PvP An Investigation Into Frontier's Actions on Combat Logging, Part 2

[Martian Successor]

I'd appreciate it if you could move on from this, you've laid down your stance, it's okay for others to disagree. There are valid reasons either way. Would you agree PvP Clogging is a higher priority at least?

Sure PvP logging is a higher priority because it involves people, no arguement there.

It's okay for me to argue my points of view on this however, I don't need to check my viewpoints at the door on the count of you or anyone else here. I view it as important, others either don't or view it as less important, that's all fine by me. What particular problem do you find with me expressing my viewpoint on this subject?

 

[Chip Patton]

What? You suggest Frontier does something most other main stream MMOs are doing and something that actually works? You must be kidding... I am not sure what I would be doing if that ever happens, what would be the source of endless drama? Sandro, please, no!

The solution here is quite simple -- the bounty placed on the player who kills another innocent player carries the rebuy cost as a 30-day bounty to the pilot's association which can only be cleared by paying the pilot's association the cost of that bounty which will then refund the player killed. This way pirates will have their own space so they can pirate and blow each other up until they have nothing left, and PVEers will have their own space that is still not 100% safe. Authority needs to act more preemptively, though -- if a wing of 4 wanted players comes into a system, the system authority patrolling the system should be able to see this and respond.

As far as the combat logging goes -- I still can't figure out what drives people to do this; starting the game in Open Play isn't forced on anyone, so you're there for player interaction and when you get that player interaction you pull the plug? *boggled*

 

[Manticore]

It's okay for me to argue my points of view on this however, I don't need to check my viewpoints at the door on the count of you or anyone else here.

Quote of the week and it can be easily translated into: "Don't tell me what to do, think or say... my opinion is my opinion".

 

[Devari]

See above answer,
possible solution is a watchdog service
or anti-cheat system.
It will require some good coding, but be worthwhile.

That doesn't get over the fundamental problem that it will mostly "catch" legitimate game crashes and disconnects which occur at high frequency among many players. A "watchdog" that barks at everything, including family, neighbors, the mailman and so on isn't going to be particularly useful if you expect the barking to reliably detect an intruder or burglar.

 

[Riverside]

Sure PvP logging is a higher priority because it involves people, no arguement there.

It's okay for me to argue my points of view on this however, I don't need to check my viewpoints at the door on the count of you or anyone else here. I view it as important, others either don't or view it as less important, that's all fine by me. What particular problem do you find with me expressing my viewpoint on this subject?

I'd prefer to get some more out of this than what your opinion is on what I see as a lesser issue.

If you want to derail that that's up to you

 

[Devari]

You are right that identifying intent is hard, the solution I propose handles all of these simply by having the player rejoin in the mode they were in.

This basically already happens. Occasions where I've legitimately left combat with a menu log-out and then rejoined shortly afterword put me in exactly the same instance that I left, with the same ships present.

CLogging from SC is functionally no different from double-tapping J or switching off the FSD or Thrusters.

Not if you're being interdicted. Combat logging from SC is different than simply trying to "leave" supercruise as you're "stuck" in SC while being interdicted. The only way to legitimately get "out" of an interdiction is to submit, win the interdiction mini-game, menu log (which has a glitch that will reset the timer once the interdiction ends) or task-kill the client (which is often necessary if the game has crashed and remains stuck in SC). You can't even select a destination to high-wake to once the interdiction has started. Unless it's already been plotted you are locked out of the navigation menu and can only complete a jump if the FSD is already charging. The technical reason is that interdictions are separate "instances" where the interdiction occurs and the difficulty that the game has with transitions between the instances means that the game crashes at these points with a rather high frequency (i.e., transition from SC to glide, transition from normal space to SC, transition from SC to interdiction and so on).

 

[Martian Successor]

I'd prefer to get some more out of this than what your opinion is on what I see as a lesser issue.

If you want to derail that that's up to you

I'm not derailing anything. I'll say this to you only once, kindly get back to the discussion and stop focusing on me.

 

[jasonbarron]

I'm not derailing anything. I'll say this to you only once, kindly get back to the discussion and stop focusing on me.

I think we're starting to see a pattern emerging. Makes me wonder how many of the people trying to shout down the importance of clogging on this thread by using the "SDC are cheaters and villains!" strawman are contentedly clogging on NPC's when the going gets tough.

For what it's worth I don't think you're derailing anything. Rather, I think you're one of a few who are actually contributing something.

