Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Yea, local is due for an overhaul. I'm with ya on that one. I'd rather hear how you envision a better local / combo than explaining why things are as they are now. Charges for cloaks don't break anything but they also don't really fix much... a potential encounter when a cloaker forgets to retrigger is kinda like hoping the blops forgot to load fuel. Hilarious for sure- ayyy but you get the picture.

The possibility for mistakes to be made is always nice but we may have to think a little further and allow for the concept that developers will need to expand their programming. Substantial changes that address both local and cloaking.

My guess would be that Jerghul doesn't dare propose anything outrageous after the last load of flak he got for user-configurable stargates- an idea he borrowed from rolling wormholes. He tries to be cautious and conservative- whereas a better fix would indeed need to go beyond one-minute-of-coding solutions.

So .... what did you have in mind?

Holy crap...we are having this discussion again.

The changes to local and AFK cloaking should, ideally, happen pretty much at the same time. Local goes, the Observatory Array enters the game...maybe with a brief lag between local going so people have time to set up an intel network, but nothing mroe than that.

I swear to God we had this discussion for like 500 pages in total....but if we weren't being sidetracked by somebody's sock puppet exercise....

There's your problem. Wrong tool for the job.

While small roaming gangs do catch stuff, you stand a much better chance avoiding intel as a solo or blops hunter. The common enemy to both is local. One second is not enough at all - I don't think you realize how long it takes to find someone in system. Even in a small system of no more than a 14 AU diameter, Its going to take 2-3 d-scans to narrow it down, especially after the anom quantity buff of a year or so ago. Add aligning, warping, and just the general zone-in for each system, and all but the slowest ships are virtually guaranteed a warp out before you can land on them - you would need at least 10 seconds minimum to actually stand a chance at surprising ratters that are paying attention. Add in MJDs, and the fact that carriers and supers can both rat while aligned 100 km off the warp in in any direction, and can just jump out to a beacon at any time, and you get the current zero risk null provided by local.

If you are actually interested in small gang roams being fun again, removing local would be great. Do you not realize that local does 99.99% of the keeping people safe job for them? Suddenly attackers and defenders would have a GAME to play with each other, rather than local spoiling it with perfect intel.

Buff anom income by 100%, remove local. Fixed.

Sonya
They could if they would, but they won't.

Not that this would help small gangs much. The idea is not for them to undock with immunity to small gang roams. The idea is that they undock with a sense of security, but with vulnerability to small gang roams.

But sure, mechanisms could be changed to make sure ratters were pvp fit. Rats causing omni damage would be a good start. Or overseers warping off with their personal belongings unless scrammed. Adapt the rats to make sure the optimal rat fit is a very solid pvp fit.

Smarter rats and better bounties to compensate for loss of raw kill numbers. CCP has amassed a lot of experience with that that could be transferred to normal ratting grinds.

In short: Sure CCP could do stuff to make pvp fits optimal ratting fits. But that fails on my "least intrusive" principle.

Sonya
Thank you for sharing! I actually spend a lot of time in wormholes. Drunk driving in Occators without a scout is a favourite past-time of mine. Maybe I could catch myself in a small gang roam...as there never is anyone else around.

All I want is for cloaking modules to be aligned with the new command bursts and have a 5 hour charge capacity.

With all the goodness that would flow from that.

Sonya
Its not about me, sis.

Introducing cloak charges aligned with the command burst charge system would result in more vulnerable ships in hostile space.

The concept is brilliant in its simplicity if I may say so myself.

And I will. Or did. Whatever :-).

I made this point way, way, way, waaaaaaaaaaaay back. Back in my old AFK Collection thread.

That, we up the risk by removing local, but also up the reward. Yes, ratters will lose more ships, but they'll have more income to easily offset such losses.

Every bad PvE player nearly crapped themselves over the idea. To them they'd be ganked the second they undocked.

I also made the point that NS ratters who do NOT PvP are not best looked at via the lens of risk aversion, but instead via loss aversion. It is not risk that is the problem, but loss...any loss. This is why they dock up and stay docked up 24/7 even though they know for a fact that the AFK cloaker cannot be at his keyboard the vast majority of the time. It is the slightest prospect of loss that makes them dock up.

Here is an example.

I'm just using simple numbers here, so don't get up on the numbers, they are illustrative.

Suppose you log in and your heart sinks....there is a hostile in local. You sit around and wait a few minutes....and he is still there. So you undock in an interceptor and using an insta-warp and safes d-scan the system. Nothing. You then bring out a probing ship....and again nothing. Crap, most likely and AFK cloaker.

Now you have two choices:

Choice 1: Log off and earn 0 ISK.
Choice 2: Get into your lower cost ratting ship (say 250 million ISK, not the blinged out ship and/or carrier) and take a risk of losing your ship with probability 10% or earning 50 million ISK.

Choice 2 has an expected payout of 25 million ISK. Choice one has a payout of 0 with certainty. Or to put it differently, if you ratted and chose option 2 10 times, you'd earn 450 million ISK and lose your ship on the tenth the ratting session netting to 200 million in profit--i.e. the ratter is coming out ahead.

The loss averse player will always chose option 1, not matter what. The problem is one of psychology. To the loss averse person the loss is viewed as more substantial than the potential gains. To the loss averse player the loss of the ship is actually more like loosing 500 million ISK meaning that even with 450 million ISK in ratting income they'd feel they are down 50 million ISK.

So, when the charge is leveled: they want to rat in absolute safety, that is really not too far off the mark, IMO.

For many of these players any loss seems to be unacceptable. For example, suppose we doubled the payoff to anomalies, would they undock? No. Triple? No. Quadruple? No. They simple will not undock if there is a hostile presence even if that presence has been there day-after-day--i.e. they KNOW he is AFK cloaking. Even if you were to deliver 12 PLEX to their ratting account with the proviso that they undock with no local, I highly doubt they'd accept even when they can get an entire year of game time at no RL out of pocket cost to them.

Remove local and provide nothing else to let them see who might be in system with them...they'd **** their pants. It is their innate psychology and no amount of tweaking the payoffs will change that.

Exactly, they are loss averse not risk averse and extremely so.

I have never once AFK camped anyone, I have only been camped/attempted to be hot dropped, so I can't speak to their thought process. I will defer to your experience.

I only know that ratting in a group in PvP ships while organized on comms makes hot droppers extremely nervous.

I do appreciate that you dive deeper into trolling the more you're called out on your BS. Let's see what you try next

Sonya
I never said you had. In fact I specifically made it clear you are speaking on behalf of a group that you did not belong to.

Nice charity work for a crippled cause, sis.

Baltec
Afk cloaky camping kills content, buddy. I showed you all how it could instead generate content.

We should add my gloating endlessly as a possible downside to aligning cloaks with bust charge system and gaining a 5 hour charge capacity.

It will be nauseating. Even for me.