Sarcasm is hard

This was not long ago.. in same thread, scrub :P

PS: Love you too.

me? the 4-4 guy? I thot of all people you enjoyed the content generation of summers and winter past... on the other hand maybe you didn't have fun stuffing Marmite into a jar... as you know, I prefer merc on merc hairy back kinda content as opposed to the ease and smoothness of the industrialist

As an aside, going a lot further back in time than the buddy list change, CCP also removed the ability to see a pilots standings change data via their character information view. This used to be used in addition to locator agents to see where someone was if they were ratting/pirating etc.

Not sure many people will remember that now.

Though the answer might not be what you are looking for, Team Five 0 have replied to the original feedback thread here: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=6550198#post6550198

I don't know why simple solutions to problems always seem to allude you guys, but it seems to me you already have the solution in place: locator agents. In other words, all you really need to do is have the agent say that a particular character "is too deep in cover" at the moment to be located and to try again later. That way people have a way not to be chasing ghosts, and the game isn't giving out "free intel". I don't understand why you have to ruin entire types of game play without having reasonable workarounds.

To me the answer is simple.

A corp ticks a box as being a Merc and in return they pay higher costs for war decs but get special access to a upto date panel giving info about who is signed in and where and what ship they are in and location.

Corps/ Alliances that don't tick the box as a Merc don't get this information.

Defenders receive this information automatically but are locked into being in the corp until the war dec is over. This should stop a war decced corp from joining an NPC corp. Again another example of the mechanic being somewhat overdue an overhaul.

Hey Space Friends,

...There are a couple of points we're not entirely happy with (such as the convo spamming issues)...that we would like to iterate on.

...We think there is some potential for the return of similar, but counterable, functionality in the future. When we have concrete designs we'll share them with you and be very interested in your feedback.

Locator agents are desperately in need of an overhaul. And in my system, they would get a wide array of new buffs...so here's how I would change them.

1:) All locator agents now have unlimited range. From level one to level four, all agents can now locate anyone anywhere. Let's be honest, the level one and two agents are near useless, three may be marginally useful, but I am fairly sure people only ever use level four agents. Since you had to grind standings anyway and you pay for distance of locate, it really doesn't make sense not to use level four agents. So, we'll give all agents a huge buff so they can all be useful. This also means you don't have to do tedious grinding with local NPC's just to be able to run basic locates.

2:) With all locator agents finding people at all ranges, what is left for the level two through four agents? We are going to revamp what intel is given at what level agent.
__A: Level one agents give you star system information only.
__B: Level two agents tell you whether the person is docked (at what station) or if they're in space.
__C: Level three agents tell you what ship the person is flying.
__D: Level four agents give you access to watch list functions. For a sum of 5 million isk, they will enable you to watch 1 person per transaction, for a period of 7 days. Only works in k-space, and while undocked. Further explanation in a bit.*

Note:I know that current locates already give you docked or not (level 2 agent), but I needed levels of intel to fill four slots. I'm also open to the idea of nixing level 1 agents as listed, and just moving everything down a level so we have level 1-3 agents.[/i]

3:) Decreased search duration, decreased cooldown. Locates need to be more accessible, with how few and far between some locator agents can be. So, I'd make the search duration a mere 10 seconds or less, with no cooldown. If you want to toss a ton of isk at an agent finding out where every person of that 30-man industrial corp is, then you should be able to go for it.

Note: the search duration is probably a limitation of the software querying the database. If that isn't the case, then we need to get that turnaround time as close to zero as possible.

*So the watchlist function I mentioned would work differently. Here's how: all things in the game need counterplay. The counterplay for this version of the watchlist is this: It no longer functions as a simple "online/offline" status. It functions as an "in k-space" status. Due to working through the stargate network, it does not work in wormholes. And it does not work while a pilot is docked.

Yes, that does mean you'll have to pair the watch list function to the occasional level 2 agent locate to see if they are actually offline or simply docked up. Yes, that's still tremendously less than the old watch list. But that's still more than what you have now. And it allows people to have some measure of counterplay to the basic intel you're collecting. If you're going to try to convince CCP to bring back the watchlist in a way that has some bit of counter, as they themselves stated, I believe this is a good compromise, or at least a good starting point.

Venturing into C&P to say I empathize with OP and friends. Buddy list hit the WH content creators hard as well. I've spent hours waiting in vain for someone I was literally just looking at, and they aren't even playing anymore. Locators are no help, obviously.