 

[ryan_m]

That doesn't get over the fundamental problem that it will mostly "catch" legitimate game crashes and disconnects which occur at high frequency among many players. A "watchdog" that barks at everything, including family, neighbors, the mailman and so on isn't going to be particularly useful if you expect the barking to reliably detect an intruder or burglar.

You develop metrics and act on those. If you see that every time a player loses their shields they suddenly have connection issues, but they're rare during every other phase of the game, that's a pretty big clue. If you have data showing that every time a player enters combat with another player their connection fails, that's another clue. You check against a baseline.

 

[Red Anders]

That doesn't get over the fundamental problem that it will mostly "catch" legitimate game crashes and disconnects which occur at high frequency among many players. A "watchdog" that barks at everything, including family, neighbors, the mailman and so on isn't going to be particularly useful if you expect the barking to reliably detect an intruder or burglar.

Just curious. Do you actually believe this will become true if you just say it enough?

There is already a crystal clear example of the kind of case that can be reliably determined in this thread - a player who miraculously disconnects in every single fight when his hull gets dropped to about 40%. There are at least ten instances of it shown just in the videos linked in this thread. He never randomly disconnects immediately on interdiction, or earlier in a fight, only ever when his ship is getting to the point where it looks like he might lose it. In a modern online game, I would expect a permanent account ban to have been given out for that many transgressions by now. *

I really wonder about the motivation of people who perpetuate this myth that any kind of automated monitoring system a) will cause thousands of totally innocent players to be punished and b) must be 100% certain in every single case before anything is done.

a) is simply nonsensical and frankly is exactly the kind of thing people who are using exploits and are terrified of them being removed cling to. If that's not you fine but you do the game and come to that, yourself, no favours whatsoever by peddling this line. Who exactly are these players who spend their spare time playing a game that throws them out with such regularity that it would be impossible to differentiate between their problem and someone whose connection only drops out regularly when at the critical end of combat? As I said earlier in the thread, the burden of proof that some people seem to think should apply here is so hilariously above that which they would deem reasonable for virtually anything else in their life that it descends into parody territory. Which leads me on to...

b) is what an appeal system is for.

I could understand this whole discussion if we were talking about some wild and crazy notion that nobody had ever thought of doing before.

What we're actually talking about is an online game company actually enforcing their own game rules. It's not such an odd concept. The fact that this is even a debate is the odd thing.

I will say one other thing too. There is at least one player who has quite clearly advocated combat logging in this thread. I have played games where that alone would be a permanent ban from the forum, regardless of whether they have really done what they say they have or not. Honestly, some of you really need to reset your parameters to 'online gaming 2018' rather than 'typing cheat codes out of a magazine in 1986' when thinking about this stuff.

Think I'm done with this thread now because I don't particularly want to provide a reason for it being close again and I'm finding it increasingly difficult to keep my posts civil with some of the stuff I'm reading. Enjoy the discussion Commanders, such as it is.


* By the way, here's Rockstar's suspension and ban policy for GTA Online, just for some comparison.

https://support.rockstargames.com/h...pdate-to-GTA-Online-Suspension-and-Ban-Policy

Question: What happens if I am suspended or banned from GTA Online?

Answer: GTA Online suspensions are triggered by a number of factors, including modding in GTA Online, exploiting or abusing game mechanics, manipulating protected game data and code, or interfering with other players’ gameplay experience.

Suspensions from GTA Online due to these reasons may be temporary suspensions or permanent bans depending on the severity of the infraction.

If you receive a temporary suspension from GTA Online, the next infraction will result in a permanent ban. If you are temporarily suspended from GTA Online, you will not be able to access GTA Online from the moment you are suspended. Your suspension expiration date is shown on the splash screen after being returned to Story Mode following an attempt to play GTA Online.

In addition, your GTA Online character(s) will be reset. All GTA Online progress, property and inventory will be reset.

All GTA Online suspension and banning decisions are final and may not be appealed.

Compare that to an e-mail warning someone that FDev had recorded as already having multiple occurrences of exploiting that if he carried on doing it (!) he would get a shadow ban (!!) for a few days (!!!). (From the player's own post on the forum which included the text of the e-mail)

The real issue here though is this. If people don't trust that FDev are actually taking action on this issue because of a lack of visibility (and of course players who are notorious for doing it stlll flying around on the same accounts) how exactly are they supposed to trust them on anything else?

 

[JosiahD]

I think we're starting to see a pattern emerging. Makes me wonder how many of the people trying to shout down the importance of clogging on this thread by using the "SDC are cheaters and villains!" strawman are contentedly clogging on NPC's when the going gets tough.

