Why? Because CCP have made it clear thye want to combat afk gameplay and that’s a way to help us helping them. It’s not much, but it’s far more than what we can do now to combat especially whole fleets of Orcas.
Everyone reading this should be reminded of the fact that CCP wants to get rid of afk gameplay. No matter what kind of reasoning and arguments you can come up with in favour of achieving something in the game without actually playing, (*breathes in*) it won’t help you in any way or form and thus I’m simply going to ignore that. (*exhales*)
As I’m not willing to spend a significant amount of time dealing with predictable responses, I’m going to cover a lot of ground in this one single post. If you don’t bother reading through it, then so be it, but rest assured I’m not going to bother with responding. Put some effort into your posts.
“Why should we help CCP?”
Why not? I see no reason not to and you’re not required to. Others want to. Why not let those, who want to, do so? It’s content for people who play and it’s content against people who don’t. Why should I not do that? He’s not playing, while getting rewarded for not playing.
CCP doesn’t want that, I don’t want that and plenty of others don’t want that either!
BOOM, what an opportunity!
“But they’re just AFK, why not leave them alone?”
- Because they’re not playing the game while getting rewarded for it.
- Because CCP agrees that that’s ■■■■■■ up.
- Because it bothers people who actually play.
- Because it is being pushed beyond acceptable limits.
- Because mining (actually: the gathering of resources) is the single most important thing in this game and it’s being mostly done by people who don’t even play.
- Because CCP Hellmar himself dreamed up a scenario about competitive mining and, no matter how that materialises, it is clear that mining afk is not going to be a thing he wants to support.
“BUT MY PLAYSTYLE REEEEE”.
Ignoring that this argument is a fallacy: Ever after the stretch required to think of gameplay as “individualistic playstyles” it’s still not a “playstyle”. When you’re not interacting with the game you are, by definition, not playing. If you don’t understand what “by definition” means then look it up and don’t bother trying to weasel yourself around this.
“You’re just an asshole.”
You might be an RMTer! Guess who has the biggest benefits of AFK gameplay? RMTers! Who has the biggest reason to oppose everything that works against afk farming? RMTers! Who will be the ones screaming loudest? The RMTers!.
“No one bots/RMTs highsec income.”
They only need to put in a minimal amount of effort and n weeks later sell their ■■■■. It doesn’t matter if they don’t make a lot of ISK in highsec. What matters to them is that it makes them money.
Smart people don’t think “i want to make thousands of dollars, otherwise why bother”. Smart people think “this stuff helps me lowering my cost of living”. As long as it nets them a profit, they’re be happily doing it. That’s a normal part of an economy: There’s a few who are super professional, making millions, and there’s also tons of small fries who just want some extra income.
While I actually feel sympathy for “the little guy” (it is, in the end, a smart thing to do), they’re free to ■■■■ off into some other game where I don’t care about them doing it. Try a game made by Blizzard. They earn billions already and they’re assholes anyway.
“TL;DR?”
Sure. TL;DR:
I hereby request having Mining Drones stop mining as soon as the ship loses the lock on the roid. That way there is an actual thing we can do. There’s a cheap and accessible opportunity for dealing with fleets of bricktanked Orcas who are all protected CONCORD.
Without this change, people are being forced to completely commit themselves to the task, risking burning out, while all the Farmer needs to do is looking at the client every now and then. Time is in his favour, not in the actual players’. He earns ISK while barely doing anything and the actual player earns literally nothing for putting a lot of work and effort into it.
“You lied about that TL;DR!”
Yes, I did. If you can’t read through this then you have no business around here. You can gank them once, or twice, or thrice, but while he gets insurance paid out, you don’t. You still have to pay for all those ships, the modules, the rigs AND all the characters needed to pull it off assuming you don’t have friends stupid enough to throw literally billions at a completely lost cause, while the asshole gets insurance, can start again within minutes (with your chars being forced to wait fifteen) and you’re losing ISK, time and spirit.
There is no sane way of dealing with those guys.
“I give up. So why this specifically?”
Because it’s a low cost/low effort thing to do, while also giving people both the feeling and the ability that they’re actually able to do something without having to commit their lives to it. All it takes is an alpha, an ECM frigate (low skill, low cost) to jam the Orcas once. People will figure out if it’s a bot fleet or an afk player and react accordingly. CONCORD can come all they want, the Orcas are still losing target lock. It’d be cheap and it’d be effective. It’s also significantly more than can be done now.
“There’s too much text in this post. Why is this effective?”
Because, if he’s truly AFK, he’ll be losing more money than you, especially when it’s a whole fleet of Orcas. If he isn’t AFK then he’s actually there, which isn’t optimal either, but it’s still better than him earning money afk. Suicide jamming is cheap and low effort, yet it’s still infinitely more effort than mining AFK.
If he’s a botter, then his bot will re-target the roid, of course. A real person is going to be pissed and will start talking to you, but a bot won’t. A bot talking in local will just make himself look suspicious. They won’t actually be able to have a conversation with you, which is something you will definitely be having with a real person, even if he’s just throwing insults at you.
He will be reacting to what you say, so that’s fine. I can tell. I’ve pissed off plenty of afk alarm-clock miners (morons mining solo in skiffs, so i mine their roids to beat them to the ore). In the end they all bite, no exception so far. Anyone who doesn’t ever react at all gets reported.
“You’re wrong, we can already deal with them.”
No, we can’t really. There is literally nothing that can be done to beat his efficiency. Dealing with them right now is barely accessible and not even remotely worth all the ISK, time, effort and spirit required. It’s significantly more accessible to roll an alpha, skilling it for ECM and throwing him onto the Orcas.
Considering that it’s not a secret that these fleets exist, giving the players not only the feeling that CCP acknowledges the problem, but also giving them the feeling that they can do something about it, is a huge plus.
“You can already smartbomb the drones efficiently.”
You’ve never actually tried doing this, otherwise you’d not be writing it.
It is illogical to argue against players who legitimately complain about being out-competed by someone who isn’t playing at all. Legitimately. A whole fleet of brick tanked, untouchable Orcas is unacceptable.
CCP. A first step.
It’ll make people happier.
You already did a crowd-pleaser by changing warp speed and warp-deceleration,
I really don’t see why you can’t put in another crowd pleaser,
especially because it doesn’t affect active players at all.
Which is the biggest reason why anyone complaining is actually rather suspicious.
An active player can just re-lock the roid.
Help us helping you.
Thanks!
PS: At least half of you people didn’t manage to read through this post and jumped to the end instead, which is why it contains bait to make sure people with short attention spans are being caught and, hopefully, shamed appropriately. A good portion of you also stopped somewhere in the first quarter to immediately start replying. Shame on you as well.
