Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Cloaking ships are never, ever going to simply "drop from local". They are almost surely going to be ways to detect them. CCP has pretty strongly indicated that whatever happens to local it will have to include methods to gather intel on who is in space with you.

And right now, local trivializes cloaking ships to a large extent. You know they are there as soon as they jump in system. You can deduce that they are cloaked with minimal amounts of effort. And cloaks trivialize resource denial as well.

The current mechanics need a change...a good one. One that makes cloaks viable, but at the same time maintains PvE in null as a viable income source too.

But cloaked ships already have this. their benefit is they can;t be found and caught. I really don;t know what you are trying to imply with this.

As for "leaves the PvE ship with an uncountered advantage", that's not really true. The only way for a PVE ship (alone) to be classified as safe against a cloaker is for him to be docked/in a pos. It's not an advantage if they can;t do what it is they set out to do. So it's not an uncountered advantage at all. The only player with an uncountered advantage is a cloaker, since he cannot be found or removed unless he chooses to be found or leave. You want to expand that and give him MORE unique abilities? I'm personally happy with cloakers as is, I'm just not happy with the sate of AFKness this game tens to be in most of the time.

Then we clearly have a difference in our definitions of "forced PVP". I don't consider it "forced" if you can avoid it. What the changes that have been suggested by most people on the "nuke local" camp would allow cloakers to force people into PVP, i.e. give them no opportunity to evade combat, regardless of how prepared they are.

What you are talking about, interdictions and such, i would consider unwanted PVP, but not forced.

No PVP players can make is outside of faction warfare actively. That's the choice of PVP. If you are PVPing, how can you expect to make isk?

No, utterly wrong. Firstly, I don't believe anyone ever has been killed because an AFK cloaker cloaked, so I don;t even believe that's a reason for it. Secondly, I've killed people with a cloaking ship and never AFK cloaked, so I know for a fact that kills would not vanish.

Basically without any evidence to suggest it, you are claiming that the removal of AFK players would make cloakers useless. Surely you can understand how absurd that is?

I consider it "forced" because it stops you from doing what you were previously doing.

If you are mining in a belt and you see a hostile show up in local, that right there is a form of PvP. He'll send you out of the belt. If you were distracted and failed to notice said hostile until he lands your belt and you warp off, that too is PvP. It is against your desired wishes for what you want to do in game.

In this sense, this PvP is forcing you away from what you consider your optimal activity in game--i.e. it imposes and opportunity cost on you, even if only for a few minutes.

And if this neut does manage to catch you and starts shooting you and his buddies show up and destroy your ship...that too is forced PvP.

Even market orders are something I'd consider forced PvP--i.e. PvP I don't like and that costs me something (in this case profits).

In this definition of the word...that is what Eve is...heck EvE--Everyone vs. Everyone...its a giant wonderful ball of PvP by a bunch of space happy nerds.

*sniff*sniff*...sometimes when I think about it...brings a damn tear to my eye... :P

I get that, but my mistakes could be considered user interface errors too....align, warp to 0 and warp-to-0-jump are all right next to one another. Was it me making a mistake or was it **** poor user interface design?

And where do we draw the line with pop up menus that all start with "Are you sure...."

Are you sure you want to undock?
Are you sure you want to lock that target?
Are you sure you want to switch ammo?
Are you sure you want to warp to 0? And should the warp to zero button be removed and we go with the menu option?
Are you sure you want to jump to that cyno beacon?
Are you sure you want to play the game?

I saw one thread related to this where a guy was whining about this while goddamn triple boxing. He got confused while running 3 clients and jumped his panther vs. opening a bridge and jumping his pilgrim.

Should CCP provide a person to swing by every time one loads the client to make double check everything a player does in game?

Moving Jump/Bridge so that it is harder to mis-click is not unreasonable, but trying to craft a game so that the players intentions are always the basis for how the game works vs. simply making a mistake...how about two versions of Eve:

Eve Online, and
Eve Online for Dummies.



Yes, we are talking about ganks, and any change made to a game mechanic regarding ganks should be reconsidered for their wider impact on other aspects of the game. Cynos are used for....ganks and large scale fleet combat. You cannot isolate cynos and make changes just for ganks and not consider the wider application of cynos. That is precisely how you get bad game design.

And there are lots of things to fight over in the game as it stands. Various alliances and coalitions go to war regularly. The blue donut thing is largely a myth, IMO. You have two big coalitions down in the south east right now going all out at each other (the CFC and the Russians against N3 and PL). Part of that fight is fueled even by old grudges.



Sure it might, but the point is critical systems are being taken offline so you can have safer ratting. No. Unacceptable. And you refuse to consider other mechanics changes that would have other salutary effects (e.g. a possible jump drive cool down to limit both force projection--i.e. crossing New Eden in 15 minutes [up to 100 light years] and possibly stopping/reducing people from using supers for stupid PvE ganking--and yes I think jumping in a super to gank a lone ratter is more than a bit ridiculous...and I think big ships like titans and supers should be vulnerable if they move around without sub-cap support).



