What percentage of players actually live in wormhole space?
-next-
What percentage of ship kills occur in wormhole space?
My predictions:
The answer to 1 is likely to be less than 20%. The answer to 2 is likely to be less than 2%. Therefore, you’re ten times MORE likely to die in space where Local is available than where it isn’t. Why? Because having a Local and colour coded icons for various standings/fleet/corp/alliance statuses means less than precisely NOTHING. If anything, having a Local breeds complacency, and particularly now with Local being intermittently broken, it’s not the most reliable method of detecting neutrals.
The most reliable method of detecting and avoiding neutrals is having a corp-wide ship naming convention and treating anything not conforming to that convention that shows on D-scan, as a threat to be engaged or avoided. That is what makes wormhole space so much safer than anywhere in normal space. Once you get used to the idea of using D-scan instead of Local.
I’ll give you a couple examples of where to look to find players who are very likely AFK or just not paying attention to intel channels or are distracted by something outside their client (checking an incoming mail ding, for instance): BjornBee or Zarvox Toral public fleets. Those guys invariably happen into someone who is basically just sitting there begging to be sent home via Pod Express. And they get pretty much 99.9% of their kills in normal space. The floaters like I said, are even slightly distracted and they simply fail to notice the sudden Local spike. I’ve done it myself, and nearly lost a blingy Orca for it.
TLDR; it doesn’t particularly matter if CCP gets rid of Local altogether, until it gets fixed with its current problems those of us who have even dipped a toe into wormhole space won’t even notice the difference.
Thats wrong. WH space isn’t sparse because of local but because of all the scanning and lack of perma gates.
The scanning is so idiotically tedius I remember I got an actual repetetive motion wrist injury from it, like seriously, for real, had to go to the freagin doctor and had a bound wrist and some meds for about 3 weeks from it.
The lack of gates makes it a PITA to travel back and forth.
Local is the last thing for me that I was concerned about. In fact, not having it was good.
I don’t see how “delaying local” will make anyone happy other than maybe the fact bots are gone.
So much of Null has backboned their playstyle on that very mechanic its not conceivable.
Unlike cloaking where the person has a choice to use the information or not, there really isn’t an alternative to local. Also if you force people to use only visual confirmation it will lead (as it has) to people creating a 3rd party program that will just let people know exactly like local and only the people basically cheating will be ahead.
When you want to address problem people, you shouldn’t do it by making everyone who isn’t a problem suffering for it.
Also, people tend to forget that before bots there where Chinese farmers. RMT is a terrible in a game like EVE, with its player industry and market economy but failed to kill it before. I wish to point out that RMT Botters are not the only problem. What can actually kill eve is the automation by the small guy, who plays the game normally and then bots for money-making a little bit.
I concur that the “problem” with wh space is scanning. I used to play at lunch time and used the time to scan the chain and manage PI. I had to stop after I got a metacarpian… <> .
Cloaky intelligence gatherers are a different problem. One that should have been tackled 10 years ago. And regarding a 3º party program that gives you information similar to local. Well, as long as there is room for human error, we will be in a better position compared to now, and you can also attack the source of information of those programs.
While it’s amusing to see how you are sharing your war injuries here, does it also show how a removal of local will ultimately aid bots, because they can automate any process and do it 24/7 without needing to care for their health.
I took a 6 year break from the game. I come back and the problem is now chronic. I can only assume CCP are making money from this. We could possibly be in end times. Gameplay has been degraded but CCP are only listening to their bean counters.
Did you just say your solution to people using cloaky intelligence programs is that you can attack them?
Serious?
You called that a “solution”?
That 3rd party program is automation at its peak, it is also illegal with its audio ding warning people. It is also still used , even with it being illegal, to hear people using it on stream. If its a problem now when its moderately overpowered, exactly how much of a problem will it be when its completely overpowered?
I can commonly see the damage 3rd party programs have done to EvE, I don’t even have to look hard, but here we are with CCP promoting all the new ones. By pleasing a few they are damning the many.
That’s a good point, IMO. There’s lots of things one could do to make “life” harder for bots, but if they also make life harder for real players, well, bots don’t get bored or frustrated. One would have to check really carefully to make sure it doesn’t just drive real players somewhere else, leaving what’s left to the bots.
