Except the people in question are causing themselves the poor gameplay experience, by being so risk-averse that they dock up instead of acknowledging they maybe will get dropped and doing the bare minimum to attempt to mitigate that risk, or accepting some risk at all. There is zero fix for that mindset from a game balancing perspective- CCP can’t fix the complete lack of will to participate in PvP risk.
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This is still not true.
There’s nothing the person wants to do about it. Or is willing to do about it.
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In the literal case of “this person in AFK and cloaked” there is nothing I can do to remove them, inconvenience them, ect. Once they decloak and play their hand there are things that can be done, but as this thread has pretty solidly established most of those things don’t make for great gameplay.
The most common counter is just have people sitting and waiting to bridge to the rescue of anything big enough to survive to light a Cyno, and otherwise people just do whatever they’re doing aligned and warp off at the first hint of anything, which has less gameplay than most phone-clicker games.
For someone who has already stated they don’t see this as a BIG problem. And maybe even said they don’t have personal skin in the game (going from memory) you are awful persistent.
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Yup, you’re correct on both counts, and yes I am. I got my degree in game design, and while I just work in the broader software field now I still have something of a pet peeve for badly designed game dynamics like this, especially ones that reward AFK behavior.
Besides, if I can stay civil and on topic in a thread like this then I’ll have no problems responding to the dumbest things in my work inbox… 
It seems the Null bloc’s do this anyway. So your already prepared.
Did you write your own bot program but it still wont take into account an afk cloaker in sys?
Just because people are doing something doesn’t make it good gameplay.
And no, botters can all get banned. They’re worse than AFK game mechanics.
Not to you, but to others. I kept a acct on 2 mo’s longer than I wanted to just to send a worthless PI toon that could cloak (yes, all my WH PI toons can cloak 
) into null just because of this thd. Glad I could chip in.
I did my job in backup fleets guarding gates and wh’s, etc. (the only time I turn up my game volume) Why cant the rest of you?
Because this doesn’t really do much against this particular issue.
In WH Space if someone infiltrates your WH then that only really matters until the hole roles over. They have a limited window to act and their friends have to come in through a wormhole as well. This creates a whole active cat and mouse game of moving in ships, reinforcements, rolling holes, interdicting each sides reinforcements, ect. Tons of active gameplay.
In Null you can camp a gate, but you have to sleep sometime and it’s functionally impossible to stop someone from getting a cloaky into a specific system sooner or later. After that they can sit around however long they like, there’s nothing you can do, and their friends can jump or bridge from a completely empty system many many gate jumps away, but a single bridge away.
I see you really don’t know what you’re talking about…
When a scout finds a good ‘target’ WH system he sends in a cloaky camper to observe and report. The camper parks himself somewhere far’off the beaten track’ so he can log-off and -on without appearing on D-scan. If he does it right the inhabitants of the WH system never even know he’s there. He finds targets worth attacking and sets-up bookmarks for the attack. He finds out when the system is busy and when it’s empty. This may well take several days.
At the appropriate moment he scans-down a route to K-space for his fleet to enter and perform the initial structure attack. They leave, and he goes back to being cloaked until the reinforcement timer is over and the follow-up attack can take place. Rinse and repeat until all the target(s) are destroyed and any loot taken.
There are corps and alliances who’s sole purpose in Eve is to do exactly this. Unless the wormhole residents have a good defence fleet they’re doomed from the moment the scout first arrived.
I know this, because I’ve been the wormhole resident on the receiving end…
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This 100%.
As an example, my favorite pastime for WH hunting was dual boxing cloaky T3C. A facemelting proteus and a neut legion. Just this pair could take down almost any solo anom running if they relied on an active tank. There were many times I would roll into a WH that looked like it had promising targets. Sometimes I’d hang cloaked off their POS (this was pre-citadel) just watching activity. Waiting for a good time.
Sometimes that meant I sat there for hours, going afk when it seemed it was outside their TZ activity. It didn’t matter if the WH collapsed, I didnt need to bring friends in.
