Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Locator agents are desperately in need of an overhaul. And in my system, they would get a wide array of new buffs, both out of necessity, and because even without my proposed changes they need some changes. So here's how I would change them.

1:) All locator agents now have unlimited range. From level one to level four, all agents can now locate anyone anywhere. Let's be honest, the level one and two agents are near useless, three may be marginally useful, but I am fairly sure people only ever use level four agents. Since you had to grind standings anyway and you pay for distance of locate, it really doesn't make sense not to use level four agents. So, we'll give all agents a huge buff so they can all be useful. This also means you don't have to do tedious grinding with local NPC's just to be able to run basic locates.

2:) With all locator agents finding people at all ranges, what is left for the level two through four agents? We are going to revamp what intel is given at what level agent.
__A: Level one agents give you star system information only.
__B: Level two agents tell you whether the person is docked (at what station) or if they're in space.
__C: Level three agents tell you what ship the person is flying.
__D: Level four agents give you access to watch list functions. For a sum of 10 million isk, they will enable you to watch 1 person per transaction, for a period of 7 days. Only works in k-space, and while undocked. Further explanation on page 3, first post.

3:) Decreased search duration, decreased cooldown. Locates need to be more accessible, with how few and far between some locator agents can be. So, I'd make the search duration a mere 30 seconds, with no cooldown. If you want to toss a ton of isk at an agent finding out where every person of that 30-man industrial corp is, then you should be able to go for it.

4:) Cost. I'm not immediately familiar with how much each level of locator agent costs (again, I recall it is based on distance, I just don't remember what each level costs), but I believe the farthest current range costs 500,000 isk, am I correct? I would up the cost of the locator agents so level one agents start at that, then it doubles up from there. 1 million isk for a level two agent, 2 million isk for a level three agent, and 4 million isk for a level 4 agent.


(...)The lore: level 4 agents, being rather high up in the command chain of their respective companies, have contacts within Concord. Contacts willing to keep tabs on other players for you...for a price. Concord officers take the bribe and spread it to their friends, friends that use the stargate network to monitor your status.

Here's the catch:

All things in the game need counterplay. The counterplay for this watchlist is this: It no longer functions as a simple "online/offline" status. It functions as an "in k-space" status. Due to working through the Concord-monitored stargate network, it does not work in wormholes. And it does not work while a pilot is docked.

So is your target offline, or simply docked up? Hmm. Now the intel is incomplete, and it has to be. Streaming intel cannot be infallible, heck, streaming intel should not be possible at all. But I think this is an acceptable compromise.

__B: Level two agents tell you whether the person is docked (at what station) or if they're in space.


,,,

And it does not work while a pilot is docked.

So is your target offline, or simply docked up?

I use the watchlist to track whether or not someone is multiboxing so we know if 4 War Targets are 1 person or 4 individals which assists in tactics.

Most Intel people can tell this without the watchlist but getting OOC eyes flagged to your corp usually requires some form of proof.

This will no longer be the case and so sucks balls imho.

Seeing a lot of talk about Supercaps, so looks like as usual CCP is pandering to the elite level and saying F%^& You to everyone else.

What's next CCP? Pandas and a F%^&ing Farming Option?

you should be able to know if you are wasting your time looking for some one who has just quit playing

You know its a good change when you generate this kind of response.
All free intel should go from this game.

You should be required to take more effort than looking at a contact to see if your target is online.
Being able to do so has been OP for a long time.

Sounds like interesting and challenging gameplay.

A lot better than free-force fed intel.

That's (pretty much) flagged as an exploit, iirc. People used to spam convos at people to cripple their ability to use the UI was the reason.

To be fair, this was a while ago.

While the asset is logged off it also can't affect a single thing, and unless I remember my locators wrong, if you know the asset exists at all, you can then use a locator agent to find which system it was in and if they logged off in space or in a station (& possibly even in a citadel). So yes you can't blow up someone's ship that they are actively piloting while they are logged off. And you should never be able to localise it and lie in wait to ambush them as soon as they log in either, because that's bad gameplay and denies them any chance to respond.

You want to locate it precisely, locate it before they log off. Or accept you only have a rough location.
But while you can't affect them logged off, they also can't affect you or find you. So fair is fair.