Sure, except that’s massively inefficient, even compared to just having everyone fit a Cyno on their PvE ship and having a relatively small number of semi-AFK players sitting on an AFK bridging Titan.
That’s the problem here, there are plenty of things in the game where “be AFK” or “don’t play the game” is a solution, but in this case it’s pretty much the optimal one.
That’s not just against “renter trash”, that’s against everyone. TEST, Goons, xXDeath, they all lose ships to this stuff. Not as many and lesser known groups, sure, in fact amusingly the vast majority of Blops class kills are in High Sec (though not exactly surprising), but they still lose to this crap.
Plus if the only defense against something is “be big enough that you can pay some guys to be semi-AFK for you” then that’s just reinforcing my point, that this is promoting bad and boring gameplay.
And here we come to the honest answer: it’s not that counters to AFK cloaking don’t exist, it’s that counters to AFK cloaking involve less farming ISK per hour and that is unacceptable to the farmers.
That’s not just against “renter trash”, that’s against everyone.
Everyone has trash in their alliances, it’s a fact of EVE. The point still stands: that black ops groups have very high K:D ratios because there are enough easy targets to slaughter that they don’t ever need to take significant risks. The solution is for people to stop providing easy targets, not for CCP to give out nerfs to compensate for their lack of skill.
This has always been the root of the argument. Nobody wants to reduce their isk/hour to account for their own safety, so they just want CCP to make them safe.
Surely having a defense force and actively defending your system from threats… teaching pirates that coming to your system will result in them exploding, is much more exciting gameplay than ‘if local pings, then dock up’.
I would suggest your way is “promoting bad and boring gameplay”
Yes, which is a problem of incentives and mechanics.
Except CCP can’t reduce the ISK or make the sites have to be run in PvP ships, because players will either find a way around that or just complain until CCP changes it back. And when half the CSM is Null-sec there’s a lot of complaining that can happen.
Again, I don’t particularly have a problem with the risk here. The problem is the incentive structure. I personally think it’d be pretty neat if CCP made ratting in a PvP ship good. Let the rats warp away if you don’t scram and web them down or something.
The problem is that right now it’s more efficient to pay some small percentage of profit to a bunch of AFK guys in another system than it is to run in that PvP fit ship, or do any of the other things that result in good gameplay instead of an AFK standoff.
And I would agree, and I would dearly love if this sort of thing resulted in actual fights instead of an AFK standoff, but the mechanics CCP has set up say that this is the best way to handle it. Large groups pay people to sit semi-AFK in response fleets, and small groups do everything aligned to a structure and warp if anything so much as sneezes on grid.
Utterly boring.
I really don’t get why people insist on defending this state of affairs.
Dude, I know I’m long winded, but I’ve literally said I like cloaking and cloaked ships like six different times now, several times in the first few sentences of a post so it would be easy to spot.
The problem isn’t cloaking, it’s the gameplay that all of these things come together to create, where the optimal course of action is an AFK standoff which has all the “gameplay” of watching paint dry.
Except CCP tried that, and it basically put Null in a coma.
It certainly solved the problem, but just like any of the other “easy fixes”, like nerfing cloaking/cloaky ships, it had too many knock on effects.
As I’ve said previously, I just think this is a problem (and I enjoy debate), I don’t actually care how it gets fixed, and I suspect that if it ever is fixed it’s going to be because CCP changes some of the fundamental systems involved here, and this is basically just a side effect.
Well as CCP and many player groups are fighting against afk activities, I agree that y should not be able to do any activity while afk ( at least not properly or without risks) I live in null and I’m not against cloaky campers, it’s gameplay, just don’t agree they can do it afk, witch eve community is fighting so much to kill those activities. I say cloaks should not have auto cycles, or at least y need to enter the input again after few time. ( without stopping cloak)
Yes, well said. Let’s have a generic timer that needs to be ‘cancelled’ by a click. This tells the CPU you are alive and, unlike me, awake. This must work for all activities and should not be predictable - say a simple puzzle like 1+2=? with a choice. Wrong (or no) answer and you are placed in warp mode. This is not discriminatory against any one activity but happens at random intervals for EVERYONE in space. It would be awkward stopping in mid-battle to work out 5-2 so an average number of clicks per time frame could and should be a factor.
Looking forward to the outrage.
Voets
Y mean like a captcha? no I won’t go for that. I mean the module itself, let’s say 1 cycle is 2-3 minutes, and after that cycle you still stay cloaked for like 10 secs. If you activate it again, y go all over again without dropping cloak . Think it’s not hard to code it, and a fair solution cause if you are not able to fight, explore or mine afk, y should not be able to cloak camping too
You aren’t doing any activity. You are literally sitting idle in a safespot doing absolutely nothing. AFK cloaking is the exact opposite of doing an activity.
Think it’s not hard to code it, and a fair solution cause if you are not able to fight, explore or mine afk, y should not be able to cloak camping too
Because fighting, mining, etc, are active things where you are producing direct benefits: ISK, minerals, killmails. AFK cloaking is literally just sitting in a safespot doing nothing. What you’re suggesting is the equivalent of having to click a “stay docked” button every 2-3 minutes while in station or your ship is ejected into space for people to kill.
And what will they gank[quote=“Merin_Ryskin, post:6606, topic:4731”]
What you’re suggesting is the equivalent of having to click a “stay docked” button every 2-3 minutes while in station or your ship is ejected into space for people to kill.
[/quote]
Sure, except to every other player in local there’s no visible difference between an AFK and a non-AFK player, so they’re effectively able to threaten while AFK.
Psi-Ops is absolutely something of benefit and part of Eve’s gameplay.
There are two problems with this. One, it’s going to be frustrating to normal players to at least some extent. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t work, but it does mean that it would need to be implemented carefully.
Second, it’s pretty easily circumvented with a very small shell script. If it’s a straight and predictable timer then I can literally just write a script that throws an “F1” key press at my client every X minutes. If it’s random, then that aforementioned frustration factor goes up.
Except this potentially hurts cloaked scouts, especially Covert Ops ships. Just the local thing could potentially be a buff, potentially, but losing DScan would be a pretty big hit, especially in Wormholes.
The issue I think you’re trying to address by having DScan pings notify the pinged ships, but that has other potential issues like spamming people, server performance, ect.