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The problem with removing local

First post
Author
Sigras
Conglomo
#21 - 2013-08-17 06:38:15 UTC
Aliventi wrote:
Oh please. Spare me these pitiful antics. You should see a cloaking Proteus or Arazu coming through your intel network. You as well as I know that an Arazu is not going to be soloing. If you are dumb enough to know an Arazu is coming and continue to rat you deserve to die. As far as wormholes scan them down and collapse them. WHers do all the time to control their space. You can too. And you accuse me of not playing the game...

yeah WH players do it because they only have one system to control and scan down, and they never have to worry about 248 of the enemy ship's closest friends dropping by with no notice . . . apple, meet orange . . .

and you wonder why I accuse you of not playing the game.

Aliventi wrote:
Welcome to Eve Online. The game happens to you sometimes. Let me educate you as to what non-consensual PvP is. You know that thing highsec and you seem to hate but makes Eve unique? Suicide ganking, cloaked ship decloaks and points you the light a cyno, smartbombing BS on a lowsec gate that kills pods, etc. These are all things that happen without your consent. If you are advocating the removal of one you may as well be advocating the removal of all non-consensual PvP. Here is something you clearly missed: you consent to PvP, like it or not, when you undock. Learn to live with it. It is one of the things that makes Eve great. Don't like it? WoW is that way --->

perhaps you should train listening or reading comprehension to level one . . . I did not say that you should not be forced into confrontations; what i said was you should not have things happen with no warning.

Lets look at every one of your examples:
1. suicide ganking - preventable by warping to zero and using the web trick; also preventable by checking out the ship types around gates
2. cloaked ship decloaks and points you - you have local, so you have a way of telling the cloaked ship was there
3. smartbombing BS in low sec - you could always d-scan the gate and never warp gate to gate when in a pod duh!

Those are all things that happen without your consent but you can see them all coming if you have the player skill, but if a proteus decloaks next to you, lights a cyno and bridges a fleet on top of you with no local and no way of telling he was there that is not a skillful thing, there is no amount of player skill that will prevent that and therefore it is a bad game mechanic.

Think about any game mechanic that you cannot avoid with player skill . . . ill wait.

Aliventi wrote:
And yes. A cloak does provide a ship near perfect safety. But do you know the difference between a cloaked ship and you ratting or mining? The cloaked ship isn't making isk. Which means the risk (read: none) matches with the reward (read none). Oddly... cloaks are balanced when it comes to risk vs. reward. Whereas currently with local your reward (Read: standard nullsec payouts) doesn't match up with the risk (Read: none).

If your definition of reward is as narrow as monetary gain then youre right; unfortunately for you this isnt the correct definition of reward. Valuable intel is gained by cloaked ships: fleet compositions, fleet locations, fleet activities, warp ins, cynos, threat of force . . . I could go on but i think you get the idea.
Arkenai Wyrnspire
Incorruptibles
#22 - 2013-08-17 07:08:29 UTC
I love all the nullsec ratters complaining "But then it's not safe!"
Aliventi I'm also stunned by the amount of good posting you're doing in an awful thread. +1 to you, sir.

Someone.

Scatim Helicon
State War Academy
Caldari State
#23 - 2013-08-17 07:51:41 UTC  |  Edited by: Scatim Helicon
Quote:

One person on each in gate cloaked. One person in each bottleneck system. If a person jumps in you report it to the intel channel, or perhaps make an out of game tracker, and you instantly know that the section of systems between the in gate and the next bottle-neck are compromised. You have lots of warning to get safe. If you ignore this and die, again, you deserve it. From there you just keep track of their movements. I am sure y'all who value your safety will find the most efficient way to accomplish this with great results.


"Have a dozen or more friends spend their evening watching a gate like a hawk for hours so that I can rat" isn't a viable solution even if it couldn't be trivially bypassed by wormholes, log in traps, blackcynos, etc. It might be workable if irritating for large coalitions like my own with manpower to spare, but smaller groups would be greatly disadvantaged by such a requirement.

