Hypothesis: most Combat Loggers are serial cheats who learned it in other games or against NPC's

[Vasious]

If one justifies one form of cheating one justifies all cheating, as we may as well let the memory hackers do their thing

Combat log to avoid PvP if that is okay, then it is okay to

Combat log to avoid NPC Combat, and never worry about insurance, log to aovid being scanned on missions that you need to avoid it, and never fail, log beofre any desturction, never lose bonds, bounties or data, or cargo, for any CG you are in, or any BGS faction you are trying to insurance.

It is okay to cheat, just as it is okay to save scum, in a share game

 

[Leo Sagan]

Its Frontiers mess, and they need to sort it out. Otherwise their rep and that of the game will be tarnished. The swamp needs draining. I mean what does all this say to people who play fairly and don't cheat?

Sorry FD, no way I white knight this one : your mess, your responsibility. Sort it out so we can be friends again !

 

[kdjac]

The only fitting punishment for combat logging is to be banned from Open play. If you are so annoyed by being killed by other players, go to solo or Mobius.

Thats a brilliant idea.

 

[TomP]

Why combat log? I escaped a modded Cutter in a Beluga today, without dropping shields. It's called high wake. Pip management, heat sinks and SCB's all help too.

Thing is, what sort of utter gets his jollies trying to destroy a Beluga? There are so many PvP groups out there. Lots of fights to be had. Hell, if the Cutter had interdicted my Cutter he would have had a proper fight. But no. There are a lot of tools out there.

So while I take pride in not combat logging, I could not give less of a toss if people log on tools. Sounds a bit scatalogical...

 

[Scoopy Doopy]

This is incredible.

I fully expect combat logging in Elite dangerous to be headline news in the papers tomorrow. Must be fun conversations going on in the bars in some parts of the world.

 

[Kaocraft]

Sounds plausible. Now how do you test the hypothesis?

 

[TigerTen]

Warriors survive to fight another day.

 

[dynamicbob]

we need a combat logging megathread, its getting out of control

 

[VR Murgle]

Hypothesis: the excessive attention promotes combat logging.

 

[Truesilver]

What do I think? A hypothesis presented with no means of verification. Pointless...

The point is that it's responsive. You see, over the last few days in particular - but the last 18 months plus in general - I have read thousands of posts in which forum users have asserted that combat logging is - naturally - without evidence or reason or justification - inevitably - a response to ED's lack of an effective crime and punishment system.

That is an assertion of cause and effect, which I find implausible and wish to challenge.

It is usually put like this:

"Want to fix combat logging? Fix the root cause! People log because there's not enough c and p!"

Why should we believe this? Why should we accept this forum-created dogma?

Those that assert cause and effect should offer reasons for it. Otherwise it is just dogma.

Sounds plausible. Now how do you test the hypothesis?

You and I can't, although we can discuss it by reference to the known factors - hence my pointing out that logging inside a few seconds of a player interdiction is actually quite difficult, if you don't already have it in mind and have never, ever logged before.

But FDev probably have better ideas. They know how many disconnects players get. They know whether you are in combat with another player when you disconnect (this has been publicly stated, I can link to reddit). And they know how many reports they get.

I'm willing to bet that the reason FDev do not have the 'excuses excuses' attitude to logging that this forum does is because, unlike the typical user of this forum, they know that the forum meme of the random, innocent, one-off, yet somehow superhumanly speedy and aware logger, is sheer forum fantasy.

 

[Scoopy Doopy]

The point is that it's responsive. You see, over the last few days in particular - but the last 18 months plus in general - I have read thousands of posts in which forum users have asserted that combat logging is - naturally - without evidence or reason or justification - inevitably - a response to ED's lack of an effective crime and punishment system.

That is an assertion of cause and effect, which I find implausible and wish to challenge.

It is usually put like this:

"Want to fix combat logging? Fix the root cause! People log because there's not enough c and p!"

Why should we believe this? Why should we accept this forum-created dogma?

Those that assert cause and effect should offer reasons for it. Otherwise it is just dogma.



You and I can't, although we can discuss it by reference to the known factors - hence my pointing out that logging inside a few seconds of a player interdiction is actually quite difficult, if you don't already have it in mind and have never, ever logged before.

But FDev probably have better ideas. They know how many disconnects players get. They know whether you are in combat with another player when you disconnect (this has been publicly stated, I can link to reddit). And they know how many reports they get.

I'm willing to be that the reason FDev do not have the 'excuses excuses' attitude to logging that this forum does is because, unlike the typical user of this forum, they know that the forum meme of the random, innocent, one-off, yet somehow superhumanly speedy and aware logger, is sheer forum fantasy.

Perhaps many of those thousand posts you read were written by people who have combat logged. I presume they know why they did it whereas you are only guessing.

But that aside, how on earth can this be quite so important to you. You must be one lucky person.

 

[Leo Sagan]

Perhaps many of those thousand posts you read were written by people who have combat logged.

I never (really : *NEVER*) combat logged.
I fully support the idea of an elaborate c&p system.
Most importantly, I don't see how anyone (*anyone*) except a griefer could be against it.

 

[CMDR Harada]

The only fitting punishment for combat logging is to be banned from Open play. If you are so annoyed by being killed by other players, go to solo or Mobius.

And that's the point. I don't mind being pirated, if we're going to do the whole thing. But just getting jumped and killed by a purpose built combat ship.. no money to be made, no cargo to pirate.. why are they interdicting and killing ? And what happens to the attacker ? 5k fine ? MAYBE ? Combat logging and C+P are linked. One begets the other, and vice versa.

In the end, if combat logging becomes prohibited, or fixed, depending on your point of view, OPEN can be renamed to EMPTY. Look at the numbers.. how big have the private groups become ? That's gotta tell you something.

