Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Guess what? If I'm behind my monitor, or I'm at the bathroom, or eating a sandwitch, or taking a nap... whatever I do in the real world... IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. You can take all the sovreignity you want in a videogame you're not entiteled to know.

As well I don't have any right and any tool to know if you are AFK; an honest mind would say: "this is mutual, even, is balanced".

Where did I ever say what you do in real life was my business.

If you are in a game, and affecting an aspect of that game I want you to be playing the game, not afk or botting or anything else that may be considered an exploit or cheating.

If you are not affecting an aspect of the game, by all means go afk... I am fine with that.

No one cloaked and AFK ever stopped anyone docking, undocking, activating modules, using gates, possing up. The only one able to stop you, is you.

You start to say what others can do in real life, when you ask for changes to how people can and cannot go AFK. The funny thing is, when they are cloaked and AFK, they are not even using the cloak in an attempt to cause you issues.

Edit: Removed snappy retort.

So if none of the things I listed are affected, what is the issue with people going AFK? If they can carry on as before, then what do you mean by industry and military levels?

You do realise that this tactic doesn't even need a cloak to work? That fact alone should speak volumes.

I know it's not an exploit, as CCP have not deemed it one. Be careful using that term, it has a very specific meaning in this game.

I have edited the original post you quoted a couple of times to better clarify what I mean... and ensured when I say exploit that it is expressly my opinion. Though I personally think you are overacting with the use of the word exploit in even my original post.

On the industry and military lvls being affected... They are affected expressly because a hostile is in system. The hotdropper, the roaming fleet, the rogue explorer, and so on does not stay in system for days on end. Therefore the lvls are not affected enough to matter. The hostile entering system to expressly reduce those lvls has to stay in system for several days. Yes this can work with an uncloaked ship, but eventually they will be tracked down. Therefore you have to use a cloaked ship to employ this tactic successfully. That is fine as long as you are actively playing while employing this tactic. Talking in local, corp, alliance chats. Running industry jobs remotely, buying and selling on the market remotely. Posting contracts, or even buying contracts. As long as you are playing this is a valid tactic and I will not question it. When you stop playing the game and continue to employ this tactic; this is where I have a problem with it.





Here is a suggestion I just came up with. Miners can't truly go afk because rats warp in and they have to be dealt with, asteroids are depleted, and cargoholds have to be emptied. With the new expansion Ice miners now face similar issues as the ore miners, so they too can't go afk. With ratting/missions CCP changed the ai of the npcs to have them target drones so drones boats could not warp in drop their drones and go afk. Even in PVP you can't really go afk unless tidi gets around 10%. When you cloak, every hour you simply have a pop-up box that asks the pilot are you still there? If you click yes (the only option) it goes away for another hour. If you don't answer within 300 seconds you uncloak. Uncloaking anytime before that one hour mark resets the timer. That way the cloaker cannot go afk. Nothing else changes in terms of tactics, mechanics, etc. If one hour is too short make it two hours.


Or rather the question is not are you still there, but something like... Power fluctuations threaten to uncloak your ship. Do you wish to reroute power to the cloaking device to correct these power fluctuations?

And my point is: What you're describing is done currently by lots of groups/corps/alliances. We do all those things you suggested doing to continue in a constellation but we do it in a group of systems, not necessarily a constellation. Lots of people do. Those that don't complain on the forums. They will continue to complain on the forums if local were removed. They wouldn't get their acts together. If they were going to they would have already.

If, in the current situation, it didn't matter that one system was being cloaky camped people wouldn't complain. They would just move system, group up, use cheaper ships etc. They don't so what makes you think they would if their constellation were to be invaded by a cloaky camper and they had no local? A lot of constellations' sov is split between alliances so your proposal would necessitate cross alliance cooporation. What makes you think this would happen if the group/corp/alliance can't get their act together now? You're making a rather hefty and arguably inaccurate assumption on what would happen and what does currently happen.

Edit - as has been mentioned many times, a system of 20 people or more can be rendered "unable to play" due to one cloaky camper at the moment. If 20 people in the same system can't get it together what makes you think several systems will considering they no longer know what system the cloaky is in and so could get jumped in any of them?

You are not entitled to those index levels, even if you worked them up. You have to do something to maintain them, docking up over a single cloaked ship indicates and unwillingness to maintain them. One solution is rat in a group. Five ships ratting will present quite a different scenario for the cloaked ship, if he is indeed a cloaked hunter for a BLOPs gang or looking to get a solo kill on a bling boat.



Sure looks like you are against risk to me, and uncertainty. Your beef is that a player who is cloaked and may or may not be AFK is having an impact on your game time. What is that if not risk aversion? Your very next quote supports this, the hunting down of a single undesirable.



And note, you are most likely talking about using several people to track down and kill that lone undesirable which raises two questions in my mind....

1. How come you feel justified in using overwhelming force for 1 hostile pilot? Seems antithetical to your over all view that things should be perfectly balanced somehow--i.e. one dude in a cloak should not be able to disrupt the game for several players.

2. If you can get cooperation and teamwork from your corp/alliance to hunt down some guy in a non-cloaking ship, why can't you get it do deal with a cloaked ship?



I don't know about Gunslinger, but I do because you want to leave the cause of afk cloaking in place and at the same time make your game safer. You want to nerf cloaks to buff your game. That is the very definition of unbalanced.

With certainty comes awareness and control.

You know exactly what results are possible, and can limit your exposure to remove any risk you consider not needed for the reaching of your goals.

For such an obvious and simple game, the rewards are small.

In null, as I keep pointing out in multiple areas, they are being reduced.
I made claims that this would happen to rewards in null well in advance of this, and now it has come to pass.

With uncertainty, comes risk.
With risk, specifically in a game intended to be balanced, comes the rewards.

Why do you hate rewards?

To paraphrase my parent's expression: "they want their cake, and to eat pie too"
(when dealing with a child offered a choice between two deserts)

They want the cool rewards, so they came to null from high sec.
But they liked not having high risks from high sec, so they want that too, but even less riskier even!

(Picturing a toddler gleefully making a wish list)

Having to "work" for your intel doesn't work that way. The reason it swings in w-space is scale - most operations stretch no further than several separate holes. Connections open on a pseudo-random basis and are unstable, a dangerous neighboring hole can be collapsed.

With higher density of people/system, it's easier to spare a scout to watch the entry point - and I already mentioned the matter of reward, which is significantly higher than that in nullsec. In null you will run into major issues trying to put scouts everywhere since you can't shut down a stargate.

Now, I do believe some rebalance is in order - and would start with a solid look at PvE and its rewards. Before anything is nerfed, before risk is increased in any major way, we need to see an incentive for people to take that risk. If the ratio will go up in the favor of risk any more, we're likely to see people running off to hisec for risk-free L4s and Incursions.

We saw CCP do it with Odyssey by decreasing the effort needed to run a site. Now that backfired in a major way, since everyone and their alt can now run them in a covops frigate but the concept is neat - get people in to risk it. A lot of people died in the initial gold rush, and I've seen many killmails of overconfident explorers that went for that one last can thinking they can swing it before they're caught.

(As far as I'm aware the market crashed and it's not lucrative anymore. Oh well - shows just how touchy the subject of rebalancing anything in EVE economy is.)

I mean, don't get me wrong - total removal of local? Count me in, covert cyno a black ops and a pack of bombers - boom, undetectable fleet. Scout reports one man, ten jump in!

...but we'd be flying in a ghost town since everyone would've left for greener, more profitable and less certain-doomy pastures after a first month of absolute slaughter.