Nobody is saying that nullsec living should be "safe". What it should be, however, is worth the risk and the effort, and if you want to add the requirement of a bunch of players pulling sentry duty (and presumably wanting a cut of the income for their time) then it becomes pointless to actually live in 0.0 rather than roll a highsec alt to grind missions or mine.

Every time you post a WiS thread, Hilmar strangles a kitten.

Sigras
Conglomo
#24 - 2013-08-17 07:53:49 UTC  |  Edited by: Sigras
Arkenai Wyrnspire wrote:
I love all the nullsec ratters complaining "But then it's not safe!"
Aliventi I'm also stunned by the amount of good posting you're doing in an awful thread. +1 to you, sir.

I defy you to show me one way, without local to to prevent yourself from being killed by a cloaked ship with a cyno + hot drop. It doesnt matter how prepared you are, it doesnt matter if youre aligned out because he could just bump you before he hits the cyno, it doesnt matter if youre with a fleet, there is literally no way to avoid being killed no matter how prepared you are.

That does not make a skillful game, that makes a random one; you might as well be watching a movie because thats about how much interaction you have with it.

But that isnt even the worst part; the worst part is that if they see that you've devised some crazy sort of counter to their plan, they just dont engage and it costs them nothing; they never have to commit to the fight, and it costs them nothing.

Nobody wants safe space, but nobody wants completely unavoidable, no warning death either and thats what covert ops hot dropping with no local is. Unavoidable. No warning. Death
Mr Floydy
Questionable Ethics.
Ministry of Inappropriate Footwork
#25 - 2013-08-17 08:00:01 UTC  |  Edited by: Mr Floydy
OP inadvertently explains why WH space is awesome.

I assure you consistently bumping a cloaked ship as you decloak to stop them warping out is not something that can be done easily, or at all if the target is moving at any pace (ie with an AB)
If you're sat still you deserve to die :)
RubyPorto
RubysRhymes
#26 - 2013-08-17 08:52:40 UTC  |  Edited by: RubyPorto
Xequecal wrote:
Aliventi wrote:
It is only idiotic in your opinion because you don't want to do it. If you are so scared of a ship finding you and lighting a cyno why don't you make your ship able to kill the cyno before anything can make it through the bridge? That is not idiotic. That is common sense. If you are faced with the choice of modifying your fit to kill a cyno frig/ratting in groups or losing your ratting ship I think we both know the choice you will make. Unless of course you are an idiot...


Ok, what about covert cynos bringing in a bunch of stealth bombers which then warp to you cloaked, uncloak, insta lock you, and kill you? Your "intel network" is worthless when they can all be sitting in a deadend system a whole region away.


The giant local spike might clue you in on it being time to get the hell out, and not wait for that bomber gang to tackle you.

Sigras wrote:
you do realize that there are cruisers that can fit covert ops cloaks right? lets hop on the test server, I want to see how many ships you need to kill my covert ops proteus before the hammer falls . . . That said, even an arazu can field a substantial tank and it can tackle you as well.


Every Covops Cloak capable ship other than the Stealth bomber suffers from a 5 second delay before it can start locking a target.

Quite simply, leave before they can tackle you.


Scatim Helicon wrote:
Nobody is saying that nullsec living should be "safe". What it should be, however, is worth the risk and the effort, and if you want to add the requirement of a bunch of players pulling sentry duty (and presumably wanting a cut of the income for their time) then it becomes pointless to actually live in 0.0 rather than roll a highsec alt to grind missions or mine.


HS Income needs a nerf, Nullsec individual income needs a buff (and an actually useful means of taxation).

Make it worth the risk by modifying the rewards.

"It's easy to speak for the silent majority. They rarely object to what you put into their mouths." -Abrazzar "the risk of having your day ruined by other people is the cornerstone with which EVE was built" -CCP Solomon

Whitehound
#27 - 2013-08-17 09:07:48 UTC
I can only repeat myself...

Turning off local is like turning off the lights of EVE. Local is needed for the game to look alive. If you could not tell anymore who and how many players are in a system then you could as well be playing a single-player game and pretend it is an MMO.

