I love watch lists as much as the next guy, but sometimes it feels overpowered as an intelligence source. Especially in w space where the lack of local adds to the mystery and shroud, but watch lists kind of undermine that. Any thoughts?

I know some of you may not consider me to be a wormhole resident, and I know I did not run on a primarily w-space platform during my CSM X campaign. I am by all accounts a newbie who has carved out a very narrow niche existence in Eve and self-promoted my way to F-list notoriety.

I put my thoughts in the thread linked below here.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=5227161#post5227161

To summarize... Put a price on watch listing people for longer than a short term (no free three year watch list setups). You can do it, but it will cost you isk not to notify them.

Well, the Intel of local is mutual. Everyone in local can see everyone else in local. I can by counter watch list everyone in a corp that's my target, and use that info unbeknownst to them to figure out when to run locator agents. Or for instance a corp I am camping can watch list me and know when not to run sites, or when to. Kind of detracts from the mystery of it for me.

do you have access to personal data of all the people who has access to yours in RL (talking about government, your company, etc...)?
Or maybe you have access to financial data of your bank like they have access to your?

Hint: watchlist gives you ability to watch for someone but it's not that you always know who you can watch.

I started this thread on a lark yet it seems like a very divisive issue. I think it would be possible to preserve both the social nature of watch lists and the spookiness of j space.

Someone can wreck your playstyle simply by logging off when you log in, and continue farming once you logged out.

If you think info should be that easily given to you, then I propose wormhole local to just make it right.

Requiring visuals, wits and good scouting/scanning should be what tells you if a person is active or not. Monitoring their online status is **** easy, immersion breaking and overall an outdated mechanic.

Say no to free intel
Say no to mechanics that can't be countered or evaded
Say no to wormholes with a curate automated intel
Say no to the easy mode

Speaking of w-space, a lot of times it's in fact the same tool. Because one main use for non-mutually agreed watchlists is watching players that camp your wormhole or watching corp that you camp. In these situations being online is hugely correlated with being in a specific system. And that both sides can mutually watchlist each other is even worse GÇô at that point we have a substitute for local. There is no balance in this mechanics, as the game give you no sound option to deny that intel.

Jump wormhole, look up zkill for inhabitants, WL potential FCs and obvious scanners. Intel gathering complete. Afterwards press dscan and look around for offline towers with SMAs, bm wormhole. Much unknown.