 

[Ydiss]

Hit F5 just before you do something dangerous. And then F9 when it all goes wrong.

That's how I roll.

 

[Scoopy Doopy]

I never (really : *NEVER*) combat logged.
I fully support the idea of an elaborate c&p system.
Most importantly, I don't see how anyone (*anyone*) except a griefer could be against it.

I have never combat logged either but I get some people are very upset about it and would like to express their concern. However, banging on and on about it looks a bit needy to me.

By the way, it is trivial to avoid combat loggers if people find them annoying.

 

[Arguendo]

Sorry Truesilver, still out of rep

I have actually been accused of enabling and siding with the gankers when not budging on Combat Logging = cheating. So yes, Combat Logging is very accepted in Elite.
It does make me wonder if Combat Logging would go noticably down if proper C&P was implemented in the game tomorrow. I think it would go down, but not in the numbers people think. Gankers/griefers log too.

 

[jasonbarron]

Perhaps many of those thousand posts you read were written by people who have combat logged. I presume they know why they did it whereas you are only guessing.

But that aside, how on earth can this be quite so important to you. You must be one lucky person.

Why shouldn't this be an important issue?

I think Truesilver hit the nail on the head, personally. Logging is an ingrained pattern of behavior rationalized by the people who do it as avoiding the gankers and laying the blame for their behavior on both the PvP crowd and Fdev. Anything to avoid taking responsibility for their actions...indeed, seeking to normalize it every chance they get.

Fdev might never be able to sort combat logging in the game, but I'd settle for them cracking down on the open bragging about it on these forums

 

[Truesilver]

It does make me wonder if Combat Logging would go noticably down if proper C&P was implemented in the game tomorrow. I think it would go down, but not in the numbers people think. Gankers/griefers log too.

I have never harmed any Cmdr in this game except for the Wanted, Powerplay enemies or player group enemies. So basically I am a relatively rare bird - a playa-killa that is nevertheless on the 'right' side of forum morality.

(And I have the pointy role-play dice to prove it ...)

And yet I have seen my fair share of logging.

Were these poor souls sensitised by ED griefers and gankers? (Apart from the ones that, as you quite rightly point out, were themselves griefers and gankers?)

The more I think about it, the more I find that forum meme practically implausible.

They logged because they were practised at logging.

How did they get that practice?

Most likely in other games or against NPC's.

 

[Scoopy Doopy]

Why shouldn't this be an important issue?

I think Truesilver hit the nail on the head, personally. Logging is an ingrained pattern of behavior rationalized by the people who do it as avoiding the gankers and laying the blame for their behavior on both the PvP crowd and Fdev. Anything to avoid taking responsibility for their actions...indeed, seeking to normalize it every chance they get.

Fdev might never be able to sort combat logging in the game, but I'd settle for them cracking down on the open bragging about it on these forums

I understand it might be important to some people and I would imagine for most people it is at least "an odd thing to do". I have no problem with people expressing their concern over this issue. However, the sheer magnitude of the vitriol being displayed, the work and effort being put into orchestrating an armada of pitch fork waving yokels banging on the doors of FD strikes me at least as being somewhat out of proportion.

I am thinking of writing a guide for those frightened of combat loggers on how to escape them in Elite Dangerous.

 

[Faybs]

The point is that it's responsive. You see, over the last few days in particular - but the last 18 months plus in general - I have read thousands of posts in which forum users have asserted that combat logging is - naturally - without evidence or reason or justification - inevitably - a response to ED's lack of an effective crime and punishment system.

That is an assertion of cause and effect, which I find implausible and wish to challenge.

It is usually put like this:

"Want to fix combat logging? Fix the root cause! People log because there's not enough c and p!"

Why should we believe this? Why should we accept this forum-created dogma?

Those that assert cause and effect should offer reasons for it. Otherwise it is just dogma.



You and I can't, although we can discuss it by reference to the known factors - hence my pointing out that logging inside a few seconds of a player interdiction is actually quite difficult, if you don't already have it in mind and have never, ever logged before.

But FDev probably have better ideas. They know how many disconnects players get. They know whether you are in combat with another player when you disconnect (this has been publicly stated, I can link to reddit). And they know how many reports they get.

I'm willing to bet that the reason FDev do not have the 'excuses excuses' attitude to logging that this forum does is because, unlike the typical user of this forum, they know that the forum meme of the random, innocent, one-off, yet somehow superhumanly speedy and aware logger, is sheer forum fantasy.

Here are my thoughts on this...

* Combat logging is, for better or for worse, seen as mostly a PvP problem - most of us couldn't care if someone decides to pull the plug on an NPC if the fight is not going their way. The open PvE poll from the other day suggests that there are more PvE players than PvP, and since we're not seeing much from FDev to fix this I imagine that their internal telemetry confirms this - why spend limited dev resources on something that only affects a minority of players when there are plenty of other bugs that affect everyone?
* It's possible to be an accidental combat logger - we've all seen the recent spike in threads from people getting kicked from the game because the adjudication server wasn't reachable. If that happened during a fight, you would be completely right to believe I logged on you, but also completely wrong. So there is a big tendency for people to give loggers the benefit of the doubt.

As I mentioned before, my own stance on combat logging is that if you're doing it in open, why are you there to begin with. So my humble suggestion on how to "fix" combat logging without punishing people with crappy network connections is to have a mechanic similar to bounty timeouts - if you log once, your account is locked to solo mode for 8 minutes. You do it again inside of 30 minutes, you're locked to solo for 30 minutes. Again and you're in solo for an hour and so on. That will solve the real problem with loggers (combat pilots being cheated of victory by cheats) while not punishing innocents who probably should not be playing in open with a flaky network to begin with.