Player Features and Ideas Discussion

With the changes to the buddy list the usual way to hunt war targets went out of the window. You can't check whether people are online and have to use locator agent, which in 9 out of 10 sends you to a log off location.

I think changing the buddy list mechanic was good, since it was a mechanic that wasn't "in" the game. Also it was a two edged sword - war targets could also check whether the hunter was online, so all in all the change was fair from my point of view.

This leaves us with a pretty crappy remaining mechanic however. Locator agents essentially require two account to use, which is bad in of itself. Then they also waste your time, because they don't tell you whether that player is actually online. Now the privacy argument ("someone is online") doesn't really count from my point of view, because you still easily check whether someone is online by using the locator agent and flying to the location.

So i would like to suggest the following:

1. locator agent tells you upfront whether a person is not available (for a fee)
2. He doesn't give you the location, he gives you a mission you need to scan down.
3. Once you scan down the site and fly to it, the mission updates and you get a new site.
[...] repeat a couple of times until you hone in on the target, each update gets you close, and you may decide to manually scout the area,
first mission, maybe highsec/lowsec/null, second mission region, third mission 2-3 constellations out, fourth mission constellation, 5th mission system
4. At the same time the target might get a warning, chance is based on the time the hunter needs to complete the sites

This is just a rough idea, basically the idea is to simulate an actual "hunt" following a trail. And it could be tied into the regular mission mechanic so it is easy to understand.

Thoughts?