“I’m responding to you repeatedly but I am not interested in a discussion with you.”
I’m just going to say you’re not very good at showing a lack of interest in having a discussion. My advice… start with actually not having a discussion. You know… by not replying?
“Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
If I buy a BPO from a NPC source or a BPO from a player on the market, the experience is the same. Since only one involves another player, I have trouble calling either player interaction. I could be convinced though.
The rest of the post you ignored:
" it takes you an extra 20-30 seconds to log in before checking the order after walking away for an hour to do something else. If you’re waiting 30 minutes between checking orders I’m not sure why an extra 30 seconds would be an issue."
Sorry… you’re complaining about 30 seconds every 30 minutes (or whatever arbitrary time you choose). I don’t think that is a significant enough downside to matter.
That’s fine… but doesn’t really change my response. The point is that a person hiding in station/citadel who’s at their PC has the ability to make decisions that can lead to interaction. And the fleet can try to press the issue by hanging around and goading the player into taking an action that makes them vulnerable. Offering 1v1’s, doing a log off trap at an abandoned MTU, trash talking in local… whatever.
Doing that is wasted time if the person who docks up went to bed. The fleet could be wasting time where they could be searching for other targets by trying to goad a AFK-station sitter into combat.
Logging off a afk-station sitter is just as useful as logging off an afk-cloaked camper to keep the active players from wasting time trying to interact with afk toons. Active players aren’t wasting their time taking steps to trap or goad a player into action who’s not present at their PC. The same benefits apply.
And that can never happen. If you require activity every 30 minutes then I will glance at EVE every 29 minutes to push the “don’t be AFK flagged” button, but nothing more. Maybe I’ll even remote desktop in from my phone so I can press that button every 29 minutes even when I’m completely AFK. But since I’m occupied with something else I’m not even going to look at anything besides the “don’t be AFK flagged” button. You can’t force people to meaningfully interact with the game, so your empty chair exists either way.
You have to sleep sometime. Even if it eliminates 6 hours of every 20 hours of AFK play it’s a positive step.
It’s an irrelevant step. You’re adding extra complexity and potential balance problems to eliminate a negligible problem, and you don’t even eliminate it at all if your AFK cloaker is smart enough to use one of the 100% undetectable methods of automating anti-AFK-flag inputs. And either way you’ll still face lots of situations where a player is committed to not interacting with you and no amount of attempting to force an interaction can possibly succeed.
AFK timers are not complex. They exist in virtually every MMO on the market. And having a timer makes the automation quite easy to detect.
“You’ve stayed logged in except for downtime for the last 5 days with an AFK timer in place. You’re either sharing your account or botting. BANNED.”
And yes… there are always ways to get around everything. That doesn’t mean a change can’t be made. The fact botting cannot always be detected is not a valid reason to avoid making botting against the rules. Some people get away with murder… it’s still a good thing to make illegal. The fact people can avoid something is not a good argument against that thing.
No, the timer itself is simple from a coding perspective. But the gameplay implications are not.
And then people stay logged in for 4 days on one character, then 4 days on the alt, etc. I suppose this is good for CCP’s revenue, as long as alpha accounts don’t get access to cloaks, but it doesn’t do very much to stop AFK cloaking.
The difference, aside from bots being much more detectable than an anti-AFK tool, is that botting is doing clear harm to the game while AFK cloaking is only a “problem” for lazy and entitled carebears. When the value of a solution is in serious doubt before you even consider the implementation issues you should have very little patience for those issues.
It is still interaction. You are not only interacting with the player logged off you are interacting with all the other market participants as well. When you buy something, it has effects on more than just one market, but also other markets such as the input markets, and the markets that the person might spend is profits on, etc.
The market is actually more like an eco-system, a co-evolutionary eco-system. So you doing something changes just not your behavior, but the behavior of others and the fitness landscape–i.e. the eco-system itself–even if in a small way. And when you think of thousands and thousands of players doing this the changes can go from small to big, and they can move in ways people may not anticipate.
Further, these changes in the market will induce players to change their in game behavior. If the price of one good goes up, some people who manufacture stuff will switch and compete away the profits. If that change results in price increase of some or all of the inputs, some people harvesting those inputs may very well change their behavior.
Why should I have to be burdened every time with that?
I get that you think it will promote interaction, but it won’t. Logging people off does not promote interaction, it prevents it just as much or even more so than simply being AFK.
The safety of a station/citadel means that, that person is totally safe ignoring your attempts to interact. You complain about “wasting time”, but that time can and largely will still be wasted in this scenario as well. This is sill the empty chair scenario if the player in station wants it to be. In some instances interaction is simply not possible. In a station/citadel, a POS field, and when cloaked at a safe spot. Those are about the only time when interaction has to be cooperative–i.e. both sides want it.
Not just that, but setting up a macro that interacts with the client to keep you logged in would not violate the current EULA.
Well, I’ve got some very simple answers and solutions to cloaky camping.
For starters, anyone who says that ‘cloaky camping generates content’. Yes, it does. But it only generates content for the camper themselves. Content is absorbed or rejected. This content is rejected by the opposing party which is being ‘camped’ on. Without any effort a ‘cloaky camper’ will gradually decrease the activity in the system.
