Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I would have been fine if they nerfed everybody else except me, because :poors:, but everybody else did not agree so I'll suck it up and pretend I didn't cry in my soup.

Yea, I know the feeling. I too am in favour of getting a little bit of delay on those things, if only to allow for fights to happen... but it's not a very strong sentiment. We get dropped on all the time, we see it coming, we enjoy the thrill of maybe blapping the cyno guy before their stuff lands, staying on grid to see what it is they're dropping exactly (bombers? recons? some heavies?) and then deciding if it's worth more than our fleet, maybe go for it yes/no ...? All things concidered, cynoes aren't the end-all solution they're made out to be. A little delay? Perhaps. But they do make for some interesting gameplay.

My general stance is one of "more danger, not less". As long as the game mechanics themselves are balanced -- and I did say "balanced" not "fair".

AFK cloaking for example is something I'd definitely consider lame to the highest degree. But .... yes, balanced.

People already in warp to a POS before our grid loads? Meh. You've made it very clear you don't care one bit for the little squirrels like me, and to me this was unfortunate. I've tried to explain WHY people resort to AFK camping -- even though we don't do it ourselves, I completely understand why it's a thing.

Despite your intentions to bait / hunt the cloaker, I fear it'll only result in a shift from 96% safe to 99% safe. It might become sad to the extend we can't roam anywhere anymore. 80 in local, ALL POSSED UP. Like ..... for real?? I know your intentions are good but you may be one of the only ones looking for a fight. Most other guys in this thread were just looking for a way to "get rid" of the cloaker because they want to carebear it up.

Look, I don't mind bears. I don't. Honestly. But so far I've seen only three responses to a roaming gang:

(1) they form up and duke it out- Feign Disorder, Iron Armada, Provibloc style. COOL! There is fun to be had, win some, lose some-- great experience on overall.
(2) everyone POSses up. No attempt to respond is made at all. Probably hoping we'll get bored and won't visit again -- these are the guys who clearly deserve an AFK camper in their system because it is the only way left to interact with them on any level.
(3) everyone POSses up and 15 minutes later, five Thanatosses undock. They hug the undock so tight it almost scratches the paint on the station despite their ability to alpha the entire fleet. When you warp off they follow you around with an instawarp/cloak ceptor and talk smack in local till you're literally in another region.

I can elaborate on anything you want to discuss, but tell me Drac- is this fun to you? Aren't you the least bit afraid getting rid of the cloaker WITHOUT doing "something" about local will totally take roaming out of the picture? Would you rather see a full-blown invasion or complete boredom around the clock, with no middle ground anymore?

These are my concerns, and so far you've dismissed those. Because us "little squirrels" don't matter in the big picture? This may be true- we're not that dangerous. We inflict maybe 60-90 mil in losses; something they can rat in an hour. They simply don't want us in their sandbox -- they want a private sandbox wholly for themselves.

Your proposal would indeed get rid of the AFK camper- then what? Nothing ever happens? You won't get the chance to hunt/bait the camper, something you so desire and coming from you, I believe that is true... but you won't get that chance. Because there won't be any camper to bait. There won't be anything except blues. Blues everywhere. Your heart is in the right place, but that fix could use some work I believe.

I want to be clear, cynos are not useful by themselves, generally speaking. Cynos are meant to be used in conjunction with ships that can either bridge or have a jump drive or both. As such a nerf to say, bridges or jump drives or jumping period (e.g. fatigue) is also a nerf to cynos.

If you are referring to Drax? No, as was noted, he appears to be too literal and his reflexes are not that fast.

That's a refreshing point of view. I'll get back to it- give me some time to digest the full implications; I sense there is some truth to it except the part where we get lots of kills. We don't anymore-- not in a 35 jump radius around our home system.

There may however be something else wrong at our end so as I said, I'll need to think. Thanks for your thoughtful write-up man.

