One thing I still don’t get. And it goes back to my other questions (which nobody will answer). If your system has an afk cloaker in it, why not move next door? Or 2 systems over? Most SOV owners hold more than one system.
Why these discussions always boil down to “filthy krabbers should just go elvewhere”. I personally want to defend my space and kill the cloaky bastard thats invading. But i’m 100% unable to.
EDIT: and another thing is cloakers always taunting “stupid PvE’rs” wanting to be safe while exact same people want to sit cloaked being completely safe themselves. Newsflash: Your concept of risk vs reward is pretty frikkin stupid.
Only if you do nothing but sit idle in space. They also can’t do anything to you if you log off, should we also remove the ability to log off while in space?
Why? Why can’t they be in PvP ships killing NPCs alongside the ship they’re defending? Did I miss an update where the guns on PvP ships no longer function against NPCs?
The rest of those things mostly don’t really matter or apply here
Thanks for admitting your ignorance of the subject. Staying off the warp-in beacon is extremely relevant because cloaked ships are slow (since they can’t use MWD/MJD) and have to get within tackle range to catch you. If you warp in at 50-100km from a random direction and then constantly MWD/MJD around the site in random directions you’ll be moving faster than the cloaked ship can chase you and it becomes extremely difficult for it to ever get within tackle range. One of the biggest factors in farmer losses is the number of idiot farmers that warp to zero and then sit there mindlessly pressing F1, ensuring that they’re within tackle range as soon as the cloaked ship warps in.
In practice, not so much.
Only because lazy and/or stupid people keep feeding them kills. This is like complaining that suicide gankers always maintain a positive K:D ratio (in ISK terms). It’s not that suicide ganking itself is guaranteed profit, it’s that there are tons of idiots in expensive gank magnets and gankers never have to fire at something that won’t be profitable. Same thing for black ops groups, they only maintain their impressive K:D ratios because there’s a sufficient supply of easy targets offering themselves up as willing sacrifices, take that away and they can’t maintain the same killboard stats.
Because the cost/benefit on that is terrible.
Kills your efficiency a lot of the time because you need to stay within range of spawns
And now we come back to the heart of the issue: the ISK per hour isn’t good enough for certain farmers, so they reject the defense tools they already have and demand more nerfs to the PvP threats.
Stop lying. People have pointed out your existing defense tools over and over again.
Newsflash: Your concept of risk vs reward is pretty frikkin stupid.
How is it off? AFK cloaking has zero risk but it also has zero reward. All you’re doing is sitting idle in space. The only way to obtain any reward is to shut off your cloak and face risks. Contrast this with the RMT botters who demand 100% safety while still receiving tons of ISK per hour.
Seriously, are you being dense on purpose? Because if there is no reward on afk cloaking (as you claim), why do people constantly do it? If you make people move elsewhere, thats a reward. If you make people dock, thats a reward. If you make people uselessly try to hunt you down (and waste time), thats a reward…
And… Please tell me, oh great master, what are my defense tools to get that afk cloaker out of the system? Yeah, there is none. He can just keep on disturbing the system while being at work for example.
Because you can follow it by engaging in PvP combat and earning a reward, but that requires facing risk. If you want to claim that AFK cloaking involves no risk then you can only look at the time spent cloaked in a safespot. And during that time there is no reward.
If you make people move elsewhere, thats a reward. If you make people dock, thats a reward. If you make people uselessly try to hunt you down (and waste time), thats a reward…
That’s not a reward at all. Making someone move to another system or waste their time does not put ISK in my wallet or kills on my killboard.
And… Please tell me, oh great master, what are my defense tools to get that afk cloaker out of the system?
Why does it matter? It’s an irrelevant name in local if you use your existing defense tools.
Ok, so where is the risk vs. reward balance in sitting in station spamming local with rude messages (but not anything against the TOS)? Should each message sent to local chat have a 1% chance of deleting your assets? After all, if merely being a dick is considered a reward then this is clearly a situation where you have zero risk and non-zero reward.
Of course it does. If you do not agree with the need to impose risk on talking in local while docked then you have admitted to a double standard where considering “being a dick” for risk vs. reward analysis only matters for things you don’t like.
A “reward” is not really subjective when you talk about game design here - it isn’t just whatever you want it to be. A reward is when you spawn resources into our shared universe.
Ratters and miners do this. The hunters of them do not - in fact they remove rewards from the universe (if successful) via explosions. And AFK cloakers certainly do not.
AFK cloaking is literally equivalent to staying docked in a station while you go out to do your chores. It has zero effect on the game universe other than to leave a name in a social chat list. No reward is directly generated, and it is only useful in game because other people use participant list of the chat tool as a (unintended) proximity detector.