For what it's worth I don't think you're derailing anything. Rather, I think you're one of a few who are actually contributing something.

I don't know about others but I can state that I have menu logged in a PvE situation precisely once. And that was merely because of my own stupidity - it wasn't even a ship-to-ship combat scenario (I'd stupidly parked too close to a surface base and left one turret still active - then loaded my SRV and walked away for a bio break before taking off....still kicking myself for that one). And I was too slow to initiate it anyway so suffered the rebuy screen regardless. I am yet to combat log on another player (doubt I ever will but there's a couple of players I'd be sorely tempted to just to spite them) - but I tend to try to avoid player combat when in open so I've been engaged (and destroyed) by another player precisely twice since open beta (one of those followed chain interdiction so he REALLY wanted to destroy me for some reason but not for piracy as there was no challenge or threat made). On both occasions it was basically a ganking, or a griefing intrusion on another activity so would have arguably been incidents where a combat log could be construed as tolerable if I'd done it, subject to one's point of view. I don't condone combat logging, but nor do I have any sympathy for gankers/griefers who are combat logged on.

 

[Devari]

Just curious. Do you actually believe this will become true if you just say it enough?

Just curious. Do you actually understand that the threshold for catching serial combat loggers needs to be very high to move above a reasonable background level of disconnects due to the extremely high level of game crashes?

If you have no background in statistics or clinical screening (i.e., false positive rate vs. true positives) then I can understand that you might not get this concept. It is a very well-defined statistical issue however and when your false positive rate is very high you cannot reach reliable conclusions based on screening methods that cannot reliably distinguish between false positives and true positives.

There is already a crystal clear example of the kind of case that can be reliably determined in this thread - a player who miraculously disconnects in every single fight when his hull gets dropped to about 40%. There are at least ten instances of it shown just in the videos linked in this thread. He never randomly disconnects immediately on interdiction, only ever when his ship is getting to the point where it looks like he might lose it.

First, how do you know when that player disconnects or doesn't disconnect? Are they being followed around continuously by someone live-streaming everything that CMDR does and encounters in the game?

Second, if that player has been reported to FD already and someone feels that FD's actions aren't sufficient, then why aren't they on those players block lists? FD has given players a reliable tool for avoiding interactions with CMDRs who you don't want to encounter in the game.

I really wonder about the motivation of people who perpetuate this myth that any kind of automated monitoring system a) will cause thousands of totally innocent players to be punished

Maybe because there are many players (including myself) who frequently encounter several disconnects per gaming session during combat and any automated system would not be able to distinguish this from combat logging? Could that be it?

and b) must be 100% certain in every single case before anything is done.

It has to be as close to 100% certain as possible because the idea of taking strong action requires certainty on FD's part. How is that hard to understand?

a) is simply nonsensical and frankly is exactly the kind of thing people who are using exploits and are terrified of them being removed cling to.

Sorry, what now? Your argument here is that a player who doesn't want to be accused of combat logging incorrectly by an automated system is really just someone who regularly "uses exploits" and is "terrified of them being removed"? That doesn't even make any sense.

If that's not you fine but you do the game and come to that, yourself, no favours whatsoever by peddling this line.

Sorry, what line is that again? The idea that a system that can't reliably distinguish between game crashes and other disconnects unrelated to combat logging behavior shouldn't be used to "punish" players? Because that idea is just common sense.

Who exactly are these players who spend their spare time playing a game that throws them out with such regularity that it would be impossible to differentiate between their problem and someone whose connection only drops out regularly when at the critical end of combat? As I said earlier in the thread, the burden of proof that some people seem to think should apply here is so hilariously above that which they would deem reasonable for virtually anything else in their life that it descends into parody territory. Which leads me on to...

No, it's simply a reasonable burden of proof that any player who has encountered legitimate game crashes would expect FD to apply to the situation.

b) is what an appeal system is for.

I see, so FD should ban players who may have been encountering frequent legitimate game crashes, and the player is supposed to "appeal" the decision?

Seriously? That's your idea?

I can't properly describe how bad an idea that is. I don't even have a meme for it yet. It's literally that bad.

 

[Devari]

You develop metrics and act on those. If you see that every time a player loses their shields they suddenly have connection issues, but they're rare during every other phase of the game, that's a pretty big clue. If you have data showing that every time a player enters combat with another player their connection fails, that's another clue. You check against a baseline.

