Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Even after the change hunting a cloaked ship will be hard, and in many cases near impossible.

And your precious local may very well find its head on the chopping block.

And fortunately for the good of the game you won't be making that decision.

If the situation wasn't so stupidly one sided already there would be room for compromise. Unfortunately, it is what it is, with the cloak so ludicrously overpowered that any Chang at all will be perceived as a grevious nerf to entitled gank bears.

There is no wall that local puts up to keep anyone safe. That safety comes from active and continuous effort on the part of players.

It's not 'hard to impossible' to hunt a cloaked ship. It's just plain impossible. Reducing the safety levels of cloaks down to 'very hard' would be a welcome change, and to date any suggestion to do so has been met with abject terror and stupidity.

Local isn't going anywhere. It's a vital game function. It might have an extra hoop thrown in to see it, but that's about it. They aren't going to turn the entire game into wormholes. Very few people like worm holes.

I helped kill Admiral Goberius a couple nights ago and he had a cloak. He even cloaked.

Yes,my fleet mates and I are just that awesome....doing the impossible!

Ahh, and there we have it. "Local is not going anywhere...." The old "nerf their game not mine" attitude.

Nerf them both!

Hmm... Hundreds of people participate in Intel channel, pilot constantly watches and stays aware of environment, has to actually take action by docking to stay safe...

Compared to lone cloaker pushing a button and then going out for the day.

Yep, totally balanced effort. You can dismiss and downplay the other side all you want, but the more you do the more trivial you make your own effort appear. Sure, you had to get there in the first place, but so did your target. He made diplomatic inroads and toes whatever party line the Corp/alliance demands. You crashed a few gates and pushed a button. At every turn your target not only does more, but is forced to continually do it to keep the benefit. You have a one time set up, and then are fine until you choose not to be.

Totally balanced.

I want more active game to, so yes cloack MUST be change to avoid afk clocking (a lot of idea can be use... a lot).
Remove local in exchange ? If you want remove local who is "perfect intel" start to learn something: the perfect intel is to have with dotlan or in game a map with PVE/PVP/mining activity in one system without moving in. You remove local you MUST remove this information. HO WAIT it's call`l WH. And some pvp player in this thread already said :"please no it will be harder to find people in some area of 0,0 without it".
In fact cloack cane nerf without nerf other thing (cry if you want but ...). In the past perma cloack have a counter : Carrier assit. The only problem was it's just to strong and you can do a lot of thing with this and not only protect miner/pve player with "more dps" to afraid ganker.
CCP nerf carrier assit, but don't nerf cloack in the same time... So yes people who try to counter cloack have already offer something , but clock don't change.

Now imagine, we remove local what will happen in the few days after? Less people in 0,0. Less target(see how many people left after end of carrier assist and explosion of AFK cloack ins one area of 0,0).So actually you will kill EVE online, by killing 0,0 with removing near all farmer. Because yes people who want farm without local live in WH, you know this part of space where you don't have local and you can't have a colloquy cyno on you're face. This part of space where you can check all entrance and close it.


You really think intel and local are passive? Ok so be passive means you don't need to do nothing to use it.AFK Cloack i need 1 click and after yes it's 100 % passive gameplay. Local, you must check it overtime, you must react in real time . Intel is passive? People send information in it, if they don't you have no intel, so you have player who send message to all other player to said to they "alert enemy incoming". So it's an active game play who need people react and click.


Now let's analyse cloack deeper: All use of active clocking have a good impact on the game (more or less, yes we can debate about recloacking delay of some ship a little to faster... but yea it's near balanced gameplay). But AFK cloacking is just a gameplay to avoid other player play: perfect to kill a game. Yes true afk does nothing, but you can't know if he is afk or not. The main argument to nerf local and avoid it, is same as said: remove cloack you avoid it (same impact on game you unbalanced the whole game to solve one problem).

What is the solution: Nerf perma cloack, a lot of idea are on this post, OA is under preparation, maybe CCP must start to try one idea of OA with POS module will evolve in service slot the day who OA arrive (and permit to see if the counter is balanced or not... think to this CCP).