The point being there are differences between WH and K space. But the net results are often the same. Most engagements are smaller, largely because neither saide can bring in friends as easily.
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There is nothing that they can do to remove you, inconvenience you, etc. either because they are literally not at their keyboard.
This is the underlying truth that this undying topic is based on. An AFK player cannot harm you. The only harm caused by an AFK player in local is the reaction on the part of others in-system caused by a perceived threat. The AFK cloaker has absolutely zero control over how other people in local will react. The AFK cloaker can’t force people to change their behavior. All the AFK cloaker can do is present the possibility of a threat and let others around them react as they see fit.
It’s a metagame, it’s the art of deception, it’s PSYOPs, it’s playing with your opponent’s headspace. We do this in real warfare all…the…time.
I have over twenty years of experience doing analysis and engineering for the US military. I think this may explain our differences in perception on the topic.
Never forget that, at its core, EvE is a war game. Focus more on the war and less on the game and you’ll see where I’m coming from.
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I am, in fact, familiar with all of this. I was trying to simplify and apparently missed the mark.
What I meant was that if I’m just sitting AFK in a WH system there’s no threat risk without some amount of activity leading up to it on my part. I need to scout the connections, scan down wormholes, ect. There are opportunities for counter play or simply fighting the people I bring in on relatively even terms at most stages of this. Hells I could just end up locked out if the locals have a cloaky parked on the exit hole, notice me leave, and roll the hole while I’m scouting the chain.
Sure a good attacker can probably bring in more people than the defenders, out-fight them, ect, but that’s a contest of skill and strategy, not “who can AFK harder” or “who can click one button faster when someone decloaks”. There’s actual gameplay there.
And this is one of the key points I’m going for. This creates more opportunities for real gameplay and makes the risk at least seem more manageable for the defender, even if there are people out there like you with a Proteus/Legion combo. The defender still has more potential options in that fight than they do in a Blops Hotdrop in Null.
See, your first point kinda negates your second here. That psy-ops is an effect, and there are plenty of other places people will try and fake people out in Eve, but those require real effort and have some kind of counter play, even if that play is just bluff and bluster on both sides in a chat channel. There the risk and action economy is fairly even on both sides.
And of course the key problem with this entire point is there is no AFK indicator. You have no way of knowing if someone’s AFK or on-grid watching you.
Eve is still a game before it’s a war. Wars don’t try to have balance between sides, wars don’t get patches, wars don’t care how bored you are 99% of the time. Games need to care about all of these things, and treating any game like a real war doesn’t work even halfway because wars aren’t fun or engaging.
This sort of thinking can inspire gameplay dynamics, but no game tries to model a real life experience exactly and entirely.
If it did then ARMA would be hours or days of sitting around in base and patrolling before anything happened.
Um what? Not really. If I wanted to do the afk cloaking thing in 0.0 I’d still need to scout around gates looking for a system worthing to camp until the time was right.
It’s not that different from hanging out cloaked in a WH system for days, popping a mining barge every time they think it is safe. Yea it was prolly a d!ck move but it was fun 
Do they though? in the WH they don’t even know I’m there. It Null, I get a big old HERE I AM in local.
Personally I still think the answer is a reworking of local. But I’ve posted those ideas enough times already.
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And therein lies the metagame. The impact is entirely in the minds of other players.
Let me pull an old example from my days as a wardeccing PITA. I would wardec small corporations (sometimes for a fee, sometimes for fun) with hisec POSes running. I would then park myself in local and wait. Literally, wait. I’d either be docked up or in space cloaked, never saying a word or engaging them at all. If I had chosen my target properly, they would take down their POS without me ever firing a shot, thus freeing up the moon for myself or my client. (Or, if they didn’t, they’d eventually let their guard down and I’d start shooting them, but that usually wasn’t the goal.)
Now…what’s wrong with what I just described? What tweaks or changes need to be made to gameplay or how local works in order to correct what I highlighted as broken?
