Logging During Combat Punishment [Proposal]

MONTItheRed

M
I'm drafting a punishment system for those who violate the rules of the game framed within the six general forms of punishment. Comments, questions, concerns are welcome and encouraged, whether through comments on this document or in forums this document is posted in.

I have expanded the punishment system to include other actions that break the rules such as griefing, combat logging, exploiting, and cheating because the punishment system could be applicable to any rules violation. A good portion of discussion was regarding how guilt was determined, but that is not the intent of the proposal. A discussion of how Fdev determines guilt is worthwhile. Additionally, much of the conversation was centering around the detection and definition of combat logging, rather than the validity of the methods. There will still be a general theme of punishing combat logging due to the hot nature of the topic. I will strikethrough the references to combat logging in the Google docs for a record of changes.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/16UeeC2cMDgLE0RPJB5OFBfNW3X8cahkNJWjgDfVqYVM/edit?usp=sharing

Rules Violation Punishment​

Based on feedback from multiple people, it seems the most popular form of punishment for combat logging and other offenses, would be a combination of banishment, financial burden, and restitution.
- Banishment: the guilty party is prevented from connecting to game modes. The duration of this banning could increase with frequency of violations.
- Financial burden: fine (or bounty) the guilty party their rebuy. The ability to clear fines and bounties would need to be reworked for this method to be more effective.
- Restitution: the rebuy of the guilty party awarded to those players engaged in combat with the rules violator. Splitting this bounty among all players could prevent this method being used to create free money. Additionally, if paired with the banishment, the time out of game would get longer and longer, meaning the restitution element would be more difficult to farm.

What this is
A proposal for an Fdev implemented punishment system within the mechanics of the game.
A listing, explanation, and lore justification of punishments for those that violate the rules of the game.

What this is NOT
A discussion of exiting the game through game menu functions, it's countdown, or it's validity.
A discussion about how guilt is determined or who is guilty, merely the punishment once guilt is established. (The developers already have methods of determining guilt.)

Terms
Rule Violation​
Anyone found guilty of breaking the EULA, Terms of Service. This includes, but is not limited to griefing, combat logging, cheating, or exploiting; as defined by Frontier devs.

Combat Logger: ​
- anyone who purposefully exits the game by terminating the game or game connection during PVP combat after interdiction has begun until either high- or low-waked out of the normal space instance, destroyed, or exiting through the game menu

Justification for Punishment
- There should be some consequence to those who violate the rules of the game. I think this is the most aggravating thing to those that put forth time, effort, and credits to PvP. The offender is at risk and must face consequences for engaging in PvP, but the receiver can face no consequences simply by exiting the game.

Methods of Punishment​

General Theory of Punishment
- There are generally six methods of punishment: incarceration, banishment/shunning, financial burden, restitution, public humiliation, physical pain.
- The general idea is to apply as many punishment types together because it is difficult to know what punishment provides the best deterrent.
- Players have brought up that being sent to solo or open may not be a punishment, and therefore not act as a deterrent to reduce rules violation (or other activities that break the Terms of Service, EULA, etc). Therefore I have added an additional banishment/shunning method.


Incarceration
- Incarceration: this could be done by locking a player in open and/or in the system they combat logged from for some time (play time and real time). This prevents the offender from escaping from pursuing players by going to solo or private and exiting the system.

Banishment
- Banishment/shunning: player kicked from the Bubble into solo for some time. Removes them from repair/restock/refuel as well as other players/NPCs and money making methods. May severely limit movement since some ships may have low jump range.

Alternative Incarceration/Banishment Systems
- An alternative to, and combination of, the incarceration/banishment punishments would be to banish and incarcerate the offender into a prison system central to the bubble. The offender is placed at dock in the single station (Coriolis) in the prison system.
- Temporary banishment (banning) from the game could act as a viable punishment and deterrent to rules violation. This could be implemented by preventing the player’s account from connecting to open/solo/private groups for some period of time. Disabling the player’s ability to connect to the game would have the additional benefit of preventing players from abusing the financial burden and/or restitution methods.

Financial Burden
- Financial burden: offending pilots are fined their rebuy but not reset to station or loss of cargo. Penalizes the offender as if their ship was destroyed.

