That is why routers exist.
If you want to make another player look like a CLogger (ie forging evidence) you can use a video. If it's reported to FDev then sure, they can check the logs & see that it wasn't a CLog, but they wouldn't necessarily know who disconnected from who.
There are other methods, all of which are significantly more effort than just killing your non-CLogging foe in-game.
And some exist which are no effort at all, indeed some are forced upon you by powers outwith your control with no notice and no remedy possible.
The circumstances of a player being annoying enough to motivate someone to go to these lengths is enough on it's own to put it into the edge case category imo.
Someone could just show up at your door one day with a gun. It could happen, it does happen. But it's not likely and not something FDev can code for.
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Indeed they could - which is precisely why I also own and am trained and licensed to use and carry firearms
In-game though - over the years we have already seen concerted efforts by players to manipulate things to their own liking. CQC bombing went on for a good while, where certain players milked each other for ranks and nuked everyone else out of their game to remain undisturbed. There was The Great IP Gathering on Reddit. There was even a pfsense filter sold for real money.
Lulzbunnies will always find a way - either to generate lulz, or to be the subject of them.
Indeed they could - which is precisely why I also own and am trained and licensed to use and carry firearms
In-game though - over the years we have already seen concerted efforts by players to manipulate things to their own liking. CQC bombing went on for a good while, where certain players milked each other for ranks and nuked everyone else out of their game to remain undisturbed. There was The Great IP Gathering on Reddit. There was even a pfsense filter sold for real money.
Lulzbunnies will always find a way - either to generate lulz, or to be the subject of them.
We don't see many (any?) complaints of forged CLogging, we see actual CLogging (and network issues) mentioned pretty regularly by a fairly large number of people, naming & shaming prevents me from providing 'big name' evidence but it's out there. AFAIK the issues Toumal is concerned about are more theorycrafting than a genuine problem in the community. IMO of course
The points Toumal raise are because Toumal (and many other people) know how things work.
It's not theorycrafting - it's a real and present issue because anyone with even five minutes of real domain, group policy, IOS, VLAN, MS or network administration experience will just lulz at.
It's not theorycrafting - it's a real and present issue because anyone with even five minutes of real domain, group policy, IOS, VLAN, MS or network administration experience will just lulz at.
FD would never punish anyone for CL if they kept their server connection. The only way to fake a CL, is to force disconnect a player from their ED server(s). This require an illegal(criminal, noe EULA breach) hacker attack like DDOS or malware.
While I'm in no doubt that a minority exists that are both capable and willing to do this, it's by no meas easy.
It would also be quite easy to document in hindsight, that foul play was involved. I don't see this as a real problem.
The scenario that that is though for FD to detect is players that combat log, without dropping their own server connection. Players that deliberately slows down their response time, enough to desync their P2P link or block specific P2P connections are practically impossible to detect.
This isn't hard to achieve and may be the reason that FD are reluctant to spend a huge amount of resources on the problem. Even a perfect system would only catch the 'casual' CLers.
It may be difficult to detect if it's deliberate or not.
However, if a player has network problems all the time -> return him the money and close his account, since he clearly doesn't have the prerequisites for playing.
If he repeatedly starts having "problems" only when in a tight spot while fighting another player -> cheater, take action against him.
Depends on what their Karma system (tracking longer term trends) was set to pick up, but if it didn't & a significant number of these incidents were reported I can see that they could start to track KPIs that would flag this behaviour for manual analysis.
If I were asked to set up a trend tracking system I wouldn't include every metric, I'd start with a few stats that pick up what the project scope deemed a priority, then add other KPIs on demand from something like a Customer Support report on the regularity of certain complaints. So the first few examples of a new 'exploit' might be missed, but once it became enough of a priority to track, any trend tracking could start from there.
For genuine networking issues however inconvenient or inconsiderate other players might think it is, it would be a lower priority than identifying actual exploiters. I can picture general networking issues to be low enough priority (and there being enough actual exploiters to deal with already) that no action is ever taken. There is no minimum connection quality requirement for the game, if your connection is really bad it just won't instance you with other players.
Arguendo
Volunteer Moderator
You're obviously missing my point.
Sure, it will look like a combatlog from the other player's pov, but it will not look like a combatlog from FDev's pov.
All this talk about manufacturing combatlogging for lulz is scaremongering at its finest!
Arguendo
Volunteer Moderator
Atleast someone gets it! Must be a gene/environment thing [big grin]
You are incorrect. To fake a CL, all I need is to block incoming P2P traffic from another player, and he will vanish from my instance. We will still both have connection to FD. FD is not able to determine whether I am the culprit, or he is.
You are also incorrect here. Again, FD does not "see" the connection quality between players as they are not inbetween players as far as the P2P data flow goes. Once the P2P connections are establishsed, it's... well... Peer-to-peer. It's in the name, even.
Firstly, only a handful of players are technically versed to pull that off.
Secondly, there might not be a way to determine malicious intent in any separate incident, but if this happens every time a player is about to lose to another player...
And then FD would of course not punish either of you. They aren't mad. They know how their game works. The P2P connectivity will never held against anyone.
If you are dubious enough to use it actively to combat log, you will go free. If you try to use it to frame someone, nothing will happen.
Correct! See thread title
BUT: There is a way to fix this. They already have the needed components. However, they'd need to change their P2P implementation a little, and it would require more resources on their end. The components are already there and you can actually ensure that you're protected from being framed as a combat logger, however it's not straightforward at the moment.
If they do this for all players, then yes, Frontier could actually detect when people try to selectively block P2P traffic. And they could implement CL punishments without having to fear that people are getting framed.
Correct! See thread title
BUT: There is a way to fix this. They already have the needed components. However, they'd need to change their P2P implementation a little, and it would require more resources on their end. The components are already there and you can actually ensure that you're protected from being framed as a combat logger, however it's not straightforward at the moment.
If they do this for all players, then yes, Frontier could actually detect when people try to selectively block P2P traffic. And they could implement CL punishments without having to fear that people are getting framed.
I don't think it's even needed. Most combat logs are simple process kills or cable yanks. These are already detected server side as disconnects. If the server also has has the info that the player is in a combat situation with another player(not sure if this is the case), it has enough info to recognize patterns of suspicious behavior.
I wouldn't even bother with those that go to extremes to CL. They are to few to be statistically relevant, I hope.
Arguendo
Volunteer Moderator
Again, you're missing it. You cannot be framed as a combatlogger in the eyes of FDev if the other party does a bit of P2P trick to make you de-instance. Combatlogging is exiting the game in combat, which FDev will know has happened if that's the case. If both players are still in the game then neither has combatlogged!Correct! See thread title
BUT: There is a way to fix this. They already have the needed components. However, they'd need to change their P2P implementation a little, and it would require more resources on their end. The components are already there and you can actually ensure that you're protected from being framed as a combat logger, however it's not straightforward at the moment.
Sure, you may find yourself on the other end of a reddit thread, but that's the extent of it, and it's easily countered by using a recording program while playing, especially if it happens multiple times against the same (group of) player(s).
You are obfuscating issues to create problems that are non-existant imo.
FDev have introduced ways to "selectively block P2P traffic" in the game themselves (modes and blocking function). Sure, doing it "on the fly" is quite a bit on the nefarious side, but since neither party has combatlogged, there is nothing to punish from FDev's pov.