Loss is meaningful. Therefore is the loss of meaning likewise meaningful. It is the source of all trolling.

Sigras
Conglomo
#28 - 2013-08-17 09:14:55 UTC
RubyPorto wrote:
Xequecal wrote:
Aliventi wrote:
It is only idiotic in your opinion because you don't want to do it. If you are so scared of a ship finding you and lighting a cyno why don't you make your ship able to kill the cyno before anything can make it through the bridge? That is not idiotic. That is common sense. If you are faced with the choice of modifying your fit to kill a cyno frig/ratting in groups or losing your ratting ship I think we both know the choice you will make. Unless of course you are an idiot...


Ok, what about covert cynos bringing in a bunch of stealth bombers which then warp to you cloaked, uncloak, insta lock you, and kill you? Your "intel network" is worthless when they can all be sitting in a deadend system a whole region away.


The giant local spike might clue you in on it being time to get the hell out, and not wait for that bomber gang to tackle you.

Please read the thread or at least the OP before commenting . . . we're talking about what if local didnt exist; if local didnt exist, how would you avoid that gank? the short answer is you couldnt, you would die.

RubyPorto wrote:
Sigras wrote:
you do realize that there are cruisers that can fit covert ops cloaks right? lets hop on the test server, I want to see how many ships you need to kill my covert ops proteus before the hammer falls . . . That said, even an arazu can field a substantial tank and it can tackle you as well.


Every Covops Cloak capable ship other than the Stealth bomber suffers from a 5 second delay before it can start locking a target.

Quite simply, leave before they can tackle you.

Again, please read first and comment second. The scenario we were discussing was with a cyno; you dont need to lock to launch a cyno and you dont need to launch to put up a bubble. The scenario we were discussing was bump-cyno-bridge-bubble-dead . . . all in less than 3 seconds well maybe not the dead part, but by the time you reach bubble its too late.
Bendit
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#29 - 2013-08-17 10:12:12 UTC
Everyone think of local as either you have, or you don't.


Why not something in between?

Anyone seen the constellation chat?

This only shows number of people in chat/constellation, but no names appear unless you type something.


This will give you:

No local (almost)
Some intel (you will see there are people there, but you don't know if it's a friend or foe)
Whitehound
#30 - 2013-08-17 10:33:23 UTC
Bendit wrote:
Why not something in between?

We already have wormhole space. It is the something in between solution.

Loss is meaningful. Therefore is the loss of meaning likewise meaningful. It is the source of all trolling.

RubyPorto
RubysRhymes
#31 - 2013-08-17 11:27:44 UTC
Sigras wrote:
Please read the thread or at least the OP before commenting . . . we're talking about what if local didnt exist; if local didnt exist, how would you avoid that gank? the short answer is you couldnt, you would die.


Same way you can avoid it now. Fit to be able to kill stealthbombers quickly (this may mean working in groups), and fit to be able to escape anything else (again, working in groups helps here. Take a page from my anti-ganking advice to miners, webs are your friends). Nothing's foolproof, but I'd be shocked if Nullsec lost local without some significant income boost to compensate (if it didn't, it'd simply be time to hitch out to HS).

Quote:
Again, please read first and comment second. The scenario we were discussing was with a cyno; you dont need to lock to launch a cyno and you dont need to launch to put up a bubble. The scenario we were discussing was bump-cyno-bridge-bubble-dead . . . all in less than 3 seconds well maybe not the dead part, but by the time you reach bubble its too late.


You cannot be bumped by a (previously) cloaked ship before you have time to react. The 2000m decloak radius and <1km/s max speed of a cloaked ship ensure that you have at least 2 seconds (more like 4+) between when they show up on your overview and when they bump you. Then there's the amount of time it takes for ships to actually bridge in and load grid. If you're at all paying attention, you're gone long before the bubble goes up.



You're right that removing local is a terrible idea. It would be bad for the game, and arguments that it would be similar to wormholes ignore massive game mechanical differences (including, appropriately enough, the lack of mass limitations). But it doesn't follow that it would be impossible to adapt to.