Restitution
- Restitution: the offender is fined their rebuy, and that amount is split as a bounty to all hostile players in that instance. Provides a reward for those that engage in PvP and penalizes offending players. This punishment would not stack with the financial burden.

Public Humiliation
- Public humiliation: the CMDR name(s) of players found guilty of combat logging, cheating, exploiting, griefing are published in the station news feed of all systems they violated rules. The nature of the offenses will not be listed. Ship flagged as "criminal" similar to wanted.

Physical Pain
- Physical pain: Not sure how to implement this. /s This is most assuredly unpopular, impractical, and illegal. This method was included for completeness with regards to the six methods of punishment.

Lore Justification​

The lore justification for this punishment system would be the Pilot's Federation policing their members. The Pilot's Federation is an apolitical and neutral organization. A code of conduct or uniform code of justice could be created. All members would be subject to the galactic jurisdiction of the PF.

Annexes and Addendums​

Increased Bounty Value
- The fundamental problems of the crime and punishment system are not the values of the bounties, but the ease of clearing bounties and the difficulty in collecting bounties.
- Simply increasing the value of bounties put on players wouldn't fix the issue, and might make it worse.
- For example, let's say the bounty given for player destruction is 5% of the OFFENDING player's ship. For decent combat FDL this would be ~300,000. Their friends get in sidewinders and get destroyed, rapidly pushing the offending player's bounty to the cap. Roles and ships swap, instant free money without leaving a system.
- If the bounty were given based on the rebuy of the defender's ship, the scenario would just mean the offenders are attacking other players, instead of each other.
- We must also consider the impact of increased bounties on the BGS. Bounties and fines are directly tied to the lockdown and civil unrest states. Currently a small but dedicated group of players can lockdown a system in a few days. If the bounties increased in value, the time needed to lockdown a system could shorten to the point of locking down a system in one day.

Link to this thread and Reddit thread
- https://www.reddit.com/r/Elite_PVP/comments/5g77oa/logging_during_combat_punishment/
- https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/312685-Logging-During-Combat-Punishment-Proposal

EDIT: Added content to clarify the intent of the proposal is not to determine guilt because the developers already have methods of determining guilt.

EDIT: I have expanded the punishment system to include other actions that break the rules such as griefing, combat logging, exploiting, and cheating because the punishment system could be applicable to any rules violation. A good portion of discussion was regarding how guilt was determined, but that is not the intent of the proposal. A discussion of how Fdev determines guilt is worthwhile. Additionally, much of the conversation was centering around the detection and definition of combat logging, rather than the validity of the methods. I will strikethrough the references to combat logging in the Google docs for a record of changes.
 
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NW3

NW3
Sorry, but no. I have never logged, but I can see why someone might do that.

I don't think this sort of punishment is necessary, especially since the dropped connection might be accidental. I mostly play Solo and have luckily never been dropped during combat, however, the dropped connection issue seems to be getting worse, not better. Until it can be proven that a player pressed Alt+F4 or unplugged his/her cable modem, they should be considered innocent.

However, I would like to see something done about both the connection issues and the gankers (which I feel is a much larger problem, than the combat-loggers).
 

z993126

z993126
Notice that this topic is entirely one-sided, tellingly. Only those upsetting the aggressor should be punished (and severely!), giving carte blanche to individuals and groups who have a thirst for blood?

If it were technically feasible, I'd rather see all ships existing in the game in a single instance on a persistent basis. This would naturally require a lot more docking bays, but it would render combat-logging irrelevant, since the ship would remain whether or not there was a player connected to control it. Global permadeath would make it meaningful to have high rank, but likely reduce a portion of the playerbase to simply hurling themselves at each other with no goal beyond being a nuisance.
 
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Kubicide

Kubicide
Stopped at the part where you say the offender is at risk and must face consequences blah blah... err... ok. No.
 

smiths121

S
I think the chances of this bring implemented are the same as Season 3 starting this year.

By the way was this PvP combat logging only, FD like rules that cover all game modes. It's why those with bounties are not forced into open as was originally proposed for the C&P. Think that is needed before you can implement the CL proposal.

Simon
 

Gunnet

G
Bringing up how the Pilots Federation might police its members isn't a great idea if you like doing things which might result in people logging on you.
 

