Player Features and Ideas Discussion

So that would be zero evidence of anything getting killed by an AFK cloaker.

Sorry man. I just dont wanna go round and round with you on circular arguments. I mean you did spend a good portion of the thread saying stations cant change hands.

Nikk had said:

You seem to be contradicting yourself.

If the camper is expending zero effort, they have no fleet to attack with, nor are they paying attention.
Zero effort = zero risk.

If the camper has friends on standby, then they are making a clear effort. The expectation that this requires comparable effort to neutralize seems fair.

Your objection, is based apparently on the uncertainty where you believe they have no threat, but owing to your lack of this awareness, you waste effort defending against what might otherwise exist.
In other words, you expect they are bluffing, and feel cheated.


Haywoud Jablomi replied:
And you seem to be talking in circles. Growing tired of your overly literal interpretations of what I say.

Here minimal effort. Is that better? You do realize that your last paragraph makes no sense, right?

I realize that you dont understand how null actually works, but I would guess you would be smart enough to realize that if there is a threat in system, no matter how little that threat is, you cant just ignore it.

No, like I have said a hundred times so far. The issue I see with AFK cloaking is that once they are in system and setup camp, there is nothing you can do to threaten them. They achieve 100% safety. This, I see as a flaw.

The overall debate really does come down to how long it should be allowed. In the short term I have never had an issue with it campers. However when it moves into weeks and months, it becomes trolling. The fact that this is possible, is where I think the game mechanic needs to be addressed.

Nikk's response:
My last paragraph makes perfect sense, when you acknowledge that a so-called AFK Cloaking player cannot both be a threat, and expending no effort, at the same time.

Whether you or some other player believe he is a threat has no meaning.

You have to guess.
On the bright side, you can do research on the name, and find out if they have a pattern of active and passive time periods, what ship they seem to be using, etc.
If they are an older player with no meaningful kills to track, then they are either bluffing, or new to this activity.

A circular argument, which you mislabel my previous replies as, relies on itself for justification.
An odd bit of projection you are doing, as I simply point out direct facts about two possible states of activity, which do not rely on each other at all.
In fact, I attempt to break the so-called circle when I point out that they cannot be both AFK and a threat.
You however, are tying together the effort for one state, (no threat by no effort), and the benefit of the alternate state, (effort present so threat exists).

That is simply not a valid argument.
The uncertainty you claim as validation certainly doesn't replace that effort, which is not present, so the threat is simply not present either in it's absence.

As we are not being forced to assume anything, any who choose to make such a choice do so for their own reasons, as it has been demonstrated and accepted by all sides that evidence supporting such a judgment is specifically absent.

Nikk had said:
My last paragraph makes perfect sense, when you acknowledge that a so-called AFK Cloaking player cannot both be a threat, and expending no effort, at the same time.

Haywoud Jablomi replied:
This statement is wrong and you know it. Potential threat and threat are the same thing in the context of this game. A player sitting in space is expending MINIMAL effort and is creating a disproportionate threat to the players in that system. Though I agree this is how cloak should work. like I said already. The time this should be allowed really is the issue and really is why people complain about AFK cloaks in general.

Nikk's response:
Potential threat does not equal threat. This false equivalency is a leading cause of play stoppage, as too many players cannot grasp the subtleties of uncertainty.
As a previous generation was prone to say: Don't count your chickens before they hatch.
That nugget of homespun wisdom referred to not assuming things would turn out as you expect them to, as far as making plans went.
The logic works for this too, in our context.
Don't assume the unseen player is a threat, simply because he might be.
If you apply full logic to the situation, you realize you are discounting multiple potential threats as a given, while treating the name seen in local as proven, simply because it is an obvious presence.
You COULD hit a lag bubble, and get popped.
You COULD have someone AWOX you from your own blue list.
You COULD have someone log in at your location, and pop you before you were able to react.

These things happen to other pilots, often enough to be known and understood as risks.
Maybe these seem less probable, so that even a risk averse player can disregard them.
But logic dictates, at some point, that the possibly AFK player really IS AFK at some points, making their threat potential more real, even if this is not commonly known at the time.

Nikk had said:
In fact, I attempt to break the so-called circle when I point out that they cannot be both AFK and a threat

Haywoud Jablomi replied:
Again you take things far to literal. You know well that "AFK" in the context of this debate is a play style to camp. Since this has already been established several pages back, your statement invalidates itself cause you know that its impossible to tell if they are actually AFK. Thus they are always a threat.

