Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Actually, you haven't been reading me again.

I don't care about local. At all. If local goes away tomorrow morning it won't affect the balance point of cloaks at all. It will prevent the AFK issue, and greatly mitigate the overall effectiveness of current tactics in use while cloaked, but as I have stated many times the real issue is the cloak, not the afk.

Cloaks don't balance Local.

Local is not in need of balance. It's an innate and intended part of the game that affects all players equally. It helps hunters find targets, and helps targets evade hunters. The issue most hunters have is that it tends to turn them into prey for other hunters looking to defend their space, which makes their own hunting more difficult. Basically, they are looking to kill, not fight, and don't like that a prepared enemy will come get them instead of just being able to jump a defenseless ship.

If local does get changed, there will be little difference in game across most systems. they are not going to alter it in such a way as to make it useless, and like many systems in EVE it's pretty binary- it works or it does not. Sure you might lose it in a few targeted systems as OA go down or something, but the gameplay in those systems will change while the rest of the game rocks on with business as usual.

The game will always tend to people being able to find people. This is because that is how you get PvP. If nobody can find anybody nothing explodes.

The whines about local come from a bunch of entitled PvP gankbears who don't want to actually fight eachother, they just want to prey on the other guys who are in ships that can't hurt them. Disrupting alliance industry is great gameplay, and that happens as soon as you arrive in system and lasts until you are forced to leave. Kills on defenseless ships are not part of that, and you aren't entitled to have them wander under your guns.

Yes, I know you don’t care about local…your recent discussion with Mark Hadden about rat aggro swapping indicated you have little interest in PvP and your view of game balance is stilted by your focus mainly on PvE.

Local is completely immune to attack, yet it is something you use to your benefit and advantage. I can do nothing about it. Your source of intel and advantage is completely safe from anything I can do to it. Just as I’m completely immune with my cloak at a safe. Your intransigence in admitting the symmetry and nature of AFK cloaking and local simply provides evidence of my hypothesis that your views are slanted.

And no, I do not suffer from such a slant because yes, I do PvE. I have a character that can mine fairly well. I have hauling characters. Characters that can do PI and invention. And I also have 2 characters I can rat/run missions with. When not deployed or doing PvP I’ll typically log in and do some form of PvE broadly defined. I can see both sides. I understand the complaint about how an AFK cloaker can still project power when people want to subscribe to the risk vs. uncertainty view point (as noted I don’t, I’m a Bayesian and so I go out, make a subjective probability assessment and then gather evidence and data to revise my initial probability assessment, which includes undocking and doing stuff even when there is a cloaker in system…and yeah, I’ve lost ships that way).

And yes, if local were to disappear tomorrow it would absolutely impact the balance for cloaks. Cloaks would be a very, very popular mode for roaming games, solo hunters, BLOPs fleets, etc. In fact, as has been pointed out by me and others, simply removing local in null and changing nothing else it would be unbalancing. Yes it would fix AFK cloaking, but then it would be too much uncertainty in that you’d have no way of dealing with cloaks at all. None. This is why most people such as myself, Nikk, and a host of others favor NOT simply removing local, but a balanced approach such as has been discussed by several of us for a number of months if not years.

And all your talk about local being an “innate and intended” part of the game can be said precisely of cloaks too. Cloaks were put there on purpose and their function was done on purpose. For years, AFK cloaking has not only been tolerated by CCP there has been indications that they are fine with it. I believe the Dev comment was something along the lines of, “No ship has ever been destroyed in this game by a player who was AFK, let alone cloaked.” You keep trotting this claim out as if it means something significant when in fact it means pretty much nothing when taken by itself.

Further, local is not equal for all players. This is an indisputable fact. If you are ratting away in your preferred system and I jump in you’ll have 1-2 seconds to see me before I even load grid, let alone get to align, pick an anomaly, and initiate warp. On this point you’re just flat our wrong on the facts.

And your obfuscation that people are looking just for “easy” kills vs. fights is not helpful either. Whether players are looking for “easy” kills or fights is neither here nor there as both of those two desires are valid aspects of this game. Some people want fights. Some want kills, even easy ones. And given a vigilant PvE player, even a hunter will have to spend some time stalking and trying to catch his prey. The fact that killing said player might be “easy” does not negate the fact that quite a bit of work might have gone into getting to that point. So your complaints about people wanting “easy” kills is totally invalid. It is a known, expected and even valuable part of the game. And no, it is not all just about “easy” kills. As I have stated in the past, some of the most fun I have had in game is when the other side forms up and brings the fight. Sure slaughtering a few unaware pilots is amusing, but the real fun is when you are in a dead end system and the people whose space you have been roaming through have set up on the only gate you can use to get out. You jump through, and let the fun begin. Sometimes we’ve welped it, other times we got away (mostly) and took a couple of them out in the process.

I want you to think about what you posted here.

"Local is not immune to attack." This is a flat out lie, there is no way to make local go offline for a player, a group of players, or in an area. Local will always be reporting who log in the system, There no way to bring it down. So instead, players figure out how to make local lie to you. They are doing work, to try and have a certain outcome/effect happen. An effect that may or may not work.

