Currently, players in local are sorted alphabetically.
Idea is to add various sorting - for example by suspect status, kill rights, corp, alliance, etc.
This can help players assess the situation better once in a crowded system - e.g. seeing blinking red players at the top will make many more vigilant.
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You mean lazy.
3 Likes
Ranked sorting 
The UI implementation could be very similar if not identical to the checkbox+drag-and-drop of color tag precedence in overview. The colortags could be used as criteria along with name as the final sort criteria, with the default sort only checkboxing name and not any other prior criteria (ie. no colortags are not considered) so as to preserve existing behavior
Limited Engagements
WTs
Enemy Militia
-10s
-5s
Criminals
Suspects
Corp
Alliance
+10
+5
Miltia
Name
I can get behind this
I mean, yes your suggestion would definitely be useful. Like, it would be definitely make it easier to see neuts and whatnot in local when you have a bunch of corpies or fleetmates filling up the list. But the thing is that local was never meant to be an intel tool, and I think CCP would like to do away with it if they could.
Anyway, it’s a good suggestion, but I’d be surprised if CCP acted on it. Moreover, I’m not entirely sure myself if local should still be in the game.
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I would be extremely surprised if CCP acted on it except for two things:
- The interface used to do this already exists: it would be almost a carbon copy of the color tag precedence interface. Very little modification is required to adapt the existing interface into a sort configuration tool. All other changes are client-only and not server only (other than server saving the settings as part of overview config)
- CCP has been extremely aggressive in implementing innovative and disruptive things lately with a Zero â– â– â– â– s Given attitude that it is plausible they would, in fact, be willing to treat in-game Local chat as an intel tool
Since all entities present would be guaranteed to be listed (ie. the last sort field is guaranteed to be name, even if it is the only sort field), it would… well, simply work without breaking existing behavior but easily scaling to tailor user needs and preferences.
And that’s the problem. Makes them too easy to avoid.
If anything local needs to be less effective at telling us when the bad guys arrive. That’s why black out was experimented with.
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I disagree with you on a number of points. I’m going to start with blackout:
While it is true blackout reduced intel, it actually it made it easier for players to avoid gankers rather than harder. The intel reduction favored the PVP-averse: it was solo PVErs and carebears who rejoiced the loudest when they realized they could fly under the radar of gankers who would have to work extra hard via D-Scan and Combat Probing to detect their presence, and the delay in detection gave them that much more of an opportunity to escape. Many of those who were previously scared of NS popped their heads in for some PVE for once. Between D-Scanning and Instant Alignment, players savvy in PVP detection and avoidance had a greater advantage during blackout than hunters did.
There are minor exceptions, of course, namely in regards to covert ships dropping in on you, but they generally weren’t a concern for the PVP-averse for a number of reasons:
- Whereas covert ships are meta for hunters in WH, this is not necessarily true of k-space NS, especially in player sov regions where many players present are focused on territory expansion/control and other ops, and as such need more appropriate ships to achieve those goals. The higher player population does not necessarily translate to cloaky ships ready to drop on you.
- There are numerous exit points present in NS that aren’t present in WS, including gates, NPC stations, and occasionally public Upwell POSes. That, and you can Cyno/use Needjacks, too, if you wanted to.
- At worst, NS blackout would be no more dangerous than WH blackout, which is already pretty damn friendly to solo PVErs and even carebears.
Personally I’d love to see blackout reintroduced in some form (not necessarily all of NS is blacked out all of the time). There were some good ideas on the forum thread… I don’t want to derail THIS topic, so I’m not going to get into that.
I hope you are not suggesting we should make a system arbitrarily complicated, more complicated than an alphabetical sorting of players present. Blackout in HS/LS doesn’t make sense for numerous reasons. One of the reasons is that, this being an MMO, we want to see who is around us as a community so we can reach out as friends or unleash our guns as foes. If there was no Local in HS/LS, EVE would look desolate as an MMO, and that wouldn’t be good for player retention of new or existing players. Another reason is that, for those not interested in PVP or those wanting a “lighter” form of PVP, it makes sense that such intel is available in HS/LS whether or not it is available elsewhere. There are other reasons as well.
I don’t buy the “makes them too easy to avoid” argument - there are numerous issues with it. In no order in particular:
- Not everyone is going to flee just because they see hostiles present on top of Local
- If some people are constantly fleeing… honestly they’re already losing at EVE so really you’ve already griefed them just from getting them to stop what they were doing
- There’s no shortage of players who want to PVP, and we all know where to find them. If you’re struggling to gank players who don’t want to fight you, then man up and face those who do. Even in HS you’ve got what is arguably a gross proliferation of Upwell POSes left and right fielded by small groups ill-equipped to PVP if it is so damn important to gank the sick and feeble.
- Less time spent parsing intel is more time spent doing actual PVP. This is a good thing.
Let’s make free intel better.
No -1
The intel exists already.
Sorting it is a QoL improvement, not a massive change
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We’re currently suffering huge nerfs because the game became too easy and too safe.
No this isn’t just a quality of life change. It’s an idea that heads in the wrong direction.
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