There is, sadly, probably quite a bit of truth to this.

this would be a lot to read. I have one suggestion. If it's been suggested already please feel free to delete.

Depth charges. Since the grid is now large, one could implement depth type charges to momentarily show the cloaky afk camper without actually disrupting their cloak.

could have high powergrid/cpu versions that launch only once in a while and do a large area, or smaller powergrid/cpu with faster fire rate that cover smaller area.

make it a 4 second reveal of position that way the cloaky has a chance to get away.

anyway. my 2 cents

Well, after reading through a bunch of this topic, though not all 300+pages of it, I guess I'll throw my little bit into it as well.

Am I a "carebear"? Yes
Do I do PVP? Yes
Am I a "ganker"? No
Do I try to ruin the fun of the game for others just for my enjoyment? No
Do I push others into a fight when they clearly don't want it? No

I play Eve for all the aspects of the game, not just 1 or 2 little areas and I abide by the TOS that we all have to read and agree to before ever starting to play Eve.

With that being said, AFK Cloakers being the topic here. I've read a crap ton about Cloakers needing a way to be found and killed, local needing to be done away with or nerfed, cynos are the problem and on and on. In my humble opinion - and don't know if anyone else sees this or not - The biggest issue here is not knowing if the cloaky camper is AFK or not. True, this messes with others in the system and incites paranoia. True, it disrupts "carebears" gameplay...for that system ONLY. I've lived in nullsec a long time, if I'm mining or ratting and a cloaky comes in, I move to another system....no big deal. In todays nullsec, there's many systems within a region or sov space that have ratting sites and many with built up grav sites. The biggest issue here imo is the AFK part. A person logs on right after DT, cloaks their ship then goes off to work or to do other things. IMO this is a breach of the TOS as it's harrasment of the locals and nothing but because:

1: There's no intel gathering if you're AFK
2: It disrupts others gameplay.
3: It's harassment of those who have spent a lot of time, effort and isk to make that system their "home".
4: There's no risk what-so-ever to the AFK'er

Now, before you start flaming me, let me add this. If you're in a nullsec system and cloaked...at your keyboard looking for hotdrop targets or gathering intel, I'm totally fine with that. If you're cloaked and AFK to deal with kids/wife or for a bio break, I have no problem with that. If you're AFK and going to work for 8 hours or more each day, coming home, maybe looking at your screen, logging in an alt you can actually play or doing something non-Eve related...THAT'S where the problem with the whole issue lies. NOT local, NOT cloaks and NOT cynos. You're wasting power that your computer is using to be on and online...wasting power and server space plus bandwidth someone else could be actively using.

There is actually a very easy fix to this...one that I really have not read a counter to. I've played Eve off and on since 2005. In my away time from Eve, I've played many other MMO's...Lord of the Rings Online, Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic, Star Trek Online, Perfectworld International, Neverwinter.....and the list goes on. Eve is the only online MMO that I have yet to see that does not log you off due to inactivity. Only at the daily downtime does anyone purposely get logged off. You want to fix AFK cloaky camping? Someone brought up AFK station sitting.....add a inactivity log off timer like most other MMO's out there have. This would not only "fix" AFK cloak campers, but would also reduce power usage and free up server loads. The only way around this is for someone to use a macro bot to click a key or two every so often...again, against the TOS but then, someone sitting in local for hours on end could be reported as a bot and a GM could easily check it out.

This is exactly what I think, however there are reasons not to have a log off timer for inactivity because it will be used to get out of sticky situations, this is why I proposed an OS that will detail if the player is AFK after an hour of inactivity. As soon as he interacts with his client he will lose that flag. The OS is of course a structure in space and players will have to defend it and keep it operational, also they have to gather the intel on the AFK player as well so it is not free intel. The key part is that with some effort you will now be able to work out when that player is likely to be at working or sleeping and thus remove the AFK part which both you and I dislike.

This is one of the best set of Ideas I have heard in a long time. +2