Would you like to see a combat logout timer introduced?
- Thread starter Lister_of_Smeg
- Start date
So, you log out to game the system. Nice. I'll remember that little trick. It sounds interesting.
I do feel that players who decide to log out because they are being pirated or attacked by other players are really bad sports. If you play in open play you are telling everyone you want to be involved with other players, this means the good and the bad. If you want to play with other players but don't like fighting or pirating then go join a non pirate/PVP group and play on that instead.
From what I understand there is a system that keeps your ship in-game after you disconnect but players can just force close the game or pull the Ethernet cable and get around this? If this is the case then it needs to be fixed.
From what I understand there is a system that keeps your ship in-game after you disconnect but players can just force close the game or pull the Ethernet cable and get around this? If this is the case then it needs to be fixed.
Yes please. If you don't want to play with other players, Solo mode is right there on the front end menu for you.
If you do, no backsies.
I guarantee you, for a lot of people this being possible makes it a legitimate 'part of the game'. They think that they're just being clever and beating you fair and square.
If it's not supposed to be part of the game, fix it. If it is, you might as well get rid of the countdown on quitting via the menu too.
If you do, no backsies.
I guarantee you, for a lot of people this being possible makes it a legitimate 'part of the game'. They think that they're just being clever and beating you fair and square.
If it's not supposed to be part of the game, fix it. If it is, you might as well get rid of the countdown on quitting via the menu too.
How do you propose FD stop it happening then? Send them an electric shock through their keyboard if they try and close their game client?
It is a mystery to me, there is no mechanical advantage of any mode. The advantage of open is they you stand a greater chance of interactions (both good and bad). The only reason that people might insist on playing open is for the prize money, but a history of combat logging might just destroy their chance of being eligible for the prize money. In fact, as a trader, you are much better off playing in solo or private group. I'm really surprised all traders don't do this as a matter of course if they are not willing to have PvP interactions.
It's an obvious exploit and should be fixed. End of story.
There really isn't anything to argue about here, although I know that won't stop anyone.
(With regards to genuine connection issues being 'punished' there are several things to bear in mind. Genuine connection issues are pretty rare these days for the vast majority of players on a DSL or cable connection. Even those that do suffer from a problem won't be 'punished' unless the connection issue just happens to occur at exactly the moment that the player is in a dangerous situation - the vast majority of the time their ship remaining in-game for a short duration won't have any negative effect. If FD wanted to, they could even make disconnected ships immune to NPC or environmental damage, so they won't be destroyed by running into a sun or something similar. Finally, and without wishing to sound harsh, if a player chooses to play a multiplayer online game with a bad internet connection, it's not the game's fault if that results in accidental destruction.)
There really isn't anything to argue about here, although I know that won't stop anyone.
(With regards to genuine connection issues being 'punished' there are several things to bear in mind. Genuine connection issues are pretty rare these days for the vast majority of players on a DSL or cable connection. Even those that do suffer from a problem won't be 'punished' unless the connection issue just happens to occur at exactly the moment that the player is in a dangerous situation - the vast majority of the time their ship remaining in-game for a short duration won't have any negative effect. If FD wanted to, they could even make disconnected ships immune to NPC or environmental damage, so they won't be destroyed by running into a sun or something similar. Finally, and without wishing to sound harsh, if a player chooses to play a multiplayer online game with a bad internet connection, it's not the game's fault if that results in accidental destruction.)
Unfortunately they are not logging out, they are most likely simply terminating the Elite process. This cannot be prevented. And of course it may happen completely legitamately due to computer/network/software issues.
However, I brought the same matter up here regarding traders dodging interdiction - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=101696
IMHO, whenever ED detects you've "disappeared" during an interdiction or fight, if it sees it happening regularly, it should take action. First a warning but ultimately something else? A CR fine? A day long nerf (eg: a big target painted on your ship)... Who knows... But something!