The worst part is most people in WH are spoonfed content by the scouts and don't even realize how frustrating a change it was, so they've all been rather quiet.

I very much hope that any change implemented will fix BOTH the merc use case AND the WH use case (talk of locators and observation arrays makes me nervous ). I would encourage you all to help CCP remember. We minority groups need to stick together!

o/

Namely, locator agents need buffs, and some sort of watchlist is necessary for some gameplay styles. I'm not going to claim my old proposal is perfect or exactly what the hunters or huntees want, but it is better than what we have now, right?

A thought occurs, perhaps not a great one.
But what about the idea of 'Watchlist Agents'?
You pay them and they put a specific character on your list for a fee (recurring of course)... while you're paid up they show up. While it might not be of super great help to mercs who have hundreds of targets it would still resemble lube in a manner of speaking, as each member could shoulder a share of the burden... It strikes me as being more useful to wormholers on an individual level, and they seem to actually have gotten screwed at least as hard as we have, if not moreso by this change.
I'm a tad durnk atm, so like I said it's possibly not a great idea.

It seems now that CCP Lebowski wants me to send him links to ideas how to fix the buddylist issue on twitter, not sure if he's just playing along or not but... I suggested he make a dev post asking for ideas instead.

What do you guys think about a delayed watchlist? Something like 3-5 minutes before it let's you know if someone logs in or out? Or alternatively don't even have a notification and just let us check online status in contacts list. Personally I dont need it automated like it was, I just need a way to check if someone I suspect logged out, did in fact log out.

How does that sit with the mercs? It should prevent super ganking because they have some time to get safe after logging in.

Shitlers should not fly what they can't afford to replace... period.

... and Fozzie sov is 110% AIDS.

Wat

I understand your point regarding the watch list.

but with multiple wars changing each week just keeping up with adding them did my nut in, especially having your alt add them too.

There are a few ways I hunt them down when im at war. ( this isnt being cocky but just what I do)

1. Most corporations have a central point or if there from null and low sec a central point of entry into high sec.
most chars very rarely change there path even at war so that dude you saw in that blingy ship even at war will carry on the same way.

2. ZZkill and the other one when its working are a good source of previous places of where wt have been and possibly will be.

3. Main missions hubs IE the sister have always pulled chars in no matter if there at war or not. However the clever ones evac from there and go to a mission system in the middle of nowhere. catching them on the move if your tracking them prior to war helps.

I do understand that the offline online thing is a bit of a **** but at the end of the day mercs get paid to either do hub denial or hunt the feckers down and make them cry a lil. I dont mind flying alts around trying to find war targets as sometimes you might get more that you bargained for.

Typical point I decd a corp that was already at war flying a nightmare. However after setting them red my alt was flying around and found a mack pilot who was using a orca in a diff corp. So i dec the orca corp too. I kill the mack then go back there the next day and kill the orca then the nightmare.

I would rather be flying all around eve than sitting in a station banging out locators. i myself am in a small corp and in wars its easy for people to see me online, however not any more so it does benefit me alot

Its a shame to see you go though. Fly safe to all of your alliance in what ever you do next

Yeah, I left highsec at a good time. 3-4 months later the watchlist change hit and now it's double the effort to find people. So I guess the hub camping scrublords got the final laugh.

I made the decision to unsub last week on all accounts. After a lot of thought it dawned on me that CCP doesn't like the color of my money. It was a sweeping, ill considered and unnecessary change to a long standing mechanic that ultimately massively negatively impacted not only my play style but that of others too.

No. You can't have my stuff. It's being buried with me.

Mort and Melvin signing off.

*shutdown jingle*

I made the decision to unsub last week on all accounts. After a lot of thought it dawned on me that CCP doesn't like the color of my money. It was a sweeping, ill considered and unnecessary change to a long standing mechanic that ultimately massively negatively impacted not only my play style but that of others too.

No. You can't have my stuff. It's being buried with me.

Mort and Melvin signing off.

*shutdown jingle*

I made the decision to unsub last week on all accounts. After a lot of thought it dawned on me that CCP doesn't like the color of my money. It was a sweeping, ill considered and unnecessary change to a long standing mechanic that ultimately massively negatively impacted not only my play style but that of others too.

No. You can't have my stuff. It's being buried with me.

Mort and Melvin signing off.

*shutdown jingle*