Nerfing cloaks to improve the accuracy of this “safety detector” seems like a terrible and self-interested idea. Cloaking is very useful to explorers, travellers and hunters moving around New Eden. Sometimes you need to dock up and leave the computer, or you run into something you can’t deal with and need to hide. Why should this be made harder, just so nullsec residents can feel more secure and rat more efficiently, generating more rewards?
Sorry, cloaked ships, and especially AFK cloaked ships aren’t generating rewards. There is nothing going on here other than subversion of an unintended intel tool that results nullsec people feel unsafe. Yes, this could all be improved and more gameplay introduced to give nullseccers more ability to secure their space, but I’m pretty sure almost everyone agrees, except for the odd selfish renter, that nullsec is already far too safe. Any changes to AFK cloaking/local chat will come with compensatory changes so you cannot just avoid any fight.
All I hear still after dozens of posts is people crying that their farming isn’t 100% safe. If you take away the ability for any PvP engagement against your PvE farming then where’s the risk for your reward?
Which by the way, in spite of being so terribly hampered by the plague of awful campy cloakers is hands down still the biggest isk faucet in the game.
Arguing risk vs reward against cloaky camping is intellectually dishonest.
Active players need to leave the keyboard sometimes when they are far away from a station or safety.
Why inconvenience everyone for the sole reason that it makes local chat a more reliable danger detector for nullsec farmers? I see no reason why a general mechanic used everywhere in the game should be nerfed because some players don’t like to see a name in chat channel list.
IOW, you admit that you have no defense for your double standard in only considering “being a dick” to be a reward when it suits your current argument.
Because that setup is the most efficient. You can have X people covering every system within jump range instead of just one system, and cynos are faster than warp anyway so they provide better cover as well.
I don’t know if it’s still policy but Goons used to forbid PvE in their staging systems because you can’t cyno within the same system.
Sure, yeah, I was assuming enough brains to at least align since that’s been the assumption for a while in this thread.
And as I said, jumping around like that isn’t really practical in a lot of sites.
People keep saying this, but if this stuff didn’t work people wouldn’t do it, and not every kill these folks get is lazy or stupid. Fundamentally the Cloaky just needs to get lucky once, and the targets need to be fast or lucky every single time.
No, you’re misunderstanding me. It’s not “I don’t feel like this is enough” it’s “in the average time it takes me to lose my ship I will earn enough extra using a good PvE ship to buy another boat compared to if I used an inefficient PvP fit”
I’ve tried it, it’s just a bad idea. Full stop. The only way this makes sense is if you literally don’t have the reflexes to push “warp” when someone decloaks near you and your only option is to fight, and even then you’re probably better off just using a cheaper PvE fit.
So let me get this straight, you expect us to believe that both of these are true:
AFK cloaking is a huge problem that requires far-reaching changes to the entire concept of cloaking.
and
AFK cloaking is such a minor problem that none of the counters are worth it because it’s cheaper to just ignore the cloaked ship, continue farming, and make more ISK than you lose if/when they ever bother to attack.
Sounds like everything is fine and the solution is for farmer trash to stop being so terrified of losses that they hide in station all day even when they could be making ISK.
I never said this, in fact I’ve specifically said not this. I can dig up a quote from some other post if you really like, but I’ve been saying since I popped back up in this thread that it’s a problem but not a major problem, and that I don’t think that there should be major changes to cloaking mechanics specifically to address this. It’s a small problem, it either needs a very targeted solution or it should be swept up with a large change to some other system (like cloaking, local, ect) that’s aimed at solving some other problem, or making some other change to the game, but not explicitly this one.
The problem is that it’s bad gameplay and an almost entirely un-fun dynamic because there’s nothing the person can do about it. It’s the game mechanics equivalent of an itch inside your skull. And something like that is mostly fine IRL, or in your job, or whatever, but in a game. Something people do for fun. It’s not great and it contributes to a poor gameplay experience for players.
I don’t think this is driving anyone out of the game on its own, but it’s definitely not helping, and I’d bet this has been the last straw for at least a few people.
A far better gameplay dynamic would be one where a ganked player is actively encouraged to fight back, like sites that push people towards small groups of PvP-ish fitted ships, or one where the player has some immediate action they can take to revenge themselves on the offending parties. As things stand neither of these dynamics is present.
They definitely could be though. Incursion ships in High Sec generally run fairly close to PvP fits, minus the Warp Disruption, and as a consequence don’t get attacked in sites much, despite the amount of bling on the field.
Add in sites where the enemies have higher bounties or shinier loot and the DPS is high enough to encourage fleet play, then make those enemies inclined to warp off if not pinned down. Presto, PvP fits are suddenly not just viable but fairly close to optimal.
As for immediate revenge, I’m not sure. There are plenty of potential ideas, but none that are particularly satisfying to me personally.