I'm Down
Macabre Votum
Northern Coalition.
232
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Posted - 2015.01.12 22:23:18 -
[1] - Quote
The problem with AFK cloaking is that it's the only thing in game where a player can generate an unintended impact on the game without being actively logged in while not being identifiable as active or inactive.
The issue stems from when that player transitions from passive to active. Unlike all other features of the game, you cannot determine the nature of when someone changes over from passive to active, and therefore become part of the game. If you look at wormholes or any other part of the game, the transistion between systems or the act of logging in or undocking all provide ways of scouting out an individual to know if they are active or passive with some level of certainty.
Roaming cloaking gangs have to uncloak on a gate, which is an indication of activity, even if its brief.
Black Ops Cyno gangs have both the possibility of scouting the home system, and the possibility of scouting the cyno alt moving around.
A player who logs in to system has a brief window where they can be actively scanned or visualized in some way even ignoring local chat.
Any active player outside of cloaking always has some visual indication possible of when they transition from passive to active.
Here's the problem with AFK cloakers... There is no way of indicating that transition from passive to active. A guy who log's in straight after downtime and sits in system all day cloaked provides no indication. The complain stems from this and most players just want some way of knowing if that player who's impacting the game actually is active or passive even if it's incredibly small.
It's totally different from a player who actively sits on his/her computer waiting to pounce. In that case though, at least they are working for that illusion of passivity. But if that's the case, then something should be required to indicate the difference between a player earning that illusion, and a player not doing anything, if for no other reason than to provide the opposing players some small window of how to indicate threats.
I think the best solution is a pop-up screen that requires a code to be typed in after ~ 30 minutes of inactivity or a disconnect after an additional 30 minutes. This way the player has to do something to keep his illusion up, and get's an hour of afk time, but can't have any advantage over the other scenarios listed above that actually have some vulnerability to being scouted out for their activity level. |