Player Features and Ideas Discussion

3 reasons.

First, with all the hooplah about it over the years, they would have said so clearly.

Second, they have had multiple opportunities to change local, as well as having a dedicated UI team, if local was a problem. Cloaks are at best a kludgy fix, if that had been their intent.

Third, local creates the opportunity for conflict, while cloaks stifle it. At the end of the day all that matters is someone explode. They don't need your cloaking ship to blow up miners and such- letting the defense fleet blow you up is just as good. The use of the cloak in this way is purely emergent, not intended, and that more than anything else is probably why they neither talk about it nor make much effort to fix it.

Dude, the hostility. It seems out of place.

One of the current crop of new devs that was hired from the ranks of the PvP pilots said he would prefer if local was just Chat, and as I recall that was on some other social media, not an official statement. Same on the quip about being killed by an atk guy. Those aren't policy, those are statements of personal opinion by individuals who were already known to be on your side of this debate long before they were hired as devs. Other than that they don't address the subject directly.

They have had time to change cloaks, but to my knowledge cloaks have never undergone any sort of adjustment other than specifically to the covert ops hulls. The module itself remains the same as ever, and as we know, these things don't see change until someone makes it a real priority- so while cov ops got attention with ship tiericide, cloaks themselves didn't. Thus no real opportunity to have looked at them because it wasn't assigned to anyone. Just like the scores of modules with bizzare stats that have t2 versions worse than meta 1-4... Some things just need a serious look.

Local provides opportunity for conflict. In your examples the PvE guy heads for safety while calling for help. Your lone hunter is now being chased by defense fleets and or a PvE guy reshipped for combat. The cloak ruins that interplay by simply stopping all activity because there is nothing a defense fleet or the PvE guy can do except move on, stop playing, or fly suicidal. The FC stands down, but now the home team sends out interceptors and interdictors to trap the enemy fleet before it can escape.... That's not stopping the conflict, just changing the labels of who is predator and who is prey.

You cannot say the same for cloaks. They are a purely one sided tool that stops the possibility for PvP to be brought to the user once activated.

The point is, there is more from CCP suggesting that they are unhappy with local than cloaking, even if it is anecdotal and not an "official company response".



This is largely your own argument against changing local. "It's been this way all along." "They haven't changed it." And so forth. This is why I claim your position is hypocritical, and it isn't hostile, it is just being blunt.



I've already pointed out that local can stifle PvP and cloaks can lead to PvP as well. For example, a BLOPs gang will make heavy use of cloaks.

And trust me, the home team wont send out interceptors to do anything, they've won a tactical victory no need to **** away a bunch of interceptors trying to lock down a hostile fleet.

This in my opinion was a mistake.


Local is not being used in this manner. And you know this.

I'll say this again. Local, on its own, is not an intel tool. But it is extremely powerful in what it is being used as, no other system is as good at what it does. I can understand why this is being defended, but I also think that this is preventing other systems to come into play.


Cloaks are in need of a major update. I'm not disagreeing with this.


It is not.

Oh Bob. 131 pages. I read several threads on the subject, I tried to dig into the threadnought but this is simply too much. So, I'll give y'all my two cents and be damned if someone pointed any or all of this out already. If so, I apologise.


ARGUMENT 1:

First off... lots of talk about AFK cloaking. Yet, honestly, I could care less if someone is AFK or not -- people go AFK in stations too. If a player desires to remain online even when he's having dinner or walking the dog, that should be his choice. Counter-argument: when a gasminer mines himself to sleep, would you like the game client to log him off due to "inactivity" ? Of course not. So, let's move on to the cloaking device itself.


ARGUMENT 2:

"yeah but you can't harm people when cloaked..." BULLCRAP. You're providing intel on exact whereabouts and fleet compositions, whilst sitting 100% safe on-grid at a ping. You might even be combatprobing. Yet people maintain they're doing nothing? Gathering intel is *not* doing nothing. Decloaking 3km off and dropping a metric sh!tton of hostiles on you is *not* my idea of doing nothing.

Are these aspects that need changing? Not at all! Stealth warfare is all up-and-up dandy. Black ops, recons, make for intrigueing gameplay.


ARGUMENT 3:

"yeah but local but mbmbmbmbmbbbb LOCALLL!" So what? People sitting in station also see local. Local is good. Local tells us when the bad guys are about to roflstomp you -- and truth be told, by then they should have you pointed already.

Local chat is good. Cloak is good. What is not good, however, is the 100% safety the cloaker gets. Funny how the advocates of pro-AFK-cloaking like to mock the so-called "risk averse nullbears!!" ... given the fact they themselves are the ones in hiding. Not the other way around!


HOW TO FIX?

Well, someone proposed T2 probes offering cloak detection at a substantially longer scantime, and this proposal has my blessing. It's simple, it's elegant, it fixes "the issue" and it does not require a complete overhaul of existing game mechanics. Because you know what? I frankly don't care if you're AFK. And I don't care if you can harm me or not: I want to be able to harm YOU. Since you're allegedly gathering intel and thus DScanning, you can reposition to avoid detection. If you're AFK ..... we kill you. Why is that so unreasonable?