And how do you know that FD isn't already doing this? The assumption that a very low rate of artificial combat logging means FD is "doing nothing" is just not a logical leap to make here. For all you know a player who you might personally witness "combat logging" had a dozen disconnects that week and the 1-2 times you observe it yourself doesn't reach FD's baseline to act on it. Or maybe they already acted on it, and it just wasn't a ban that they went with given how rare FD actually resorts to game bans. The idea that you know what FD is or isn't doing or what data they are or aren't acting on is just an assumption that has no actual basis.

 

[JosiahD]

And how do you know that FD isn't already doing this? The assumption that a very low rate of artificial combat logging means FD is "doing nothing" is just not a logical leap to make here. For all you know a player who you might personally witness "combat logging" had a dozen disconnects that week and the 1-2 times you observe it yourself doesn't reach FD's baseline to act on it. Or maybe they already acted on it, and it just wasn't a ban that they went with given how rare FD actually resorts to game bans. The idea that you know what FD is or isn't doing or what data they are or aren't acting on is just an assumption that has no actual basis.

I think this is an important point. Frontier do seem to err on the side of caution and avoid bans when possible, at least as far as we can tell. Otherwise those players who engaged in the engineering exploit would have been outright banned. Heck, maybe some were and the rest of us just didn't know about it and they haven't admitted it. I don't recall hearing of any though - just the modules being removed. Just because the desired penalty is not self-evident and advertised, doesn't mean a penalty has not been imposed - just that it might not be the penalty the complainant wants. Conversely it could indeed mean no action has been taken, but firstly that's Frontier's decision to make, and secondly we can never know either way at a wider playerbase level (unless the offender openly admitted to receiving a warning or ban) because of the privacy maintained around such things.

 

[Red Anders]

Just curious. Do you actually understand that the threshold for catching serial combat loggers needs to be very high to move above a reasonable background level of disconnects due to the extremely high level of game crashes?

Literally everything you wrote after this was a waste of your time and effort because as I said, it's all based on your contention that everybody has so many disconnects from the game that it would be impossible to determine with any certainty whether there was a pattern in any individual case.

As I said, that is nonsense. Believe me, don't believe me, I am past caring.

 

[Devari]

Literally everything you wrote after this was a waste of your time and effort because as I said, it's all based on your contention that everybody has so many disconnects from the game that it would be impossible to determine with any certainty whether there was a pattern in any individual case.

As I said, that is nonsense. Believe me, don't believe me, I am past caring.

Right, it's "nonsense" because you say so? Sorry, that's not an actual argument.

Like I mentioned earlier, these concepts are also relevant in clinical and statistical contexts and the issue isn't unique to combat logging. Screening tests that have a high false positive rate are not only very poor at catching rare events, they can actually cause harm if all they do is catch a large amount of false positives for every true positive.

 

[Martian Successor]

Right, it's "nonsense" because you say so? Sorry, that's not an actual argument.

Like I mentioned earlier, these concepts are also relevant in clinical and statistical contexts and the issue isn't unique to combat logging. Screening tests that have a high false positive rate are not only very poor at catching rare events, they can actually cause harm if all they do is catch a large amount of false positives for every true positive.

In all fairness I can apply the same logic to your assumptions that everybody experiences so many regular disconnections from the game. Is it correct because you say so? The only people that can comfirm or deny this assumption is FD themselves so that particular avenue of your argument is a moot point that cannot go anywhere.

 

[jasonbarron]

Anybody experiencing as many disconnections as some of you are suggesting should not be playing in Open, simple as that. I know that if my connection was so bad that I was constantly dropping out no way no how would I be playing in Open. It's not fair to the other players.

 

[LeoBartlet]

Right, it's "nonsense" because you say so? Sorry, that's not an actual argument.

Like I mentioned earlier, these concepts are also relevant in clinical and statistical contexts and the issue isn't unique to combat logging. Screening tests that have a high false positive rate are not only very poor at catching rare events, they can actually cause harm if all they do is catch a large amount of false positives for every true positive.

One would imagine frontier would have and do have mechanisms in place to differentiate between genuine combat logging and random disconnects.

 

[Asp Explorer]

Anybody experiencing as many disconnections as some of you are suggesting should not be playing in Open, simple as that. I know that if my connection was so bad that I was constantly dropping out no way no how would I be playing in Open. It's not fair to the other players.

How would you know? You can maintain a rock solid connection to the important bits, while peers drop like flies with power cuts / bandwidth limits / overloaded modems / wifi connections / routing changes / DHCP leases / downloading Star Citizen / etc.