Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Yes I can see them.

But i cannot counter cause they can just stay in their little ship a danger to all in the system. But this is one of the places where a hard counter is needed. You may even make it so that it is only possible to find cloak ships which does not warp around ever 20 min or so. But give us a chance of doing something about an annoyance. If we cant we can keep ping ponging messages in here. And if it only hurt the one afk who is not warping then you who are actually playing the game should have no reason to be against it.



No it is not really exciting. And though he may not have killed some one in a time frame before does not make it so that he will not now. I know of most of the tools and use them but when I know one is in a system and I do not have back up against a potential threat, I am not willing to risk an expensive ship for littele profit which cant cover a 20% of what I am using, I see no reason to try and make my isk go down when I know the danger is there I will find other ways of making isk. Which is why I do wormholes while this is happening, but that does not make it less of an annoyance. Cause it is actually just about every thing els I could do in the game is blocked by one player who just sits there, online afk does not ralley matter the fact that he can sit with out any risk to him self, but increasing risk for several other players tells me something is wrong.

I am willing to risk it in wormholes and that is a thrill and I like it. but being on my toes all the time while playing is not to my liking af its to much stress. But I must say I am happy about doing wormholes as it gives me a rush. It is like my own little heroine brand I guess.

Yes, because it happens in other contexts too.

If I set up buy and sell orders I have an impact even when I am AFK.

If I set up my skiff in a HS belt and go AFK for several minutes I am having an effect while AFK.

If I sit in a station in HS during a wardec I am having an effect even though I might be AFK.

If I sit in a station in NPC space I will have an effect on anyone else in system even if I am AFK.




I'm sure many thought the same thing who fell victim to Carlos Hathcock.



What profit does a cloaked AFK player obtain?

But it actually is safe if you are awake and don't go out to the camper. I wish it was right what you said that it was not safe but it kinda is. I am not AFK farming, when I make isk I am always on. And even though it is not ment to be safe we still should have tools to see that which makes it unsafe. Thats how thing usually work, there is a counter to every thing. And not just that we can see them in local I mean a hard counter cause they should not feel more safe than you when flying around in a system.




But buying and selling is not some thing that affect warfare as it is happening so I do not see your point.

So skiff I guess is for the purpose of setting up a counter gank?
If this is the case then while you are afk in it and you are not cloaked there is the possibility of you getting destroyed so again do not see your point.

I would also suggest that maybe people in a station not be shown in local though that might be used to counter drops on a high level as you can be ready for them and they do not know you are a couple of hundreds in the system which are not undocked. Ofcores it could be shown in local whether they are docked or not, afk or not. If they have not interated with the game for several minuts = set afk.

And I am not saying every other aspect of the game is perfect, but fix one thing at a time. Whit this the cloaky thing it might incorporate cyno, cloak and local. Maybe even a few more and then start fixing the other problems. right now I think this is a bigger problem, as I have yet to put me in the position of the other side and see what thier problem is and I will hopefully do that at some point and then you will se me rant in some other thread.



But he might have been in the sight of another sniper or a sodier could have walked up behind him. It might never have happend but the possibility of it where there. The cloaked ship cant be targeted as you have to see things to target things in this game. There is know possibility here for getting the ship unless he decloakes.



The problem is that it is not possible to move a system over with out seeing another red doing exactly the same thing. It is almost all the systems where I am. and that is what pisses me of fair enough if they want to use the tactic in a few systems so that I could just move over, but when they place alt in every damn systems it is to much even all of you should be able to see that. Cause if they all have cynos no where to go then. And do remember I am not suggesting a totally safe environment. I just ask that if it is not safe for me in the system it should not be safe for some one sitting in a ship in the system who is cloaked, I mean it is only fair that he not be safe. Before you start taking that people in station is in to the idea, you might want to think if you want to be able to loose every thing you got when not online because that is the next step I would say. lets destroy stations and every thing on them is lost. How ever this would probably be to brutal. But I guess it could be fun and a new economy object would be in the game one which would require a lot to build.

