Player Features and Ideas Discussion

You completely miss the significance of your reference (which is in my AFK Cloaking Collection thread, BTW) is that AFK cloaking is as old as cloaks. And in all that time CCP has not changed it. Could it be they don't see it as unbalanced? Despite dozens if not hundreds of threads on this over the course of 6+ years what has been done about AFK cloaking? Nothing. Precisely nothing.

A lot of things are designed in a certain way and have this design changed later for adressing issues. If it was not for redesign you would not have any sort of upgrades. Not all redesigns are good, that does not mean all redesigns are bad.

Actually, there is a third answer to this, and I will get to that in a moment.

Nag'o wrote in another location about how he wondered why this happened mostly in null sec.
It is because null sec allows pilots to occasionally experience EVE play without ANY hostiles present.
Every ship in local is blue, and therefore friendly at least to the point they are not a combat threat.

No other section of space permits this, and local makes this presence obvious in what becomes a reassuring manner.
But, this is not the intended nature of the game, and certainly in null sec this is not meant to be safe.

The problem is players get used to this unrealistic safety, and freedom from threats. Oh, sure, they watch local just in case something passes through, but quite often the hostile soon leaves, and they can rely simply on "run to safety when hostile present" as the only needed defense.

This spoils many players to the reality of the game. They treat a hostile presence as an aberration, not meant to exist beyond a certain point. Some even run to the forums crying passionately about how this must be broken and wrong, because they really really liked being able to operate in the worry free version they had discovered.

But that is not EVE.

We are truly sorry you expect such lack of risk in this MMO, but your expectations simply make for bad gameplay, if we were to enforce them beyond player mechanics already in the game.

Stop expecting this. Be glad you can operate briefly free of threat, but never expect this is normal, or somehow earned when no pilot is there to enforce your safety.

So, what can you do?
Fly like you are playing a game with potential hostiles everywhere.
People sometimes refer to wormhole dwellers as crazy, the way they never know if a hostile is around them, or even about to attack. BUT, they are playing the game as intended, and you can too!

Here is that third answer I mentioned at the start.
Defensive posture: Immunity to the disease of hostile attack, by presuming attack always imminent.
Fit your ship as if the hostile could be watching you on grid.
If you have defensive PvP ships handy that can protect you, then you can fit accordingly. A simple guide is that if you would not fly it in high sec, expecting your PvP support to protect you when even Concord could not is not realistic.
Fit to survive, and not to min max income on the assumption noone will bother you.

The same rules apply to everyone.

So, they aren't playing the game. They are influencing others. They could undock at any moment and attack any hostile in system and they dictate when that engagement happens. I'm sorry you'll have to do better than this explanation.

They are not influencing others the same way the afk pilot is because being docked or at the towers gives them the tactical disadvantage of having their location exposed.

Their location is not exposed if they are docked.

The hostile player knows from local they are present, but since they cannot dock to directly confirm this location, it is an assumption.

So, you have both sides, listed in local, for hours on end, never knowing exactly where the other is.

How is this not balanced?

They cannot dock only in nullsec, and only if he does not have access to the station. I'm trying to broaden the perspective here.

In EVE you are never supposed to even assume that any pilot in local is even afk at any time and you have to play accordingly, even in highsec.
If a pilot in a system irritates you through his cloaking or his inactivity, then you can simply use the stargate to the neighboring system.

Are you even bothered when someone is AFK-cloaking in highsec? - Of course not.
Cloaking is almost absolutely irrelevant in highsec, except your corporation is at war with another corporation or in factional warfare.
Cloaking only matters in places where CONCORD is not present, and CONCORD is only active in highsec.
Cloaking is a form of self-defence and if someone decides to be cloaked in a system for the next 10 years, every day, 24/7, then this is his own good right.
Nobody is permitted to dictate anybody else how to shape his time in EVE and especially, nobody is permitted to force someone to fight if he does not want to.
If someone decides to cloak up and be untargetable, then so be it, and you have to respect his decision.

Never assume that anyone is AFK in EVE, ever. And if you do, then change your attitude.
There is no "safe" in EVE and all people ARE active at all times, as long as they are listed in "L-O-C-A-L".

With all respect, please close the thread and dump it into the year long list of nonsense, sorry.

No. I'm trying to BROADEN the issue by adding the use of cloaking in all aspects, not only nullsec afk camping, wich is what you're doing. I already addressed this matter of the owned station by saying that, in the big picutre, it's a justified privilege for having control of the system.

The only uncertainty cloaked players should give is about their location. Because cloaking is just about hiding.