We don’t give a crap about ADMs we care about hunting targets. When someone enters local in X system the whole system docks up. If we stay long enough - be it hours, days, weeks, etc. Eventually the greed takes over or they figure we are AFK because of lack of activity and they will come back out. We can then finally hunt. The only reason it works is that they don’t know if we are active or not. If there was a way to tell if we were active, then they would just remain perma docked as they can see us in local.
Entering a system and waiting weeks to hunt a couple of ratters is a niche enough of a playstyle that I’m okay with it being killed by whatever CCP has in mind. I will repeat this position on each and every extremely niche and hyper specific style of play that you try to raise as a “but what about in this case?!”
But why should we have to wait weeks? Local forces us to because of the perfect intel it provides. Many times its the only way to counter local sadly. I don’t like it myself but that is how CCP made the game. And now they want to make it EVEN WORSE.
You don’t have to wait weeks. Nothing about Local or Cloaking says that you “have to wait weeks”. That’s a restraint you put on yourself. Don’t try to divert the subject away from Cloaking.
This is subjective, but you don’t even know what the change is going to be. How are you so sure?
Already it is know local is not changing, so that means that the intel it provides is there to stay. We know it is an “intel tool” and it counters AFK cloaking. So we know krabs will have more intel or some ability (surrounding the cloaky being “active” or not), with none taken away. Sure we don’t know what the definition of “active” will be and how the “intel tool” is invoked but the odds are severely in favor of making it much harder to hunt and much easier to krab in perfect safety.
So, first off, we still don’t know what it’s gonna look like. But on the assumption that specifically counters afk cloaky camping, why don’t you just… not be AFK? Or like, better yet, just log off?
It’s weird that you say this. Why would anything need to be taken away? Is it based off your subjective ideas of ‘fairness’ or something? Because that’s not how game changes work.
It is simple, a cloaked ship should not show up in local unless they say something in local to reveal themselves. Then there would be no point in “AFK cloaking”. Of course this is the same effectively as removing local and we saw how things went with that. So sure it will never happen. But that is the proper way to handle it. Local should have never been there in the first place the damage is done but increasing the power of intel without doing something to local makes things even more heavily skewed.
Well, if CCP wants krab online instead of the EVE that was at their peak, then sure nothing needs to be taken away. We can turn this into a mining/PVE sim and get rid of PVP except for arenas and duels. Otherwise, the answer to “removing local didn’t work” isn’t a huge flip in the opposite direction, making local even stronger.
I find it amazing how people wanna ■■■■■ and moan about AFK mining, and it’s killing the game, and telling miners to be online, and therefore CODE was created… Go after AFK cloakers and all tears flow like water…
And who is to say that this isn’t CCP’s goal? It sounds like you’re replacing what CCP’s intended goals are with your’s… And again, we don’t know what it’s gonna look like.
Best option: blackout is permanent, farmers can STFU and ragequit all they like and nothing of value will be lost.
Second best option: add a delay to local in nullsec so that a new arrival has time to act before immediately having their presence announced to everyone and local is no longer a 100% effective guarantee of safety for smart players.
Third best option: remove local, make constellation/region chat the default channel so that you have a rough idea of who might be in the area but not instant and 100% accurate notification of exactly where they are.
Of course it’s CCP’s goal. But the fact that CCP is pursuing F2P monetization strategies and the relevant whales (who are almost always PvE-only players) with limited concern for long-term success doesn’t make it a good idea from a game design point of view.
It’s almost like some people understand the difference between AFK resource generation and sitting idle in a safespot while AFK.
I pointed it out in the part of the sentence that you dishonestly cut out. CCP is looking at nonsense like “logins per week” or “average time spent logged in” metrics and deciding that AFK cloaking causes people to log out (and therefore not be engaged with the F2P cash shop) therefore AFK cloaking must be removed without bothering to ask whether or not the people logging out over it should be pandered to. This is a fundamentally stupid approach if your goal is to design a good game, it’s an incredibly obvious thing to do when your company is owned by a F2P mobile trash developer that wants to see those metrics go up.