An investigation into Frontier's actions on Combat Logging

[SpyTec]

Don't forget Reddit's also a toxic cess pool and the ship posting from certain factions would be constant until they forced their point - here's more civilised on the whole (just) and I can understand why posting there was the priority.

Now a question - as we're regularly told about how very clever SDC are and they're putting this intense focus on combat logging in this P2P game what are the chances they've worked out a way to do a mini-DoS attack together on a player to knock them offline so they can then submit a report claiming they were combat logging and get them banned?

imho fdev are fools for giving them an inch ever. it's obvious what game they're playing and the harm they do

So reddit saying forums is a cess pool, you're saying reddit is a cess pool. The only difference in the two is the rules. Reddit has the advantage of being one of many subreddits, bring attention to particular posts as they reach the front page and being a face for journalists as they look more at subreddits than gaming forums

There is no stopping anyone from DDOSing a player. But that would break the law and breach TOS. Given a person does it often, they'd have a high chance of getting spotted. But this is nothing only SDC can do, the rest of 99.99% of Elite players could also do this

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stop combat logging by stopping all the idiots whose sole intention is just to destroy every thing and everybody they see just for the fun of it

Whilst crime & punishment system should be fixed to give players a reason not to combat log (and give more of a challenge for the ones attacking), combat logging should still be treated as the exploit it is.

 

[CMDR M Kozak]

Wrong

DayZ had a point where everyone pretty much combat logged, it's a perms death game if your not familiar, you lose Everything when you die

People would log off if shot at, change server move position (your in game position was saved across servers) then log in behind you or your team and kill you

Then they made your character stay in the game for 30 secs after You lost connection with the server and if the bot that replaced
You died, your character was wiped clean and days, weeks or even months of gameplay was lost

Maybe do some research first

It's one of many games that got the anti combat logging right, in a sense it is still a ban of sorts by forcing you to start the game again

How about you do some research first. I will hint you with this:

The dayz solution wont work in Elite for technical reasons.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

So, reading the comments on Reddit, good thing FD responded or else they would have had to deal with all kinds of nasty ... right? Right?

I also just want to say I just needed one post to be amongst the most prolific posters in this thread.

xdeath & Shar, stop posting now!

 

[Theodrid]

So, reading the comments on Reddit, good thing FD responded or else they would have had to deal with all kinds of nasty ... right? Right?

I also just want to say I just needed one post to be amongst the most prolific posters in this thread.

xdeath & Shar, stop posting now!

More '7 of 9' tendencies Ziggy, needing to be part of the collective?

 

[IndigoWyrd]

1. Three of our own alt accounts were used to taskkill combat log on our members, who recorded footage of said logs and reported them to Frontier support with tickets.
2. Once support had acknowledged that they were looking into the case, the owners of the alt accounts monitored their emails to see if Frontier had punished them in any way.

So you agreed to use your own alt accounts and agreed to stage this?

Let me shine a different light on this:

My girlfriend is kinky and has a fantasy. She buys me a leather mask, tells me which window is unlocked, and that her safety word is "Armadillo", and lets me know she'll be home on Thursday.

So Thursday morning, I get up, drive over to her house, but park down the street. I walk towards her house, put on the mask, climb through the window and....

One of the neighbors sees a masked fellow climbing through her window and calls the police. The police arrive to find me, still in my mask and my girlfriend.

It looks like the real thing, but once the truth comes to light, no crime has been committed, as the whole thing was staged and consensual.

I see absolutely no difference here. Your example shames real combat-logging victims.

 

[frostypaw]

So reddit saying forums is a cess pool, you're saying reddit is a cess pool.

a portion of elite reddit hates here because their PvP clans can't dominate the discussion with up/downvoting. everybody knows about reddit.

There is no stopping anyone from DDOSing a player. But that would break the law and breach TOS. Given a person does it often, they'd have a high chance of getting spotted. But this is nothing only SDC can do, the rest of 99.99% of Elite players could also do this

But they won't and often can't - the vast majority are playing on their own not in a clan specifically working together to disrupt other's play for lolz. They are at a huge disadvantage to start with, but apparently not enough of one for the kids pulling wings off insects.

Whilst crime & punishment system should be fixed to give players a reason not to combat log (and give more of a challenge for the ones attacking), combat logging should still be treated as the exploit it is.