The answer to both questions is absolutely nothing. I relied on human psychology to achieve a desired result. I was alone and outnumbered, yet I managed to play up my perpetual presence into a force multiplier. My targets could have easily stood and fought if I had attacked them, but they chose to let me win without a fight.
At its core, the scenario I just described is precisely analogous to AFK cloaking in nullsec, and neither one of the requires any kind of “fixing”.
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You can often do this by just looking at the system statistics and looking for systems with low but consistent numbers of pilots in space. No active scouting required.
It really kinda is, at least in practice. I think if AFK cloaking worked this way in practice this thread probably wouldn’t exist, instead it’s someone just sitting in system for days or weeks doing nothing.
Also, like, that person should have learned after the first mining barge…
Sure, but there are also limits to your intel without doing something to give your presence away. That whole “here I am” thing works both ways in Null, so the cloaker doesn’t need to do much to know who’s around.
I’m kind of in favor of reworking Local as well, but I don’t think the blackout was very effective. I’m personally a fan of the “tie intel to a structure” framework, but I think that should go beyond local and include some benefits for both sides of the equation here.
As you said though, that’s been done to death, and is kinda off topic for this thread.
It’s not though. It’s close, but the key thing here is that the other guys took down their POS. That’s an over-reaction on their part, and they probably should have at least waited until you were actually threatening the thing, though to some extent that’s risk/reward on their end.
Ultimately here though I have less of a problem with that dynamic because in High Sec the threat and the effects are known quantities. You can’t magic a force from nowhere who then disappear just as quickly. Someone can respond disproportionately to the threat presented, but as you said the people on the receiving end of your Psy-Ops could have fought and pushed back, actively, and that would have been gameplay. You couldn’t achieve your objective without some active play on your part if they didn’t give in to the soft pressure.
I’m also curious whether or not this works with Upwell Structures. I somewhat suspect not, thanks to Asset Safety, the structures being better armed than the average High Sec POS, and their value relative to ISK buying power being lower than POSes were back in the day.
If that’s the case then that suggests that the key part of your operation wasn’t really the AFK part, it was the POS mechanics and the financial loss a POS represented.
ok at this point you are just splitting hairs. I can also check KB for the WH system to get an idea of who lives there and their active times.
The point is that what occurs leading up to me hanging out cloaked in the system is not relevant.
As if you know the intentions of the cloaker. Or if they are even AFK. Maybe they just weren’t getting a good chance to attack?
They did eventually, and I left. Actually they finally put out a bait barge and I ran away.
Dscan? I can literally find out who’s active completely hidden, as long as I don’t log out (hence going afk sometimes.)
It’s pretty easy to tell someone who’s actively hunting from someone who’s AFK cloaking. An active hunter will be around for a few hours at most, and will likely move on if they don’t get any targets to go after. An AFK cloaker will be around for 12+ hours every day, often close to 23/7.
That’s another fundamental difference. You can’t bait an AFK cloaker because there’s no real investment on their part. That account exists to just sit there and wait while they do other things, they only have to check it occasionally, and often they won’t check it much if at all for the first few days or weeks.
You can find out what’s active, but not necessarily who, and if someone else is cloaked up on overwatch you have no way to know that.
Yeah the differences between Null and WHs as far as cloakies go are small individually, but they add up to a very different situation. Ultimately there’s just no point in someone AFK cloaking in a WH. The psy-ops effect isn’t there, and there’s no way to cyno in reinforcements. There’s plenty of uses for cloaked ships in WHs, but that’s not the same thing and doesn’t create the same gameplay problem.
This thread just continues to deliver, I have not seen such well thought out wordy versions of “I’m scared to undock mommy because I might not be alone!!!” in ages 
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Not for that reason. But there are many reasons to stay cloaked for extended periods of time, even if it means you are walking away from the computer for a bit.
To be fair, and I guess this isn’t so much for you, but it is the main reason I would be against the proposed “fixes” to cloaks, especially things like fuel.
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