As mentioned in the response above, there is nothing to fix/prevent as such. All that can be done is to spot such (continued) behaviour and penalise IMHO.It's an obvious exploit and should be fixed. End of story.
There really isn't anything to argue about here, although I know that won't stop anyone.
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i'm a trader and trade in open. I've never logged except when caught in the endless interdiction bug. But there are times when the server connection hiccups or drops. Generally I believe that being in Open is to accept risks. I fly accordingly and evasively to avoid getting interdicted in the first place. However I do reserve the right to do so if having given up cargo I'm still attacked or if the other player starts being abusive in the comms.
But until such time as it can be conclusively proved that a specific disconnect is a deliberate player action there is no sanction that can be applied.
And in general I don't care if people disconnect on me. It's a game and if some people are going to be twonks that's their choice.
But until such time as it can be conclusively proved that a specific disconnect is a deliberate player action there is no sanction that can be applied.
And in general I don't care if people disconnect on me. It's a game and if some people are going to be twonks that's their choice.
You can't prove a disconnect was conclusively suspicious. But a trend? If the session/game terminated X time during interdictions/combat?
You could show the player such disconnections are being monitored/counted. And if it reaches a certain limit, take some sort of action:-
- Paint the ship yellow, or tag the player in someway.
- Force them to play solo only for a period of time.
- etc...
This thread is all the proof you need FD. You have divided the community right down the middle,well done *clap*
Gotta love that FD start a competition with a broken game too, again, well done. *clap*
If you only play solo you should have no right to comment in this thread and just saying "play solo, it's safe" is just rubbish, go away.
I for one would expect there to be a forced 15-30 second log out timer for all in open play, even if you close the process or pull the plug. If you force close the game your ship should just keep it's heading for 15 seconds before it then leaves the instance to, but of course the game is made for people with only 56k Internet connections so expects every single disconnect to be a drop in Internet connection. :S
I will not caveat this with anything to appease the DB ego strokers.
This game should have always remained a single player experience!
All FD are showing is their rather blatant inexperience of dealing with any form of multiplayer game play.
I know, lets make it P2P! *clap*
I know, lets release the game, claim it's an "MMO" , then not give players a solid way to group or play together! *clap*
I know, lets start a real money competition with £1000's as the prizes that forces players into open fully knowing the game is just not ready to truly support multiplayer gameplay! *clap*
These are just 3 of the issues I could pull off the top of my head, there are more!
Gotta love that FD start a competition with a broken game too, again, well done. *clap*
If you only play solo you should have no right to comment in this thread and just saying "play solo, it's safe" is just rubbish, go away.
I for one would expect there to be a forced 15-30 second log out timer for all in open play, even if you close the process or pull the plug. If you force close the game your ship should just keep it's heading for 15 seconds before it then leaves the instance to, but of course the game is made for people with only 56k Internet connections so expects every single disconnect to be a drop in Internet connection. :S
I will not caveat this with anything to appease the DB ego strokers.
This game should have always remained a single player experience!
All FD are showing is their rather blatant inexperience of dealing with any form of multiplayer game play.
I know, lets make it P2P! *clap*
I know, lets release the game, claim it's an "MMO" , then not give players a solid way to group or play together! *clap*
I know, lets start a real money competition with £1000's as the prizes that forces players into open fully knowing the game is just not ready to truly support multiplayer gameplay! *clap*
These are just 3 of the issues I could pull off the top of my head, there are more!
Go to the doctors, you've got a bad case of the clap.
How many times have you actively been disconnected in the last couple of weeks for something other than scheduled downtime, compared to the number of minutes you have played? What % of your gametime have you spent in combat with another player in the last couple of weeks?
Multiply them out to see the chance that you could have been accidentally disconnected during a fight with another player. I suspect that for pretty much everyone here the number is very close to 0. So yes, a sudden disconnect during a PvP fight could very well be considered suspicious on its own merits.
All the whines on the boards inevitably come from the PvPers.
Any game with PvP is a nonstop crying fest of "imba!" "Nerf!"