It needs to be fixed to give players a reason not to cause others to combat log! No more suisidewinders, appropriate penalties for killing other cmdrs in cold blood, unstoppable defensive responses in high-sec systems and near stations - ramming play detection.... these are all ways these folk happily abuse the systems - why on earth the focus should be on fixing the tiny group trying to cause trouble's problem rather than the majorities issues and the reason so many leave the game is beyond me

 

[Red Anders]

But you have a choice! Form a private group with only non-combat loggers in it. Eject anyone who combat logs.

This is the *exact same argument* Möbius users have had since inception. What's wrong with it?

-BW

The fact that the rules in Mobius are Mobius's rules, whereas the rules that are at issue here are game rules.

FDev themselves have made it perfectly clear that the rules of any private group have no 'official' standing and can only be enforced by the group's owner, they're effectively a gentleman's agreement. Combat logging has been deemed to be an exploit by FDev. That's a game rule set by the developer and should have a hell of a lot more significance than a gentleman's agreement.

Suggesting that someone join a private group or plays in solo is a perfectly valid response when that person is trying to avoid player behaviour that they simply don't like but is within the rules of the game, because there's basically no other way to avoid it. FDev can't tell players to stop doing something that's within the rules just because someone else would rather they didn't do it. When the issue is player behaviour which is against the rules though, the reasonable thing is to expect that the rules will be enforced.

 

[Mephane]

Wrong

DayZ had a point where everyone pretty much combat logged, it's a perms death game if your not familiar, you lose Everything when you die

People would log off if shot at, change server move position (your in game position was saved across servers) then log in behind you or your team and kill you

Then they made your character stay in the game for 30 secs after You lost connection with the server and if the bot that replaced
You died, your character was wiped clean and days, weeks or even months of gameplay was lost

Maybe do some research first

It's one of many games that got the anti combat logging right, in a sense it is still a ban of sorts by forcing you to start the game again

Does the game have a central server? Because you need to control everything through a central server for such a solution, in a P2P architecture this would open up a very simple exploit: block your connection to the other player, *poof* your client will (because no central server = the still connected player's client has to) create that NPC AI to control the other player, which you can then blow up easily.

 

[Wasp0]

But nobody is stealing. They are logging of at a morally questionable time - yes. but not stealing.

Did you read my Post? Stealing was just an Example of a way in which customers can cheat a company, it was used along with other examples of ways to cheat a business including cheating the system, in this case CL clearly are!

 

[Frijaz]

Frontier has now conceded that OP is correct on reddit, good job ryan on taking on this issue and wrestling it. Progress has been made.

 

[Heavenly-Hammer]

But nobody is stealing. They are logging of at a morally questionable time - yes. but not stealing.

Absolutely not. You continuing to say this doesn't make it true.

Waiting the 15 seconds and logging out the right way is a morally questionable time. But it is allowed in the current games rules. Ideally you wouldn't be able to exit the game while being attacked at all.

Disabling your internet to avoid losses or closing the game from your task manager IS cheating. It is circumventing the game mechanics in order to better serve your interests. It IS that simple. It can impact the game experience of others even from Solo, especially if you were about to die while carrying PowerPlay vouchers, CG materials, bounties or cargo that would work toward changing the power balance of a minor faction in a system, etc.

There is no reasonable argument that makes this acceptable. It is cheating the game, the system, and often the balance of the game and BGS along the way. Stop defending cheating. Stop cheating.

 

[Wasp0]

stop combat logging by stopping all the idiots whose sole intention is just to destroy every thing and everybody they see just for the fun of it

Can you clarify your statement? as i am unsure if you actually know what you are talking about. My other cmdr is a Pirate by trade, not griefing or ganking or any other terminology you want to associate to it. I stopped Cmdrs, i sent then a message telling them what i did and what i wanted, some would yield, some would fight some i would win some i would lose, but some just Logged!!

So am i in your class of idiots? as i had loads of loggers and have a record of every one of them along with every cmdr i killed and every cmdr that killed me.

 

[Gunnet]

Absolutely not. You continuing to say this doesn't make it true.

Waiting the 15 seconds and logging out the right way is a morally questionable time. But it is allowed in the current games rules. Ideally you wouldn't be able to exit the game while being attacked at all.

Disabling your internet to avoid losses or closing the game from your task manager IS cheating. It is circumventing the game mechanics in order to better serve your interests. It IS that simple. It can impact the game experience of others even from Solo, especially if you were about to die while carrying PowerPlay vouchers, CG materials, bounties or cargo that would work toward changing the power balance of a minor faction in a system, etc.

