Player Features and Ideas Discussion

No, I do not see the hypocrisy.
IF I was saying that the resident should be guaranteed to KILL the other player then it would be.
But there are no variable here. If BOTH SIDES do EVERYTHING PERFECTLY CORRECTLY, the outcome is GUARANTEED. I believe in that case, the resident should be able to escape. Having it the other way, that you ALWAYS GET THE KILL would be absolutely moronic to game balance.

I don't know how you don't understand this. But please go on crying about how sad you are that you can't get easy kills.

An auto-timer would be easy to bypass, for sure. Just return to the client every hour and be a little active. Or create a script, I know.

CCP does not get paid for accounts being online. The payments come for a month's subscription.
People do not subscribe because the currently online number is high. They subscribe because of the active content (that they can access).
CCP does not get any awards or bonuses for current online numbers. Numbers on the server are not that important.
Removing afk players is not about making anyone feel safer, it is about addressing the issue of players wanting to interact with other players and not to waste time trying to interact with those who are VERY afk. Most players do not like the idea of a character remaining signed but completely afk 24/7 in the exact same system for weeks or months at a time. Especially when the character must be treated as though it were active with a cyno, and has the effect of owning a system for which it could not claim sov by forcing everyone to move to neighboring systems to continue ops of any kind.

1) It doesn't matter how skilled, quick, or brilliant a hunter is - the resident has the ability to enter warp before the hunter can do anything due to the slight delay in transitioning into system vs the immediate updating of local

2) There is no level of preparedness that can counter the fact that local informs a resident of my presence literally before I properly enter the system. Throughout this topic you've done things like imply a hunters skill, preparation, etc help - yet you've never given a single example or justification of such statements - because you know as well as I do that it's bullshit. There is nothing, literally nothing, that a hunter can do to prevent local warning residents of his presence before he has actually finished loading system, and before he has the ability to see or act in any way. Back up the stuff you're saying bro, otherwise you just look like a fool.

3) Residents should have that chance, but it should not be anywhere near as sure as it is now. Decent to good chances, not 99% perfect

4) Claiming that I can attack sov and infrastructure is extremely hypocritical. You're saying that in order for a hunter to succeed, he must organise a big fleet and dedicate the time to burn a system (during which the resident can escape anyway). But when we suggest that residents should put in any effort at all, that's unacceptable? Hypocrisy and entitlement are the name of your game, bro

In any case AFK cloaking needs to be nerfed. No? Then [lease explain how afking in a system all day with an alt to create paranoia among the local residents is any different from afk mining with a bot all day? Both are equally disruptive to the economy of eve and both are equally lazy when it comes to reaping the rewards of what they hope to accomplish put a fuel bay on cloaked ships that give them 4 hours to get in and out of enemy territory and call it a night. If you can't find a target and kill it or call in a covert cyno in 4 hours then its time to retire as as bomber pilot.

You can't compare afk cloaked ships to botting.

If you want to sit afk in a mining ship in a belt all day, you can do that.

I dislike anyone being afk all day as I'd rather those system resources were used for those actually using the system.


No one was ever killed by an afk player cloaked in their system. I fail to see reasoning behind a 100+ page thread for people who aren't there.

What kind of philosophical garbage is this?
The AFK cloaked pilot is getting no ISK.
The ASSUMPTION that an opponent will lose income which results in a benefit, through some underwear-gnome chain of events, is seriously flawed.
1 Scare Opponents
2 Opponents stop making ISK
3 ...
4 Profit!

Sure its comparable. The bot miner's goal is making isk with absolutely no effort put into obtaining it. The afk cloaker's goal is to instill a sense of paranoia among the miners/ratters in a system with absolutely no effort put into it.

In both cases the person doing the afking is away from their computer jerking off, sleeping, working etc and not at their computer doing what their there to do.

Which as far as i'm aware is something CCP frowns upon. Just because the afk cloaker isn't making isk while sitting there does not mean that their not achieving their desired goal because in fact they are.

People setup comms channels in null sec to warn miners and ratters about incoming reds and put hours and billions of isk onto systems to upgrade them and CCP constantly talks about how they want to improve industry and migration to Null sec and yet all of it can be countered by one guy in a system cloaked in a safe spot while he's out of the house with no intention of even getting on his computer for that entire day and all the while holding up potential hundreds of other players from using a system. Just because it doesn't require an actual macro to achieve the effect doesn't mean that the result isn't the same. In some ways afk cloaking to scare the locals is even lazier and cheaper than afking mining. At least with afking mining people run the risk of getting caught and suicide ganked. Whereas with afk cloaking there is literally nothing anyone can do about it in any shape or form.

