Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I agree. This would apply MORE if there was a short delay to local. The intel would not be perfect as it currently is and could be improved by active efforts. At the moment the intel is both free and perfect and should either be nerfed or able to be countered without having to log out of the game.

However, logging off/on in space makes you disappear/reappear into/out of nothingness. And since that is basically out of the game mechanics, it's not good. People shouldn't (de)-materialize in the middle of space. Especially since it's quite often used to make your enemy think your fleet has only half the members that it actually has. There's no way ingame to determine how many people are logged off and that's the flaw.
Not so sure what would be a good fix for that. Removing local certainly isn't a solution at all. Maybe have a list of who logged off in system outside a FF or Station in last hour or so would do it.

Local does not need countering. It is balanced as is. Cloaks are just plain broke (because "at the end of the day, ur never 100% safe either way. This is a good thing unless you cloak.), which is a different discussion. People want to link local to their favorite broke toys in fear that they may actually have to experiance danger in their hunts.

OP has a point. If log on can be used to safely aggress, then log off should allow safe escape--- if not, then not. People hunting ships designed to evade should be prepared to be evaded. No one is owed a chance to shoot at defenseless ships. If a pilot chooses to enter space in a defenseless ship and fails to pay attention, he deserves to explode, but his ships defense should be given the chance to function by the game, failure should be on the part of the pilot--- unless you want to advocate shields and armor shutting off as soon as you aggress a mining or industrial ship and mining lasers being able to damage the hull.

Log in traps are the only way to catch ratters in bubbled up systems. Even with inties they will be warping off as you land if they are watching local. Deal with it.

The danger of hunting is inherent. u cannot shoot anyone without them having the ability to shoot back. THAT is balance.
Some ships are terrible at fighting, so they fly rather than fight. This is great. There is nothing wrong with having the option to retreat. And no one is saying that a system where u are able to detect incoming bad guys in advance is broken.

The supreme omnipotence of local as an advanced warning system or hunting guide however, makes awareness a trivial effort. on all sides and is perfect. The supreme cloak is also a trivial effort for all sides and perfect. U can use it to hunt, u can use it to hide, just like local. As i have said to u before Mike, whatever arguments there are for local, there are the exact same arguments for cloaks and vice versa, they are quite metaphorically ying and yang.

Log on traps are a bit more effort, but also quite potent. There is no way to detect anyone who is logged off. the best thing u can do is run a locator agent on him. Whether u like it or not, they remain to exist because of eachother, they are all part of the same broken process that is intel gathering and hunting.

no, its not part of the game, not quite intentional. but neither was the potency of local intentional.

all of it, absolutely all of it, is less than ideal. A more sophisticated way of gathering intel that is not so perfect would affect all sides, hunters and hunted, as being able to avoid detection is both useful to hunter and hunted. It would also open up avenues to address everything else related to this god awful mess.

But if u think one should nerfed before the others, u are wrong.

Unless, of course, you only hunt mining barges, freighters, and industrial ships. All of those are designed with their sole defense being evasion.



Except they are.



Here you are glaringly incorrect.

Using local to evade is not a trivial effort. It requires either good timing, extreme remoteness, or else a great many people spending many manhours hunting down every neutral in the systems they want to protect, and then spending even more time keeping them clear with camps and readied combat wings. Without that effort you have high sec, where ganks happen all the time with trivial ease. Local is balanced on it's own, and using it as a defense is a very time, effort, and most importantly Active endeavor that fails as soon as you try to make it passive in any way. It functions exactly the same for everyone involved.

Cloaks are exactly the opposite. They are trivial to use, rely on the efforts of no one and nothing, and are immune to influence by other players in any way unless you happen to get lucky at the gate. That does not translate to trivial on both sides---that's trivial to the user, impossible to affect for everyone else. Worse, it requires minimal ship resources to fit and use indefinitely. They make you safer than sitting inside POS shields, and worst of all are completely passive in their use. They violate every single point you make about being in danger in open space.

Fleeing before hostiles arrive does not mean you were safe--it means exactly the opposite, and their chosen counter to danger was to stop playing.



incorrect again. This is less of a game balance issue, and might be worthy of being addressed---but logging in is the same warning you get from cynos or gates, and using it means you baited them in or set up where you knew they would be---choices they made.



Local does perhaps provide too much info, but the warning that other players are present is basic and essential functionality that would need to be replaced with any alternate system.

Local is balanced, and does not need 'countered' by broken cloaks. Cloaks are broken, and need brought in line with the basic design principals of EVE. Nerfing local without other huge changes in core mechanics (such as was done with wormholes) would break all of EVE. Fixing cloaks would return active play to those that use them and annoy some wormhole people.

How long the disruption lasts is a choice you make. If it's trivial it's because you choose to make it trivial. If you were to cease making it so trivial, they might be more motivated to reship and fight you.

It's not a good mechanic, being out of game, and there is an excellent point to be made about the opposite (logging off) not working when aggressed... but it's not as abusive as many other things, and fixing could be adverse to other things that don't need fixing.

More likely you will get hard counter and/or blobbed. Being immobile in enemy sov is a death sentence and 95% of people in eve are looking for KMs, not good fights.

That would be the effort I was talking about that makes local an effective tool.



Why do these targets need caught when you win just by stopping them from their chosen activity? They dont owe you an explosion, they are already harmed and disrupted.

You know, I wonder just how many F&I threads have such a "reason" behind them? I'd guess more than half.