Player Features and Ideas Discussion

to make mention of certain points,

1. on another note I can not believe this thread is still open.

life of this thread will stay open as long as there is no real counter to AFK Cloaking.
It would seem that most are not vocal as they feel like "what's the use" Most dissenters are a small minority that are very active on the forums. over half of those participate in either Grief play or Easy kills, whereas most of thier KB is made up of killing ratters and miners.

2. All pve activities should be balanced in terms of risk, reward and investment

they already are, this is done by the sec status system, and the security system.
Of what you are suggesting is very very complex and most certainly would break a lot of other coding to the point of Risk vrs Reward for the developers. while it is easy to agree with, implementation is not feasible, Note I did not say impossible, just not very likely. if it was implemented I have a friend who would love it. would only take 5 of his 38 alts parked in system to make a whole constellation more "dangerous" and therefore artificially increase profits. if the system required losses, then just imagine all those noob ships destroyed. again while this is a nice idea, you need to look at a broader horizon with a more open mind. Feasibility and scale are very important things in balancing game play.

3. The scanning array
while this sounds wonderful, It would in my opinion damage the usefulness of cloaks. There needs to be a trade off. a give and take if you will.

THE **** NEEDS TO BE HOTFIXED.

Im a game developer and i am utterly disgusted at the fact that ccp's developer have not done so.
This shows that they are really POOR development staff. I dont get a flying monkey what ISD, GMS
or even the developers of CCP have to say on the topic.

150 @$#@# pages of complaints and qq and nothing is done.

THIS THREAD IS A GIMMIC. ITS HERE TO MAKE PEOPLE THINK THAT IT CAN OR WILL BE CHANGED.

I dont think you guys get the point...




WE ARE LITERALLY TALKING MINUTES HERE.


All they have to do is buff the cloaking recloak timer to 5 minutes, and bump the energy use up to prevent
no more then 1 minute cloaking periods. It will force people to do something, or get out.

ITS AN EASY HOTFIX Until the release of a more stable change.


This development team is garbage. I have lost all respect for CCP. They are a F rated development team in my
opinion.

Sometimes I wonder... will I recognize people who post without researching the topic, or at least reading a meaningful amount of this thread...?

Then I read the last couple of entries, and saw how obvious they were.

I appreciate the interest, and the potential for new ideas.
But examples which have proof of interest only, with nothing new, have somewhat limited value.

Cloaking combined with AFK & potential cyno use, is simply not as simple as these new arrivals may believe.

That is entirely unreasonable for a few reasons.

First, any solution that involves out of game and unregulated third party resources should not be a part of game balance. EVE has a storied history of private individuals screwing over thousands of players in scams that required them to keep a good reputation for years. That's all well and good, but in game mechanics should not support out of game interactions, much less require them. Killboards and such are all run by third parties, and reporting kills is entirely voluntary.

Second, it's trivial to train an alt to do the camping. You won't get on a kill mail for lighting a cyno. A given camper may or may not have a notable kill board, and may or may not be active at stable times. So even if the kllboards were reliable, the alt history could be groomed to make it useless.

Third... how is it reasonable that all the research be done, when the camper logs on and goes afk, and then later at his convenience he just drops his buddies, no effort beyond just getting into system and gathering his buddies.

Me too, honestly.

The quote of fozzie essentially saying "hur, hur, cloaked ships never hurt no one and it's important that isk making be disrupted" ended the conversation as far as I am concerned.

The implications of that quote ended interest in the game for the most part. I am done investing in a game like this. I just reupped my time, and when it runs out I won't be back unless I see real hope for all players, not just one specific group.

While somewhat reasonable, it would disable afk cloaking, which is an intended mechanic for disrupting PvE.

Cloaks must remain capable of keeping PvE ships under direct and uncounterable threat at all times.

That statement may reflect how you see this, particularly as it appears to be something broken with consequences that are bad for the game.

I would point out, I want cloaking to be vulnerable, but only for those willing to make a proactive effort.

Local is simply too obvious and free of effort, to consider as a balanced means of being alerted to a cloaked target you can directly hunt. It is analogous to having a robot coach shouting for you to react and get going.

A cloaked player is an opportunity. Not a free hand out.
With current local alerting you, it is a free hand out, in intel terms. The cloak's defense is limited to intel, and if you can beat that, then not knowing is it's only protection.
And local would be handing that out at the door.

Even if it is as simple and easy as toggling on a self repeating scanner, once you come out of warp.

Put in reverse, it has to be something you could be careless, and forget to do, or prepare for.
We are expecting cloaked players to meet every detail on a strict checklist, in order to be a meaningful threat.

Too much of a blanket statement, too little consideration that only a specific and limited group of players would need this.

Such a choice would not be practical outside of specific circumstances, (unlike the previous clone requirements), these circumstances would not be nearly as universal by comparison.

Are you in a fleet? Then your security is likely dependent on keeping up and doing what is expected of you.
MAYBE if you are scouting, that would include scanning for cloaked opponents, but otherwise without value.
A fitting designed to counter cloaked threats is also unlikely to be a fleet approved doctrine.

Same thing with smaller fleets, like roams, or travel in general.

Unless you are staying in one area over an extended period, such as typified by PvE play, scanning for hostiles that may be coming to you with a cloak has relatively little value.

From the cloaking side, try to also focus on this being intended to have little to no effect on active play, and AFK play hardly needing the response posture of a fleet.

Mike, I must point out that you are stepping outside the bounds of this, when you expand potential hostiles into this many possible categories.

This is about AFK Cloaking, the context of which requires it to NOT be anywhere but a null sec system, and that with low enough activity that an unknown name in local becomes considered such an overwhelming threat which cannot be ignored.

In other places, where a non allied name is already ignored or everyone is paranoid already, this loses meaning.
That cloaked titan isn't going to be AFK Cloak camping your systems, and I think you know better than to mention such.

The probable chain of events is quite obvious.

One of the key tools for cloaking, in the event cloaks become vulnerable to being hunted, will be avoiding tipping off the targets before they realize he is present.
Once they know he is present, he will be unable to effectively do anything but either leave, or run in blind circles.
No scouting, no hunting, just a matter of align and warp before the hunters land on grid again.

He can only attempt his own objectives so long as his target is not tipped off to his presence in system. My suggestion already makes this a certainty in exchange for something simple, yet prone to human error as a vulnerability, which translates into interesting game play.

Whoever makes the careless mistake is at a disadvantage, whether it is a cloaked player or a local resident.
Local reporting such a presence automatically eliminates any risk that the player forgets to equip a ship properly.
Local reporting such a presence automatically eliminates any risk of carelessness that the player might forget to activate an automated scanning device.

If a cloaked player can do nothing but either run in circles, or leave, then cloaking becomes trivialized here.
They cannot accomplish any meaningful play objectives, so they quit playing this way in frustration.

AFK Cloaking has no impact, EXCEPT in null sec under specific conditions.

You are not impacting game play in a comparable manner, nor are you disrupting the expectations and gameplay of others, anywhere else.
Sure, they might be frustrated if they want to shoot you, but the absence of players voluntarily stopping play rather than experience risk is clearly missing here.

Otherwise, AFK behavior in general becomes suspect, which includes sitting in station or outpost.
You are in the game, but immune to being affected.
Even if you attempt to leave the game, under specific circumstances, your ship remains behind so it may be interacted with... UNLESS you are in the described Outpost or POS...
Making the Outpost and POS safer than actually leaving the game, under such conditions.

I appreciate you want to target cloaking itself, as your strategy in this debate, but that is not our implied mandate in this thread.