There was near universal consensus it was a good idea, or at least somehow this intel should be available.
That and a couple bucks will get you a cup of coffee. While as you can see from that graph the axis isnāt labelled, but I would guess what it means that in 2014 about 1% of logins, or 1 in 100 ran locator agents. That dropped to ~0.2% by the beginning of last year, and probably has dropped further given the complete collapse of all targeted war groups. CCP isnāt going to spend any effort on something 1 in 500 or 1 in 1000 of their players do on a daily basis, at least in isolation.
Iāve been asking for an updated graph for 2 years now. Iām very interested to see the result after the watchlist change.
I fear it will be removed because people dont use the mechanic, as it has been the reasoning for other mechanics removed recently
Geeze guys⦠I think I scrolled through 40 posts of people going back and forth about how the other sucks at posting. Try and stay relevant to the topic at hand.
You can see the effect (in theory) in the graph Pedro posted. I guess you mean long term?
I am not sure how well founded your removal fear is. Consider:
If # of characters who use locator agents has seen significant declines, then the number of total queries has not (or decline has been much much slower).
If the# of characters who use locator agents has a small decline (or no decline), then the number of queries has gone way up.
Just a quick comment about locator agents, I support them also detailing the active status in some way, they do have restrictions so they are not going to be used effectively to hunt supers / titans as they have to be timed for best effect. A lot of nullsec entities use them to keep tabs on where FCās areā¦
It has declined, but most alot of those characters using the locators tried their best (atleast I did) to still do hunting and just use workaround and locates instead. But that was too much work and with that the # of queries should have dropped even further the last year while hunting faded out.
You guys are underestimating how badly your good ideas are being subverted and denied by community in your midstā¦
Make the thread to institute online data for a target you used a Locator Agent on.
I will back you up, but you will be shocked how much resistance you will get, and from where/whom.
The watchlist was removed in March of 2016 and can be seen on the chart. It coincides with a marked drop in locates per login as you would expect after such a change which made the tool significantly less useful.
I think the data are clear - the number of locates per player has dropped more than 2/3rds since 2014. Some of that change may reflect changes in demographics and organization of war groups, but most of it is just simply a result of how inadequate the tool is on its own. I was never a power user of the mechanic, but I can confirm my use of it has dropped to near zero after the watch list removal as it no longer works for the tasks I used it before.
Ralph and Raz have made efforts (and others as well), and still keep pressure on CCP and the CSM to address the fallout from their 2016 change, so far to no avail. I have no doubt though that CCP has heard the issue and if and when they seriously turn their minds to wars again (or alternatively, the Observatory Array) something may be done. Whatever CCP does to address the issue is almost secondary at this point - the major problem is and always has been making wars and hunting-style game play, things maybe only a single-digit percent of their players regularly do, a development priority.
Ask yourself, why that hasnāt happened.
Ask Ralph and Raz too.
Its not for lack of effort or good ideas.
Its because there are entities in EVE that dont want those to happen.
Nah, Occamās Razor - wars are niche and CCP doesnāt have the developer power to fix even the real issues that affect the majority of the players in a timely fashion. It is perfectly reasonable that something as peripheral as locator agents have not found their way to the foreground yet and gotten some attention from the overworked dev team.
I am not sure I expected a Dinsdale-level Machiavellian plot by nullsec powers from you as the reason why you believe locator agents havenāt been looked at yet, let alone an effort by you to convince me to join in with your delusions with no evidence, however skimpy, but there it is. These forums often surprise me.
Thereās no major conspiracy. Itās just not on CCPās roadmap and not likely to be until they get around to observatory arrays or completely finish the roadmap outlined back in 2014.