Goal post moving duly noted. You said "an impact on the game". Those things are all impacts.



No, in HS you use a skiff or procuror with a tank so you won't be ganked. It is quite expensive to gank a skiff or procuror. And yeah you can go AFK and have little worry of a gank.

I would suggest that the only reason to "fix" cloaking is due to the interplay with local and how it can lead to less active play--i.e. remove local, put in the observatory array for players to regain a source of intel that is vulnerable and make it possible to find a cloaked ship that lingers too long at a given spot...if you fit your observatory array accordingly, which will almost surely mean you'll lose some other aspects of intel. The game is always about trade offs.



There were a number of such close incidents. But for a cloaking ship there are similar risks. You have to get to your target system which means jumping gates and make yourself vulnerable to various gate camps. And if you do decide to engage you must make yourself completely vulnerable to counter attack.




Oh please. Yes, there is always another cloakers every where you can't do anything anywhere. Spare us this kind of histrionics please. If you guys are so easily cowed by a single guy in local...guess what you won't be holding that space for long is my guess. Get out there and rat in a fleet. Go test how likely he is AFK or not. I have actually ratted quite safely in a system with a hostile AFK cloaker. I knew his TZ and my TZ and figured the risks were low enough. I faced higher risk from people roaming through our space than that guy sitting there in local.

Market trading is PvP. Perfect example given above.
Hauling is PvP. If you're buying goods in Jita and hauling them elsewhere, you're impacting the local market and forcing folks to either lower prices or move their goods elsewhere to sell.
Mining is PvP. The amount of ore you extract impacts the market, either directly by selling it or indirectly by reducing demand. And don't forget the actual direct competition you see when things get crowded like hisec ice belts.

Literally every activity in EvE is PvP.

Even sitting AFK cloaked in an undocked ship 23/7.

I have been following the discussion raised by Beeflee Filee. It feels like, in lieu of the finer details of the problems being discussed, the debate simply stops a people discussing their attitude to general gameplay in EVE. Therefore, I would like to summarize the points made, just so it's clear what exactly is being discussed.

What Beeflee Filee points out is that it is not healthy for the gameplay that there is a tactic which allows attackers to easily kill a target as well as limit the ISK mining of rivals, with minimal effort or risk. It doesn't matter the fights are "fair" - the point is that the defender can do very little to guard against the mentioned tactic.

Efforts of the attackers

* Keep AFK cloaked players in various systems of their rival corporation. This could be players who are AFK for days except the time when they decide to go for a kill.

* Using the intel from cloaked players, check if the rival corporation has any fleet of ships assembled to avoid the possible risk of them using cyno defensively.

* Find target to destroy, warp in a significant group of ships through cyno, and destray said target without losses because you outnumber them.


Efforts of the defenders (for any chance of preventing this tactic)

* Make sure your corporation has a fleet of ships assembled at any time of the week.

* Spot enemy ships and survive long enough to warp in defensively through cyno


Given the above, attackers will know when they can strike safely and don't need to use a lot of time on it (when you want to attack, simply check intel from scans). Meanwhile, defenders would have to spend all their time being ready for the defensive cyno (assuming there is always an enemy registered in local in their system). If you have a corporation of 50 people, it's hardly realistic to assume that they will be online and assembled so often that it would not be possible for attackers to find a risk-free target several times throughout the week.

Beeflee Filee, understanding that cloaking is currently needed to avoid the defenders getting away, has suggested various things that could balance this tactic:

* Allow of method of scanning an area and uncloaking ships that are in the same spot for a long amount of time. If you add this feature, remove local. That means cloaking can be countered (albeit not too effectively), but attackers can more easily find a target because defenders don't have the intel of local.

* Only allow cyno to be fitted on the most expensive ships. This would mean greater risk for those employing the mentioned tactic.