"It's easy to speak for the silent majority. They rarely object to what you put into their mouths." -Abrazzar "the risk of having your day ruined by other people is the cornerstone with which EVE was built" -CCP Solomon

Trii Seo
Goonswarm Federation
#32 - 2013-08-17 12:31:26 UTC
Being all for removing local, I have to drop one counterargument to it. The Reward. Risk vs. Reward is often mentioned when talking about nullsec and cloaky camping, without noticing that this ratio is somewhat skewered.

To put it straight, if you were to nuke local people wouldn't rat in nullsec, they'd all move to hisec and run L4s. Why? Because the rewards are approximately the same for a fraction of the risk.

The reason for that lies in how ratting income is generated - through rat bounties. Regardless of inflation, your rewards will always remain constant. They will remain constant regardless of how many people rat. Due to prices on the market now we run into a situation where nullsec residents come up with setups that can blitz anomalies for optimal income. Belts remain untouched and ratting in a pvp-fit ship is a suboptimal, low-profit way of doing it. You can do it but if you want to earn money, why not run L4s in hisec? That you can do with a pve fit, safely. Get an out of corp/alliance alt to avoid wardecs and you're golden.

Before local is looked at, we need to take a look at one major thing: incentive for people to undock. A player needs to be willing to risk his ship in local-less environment with possible hostiles, because the reward will be worth it. There are faction/deadspace/officer goods, of course but the market for them is small and just making them more abundant would crash the price - something that shouldn't happen.

"W-Space does it!" yes, because w-space income is based on exported commodities. Price of said commodities changes, unlike rat bounties - it's also pretty high, making for a good incentive to run difficult anomalies in groups.

Before removing local:

- Change income from pure rat bounty to a mix of rat bounties and unique regional commodities. Increase "profit per rat".
- Change anomalies to enforce running higher-end with a group to make belts more profitable to run.

Then remove local.

Proud pilot of the Imperium

Arek'Jaalan: Heliograph

Nikk Narrel
Moonlit Bonsai
#33 - 2013-08-17 13:42:34 UTC
Hi there!

I obviously show up on a bunch of these threads.

In my signature, are two interconnected threads.
The first is specific to a version of local that still keeps a limited aspect of the current system, but with specific and balanced gaps to it.

The second answers the question in the OP, about how we should handle cloaked vessels.
The detection method is an exact duplicate of cloaking itself on every level possible.
The logic is simple, by duplicating the requirements and efforts needed to be cloaked, the detection of cloaking is balanced towards the effort to cloak.

Also, since it does get brought up, this is a thread about fixing scanning too:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=112964&find=unread
Nikk Narrel
Moonlit Bonsai
#34 - 2013-08-17 13:50:17 UTC
This is disingenuous.

I honestly don't know if you actually believe this, or you simply don't understand how changes would cross affect other details.

I will help you, by pointing out what will possibly seem obvious when you look back on it.
The only detail needed is to add in a method to hunt cloaked vessels that requires effort, which I explained above.

First, your comments that I specifically address here:
Trii Seo wrote:
Being all for removing local, I have to drop one counterargument to it. The Reward. Risk vs. Reward is often mentioned when talking about nullsec and cloaky camping, without noticing that this ratio is somewhat skewered.

To put it straight, if you were to nuke local people wouldn't rat in nullsec, they'd all move to hisec and run L4s. Why? Because the rewards are approximately the same for a fraction of the risk.


Here is something that is difficult for many to grasp, but is an important detail that those hunting will not have an advantage because of local being missing.

The advantage will always belong to whoever has sov, simply because the intel channels and patrols supplying them will be a huge advantage.

Those hunting in hostile territory will be on their own, and with no local to artificially tell them where everyone is, chances are they will have no idea.
They can, of course, guess, or do research to learn where people usually hang out, but unless someone spies for them and tips them where to look, they will be effectively blind.

Local is never the friend of PvE. PvE has a far more obvious advantage trading it in for an intel channel while the hunters are blind.

And hot dropping??

Especially after trimming the BS from it, hot dropping is a desperate tactic, and one to avoid except when absolutely necessary.

