Sure but you can’t expect to just be handed content, you have to actually work for it now as you don’t instantly have an up to date list of every target that is or isn’t online, what this really boils down to is, you don’t like not knowing that you’re wasting your time hunting for people who might be offline, welcome to EVE 
This makes sense if only a subset of war players are complaining about the change, while others have adapted. However, no one has adapted because there’s simply no viable alternative to the mechanic that had been removed.
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Where did I argue in favor of being handed content? Saying the watchlist is free intel while leaving local in NS is just laughably dumb…CCP really made a blunder, I don’t expect any admission of error though.
A list the player into the data for. As somebody who works with data and has input data it is not free which is what you are implying.
Which has killed a nice part of the in game content. And it isn’t “hard” it is such that people just stop doing it completely and either leave the game or go and mass dec…then the Bads™ show up and whine about the result that CCP created…almost deliberately.
That’s how it used to be, and it worked fine.
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I’m all for NS local being delayed the same as in WH’s, i’ve never argued against it, CCP just haven’t ever bothered to change it, i think at this point WH local has become commonplace enough that its not a mechanic that will confuse players anymore removing NS local would actually make NS dangerous again which i am all in favour of
And how did the watchlist not give you free data? it listed the instantly updated online status of the people you added to it, there was no cost other than you needing to know the name of the person you wanted to stalk, which was borderline freely available these days with sites like eve-who, its not like you had to get a spy in there to find the names of the key players most of the time, it also let you freely stalk known FC’s and super pilots etc, it provided far too much information for no real cost
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You are in favor of is irrelevant. Do you usually use non-sequiturs? The point about the watchlist are two fold:
- It was not free intel if you had to input the names for it to work.
- It killed content.
It only worked once you input the character’s name. That is not free. It takes time.
Your backpedalling is duly noted. I highlighted the part that shows why it is not “free”.
I love it when people say “free” when what they really mean is “at a cost I find objectionably low.” 
Well… this might be explained other way… Like all of them was too weak to adapt… 
Yes, i see you’re going to play the “But i had to type a name in to a box” as some sort of “cost” like copy and paste is hard >.>
You didn’t have to put in any actual effort, you didn’t have to infiltrate a corp you didn’t have to follow people around for weeks before deccing them to collect the names of their members you didn’t have to hunt for information to try and piece together their most active timezones etc, you literally copy and pasted a name in to a chat box after typing in a couple of website names, big massive effort you totally deserve a medal for paying the massive cost of pasting a name in to a box and hitting search, infact join my corp and i will create a fitting decoration for you and award it to you
“Searcher of Things”
“Paid the ultimate cost of pasting a name in to a box and clicking search, the true hero we deserved”
No, you’ve missed the point of that post. When your entire player base drops a play style entirely due to a mechanics change, they didn’t fail to adapt, your changes broke that play style.
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But the point still stands, to use the Watchlist you have to actually do something for it to be useful. And removing the old names as well. Basically managing a database with a clunky and shitty user interface.
Pretty much. People always say, “Oh just adapt.” Sometimes the change results in extinction, not adaptation. When a meteoroid slammed into the earth spewing gigatons of material into the atmosphere causing a dramatic global cooling…most organisms were not capable of adapting to the sudden change and they simply died out. Completely. And, they’ll almost surely never come back. The removal of the watchlist broke targeted wardecs beyond the point of adaptation. CCP drove that play style into extinction.
You know there’s a lot more to it than that.
To have enough locator agents available you need to grind a shitload of missions etc to get the standings needed is one example.
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There are really affordable services you can pay for where people will grind your standings for you. Anyone that’s going to be paying for wars ought to be able to afford a service like that, especially with the types of ships that highsec wardec dudes tend to fly around.
Even then if you’re doing it yourself, it’s a trivial amount of effort to get your first batch of locator agents. I recall Lords of Midnight having a week or longer every so often where all they would do is grind missions to get the new up and comings some ISK and standings.
Do you forget there were also 3rd party websites that would use evegate to automatically add standings for thousands of players? You could set it to populate while you go to work or school and come home with thousands of new potential notification pinging at you.
Thanks for other examples Faylee.
There are other ways to gain standings, but that involves paying for it. And I would say that’s a “cost”. right?
Why do you think a hs merc corp would have a week every month to grind missions, fun? Thats something we did for years to get our new player up to par. With the lack of new souls we stopped that practice.
And ofc… the 3rd party websites… CREST opened up for adding people like you mentioned just a short time before they removed watchlist. With that 3rd party to website to add people for you was also abused by 0.0 players scraping zkillboard for super/titan pilots. Something that hs wardeccers cared nothing about.
But it was a great QOL improvement for the wardeccers that had for years previously needed to add them by hand.
For years I had to make the lists manually. Copy names, and link them one by one in a mail in game. before sending it to my guys so they had to add them manually, one by one. Before your time tho…
So yeah… give us crap for finally getting a qol upgrade after years of painstacking groundwork that was taken away because another gamestyle abused the mechanic?
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I would not use name “QOL” for out-of-game resources which give in-game advantage though…
Does not every out of game resource give you in game advantage in some way? 
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Man i’d kill to have that terrible system back now.
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That was such a pain, but so worth it in the end lol
This is still a cost…
Why is that when people see an innovation that reduces costs they seem to imply that the cost magically becomes zero?
You do know that value, and this includes valuing one’s time, is subjective.
Oh you are just a complainer. Sheesh, adapt. /sarcasm
You don’t use voice comms? Killboards? Dotlan? EVE-central, EVE-industry, EVE-agents, EVE Uni’s website, etc.? You don’t use any of those? Maybe you should concern yourself with your own glass house.
How about Excel? And no fair using that, or google sheets.
I’m not saying it doesn’t cost anything. The point I was making is that locator agents aren’t some out of reach tool that players have to grasp for.
True. It’s always been hard for me to run missions even for locator agents. I would much rather sit at my computer and watch cat videos on YouTube.
I would love to see some sort of functioning watchlist make its way back into the game, but I’m not holding my breath. My issue with Lord Raz is that all he seems to do is complain about something he claims killed Eve Online for him. Yet despite his yammering there are still plenty of people that manage to hunt, stalk, and kill despite not having the watchlist.
So while a watchlist would definitely benefit me directly because of how I enjoy to play the game, I can totally understand why CCP would have removed it even if a group of people weren’t abusing it with the log server.
I actually agree with Lord Raz on a lot of points, and he has actually helped to change my position on things like neutral logi. I do enjoy giving him a hard time for his crusade to acquire another watchlist, and I hope he doesn’t despise me for my counter-arguing.
<3 you @Lord_Razpataz