PL/NC have been cloaky camping Providence for several months now. They (or someone else) apparently hired Replicator to do the same for a few months before that (or so he indicated). Just because you aren’t asked to do it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
I honestly cant remember the last time I haven’t had a camper in my home systems in Providence. It’s not a big deal for me… all my ratting alts have bait fits and I am usually in standing fleets. I’d much rather him actually DROP on me though then just sit there. I get excited when there’s an active small group of reds in system… but it’s always either a cloaky camper or a 20-100 ship spike.
Before all the escalation, we rarely had campers and had a lot of solo or small group hunters coming through. Much more fun than blobs and campers.
Without local you’d get more of the small gangs you want.
Easier to hide small gangs and solo players without local than it is fleets, and there would never be a moment you got frustrated waiting for an afk cloaker.
Are all of these people complaining about cloaks new or newish to this game?
Maybe transplants from WOW?
Because I have seen this kind of thing on the WOW forums, same kinds of arguments, similar frame of reference.
This isn’t WOW, this game is brutal and inconvenient by design, and damn is i elegant.
People have repeatedly given good advice on how to handle cloakies.
Fleet up, reship, align out, communicate, rat with a pvp fit.
If they’re cloaked, all they can do is look at you and pick their nose.
If they uncloak, they die easily.
Play the game, jeeze.
The same guy camping the same system cloaked for a 4 months. lol This is sickness. these people are destroying the game using and abusing certain game mechanics. Eve does not deserve this type of players. Just my opinion.
EVE deserves more of them, because EVE is a game of STFU and deal with it. If you are so weak and pathetic that your game is “destroyed” by the presence of a player who hasn’t uncloaked in months then you are a coward who does not belong in EVE. Either grow a spine, take appropriate actions to counter the cloaked threat (PvE in PvP ships, standing fleets, etc) or go back to WoW.
And the carebears want to get rid of this by removing the only thing that puts them in any danger: AFK cloaking.
At no point should efforts put into any activity but direct PvP bear any rewards.
No, PvE should bear rewards. It just shouldn’t give the maximum possible rewards with essentially zero risk, as exists in a world with no AFK cloaking but the same local we have now. The people who want to remove AFK cloaking are arguing for a game in which you can farm at maximum ISK/hour with negligible risk. That isn’t a desire to have rewards at all, it’s a desire to break the entire risk vs. reward system for their own benefit.
You would have a point if it required some kind of effort beyond sneaking into the system when no one is around to catch them.
It does not. Once in system they push a magic safety button, and that’s it. As little effort as you claim the bear puts forth on behalf of his own safety, it’s still orders of magnitude more effort than the camper puts forth. And the bear does it in a generally much more expensive ship with much less combat ability, despite that being the often claimed balance of cloaking ships themselves.
I have no problem with the threat, I have issue with the lack of effort to maintain that threat. Somehow requiring someone to put forth even the most minimal effort with the tiniest chance of failure if opposed completely breaks the mechanic for everyone, everywhere, all the time.
And once that “safety button is pushed” the AFK cloaker gets no ISK, get no resources, gets nothing the bear cannot obtain by simply staying docked. Effort vs. reward.
That is a choice, the cost of one’s ship. You can rat in a VNI which is actually quite cheap.
Actually it isn’t the threat or effort, IMO, but the uncertainty. If there was a indicator that the player was there you’d not undock. Ever. In fact, you might just jump clone back to empire after a period of time. And if it indicated that the player was not there…you still probably would not undock. After all he could come back at any time. If there is even a hint of an actual threat, you’d get safe.
But the uncertainty…you suspect he is not there and is not a threat, but you can’t tell. So instead of risking it or trying to find out, you want a mechanics change to solve your problem.
Yeah, and the player isn’t doing anything in game, metaphysical/dictionary silliness aside. They are AFK. Why should their be effort relating to doing nothing and not obtaining any in game resources. At best the AFK character is having an effect by scaring you via local.
