Player Features and Ideas Discussion

No, it's not. Often as not the cloak ship is an alt created specifically for AFK camping, with little or no information available. It's not in the same Corp as it's controller, has few direct kills, etc.

Miners rarely go to any great length to misrepresent themselves. Granted, they will usually not have much of a combat history other than losses, but you can see the fits and tell if they had a lot of non-mining modules.

You are attempting to compare Apple's to oranges. It's possible that a particular target is in fact setting a trap. However, the risk is not the same. The number of Cloaked Campers running around specifically to kill PvE pilots is huge. The number of PvE pilots setting traps for cloaked ships is tiny. The number of Cloaked Campers set up to give false information to anyone researching the alt is large. The number of PvE pilots setting up false information is tiny. The odds alone favor the PvP pilot, and that's before he starts cherry picking his targets.

The whole point of the cloak is that presumably there are plenty of people that would be happy to engage the camper if that cloak was less than perfect. Maybe not who he wants, but non-consensual PvP is fun all over, right?

I am not ignoring any collaries, the camper may very well not like the targets available at his preferred time. Unlike his targets, however, he has all the initiative. Rather than having to deal with any disruptive factors in his own chosen activity, he can decide to keep camping, and the longer he does it the more effective it becomes. His target does not get to choose if there will be PvP or not, his choice is to play in that system or not. The camper gets to play and be effective at what he is doing regardless of if his target decides to play- which was the point of him being there in the first place, to disrupt PvE. He is projecting his threat and influencing the decisions of anyone wishing to play in that system for as long as he likes, and is there until he decides otherwise with no chance of non-consensual anything happening to him.

If you want to increase the probability that the cloaked player can be shot, then the PvE player he is seeking also should have increased probability to being shot.

Nerfing cloaks is not necessarily required for this.
Removing the incentive to avoid contact quite specifically IS, and for both sides.

Cloaks, even with no role in direct combat, are a vital way of being AFK in hostile territory. This is good for the game.
Balancing them should not be needed beyond removing the impact they have on active play.

Quite literally, if they were to be mutually blocked from local chat viewing and reporting, then this paraphrased old saying would be true.
What you don't know, won't hurt you.

Quite to the contrary, I point out that only superficial PvP jabs or scouting attempts have a reasonable expectation of starting and finishing in friendly space, during the same play session.

Get a roam together, figure a time period where most players can stick around, and head back once you hit the halfway point on the clock.
If you're lucky, you might get a couple of hours, but most can't expect over a half dozen players to not need to leave before then.

So, perhaps you are small group, possibly solo, and expecting to either log out or cloak.
For logging out, this can be a small gamble. You don't really know what you may be logging back into, or how much time you will have before someone begins probing down your ship to pop it.
You did just add your name to the chat list, with no presence in surrounding systems to explain a gate arrival. Whether you popped up by wormhole or log-in, they want you.

At least with a cloak, they have no idea when you will expose yourself, so are less likely to be alert should you drop it in order to enter warp, or use a gate.
After all, your name did not just appear as a warning, so seeing it do nothing but sit there for hours does nothing to provide intel about your likely degree of activity.

I keep in mind, that I tend to think over long term about this sort of thing.

Actually many of us think the current situation is balanced but is sub-optimal. Which is why we favor changing both the cloaking mechanic and local. Some want to leave things as they are, but that would still be balanced.

And please stop using the term risk...you don't know what it means.

When you right,



That is more of an uncertainty. At least that is how your posts have sounded. You don't like AFK cloaking because you feel there is no counter and that you can't tell if the person is there or not. Risk is measurable--i.e. you know your chances. Gambling in Vegas for example entails risk in that you know your probabilities of winning and losing and your payoffs (well when you looking at games like roulette, craps and blackjack; betting on a sports team on the other hand actually entails uncertainty). With AFK cloaking one of the complaints is you don't know those chances; that they are inherently un-knowable. If you scroll through the AFK cloaking threads you'll find many many posts where the people complaining will say something to the effect, "we don't know if he is there or not...."



This has very little to do with AFK cloaking, IMO. Here is why. As I noted above, you see the issue, in part, as one of uncertainty, a risk where the underlying probabilities are unknowable. Once somebody shows up in "your space" you wont stay there until you can resolve these uncertainties. Even if it is a lone interceptor. You'll likely still dock up...after all, he could have a cyno. His friends might be nearby.

And I'm not saying you are bod or good for this kind of thing. This is the reaction pretty much everybody in the game will have. Especially if they don't have any information at all (i.e. don't even know his ship type). And as has been pointed out, at the very least people are going to want to switch to a ship with what they think has a better chance of survival (a PvP ship). So when you right the next part....