MONTItheRed

M
NW3 said:
I don't think this sort of punishment is necessary, especially since the dropped connection might be accidental. I mostly play Solo and have luckily never been dropped during combat, however, the dropped connection issue seems to be getting worse, not better. Until it can be proven that a player pressed Alt+F4 or unplugged his/her cable modem, they should be considered innocent.

However, I would like to see something done about both the connection issues and the gankers (which I feel is a much larger problem, than the combat-loggers).
Click to expand...

As I said in the opening post, this is not about how guilt is determined, but a system for punishment once guilt is determined.

With regards to the issue of connection, I agree that the connection and instance problems seem to have gotten worse over time rather than better.

In game punishment of gankers is another issue entirely.

This same punishment system could be used for griefers as well as combat loggers.

Combat logging vs griefing is an odd hot topic because it involves two very small minorities of players that the developers seem to do nothing about either.

Likely if the griefers left the game, the numbers of combat loggers (reported and/or actual) would decrease.

However, there is also the current solution: just do nothing. Because the two small minorities don't affect the functioning of the game in a large way, doing nothing may solve the problem.
 

MONTItheRed

M
z993126 said:
Notice that this topic is entirely one-sided, tellingly. Only those upsetting the aggressor should be punished (and severely!), giving carte blanche to individuals and groups who have a thirst for blood?

If it were technically feasible, I'd rather see all ships existing in the game in a single instance on a persistent basis. This would naturally require a lot more docking bays, but it would render combat-logging irrelevant, since the ship would remain whether or not there was a player connected to control it. Global permadeath would make it meaningful to have high rank, but likely reduce a portion of the playerbase to simply hurling themselves at each other with no goal beyond being a nuisance.
Click to expand...

The one sided nature of the proposal is intentional. As I said in the opening post, this is not about how guilt is determined, but one course of action after guilt is determined.

The same punishment system could be applied to griefers.

Since you presume that your proposal isn't technically feasible, why bring it up?

- - - Updated - - -

Asp Explorer said:
Naah - that's not strong enough.

If, for whatever reason, you ever disconnect from Elite, the client should immediately dox you, program your router to perform DDOS on other combat loggers, wipe your partition table, overwrite your BIOS and leave a "Didn't Git Gud" message on Reddit :D
Click to expand...

That's probably not legal.
 

Clicker

Clicker
How about....if the interdictor does not provide any sort of role play, the "victim" is allowed to log?

Most pirates I've come across do some RP, and sure if I do what they want they let me go.
If I fight back they usually decimate my shields and 50% or more of my hull...usually take out my thrusters....then let me go (usually after saying "good fight, thanks".

Griefers/Gankers simply don't....they attack without a word and with the sole intention of blowing you to pieces.
This is not fun especailly as I'm absolute rubbish at combat!

And in other words, OP, what you are saying is that if I choose play in open, I'm therefore bound to play by all the griefer/ganker rules and be punished if I don't play their way.
There's heaps of youtube vids where a griefer jumps in and interdicts someone, who then out pilots the griefer and as soon as they start to lose they combat log....now there's a group of people who should be punished!

Clicker
 
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MONTItheRed

M
Kubicide said:
Stopped at the part where you say the offender is at risk and must face consequences blah blah... err... ok. No.
Click to expand...

The offender IS at risk, albeit a small risk.

The lack of risk (or incredibly high risk, depending on who you ask) of each party muddles the discussion because each side can use either argument to support their claim
 

z993126

z993126
MONTItheRed said:
Since you presume that your proposal isn't technically feasible, why bring it up?
Click to expand...

Because it's an interesting idea to think about. ;)

Similar to bringing up the idea of punishing combat-loggers; there's simply no technically feasible way to accurately detect whether someone is logging simply to evade death vs. having a flaky connection. Sure, if it happens every time they are engaged in combat, you can suspect foul play is involved, but absent admission-of-guilt from the logger, there's no way to prove it.
 

Devari

D
The sense of entitlement that some members of the PVP crowd have to continue their seal clubbing nonsense is amusing but does get a little old after a while.

