Fozzie is not just “some developer” and it isn’t just his recollections. The standard view of wormholers (as in all but 1 IIRC), as expressed in the old cloaking thread on the old forums, and my AFK cloaking collection thread (hundreds and hundred of pages between them) was that AFK cloaking is a direct result of local. No local, no AFK cloaking. After all, how do you know an AFK cloaker is in system? Not his cloak. Not his ship. His mug shows up in local and nowhere else. Logical deduction: the guy is cloaked, he’s been there for hours…AFK and cloaked.
And yeah, in LS you won’t see people complaining about AFK cloakers people who tend to live in LS tend to be PvP oriented. Just like many PvP alliance do not have people showing up and complaining about AFK cloakers either. In my last alliance/corp (which I was in for around 8 years) I never recall anyone complaining about AFK cloakers. So this isn’t just a NS thing, it is a subset of the player base who tend to live in NS. And these people also generally tend not to PvP, not all, but generally.
Just an FYI, it is risk averse not risk adverse. It is a bit pet peeve of mine on the forums as I see people using adverse quite a bit.
As for players undocking, you might be surprised. Mike Voidstar is a long time participant in this thread who is very anti-cloak…I doubt he’d undock at all. Even if the mere act of undocking caused the cloaking ship to explode. For some people who live in NS, PvP is a complete anathema.
I’m fine with cloaks. I’m more annoyed about the AFK side of things (and not specifically related to cloaking). I get annoyed as hell when I try to message someone who’s online and 3 hours later they send back a “sorry, AFK”. I’m playing a multiplayer game to interact with other players. If you’re not actually going to be doing anything… I’d prefer the game log you out after a certain amount of time. Well… I guess it already logs everyone out at downtime… so the maximum amount of time you can remain AFK is 23 hours or so. I’d just prefer it be… 30 minutes or an hour or something.
But that’s not really about game balance. Just me being annoyed at not getting a response due to someone walking away and not logging off.
Teckos, a certain amount of intel is necessary to actually get interaction. Local gives enough to know you aren’t in empty space but are in fact in a system with reds present. It would be very annoying to have to scan every system, figure out if ships are inhabited instead of abandoned in space to create false positives before figuring out that the system is in fact empty of targets and moving on to the next one.
I think people are misguided in thinking that only those avoiding conflict use things like local. And even that is interaction… there’s an element of cat and mouse that exists between roaming PvP players and PvE/miners that run from them. You are in a contest against that person… the PVE person winning if they excape and the PvP person winning if they don’t.
Spending minutes in an empty system trying to determine if someone is present… we’ll there’s no interaction there. It’s just wasted time. Same goes for trying to interact with/hunt down/bait someone who left their keyboard an hour ago to mow the lawn and is instead cloaked at a safe spot.
Having intel is not the problem, having free intel is the issue. Local is free. You do nothing in game for it. It it always there, always perfect, indestructible, etc.
Yes, players should have intel. However, it should be with some effort, should be destructable, etc.
The problem is that in general when you make something cost something… you’re making it so the “local” person has the intel while the visitor does not. Infrastructure isn’t something a visitor often creates. If an alliance has a module that creates the equivalent of local intel (names and standings of those in system) and provides that to only those the alliance chooses… that gives a huge advantage to the locals. And when you’re talking about PvP scenarios… that means you’re giving the local miners and anom runners the advantage over the invading reds… which probably leads to less combat.
Having lived in WHs and in null, it can be a lot easier to find a fight in WHs than in null. In null people run and hide when you are 10 system away because of local and intel channels. In WHs, you already have the chain scanned down and scouted all the time (because all of your corpmates are helping, half aren’t PvEing on their own when there is scouting to get done), so you’re talking about maybe 15 seconds to check a new system (without local) for someone active before you get set up for a fight.
I doubt the OA is going to replicate local, but let you regain aspects of it depending on how you fit it. And yes, if you are an intruder you’ll no longer have local, so you’ll have to rely on things like d-scan and probes or possibly hacking the OA if such a feature is included.
On the contrary, it is much more fun when you have to scan for other players.
You talk about cat and mouse, but what is cat and mouse with local compared to trying to probe your target down before he notices or gets you first. Not knowing if you are the hunter or the hunted.
You piss and moan about abandoned ships, but can’t think enough for yourself that they could be deliberately placed decoys. Players thinking outside the box to slow you down or trap you.
Plus, you can always try to start ■■■■ by hacking the OA, even if it merely disables it. I’d like to see the OA work as follows,
When it is hacked with the entosis link it goes off line.
Second hack, if it is not counter hacked it is destroyed.
Possible subversion mechanic–i.e. it lets me see what the friendlies see, or marks me as blue. Of course failure here would alert people in the defending alliance/corp of the attempted subversion.