To anyone who says that ‘cloaky camping stops the players in the system from making money - it’s a fair tactic’. You are also right. It decreases revenue in a system without (or with minimal) efforts for said ‘camper’.
Cloaky campers do not exist. They are mostly either paid by a 3rd party, an alt which is kept on screen with a macro for d-scan or a fully-automated bot.
I have not heard of a single person who would sit still and devote 100% of their attention to the ‘camper’ alt to try and ‘hotdrop’ onto an unsuspecting target. It doesn’t happen. Cloaky campers normally use tools to either automate or automatically inform them of new information.
Even without actively trying to ‘hotdrop’ players they have an affect also, people don’t feel safe. I wouldn’t feel happy undocking my Rorqual and doing a mining fleet for 6 hours knowing a neutral / red is in system. Without any efforts by the ‘cloaky camper’ he has stopped revenue from being generated.
For the people who dare to generate revenue when a ‘cloaky camper’ is about are put at a Major dis-advantage.
The ‘cloaky camper’ can easily chose to not engage. It’s like 3rd person in any other video-game. They can chose to engage what they think they can succeed with whilst the person being camped has no choice apart from trying to run or shoot them back. A battleship will lock a frigate in around 10-15 seconds (unless it’s fitted to take out the campers). An entire fleet can be on-grid within 3 seconds of a bridge being made.
The fundimental problem is, ‘cloaky campers’ aren’t actually people actively attempting to ‘hotdrop’ 95% of the time. They are bots, modified clients or input-automated alts designed to have minimal interfacing with a person and still perform at the same level.
You’re welcome to reply, but at least make some sort of effort in your reply to counter my argument without either:
‘AFK cloakers can’t hurt your because they’re AFK’
‘Cloaky Campers create content therefor; all content is good.’
‘Cloaky Campers are banned, you shouldn’t have to worry.’
‘Cloaky Campers don’t have any focus. If you keep aligned then you’re fine.’
‘AFK Cloakers attack an system by lowering the revenue gained by it’s inhabitants. This is a tactic in pvp.’
Good luck.
Where is your solution? I just read a bunch of assumptions without facts.
You are aware of the fact that people have put forward a number of ways to deal with cloaked hostile in system, AFK or not, right?
Maybe if you actually…read some of the thread first.
How does this work if they are AFK? And if they are ATK why do they need these tools? Sorry this just sounds like errant nonsense.
Yes, working as intended.
You can’t form a standing fleet? You can’t rat or mine in a group? You don’t have voice comms?
Why not bring your own fleet to rat in…with PvP fits?
This is a load of bunk you are just making up based on literally nothing.
Are you really this Bad™?
At least some people are prepared to take responsibility for their situation, and not be bothered by campers.
Simple.
Many examples of it.
Last time we were cloaky camped we just lumped the carriers and subcaps together.
Carriers had cynos, subcaps were safe from being tackled because a carrier can blap pretty much any solo attacker, and a dozen faxes and dreads ready to jump to the cyno if they had the capacity to escalate.
Net result, not one ■■■■ was given. Rorqs were out mining (not sieged mind you, so maybe one fuck was given by them) and everything.
Funny part was when they tried to poke and prod and get a kill here and there, the only ships to die were theirs.
This is pretty normal for this thread. Eventually the cycle will begin again and it will be active for some time before people are our of ammo again
But why gathering info should be effortless then? After you got into the system and start afking/gathering info there, you bear zero risks at all. Here is counter-proposal: make afk cloacking impossible first, through adding some mechanics which allow to pin-point and de-cloak any ship if it isn’t playing actively enough. Then you can remove local. Seems like a fair deal to me: both sides must play actively to achieve their goals now.
How do I gather information if I am AFK?
That is the idea with the observatory array…of course that was suggested a long time ago.
I’m aware it’s an old idea, and I still support it.
The main point here was about zero risks. The cloacked ship’s pilot can just go away, leaving his ship on spot near the station dock or a gate, or a belt, or at some complex he scanned, indefinitely, without any effective ways to counteract him and spoil his plans - even though it happens in space. He may be a totally lazy, relaxed bum, watching sitcoms and just checking what happens on the monitor every once in a while. It’s already an approach totally alien to the core ideas of the game. The only way you can be totally safe in Eve is while you are docked. Whenever in space, you must put efforts all the time to survive if somebody is after you. If you’re at POS they still can interact with you and get you, if they really want it.
Current implementation of cloack breaks this principle. So before touching anything else this is what needs to be fixed first. If you are in space and afking while cloacked, there must be some tools to haunt and kill you if somebody has will to go after you. Otherwise, you must put some efforts to get them off your tail, even when you stay in the same system. You must not be totally safe in space at any time. It’s a hideous loophole in otherwise good and solid mechanics. And I’m saying it as covert ships pilot myself which currently is training for b-ops. I feel like it spoils the very vibe of piloting such ship. It’s too safe in most cases.
And btw, you actually can gather intel in totally afk mode. Just run account at another machine, and start screen-capturing everything that happens on the screen. I bet with a bit of scripting and/or adding some soft that simply makes screenshots or video capture if changes on the screen are detected, it can be optimized further. Don’t think it breaks EULA even, as no interactions is done with the game’s client itself.