Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Man, I go out for 1 hour and you manage to fill a whole page with BS and repeated arguments. I will try to sum it all up in a single post later, but I'm at work now, so don't expect any quick replies. If you're really interested you can just try to dig your way through the troll poo in the thread. The answer for all questions you made in the last page are already there.

Nikk,
Forget about the mechanic I suggested. Just answer this simple question. It's a "yes" or "no" question, not a "maybe, read my thread" question. Do you think being AFK for a whole day while cloaked is a problem for the strategy aspect of the game?

That's where we disagree. No matter what I suggest, it will always be wrong for you simply because you think that AFK cloaking is not a problem.


I think going AFK for long periods while the character is in a cloaked ship is essentially bad because it affects the other people in the game exactly the same way as if the character was being played.

I don't think that characters whose players are afk for very long periods, to the point of not being played anymore, should have any effect, psychological or not, on the active players in the game.

I think that any effect caused on the game by the characters must be a direct consequence of the actions from the players controlling that character.

Why is botting bad?
One of the reasons is that the characters controlled by bots have the same effects in the game as characters controlled by players, while not being played at all. A botter can effortlessly just spam characters all over EvE while a real player has the challenge to manage every single one he chooses to play. If someone is not playing the game why should his character pose as a competitor, ally, enemy, or whatever that affects directly or indirectly the game for people who are playing it? I don't think it should.

Why is it impossible to compete with a market bot on the top order game?
Because it keeps acting as a player, updating his orders indefinitely, no matter how many times and for how long real players react to his order changes.

The same goes for the afk cloaker.

A player going to space with an invisible enemy present reacts to that presence in some way. Fitting for pvp, staying more alert, warning his mates... whatever fits his playstyle.
No matter what that reaction is though, there's possibly no way for it to compete with an effect that persists indefinitely.

If there is a human playing the cloaked character he is going to decloak, engage or leave the system sometime.
If there is nobody playing the character, the effect will stay, even through periods of time impossible for a human to keep playing.

Why are you paying attention to the pilot roster of local chat, on items that are clearly not actionable as intelligence?

Fit for conflict, and hope it doesn't happen.

Clearly local is not giving you useful intel, but then you did not waste any time getting that intel either, so it breaks even.

If your weather report tells you it might rain, and you can bring an umbrella, do you stay locked inside because of the remote possibility that a class 5 hurricane might be hiding behind the mailbox?

What is the same here is your reaction to his presence. That's on you, that's not the effect the afk cloaked pilot is having, that is the reaction to him YOU are having.

Do you really not see that distinction?

It's not about MY reaction. It's about THE reaction. ANY reaction to a cloked ship presence is the same as if the player is afk or not.
There's no distinction, because the effect is the same in both cases.

Why should I be a persistent, active player on the top order market game knowing that, since my opponent is a brainless, restless machine, I will never able to beat it? I don't, I just give up on the order.

I still don't get the analogy of an AFK pilot with a bot, since the cloaked, AFK pilot is... away, not doing anything at all, not gathering resources, nor earning ISK income in any way. I've read your previous posts where it's clear you see them as the same as a bot, but other than your own reaction to the AFK pilot, which I point out is YOUR issue and can no way be attributed to the AFK pilot, that pilot is not interacting with the game nor is the in-game character doing anything either.

Obviously you and I are on two completely different wavelengths here and it really appears to me, in the face of all the bull-headed stubbornness in this thread, you and I will never agree and you won't ever be persuaded that your viewpoint is wrong.

My ex-wife once accused me of being insensitive.... ?