Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Ok I was looking at the afk cloaking issue and I discover this being the most talked about solution.

I have to ask... how does this fix the broken mechanic? What possible purpose would removing local serve but to make life EASIER for griefers and afk cloaky pilots.

Local makes sense from an RP / Game style standpoint... Every ship every where enters a system via a gate... that gate logs their entrance and maintains their presence until the gates in the system logs them leaving. Simple. (And yes I know WH has no local... but you didn't get there throw a gate either) Maybe I ca see an argument made for WH Raiders not being put on local until they get near a system resource like a POCO, Station or Gate.

Local makes sense from OOC standpoint as a way to talk to pilots in the system easily especially for new pilots just getting into the game. Can you imagine your first few months of eve with no local ... just Rookie help and Corp channels on your chat window... I would have quit after about a day and a half.

In fact no matter how hard a try the only reasons I can see someone wanting to get rid of local is cloaky pilot spies. Saying local is the problem and not afk cloaky is ridiculous on its face. Its like saying AFK cloaking is how we get rid of botters. Both solutions are stupid. And I use the 'S' word deliberately because both arguments deserve the same respect as that word offers.

Saying Local is too powerful a tool falls short of a logical argument because all local can do is say who is there, and if you are watching it closely, when they arrive and leave. That's it. No unfair advantage to anyone. Can't report location, destination, ship type, doesn't give the warp to ability, or even let you know of they are docked or in space. Just that they are there and exist. Combat scanner probes, d-scan and actually flying around are still needed to get any real info.

So where is the unbalance?

I would seriously love to see a reason for getting rid of local that makes sense in a story context or a needed mechanic nerf sense.

As far as I can see every poster suggesting killing off local wants it done so griefing, trolling and indy killing is easier. Not for good fights, fairness, or more interesting game play. They just want an easier time sneaking up on people in weak ships and shooting them in the back.

Please post your reasons for killing local I would love to read them. I truly am trying to find a

Some misconceptions...

I am a Wormhole pilot and don't have local now.

removing local would not make AFK cloakies more effective, it doesn't make ANY cloaky more or less effective... essentially everyone is cloaky till the combat probes go out or dscans start pinging. It does make intel a premium as it should be in wormhole space.

SOV space is different that WH. People have burnt time energy ammo and probably ships to win it. AFK Cloaking has one purpose only... Lazy system control. Use an ignored account to scarecrow a system causing 3 pilots for everyindustial effort to be tied up. Or putting Leroy at the wheel.

Once again you simply throw out the tried and true... "You are all whiners, if you were real pilots you could kill them" You know this to be completely false, but still you trot out again and again hopeing at some point it will be true. A cloaked ship cannot be brought out unless their is a pilot to bait. AFK means there is no pilot. The cloaky cannot be moved, found rattd, baited or drawn into the open. He or she simply is.

As I said before I have no problems with real skilled pilots using cloaks to camp a system ad infinitum, if they were actually there. We have all been in fleets where we send out swarms of cloakers to scout for us or sit on a system waiting for the enemy to give us a target.

As I also said, if a cloaker wants to AFK that is fine, as long as the action carries the same weight it does for EVERY other afk activity. People can find you and kill you for your lack of diligence. If I die because I was afk mining I don't whine about, have never petitioned a ship loss, didn't cry to my CEO for a replacement. I decided to walk away or watch a movie or scan you tube, and somebody caught me napping. Same should be true for afk lurking.

Removing Local does not make things more balanced it makes it less balanced... towards the afk lurkers. SOV space is claimed and the people in that space should have access to all the intel they can get... the tiny bit they get from local and the rest they get from skilled hunter pilots.

Removing local has no purpose other than to make SOV more useless, and null sec more dull and pointless. There are a thousand reasons SOV is already a bit of a waste. Too Many blues in between wars, bashing fleets, pointless 35 systems roams to nowhere. Removing local will ball everyone up even more, not less. And would be one more punishment instead of reward for the effort of taking and defending a system.

Someone post with a real reason to remove Local and lets get a real discussion going

Fitzhugh

The OP got this right, they just want easy kills, at the moment its a challenge, you cannot just go blundering in there in a roam and expect to catch people ratting, you might get lucky, but against well organised people its difficult, so they want it easy, so easy that it becomes meaningless. Every time there is a whine about AFK cloakies, they come out with remove local to solve AFK cloaking, its stupid beyond belief because CCP will not do it.