You are very much showing it is not just the issue of PvE vs. PvP fits but the uncertainty aspect. Instead of putting things into a more reasonable probability context you reduce it to two extremes. 0 and 1. "I risk nothing by running," that is there is zero probability of loss with running. You conflate my view that there should be a non-zero probability of you being caught and killed while ratting with insisting that you sit there like a duck waiting to be shot in the face. You also don't look at things in a larger context; either willfully or just out of ignorance. You should face a non-zero probability of being caught while doing PvE in NS. That also means the probability of escape is also non-zero. When somebody says a a probability should not be zero that does not mean the probability equals 1.

Currently local gives an advantage to the "defender" (the person already in a system). When somebody enters that system they'll show in local first then load grid. That is, while they are still in the warp tunnel between systems the defender will see them. With plenty of time to scoot to safety if they so choose (which they almost invariably will because 1. PvE tanks have holes and 2. people do not like uncertainty and it is my belief that 2 outweighs 1).

The only way people have found to deal with this advantage on a persistent basis is with AFK cloaking. They are using people's dislike of uncertainty against them. The advantage of local is now nullified because there is always a hostile showing. Yes, a hostile you can do nothing about. Just as I can do nothing about the advantage local provides to you when I'm out roaming around.



That is usually the way it works in game. People will try to get an edge. And that edge can be more people, better ships/doctrines, and even better strategies. And nobody is saying you have to stay on grid. Nobody. But at the very least acknowledge that local gives you an advantage and that removing AFK cloaking is indeed a benefit to the PvE side of things without any sort of benefit to the PvP side.

And no, I don't think you really understand the concept of risk.

Ok, if that makes you feel better.

You are right, no one says you have to stay on grid. But why afk camp? Because people won't stay on grid.

Everything in this debate is a thing because PvP is only fun and profitable for the hunter.

Discussion how to get people to stay on grid in the face of aggression is at the very heart of the matter. I use the word risk in the same world-wide accepted manner that insurance adjusters do.

Avoiding an encounter is the only reliable way to reduce risk. Eve is very binary, so there are few shades of grey here. From the PvE perspective, nearly all engagements will be sufficiently fatal to cost at least the ship. There are some ways to reduce the risk of an encounter, but the most effective is just leaving before the encounter occurs.

To be clear, avoiding the confrontation is not the PvE pilot winning. This attitude that the PvE pilot is somehow immune to violence because he can warp off and hide is BS. He is losing time he would rather be playing the game waiting on being allowed to do so. Some may be willing to change to PvP at that point, but rarely results in a win condition either, as the other guy either will not engage, or simply returns if destroyed. Neither case allows the PvE guy to do what he wants. This would be fine if not for the fact that the cloak allows the camper to camp forever. You can't even wait him out.

And you consider leaving your opponent the choice of fly suicidal or don't play as good game design?

Good thing you don't design games.

I am not saying that the PvE player should not have to change anything.

I am saying he has no reasonable choices. He would love to hunt down the camper, but that guy is using a broken mechanic to be 100% safe while still being able to hunt others himself. That individual will never consent to PvP either when there is a chance he will lose, and unlike the people he is camping, his is immune to non-consensual PvP.

So the PvE choices are:

1. Fly Suicidal. Simply ignore the camper. This is exactly what the camper is hoping will happen, and sooner or later that gamble will cost you your ship.

2. Fly with support. This is a mixed bag of extra loss, as you tie up the time of everyone who is now babysitting you. The engagement never happens because the camper is camping to avoid this exact scenario, and the camper is now preventing the support fleet from playing instead of just the PvE pilot, because sitting around and not engaging your enemy for days on end isn't fun.

3. Don't Play. Either don't play in that space, or with the trivial cost of setting up alts to do this don't play anywhere the campers feel like setting up camp.

None of those choices are reasonably balanced choices for dealing with a camper who is so safe he can go afk for the next year or so. I am not saying the camper does not have his reasons for doing things that way. However, the point of the game is engagements. The PvE guy only looses in any engagement, because he wants to play other aspects of the game. Those other aspects do not have any win conditions for a PvP encounter. That's why he does not stay. Many people would stay with the right reasons---other pvp games are played constantly, but they don't involve half the players loosing no matter what they do.

Some do fly with support, and once in a blue moon they do get engaged. Not often, but sometimes. That's how it's supposed to work, with content driving player conflict.

However, that's not content creation. Content is what is in the game. The other players are just that- other players. This is a common mistake among those who enjoy ganking and griefing (traditional definition, not EvE special snowflake). All the PvE stuff is content. What players do is play, and ideally come into conflict over content. Saddly, it's more risky, time consuming, and ultimately boring to defend assets than attack them, so PvP devolves into simple cheap kills.

If cloaks could be hunted we would have more conflict over resources rather than just plain ganking. Player would come into system, locals would ship up for PvP, and if everyone stayed at their keyboard and active you would get hunt/counter hunt/ fight and maybe even kills- a potentially fun time for all. Instead you get camp/kill or camp/everyone goes elsewhere or logs off.