Oh look, another proposal that can be summarized as “you can’t keep your name in local when you go AFK” and has the sole result of buffing RMT botters and bot-like players who wish to avoid PvP.
Also, the difference between AFK cloaking and AFK ratting is that one is actively producing income (via a method that is so absurdly easy and mindless that you can do it while AFK) while the other is just sitting idle in space.
Appreciate the feedback. Did not know that Cloaky Campers were the elite sages of EvE. Looking forward to more pearls of your wisdom. Good lurking out there.
So many times… OMG… So many!
Instantly know (well one scan ping) if there is a cloak user in system, Well done you’ve just broken WH space.
You forgot to mention Sitting in Station AFK, or any structure for that matter.
Main difference, in case you were deliberately missing the blindingly obvious, is that AFK mining and ratting make money!!
Being AFK cloaked does not do anything, nor can they do any actions.
It was about 10 months ago.
Actually the main difference is AFK mining and AFK ratting are botting activities which require 3rd party tools.
AFK cloaking, since it doesn’t actually DO ANYTHING doesn’t need those tools and is therefore not botting.
I can tell you it’s not 100% safe as I’ve lost a magnate and more recently an astero (last night) because my connection ■■■■ the bed and decloaked me. It’s rare but not totally safe.
If AFK cloaking ‘doesn’t do anything’, why do some people leave their alts cloaked in a system all day long? Sure, it’s not ISK they get like AFK miners and AFK ratters, but they certainly have a reason to be logged in and AFK.
Even if you ignore the people that leave their ship cloaked and AFK to go for lunch or a toilet break for a few minutes, the game gives players a reason to keep their ship cloaked AFK all day long. Therefore AFK cloaking ‘does something’, or they wouldn’t do it. What this ‘something’ is, I leave up to you to figure out.
And this is the same CCP that stated they never intended for people to live in wormholes, among many other things that players do that they didn’t envision and/or may not like.
So the argument that CCP said local bad is irrelevant.
Because they are paid to.
Outside of that, it’s because they ran into or are trying to avoid danger. There’s really no reason to stay out afk in space for hours at a time.
And, as is commonly stated by fools, they claim you need to leave the cloaking mechanics as is, because it’s a weapon against botters and, indirectly, RMT.
Except that’s not the players job, it doesn’t stop, only slightly stall botters, RMT has taken bigger hits due to PLEX price changes than the combined efforts of anyone with a cloak, and in the end the cloaked ship in space achieves the following, through no effort:
Intel
System activity degradation
Player activity reduction and/or repositioning
Perfect safety, barring internet failure
and much more, but more detailed benefits
Plus, saying you wish a method to hunt cloaked ships, or to reduce the perfect safety of a cloaked ship, just makes you a target. A request for increasing risk, driving active rather than passive content, gets shot down by trolls and fools.
However, since the only real argument against changes to cloaking, outside of foolishness, is that it hurts people traveling, exploring and other activites can be addressed.
The idea purposed where an active cloak generates very very little heat would forbid excessive cloaking and increase the risk without changing the underlying mechanics
But change is bad. Trust the trolls. There’s over 4.5k posts in this thread, mostly of the same dozen or two posters, regarding cloaking and all they do is shoot down any suggestion, any attempt at discourse. They bury any post under a sea of shitposting.
And specifically addressing afk cloaking: It’s a no effort activity that hurts players, and no one else. It keep players from playing the game, it drives players away, breaks groups within eve apart, in effect it’s similar to the effects of wars in highsec, which have already been changed to keep people playing the game.
And I know this post will reply’s from those same people who try so hard to keep cloaking as is. All that does is prove my point. Forum monkeys or somesuch, endlessly banging on drums to keep people away.
It was kind of a rethorical question. But no, I don’t think the cloaky campers in and around the systems I live in in null are paid to do so. And neither are they trying to avoid danger, they are the danger.
These AFK cloaky campers want to gather free intel and catch people who make the mistake of undocking in anything big, expensive and slow, all without letting us know at what time they do become active until it is too late, because there is no visual difference between an AFK cloaky camper and someone who just came back to his keyboard.