If you can't see how its similar then I'll leave you to your abc's and 123's

That's just it though the afk cloaker does generate something of value and you can put an isk value on it in the form of paranoia and isk lost due to his afking in system. Simply because you can't verify how much isk is lost doesn't mean that he's gained nothing. Though i supposed if you wanted to try to verify it you could simply view the activity in a system prior to their afk campaign began.

In both cases the afk party achieves their desired outcome with no effort and without being present in their seat. At least with afking mining people run the risk of getting caught and suicide ganked. Whereas with afk cloaking there is literally nothing anyone can do about it in any shape or form.

Also I've noticed that in many cases those who are afk bombers for days on end do not do it to simply deny the enemy resources but often out of spite for being kicked out of an alliance or because they lost sov or some other petty reason rather than doing it for a strategic purpose. If a party was interested in camping a system with the strategic goal of denying the enemy resources then they should be able to do so but that tactic should require effort other than simply waking up early to log in and then going about their day and relogging the next day to rinse and repeat.

There is simply no other activity that you can do in eve that requires less effort than afk cloaking. Not even ice mining is less devoid of effort. I'd argue that its the lamest yet most effective thing you can do with your time while spent away from the computer. The fact that the afk cloaker often spends 98% of their day away from the computer rather that sitting there waiting for an opportunity to attack proves that is is no different than a Mining macro setup in the morning to mine all day with no one there to supervise it.

If the bomber is logged off in the attempt of a trap then that is totally legit because they are there presumably with a spy alt ready to spot a target so they can jump in and take the target out and are therefore active. In all honesty such a trap is even more effective at creating paranoia than sitting there afk all day cloaked just waiting for someone to take the risk of undocking.

As far as 123's and abc's I'd agree with you

Nope There are always other forms of isk for a person to seek when a system is camped by a afk cloaker and its as simple as moving over one system and moving the ore in and out with the new industrials that can now fit 4 warp core stabs in the lows and still haul 50k+ m3 of ore.

I'm simply stating how the mechanic of afk cloaking is comparable to afk mining in the fact that they both are achieved by

A : waking up early to log in and set up the afk activity

B : going about your day while your character is logged in completing the desired task for you.

C : the results are that the afk'er is obtaining the desired outcome of their characters current activity while being away from their computer for an extended period of time with little or no intention of returning to supervise said characters activity

The results economic or otherwise are simply argued to show the afk persons impact aka benefit for an activity that is done while the offender is not present during the course of their actions ingame. In one case the offender gets isk in return for their setting a macro to mine all day in their absence. In the case of the afk cloaker its the offender reaping the rewards of denying the enemy resources they would otherwise have access to in their absence due to the paranoia they create while they are in fact at work or sleeping or would otherwise be logged off

Simply put the only reason this isn't a violation of the EULA is because there is no 3rd party botting program tapping the C button to cloak a ship throughout the day. Instead its a mechanic that was put into the game years ago that was thought to be cool ( it is btw ) that would allow a ship or group of ships to enter an area and aggress targets then allowing them to flee before they could be found aka hit and run. Instead its used to log in and disrupt player activity for days on end with little to no effort put forth at all by the user for 23 1/2 hrs a day with literally no counter other than to move shop. You can't camp a afk cloaker you can't wait them out with bubbles on a gate you can't scan them down. there is literally nothing you can do other than to move. If its intended to be a pvp mechanic then where is the pvp oppertunty except for the 5 mins they get on when they get off work? If any other activity was allowed to be carried out 23/7 with no supervision taken place it would be nurffed or banned almost immediately

I have not claimed they get paid for people being on-line. I am quite aware of the payment method thank you.

My point is numbers on-line do matter in an mmo business and they are important. I'm actually quite amazed you suggest they are not.
It's a metric that they look at and follow, a metric that's also followed closely by others. The point being here is that when faced with numbers of AFK pilots that have practically no load on the server, it does not make good business sense to remove them. Obviously.

As far as making people feel safer. Well at the moment they have uncertainty, they wish that to be removed. I've simply drawn my own conclusions to that and you have your own. Just as I disagree with anyone being forced to do anything, by someone cloaked and AFK.