Calm down. I’m just telling it like it is. AFK cloaking is not something CCP have any interest in addressing.
And you think your hunting will improve when local goes away and you can’t tell if a system is empty or not? Oh, and they still have intel chanels where they’re reporting what movement of reds is noticed (with cloaked gate watching alts) and you have nothing?
It might help you… if you only hunt in a populated part of null with low security like Providence. But literally every other part of null will be much harder for you to hunt in. The only people you’ll actually find will either be even more asleep or bait. And it will take you longer to find them because of the time you have to expend in systems to even see if someone is present.
And of course the AFK VNI ratting will end up getting replaced by AFK curses instead. You’ll just sail on by not even knowing they’re in system. It’ll nerf their bounty output a bit though.
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Don’t mention that!!!
He is expecting that CCP will retain all that free intel that enables them locate active areas, which is on the map and on Dotlan. If local goes all that shite has to go too.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to “fix”. I think you just want it easier to hunt.
I started 2009 and have been pretty casual since. When I started, the issue wes often how to get enough incentive for players to take the risk of moving to low/null. It was focused on rewarding players. Since I moved into J space, I see how the more lucrative the opportunities, the more risk players are willing to expose themselves to.
I’m guessing that you’re getting at the point that players in null have managed to minimize those risks with the current mechanics. Rewards are high relative to the risks assumed. I think it’s more important to discuss the real issue than hammer a mechanic that differentiates K space from J space.
If I could make any suggestion, it would be to make a different tier of null with less safety and without local. You could have null and deep null. That way you could do more to balance rewards.
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To be frank, such intel channels would be largely impotent. As the intel channels stand right now, the information provided is player/ship/location. Emphasis on location being a constantly updated part of that info. Since local provides your name, they check your name with various sites and get an idea of who you are, who you fly with, what you generally fly (if different than your current ship), if you are known to be part of a hot dropping squad, what timezones you’re generally active, etc.
With local removed, the most important part of that intel, the constant update as to your whereabouts, is gone. The intel networks become a series of “[pilot A] was here seconds ago”. Sure, they may know what you were in and most of the rest of that stuff, but they have no idea if you’re still there. You can just as easily drop in from a wormhole, leave via a wormhole, linger for a while, transition through an unwatched gate, or log out in system. And there’s no way for them to know any of it until you pass another set of cloaky eyes.
So yes, it makes a significant difference without local. You can’t sit there with any sort of straight face and try to argue that nothing changes if both sides are deprived of it. Removal of nullsec local is something that probably should have been paired with the removal of the watchlist since having perfect defensive intel is just as egregious as perfect offensive intel.
Also, you said…
Like it’s a bad thing. That sounds like a really good tradeoff actually. That sounds a lot like how the game was envisioned to be played.
Sounds good to me.
NPC null and sov null. There, done.
I have a question. It’s not rhetorical, either. There’s something about the null local topic that has always kinda bothered me, and I think I’ve finally put my finger on it.
Whenever players completely broke a part of this game, CCP has (…eventually) moved in to deal with it. Whether it be ratting income, LP points from faction warfare, running multiple prop mods at the same time, etc. CCP has given tools and rewards that seemed fine at first, but when demonstrated to be completely broken in the right hands, they’ve eventually brought change to somewhat bring things back into alignment.
Nullsec players completely broke the use of local with their intel networks. If discussion on the forums is any indication, nullsec safety is considered to be far higher than even highsec. Yet, with this immense defensive advantage and all the untold riches they’ve been able to wring out of the game with it, CCP never bothered to do anything about it. The recent bot fiasco, which was only discovered due to a change in how local was presented to the client, is about as golden and iconic as an example gets when it comes to this issue.
So, we have this sacred cow CCP is unwilling to touch even when it is a demonstrated part of the problem. What makes this so sacred that CCP won’t deal with it, as opposed to everything else in the game where CCP has at least implemented partial fixes?
As CCP continues to upgrade AI this problem will slowly diminish. Already I see people in my own sphere of contacts complaining about drones being killed off these days, something you never used to hear about.
