Main AFK cloaky thread

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
986

Just because something is “for” a purpose, doesn’t mean it’s “required for” that. (Once again you are having problems with logic, if all crows are black, it doesn’t mean all black things are crows.)

The ability to chat/talk with other players of the game is an expected part of any multi-player game, even when it doesn’t make sense in-game. For example in a FPS you can taunt another player on the map without giving away your position.

Is this a double negative for emphasis, (okay in English despite what Grammar NAZIs say) a double negative for negation, or a typo?

I’ve never suggested nor supported any such idea.

Yes, AFK cloaking is a meta-game thing, not an in-game thing. You “suggested” treating a meta-game item like an in-game item (needing fuel), I simply pointed out that in-game things and meta-game things are distinctly different and it’s wrong to equate them and try to treat them the same. Pointing out that something else is also meta-gaming doesn’t make meta-game and in-game the same.

No, I’m not. I’m saying “I have an issue with AFK. (full stop)” But maybe I stand alone in this. I would have an issue with AFK even if it didn’t effect in-game game play.

I really want to agree with you here. It would be great if this was true, but if this were the case I think it could only “register” ships that come through the gate. Unless the gates somehow scan the whole system. Also it doesn’t register ships, but pilots, and local does exist in WH (although delayed) where there are no gates.

Sorry, but local chat is not an in-game justifiable communication system, it is a magical system powered by fairy dust (rust that falls off of Minmatar ships) and carebear tears. That connects to every pilot in the system when the player is logged into the game.

987

There needs to be a serious change with how cloaks work… a cloaked player can sit in a system for 23 hours and 45 minutes and walk away but still cause serious disruption to the game. I understand that there should be risks to players that mine or rat, but there also should be risks to those that just sit there cloaked.

Problem: First thing, is how is it possible that the cloak can work for 23 hours 45 minutes without spending any type of fuel or using any power. …

Solution: It needs to have a capacitor draw to limit it to an hour with a longer reactivation time if it expires as opposed to if it is turned off.

ProblemSecond EVERY… and I mean EVERY MMO in the world that has an invisibility function in their game, has a see invisibility counter to it usually limited to class or items…

Solution My solution to this is put an ability in one of T3C subsystems to be able to detect cloaked ships.

Another possible solution would be a module on a structure that when activated sends a cloak disabling burst. Anyone cloaked would not be able to cloak for 10 minutes and the timer does not expire while being logged off. if you log off for 10 minutes and come back, the timer is still there

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988

Only if you are weak and allow them to. Perhaps if you are too weak for nullsec you should go back to highsec, where you can farm with the 100% zero-risk safety you desire?

Problem: First thing, is how is it possible that the cloak can work for 23 hours 45 minutes without spending any type of fuel or using any power. …

How is it possible that a shield extender works without spending any power? By this reasoning there should be no such thing as passive modules, every module should have a significant capacitor drain and if you’re in space for more than an hour you should have all of your modules go offline.

ProblemSecond EVERY… and I mean EVERY MMO in the world that has an invisibility function in their game, has a see invisibility counter to it usually limited to class or items…

Why should anyone care how other games, which are not PvP-focused sandboxes like EVE, handle their game mechanics? Those other games are irrelevant, please don’t waste our time trying to discuss them.

I think I should have a structure with a “make cloaked threat go away” button I can press that removes all PvP risk from my farming operation for 10 minutes, because PvP is scary and I don’t want to have to worry about it.

No.

989

That 100% zero risk bullsh1t you all talk about is applied only to the cloakers once they are in the targeted system. Too weak for nullsec? I can’t believe this came out of a guy’s mouth that hides behind a cloak. :rofl:

990

Highsec PvE farming is 100% zero risk, like it or not. If you’re farming level 4 missions it’s impossible to die against the NPCs unless you’re playing EVE drunk or have to suddenly go AFK and can’t turn on your tank. Assuming even a minimal level of competence the only possible threat is suicide gankers, and that’s easily avoided by flying T2-fit ships that are not profitable to suicide gank but can still farm missions with zero chance of failure.

Nullsec PvE farming is as close to 100% zero risk as you can get outside of highsec. If you watch local and immediately warp out as soon as a non-blue player enters local it is almost impossible to die. The time required to enter the system, locate your target, and get tackle on it is far longer than the time required for the PvE ship to enter warp. You do have to pay a minimal amount of attention while farming, unlike highsec (where you go AFK and only switch back to EVE to hit F1 on a new target occasionally), but the result is still the same: farming with negligible risk of loss.

AFK cloaking is a zero-risk activity once you enter a system, yes. But, unlike zero-risk PvE farming, zero-risk AFK cloaking is also a zero-reward activity. While you are cloaked you can not make money, can not engage PvP targets, etc. All you can do is passively sit there in a safespot and avoid destruction. To accomplish anything, whether it’s making money, killing people, etc, you have to deactivate your cloak and accept risk.

Too weak for nullsec?