Anyway after the Mittani 1st April on local, I had a think about it, and removing local could work but it also requires removing all the other intel that gets reported on Dotlan and on the Eve map, if local goes that intel such as people in system and people in station, active cyno's, NPC's killled in the last 24 hours etc. has to go, because it enables the ganker to zero in on targets, so I suggested that they be in the same boat, in that they would have to scout for prey and the prey had a chance to hide, by shooting wrecks, picking poor systems, using a cloak and a scout, talk about cat and mouse, of course they did not want to lose their easy locating tools so reacted to my post in the normal insulting childish way.

What they want is to be able to charge into 0.0, get on top of a easy to kill PvE ship, blow it up and feel great, its their idea of emergent gameplay and its so sad. Eve to me is a game where you have to work for it, instant gratification for gank bears is not Eve.

EDIT: In terms of your second post, many WH players seem to downplay the issue of force projection by cyno's, a single cloaky in a WH is no risk, he only becomes a risk if he can pin someone down for others to come in via an unscouted hole, but doing that is very difficult, because its takes a lot of work to collapse holes to get to teh target system, to use it people have to work for it. In 0.0 it would be a single Rapier getting on top of someone and a whole fleet dropping on them, and there is no control of local space. And its the force projection that is the reason CCP will never remove local.

I like the system as it is, cloaks, local and cyno's, it works, there are issues like people gaming the system with AFK cloaking, same as Goons using aggro on frieghters, but at teh end of it all teh issues are minor. People whining about AFK cloakies have mainly got themselves in this position, most of them rented a system at huge cost and cannot use the system, but picking taht system in the first place was their error, but people never blame themselves do they. When Pirate Nation rented systemns in Querious we deliberately picked poor systems so we could afford 4 of them, we never got AFK cloakies...

You don't quite get what AFK Cloaking does do you.....

Putting a cloaked vessel in a system and leaving the computer. So that the residents 'see' this vessel on Local and are too scared to come out of the station go about their business.

If Cloakers didn't show on local, then the residents would have no reason to be scared of an AFK cloaker.

Granted it would benefit active cloakers, but as we have seen with wormholes, it just takes some intelligence and sensible strategy to make sure you are protected when going about your business.


What it really boils down to is that zero sec bears want to nerf cloaking (and keep the all-seeing-eye of local) so they can rat/mine/bear in safety, knowing that as soon as an unknown shows up on the local channel, they can run away.

Either that or the botters want their bots to be safe by using the local channel as an warning alarm.

TL;DR.

But you realy shouldn´t start a speech or wall of text with an 'OK'. Never ever.

And this is where you are wrong, because Dotaln has a nice graph showing ratting activity, slighly delayed but its very useful to find people in space, the Eve map reports people in space over the last 30 minutes, active cyno fields and number of pilots currently docked and active. Those PvP pilots will still be able to locate prey the same way as they do now, and if you remove local you will need to remove all that intel too, in which case I would be happy to lose local, because I can then operate under the radar.

Go the entire hog, not half measures that make it so easy its like taking candy from a baby...

But your original statement is incorrect and I am not talking about where they are in system, I am talking about what system they are in, read it again at the top, there is no need for them to search, they know what system to look into, that is free intel, without local and that intel they would have to send people in to scout, to locate people, finding wrecks and someone on D-Scan, and of course its quite easy to find people ratting in a system, go the whole hog or not at all!

My example of anchoring bubbles is bang on accurate, I've seen more than enough to know it's a commonly deployed tactic. They don't catch the locals because they know about them and have JB networks to bypass those gates.

Also I don't really care about you or how you deploy bubbles, my reference was how they're used (or abused) in attempts to make ratting systems safe.

You state how they should be used, does that mean you agree that anchoring 15+ on a gate is abusing their intended use?

tbh I don't care if local remains, as long as the cloak nerf pleas are ignored.

Having no local in wormhole space works because you have to spend time probing people/locations out in a wormhole, which gives people a fair chance to detect signs of intruders and react accordingly. In space where the majority of people will be at celestials that you can directly warp to, having no local is a bit of a problem because people don't have much of a chance to react. I love the way that local works in wormholes, it's the best place to catch idiots that aren't aware, but in regular space it wouldn't work. Unless say, cloaking removed you from local..... that would really improve the abilities of say, covert cynos. I don't have a problem with that. I imagine a lot of carebears would.... but suck it up, it's EVE.