There is already 3 tiers of known space, and there is already distinctions amongst the null space (npc vs sov), and the lowsec (fw vs non fw).
I always find peoples concepts of what will happen with no local to be fairly naive - unlike wormhole space where an alt has to take d-scan acts to bring in a fleet and the fleet has to overtly travel through a hole, in nullsec you can just leave an alt there, it need take no other action than covert warping about to determine what things are tripping the ingame stats and then decloaking at a super safe deep safe to covert cyno in gangs.
ie the first evidence that a gang was coming would be the entire gang being on grid.
Its nullsec, cynos work. At the moment, we don’t get dropped very much because process is neut comes to system, we all safe up and check zkill for evidence of cynos - so it takes a long time for a cyno alt to get a legit target and they have to tackle it, which produces intel for people that would look. In a non local environment, the cyno alt would never gate or tackle, it would just be your corps dedicated cyno for that target system.
Reporting on gates would be pointless, its not wormhole space, gating is not necessary for a fleet to enter.
Usually when I jump into hostile local, the whole alliance will dock!
And they won’t undock till next downtime.
They log off!
I log off!
Everybody will go play other games! 
But that is why you have it wrong, because having been in a number of nullsec alliances I know that there is big gaping holes in the local reporting of people coming through, lots of people go AFK and many people do not bother reporting. Furthermore as it is quite easy to get a spy into these alliances it is possible to identify those holes and use them. I like many agree that local reporting bots need to be dealt with, but penalizing normal players is not a good idea.
I keep seeing people talk about the issue of player warping out as soon as they enter local, well my experience is that the more secure the area is perceived to be the more AFK people do ratting, for example I am mostly very observent but there are certain periods when a lot of my alliance mates are on that I am less observent. I also picked a system with a long warp, which helps too.
There is a balance to the game in terms of local, lower skilled players who fail to put the correct or required effort in to catch stuff will of course think that the balance is out of kilter, they need to get better at Eve or HTFU.
That would even up the balance a bit, however cyno’s would have to be nerfed in some way too. I think just removing local will kill most of the small alliances in nullsec, their operating losses will become untenable with blanket camping, I would be in hisec and then likely de-subbing because it would be too unbalanced for me. No crying, no whining, but I don’t play to be an easy kill and that would make it too easy for the lazy hunters, which for me is the worst possible thing for CCP to do.
Yeah it can be painful, also recently I had a number of my drones decide not to return to my drone bay even though they indicated that they had and I had to go and probe them down. I was wondering if CCP did that to see if they would still try to do the sites with a reducing number of drones and thus identify bots.
Yes… but you still see the cyno ship. Everyone knows/suspects what ships carry cynos. The solo-frigate roams aren’t a common thing unless cynos are fitted. Cloaky solos tend to have covops cynos. That’s just common sense.
Look… this isn’t super complicated. When you take away free intel (local) and add paid intel (observatory arrays in whatever form they end up taking)… the balance shifts to the locals. They live there… they’ll drop the arrays, they have set intel channels, they have parked alts in place. That’s not an argument for or against… that’s just a statement of fact.
Yes, less free intel will make the life of locals harder. But it will make the lives of non-locals even harder still. It won’t impact “BIG” operations… because they likely have spies watching the local’s own intel channels. But the smaller scale guys will lose intel and not be able to replace it.
It may still end up being a positive. But any structure (as opposed to module) based intel “replacement” is going to favor local entities and hurt invaders.
This is the biggest issue… and the reason why CCP will likely not change a things…
I am perfectly okay with that. If there were a team of devs with proper experience ready to tackle this and balance it all out appropriately, I’d be very excited. However, I don’t share your gloomy outlook about the smaller alliances withering away under such a system. I do think the meta would change dramatically but considering that hunting would be dramatically effected too (with no way of knowing if there’s more backup already in-system), I fully believe the lazy hunters would be getting eaten alive on a daily basis.