So what? No logging out of a game until you give a blood sample?
Hey FD, put your resources into the missing game features and content, not more timers so Billy can't gank.
Any game with PvP is a nonstop crying fest of "imba!" "Nerf!"
So what? No logging out of a game until you give a blood sample?
Hey FD, put your resources into the missing game features and content, not more timers so Billy can't gank.
Any company that decided to inflict sanctions based on a 'trend' is going to generate a lot of bad publicity. Plus having to invest time and effort into tracking and analysing every disconnection, if that is possible to do at a reasonable cost on the shaky P2P setup this game runs on.
As far as I'm concerned they have more and better things to do than worry about this. If they want to seriously reduce it they can address the imbalance between the huge consequences on one side and the negligible consequences on the other.
Its the behaviour incentivising game mechanics that need addressing.
If destruction wasn't such a huge loss and destroying a minor penalty event then you'd have less destruction and less logging and a more solid footing to complain.
So long as a trader stands to lose millions and the attacker just thousands the rational thing for the trader to do is log off. It doesn't matter if we think they should be in Solo, the fact is they aren't for reasons that make sense to them. Change the rationality and behaviour will change.
But in the end I don't care if people log on me, not that anyone has but then again I'm the guy being attacked usually.
I wouldn't fly in open if I couldn't afford the loss but it seems people do.
Why can't this be fixed? Your ship is in my game, and your game is sending my game updates telling me where your ship is, how it's moving, where it's firing, how much health it has, and so on. When we're done, both our games are going to update the central server, which is always there, with who won and who lost.
If those updates stop, I don't see why your ship has to just disappear. It can float in space and my game can keep updating it by itself, and then when you die it can tell the server you're dead. Instead of both games communicating back and forth to reach a consensus of what's happening, one game becomes supreme arbiter - the one still connected to the server. My game tells the server you died. Your game tells the server nothing. My game wins by a vote of 1 to 0.
You reload the game from quitting, you have to connect to the server and the server updates you that you're dead. I don't get frustrated, you don't get an advantage and you never, ever try that again.
If ED was pure peer to peer then I could see no way to manage this, but with the central server sitting there in the background, it could be handled even though the fight itself is happening locally.
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My machine crashed/rebooted a week or so ago while I was playing ED. I've had ED crash as well recently. So "terminations" can happen legitimately so we need to be careful.
But I'm sure the software could spot suspicious behavior - ie: Repeated terminations during combat, being attacked (by a station) or being interdicted etc.
Then it would just be a matter of warning and acting.
I'm sure even just showing an ongoing counter of such suspicious disconnects would put some people off if they new there was an outcome for it!
Is it fair you should die if your machine/network has a problem? Or indeed if the FD server has an issue?
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That's exactly what happens in any multiplayer game played on a server. How is this any less fair?
Unfair is people gaining an advantage by cheating. Dying because of a technical issue isn't unfair, it's unfortunate. Like when I died because of my controller having a dodgy USB connection. Or when I died because my cat had its nose pressed against the crosshair on my screen. If your internet is so bad you can't reliably play PvP, play Solo.
If the FD server has an issue, both our games would report no result...
I'm with you. I don't think it should be ignored, but I'm wary of simply penalising someone for bad luck. I'm fairly sure the server/software can see a behavorial pattern and act upon that.
That said, taking your hardline approach could:-
1) Be the easiest to enforce.
2) Be the most effective approach against people employing the "exploit". ie: They know they pull the plug, but there ship will always still be there for a while (without them)...
So as a "fix", I'm not entirely against it. Maybe when a disconnection occurs the now CMDR less ship pretends to a FD jump with a countdown of 20-30 seconds or something? (Even if in a station
)That said, it might prove too hard for FD to carry on your instance/existance without your client there. What if four other CMDRs are around? What machine owns your process now? Are you suggesting the FD server now plays your role? Are they willing to put they CPU overhead in there? If this is a problem, then my solution/approach might be better.
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