The problem is that the botters are no longer “the few” in 0.0. Its already affecting gameplay. Perhaps delaying local its not the ONLY thing to do, but its the simplest one with the greatest effect. Cloaky intel are another problem, I agree. But its one that can be faced with other type of measures.
I always favour solutions that involve players having incentive to do the job, because they are more scalable. Having a Dev ban people is ok if he has to ban 100 accounts. But if you take in account that he has to have hard proof to ban someone. Banning 20k “players” every month its not practical, specialy because they will be there again the next month with a different name. This is when changing mechanics becames paramount.
And if you take in account that there are not only bots that run 24/7, but common capsulers that automate their ratting. You will be banning the people who actually plays the game. That is an unsolvable riddle for CCP.
In my opinion. Remove local will make obsolete 80% of the bots, making permacloak imposible will remove the rest (but this post is not about this particular issue). They are easy solutions code-wise, effective, and wont need Dev intervention.
By the way. I was told that long long ago, 2005 or earlier, local was removed for a week. Is it true?
Except that it doesn’t provide the greatest effect, it provides greater stimuli for an accelerated tech race. CCP have already stated that the tech race is one of the biggest reasons why they can never see themselves winning any war with bots, only prevailing in curbing potential trends from consolidating.
In essence the idea, in its various alternatives and variations, punishes large subsets of the human userbase in order to sanction a minority which is in a far better position to deal with such a change, even profit from it.
It’s more of a high potential counterproductive idea. See the various arguments provided in the topic. It’s pretty much the wrong angle of approach, a focus on quick gratification under the cover of using a part of a symptom of a disease as marketing. Which is a shame, as both symptoms and disease need to be addressed.
There isn’t a coherent argument or eloquent statement in this thread that nails why botting is a problem. In any case, I feel we have been going around in circles for a very long time. Remove PLEX and you remove RMT. Every player should be equal and pay a yearly subscription. That’s never going to happen, so I can only conclude CCP are complicit. Eve is now just another garden variety pay-to-win game like every other online game. It’s the revenue model that has destroyed online gaming. Take me back to 1995.
You can only conclude that from the fact that CCP wants players to be able to pay their subscription with PLEX? How smart and insightful of you… I like when people openly admit they’re clueless and their posts not worth reading, makes following long threads so much easier…
TL;DR: Botting takes the control of the game out of the developer’s hands and puts it into the players’ hands.
What happens when bots take over isn’t just getting a bit of extra ISKs or resources, or just doing something while one isn’t at the keyboard. This is only the start of the problem. Botting doesn’t stop there. It continues with manipulating the software and data in memory and the data packets in ways not foreseen by a developer and can go as far as damaging it for others and for the user of the bot, because bots care little about quality or security when they try to take over control.
In theory could we all live just fine with bots. If we kept them open, made them accessible to everyone, documented their usage, tested their quality and ensured proper and continued operation of the game. A bot could in theory be a part of the game itself. But this is not what the reality looks like. Bots are kept under hand, every botter has their own version and even engages in rivalry with other botters, and so on. In short, all the problems that software can have intensifies with bots. And you didn’t pay for this.
Botters will tell you how great their software works and how much they win with it, but they won’t tell you what side-effects it has or what isn’t working. Some may tell you to take it or leave it, use at your own risk. They might even exclude you from using their version, or worse, use it to steal your account and what not.
This is why bots and botting is bad. The game maker loses control over the product and service you are paying for.
Would you care to back that up with something other than a blind assertion.
I am no market guru but I can’t see how plex would anything but harm the RMT market, by forcing RMTers to to lower there prices just to compete with plex.
Also this would imply that prior to the introduction of plex there was no RMT. Yet the stated reason that CCP introduced plex was to combat RMT. Why would they use such an justification if RMT didn’t exist in the game yet?
You do know that a bot is code to automate player action, right? You think bots cannot D-scan? Weird. Unless you are a bot writer, then it makes sense and money for you if any of the above are implemented. Good Luck and don’t give up your day job yet.