Hot Dropping: Bridging is intended to bypass reinforced blockades and travel time. Here, it has been fine tuned to avoid advertising the presence of a fleet to the free intel tool as well by delaying the easily recognizable population spike till the last possible moment. The intention is to deny the warning local provides, although it still reports the presence of the cyno boat enough to be associated with AFK Cloaking instead.
Quite simply, while PvE pilots would never resume regular activities with a hostile fleet present, they are sometimes willing to gamble over whether a cloaked vessel represents that level of threat at a given time.[/quote]
I don't really know what you want me to comment on here...
How does this have any bearing on what I was saying? WH space can't by jumped into. Null space can. If you couldn't see anyone on local, and couldn't dscan out the covops dropping it, you could have an entire fleet of bombers and blops jumped into a null system with 0 warning. This can't happen in WH space. This is one reason the lack of local matters less.
[/quote]
Noone in their right mind would ever hot drop, unless that was the only way to catch them.

And seriously, if you are not being instantly told for free about exactly who is in the system, how would you know if a roam just rushed in?
How would you know if a covert cyno went off beyond your scan range?

Considering you have no way of being instantly warned, the whole point of hot dropping vanishes.

Only a fool brings a gate equivalent onto grid, in firing range no less, of a pilot or group of pilots who are the most motivated to shoot at it.
And then add, if they kill the cyno ship BEFORE the others jump through, the others never show up at all.

Hot dropping simply is no longer justified, in this most common version referred to.
Olaf4862
Dragoon Industries Limited
#35 - 2013-08-17 15:34:29 UTC
I made a post about this but I will note it here.

I do not think that removing local is the solution. A delayed mode (aka wormhole) local I think is the best choice.

But I does need to be paired with something to give you a better intel tool. My suggestion was a massive overhaul of the directional scanner to make it into a much more dynamic and functional tool for gathering intel in a system.
ExookiZ
The Dark Space Initiative
Scary Wormhole People
#36 - 2013-08-17 15:41:21 UTC  |  Edited by: ExookiZ
I find this thread hilarious. all the whining about getting ganked is quite lulzy. I would love to see local gone from nullsec, it would mean I could actually pvp there.

As a WHer who dives out into 0.0 frequently nothing is more dissapointing than local chat. literally the second i load grid and show up in local you all warp to poses and stare at me till I leave. just plain stupid.

Have you considered that if your worried about your ability to maintain intel on your empire that maybe your empire is too large? Most of your dumb alliances own far too much space anyways, forcing you to take care of your systems to make them more useful has been needed for a while.

Also my WH corp rarely is only concerned about 1 system/gate. I often have as many as 6 pilots out in the field doing nothing but monitoring connections while we do our work. In eve there is something called a alt, you put alt on a gate, turn sound up and BAM youll know if someone came through. quickly alt tab ( if your not using multiple monitors) and youll nkow who and what just came in. If my scouts can catch a cov ops moving through and get a name, so can you.

As far as I can see removing local will lead to more pvp, and more fights, any important targets getting ganked can lead to escalations.

Right now the only way you get killed at all in 0.0 non consensually is if you screw up or go afk somewhere you shouldnt have.

Event Organizer of EVE North East

Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#37 - 2013-08-17 17:32:57 UTC
Sigras wrote:
Several people have suggested that local is a large intel problem in 0.0 and needs to be removed.

I have not made up my mind about that, but in all the proposals, Ive found one major glaring flaw that needs to be addressed if any progress is to be made toward removing local.

Cloaking ships

This is not to be confused with the AFK cloaking issue because it isnt; in fact removing local would be the perfect solution to AFK cloaking; nobody would ever waste their time AFK cloaking in a system because nobody would know that they are there.

The problem is that without local there would be literally no way for anyone to know that a cloaked ship was in the system. It would be a piece of cake for a cloaked ship to use its directional scanner to triangulate a ship location; use the wormhole probe trick to get a warp in, warp on top of him, decloak, cyno, bridge, bubble all before a battlecruiser sized ship can warp off

Even if you made cloaked ships able to be probed out (which you should never do) this would be ridiculous because you would have to constantly have probes out and spam the scanner button and the D-scan . . . which is an idiotic solution needless to say.

