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Misunderstood Genius
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
4
   |
Posted - 2011.12.19 10:44:00 -
[1] - Quote
"so I don't want to log onto the game anymore"
AFK CLOAK MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!  |
Misunderstood Genius
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
4
|
Posted - 2011.12.19 12:21:00 -
[2] - Quote
O.K., let's face the problem neutral without emo far of the personal opinion (just to let know: I am using afk cloaking with my alt a lot):
You are mining in your system. When a neutral jumps in you dock up and stay afk as long as the system is clear. This makes sense if you don't have friends or another alt to protect you.
The afk cloaker is indeed abusing an advantage due to the mechanics. But in low-sec he simply could dock up and you need eyes or friends again to check out if he's docked or not. I am sure that most of the mining bears would stay docked, too.
In null-sec the situation is different. You just warp to your POS or Outpost and keep afk till the hostile has left bored. In this case the advantage is on your side. But an afk cloaker has indeed the bigger advantage here. He's able to dominate the whole system all day long without beeing active. Because you never know when he's decloaking on your mining barge and the game really doesn't work that other players protect your mining all the time. The random risk to lose a ship is no fun and no thrill. Hard and impossible to counter without a PvP alt or friends. An active cloaker never ever would waste the game time to stay in the system in hope to catch some rare fish.
From another pov the afk cloaker is doing something similar like someone who's using a macro: efficient gameplay without personal effort and playing the game.
I have to admit that afk cloaking needs a nerf. The only idea is to probe what would be just made for determent and NOT for actively hunting. Because if it's possible to probe down - what needs high skills, special probes and some fair time - the cloaker is forced to log. The method should be that hard but possible with patience that a cloaker moving around is impossible to catch. |
Misunderstood Genius
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
5
|
Posted - 2011.12.19 15:34:00 -
[3] - Quote
An afk cloaker is not a single char wasting his time in EVE. It's an active player putting his cloaky alt in a 0.0 system where the enemy or just a neutral 0.0 corp is running missions or plexes. Typically it's a nullified t3 with probes, dampeners for a fast kill, loot and cloak again.
The cloaker never will engage PvP ships and just picking up the juicy, easy to kill PvE targets which can't really defend themselves.
And here we talk about the main issue with afk cloaking. While one single char is taking control over a whole system and other player's PvE activities (who are usually PvPers but you can't run missions in a decent PvP ship) by simply staying afk he is running another char and not caring if nothing happens on the other screen. The result is that noone can hunt the cloaked t3 down while the cloaker is taking the random chance to catch some ships in a mission or plex. And sooner or later it will happen. Two juicy kills in a week are enough at the end. There is no pressure and real threat for him. From my experience you can have the best standing fleet but you still lose ships because the afk cloaker is just taking the advantage here that people fight on his terms and not vice versa. And why? Because he can stay cloaked while going shopping or watching the LOTR Extended Edtion.
The worst result is - but best success for the cloaker - that your leadership is pissed about the "stupid" losses and start to blame their people for it. But the fact is that it takes too much effort and waste of ingame time to protect your pocket against the 23.5/7 expected unexpected because you can't find out if he's active or not. Even trying to bait is not working from my experience because we are facing not a stupid noob but someone who's exactly knowing what, when and how to do. And again: he's not under pressure to get a kill at all costs. This cloaky alt is just delivering another mini-profession and some random fun in EVE while pointing and laughing at a whole alliance (and their stupid losses).
I see just one logical solution for a fair balance here: the option to probe it down what is just possible with special probes, skills and some fair effort, patience and time investment in case the cloaked ship is really staying afk at a spot. Now some people would say: if it moves cloaked it's impossible. Well, it's not, if you align from the first hit to the second one.
Just the threat to get probed will force the cloaker at the end to log to get 100%: "You will not play then dock up or log." |
Misunderstood Genius
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
5
|
Posted - 2011.12.19 17:58:00 -
[4] - Quote
Ingvar Angst wrote:
Amazing... all this blabber and not one mention of the possibility of someone using one of these 'juicy PvE targets' as bait to catch the aggressor.
Certainly must have been an oversight... surely you don't think null sec systems should be 100% easy to hold with no need to ever do any sort of PvP defending it.
And yeah... you're breaking wormhole intel. Also bad.
"Even trying to bait is not working from my experience because we are facing not a stupid noob but someone who's exactly knowing what, when and how to do."
It's a total different situation if an afk cloaker is hanging around for weeks in one system or you have to fight an incoming hostile fleet. Again: the use of afk cloaking is not to fight your PvP pilots, it's to catch the PvE ships. You can bring 200 pilots and bubble the gates. Waste of time and fleet because the afk cloaker is not caring any minute and keeps on playing with his main and waits for the timezone where your defence is low and some want to make ISK.
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