Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Or...

Rather than undock in a miner or ratting fit ship, they could undock in a comperable ship (aka the exact same ship except with cloakbuster module fit instead of a cloak), and then have more engaging player interaction than just both parties not playing.

The problem is that the very concept of playing in such a way as to secure space is seen as completely not viable no matter how much effort is put into it. The idea that it's valid gameplay to fight for the resources simply isn't there. We must have those resources under constant and uncounterable threat at all times, rather than fight to secure them before exploiting them.

Some ideas along those lines are in game, like the siphon deployables and the monitoring gizmo. Perhaps those things need more development, or perhaps at some point it will become ok to actually profit from things you supposedly own in a way that you choose.

The arguments about the balance of the economy in this regard are nonsensical. If the economy is in such danger, then adjust the rewards. Create more sinks, change the nature of the payouts, do any of dozens of things at their disposal to balance the resources at the source of the issue instead of relying on blueballing people that don't like direct combat as a playstyle.

The fact is you don't need to attack industry in deep blue territory to get PvP, or even easy kills on soft targets. That you want to is perfectly fine, but so is the desire to defend that industry. The deeper you go the harder it should be. It's not like you can't skip deeper via wormholes... But how much effort and preperation should it take to be able to simply evacuate a non-combat ship and have that be ok?

Maybe you don't see joining a Corp or Alliance as effort to securing safe passage into well protected space. Maybe you don't see moving to sparsely inhabited systems so that local is useful as effort to securing a safer environment to operate in. Maybe you don't see watching Intel channels as actively ensuring your own well being. Maybe you don't see staying aligned and ready to move as sufficient preperation to evacuate in time to avoid a hostile. Yet that's exactly what that is. All of it is active effort, player interaction, and in a world with enough people to specialize into specific roles it is PvP delivered right to your door regardless of which member of the group shoots you.

So at what point is it ok to profit from group play? At what point is enough effort in keeping safe actually enough to expect to avoid danger on a regular basis? Because if the answer is that it's never enough then there is no point in ever playing anything but a direct combat pilot and the other aspects of the game should simply go away entirely.

Oh FFS Mike, I've been making this point for a very long time. AFK cloaking is not good game play and it needs to change. Your problem is you don’t like my suggested changes.

Moreover, I am not in favor of giving you extra security while ratting. You do not deserve it. Nor does any other ratter out there.

You keep saying it is about game balance but you wouldn't know about game balance if it jumped out a bush and shouted Boo at you. You simply want to nerf cloaks. That is not at all about game balance because in many instances nerf to one thing is an indirect buff to something else. Simply nerfing cloaks so that you can “hunt them” is an indirect buff to your ratting. Why do you deserve that buff? You never answer this question.

Auto loggoff basically gives away free intel.

--Guy is in system.
--Not on d-scan or probes.
--Auto Loggoff is AFK

Conclusion: Active cloaking ship. System unsafe. Dock up/safe up. Content denied.

Oh wait, Lucas said that couldn't happen.

There is a much bigger issue with an auto logoff feature. It would be exploited mercilessly. Auto logoff of a cloaked player would happen one of two ways.

1. They decloak for 30 seconds before logging out as happens now. This would eliminate virtually all cloaked play from the game. If you are anywhere but in friendly territory, decloaking for 30 seconds means anyone semi-decent at scanning will have the exact location of where you logged out. This means no one would hunt anymore in areas where they couldn't find some place to dock or POS up. That's a huge nerf to emergent play/anything but mindless pre-planned fleet battles.

2. You log off in space while cloaked after not pressing a key for xx time period. Now we just massively buffed moving any high value ship. Moving a super/high value cargo? Someone knows you are in the system and wants to camp you? Don't wait until downtime to log off anymore, just wait an hour or two and the client automagically safes up your ship! Now hunting high value targets is significantly more difficult.

The fact is any nerf to cloaking ATM harms PvP and helps risk averse ratters and miners. Helping the risk averse is flat out counter to the heart of EVE, and given how few fights actually take place as it is, buffing PvE at the expense of PvP is simply not something anyone should want.

And depending on what you are doing makes it harder for active players who are not terribly active. For example, you have to much more mindful if you are watching/scouting a hostile force. You might be active, but not doing much interacting with the client other than watching it. For example, you park an alt in a system your enemies are using as a staging area. You might want not interact with that client much, but you maybe checking it periodically to see if hostiles are logging in, undocking, etc.

Granted this might be a small subset of those who use cloaks, but still nerfing such players to get at those who are AFK cloaking is not a good strategy.

That is a fairly far reaching and contrived argument.

Scenario 1: Someone is actively scanning you at all times trying to pinpoint your location despite the fact that you are cloaked and immune to scanning, all in the hopes of catching that 30 second window and pinpointing you? Now they are going to camp 24/7/365 waiting at that spot for you to log in so they can catch you in the seconds before you cloak again? Yeah, that seems like a real high probability of being an issue, ever.

Scenario 2: So... no change really, except you don't have to wait for downtime to shut off the PC?

That would be Scenario 1, which they don't like because of a guy with OCD trying to scan an unscannable ship constantly to catch that 30 second window.

Just to grant some perspective, we are not talking about consensual combat, for the sake of space combat itself.

That falls into traditional PvP, with blobs and roams, along with those attempts to punch through gate camps.
These things have the players on both sides choosing to be there, and expecting to fight someone.

This side of things needs to be incentivized.

Seriously, you have penetrated the space of a hostile empire, but all you can do is look around and take screen-shots?
Is everything destructive being reserved for blobs here?

Give the PvE player something to defend. They can choose to use a more PvP capable ship than the usual PvE hull, but they should need to have limited options just like the cloaked player did.
Something PvE managed that is not fast enough to get safe.
It could even have a beacon, like a cyno, letting folks know where the important resource can be found.

If the PvE player wants to avoid confrontation, the visiting hostile deserves to have a consolation target to blow up.
OR maybe something is stolen instead, and the defenders now want to contain the target.... options exist.
If the PvE player fights back, and wins, that hostile has lost a pricey hull and module set.

We can do better.

1. No, if you do it right you start timing them. You note when they log in and then you start the timer, when they get close to the logoff timer you pop probes and start. Do people do that kind of thing? Depends on the situation.

2. He is talking about people who hunt high value targets like super capitals. It is already a rather involved process.

Incursions are about 1/3rd of that amount. That is together rat bounties and incursions are about 1.3-1.4 trillion ISK/day.

I agree, I think switching NS over entirely to mission, even in sov NS would be better. Missions that provide LP act as a sink. Letting the rats vary by region to some degree would lead to different tanks on the NS mission fits making it harder for people looking to kill such ships (i.e. you wont know exactly where the resist hole is). It also scales with number of players in a system, so you could have 5 guys doing missions or 50. In the latter case, who cares if there is an AFK camper there is you ahve 50 guys out in the system doing stuff. He attacks you got 49 other guys to come back you up.