People complain because they aren’t willing to make the effort, not because it is actually difficult to do, or because they are too risk-averse to accept any chance of being blown up, no matter how easy it is to plan around and mitigate.
Risk aversion or flat-out laziness are not compelling arguments to me for making changes that benefit said risk-averse and/or lazy players in null while actively harming players in other areas of space.
Your opinion and best guesses don’t amount to facts I am afraid.
I am not complaining myself but I have to agree that the concept of it being “not legitimate game play” holds water. I think the whole thing can be improved.
If they leave system before you, that is not only valuable information, it immediately means 2 things:
If they logged off they won’t be reported in Intel channels and if they did actually leave system and are still around, then Intel channels will alert people.
Any ship that jumps a gate has to be uncloaked and can be seen on d-scan. So if you are in warp to gate, ctrl+space will cancel any jump command and you are free to just stay in system.
Its just a non-issue if they leave system.
Yeah, so you did this 3 times and they are AFK, you thought you were safe, but now the person is VMAK and you are dead.
What is it about time and change that confounds you so? Time and change applies to your whole response. You keep talk like everything is static. It isn’t.
So you want AFK cloaking to be changed, for ATK cloaked players?
If they are ATK and jump into system, then safe/dock up. They can’t instantly get to you. We see that every day in null and it’s very much part of the game.
However, if this is now about just changing cloaks because, then that probably needs a different thread. This one is the “Main AFK cloaky thread”.
Why in the fk can you not understand they are the same people???
what gameplay is taking place when someone leaves their character logged in and afk at work?
If someone is ATK, then this can be dealt with (even if they were previourly AFK). Jumping to a different system helps to gather that intel. The issue of AFK cloaking is the uncertainty in nullsec of a hotdrop. The inability to know what the opposition actually has to fight you.
But, if you know the guy is active, then the game already provides all of the necessary tools to deal with that, and no change is needed to cloaks, to nerf players actively playing the game. Hot drops are part of the game and if a player doesn’t take action when they know a cloaky hunter is active, then more fool them.
Yeah and when they figure out your solution to AFK cloaking is to leave the system, they wait with another ship on the other side.
Why can’t you just not accept there is power in AFK cloaking, and that power is being applied by people not even playing the game? That’s BS.
I mean damn, even you offer a counter, effectively proving they need countered by people playing the game.
If you want to argue any changes will need a rebalance elsewhere, fine. But is it so hard to admit that players actually playing being directly influenced by people who aren’t, is crap? I mean damn, that’s way similiar to botting. They are not playing, but they affect our play. Its crap.
That’s what intel channels are for. If they are active on other ships next door, then you’ll know before you jump (even with your own scouts). These same approaches are used every day in null by players who apply just a little bit of thought to their play.
Typically, scouts that are out scouting for an active fleet, are in inty’s or other fast ships, not cloaked ships (as a generalization). Cloaky camping is for the hot drops, intel gathering and general disruption, where the enemy fleet isn’t just in the next system. But any enemy fleet or ships out and about are reported through intel channels and known about.
Almost everything in space is a constant competition between different players and everything has counters. That’s part of what makes EVE the game it is.
Cloaking is one of the counters to income generation (eg. it’s an effective strategy to disrupt another group you want to invade, because it affects income and morale, making it part of lowering defence multipliers in preparing for a nullwar, as one example).
I don’t think anyone here is discounting there is power as an anti-intel tool, or psychological warfare tool. That it is BS is your opinion, not held by others.
Again, it is your opinion, which you keep phrasing as if it’s fact.
This would be my approach to changing the existing dynamic around AFK cloaking, if it happened:
Issue
The power of local, allows a cloaked player to project a presence in system, even if the player is not really present and is AFK. This has a psychological affects on others in local.
Changes:
Observatory array:
This provides the ability for sov owners to control who has access to local chat and the intel it provides, however it isn’t perfect, as the range of a single array is limited, requiring multiple arrays to be deployed to cover key areas of a system (all arrays communicate together as a network, so any ship in range of one, appears in local for whoever has access to it).
Enemy ships moving through sov null now have no local intel. They need to scout more effectively.
Cloaked ships that are totally off grid from all arrays cannot be uncloaked, but neither can they gain any intel from d-scan about any ships that are in the operating range of the observatory arrays.
AFK cloakers will be decloaked if they are in range, and otherwise don’t appear in local at all.
ATK cloakers might be decloaked when moving around, but since they are active, they can cloak again anyway, so can avoid being combat probed.
Cloakers lose local and can’t psychologically disrupt effectively while AFK, however they gain the ability to potentially go undetected all together when actively hunting.
Observatory arrays are sov structures and become additional targets in nullsec wars, to help disrupt information.
Advantages and disadvantages for everyone (including wormholes that want to dayvtrip out into null) and a few more play options for both locals and enemies in nullsec.
Literally 0. And yet, it yields results ingame. Don´t act as if an AFK cloakcamper is a mentally challenged individual making useless things for no apparent reason.
The pilot doing it, is looking for a series of objetives, that he achieves while being mostly AFK. At work or sleeping, as you said earlier.
And of course he is not AFK 100% of the time, just as a droneboat AFK ratter is not 100% of the time AFK. But in both cases, the yield they get, comes mostly from a client logged with near to 0 human interaction.
Uh… no?
Your lack of krabbing is what is “yielding results ingame”.
The cause of that lack of krabbing stems from carebear cowardice. Not from someone just taking a break from the game.
In the metagame, the lack of krabbing of a group, yields results to their enemies. Decreasing morale, lowering ADM, strangling the capacity of the enemy… And it has been achieved by a method involving almost no active gameplay. While at work or at bed.
For cowardice you say? Indeed, who cares? The thing is you get something while not playing. Not taking a break; logging in and going to BED or WORK. That´s plain bot-aspirancy.
Patience 
So you’re saying that there’s no actual gameplay. Just meta-gameplay.
The fact that they are afraid to undock unless alone in a system is not a cloaking problem.
I’m not even sure if being afraid to play a computer game is healthy IRL. Seems like people have a little too much emotional currency in the game or something.
No, the meta is just a part. Then there is the people doing it just for the fortunate kill.
You login, you go to bed and then to work, and when you sit again at the computer, the locals have gone through all the emotional arc of anger, denial, and accpetance, and voila, a juicy blingy rattlesnake/orca is ripe for the harvest just as you sit and tell your folks to prepare for the cyno.
A process that has taken 16 hours and 10 minutes, in wich you have been AFK 16 hours.
If you are the hunter, I can understand why you like it that way, just as I can understand how some people liked to make 500mill a day with an AFK ishtar, but… seems that the game is moving towards other direction.
We´ll see anyway.
None of this is AFK gameplay though.
This is just carebears being scared.