I would be hunting ratters all day without them knowing that im there, which sounds too OP if you ask me. Im not against removing local but simply removing local is not the right answer.
Not AFK you wouldnât.
It is if you want to stop AFK cloaking.
Nah dude there are other ways but i dont care at all. I replied to this thread because it was bad to see all the whining and ppl calling each other dumb because they dont agree⌠ehh
There are other ways to nerf AFK cloaking, but those other ways very clearly reveal the true motivation of the people advocating them: a belief that they are entitled to farm the most profitable PvE content in EVE at maximum ISK/hour with zero risk. And itâs no coincidence that these people reject the solution that would deal with the supposed problem of trying to interact with an empty chair without increasing the safety of PvE farming, and demand other solutions that would make farming safer while being no more effective at solving the empty chair problem. All of their attempts to complain about supposed harm done by AFK cloaking, such as the empty chair problem, are nothing more than a concession that their real motive is not popular and they need a cover for it.
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Sure, and what in game activity do you enjoy that CCP can nerf to fix AFK cloaking?
Seriously, every suggestion is a nerf not just to AFK cloaking, but ATK cloaking. All of them. That you canât see this suggest you have not hunted using a cloak.
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Nah i havent done afk cloaky camping cuz i dont enjoy afk playing but we do hotdrops and i can tell you if there was no local, the ratters will not see if there is a hotdropper which would be a HUGE problem too.
And why should ratters have instant warning of a threat, and an effectively 100% chance of escaping the attack if they click âwarpâ as soon as it appears in local? Perhaps those ratters should have a counter-drop of their own standing by, or simply accept that occasionally theyâll lose ships to hot drops.
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Its not 100% chance of escaping, only with carriers when you can stay aligned and warp out in 1 sec. Anyways whats the point of owning a sov null if you dont have good intel? Man we have active hunter for the hotdrops not a cloaky camper and we alwaays find something to shoot at. If you dont then you are bad at it.
That sounds very nice, and broad sweeping, but I think, even in a game like EvE, there are some people who donât just think about their own advantage in the game. I for one, would love to see AFK cloaking go away, and I donât do PvE in nullsec. In fact most things that might âhurtâ AFK cloaking, might actually hurt me. I donât really have a problem with âAFK cloakingâ, itâs really just with the âAFKâ part. Iâm not scared of an empty chair, I just have this crazy idea that when the loader tells me there are 20,000 players online that those should be âplayersâ, an empty chair isnât âplayingâ anything.
This really should be as simple as âif you donât interact with the game for XX min, you get logged off.â As everyone points out, the AFK cloaker canât hurt you or do anything because they are AFK and not playing, the same logic says that it doesnât hurt them if they get logged out.
But, the cloakers, by staying logged in, are manipulating the local chat for a tactical advantage (the nullbear canât see when they login and become active).
I have seen the main argument against this is that they will use some automated means to violate the EULA to get around this. Thatâs not a problem, thatâs a good thing.
This isnât rocket science, even this crappy new forum can tell when people are typing and reading topics. All âAFK playâ should be removed, because itâs either AFK or play, but never both.
So why not stay aligned then? It seems like youâve identified the solution to the problem. And anything short of a carrier is going to easily warp out in time, even when not aligned. TBH even a carrier is probably going to make it out, short of insanely good skill and luck by the attacker.
But ok, letâs say the answer is that carriers are not 100% safe. It isnât true, but letâs make the assumption just for the sake of argument. Even with local thereâs a significant chance of a PvE carrier dying. So my question is so what? Why is this something I should give a **** about? Are carriers the only ship capable of doing PvE? Are you literally faced with a choice of PvE in a carrier or no PvE at all? Of course not. If you canât fly a carrier you can still fly battleships, T3s, etc. You can still do PvE. You just canât farm it at the absolute highest possible ISK/hour efficiency, which is something that deserves no sympathy at all.
TL;DR: even if your claim about risk is correct itâs still worthless.
Anyways whats the point of owning a sov null if you dont have good intel?
I donât know, why do people claim sov right now when local works the same for everyone regardless of who holds it? Perhaps, if local is the only thing making it worth it because it allows zero-risk PvE farming, claiming territory is not for you? It sounds like highsec offers a level of risk more appropriate to what you want to get out of the game.
