or guard duty. If things do get way over crowded, and you want to move to a new system, think to yourself. "Can I actively defend this system from invaders if I claim it?" If yes, start claiming that area.

There are so many ways to counter a cloaker, it scary. All it takes is a little imagination, and a little elbow grease.

DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING!

More problems have been identified.

Yes I think cloaking is a problem. No one asks why?

In nullsec... If an undesirable enters system in a non-cloaked ship they can be hunted, tracked down, and killed. If the undesirable is docked, they can be turned red, the station can be setup not to allow reds to dock, a bubble can be setup at the station exit, and you can wait for them to undock and kill them. Even if they are docked at the rare NPC station in nullsec, you can still bubble the station exit and wait for them to undock. The point is you know where the pilot is. The problem exists in that once a cloakable ship enters open space they cannot not be hunted or killed if they choose not to uncloak. You cannot reasonably eject this undesirable pilot from the system even with a thousand pilots looking for them. Yes a thousand people in system looking for one pilot might accidently uncloak them, and might potentially be able to lock them down and kill them before they can recloak, but not very likely unless they truly are afk. Frankly I think I probably have a better chance at winning the lottery then that happening either way.

Look at the flip side of this. If an undesirable alliance/corporation owns a system you can form up a fleet to destroy the POSes, the station, and the TCU. They can eject the undesirable alliance/corporation pilots who has sovereignty with a little planning and time investment. This is not the case with a cloaked ship who chooses to not uncloak. This is why I say this is a problem. Many will disagree with me here.

I do agree with many that the cloaker is the answer to the local chat issue. I personally think a module installed on the TCU should be the only way to have a local chat in nullsec. That gives the sovereignty holder the choice to have local or not too. It is a fair and balanced answer to the issue. If the sovereignty holder has problems with afk cloakers they can form standing fleets to camp the gates and turn off local chat. If they don't have that problem they can leave local chat on, or off whichever they choose. It is only the simplest, easiest, answer with the least amount of impact on the rest of the game mechanics. It still does not change the fact that a cloaked ship cannot be forcibly ejected from a nullsec system if they choose not to uncloak. Every other pilot and ship in the game, including POSes, stations, and TCUs can be forcibly removed from a system in nullsec. Even pilots docked at the rare NPC stations in nullsec can be forcibly removed with time and effort because their position is known. This is not the case with cloaked pilots who choose not to uncloak or leave system willingly.

The question is how to resolve this imbalance with as little an impact on the rest of the game mechanics as possible.

However do not get me wrong. Even though the system is out of balance, I will use and abuse it until it is resolved. Just like everyone else.

It is not a nerf to cloaking and nothing else needs to be nerfed in response to the change if the system is already out of balance.








Where have I used those words, except to quote or represent someone else's words? Fair or even fights don't exist in this game, unless the pilots involved agree to them beforehand. If I personally used those words, I apologize because I did not mean them in that manner.