Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The only people claiming that this is a tactic getting them killed unsurprisingly are people that are for the loss of local. It's nonsense. Show me evidence that it is happening, and fine. But anyone dumb enough to just assume some random is AFK on go about their business with no additional care is someone that would have died to a hostile regardless.

But then again, even if you prove for sure that it's a working tactic, why should AFK players be able to provide a valid tactic? I know, you will claim "because it's the only way to kill people!", which is utterly ********. You can;t claim that the hundreds of kills every single day are only being scored by people with an AFK cloaker, that's truly nonsense.

You're really grasping here to validate your want to make cloakers insanely overpowered buddy. Just learn to PVP. CCP aren't going to nuke local just because wimps like you can't handle PVP.

If you're going to try as hard as you can to be a condescending prick, at least try to make some sense.

No I cannot claim to know the circumstance of every kill, but I can claim to know that you have to be a moron to just float about in space carefree with a neut in local. People that stupid don't generally last long in null. I can also claim that there are kills happening every day, since that's clearly shown. I can also claim that most systems don't have an AFK cloaker, since that's simple to observe while I'm flying around null. From this I can deduce with a small margin of error that many kills do in fact happen regardless of AFK cloakers.

While there is no real threat of death from an AFK cloaker, it does remove content from the game for no good reason. So yes, I do want it removed. Content should be added by player actions, not removed by players specifically avoiding actions.

You claim that removing AFK cloakers will destroy PVP. You try to prove that by underlining a couple of sentences in my post, trying to somehow highlight that I'm somehow contradicting myself. You then claim that this invalidates what I'm saying, and totally ignore all other parts of the post, even though it specifically states why it doesn't matter where the kilsl come from.

You do realise that by you making yourself feel better by thinking you've somehow got one over on me doesn't change the fact that your idea is coming across as ill thought out, badly designed, and lacking in detail. That's why more people are speaking against your idea than for it. It really doesn't matter how many time you try to attack my arguments line by line, because your idea is still terrible. Until you actually address the concerns being raised that will not change, so please, feel free to continue underlining my posts and chuckling to yourself.
CCP aren't going to suddenly go "You know what, you're right! Lucas did not clearly define exactly how he knows something that is generally considered common knowledge! Let's get rid of local!".

Hurry up and underline a line or 2 in this one, while ignoring the holes in your ideas, please. Maybe you can attack my sentence structure this time?

EDIT: You realise by the way that it would be easier to just learn how to PVP than it is to try to argue forever to make PVP super easy, right?

So to basically illustrate your ideas, here is what I see happening.
A stealth bomber with point and cyno enters system having already been reported in intel. The locals have a scout on the other side of the gate and have already reported his brief appearance in their local and on their gate before he enters the op system. With plenty of opportunity to re-ship, the sb finds a range of ships waiting for him in the destination system on the gate with a ship with instantly locks him and prevents cloak/re-cloak. As he leaves the gate cloak, he manages to slip into cloak, but the hunter ship easily locks him and de-cloaks him again instantly and for good. The other ships quickly bring webs and points on him well before he clears the gate bubbles. He dies with 0% chance for escape. He knows that even if the bubbles weren't there to fast lock by the hunter renders his cloak useless for survival on the gate.

Does everyone pretty much see the same scenario as illustrated here for the recommended changes by Nikk and Teckos? Imagine Blockade Runners in high sec with war decs; Talk about suicide. Am I seeing the proposal correctly?

PS: Nikk, please stop making this personal against Lucas. This is the very definition of ad hominem and it is distracting to productive discussion on the merits of your ideas and of the AFK cloaky issue. I am more interested in your ideas than in personal attacks against strangers, albeit like-minded strangers.

I agree that the gates are particularly vulnerable locations for cloakies and esp. with a hunter module on grid, but this also applies to any place near objects of interest, such as stations, poses, moons, plexes, etc. A PVE ship could easily throw down a bubble at the anomaly warp-in point, move some distance away, and have a scout with the hunter module lighting up any cloakies that warp in to the anomaly. Great way to ambush cloakies looking for pve targets, too. You are right that operation of a hunter module within a bubble would have especially grave consequences. This tactic would remove most concern regarding afk cloaking though, because the cloaky wouldn't have a chance to get anywhere near a sniper at distance from the anom for the point/scram before he was locked, decloaked and sniped.

It is tough to not make things personal when others make it personal to you, and it takes the bigger man to let it roll off the back, but thanks to Eve, I have been given a lot of opportunity to learn how to do it. Basically, we are avoiding all direct or indirect references to the poster. Even when the player includes personal details in order to strengthen his argument, the reply should ignore the personal references made, even as I oftentimes fail to ignore when players make assertions of being carebears even as their language and arguments seem to reflect other perspectives.

Ok, first, Andy did make a point, I had not tried to be thoughtless towards you in previous posts, and I thought I had not been. Your comments suggested I seemed condescending, so I apologize if that is the case.

It's easy to forget how things can be taken out of intended context here.

And that brings me to my second point, intentions.
The intentions of SOME of the so-called afk cloakers, is to fool PvE players into exposing themselves.
According to your opinion, which you may be surprised to know I do respect, this happens very rarely.
I would point out, that so do dumb mistakes which also lead to kill mails. If you are a hostile pilot looking to attack economic targets, then it is either hope for these dumb mistakes, or give up.
It doesn't matter if they went AFK while mining, or got fooled by a long term cloaker. Same effect.