At which point the current AFK cloakers interact with the game every XX-1 minutes, with the minimum possible âinteractionâ to refresh the timer. Congratulations, youâve forced the AFK cloaker to put a robot around their mouse to bump it occasionally, or to remote desktop in from their phone and click something in EVE every XX-1 minutes, but you havenât forced them to interact with the game in any meaningful way. The situation from the point of view of literally every other player in EVE is exactly the same, youâve just added a tedious interface button to click. That isnât real gameplay, and it isnât something we need.
But, the cloakers, by staying logged in, are manipulating the local chat for a tactical advantage (the nullbear canât see when they login and become active).
Exactly. Youâve identified the primary reason for AFK cloaking. Removing AFK cloaking without simultaneously removing local means that lazy PvE players gain 100% safety because it is no longer possible to spend so long in a system that local is no longer an accurate indication of potential threats. The risk vs. reward balance is already screwed up enough as it is, the last thing we need is even more safety for PvE farmers.
I have seen the main argument against this is that they will use some automated means to violate the EULA to get around this. Thatâs not a problem, thatâs a good thing.
How exactly is it a good thing? Forcing people to break the EULA (in a way that is 100% undetectable) is not adding anything to the game experience.
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â â â â this thread should be deleted
This thread is a necessary forum feature. Itâs the trash can where bad ideas like yours can be thrown, so they donât clutter up the rest of the forum. We donât need multiple redundant AFK cloaking whine threads to scroll past to get to the real content.
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Go and make me a coffee solvaâŚ
Lets imagine what would happen if local was removed. All the campers would come here whining about ratters using proper scouts and they cant get a single kill.
I wish I had a job where I could remote desktop to a game every 5,10,15,20,whatever min and not have to worry about meetings, customers, or clients. If they are using a ârobotâ as you suggest, it violates the EULA, and then they can worry about a ban. There are more ways than âa bumpâ to tell if someone is actually playing the game.
If your argument is âwe canât require the AFK campers to play the game, because they will just cheatâ that doesnât really bring me over to your side.
Also good job at jumping on the one hypothetical part of my post and ignoring the real parts of it.
Yes, it is good to have all the âAFK cloakers make it so I canât PvEâ whines and all the âif you make me actually play the game, I canât play the gameâ whines in one place. Itâs a two sided coin, and both sides are whining. One side whines because they want it âsafeâ and the other side because they want it âeasyâ.
I donât think nullsec should be âsafeâ or âeasyâ for anyone, but I still have this crazy idea that players should be playing the game, not on the other side of the city. AFK is a bad thing for EvE, itâs a bad thing for just about any MMO and it should be fixed. If other things then also need to be fixed for balance, let it be. But if needing AFK is your only solution, then there is a problem.
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Ok, so you donât do it every hour of every day. You can still get large amounts of time logged in and not meaningfully interacting with the game. The basic point remains, that there is a huge gap between enough interaction to satisfy the AFK timer and meaningful interaction with other players, and the first does not necessarily lead to the second.
If they are using a ârobotâ as you suggest, it violates the EULA, and then they can worry about a ban. There are more ways than âa bumpâ to tell if someone is actually playing the game.
Technically they are violating the EULA, but itâs literally undetectable if you have a robot physically manipulating the mouse and keyboard. And it wouldnât be very difficult to defeat a simple AFK timer.
Also good job at jumping on the one hypothetical part of my post and ignoring the real parts of it.
What real points? All of your theories about how AFK players are bad? None of that matters when your idea is so thoroughly undermined by the practical difficulties in implementing it.
If other things then also need to be fixed for balance, let it be. But if needing AFK is your only solution, then there is a problem.
The point is that if you fix the other thing that needs to be fixed you no longer need to fix AFK cloaking because there will no longer be any purpose to it. If local no longer exists then you just log out every time you go AFK and eliminate the chance (cat walks across the keyboard and hits F1, etc) of accidentally decloaking and losing your ship. Your proposed AFK flag becomes a solution in need of a problem the moment the prerequisites for implementing it are met.
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We still get those regularly, because these whiny âthat afk person hurts my feelingsâ players are too illiterate to think about
- Where to post their trash
- Looking if their trash has already been posted before
and if you point them to the designated thread, they come along with entitlement along the lines of âmuh discussion here agree with me or go away troll muuuuuhâ.
I can clearly see that Linus Gorp comes here crying about local was removed and now he cant get a single kill 