"Local is indeed equal to all players. What they do with it is different, you use it in the same way when you flee the defense fleet that comes to drive you out. You didn't lose to the people who ran, get over your entitlement." I believe the only one that feels entitled here is you, You just agreed to the fact that it a defensive weapon. "you use it in the same way when you flee the defense fleet that comes to drive you out." Proof that you agree that local is a defensive weapon because as soon at the attacker is attacked, they become the defender. Do you not see how broken your argument is?

"The nature of fun in PvP is only half the equation. The nature of the fun your opponent has is equally important. Cheap kills for one are not as healthy for the game as well fought battles for all." This isn't WoW, this is a pvp focused sandbox game, "cheap kills", as you call it, you know, kills that sometimes takes players days, sometimes even weeks to get(Don't really sound that cheap to me). Has an effect on the economy of the corporation that lives there. If you drive out a corp's income, then you drive out their ability to stay in that system, which allows another corp to take it.

You constantly forget the scale in which getting those "cheap" kills can effect people and corporations, if alliance and corps can't defend their income, then their income is going to get taken. Welcome to eve, it a hard life.

You didn't read earlier.

Local isn't all powerful. It's nearly completely useless in high sec. It does not become powerful until effort is spent clearing it out. I have no problem with effort spent cluttering it up, but cloaking requires no effort or expense of any relevant kind. It's training requirement is negligible, it's fitting requirement isn't harsh, it's not expensive, nor takes any kind of resourse to maintain.

You could clutter up a null sec system too, with sustained effort on the same scale that keeps it clear. It's impractical, not impossible. Therefore local isn't immune to attack, just very resilient to it. They would eventually get caught, but a flock of interceptors could do as much damage as cloaks, it would just not be endless and effortless.

Local is an offensive weapon too. It's the first hint you have of the presence of another. Of course the hunter isn't looking to flee, so he does something else when he gets that notice. Your problem isn't local in that case, your problem is that your target has nothing on the field worth fighting for. Your bare presence has already cost him, and costs him more and more the longer you stay. Fleeing is mitigating his losses and not winning anything. Warfare on the scale you are talking about isn't measured in kill mails.

In that regard the cloak is clearly overpowered, creating a devastating affect on the value of a system with no recourse. With trivial ease it utterly defeats any and all active attempts to secure that space. And yes, securing the space is a valid game goal- there is no point to owning your own grave. It is right and just that you be required to actively defend your space, but it is equally right and just that the attack you defend against require the same commitment of time, resources and attention. You cannot argue that a cloaked ship has no effect until it decloaks because any effective defenses must be active, vigilant and in place *before* the cloaked ship attacks. You aren't entitled to free disruption of your enemy, just as he wasn't entitled to simply own that space. He spent and continues to spend the active time and resources keeping it, you should be required to be just as active disrupting it.

You are entirely correct, this isn't WOW. You aren't entitled to your kills, you should fight for them. All that is really being asked for is the opportunity to do so, rather than the cloak representing an automatic win button on system disruption. Stop defending AFK gameplay and start demanding the changes that will put targets in space with something worth fighting for on the field. The hypocrisy of defending cloaks with arguments of residents' safety is mind boggling.

I’m sorry, no. You just can’t start hopping between AFK cloaking and cloaks in general. You have argued strongly that cloaks, cloaks in general, are broken. Not just AFK cloaking. In fact, you have quite explicitly that the issue with cloaks is the cloak and not the AFK. Here I will quote you:



Those hunters and BLOPs gang will rely heavily on cloaked ships…because they are also the ones that can fit covert cynos. So you are once again wanting you cake and to eat it too. And no, they would not be unaffected. If they become scannable, then the whole gang has to keep moving and do so in hostile territory.

PvP happens all the time in the game. Just because it is not the big battles with titans does not make this so. When I go in and sell a bunch of T2 invented items I’m impacting another player. Whether I put the items on the market directly, sell to a buy order, or develop a relationship with a market trader to buy my stuff in bulk. When I had my hauling alt train for a viator vs. the obelisk due to CODE. that is a form of PvP. I selected a strategy to make it nearly impossible for CODE. to gank my ship. PvP does not have to be literally with guns, lasers, missiles, etc. Once again, you demonstrate your bias on this issue. If our goals are not in alignment when we encounter each other in game, then it is PvP, IMO. PvP can even happen between blues (e.g. market PvP in one’s space).

I never said I want a pure PvP game. I like Eve because players can do all sorts of things. That there is both mutually beneficial interactions as well as zero sum interactions. It makes for an entirely interesting game.

Oh, and no, local is not the first hint that there maybe targets there. That would be something like Dotlan that tells us how much ratting is going on, or the system true security status. We might also look for a choke point if setting up a camp. Local is probably the last bit of intel…i.e. you’ve gotten to the target system, then you jump in and see if anyone is in local. If not, move on. If so, try to catch them if you can.

And nobody has said they are entitled to kills, IMO. I know I have written nothing remotely like that.