Yep, too weak for nullsec. If a single player going AFK in your alliance’s system causes everything to shut down then you have failed as an alliance and should probably just move back to highsec. An AFK player against a well-organized alliance with the PvP strength to deserve to exist in nullsec is a minimal threat. They can sit there cloaked as long as they want, but if they ever try to do anything it’s a suicide attack with little hope of success.

991

You engade what you can kill in a cloaky, so it shouldnt be “little hope of succes” unless you dont know what you doing. Dont mix pve activity with isk reward with cloaky pvp activity.

992

If afk cloakers disrupt you that much you shouldn’t be in null.

993

I think it’s less about disruption and more about a false positive.

On either side, I think it’s reasonable for someone to know that someone in the game could be engaged or at least smack talked to the point they might get irritated enough to engage.

AFK players (be they cloaked in space or sitting in a citadel) simply waste the time of other players who are trying to get interaction.

if it’s not possible (say because the player is currently asleep or out for a walk or at work and not at their keyboard)… I believe it would be good for both hunters and PVE players to have the character logged off.

Heck, I’ve started to leave characters logged in now when I go to work just to screw with those coming in. I leave a VNI inside a forcefield just to make them think someone is ratting… simply to waste their time.

I’m not sure that’s good game design.

2 Likes
994

Except it’s not. You can’t force someone to be ‘doing something’ just because they are logged in and you shouldn’t log people off because they haven’t touched anything. The WHOLE point is that you shouldn’t know if anyone is there or not.

Anything that tries to combat afk cloakers nerfs active cloakers. Which is simply retarded given how little a problem afk cloakers are.

Take your own position, the ‘problem’ is not disruption but that the game makes you think there is someone to interact with when there isn’t. Talk about the mother of non-issues.

995

Can we stop with this lie? Of course it’s true that the AFK ship can’t kill anyone or make ISK while the player is AFK, but that doesn’t mean it’s “zero-reward”. If it were “zero-reward” players wouldn’t be doing it. They do it because it does have a value and does provide a reward. Other than the smug feeling of “I scared away a weak nullbear” it does make ISK (or really ISK value) for the alliance.

All currency, including ISK, gets value in differences. If everyone has the same, it’s all equally worthless. It’s only when someone has more that it gains value. In a simple two-party economic system doubling your money while the other party has a constant value, is exactly the same has halving the other party’s money while you have a constant value.

So while the AFK cloaker doesn’t make any ISK, every ISK he prevents the other alliance from making makes the ISK he (and his alliance) has worth more.

I completely agree.

996

Eve is the only MMO I play that doesn’t log people off or flag them as AFK for inactivity. The idea that you shouldn’t log people off because they haven’t touched anything is fairly unique to Eve. I’m not sure why anyone thinks that is a “as it should be” type behavior. If anything it seems more like an oversight.

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997

But other games don’t involve stalking other players, watching gates and trying to fool other players into thinking you’re not there when you actually are.

There aren’t games like eve. Comparing what happens in other MMO’s to eve is where you’ve gone wrong again.

Eve isn’t going to log you off a gate camp because you haven’t done anything with the client for a while and it’s not going to put a flag on you advertising to the nullbears the second you come back.

Funny you call it an oversight when it was local that was the oversight.

998

Ships, modules are used to play the game, As is local. The thing that makes local unbalanced is unlike a ship or a module there are no fitting choices, no ship choices, etc. Local is handed out with no effort and provides a significant benefit. If anything your distinction here underscores that local is really the root problem here. The only way to undermine that is via a cloak.

AFK cloaking is both meta-gaming and an in game thing. You don’t AFK cloak unless you have a character logged in to the game. And I am not equating the meta-game with in game, I am pointing out that requiring fuel is not confined to just the AFK cloaking player. For somebody who prides themselves on using logic you sure do have a hard time applying it. It is not logical to apply a nerf to somebody who is not causing a problem.

For a grammarian you haven’t heard of the indefinite “you”?

Yes! Which is why the issue is really local and not cloaks. Trying to fix the problem of local by trying to fix cloaks is like fixing your sink because your toilet is over-flowing.

999

Yea fix afk cloaky camping by removing local! Thats a very good idea!!! Geez

1000

Cloaky campers don’t stop our alliance from making isk. They don’t reduce our ADMs.

You know why? Because we’re ready to counter-drop them. We’ll bring 3 times the pain they can bring because it’s our home and we’ve got all our ■■■■ staged there.

Believe me, they’ve tried. We had a HAW titan blap one of them in a T3C once, which was funny as ■■■■. Titan got a target lock and then pop.

The last time bombers bar rolled in with 50 dudes, we dropped a few dozen carriers with fax support on them. They noped out of there as fast as they could. Interestingly, they’ve not been back since… that was a long time ago, but Eve is big.

If you can’t counter-drop, join a better corp/alliance or go back to high/low sec space. Null is lawless space where the only authority is the fire you can bring to bear. If they’ve got more, they are the authority not you, and it’s not your space for as long as they say it isn’t your space.

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1001

You suggested fuel for local, I assumed you meant in-game fuel, which would be conflating the in-game and the meta-game.

I have not disagreed with this, only that fuel for local wouldn’t make sense.