The best way I can think of to explain my reasoning would be referencing a video I watched on Youtube once. In the video, a wormhole hunter (relevant for lack of local) logged into a wormhole he was prowling around in. This was back in the era of watchlists, so as soon as he logged in, two people in the wormhole beelined for their POS and docked up. The last person was AFK while mining an asteroid. Now, he couldn’t immediately attack this third person because he had no idea if anyone else was in the system. For a good portion of the video, he was warping around their POS and other spots in the wormhole, trying to see if anyone else was on. Such disciplines would separate successful hunters from the rest. If someone just dives in head-first on the first possibly AFK guy they find, they’re gonna have a bad time when the rest of his friends land on grid.
Which is why you would have to be very careful about what sort of benefits such a thing provides. If an observatory array simply provided “ number of pilots are undocked in this system”, then that helps locals without being too great of a benefit. The locals would still have to tally how many of their own are in the system and check that against the numbers to see if there’s any intruders. Even then, it wouldn’t tell them who, so there’s still an element of surprise capable.
The biggest stumbling block to all of this, in my opinion, is the nature of how ship sensors work in terms of D-scan. Right now, everything works rather binary. You’re either in range, or you’re not. You’re either cloaked/recon cruiser, or you’re not. If you’re detected, your ship type and name is immediately presented. Players really like it because it’s quick and easy, which is the antithesis of what EVE is supposed to be. There’s no scaling, no partial data, no advanced tactics to be had (I’m referring to detecting and identifying intruder. I know there’s advanced tactics to tracking someone via d-scan and landing probes on them, my little tangent here is not about that - it’s about tactics revolving around detection and identification).
We already have a system that is much more dynamic and interesting that many players are intimately familiar with. Probing. I believe d-scan should work almost identically to how probing works. Time delay for scan, variable strengths depending on range and focus, and skills in the game that enhance how it works - just like every other function of your ship. This would work so perfectly as a change to how d-scan works. A few side tweaks, like linking your base scan strength to your ship’s sensor strength (which also already has a relevant skill attached), and you’re good to go. Best part is once you put this in play, you open up a ton of possibilities for how ships are balanced or how other aspects of the game work if you want to go that route.
Yes I know, tons of people would stomp their feet and be grumpy about it. Literally every change in EvE has had people do that for a wide assortment of reasons. Heck, someone unsubbed because of the changes to the Rattlesnake way back in the day. Yet I think it’s still one of the more popular pirate ships since the update?
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This is why the rest of the information about the arrays is so critical. If the arrays take a fleet of caps to blow then yes, but if the arrays can be knocked down by smalls then it is the other extreme.
Everything else in that blog has been a citadel class structure with reinforcement timers and such. While there might be a small ship way to “block” it, I’m doubtful there will be a way to destroy it any different from something like an astrahaus.
I’m trying to follow the cell network reference which would mean many “arrays” which one would think would be smaller. And really they should be something that can be “knocked out” relatively easy otherwise there is no counter.
Good point with the “cell network”.
I’m not sure the “no counter” thing works… these would be the counter to cloaked ships/using the map stats for intel/the other stuff it’s supposed to block. While blowing them up would of course be a pain… that is a counter.
There are lots of counters in eve that require too much effort to be worthwhile… but the counters do still exist at least.
Well CCP have a tendency to get balance wrong in spectacular fashion, but the current situation works perfectly well, it is a good balance in the main.
I have seen them melt with a bit of AFK cloaky camping, this is so much worse for them, nope they will wither and die.
Lazy hunters will be rewarded by cloaky camping and keeping a slight eye out, then its bang overwhelming force, smash them in 10 seconds and get out…
Sorry, but please do not use WH space as an example. You are thinking about this in terms of what is in system and that is your issue, it is not what is in system that counts as in WH space. But it is what can be dropped into system in a mere moment in nullsec that counts. I understand what you are trying to say but it just does not work in nullsec like that, we routinely drop the hammer on people coming into our space and no amount of scouting in system will change that.
The current status is fine. I think CCP will set up observational arrays to do the job of local, however this impacts the people roaming in a major negative way.
Until you start homogenizing them then they will be alike. In WOW the homogenization didnt occur in one patch it came in over several years. Homogenization is one of the reasons i quit playing WOW because everything started to become more and more alike.