Given that if the hostile engages the ratter in an anomaly and uses ewar the ratter will have the support of all of the remaining rats. In recent weeks I've seen KMs for cloaked ships where the victor was the AFKtar.

It is not just cloaks. Cloaks only work when AFK camping because of local and the nature of cloaks. Change either one and the AFK problem is solved, but it is not balanced.

So the solution, IMO, is to change both at the same time. Make local vulnerable and make cloaks no longer unassailable.

And Dotlan only works because CCP makes so much data available. So it is within CCP's ability to influence.

Seriously dude...do you think this stuff through before posting?

Edit: And I don't think you understand the nature of games in general. I'm not talking about just internet games, but game theory. Change the rules of the game and you change the equilibrium outcome. If we change, for example, just cloaking then the equilibrium will be different. If that equilibrium is not to CCP's liking they'll make yet more changes.

Even if you change things up so that the PvE player fits more of a PvP fit the PvP player(s) can also change their strategy.

Here let me help you....

In game theory, each player plays a best response strategy that is a function of the other player(s) best response strategy. So, if the game changes and my best response strategy changes, then the other player's best response will change too. So your idea of "provide a reason to fight and you'll see fights" might happen, but I'm dubious. Further, a change in the best response will almost surely result in a new equilibrium.

You keep insisting it is the cloak, but the reality is it is both the cloak and local. You keep denying this, but your reason for this intransigence is quite obvious to the rest of us. That this is obvious we can consider the following scenarios:

Local and Cloaks => AFK cloaking
Local no Cloaks => No AFK cloaking
No Local and Cloaks => No AFK cloaking.

But removing either local or the cloak is not balanced. CHANGING both cloaks and local can be balanced. Your deliberate obtuseness is due simply to the fact that you are not a PvP oriented pilot AND you want a buff to PvE which is your stated and virtually sole desired play style. This is why you are biased.

And wormhole comparisons are disingenuous the way you do it. No local in W-space works because you can seal off your wormhole, there are mass limits and cynos do not work. This is why I do not advocate simply removing local, but instead a balanced approach. Which makes your claims I’m being deliberately unbalanced obviously nonsense. And again, we all know why. You have an agenda to improve your game at the expense of those who do not share your play style focus.

And no, I do not think the current status quo for PvP is good. Where you got that from is beyond me as I do not believe I have written anything that you could point to as supporting this claim of yours. Additionally, I also do not think that PvP has to result in a kill mail. In fact, my recent posts suggest quite the opposite. As soon as two players come into contact in the game there is going to be PvP to varying degrees depending on the circumstances. Even between alliance/corporation members you can have some elements of PvP. For example, some people in an alliance will decide to supply the local market, and as soon as the number of people doing this exceeds one there will be competition—i.e. PvP. Similarly when you have alliance members ratting in the same system. If I get to a sanctum first, the other players have to look elsewhere for rats to kill. That is a form of PvP. So this claim of yours that to me PvP must result in a kill mail is just completely laughable nonsense.

And nowhere have I dismissed the notion of securing and holding space. In fact, coming from you, a guy who is in a corporation that has never held sov, and spent only a few months in a corporation that has been in a sov holding alliance (and I’d have to check to see if CVA actually was holding sov when you were a member) is particularly amusing compared to the fact that I’ve been in a sov holding alliance 7 years next month. I have been on both sides of the forever war between BoB and Goons and have fought in both Max campaigns, helped IT take Fountain, as well as the last ditch efforts to try and hold of Goons when they disbanded BoB which reformed as Kenzoku. Yes, tell me again I know nothing about the work entailed in fighting for and holding sov.

And no, preparing to flee to safety or reship to a more combat capable ship is not a bad thing. Nowhere have I suggested any such thing. Not even in the slightest. In fact, I wrote something that indicates the exact opposite of this. I wrote,


Your claim that I see fleeing not being PvP or somehow bad is just plain not true. In fact, it is an example of you deliberately misrepresenting my position. Further I have no where indicated that a single roaming pilot should negate the efforts of a larger number of pilots. If of course, that larger number of pilots do nothing about that single pilot, well that is their problem.

And yes, I know that game theory applied to an N-player dynamic game is going to provide lots of variation, especially when we consider that the number of times the game is played is essentially infinite and we have players with memory. We can look to the folk theorem and note that the number of Nash equilibria is going to be very large if not infinite even in far, far simpler games. For example, you can get an uncountable number of Nash equilibria even in relatively simple games with just 3 players. This is why the issue of game balance will almost surely be an on-going effort so long as the game exists.

And if you think I’m simply interested in preserving the status quo then you have undermined your credibility yet again. I have stated I’m in favor of making intel something players have to work towards and is vulnerable in game, and that cloaks are also modified so that AFK camping is no longer a viable strategy. If that is your definition of preserving the status quo, I think you need to invest in a new dictionary.

Covert ops ships are specifically designed for that. The whole idea of BLOPs is you fit cloaks and cynos.

So absolutely not. Never. Ever. Horrible idea.

Well...I see a small bit of light at the end of the tunnel...we agree. For different reasons, but we agree.

Did Hell just freeze over?