Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Bots are a completely separate issue and CCP are dealing with them in their own way. If anything, AFKing actually messes with bots and stops them. But they are a separate issue and not a part of this discussion.

Auto log off will not work and as I said, I do not think CCP even want that.

I know your solution, but you don't seem interested in knowing what the actual mechanic being used is. Nerfing cloaks will not help you.

It isn't a good solution, for many reasons.

For a start, it acts as a massive hindrance to active players. It is a fairly considerable hindrance to people running reconnaissance, people setting up bombing runs, people setting up strategic positioning, people doing anything at all in wormholes, and many other very much "at the keyboard" activities. Why should they have to suffer a nerf, or be forced through extra arbitrary hoops because you are unwilling to use any of dozens of options available to you to deal with a single other player in system?

In addition to being a direct nerf to active players, it's also an indirect nerf - currently, cloaked players are a mystery. They may be afk entirely (and as such, zero risk) or they may be actively hunting. These changes REMOVE that uncertainty, and therefor remove risk. Why should risk to you be removed, and risk to them increased? Where is the balance in that? You already have such a huge advantage: You're on your home turf. You can enter warp before they've even finished loading into system thanks to local. You have the POS/Stations. You have your corp/alliance with you or nearby. You have the time and opportunity to escape, reship, and react as you wish thanks to local. Demanding FURTHER benefits is simply appalling.

[insert amusing comment here]

PSA: If you log in to do some ratting and see a guy in local and you even undock and warp to an insta-undock point and cloak up and warp around scanning for him and then conclude he is cloaked and maybe AFK....the mechanic you (and he) are using to interact with each other is not a cloaking device. In fact, it is not any ship module or even a ship. It is not an implant, or any sort of manufacturing/industry related good. It isn't even really an in game item of any type.

So...what word are we looking for?

__ __ __ __ __

CLOWN.... you were gonna say it was evil clowns, I just know it....

I KNEW they would show up again.... git me mah shotgun, ma...., they're baaaack...

Been AFK cloaking in peoples null systems for a few weeks now. I killed a lot of ships, had a bit of banter, some smack talk, got killed twice.

You're probably thinking "wait you can't do that while AFK!" and thats exactly right but as I explained to the angry pitchfork holding, torch waving locals I can't really be expected to jump 90 jumps round trip every day dodging gatecamps and bubbles and they won't let me dock in their stations.

I can't be expected to log off and on politely in space while they sit AFK in their stations, giving them free intel while denying me theirs.

We have to AFK its the logical thing.

Really if it bugs people so much let people dock, least you'll know if they're in space or not. If not then HTFU.

Well written and reasoned post. I approve of this message.

(I also agree, allowing people to dock probably wont happen since a hostile fleet could then dock up and I can see not wanting that to happen too.)

Cloaking isn't the problem, its always the cynos that come with it. The effect being that a single cloaky frigate has the same presence as the unknown capital fleet on the other end of that cyno. For this I say put a delay on cynos before they can be jumped to. About 10 second base and 5x that if the ship has recently been cloaked. Covert cynos will not have the cloaking delay. This should be just enough to give someone the chance to escape or just kill the frig before a ridiculously overwhelming fleet arrives.

Long term cloaking in hostile space (lets not call it AFK cloaking because that implies that that the person flying the ship is AFK therefor a non threat) is mainly an in game nuisance for sov holders, even the GMs see it as such with it being ticket-able and the ship doing it being removed from system after 3 days of camping a system.

As far as I can see it's done for 2 reasons

1. To cherry pick easy targets for hot drops

2. As a form of protest against systems with good defense fleets

Cherry picking targets with covert hot drops makes pvp basicly the same thing as pve (only killing what you know your ship/fleet can kill without the risk of loosing the ship/fleet) and turns gankers into carebears, too afraid to risk their ships/fleets on any real pvp.

Just because these "gankers" fly around in tengus and use black opps battleships for hot dropping, both that cost a lot of isk doesn't mean their pvp should be a no risk activity. This is exactly the same argument they use to justify why they gank in the first place, that being that carebears who fly officer/deadspace fit battleships null sec/low sec deserve to die, because they are playing pve in a pvp game in pvp space.

Good null sec alliances are smart to this what generally happens is a red comes into system, everyone docks or safes there pve ships and mining stuff, jumps in drone frigs and destoryers and hunts them down, usually resulting in the red being podded because he can't re-cloak with so many drones around.

What happens if a red gets though is just broken. He/she finds a safe spot and camps knowing that a defense fleet is active and it just gives everyone the ***** for them to stay online cloaked, the sov holders and pet alliances give them 0 targets so they start whining about local intel being overpowered and people camping in stations.

Likewise someone from a pet alliance or sov holding alliance will sometimes use the free time to post a post or make a thread about the problem of AFK cloaking. Since the red camped in system is usually there long term, while the owner of the cloaked ship is usually asleep, at work or out with friends having a beer at the pub it gives the poster a lot of time to make a very long post while his ships are safed up or camping in station.

Long term cloaking is a cost only thing, it cost the sov holders, the pet alliances and the gankers themselves. It wastes system defense fleets time trying to bait them out and camp the gates to catch them. It stops industry from operating in the said system and most of all, it costs gankers, in that less people (targets) come out to null sec because of the problems known problems with AFK cloaking stopping them doing what they want to do with their game time.

That's the balance issue, the better gankers get at ganking, the less targets they have, making ganking harder is a huge favor for them, because it gives them more targets. I think that if ganking is nearly impossible in null sec, low sec/npc null and WH space, high sec will become nearly completely empty. This being the outcome that most pvpers have wanted since the start of EvE online. The gankers are the reason why most high sec pilots stay in high sec.

When you think about it, ganking should be the most dangerous activity in the game, by far.

However, nerfing cloaks that they produce a scannable signature after 15 mins of continuous cloak doesn't make ganking more dangerous for the ganker. It simply means he/she can't go afk for longer than 15 mins while cloaked in a hostile system. If he is at the keyboard, he can stay cloaked for as long as he wants, he/she only has to watch D-scan for combat probes like anyone else siting uncloaked at a safe spot and move to a new one and recloak when he sees the probes. If he/she wants to say in system and go long term afk, he/she simply needs to log off, like most other people do.

Defenders win because reds are now active when they are in system
Industry/pve wins because reds in system are no longer in a undefined state like a certain famous cat.
Gankers win because they get more targets and they don't loose the ability to be in hostile systems long term cloaked when they are active/semi-active at the keyboard.
GMs win because they no longer have to remove long term campers from systems and deal with tickets about them.
Forum trolls win because they no longer have to put up with all the posts about the AFK cloaking problem

How disingenuous can you get?

No single PvE pilot ever was killed in their home system, except through pilot error.

They either made a mistake about another pilot being active, and undocked in an unprepared ship...

OR

They failed to prepare by aligning to a safe spot, and hitting warp when the hostile enters the system.

All the cloaked pilot EVER did was take advantage of an opportunity, one handed to them by a mistake on a silver platter.

Thanks to oversimplified intel through the chat channel, this is the ONLY way to threaten PvE assets.
You simply cannot deliberately catch a target that can always get away from you.



More deception.

So, to use your logic, more targets exist because less targets are being hunted.

At what point do ANY of these targets lose the ability to see local, be warned by a non blue name appearing, and then hitting warp?
At no point?

Exactly.

All your proposed solution does is remove an "annoyance" that requires PvE pilots to actually take some risk, rather than the risk free version that exists with an all blue local listing.

Or, do you actually believe that consensual PvP belongs here, where only pilot error can create an opening to even BE threatened?