Christy Cloud wrote:Your "Fog of war" thing is an interesting take, and your comments about the syphons misguided.
The POS api was actually modified post-syphon release, to try make it harder to detect a siphon, but quite simply, given the API's that existed before their introduction, it wasn't going to be possible to make siphons undetectable without just chopping that portion of the API off, and considering the number of tools that existing which utilized that part of the API, not only would that of been a damn shame, as 3rd party development is (in my biased opinion) one of the best parts of EvE, but also caused public outcry as the users, and creators of these tools are left out in the cold.
You can find
here more details about my position on siphons in my frist campaign, including a post by CCP clearly stating that siphons were not to be detected by API. If the knowledge that siphons would be detected, and that was a technical necessity, I am sure other discussions could have been held to balance the siphon differently.
I am not going to focus more on those this year as passive moon income only has a few months left anyway. Still, I do hope the concept of active gameplay siphoning passive income will exist in the future, as this is a design that by its nature would affect more the larger and richer entities of the game to the benefit of the smaller ones.
Christy Cloud wrote:As for your comments about killboards, there's plenty of kills that go unreported, and if you take a look at many large entitites i.e your dreaded Ploons, you'll see "REDACTED" for system names etc, for a set time after the kill is generated(On their internal bored). A kill can only be "reported" by two players, the person who got the final blow, and the person who lost the ship. If you don't want your kills getting posted to killboards, don't put your API into them and you've cut down the posting already.
If only one of the player has given his API to his corp/alliance, the killmail will be reported no matter what the other player choses. A killmail has to be reported manualy only if neither player belongs to a killboard driven group, which most groups are nowadays. So the odds of a kill not uploaded are really low...
Christy Cloud wrote:
As for tieing alts together? The spy meta is as much eve, as permadeath is, and removing it would be a blow to the game. Also, why should people be forced to only play one persona in EvE? For example I love scamming, but would never scam using the "Christy Cloud" character. EvE is a multi-faceted game and alts help players to experience that.
I am not talking about removing the spy meta. Spies, betrayals and scams are part of Eve because they are also a part of our social construct, and Eve is as much a sci-fi experience as a social one.
The only thing I am pointing out is that there is no drawbacks in the game for having a spy account, and this is the most risk free activity in the game.
My suggestion would introduce a minor economic drawback to not chosing to link one account to the same player's other accounts, and leave to each player the decision to link their account together, with a litttle economic incentive to do so.