It does. It requires successfully locating and approaching a target without revealing your presence, getting into tackle position, getting a lock and tackle (including the 5 second lock delay) before the target can warp out, and defeating the ship in a PvP fight. Merely sneaking into a system and cloaking 23/7 does not catch anything.
As little effort as you claim the bear puts forth on behalf of his own safety, it’s still orders of magnitude more effort than the camper puts forth.
Correct, which is why the AFK cloaker can only passively sit there, making no money and engaging no PvP targets. If they wish to accomplish anything besides passively sitting there they must accept risk and invest effort. Alternatively, the carebear can obtain the same degree of safety by ending their PvE farming, forfeiting all of their income, and docking/cloaking indefinitely.
And the bear does it in a generally much more expensive ship with much less combat ability, despite that being the often claimed balance of cloaking ships themselves.
Why are you ratting in bad ships? There are plenty of PvE ships that can trash a cloaked attacker 1v1. It only becomes a one-sided gank when the cloaker is calling in black ops support, but then you’re talking about a 1 vs. many situation where the many should almost always win.
Somehow requiring someone to put forth even the most minimal effort with the tiniest chance of failure if opposed completely breaks the mechanic for everyone, everywhere, all the time.
It’s not my fault the anti-cloaking carebear whiners can’t come up with a change to cloaks that makes them require effort without breaking them.
It’s an impossible goal— The current definition for ‘breaking cloaks’ is any change that puts the cloaked ship at any risk of failure at all, ever, under any circumstance not completely under the cloaked pilots control.
How do you expose someone to risk without exposing them to risk… well, you don’t.
And the afk cloaker group can just sit there and admit to themselves that they are so incredibly risk adverse that they quake at the mere thought that they might possibly one day face a change that would break their perfect safety bubble unless they actually do something to maintain it for themselves, just like everyone else.
But they aren’t everyone else. They are the Saviors of NullSec, nay, the Saviors of the entire game! Precious snowflakes are all that stand between EVE and certain doom.
The risk for AFK cloakers is imposed by the inhabitants of the space they’re camping. If you only play the victim part instead of turning the tables on him, then of course he’s risk-free for every hotdrop. But that’s entirely because of your personal inability to impose any risk, not because the game doesn’t allow you to.
With the March release, we’ll be updating the chat system in EVE Online, moving from the custom solution we’ve been using since EVE was initially designed, to an industry standard XMPP chat server that will offer better performance and flexibility for the future.
“And once that “safety button is pushed” the AFK cloaker gets no ISK, get no resources, gets nothing the bear cannot obtain by simply staying docked. Effort vs. reward.”
The fact eve is not a “1 player, 1 active client” game kind of blunts this argument. So does having multiple toons on each account
I have 4 accounts. I can sort of barely manage two of them simultaneously to some level of competency. Sort of. Well… I have a low bar set for “competent”.
But imagine I was capable of playing 4 clients simultaneously. Now imagine I play for 2 hours a day on those 4 accounts. When I’m done… I log out… then log back in under another toon on each account already in place in an enemy system. I then hit the cloak button… and leave my computer to do real life things (eat, watch a movie, sleep, work, whatever).
I’m not sacrificing active generation of isk. Because when I’m ready to do that, I log out of the camper and log into the toons I actively play with.
I MIGHT be sacrificing passive isk generation, but depending on where I’m camping, where my passive isk generation is based and how long my reset cycles are… I might not even be sacrificing that.
With no sacrifice of an alternative (since I still get what I would from passive sources and I lose no active play time)… the argument kind of seems moot.
There are some valid discussions involving cloaking (particularly around the idea of certainty). But I think the whole opportunity cost argument is a red herring… or at least drastically overstated.
If they are cloaked, they are safe. The only way for that safety to break is for the cloaked pilot to break it.
Now, true enough, if he decides to attack he is no longer safe. Sure. That was his decision, and he made it with all of the information possible in the game at his disposal. He could see local, he could the grid, he could do all the same research from 3rd parties, he could even have spies in the corps of the locals. At no point was anything forced upon him. At no point was he exposed to any sort of non-consensual risk.
