Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I didn't over simplify anything, I directly responded to the things you were saying.

I didn't say anything about your activities in null because they're kind of beside the point. It doesn't matter what you do in null, someone sitting in system with you - regardless of what you're doing at the time - is not harassment. It doesn't matter if they're there 30 minutes, two hours, two days or two decades. It is not harassment to simply be in a system against someone elses wishes. That's not how it works.

As for your comparison to the sleeping lion and the cage... the cage, in this analogy, is nullsec. It is an area in which you KNOW for there is risk and uncertainty, it is designed to be like that. You chose to be in the cage, so you have to accept the fact that there is a potential threat. If you can't accept that level of uncertainty and risk, then you are by all means free to get out of the cage (nullsec).

In fact, your comparison to the sleeping lion proves exactly what I was saying: That this entire "issue" is caused by some players being unwilling to do anything if there is a potential threat. They want to know, with absolute certainty, that there is no risk to them. They want the cage to be empty all of the time. You wouldn't complain to the designer of a cage upon finding out that the cage is being used to contain a lion. That's its function, it is the point of the cage.

You can't have it both ways. You can't have the rewards of nullsec space without the risk of the lion biting you from time to time. That's just the way it is.

This all comes back to Local Chat, and the currently available pilot roster that updates instantly and completely to show all pilots present in a system, regardless of how active or what activity they are engaged in.

Benefitting PvE:
For most craft, to be honest you can fit ratting and mining craft by choice to safely operate in this manner, establishing pilot error as the failure to survive's cause. If you undock in a ship that cannot get safe, and you are wrong about your environment being safe, you have made an error.

That established, you can watch local, and by using the few seconds advance warning it enables, warp to a safe location BEFORE a hostile can break this chain of events.
A Venture can do this, and mine quite nicely with good yield.
A booster can sit in a POS, and make that mining yield even higher.
A BC can be fitted for ratting, fly aligned at 75%, mount tractor beams for loot retrieval in addition to any bounties.
(Short range fits, like ratting carriers, are logically reserved for safer systems. If you compromise your safety, you are gambling that you don't need the precautions, and that is a conscious choice you make)

Benefitting hostiles:
Local is your lifeline. Without it, you either need to scout all targets from scratch, or gamble that you will eventually find someone too slow to react in a popular location. Popular locations obviously from experience or map tracking of activities in game.
PvE players cannot hide in a system from you, local tells you the moment they are present, to the moment they leave.
You never need to wonder if you are scanning the wrong place, eventually they will either leave or appear to your sensors / probes.
You don't need to be active to present a threat. In situations where you KNOW you have risk averse players, simply being in the system is enough to make them stop, or use alts somewhere else. Warfare is the staple meta in null, and ALL is fair.
Perversely, to be able to hunt at any level, you need to desensitize the locals to your presence.
They KNOW you are still logged on and in system, BUT, they are not so quick to believe you are present continuously. They expect you need to eat, sleep, have possible family issues, possibly a job. For many players, being active more than a few hours exceeds what they can maintain, so over half the game day AFK really would mean "not even paying attention".

Local forces these tactics into use, on both sides.
For PvE to compete against other PvE, you MUST use the most effective tactics available, because your competition is going to do so. If that means running boosters, and operating till the last moment when a hostile appears in local, you do this.
Whether it is good gameplay is not an issue, you must do this or else your opponents will have the advantage it offers to themselves.
For hostiles, knowing that PvE will not undock despite your ship being undetectable, because they KNOW you are present, means you must devalue this intel in order to operate.

Now, if effort was required all around to gather intel, these absolute conditions would not exist this way.
But the current intel IS an absolute, never failing to report presence in either direction. The stalemates which so often result are simply the obvious reactions to this absolute.

Being cloaked is not responsible for the alteration of behavior in others.

Awareness of player presence is.

A player being behind a POS shield, or docked in an outpost, also affects player behavior.
Other players, reacting to this, can attempt to wait for these players to expose themselves for violence.

If any of these, cloaked docked or shielded, are AFK, this does not mitigate the reactions of others to their presence.
Claiming this is specific to cloaking is disingenuous.
Claiming sov space should be free of hostiles, as a side argument, only has meaning if all intel gathered is based on effort.

A cloaked player, who could be mistaken for AFK, obviously has not interacted with any concerned. Any assumptions they make is their own business, and not the responsibility of a cloaked player.

Exactly, which makes your argument of "someone who doesn't play makes others change their behaviour" invalid.

What? I think you need to explain how you made this jump.
If you can't tell the difference, then an AFK cloaker is as much risk as an active cloaker. Thus the AFK cloaker requires as much action as an active cloaker does.
Is English your first language?

You deem it invalid, it must be true!
Removing local is simply one solution to AFK cloaking, and it comes with literally hundreds of other and far worse polarised issues. Adding "lets remove local" simply derails the thread. It's a discussion to be had on it's own.

No, I'm not placing an AFK sticker on anyone.

He may be AFK, he may not. At any time his status can change.

Again no, I don't put any status on him.


Which is ********...
You say "nullsec is risk averse enough", but that's because people can be hotdropped by a cloaker. The only way to avoid being hotdropped is to avoid all cloakers. So AFK or not, you have to avoid them.
Since cloakers can't be found you can't fight back, so the only options are to dock up, log off or leave.

The fact that an AFK cloaker can't act doesn't eliminate their risk if you can't tell them apart from a regular cloaker. If I had 2 guns, and 1 were loaded, and I asked if i can fire a random one at your head, chances are you'd say no, as you can't guarantee you'd survive. Could I then dance around you calling you a risk averse chicken because you didn't take a 50/50 chance on being shot in the head?

I deem it invalid under the conditions established by the OP. These are arbitrary, and not subject to debate, as the author of the thread has made it plain this thread is a resource to document these ideas so presented.

Removing local is a straw man. Noone is seriously advocating this as a perfect solution, and references to it are present to clarify what it does, and why cloaking exists in this form because of it.

REDUCING local to being just a chat channel, and limiting it's value towards intel, however, would go a long way in removing this entire issue.
The links in my signature below are quite specific to this, if you are interested in doing the research.

It's easy to say have your own team, but since the cloaker is in control of whether he bridges his mates in, he has the advantage. He will only bridge in if they have a good chance of success (because he is also risk averse). And there could be a group of up to 254 other players on the other end of the jump.

We do move systems, and we're generally OK with that. But then people go on whining about how most of null is empty. Well of course it is, when there's a system with risk and a system with no risk, we move to the riskless system leaving the other empty. If you want more people in null, add a way to actively mitigate that risk. If not, then put up with the fact that we will move, leaving null mostly empty.

While reducing local is a good start, there are better changes than simply an auto-logoff feature.
Hunting cloaked vessels is a logical next step, once local ceases to broadcast their presence for no effort.

It can be worked around, without violating the EULA, for one thing.
Being logged on passively has many positive game aspects, such as PvE boosting, and logging intel activity under specific circumstances.