If you need to go AFK for a prolonged period of time and you're afraid some risk averse nullbear might eat you up because the coward doesn't like you to bravely drop 15 friends on his vessel... well, fear not: CCP has provided a nifty feature called "Safely Log Off".

The old "don't-touch-the-cloaking-mechanics-cause-I'm-harmless" argument sounds a lot like "why-did-you-blow-up-my-Hulk-I-was-harmless?!". NEWSFLASH: you cannot / should not be able to opt-out of PvP in EVE. (with the exception of 1. POS shields but you can shoot the tower, and 2. Stations -- the latter being somewhat lame with people under wardec spending their week docked; yet this is not the subject of debate in this thread).


CONCLUSION:

Don't touch local. Don't touch the cloak. Don't force-logoff players doing nothing. Just give us the damn probes so we can deal with the matter as we see fit -- a plan probably involving either 425mms and a free ride home, or a cloaker forcibly bouncing around every now and then to avoid detection / capture.

But PLEASE. No more of this "I'm just sitting here; does that bother you?" YES IT DOES. Your Iteron V's bother me. Your POCO bothers me. Your Navy Omen bothers me. Your cloaky Buzzard bothers me. In fact, Your presence in my system de facto bothers me. Except there is nothing I can do about it once you cloak up, and that too bothers me.

I hope that clarified the matter somewhat. ;-)

I agree; although a competent interceptor pilot might still get away with it, and a fleet of stubborn ratters might decide to stay and fight. But basically: yes indeed, cloaks are essential. Provided you could hunt the cloakies with "something" -- and specialized probes sounds pretty straightforward for the task.





And this is wrong why exactly? You can choose to live in space without local if you so desire; but for players to make informed decisions you have to give them something to work with. As it is, we DO know it's there and who it is, but we do NOT know (1) where or (2) what he's flying.

Would you rather not know somebody's out there, neither through local nor DScan? You'd call that a fix?? Sure, it does fix the AFK issue; but it leaves us even less options to interact with the cloaky player! Thanks to your fix, I can stop bitching about not being able to hunt it down to get it out of "my" system because I won't even know he's there. I might as well stop DScanning altogether as the first sign of trouble will pop up straight in my overview!





LOL -- I'm not even a PvE'er, and when I do it's highly inefficient due to using a PvP fitted vessel. That said, a docked ship SHOULD be invulnerable. Because it can't do anything. Because it's not making money, scanning down targets or watching gates. Yet it's not: you can shoot POS. You cannot shoot Cloaky.

Locals have cloaking as an option? No they don't. When targeted by a rat, you cannot cloak. There is no such thing as a counter-cloak to protect myself if a cloaky decides to make its move.

My objection is not that the cloaked ship would win the confrontation. I am not convinced that it would, by the way; not unless it has backup. Fights must occur; this is a good thing. My objection is that:

- I take precautions by not being AFK, paying attention to local, DScanning, checking the neut in local's killboard, making a few jumps in an attempt to gather more info concerning its wereabouts and what he's flying.
- having found nothing, I conclude he must be a cloaky; so by virtue of caution, I dock up my boat.

=== THIS IS WHERE THE STORY ENDS ===


Now, what I would like to see is step three:

- I undock a proper PvP ship capable of locating the obvious threat, in an attempt to engage it.

This is where AFK cloakers die, wheras players intent on hunting me will get exactly what they came for: a fight. They may or may not have a cyno. Did he bring a Buzzard, a Pilgrim, Stratios, Tengu, Sin or did he merely slap a prototype cloak on a Tornado? If he doesn't move, I can pick a fight and force him out of the system. If on the other hand he does keep moving, he is waging the guerrillia warfare you mentioned earlier, keeping me from doing my stuff whilst forcing him to be *active* in order to do so. If he's markedly stronger or more numerous than I am, I must remain docked.

But here's the thing: he can't do any of that away from his keyboard. Thereby fixing the "AFK cloaking" problem without breaking the advantage of using a cloak. If he doesn't like me perpetually scanning him down, he's free to dock. Or fight. At least stuff would be happening.

Your reasoning seems to indicate AFK cloaking is fine because I might sit inside a POS bubble and be equally invulnerable ... tell me, what kind of game are we playing then? How much fun is there to be had when we're both invulnerable? I'd rather see both involved parties VULNERABLE

You raise a valid point. Meanwhile I also made it to page 33 of the thread and apparently I brought nothing new to the table, so I suppose an apology is in order.

That said. Personally I'm not overly concerned with cloaky campers ; I guess what I bring to the table is simply not juicy enough to warrant a drop. But the fundamental flaw in the grand design, the one thing that urged me to pitch in to the discussion, is that you have people in system you cannot account for and cannot evict. While they do NOTHING. I don't mind recons (Lord knows I love my Rapier) doing recon stuff or bombers laying in wait for that one glorious ambush (we do that ourselves) ...

and then there's "Mr. AFK". He might be in station, that's cool. Then he's accounted for. He might be lurking in a Huginn, which I can combatprobe. He might be in a POS - that's his prerogative. Unfortunately, he might also be playing on his main character and never once even so much as glance at his second desktop.