So before we talk about removing local, we need to come up with a concurrent change for cloaking.

Thoughts?


If you read these threads, you'll see I'm a frequent participant...my sig indicates I, and others, are aware of this problem and have suggested changes to cloaks or allowing some method of hunting cloaked ships as a result.

Oh, and just a point of clarification, a ship that can warp cloaked cannot bubble, but other than that, yes...with no local cloaked ships as they currently are and given current mechanics would be OP. Hence a change would be necessary.

I'd also like to point out, that if this statement is true:

Quote:
So before we talk about removing local, we need to come up with a concurrent change for cloaking.


That the converse is also likely to be true too. That is:

Before we talk about nerfing cloaks, we need to come up with a concurrent change for local/intel gathering.

Wouldn't you agree?

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online

Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#38 - 2013-08-17 17:39:46 UTC
Sigras wrote:

so every ship that should ever be flown in 0.0 should always be PvP fit to take out whatever limitless number of ships can come through a cyno bridge?


Cyno bridges cannot bring in a limitless number of ships. They can bring in lots, but not limitless. Hyperbole wont help you here. Keep your statements reasonable is my advice.

Quote:
Also you do realize that people need to sleep and go to work right? You can have a 9000 man alliance and still have systems where you're alone. I was recently in fountain and went for entire constellations without seeing another pilot. You want every entrance gate and every possible wormhole into your space covered 24/7 not to mention the possibility that someone has been cloaked in that system before and has just not logged that character in?

Is that really your solution?


Simply removing local would likely be worse than leaving it in place and leaving cloaks alone. I prefer the status quo over simply removing local for null sec.

However, intel gathering should be something players (more accurately corporations and alliances) can work at doing without having to spend boring hours watching a gate so your buddies can have their turn ratting. Also, such intel gathering should not be a good as local is right now. So possibly tying it to system upgrades and structures and such would be one possibility.

The problem of local and its use as an intel tool is a big one and a far reaching one.

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online

Sigras
Conglomo
#39 - 2013-08-17 19:23:55 UTC
Teckos Pech wrote:
If you read these threads, you'll see I'm a frequent participant...my sig indicates I, and others, are aware of this problem and have suggested changes to cloaks or allowing some method of hunting cloaked ships as a result.

Oh, and just a point of clarification, a ship that can warp cloaked cannot bubble, but other than that, yes...with no local cloaked ships as they currently are and given current mechanics would be OP. Hence a change would be necessary.

please note that i never said a ship that can warp cloaked could bubble . . . I always stated that they would bridge first with the implication being that they would bridge in a HIC or dictor.
Teckos Pech wrote:
I'd also like to point out, that if this statement is true:

Sigras wrote:
So before we talk about removing local, we need to come up with a concurrent change for cloaking.


That the converse is also likely to be true too. That is:

Before we talk about nerfing cloaks, we need to come up with a concurrent change for local/intel gathering.

Wouldn't you agree?

I actually dont agree and here's why as you seem like a reasonable fellow.

Right now cloaked ships can provide a massive benefit to their user for no risk. I mean honestly if you lose a covert ops cloaked ship you probably had it coming.

The benefits are as follows:

1. enemy fleet composition
2. enemy fleet location
3. warp ins
4. cynos
5. threat of force

and yes I know that cynos do involve risk, but you're pretty much not going to commit to a cyno unless you're sure you have the upper hand. All of these things are uncounterable unavoidable real benefits that a cloaked ship provides with no risk to itself. Do you think that is justified?
Loki Feiht
Warcrows
#40 - 2013-08-17 19:31:45 UTC  |  Edited by: Loki Feiht
local should be tied with sov upkeep (maintenaince) costs, you either turn it on for everyone (as in low/high by the empires that own them) or it stays off

Lore wise speaking, wormholes have no gates or stations so registration of capsuleers isnt possible iirc

More NPC - Randomly Generated Modular Content thread https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=220858