Which is funny, because non-consensual risk is the entire lynchpin of what the afk cloakers cry about. Even though the locals experience that risk every second that they are undocked, the fact that they avoid their hunters is so intolerable that we have to remove every speck of non-consensual risk from the hunters to make things ‘fair’.
Okay fine, then the guy who can’t rat in NS because of an AFK cloaker, go log in an alt. Now enjoy a nice cup of STHU.
This sword cuts both ways and it is also wrong. I could always use that alt for ISK making purposes. For example, he could be mining semi AFK in HS while I do other things on my main. I could use him for invention. I could use him for PI. In fact, I could use him for PI and invention. But if he is logged in out in NS and cloaked…I can’t use him even if I am at the ATK.
You completely missed his point. Suppose I want to go cloak in Tactical Supremacy space. I can sit at a safe under a cloak and be invulnerable. However, the TIKLE guys also respond very, very aggressively to interlopers. While there is nothing they can do while I am at a safe, if I engage one of them they will drop a crap ton of stuff on me.
No. Using the TIKLE guys, they’ll bring in caps. And to bring in caps they’ll use a cyno so the ships will likely be sitting at least one system over. I can’t know that without having an alt or eyes in that system, and even then I might not know until they undock–quite possibly after I’ve engaged.
In short, in TIKLE space there is a damn good chance they’ll keep right on doing stuff. Granted it is possible that an AFK cloaker could go active find a juicy target and try for it. Even bring in additional help. but that is a long way for support to go, so chances are TIKLE will see it coming and react appropriately.
So there is something that can be done. Granted you still can’t shoot the cloaker, but having people online and willing to come help if trouble pops up is an option. If you and your group of players decide to not use that option…that is your choice.
Oh for crying out loud. You do realize that non-consensual risk is usually a one way street right. If I decide to engage you against your consent it is without your consent, but with my consent.
In other words, the hunter was better and smarter than the hunted.
Mike, are you aware of how nature works? That there are hunters on one side and prey being hunted on the other? You’re essentially whining about how nature is so unfair. But unlike a bunny whose only choice is to run and hide when the eagle flies around, you also have the option to outsmart the eagle, but you choose not to.
PvP-able corporations in nullsec have no problems with AFK cloakers, because they turn the tables on the cloaker.
Hunters are after easy prey. People like you. You’re not going to see an eagle attack a tiger.
Life isn’t fair and neither is EVE and no amount of whining about it is going to change either.
-It’s not particularly hard to move a toon in a covert ops ship to start AFK things like PI, invention or manufacturing jobs and then move back to be in place for camping. I use 1-week or longer cycles for these activities as it is. There is some added time cost of moving the ship back and forth. But that’s it. You don’t miss out on the activities themselves.
-The semi afk-mining is also not a cost… because you simply do that with another of the 3 toons on the account while you’re at your keyboard and only switch to the cloaker when you go AFK. Only on of the 3 toons would ever need to be dedicated to camping… the other 2 are available for whatever active playstyle you choose to use.
Look… forget the camping and think about it from any other passive gameplay method. Nothing about me using one toon passively to do PI, reactions, manufacturing, station trading, invention, research agents or any other mostly afk activity prevents me from using another toon on the same account for any active play-style. The restriction is you can’t ACTIVELY play with another toon on that account while you’re cloaky camping with it. You have to log the camper out to play with a different character. Then you log back in when you’re done to start camping again when you go afk.
The opportunity costs are tiny. If they weren’t the practice would be a lot less common.
This isn’t meant to convince you of anything on the overall subject of AFK cloaky camping. It’s simply saying that the particular argument in favor of cloaky camping is flawed. Every active play option (for when you’re at the keyboard) can be used on another toon on the same account. Every passive isk making option (for when you’re away from the keyboard) can be maintained with an extremely small amount of travel. Some of them can even be maintained while cloaked and floating in space (like resetting PI).