He just sits there. He pisses you off by being there. Am I risk averse? Am I self entitled? Maybe.

The thing is, as an EvE player, one automatically senses there ought to be punishment for grossly neglecting your character in space. People autopilot, they deserve to die. People fail to scan or check killboards first? They go -PoP!- You fall asleep in a belt? You wake up in a fresh clone. You forget to fuel your tower? Can kiss it goodbye. Yet, this AFK guy is violating the First Commandment and gets away with it?

I cannot accept that. I want to be able to scan him down, somehow. Not because I'm scared of a neutral face in local; not even because of all the awful things he might do or for the fat killmail I could probably wring out of it - no. Simply because it goes against everything I believe in. AFK in the midst of space deserves to die.

I for one still think scanning would be the preferred way to go about it. I even thought up a more realistic way to do it, without the need for hardcoded cycle timers: every object in space has a signature strength you need to beat in order to scan it down, yes? Well, how about this value starts off at an impossible number, and gradually lowers the longer you stay on grid? One could reset his value by warping off grid, meaning that in the case of a genuine manned client, nothing changes. But the longer you sit there and do nothing, the higher the chance somebody might eventually scan you down after all.

And there you go: problem solved! The Cloak remains as-is. The AFK cloaker will reveal itself over time and become a legitimate target. (which the savvy cloaker might even use to his advantage, baiting by allowing himself to be probed)

Does that sound acceptable? The PvP - PvE - HK triangle remains untouched ... as long as there is indeed a pilot behind the wheel.

[small victory Nikk -- I changed my stance from "I want to kill it" to "I want to kill it if it keeps sitting on the same grid" ]

Can you be anymore disingenuous? I have nowhere argued that any other player should have a chance of taking potshots at other players without the player being shot at having a chance to evacuate or whatever. This claim by you is just utter dishonest tripe.

Tell me, this kind of dishonesty, do you have to work at it, or does it come naturally?

Dude, two things....

1. I do a **** ton of indy stuff. I do invention, mining, ratting, and POS stuff. I've had plenty of alts killed by people using cloaks and other ships. So this idea that I'm arguing for my own sefl-interest...GFY.

2. I've been participating in this dicussion longer than your character has been in game. Forgive me if I've seen this **** more than than you've seen rats in HS (BTW, go check out the Cloaking Collection Thread in the OP by ISD LackOfFait, or suffice it to say that I had this idea before anyone in ISD even had a pube).

Now, maybe if you wanted to engage in a useful and interesting discussion I'd be a bit less sarcastic and dismissive. Like how we'll go forward on this issue...here let me help you:

1. I admit that AFK cloaking sucks. It is horrible thing and I have been admitting for probably 200 posts that AFK cloaking and local combine to make sub-optimal play.

2. I argue that local is an inextricably linked to AFK cloaking, and that just addressing AFK cloaking is actually unbalanced.

3. I have NEVER (as in ****ing ever) advocated simply getting rid of local.

4. With the prospect of the OA I have advocated giving local "back" to people who take the time and effort to get it back, but those who do not don't get it back...and that it be vulnerable.

To be quite honest I don't think people like you read posts like this one and instead post insipid and even borderline stupid posts about T2 probes, or some other stupid crap. Maybe if you went back to that post read it, honestly and gave your opinion...maybe you'd get something other than a sarcastic and dismissive post from me because I think you are just a short bus rider who had not really made an effort to join the conversation in a serious and meaningful way.

The following statement by Brokk Witgenstein was refreshing and made me delete a sarcastic and dismissive response,



I am interested in improving the game for both PvP AND PvE players. I actually do both. I have done invention, mining , mission, anomalies, and reaction towers as well as PvP. I straddle both sides of the discussion, to be quite honest. I don't want PvE to suck. Consider that Fozziesov is supposed to encourage occupancy to help in holding sov. I want NS alliances to want miners, inventors, builders, and PvP pilots (granted when the chips are down all of them will have to PvP). But to suggest, as Mike does, that I want cheap/easy kills or the like is complete nonsense. I want a NS that is rich and diverse and fun for lots of players. I want Nikk to have a home in NS, I want Mike to have a home in NS, I want you to have a home in NS, etc....well assuming you guys want it. And yeah, sometimes you guys might have to PvP.

Am I dismissive of many posts? Yes. Because I've seen the same stupid, thoughtless, tiresome arguments over and over and over. I've been reading these kinds of threads since 2008. T2 probes, the decloaking pulse, the cloak fuel, the cloak using cap, and so forth have been suggested again and again and again. If you have nothing other than those ideas kindly STFU, STFD, and preferably GTFO...and if that upsets you...well uninstall the ****ing game.

So you aren't going to look at what the OA is going do. You are just going to suggest the same old tired notions.

Okay...guess we know you really aren't serious.

Edit:

I'll point out your first post.

You claim AFK cloaking is griefing when it is clearly not. You suggested the old argument that cloaks should "weaken" over time and suggest that anybody who disagrees with you is "part of the problem", setting up a very adversarial position and now you whine that you got what you were asking for.