Player Features and Ideas Discussion

His defense against logic was pretty solid while he was here too.

He must be fitted with Talking Point Stabilizers too....

AFK Cloaking is a reaction to the problem.

Symptom to some, a counter according to others, depends on how you look at it.

If it wasn't for local, AFK cloaking would not exist.

non-sequitur

The invisible ship is not interacting on any level.

It is unable to catch any prey because local warns them perfectly.
It's presence is broadcast freely despite the lack of effort, or even an active presence.

By so doing, local promotes this stalemate on both sides.

If players needed to make an effort to detect each other, the superior effort would win. Everyone is given the right answers for free instead, is it any wonder the same results keep manifesting?

The main effort would come from the cloaked player. He would need to manage the information he gives to the players in the system by controlling his exposition. The players in the system on the other side would be more willing to do something because they would knew that the other pilot is active somehow. There would be no risk of, let's say, if you are on a defensive position and WANT an engagement, you keep waiting a whole day for a pilot that could never decloak, because the player is not even there.
It's not about playing safe, it's about playing. Cloaking is cool. Stalemates are bad. So cloaking afk is bad.

first off you are talking about a cloaked player, not an afk cloak. Only a player at a keyboard can be there to pick the engagement.


Second, train recons or blops and you will find as a cloaked player (note the lack of afk) this is how you keep your usually paper thin tanked ships alive and getting kills.

Lacking this ability you may as well delegate bombers and recons to covert cyno pop duties..or just add 1 more falcon to already too many running around for cheap shot kills jamming targets to assist buddies who any other way had no chance in hell of taking on the target.

And blops officially are only bridge makers at this point. Some make combat blops work. Cloaked up waiting for a warp to to find and tackle a target or hot drop on a potentially sacrifice covert cyno ship after waiting cloaked in another system is how they work it .

Embrace this warfare. Eveyone goes blob blob, hate the blob. Aww, you need 10 ships to kill 1, you all have mad skills.. Enter the cloakies. they can give that 1 v 1 pvp many desire. Thier torp hound vs your ratter. HInt: pve with AB's (bombers like it when you spank a mwd, sig bloom makes for more moar damage)...take the isk per hour hit and run warrior II's fulltime. this saves precious seconds recalling hobs to pop warriors.



Basically...actually run ninjya ops to see why ccp has it setup this way. Well that and understand wtf afk means. Like I said before, READ KB's. running in fear of a player who is rarely/if ever on when you play is not broken mechanics, its idiocy. The only excpetion to my system I know of is weekends.

If the wife and kid are out and I get extra freetime I could be the asia/oceanic tz player running aound US primetime as I kill time waiting for stuff to open up at 1000 in my area. If up at 0800, well I can fire up some eve if motivated to. Mon-Fri though....work is where I am at for a US tz player's night of playing.

a player not in the game is not a threat......

Why we tire of these threads really. Someone not there can't hurt you. If a 200 man corp or a 2000 man alliance cannot scrap up the most basic intel to know when player is actually there doing something....they have issues. Long term memory, they need to develop it.

After a few hours to a day someone should be going has anyone see player named iamafk actually do anything and get a decent answer. Or see something on a kb. Oh I see joe got cap drive by'd in his ratting carrier. Did cyno live to end cycle and get a shot in on the ratting carrier? He will stand out...it be archon, archon, thanny, archon, kestrel on the mail. Not on the mail, ask joe...what was the name of the cyno who called in the strike.

If this guy is paralyzing hundreds of players and no one is undocking, they need to reevaluate why they are in 0.0. 0.0 NPC residents undock all the time to local mixed with neuts. Most places are NBSI and non-sov crews will shoot other non sov crews just as readily as shooting a blob crew. Yet still they undock to spam the pirate missions.

No, what he is suggesting is that because of local you know perfectly that there is a hostile present. You don't even have to undock to see this, hence you can make your self perfectly safe as well. Thus balance. They are perfectly safe...you are perfectly safe. Tell me why this is not balanced.

Of course, you could undock and expose your self so that the hostile might in turn reveal himself allowing each of you to interact directly with each other (i.e. shooting each other). Of course, he might have friends...but then again so might you. This part is separate though from the mechanic that is ultimately driving all this.

And in many of these threads how to deal with a cloaky camper has been covered...many times. For example, rat with buddies in PVP ships. A lone cloaky will never ever engage you, and unless he is going to cyno in a heavier/larger fleet than you even a cyno ship will likely leave you alone.

Nikk has gone on at length about using ventures to mine in null.

So, it is up to you to adapt to the current situation since CCP is taking their sweet time dealing with the issue of local. But since it is currently balanced, nerfing a secondary game mechanic vs. dealing directly with the game mechanic primarily at fault is silly.