I would argue that the slim hope, of fooling a pilot into activity unprepared, is what keeps them playing this way.

Why should we deny them their play style, particularly if it might be replaced by something more effective against miners and ratters in null?

Like those new interceptors.....

Lucas, I would also ask you to be much less personal against Nikk. I find myself on the same side of most of your ideas, but I do enjoy revealing ideas for exactly what they are and allowing people to form their opinions on the ideas. His ideas may be in fact a bit too friendly toward pve, and too harsh against the cloak, as opposed to our previously opposite perception, but he sees that already and is open to limiting the hunter module. My guess is that this shows a lot of good thought, reasonable adaptability, and interest in pve ops, even if it isn't in the direction that we feel comfortable with at the moment.

So Nikk, I believe that Lucas was just saying that while afk cloakers may think that there is a big fear of their mere cloaked presence and that they have good chances of being able to condition people to conduct ops in their presence, these ideas are simply in their head and do not agree with the reality that most people simply move their ops. Now, it is not always a mistake to engage the "hopeful" afk bomber. I have engaged a solo bomber with my carrier and support several times with success, but the conditions were carefully considered, including the distance to the nearest hostile pos in ly's, the known bridging associates, and the support available, ready, and in system. So I believe that these afk cloakers use those tactics, not because they are able to fool a few, but because they can sustain the (incorrect) idea that they are shutting down an alliance's income, that they are having a great impact on the game and the war, and that they have a much higher hope of fooling players than the virtual reality sustains. In short, they dream of being much bigger than they are, and their lack of activity offers no counter evidence to check them with the virtual reality.

To your question, I have no problem denying of their "lack of play" style after 30 minutes of continuous "lack of play" ie inactivity/afk. If you want to play then click once every half hour at least. This is not a show to be passively watched for extended periods. This is a sandbox to get in play, and maybe get a little dirty, or at least talk about how you got dirty once, or at least to spin your ship every now and then, etc. Don't want to play? Then leave and return when you are ready. Auto-log FTW!

I do like those interceptors, too. Finally interceptors become what they should have been all along. Definitely a serious threat ignoring bubble defenses, AND they will be unable to hold sufficient fuel to light a cyno (Yes!). They will be the new preferred method for null sec travel and for .. well, for intercepting too. They will be much more effective against pve ops, blitzing bubbles, except that they will not be cyno capable, thus making them truly solo if they do not travel with a fleet. Lacking a cloak, players can hunt them, unlike the stealth bombers and other cloakies. All-in-all a great combination allowing pve ops to continue without adding the immense cyno blob threat of stealth bombers. I am very happy with this development on interceptors.

You may be partially correct about my being imperfect with my PvP experience.
In my defense, I have always pointed out that I am a miner, not a regular PvP seeking type.

As to players getting preferential treatment for being AFK, that exaggerates the point to the level ob being misleading.
They are not actually AFK if they are watching closely enough to monitor activity, and as Mag's previously pointed out, uncertainty is an intended game aspect.
A possibly surprising number of kills, as well as missed opportunities, happen because of players not paying attention when their ships were otherwise in position and ready to go.

It is a frustrating fact of mining, that the rewards in null are supposedly better than elsewhere, yet remain comparable to L4s in high sec.
Based off of changes to the rewards over time, the devs seem to have been acting in good faith balancing them in response to game risk and effort levels. EVE's economy may not be perfect, but I have played MMOs that wish for such player driven stability and success.
Seeing the null ice diminished to limited belts, after all these years unchanged, is huge.
Hearing that high sec and low sec belts were treated similarly is not reassuring, they had lower grade ice for one, and it points out that the difference in risk was also comparable.

Null had better ice, in my opinion, because you needed to establish sov in order to realistically mine it. Being safe while mining it is a pilot burden, but the opportunity was there from established group effort.

I don't expect wormhole levels of rewards, we have easy access to stations and outposts, as well as convenient bridging and gates. The ease of logistics means a lot.
But I do want the rewards less of a gray area with high sec. Why would anyone leave that predictable risk in exchange for political BS and instability, if they would never get higher rewards? The people simply seeking a challenge are already out here, so the reward aspect is left on the table as the missing element for this.

And to increase the rewards, we need higher risk, which they have been shown to use in setting this.

That is my opinion, and while only a dev could confirm or deny some of my theories, I believe they are solid.

What?

Really?

I favor a method that makes AFK cloaking not only pointless, but also dangerous and you write that?

It also depends on how fast the hunting module works. The way I see it the main idea is to provide a strong and final disincentive to AFK cloaking. As such, the duration of the module before seeing results could be long enough to allow people to slip past a gate camp without being auto-killed, but still fast enough so that a guy in a fast cloaky ship can still be hunted down and killed.

This is something that would have to be figured out if it is actually implemented.

Edit: BTW, increasing the time duration of this hunting module would go someway towards solving the issue of using it in fleet combat. If the time duration is too long, then it wouldn't be very helpful...which strikes me as reasonable as a bomber wing is likely going to be active and we don't want to penalize that. I see the role of this module as to make AFK cloaking completely obsolete, and make BLOPs hunting a bit more challenging (i.e. slow boating into range of target when a ship with one of these modules in space would make things very interesting).

Time duration...you need me to tell you that?

Look here and scroll down a bit....

It is the amount of time till the module is done with one cycle. In the above example the time duration is 20 seconds.