EVE Search - Sticky:Dev Blog: No Honor Among Thieves

pmchem wrote:

Zloco Crendraven wrote:

pmchem wrote:

For a moment, let us imagine the future equilibrium for this gameplay element:

Guy with cargo-expanded covert cloaking ship and a bunch of siphons is AFK cloaking in a system with a R32 or R64 moon. He un-AFKs at a random time once or twice a day, drops or scoops siphons. Meanwhile, random griefer with a bubble-immune fast-warp interceptor flies by a dozen moons dropping siphons, including this one.

POS owner has nothing to defeat AFK cloaking or interceptors. They detect unexpected silo levels as their real life schedule allows and log in an alt, gun the POS, and shoot the siphons. In the meantime he's lost all his goo production for a big chunk of the day because there were 8 siphons attached to the POS -- they're so cheap, they're just a fire-and-forget griefer tool. There's no 'timer' at which both forces must meet to determine the fate of the gameplay element, so it's entirely async and the two sides never interact in realtime.

Result: higher moon goo prices, more AFK cloaky alts (which honestly seems to be the sort of terrible gameplay CCP is encouraging these days), nobody particularly having fun unless you enjoy griefing (which, hey, it's EVE -- many do). But nobody is rewarded for spending time developing or living in a system ... only for random, short logins to push butan. It's poor gameplay.

Rubicon: burnt farms and salted fields.

Or, actually live in the space where you are holding POSs and have patrols doing their jobs.

oh wait I get to laugh in your face directly, neat!

You're suggesting that the POS owner has muitiple people logged in to fleet and on-grid at POS 23 hours a day in order to defeat one individual who appears at a random time once or twice a day. So, let's say 69-character-hours per day played in order to defeat 3-character-minutes. That is surely good gameplay and sustainable! Let's also mention the fact that the attackers have d-scan and local and can check for traps before even attempting to launch the siphon! Or that if you're using a covert cloaker or Rubicon interceptor you're amazingly difficult to kill anyway unless totally incompetent, even if landing on grid with hostiles! In short you're making a terrible argument and do not know how this game plays out.