Why do you say that? Ganking PvE players is something players enjoy. If 5 guys gank 1 guy in a faction BS with faction/officer mods ratting away in a null system that is 5 guys who had fun vs. 1 guy who didn't. And that is entirely in line with the ethos of the game. PvE is not something that is sacrosanct as an activity in this game...it is an activity that, like most other activities, makes you a target. Don't want to be a target then, don't undock, or if you do fit a cloak go to a safe and cloak up, or uninstall the game. Those are your options.



That is your solution? Get into system before it is camped or find a wormhole...brilliant. So the remaining 99.9% of the time your SOL? Sorry, not acceptable. And nerfing cynos may not be the only option.

Edit:
Although the mobile covert depot might be interesting. But why add an entire new game item, when we could look at the problem from the other end?

I already covered this at the end of my post. Make them stealthy, but make it so that the stealth is not perfect--i.e. they can be detected, but with effort.

Edit:

Here is what I wrote:

The radial menu was one attempt to improve the interface. I agree that asking, "Are you sure?", all the time can actually be more problematic, but improvements require creative, original thinking. Are there other ways to improve the interface? Of course, but we simply haven't discovered them yet. If the interface could be improved to make it easy to triple box, then it would be a great credit to the game. To me, the game is about what happens, and not about how difficult it is to make things happen. I have no issue with the process. My issue is with mechanism which make it difficult to actually engage the process correctly. That said, many processes are inherently complicated like pvp BLOPS bridging onto a solo pve ship. I hope you can see my lack of sympathy for the whining player described above by my text here. But if the mechanics can be improved for a more intuitive and easy correct engagement of the process, I support it.



The point is that critical systems still function well enough and this has nothing to do with safer ratting. This has everything to do with making the cloaked force projection vulnerable to an active defensive force! Whether it is at the cyno lighting part, after the fleet blobs, or even before in the cloak scanning ideas, cloaked cynos are overpowered, especially when they can cut straight through any defensive fleet protections. I fundamentally object to anything which denies the defense the ability to defend their industrial base. The problem is that scanning down cloaked ships is also fundamentally problematic at breaking the cloak; hence my cyno signature leakage proposal where a cloaked ship may be scanned down after 15 minutes without warping, and increasingly easier to scan for the next 15 minutes after that.



First, just because some players enjoy something does not mean the mechanic is desired or healthy for Eve. I would enjoy forcing players out of the carriers and jumping into them and stealing off with them, but that doesn't mean that such a mechanic should be considered. I would enjoy hacking your account, but CCP seems to think that would in general be bad for Eve and so CCP even rights EULA clauses saying that we should not do such things. Ganking pve ships is NOT A RIGHT, and we are NOT HERE TO FIGURE HOW TO MAKE MECHANICS TO HELP PEOPLE GANK PVE SHIPS. If anything, we should be looking at how to help defensive fleets to protect pve ships. Remember, if the defensive fleet can screen an attack on the pve ship, then there is still a fight and a better one too because all ships are designed and organized for the impending pvp. Industry can only function when defensive fleets can protect them.

Just to make sure everyone is aware of this. Someone says the local is the problem to afk cloaking. I'm 110% sure that's not the problem at all actually, because if that had been true it would be as much problem in high sec as it is in low sec and 0.0 space.

But the thing is that the afk cloaking thing is not a problem in empire because no cynos are allowed there. No ones in empire gives a flying crap about afk cloakers in empire because if they are afk, we know they can't harm us in possible ways. So they either have to attack us and try to kill us and face the risk of dying or they can simply do not attack to avoid getting killed.

In low sec or 0.0 space, you don't know if they are afk or if they are spying on you and are ready to deploy the cyno on your ass.

So there are big differences on how afk cloakers gets taken in high sec to low sec and 0.0 space. So the only reason it's a problem in low sec and 0.0 space is because of cynos.

So because no one cares about the afk cloakers in empire and as the afk cloakers doesn't care if he gets moved to his character selection screen after he have been afk for 30 mins (an example) in empire, then it would be nice to actually make the afk cloakers get the same treatment everywhere.

AFK cloakers shouldn't get special treatment just because they are in low sec or 0.0 space. It should be balanced the same for every afk cloakers in EVE. When you are afk, then you are afk and there should be a way to find that out after a little while ingame.

I disagree. I see nothing OP about it, and it affects everyone equally. A change which boosts cloakers will make them OP. And like you've said, it will probably be much the same + effort (i.e. button clicking) meaning if it's OP now, it will still be OP.
Seriously, if after the change we can all still do what we do now, but we have to click a few buttons how is that even remomtely less "OP" than it is now?