Hi Nag'o,
Please do not feel yourself put in a defensive position, where you have to defend yourself.
Nobody is against you, infact we are all with you.

We all know what you are talking about, for we are familiar with the "threat" a so-called "afk-cloaker" poses upon an entire system.
We can read between the lines and know what you mean in your posts and have sympathy for your struggle to put into words the pure pressure you feel. That's why we have passed the #150 threadpost mark and keep on throwing pieces and bits of information at you to open your eyes and mind.
Not only you, but everybody who struggles with the same pressure but tries to deal with it, the so called problem, by fixing the wrong thing, which for God's sake is not cloaking.

With love and care we try to guide you step by step to see what the problem of the matter truly is, which is not the cloaking mechanism, but the problem is that the local does not distinguish between targetable (and detectable) and untargetable (and undetectable) pilots, or pilots that can and cannot interact with other pilots and environment (which requires targeting [ignore ECM, of course]) and use modules.

Now, what does that mean, you might ask. Well, here it is:
Living in nullsec means that you treat anybody who is not blue like a virus that has to be removed from the system.
Each system is an organe in an organism.
PvE ships instawarp to safespots or dock up, interrupting their work, the missioning and ratting. Miners have to stop working, too and have to wait until the virus has been dealt with. The economy comes to a halt, which is the "serious problem". However though, soldiers and cartographers get active at this point. Cartographers seek to track down the virus and the soldiers seek to remove the virus, so that the economical engine can run again, and that ASAP.
The soldiers and the cartographers are the immune system of the organism.

Now, if the cartographers are incapable of tracking the virus because the virus is
a) cloaked,
b) is ECCM sensor boosted beyond the cartographers skill level to track it down, or
c) the cartographers are plainly not highly skilled enough,
then the soldiers cannot remove the virus and this, my dear Nag'o, is the "true problem".

Because the virus cannot be removed, the organe has to either
a) shut down until the virus decides to leave local, or
b) has to offer protection to the workers by reinforcing and covering the workers with soldiers, which are PvP ships.

This symbiotic cohabitation with a hostile virus is inconvenient and highly threatening and it is the virus that dictates the state of the situation and conducts how the organe has to function, which is the "true power" of the virus at this point, and this can cause high pressure within the system, when the system's inhabitants are not prepared for it.

Now, how do you deal with this "problem"?
An organe has to be in readiness of combat at any time to fight off viruses and intruders, no exceptions.
Well, the local is a part of the immune system, provided to all pilots as foundation. The local is a basic detector, plainly listing all pilots within the system, but it does not distinguish between those who are potentially targetable and not targetable by any conventional methods like probing, dScanning, etc and those who can and can't target, use modules, and interact with other pilots and their environment, etc.

Pilots above are discussing about the "problem" for a long time already (which is not afk-cloaking) and are getting tired of all the new weekly "cloaking nerf" posts that just graze the problem but do not hit the nail on the head.

Suggestions are
a) the removal of local altogether (i.e. the implementation of wormhole space local system in null- and lowsec, or even in highsec, too)
b) the update of local to distinguish between ships that are capable and incapable of using modules and to target other ships, thus interact with other pilots and their environment (like being cloaked, within a force field, etc.)
c) keeping the current local system and to deal with it and adapt.

As you can see, the cloaking or so called "afk-cloaking" is just one aspect, but it is not "THE problem".
It's all about the rudimental local.
That's why you are receiving all the corrections in this thread, dear Nag'o.

I really hope this helps.

Answer this question: is your issue really with AFK cloakers (because you never know if the person docked is AFK) or is your problem with the potential Cyno it could drop on you?

If it is the latter, then your problem is not with AFK cloakers.
If it is the former, maybe CCP should just play like any other MMO and add a 15 minute timer to auto-log you. No fuss... no muss.

In either case, the issue really is not the fact the person is cloaked.

If you're trying to balance a feature you have to consider the perspective of everyone affected by the balancing. That's exactly what you are NOT doing. You think afk cloaking only happens in nullsec and it only affects mining and other PVE activities.

Since you insist on it so much, I will say what I think about getting rid of local even that not being the topic of this thread. Could it be a cool thing? Sure! But that's changing a basic aspect of the game. 'Hey, Monopoly is boring because it takes too long, let's change the table so it's a spiral instead of a square.' Will that be cool? Maybe it will, idk... the fact is that it will make it another game. EVE already have this game and it happens in WH space. Could the WH local mechanic be interesting when applied to nullsec? There is a a whole other thread of factors involved and I'm not into the discussion because the issue I want to address here is AFK CLOAKING.
Does afk cloaking happens only in nullsec?
I will let you to answer that horribly, horribly difficult question.