* Limit the amount of time people can stay cloaked (so there's no AFK cloaking), but make sure that people entering a system through a wormhole are not registered in local (to make up for cloaking being weaker).

* Make sure that people who go AFK for a given amount of time will be logged off (not registered in local) or marked as AFK. If they simply aren't registered in local, the defenders would only have to keep a fleet ready when active enemies, not for the guy who is AFK in their system for a week. Meanwhile, the latter option of marking people as AFK would have the pitfall of giving too much information for potential enemies, and they can explain this knowledge to attack the structures of this player.


So, to move forward in this discussion, I think it's necessary to:

- Recognize that there is a problem in gameplay, even if you don't want it to be fixed.
- Look at the suggested solutions and discuss why they would work and why they would not.

This could how ever give rise to other problems, such as no one ever in local especially if you know when the updates to local happens. I am not against no local but then we need a way to find all ships instead of only non cloaked ships. This could mean that you could fly 20-25 systems with out ever being in local. That I would think is a bit to far but I do agree it is hardly a good way local works right now.

I just can't wait to see when CCP starts to make changes to local, cloaking I am not sure that Cyno needs any changes. Cyno is cool as it is as this makes it hard to know how much you are going to engage.

Carriers are intended for fleet play, a solo carrier will die almost every time. They are supposed to be vulnerable, also in null sec you are supposed to be in danger if you aren't able to defend your space.

I've had impact on players while not even logged in. A strategically timed forum post, a casual EvEmail to a potential target from the forum server, etc. can all influence in-game player behavior.

This kind of metagaming is at the core of EvE. AFK cloaking is nothing compared to that.



In the entire two year history of this thread, nobody has established that there is a problem with cloaking gameplay. All anyone has established, and established at length mind you, is that their reactions to a hostile ship cloaked in local interfere with their desired gameplay. As I said over two years ago at the onset of this thread, cloaking, AFK or otherwise, has never harmed anyone. All cloaking does is shatter the illusion of safety that local is friendly. Any impact to gameplay is based wholly on how you react to that illusion being shattered.

To be 100%, perfectly clear, the problem that you and so many others have railed about over the years is with your reaction to a specific game mechanic, not the game mechanic itself.

Is sneaking an pilot into a hostile system to stay perpetually cloaked there annoying and non-consensual gameplay? Absolutely.

Welcome to EvE, where your desired gameplay is not guaranteed.

Out of curiosity, how would the game client know that someone is AFK? Quick answer: it can't. All it can know is if a player hasn't made any commands to the client for a certain amount of time, the client has absolutely no way to know if someone is at the keyboard and just watching, or actually AFK doing something else. So, that's the first issue with the AFK flag: it's impossible.

The second iusse with the AFK flag is that it would not make you more safe. But, for sake of argument, let's go down that rabbit hole for a moment and try to do something close to an actual AFK flag. How would you set the AFK flag? After X minutes of no commands to the client you're flagged AFK?

Okay, great. Let's set X to 15 minutes, which makes sense because it's the length of many other timers.

Do you realize how badly that could be gamed? Most cyno traps take at least that long to set up anyways. If I have some idea where you're going to be mining, I warp to that belt and wait, only now I get the benefit of you thinking that I'm AFK after only 15 minutes of waiting so I likely won't have to wait long. You undock, warp back to the spot you were mining in, and I pop a cyno on you while you are utterly convinced that I'm AFK. Without the AFK flag mechanic, you likely wouldn't have even undocked, so your AFK flag just made you less safe.

Oh, that's no good. Let's bump up the timer to 60 minutes. We want to make sure that pilots like me are really AFK, not just faking it.

Your AFK flag just offered you far less protection. For the price of one minute of activity out of sixty, I can still convince you that I'm fully at keyboard and make you even less likely to undock because I'm not flagged AFK. Your AFK flag just made you more likely to stay docked.

Do you understand now why an AFK flag is such a bad idea? It can be gamed just as badly, if not far worse, than AFK cloaking and would potentially make you less safe, not more.