Why some people cry to protect afk cloack here: They are afraid to see cloack hard nerfed... carrier was hard nerved in the past, people cry and it change nothing to it.

Yeah, ignoring all the effort to get there.

Oh, and if there is no effort to get there...well, that is kinda on you.

Oh, and yeah....it takes no effort to do....nothing. Shocking...shocking. Yes, lets make it so doing nothing requires effort.

Do you guys even think about what you are writing.

Why do you want to nerf active cloakers? In fact, wrong thread. This is the thread on AFK cloaking. Most of the anti-people are in fact anti-cloak, but given that cloaked ships do surprising little DPS, cloaks are fairly well balanced.

But they don't. If I am active why should I be able to be cloaked as long as I need to be...including past the 30 minute mark as per your first suggestion.

Here lets consider this:

1. AFK cloaking is wildly over-blown as a problem.
2. Those who complain invariable are people who don't...PvP directly. At best they may engage in market PvP or something like that, but shooting people in the face? Nope, not for them.
3. The bigger problem with this whole issue is the interplay between local and cloaks and people looking to hunt and kill others. It tends to lead to really boring game play.

The solution is not to wreck cloaks, but to look at the entire picture and come up with a better system. The one I and others advocate is using the OA to scan for ships, but also get rid of local and make it something you can "get back" via the OA. This makes local vulnerable to attack, removes AFK cloaking, and if we add in some method to subvert the intel provided by the OA then we might get some really interesting emergent behavior.

So Brok, just to clarify...

Your stance is to just screw balance because you feel that PvE players in Null who have taken several steps, invested hundreds of man hours, and must maintain constant efforts to keep their 'safety' in place are not deserving of the fruits of their efforts?

Never mind that my arguments have never been about null in particular. I don't care where the cloak is or what it's doing... If it's so safe that it's player can go afk indefinitely while there are active hunters in the solar system looking for it... Then that's just ludicrous. To me, it's even worse outside of null, where the cloaks are being used for vital fleet functions- if the task is that important, then it needs to carry greater risk.

Every argument about how little effort is required to make use of local falls completely flat on its face in the light of the fact that there is *some* effort involved no matter how little you feel it to be, while the cloaker is even safer and zero effort at all is involved.

The part you appear to be missing is the effort of the ratter. As everyone likes to discuss null, we can start with this example:

What would happen if suddenly there were no Intel channels? What would happen if the ratter didn't watch local? What would happen if he ignored neuts and reds in system. What if he tried to do his thing in space where he wasn't allied? What if he fails to meet obligations his allies demand, if any?

For every element there, the ratter and his allies are putting out effort to create a sufficiently safe environment that a ship not fit for PvP can survive. It's hardly no effort, though as is true of many tasks the amount of effort is reduced beyond some setup time. Even so, the continuing effort is hardly zero.

You see 'effort' as direct confrontation in PvP, and that is certainly one form of it. But this is a sandbox that is supposed to allow for varied playsyles. Their effort and time is no less valuable or legitimate for being spent in negotiation, work details, or other areas not involved in ship to ship combat, no matter how entitled gank bears feel to being entertained ant others' expense.

And it's not mutual invulnerability. The ratters are never effective in any way while docked. The cloaker is, and becomes more so the longer he keeps it up. Every moment he is in space he is breaking down the vigilance of the locals. He is stalking prey, becoming more and more effective with every hour that passes. You see... That's the price of continuous vigilance, it's impossible to maintain. He sits there, influencing the decisions of anyone intelligent, demanding effort be spent on him, even if that's just checking killboards and activity cycles for his Corp- assuming that info is useful and accurate. Worse, while his intended targets are either avoiding him, as is their defensive strategy, or wasting time and resources checking him out or compromising fits and other preparations against him, he puts out zero effort whatsoever beyond crashing a few gates. Even more than that, since cloaks are forever, even that gate crashing could be done in the targets off hours when few if any defenders would have had opportunity to 'counter' him on the gate.

So yeah... Your stance is indeed pretty much 'screw balance' so long as the inequity supports your play style. If nothing but doing things your way counts as effort, then this isn't really a sandbox.