It’s outside the scope of this thread (so please don’t take this off in an aside) but personally I would support consumable fuel for almost anything/everything in EvE. But I’m mostly sure that I haven’t joined the “make cloak require fuel” side of this thread because fueling modules and ships is more complex than just the AFK cloak issue. (I could have said something about fuel, I didn’t search, but I don’t think I did.)

I think you might have missed an idea about meta-gaming, all meta-gaming requires an in-game connection. But I don’t think it’s important to the conversation. Honestly I think we are more in agreement here than not, although we might have different reasons for the position.

I don’t know what nerf that would be, the only “nerf” I suggested was that if you aren’t playing the game, there is a reason for you to not be logged into the game. @Daichi_Yamato made a valid point for why this shouldn’t be the case. (I don’t wholly agree with it, but it is valid for why to allow AFK.)

Of course I have, that’s what I was replying to. “you” meaning “all” would make your statement of the type “all x are y”, to disprove that statement all you need is one example of a y that it not an x. I am that one example.

I haven’t been trying to “fix cloaks” my only input as to a “fix” was about AFK, cloaks are fine.

1002

I think you seriously overestimate the uniqueness of EVE, but we’re all fanboys of something I guess.

Look, you said this “You can’t force someone to be ‘doing something’ just because they are logged in and you shouldn’t log people off because they haven’t touched anything.”.

The fact of the matter is most MMO’s do this. Saying “Oh, Eve is special” is fine and all… but it’s quite obvious that you CAN force them to be doing something and most MMO’s DO log them off because they haven’t touched anything. This isn’t some unbreakable rule in MMO design. It’s an Eve quirk.

Look… I view this as simply a fundamental point of what a multiplayer game is. The only reason I play a game with others present is the ability to interact with them. The most important thing to make interaction possible is for them to actually be at their keyboard. It may be “meta” to fool others into thinking you’re present when you aren’t really… but it doesn’t provide any multiplayer interaction to anyone. At best it’s a non-event… at worst it blunts interaction by having players work at interaction with a non-present toon instead of seeking interaction with someone who’s actually at their keyboard.

I view that as a flaw for a MMO game. Yes, it’s one that can be used in various ways to the advantage of one player or group or to the detriment of another… but it ends up being a net negative for actual in-game interaction. I view that as a flaw, not a feature.

And yeah… being able to talk with those in the same instance as you is also not something I’d consider “bad”. Neither is knowing that you’re not alone in a system. Both foster players interacting with each other.

1003

Right, and that’s good. but as almost everyone (on both sides) of this thread has pointed out, the reason for AFK cloakers is to scare nullbears because they don’t know when they might drop on them. Obviously fear doesn’t work on everyone, but that doesn’t change it being the point.

Almost all money making (or money restricting) endeavours have some risk, none are 100% successful. Your alliance’s case is a case where it doesn’t work, good for you.

The point is the AFK cloaker is doing something, or trying to do something, he isn’t just sitting there “doing nothing”. :slight_smile:

1004

Very true, we don’t know either. That’s why we simply maintain readiness. Our carriers rat with cynos and PVP tanks, our dreads and faxes are logged in and ready to jump, and a bridging titan is ready to undock - we have an instawarp bookmark from our keep, so that subcaps can be on said bridging titan in about 10 seconds.

When we rat, we rat in groups. Subcaps and carriers share sites, so that dropping on a VNI means you’re dropping on a VNI AND a carrier. Guess what that carrier will be lighting as soon as circumstances call for it?

Campers are there for a reason, they want something. Maybe it’s part of a sov campaign and they’re trying to lower ADMs, maybe their paid to grief, maybe they’re looking for kills. Regardless of what the reason is, they’ve got one.

When they realize that they’ll never be able to fulfill their objective, they leave.

Yes, it really does.

As I said before, authority in space is a gun. The group with more guns wins. When cloaky campers are in our system, we keep our guns ready to go. If you’re being scared into docking up, you lack the authority to hold the space. If you lack the authority to hold the space, you’ve zero right to use it for anything.

Risk and reward are intrinsically attached.

The cloaky camper has a low risk, and a low reward. I agree that the presence of a cloaky camper is not absent of reward. But it’s predicated on you not calling their bluff. It’s predicated on you cowing to them.

If you call their bluff, if you stand up and tell them to bring it (not in local, you tell them to bring it by ignoring them) their reward is zero, in line with their risk which is also zero.

The moment they try to drop on you, their reward potential goes up, and their risk potential skyrockets astronomically. They are not in effective combat ships. You should be.

1005

This is the only point I was getting at. We agree. :slight_smile:

Some others have said that the AFK camper can’t hurt anyone and can’t make ISK because they are AFK. You don’t let them hurt you or deny you ISK because you are ready and call their bluff. And as you said, “the leave”.

They can and do harm other players by scaring them away from their activities. I’m not saying that the scared nullbear doesn’t deserve it, I’m only saying that the AFK cloaker has done something and has “made ISK” (by preventing someone else from making ISK). The question wasn’t if they always did or didn’t, but that they “can”.