Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Only 10% of a corp/alliance will be online at any given time, that means 90% of your targets are not playing and you have no idea which they are. This is the problem, the vast majority of your time as a merc is spent chasing targets that don't even exist which is why I used that mission example as that is exactly what mercs face now.

I'm not exactly shocked the biggest anti pvp campaigner is against giving mercs a simple tool that tells them a target is offline so they can actually go hunt things rather than spend all of their time chasing none existent targets.

Its exactly the situation as mercs face applied to missions.






How exactly is it easier to hunt people when you cannot tell when they are offline meaning 90% of the target you will hunt don't even exist.

So, the fact that 90% of targets dont exist and mercs have no way to tell has no impact at all? Your logic is once again bollocks.

They exist, they had under the watch list chosen not to log in, how many of them without being reported for free on teh watch list will decide to log in now, how many of them will not bother to change their location because the perfect intel of watch lists is gone, how many of them will now start doing something in space now that the perfect intel of watch lists is removed.

That 90% figure you brandy around as a prop, like a walking stick to lean upon in your dotage is not going to be 90% is it?

The simple fact is that peoples behaviour changes when things get changed, my own behaviour has changed in fact.

Actually I will tell you how many of the people in the corp I have war dec'd are operating in the area in which I am operating, and how many of their allied mercs are around, zero. Notice that I said operating which is important.

When I go blap their POCO I expect 3 PIRAT tackle and 8 PIRAT DPS and 6 neutral reppers, perhaps one or two people from Vendetta or Public-Enemy.

Does that make a point or not?

Different ,
I suspect ( don't know, really ) that the change was made to slow down the highsec-wardec-noob-bashers a bit.
The before mentioned , im leet.. i just killed a T1 cruiser with my decked out faction whore-boat.

In that, working as intended. ( i guess, if that was the intention )
In that, good job of ccp protecting the new breed of players.

Face it, we all know players who stopped playing after endless highsec wardecs who they could
not match SP and experience wise.
Working as intended ? Empty servers = no game, for none of us.

And, while this is my personal opinion, when your one of those hero's who bash the new guys,
your not worthy to name yourself mercenary.

The real mercenary's can still do there job, no watch list needed.

You speak as if we were debating coming changes or one that just happened and say 'nayh doomsayers!' except taht the change has been made for a while now and I can tell you, as non-pipe/hub camper merc, yesI am a hunter, always have been, my gameplay now is running some Locators on high profile targets/contracts, send scouts to check on them see if they are online (most of the time they are not) for hours on end.

My main stays logged off in the meanwhile to maximize scouting on this account too. When I find no target, I check main mission/mining hubs, because. Sometimes I get lucky.

For example, I got no kill yesterday, after 4-5 hours of roaming and running some Locators. found some Alpha accounts/new players in frigates, I didn't bother the 15 jumps to kill a Venture. I don't focus on newbros.

As for your 'but wardec and attack structures to get a response' argument: Sometimes you get contracts over structures, fine enough, mostly not though, most of the time it's the players thet are the targets. Nobody that I know bash structures for fun.


For heaven's sake, where did you read we ask for the Watchlist back? We do not. We get it we won't have it back. What we want is SOME fonctionality (like Locator changes for example) to PARTIALLY compensate the empty void it's removal created.

You do realize you will get zero kills out of that war right? That is you will spend HOURS on end reinforcing POCO, for NOTHING, except annoying PIRAT and friends.

That's target selection.

Thanks for a reply, it is good to get one from a merc, first of all I know of you, there are some war dec players I keep tabs of, mainly though reputation and contacts and of course forum posting.

The population in hisec is pretty much beaten down into a quivering mass of avoidance, your failure to find anything worthy to shoot is perhaps more due to that then anything else. People who are into that sad and sorry state will take time to start doing things when they see threads like this and they have people like me telling them not to fear, from my prespective the change in attitude has not really happaned yet and will it happen, yes, when the new bros that went into null sec first come to hisec for a different type of play.

I actually do support the locator agent change and I hope CCP sees sense in doing that, however I would also like it so that if you ask an agent who I have high standings with, that agent will tip me off, no such thing as a free lunch...

I repeat the key thing is target selection, you as mercs do not get to chose who people are paying to hit, but you do have a choice on whether to take the contract, for example one forum warrior got uptight with me and asked a number of mercs to war dec me and they said no as it was not worth it, and you know why, because my play style is to make it too damn difficult and they know it. They refused a contract because they knew that I would just be too much of a pain.

I do realise that it will be difficult to get kills out of that war dec, but not impossible, and I have my reasons which I will not go into at this point, but I have been having fun, when the campaign is over I will explain it to you. But I have annoyed PIRAT, I had their CEO camping me, which was funny as hell and the log off trap was hilarious.

As I said it is target selection or contract acceptance which is key, going after a character who can move around and has assets all over the place like me is very difficult, I get someone who wants to camp me all the time in hisec with too much force, well I will see him in Stain then, or Tenal, or low sec, or he makes a mistake and gives me an opportunity.

You are doing it right, you have my respect and I hope that hisec can start to improve over time to give you more of what you find fun, but it was beaten down into a quivering mass of mass avoidance and people like me want to change that.

No you prattled on like you always do and avoided it.

Its a simple question, how many in my corp are online right now.

If I am on grid with the target already, I will either kill them, or follow them if they manage to run. At that point I know they're online, I know they're in space and I can see them and should be able to kill them. If they escape at that point - well done, well deserved.

Really, we don't need a way to track down players, because we already have one. We need a way to tell if these players are online *before* we spend lots of time trying to track them down, because it is really frustrating to track down mark after mark, only to find that they aren't playing the game.

Unlike players in Eve, wildlife or cars in the real world cannot just vanish. If I follow an animal track, I will eventually either find the animal or lose the track, but I can be sure that the animal still must be around somewhere, so it may be worth to keep looking. Maybe I can pick the track back up, maybe I run into the animal while searching. But if a player logs off, he just ceases to exist. And if I cannot tell whether the target I'm tracking actually exists or not, that's rather frustrating.