You keep going in circles cause you keep rehashing out things that have already been discussed and you keep ignoring the points that have been shown.

Nikk's response:
It is not acceptable that the defending player have perfect awareness of the hostile's threat level, without due diligence, as well as the hostile having opportunity to advance their goal through superior effort.

While noone is debating whether it is possible to get kills in null as a general issue, it is disputed as to how difficult getting PvE kills may be.
You have more than ably demonstrated kills happen, outside the specifics of PvE activity, but you have not provided convincing proof of PvE kills occurring despite proper defensive behavior.

Yes I have. You choose to ignore them to support your side.



More evidence that you no longer live in null sec. Every neutral that comes into a system is always treated as hostile and for good reason. They normally are. 99% of the time they are. Of course those other things you said can happen but they have 0 bearing on the topic at hand.



Threat is defined as someone or something that could cause trouble, harm, etc. Threat is always potential till an action is taken. See if you lived in null you would know there is no uncertainty. It is always assumed that a neutral is there to do harm. That is why people react to it by forming fleets or docking high end assets.



LOL Again obvious you dont live in null. Go try camping a system in a covops sometime. It's insanely easy. There is no superior effort in decloaking, and cynoing in friends. BTW I have never suggested an idea that would allow for perfect awareness of a threat.

Nullbear: This is unfair. Why should I need to get friends to protect my billions of isk industry?

High sec Hauler: This is unfair. Why should I need to get friends to protect my billions of isk industry?


See, you guys have WAY more in common than you think.

Then I'll "afk chat" in local. You know someone WAS there.

Are they still there? Are they inactive? Are the silent, hunting?

Join us for more on these pressing questions at 11, Bob, where we also discuss the crux of the issue "When will these bears grow a spine?"

Oh believe me, it makes a big difference to the greater yellow bellied ratter we see in null.

You see, if they had the testicular fortitude to rat knowing you're there - they would also do that today and we'd not have these conversations

AFK cloaking itself is absolutely, 100% acceptable and balanced. As long as we have the omniscient and infallible local chat that instantaneously provides everyone in system a complete list of pilots, AFK cloaking is a reasonable counter measure to this.

There is one mechanic that breaks AFK cloaking, however:
Hot drop mechanics allow an AFK cloaker to return and drop a pragmatically unscoutable force directly onto a target. While hotdrops have many good uses, combining hotdropping with AFK cloaking allows an aggressive cloaker to drop a near-perfect counter on anyone they find in local. This is very unbalanced.

Daichi. Thanks for the info. Interesting reading.

I do kind of wish that when you quoted....



... that you had included the entire paragraph.



See this I agree with. I am perfectly ok with PVP and hunting other players. That is part of EVE.

You know maybe I am on the wrong side of the EVE map. I have always been part of a small corp. We rarely get camped, we have active players and overall we support each other. Our response time for invaders is a couple minutes and we have some very solid PVP players. So the very few times we have had a camper in our system, we just move to a new area, let him play with himself for a few weeks and then he leaves. We actually just did this to a guy a couple days ago. Every time I have had to deal with a camper it has been cause they got butt hurt. Last guy lost a 200 mil ship cause we caught him being silly in our space. Almost immediately he shows up and just starts camping our space and poorly attempting to talk smack in local.

Living in drone lands doesnt help either. The ratting is absolutely horrible. No loot at all, no relic sites, mining is poor at best and if you see a fancy drone running around its loaded with 100k worth of junk. The rare exception are the chips for the SOE ships which are super rare.

So with that said. This is why I view camping as a troll type thing. Though I know in concept people can camp to deny space to derank a system or to gather intel, I have only seen it once and that was during the timer on a POS. Not like anyone could argue that shouldnt of happened.

I personally think cloaking should change. AFK cloaking just happens to be the focal point for many of the reasons why I think it should change. Now that doesnt mean that I think its should change on its own and if you look back at my posts you will see my suggestions on the change.

Solid truth about the issue is that there are justifications on both sides why things should and shouldnt change. The links you provided shows that CCP isnt overly happy with the situation but I get the impression they really dont know how to change it.

I have said this so many times before but I wish I had a way to show people how I have seen stealth done in other games. I think if people saw it they could easily use the idea to adapt for usage in EVE.