Player Features and Ideas Discussion

People are not leaving the game in droves due to AFK cloaking. That load of nonsense was trotted out and shot down a dozen pages ago. The time series data on players online just simply do not support that assertion.

And most requests for change have been nothing short of blatant requests for NS ratting buffs. It was bullshit then and it is bullshit now. If we are going to change the cloaking mechanics we need to also change how local works. AFK cloaking only works because of local. No local, no AFK cloaking. Of course, removing local makes securing one's space vastly more difficult...so we need a replacement for local, but one far less powerful or at least vulnerable to attack/disruption.

To be quite honest, my view of most anti-AFK cloakers is that they are short sighted, self-centered dim bulbs who want to see their play style buffed and opposing play styles nerfed without giving even the barest thought to overall game balance.

This is bad how?




The wonders of emergence.




I agree, but many in this thread do not share this view.

So that's it...they just give up.

How about you hop in a hauler, say a spare epithal and start hopping back and forth between systems. You'll look like a potential juicy soft target. Make several jumps and soon you'll get a good idea if they are AFK or not.

After such a long time and with thoughts returning to the topic occasionally I have only one conclusion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=VjzgbZL12VI#t=55

Essentially what is said here. I could go over the details but honestly this thread is so ******* dead it ain't funny.

Tiberizzle dropped from the capital focus group citing that AFK ratting is vital to the health of EVE because the game is so boring and monotonous to grind the minerals and capital for. Just like a real economy with no sinks all the wealth we see slowly accumulating in a smaller and smaller pool of individuals whom due to no regulatory oversight from CCP can just **** the entire game in a single afternoon by taking impossibly large stockpiles of minerals/ships/PI/moongoo/isk and dump or exchange it on the market on a whim.

We're seeing on average about 100bil a week being destroyed in lowsec as fights over money moons worth 1/50th of that figure escalate over and over. New players are being pulled in to nullsec to run anoms/mine/explore and some of them have almost no understanding of the game beyond whatever hyper-simplistic task they're familiar with meanwhile veteran players with the isk to spare can flood entire regions with alts and pick&choose their battles against people who are just trying to make a living in an economy that has so much top-down pressure most will burn out before they hit 9months.

I got told today to quit CFC just because I mentioned there was so many throwaways alts in my region right now - like the only response that realistically works against this kind of antagonism is quitting the millions of man hours my alliance and coalition have put in because some people are being allowed to log in 20 alts from the same IP address in order to have a massive network of cyno toons in your space. The game right now is toxic, the fact that you cannot do anything to actively attack an afk player or kick out a player from a friendly outpost or really do anything hostile to them at all besides wasting everyones time on your side is deplorable.

Now I said as the first response these words



and I didn't realise just how true those words would be. Never at any point was I actually attacking another person I was pointing out the glaring fault with EVE in k-space/null as we know it. Most of the titan/super kills we see are people getting hotdropped months or years after unsubbing their accounts finally coming back and trying to think of a place to go, but because of a flagrantly broken intelligence tool everything they do can be monitored in one way or another and so they get their asses handed to them on a silver platter.

But here we are finally seeing maybe watchlisting being turned in to what it was meant to be at the start, a mutual friendship tracker letting you know when people of importance to you who are reciprocating your intentions are online because EVE is not a ******* job and not everyone logs in every day or even shares the same alliance as everyone else.

And maybe just maybe CCP will grow some balls and makelocal in nullsec a sov-holder only priviledge that comes with the territory of being the people obstensively owning the space your magic twinky alt is sitting. Maybe CCP will realise that their submarine simulator with stealth mechanics needs an actual anti-stealth mechanic as well and introduce the only suggestion I've ever consistently seen mentioned that is agreeable which is a SONAR-style ping system which allows for cloaky/hunter counterplay where AFK alts get rooted out and destroyed and active cloakers can keep wasting your time as they are infact not AFK and therefore a known threat. But never have I seen this approach taken seriously by the designers of this universe for reasons that are never made clear. Only dismissive off-hand comments made about AFKers never hurting anyone or some pedantic **** like that.

I'm not mad at EVE per se, I'm mad at EVE being a game progressively more about 10year vets and 3 month old noobs and a diminishing middle class of 2-4 year old players, I'm mad about essentially being told to go **** myself and backstab my friends of many years because I have a problem with a game mechanic that makes no sense in a game which rewards being AFK so much that a representative in a major coalition rage-quit a dev-facing focus group because of how badly connected devs who don't have to deal with the inane bullshit of never ending reeducation for carebears who don't know how to play the game at a broader level because nullsec is one of the most toxic and boring places in the game. That's why I'm mad. A systemic failure of designer oversight to address that unilateral aggression is only OK if the defender can proactively take measures to stop himself dying that don't include docking up and logging off. Wormhole players are always the worst of the bunch smugly talking **** about how they don't have a problem with afk cloaking meanwhile they don't have to deal with soul destroying crap like entosis links, cynos or the accompanying supers/titans/bridging subcaps that come with them.

These are all player problems. I'll even go so far as to say, working as intended.

That you think young players rat in NS...comedy gold.

Seriously, how long does it take a player to get into a ratting ishtar? 4 months? Probably longer since they'll likely be training things like interceptor, indterdictor, logistics, etc. first.

And it also depends on the alliance. Some have a great culture for new players. The Imperium will throw ISK at new players. All it takes is a fleet where the FC says, "Oh, so-and-so is a week old throw him some ISK." 100 vets throwing 10 million ISK at the guy and bingo instant Eve billionaire, enough to keep him in hero tackle ships for damn long time.

Most of those complete pantie waists that safe-up/dock-up are just farmers. Nothing more, nothing less.

Here is an idea, get into PvP fit Ishtars with remote shield reps, remote cap boosts, and an energy neut. With 5 guys you set up a rep/cap chain and rat to your hearts content burning down sanctums and havens left and right. Any idiots come in to mess with you you neut them out and blap them back to HS or wherever with your 3,200 DPS.

Stop your goddamn whining and take charge of your situation and HTFU.

What a load of errant nonsense. Let me rephrase what you wrote so you can see the absurdity of it.

They have alts everywhere waiting to pounce. And no matter how many people we bring they always bring more. We’re doomed.

They don’t always have more people. They have as many people as they got. This notion that the bad guys will always have more people, if true, would indicate that Razor should simply pack up and head for HS as they will always be out blobbed.

This is an entirely dishonest type of argument where you stack the deck so that you can always trump any response with: they’ll just bring more. Well, why can’t you get more people? And whatever limitations on you not being able to bring more….why does it not apply to the other side?

Preventing your opponent from being able to make money is a valid tactic. Just because you're scared of the cloaky guy doesn't make this less true.


I can think of about half a dozen ways to bypass that, and I know there are people better at this stuff than I.

Demand all you want. The problem is two fold and until you realize and admit it you'll always be on the wrong side of the argument.

AFK cloaking only works because of local.

Local is too powerful...and needs to go. In its place should be a player deployed structure like just about everything else that can be attacked and destroyed or subverted.

It's been suggested before and shot down many times for the same reason: You are breaking working and balanced gameplay while trying to fix a "problem", that only affects a small portion of the user-base. Your idea would break wormholes, exploration, PVE-runners who sneak into hostile space. As you can use a cloak with any ship with a high-slot, you'd have to add cloak-fuelbay for every ship with a slot to use it.