There would have be to be details worked out of course, but it would let a roaming gang come in really muck things up. Yes you can turtle up, but you’ll be blinded until you find the testicular fortitude to undock and go counter hack all the Observatory Arrays.
If a whole system is shut down because of a single cloaked ship then it’s only because the residents of the system suck at EVE. Stop being terrible at EVE and you won’t have this problem.
Nonsense. The only thing they’re kept from doing is zero-risk solo PvE farming at maximum ISK per hour. If, say, they instead farmed PvE content in a 50-man combat fleet then the presence of an AFK cloker would be irrelevant. And sorry, but if the way you want to play the game is “farm the most profitable content with zero risk” then no, that’s not something that should be allowed.
What, from the point of view of the targets of the camper, is the difference between AFK camping and ATK camping? Is the gameplay experience really changed by having the camper occasionally glance at EVE and press the “don’t count me as being AFK” button?
I’m interested in playing Eve with other people. You realize what you’re talking about is making it so I have to spend a ton of time seeing if the other person is even there?
I’m fine with playing the cat and mouse game. I just don’t want to be a cat stalking through a house to trap mice… that aren’t present. Local allows you to know if a mouse is in the house. Without that… active hunting becomes much less effective. Camping is probably the more likely result from this sort of thing.
I know the empty ships would be decoys by the way. That’s what I’d do in a local system if local was removed. That’s why I mentioned it. Since the hunters wouldn’t know I was there from local, I’d make it as annoying as possible to figure out where I am (or if I’m even present) so they move on. But from the hunter perspective… that kind of sucks.
And to veer back to the original point… it kind of goes back to why I’d like an AFK timer. That just further allows me to tell (from local) if there are players actually present to interact with… instead of being away from their keyboard for the last 2 hours.
Yes, and the OA will make this somewhat easier, but there won’t be much you can do about people who are docked up.
And if you don’t own the system/have an OA then you won’t have local and you’ll have to rely on other means. If you cross the system and d-scan says “Nobody home.” Take it to mean nobody is home. If your probes tell you the same thing, again same advice. Move on to a system where there are people home. If they have an OA in that system you could try hacking it see if it draws anybody to you.
BTW, it would be spiffy if the OA is not a sov structure (I doubt it will as my understanding is it will work in most space including NPC null, LS, as well as sov NS). If that is the case, then in theory you could come along and anchor your own OA. Thus gaining additional intel as well.
I see possibilities here…how come you don’t?
And an AFK timer is a free intel mechanic, so absolutely not. We have enough of that crud already. Stop suggesting we add more.
I disagree entirely. Anything that is mindlessly repetitive will not only be boring, but annoying.
Consider a roam through null. Jump in, launch probes, scan system, call in probes, jump outgate.
You’ll be on their intel the moment you enter their space. They’ll be forming, and they’ll be forming a hard counter to your fleet if they’ve any brain at all. The more time you give them, the happier they will be. Heck, it even gives them time to get capital and supercapital ships logged in for the drop.
The name of the game in a roam is speed. Get in, smash something, get out before the bear wakes up. Because I promise anyone smart will bring a response fleet that will beat yours, or they won’t bring it at all.
You realise people find eachother in wormholes right? And thats not always with probing ships and rarely with camping. Not every ship is sitting at a safe or in a recon. Nor are abandoned ships a problem for hunters in wh’s.
Don’t understand how no local means you get hard countered by the locals. Surely its easier to hard counter with local because you know exact numbers as well as all the other info you could get without local. Why would you be taking so long? You don’t have to scan the out gate like you do in wh’s and a scout spamming d-scan whilst he warps about a bit will cover most systems quickly.
You’re both kinda making it more complicated than it needs to be.
I understand you have an issue with free intel… but I just don’t.
To me more intel = more ability to interact with other players. That’s kind of why I’m here. Even if I’m being hunted and having to run from those hunting me… that’s what makes eve fun for me. I don’t want interaction with others to be harder.
It feels like all of the stuff you’re suggesting in order to get rid of local creates a situation where you have to spend a lot of time and effort to get back to something similar to local and get the same amount of interaction that the intel from local creates. I don’t see the point… it makes player vs player interaction harder to come by. Yes, it might change who “wins” and the tactics people would use to win… but it also creates LESS. And that’s the part I can’t get on board with.
Well, WH’s do get kills… but I’m looking down the first page of W-space kills on zkillboard right now. The ships that have been killed that are not scanning frigates (including covops and astero), Ventures or capsules are:
I’m kind of wanting to avoid changing null-sec to have the level of player vs player interaction that wormholes do. Even if you want to add killing scanning frigates as “good fun”… you’re still talking about 5 hours to fill up a page of kills compared to 30 minutes.
Nullsec has vastly more systems and players (especially krabs) and thus your comparison of kills doesn’t make any sense at all.
That’s like asking why the small farmer with 1/10th the land and 1/20th the workforce can’t produce the same amount of crops as the big farmer.