As long as the game is based on P2P architecture, there is no way to enforce persistence of the CMDR's ship and combat logging will always exist.
As long as the game continues in a ridiculously buggy state and core game mechanics such as interdiction do not work, there will always be justification for combat logging.
As long as the game continues to remain unstable and crashes frequently, there will be no reliable way to distinguish between intentional combat logging and game crashes.
As long as FD insists on increasing the "death cost" by introducing grindy mechanics such as NPC pilots who are insta-killed on ship destruction, there will always be a strong incentive to combat log.
As long as the PVP crowd predominantly engages in seal clubbing instead of demonstrating a desire for balanced PVP, the PVE players will always have a strong incentive to combat log.
As long as there is no effective crime and punishment system, PVE players will always have a strong incentive to combat log.
As long as there is no incentive for PVE players to engage in PVP when interdicted, PVE players will always have a strong incentive to combat log.

Combat logging isn't the problem, it's a consequence of all the other problems in the game that FD is either unable or unwilling to address.
 

MONTItheRed

M
smiths121 said:
I think the chances of this bring implemented are the same as Season 3 starting this year.

By the way was this PvP combat logging only, FD like rules that cover all game modes. It's why those with bounties are not forced into open as was originally proposed for the C&P. Think that is needed before you can implement the CL proposal.

Simon
Click to expand...

I didn't include a timeline on the proposal because I think the options presented aren't limited to a specific time or patch. None of the proposed punishment methods are patch specific.

Combat logging can be done in open, solo, or private. Open and private merely facilitate the reporting because there is another person present to observe and report the combat log. There is also the issue of the very small and very vocal minorities of combat loggers and griefers that tend to flare up around PVP, rather than PVE.

- - - Updated - - -

CMDR Aengus said:
Sorry. Lost interest at Physical Pain. And Im fairly certain you wrote that without a hint of sarcasm.

In which case, lifes way too short to he getting stressed about something so inconsequential, in a computer game.

See a Doctor. No, really. See a Doctor.
Click to expand...

The physical pain was included because it is one of the six forms of punishment. I don't think there is a realistic, or even legal, way that physical pain could be used as a punishment for a video game. I included it for completeness of discussing the six methods.
 

MONTItheRed

M
Unhappyhour said:
You have clearly spent lot of time thinking this up. Which is...slightly unsettling.
Click to expand...

Not really. The six methods of punishment are pretty universal throughout human history. Robert Heinlein also goes into some depth on this in several of his novels, notably Starship Troopers.

Fines are a form of financial burden.
In the case of lawsuits awarding money to one party or another, that is a form of both restitution and financial burden.
Community service can be a form of public humiliation (if the service is done in public), restitution (by doing a service to the community or offended party), and financial burden because the time doing service is time take away from other activities that could earn the offender money.
Imprisonment is a form of shunning/isolation/incarceration/banishment and financial burden.
Compounding the methods tends to be the most effective form because it is difficult to assess quickly, simply, easily, cheaply, and safely on what single form may be the most effective. This can be seen by imprisoning and fining offenders while also requiring them to do public service. This hits 4 of the 6 methods (incarceration, banishment, financial burden, and restitution).

Public humiliation and physical pain are two of the rarer forms of punishment, which is why I listed them last.

- - - Updated - - -

Rustled Jimmy said:
Only Greifers care about CLogging.

I've never seen evidence to the contrary.
Click to expand...

Look into the combat loggers reddit. There are several players doing reports there that may not be griefers.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteCombatLoggers/

There is also these threads

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDange...m_marked_as_a_combat_logger_because_frontier/

https://steamcommunity.com/app/359320/discussions/0/353915309345166651/

There are also the articles from gaming websites relating to the issue.
 

MONTItheRed

M
nosleepdemon said:
Aaaand completely missing the point, which is HOW to detect when a player lost the connection to their opponent's computer through no fault of their own.
Click to expand...

No, I included in the proposal that this is not about how to determine guilt of combat logging, but about a potential system for punishment once the guilt is determined.

Fdev already has a method for determining guilt, though it may not be obvious to the player base.

I can't determine guilt, but I can make proposals on what to do after the fact.

- - - Updated - - -

Gunnet said:
Bringing up how the Pilots Federation might police its members isn't a great idea if you like doing things which might result in people logging on you.
Click to expand...

Care to elaborate on that? I don't think I get your meaning and intent.

How would punishing someone who combat logs against a player be a bad thing for that player?

This punishment system could also be applied to griefers, cheaters, & exploiters.
 
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