AFK cloaky camping is really rewarding and in my opinion, no AFK ‘activity’ in EVE should be rewarding. AFK mining, AFK ratting, AFK cloaking, just get rid of it all.
okay i give up! you win my banana!
Because other people are afraid to undock.
That is REALLY what this thread is about. People are afraid to undock when there is a cloaked ship.
This is why the devs understand that the real problem is local. Someone docks, and gets free intel about who is in the system. Using that Intel they will not undock because they are pixel afraid.
Then they come here and complain about cloaked ships which have every right to be there.
You can’t cure pixel fear with code.
Search this thread on the term “Pixel Fear”, we’ve been down this road before.
They do it because there’s no other way to counter local.
Except, again, it doesn’t increase risk. An active ship can still warp between safespots faster than you can chase it and be 100% immune to PvP. It just prevents you from staying logged in while AFK, with the primary result of making local a more effective intel tool for PvE farming and avoiding PvP.
Only because the suggestions are inevitably, like yours, terrible. We are not obligated to pretend that terrible ideas are not terrible just for the sake of “having a discussion”. If you want a discussion that consists of more than being told that your idea sucks then try posting better ideas.
No, being bad at EVE keeps people from playing the game. Strong and competent alliances do not care about AFK cloaking. The only people who are prevented from playing are the bot-like players who expect perfectly safe 23/7 solo farming and whose only possible response to a PvP threat is to dock up and hide.
Such is the nature of a sandbox. Emergent gameplay is a vital part of it. However not all emergent gameplay is created equal and unforeseen things that are detrimental to the game as a whole (like exploiting fw mechanics to generate gazillion LP) have to be tweaked or removed to keep the game healthy.
The wormhole system they released 10 years ago with Apocrypha is not the same wormhole system we have today.
What about sitting AFK in a station?
You can sill gather Local info and pop out to catch people who make the mistake of being in system in anything big, expensive and slow, all without letting us know at what time they do become active until it is too late.
AFK in a station is completely different.
When in a station you cannot see the ships, fleet composition and locations of players. And neither can you grab anything big, expensive and slow. Once you become active you can only start doing these activities after you undock, which would warn anyone paying attention.
EVE is supposed to be safe only when docked up. AFK sitting in station is fine.
As a side note, I wouldn’t mind if ‘local intel’ became less reliable, slower or gone.
Can’t do any of these things when AFK Cloaked either.
Face it, you are yet another who is trying to nerf all cloaks by ‘waving the AFK’ is bad flag.
Wrong and wrong.
First, did you read what I said? A player AFK cloaked for the past 8 hours can become active and starting reading ship compositions or grab big ships on gates without notifiying anyone that he has become active. An AFK station-sitter will have to undock, giving people who do pay attention a chance to react.
Second, I don’t want any nerfs to people who actively use cloaks at all.
I just think the game would be better if there was no reason for people to leave their AFK cloaked ship in space all day long for ingame reasons. (Being AFK cloaked because you have to make dinner or answer the doorbell is fine imo).
For example, you made a suggestion in this thread a long time ago that suggested removing AFK cloaked ships from local and removing local from AFK cloaked ships. Such a bonus would severely buff active cloaked ships, but it would make AFK cloaking useless. It would do exactly what I think cloaking needs: removal of the incentive to AFK cloak.
Do you remember I supported that suggestion? Then what makes you think I want to nerf cloaks?!
Right now there is a reason for people to AFK cloak all day long, because it gives them the opportunity to catch people who have become accustomed to see your face in local, and because it gives them the opportunity to gather intel about what’s flying around in space without offering any intel back in the form of ‘watch out neut logged in to see our fleet comp’. Both of these activities are improved a lot by sitting AFK all day long.
If the game would allow active cloakers to do this just as effectively -in the form of the suggestion mentioned above, or in the form of a delayed/removed local- any incentive for AFK cloaking is gone. That is what I support: get rid of incentives to be AFK in space for in-game reasons.
This thread isn’t composed of only two types of people, ‘complainers who are against AFK cloaks’ and those who are ‘against the complainers’, even though it may look like that at times. There are many more types of people here and it’s up to you to make the right assumptions about someone. Or just stop making assumptions at all and purely focus on what they write.
And to make it simple: No, I’m not trying to nerf cloaks.
true 