There is no reasonable argument that makes this acceptable. It is cheating the game, the system, and often the balance of the game and BGS along the way. Stop defending cheating. Stop cheating.

The post didn't say cheating, it said stealing.

 

[amysteriousstranger]

How about you do some research first. I will hint you with this:

The dayz solution wont work in Elite for technical reasons.

I never said it would

My point was that you said "a ban or whatever you want to call it" and "no business would punish its customers "

And I proved you wrong

 

[edgar]

The fact that the rules in Mobius are Mobius's rules, whereas the rules that are at issue here are game rules.

FDev themselves have made it perfectly clear that the rules of any private group have no 'official' standing and can only be enforced by the group's owner, they're effectively a gentleman's agreement. Combat logging has been deemed to be an exploit by FDev. That's a game rule set by the developer and should have a hell of a lot more significance than a gentleman's agreement.

Suggesting that someone join a private group or plays in solo is a perfectly valid response when that person is trying to avoid player behaviour that they simply don't like but is within the rules of the game, because there's basically no other way to avoid it. FDev can't tell players to stop doing something that's within the rules just because someone else would rather they didn't do it. When the issue is player behaviour which is against the rules though, the reasonable thing is to expect that the rules will be enforced.

I think much of the so-called "PvE crowd" prefer to suffer from a form of cognitive dissonance, ignoring FD's official ruleset, in favour of a sort of "forum headcanon" ruleset based around their own flawed insistance that ED is "intended" to be PvE-only, despite FD statements to the contrary, and the presence of game mechanics that support PvP interaction.

 

[Dash]

The irony in people who engage in unsportsmanlike conduct in preying on underpowered players minding their own business getting peed off with unsportsmanlike conduct.

This thread could have just been "Dear FD, please make this game a turkey shoot for me and my buddies and force people who aren't interested in this to play my way".

 

[Deleted member 110222]

I'm personally more concerned about FD's ignorance of the cheese industry.

 

[SpyTec]

a portion of elite reddit hates here because their PvP clans can't dominate the discussion with up/downvoting. everybody knows about reddit.

PvP clans can't dominate up/downvoting. All comes down to who sees a thread. PvP players having discussion on forums isn't often had due to forum rules and the strife it causes

But they won't and often can't - the vast majority are playing on their own not in a clan specifically working together to disrupt other's play for lolz. They are at a huge disadvantage to start with, but apparently not enough of one for the kids pulling wings off insects.

If by DDoSing you mean only the clan member's computers, they would be caught almost immediately. To effectively DDoS safetly you would need a botnet. So no, not even EIC could DDoS with all their member's computers without being noticed by authorities.

It needs to be fixed to give players a reason not to cause others to combat log! No more suisidewinders, appropriate penalties for killing other cmdrs in cold blood, unstoppable defensive responses in high-sec systems and near stations - ramming play detection.... these are all ways these folk happily abuse the systems - why on earth the focus should be on fixing the tiny group trying to cause trouble's problem rather than the majorities issues and the reason so many leave the game is beyond me

I never said it should only fix combat logging, I never even said how a revamp should look like. Of course revamping the crime & punishment should be made to fix all the possible problems, including combat logging. Focus shouldn't be on trying to fix combat logging only in crime & punishment, it should be to fix all the possible problems, increase gameplay and also fix combat logging

 

[Heavenly-Hammer]

Does the game have a central server? Because you need to control everything through a central server for such a solution, in a P2P architecture this would open up a very simple exploit: block your connection to the other player, *poof* your client will (because no central server = the still connected player's client has to) create that NPC AI to control the other player, which you can then blow up easily.

Yes, think we all have known for some time now that their decision to go with a P2P implementation for player interaction -- while the most affordable and least expensive for FDev to maintain -- is coming back to haunt them in big ways. From the continuing problems with Wings and instancing to the ongoing problems with combat logging, they made a system with fundamental flaws that they are either unable or unwilling to fix. Issues that could have all been avoided with a proper dedicated server setup.

The reality may be that the only way to address these issues once and for all is a rewrite of some of the code and setup of dedicated servers to handle it. If so, I hope they are working on that quietly right now. Along with proper crime and punishment.

 

[DaylightM]

This thread could have just been "Dear FD, please make this game a turkey shoot for me and my buddies and force people who aren't interested in this to play my way".

this ... this is more like the real reason for this particular instance