How to solve the Combat Logging Problem

Misty_Dark made up a very good point, why it could be misused

“And what is even worse, since this game is P2P, that means one of the players is the instance holder, that means that if I hold the instance, I can figure out your IP address and block you in my Firewall, and this basically kicks you out of my instance, and you did nothing wrong... and I get rewarded with a token to resume this combat at time I choose...”

This sounds like a ridiculous made up hypothetical to me. Correct me if I’m wrong (and be specific about it), but aren’t BOTH players the instance holder, with an adjudication server on top of that? Are people doing this right now? Because nothing in my proposal asks for a fundamental change in how the game handles P2P connections. I also seriously doubt that this type of abuse, if real, would ever become commonplace. Who benefits from doing this and how do they benefit from it?
 
“And what is even worse, since this game is P2P, that means one of the players is the instance holder, that means that if I hold the instance, I can figure out your IP address and block you in my Firewall, and this basically kicks you out of my instance, and you did nothing wrong... and I get rewarded with a token to resume this combat at time I choose...”

This sounds like a ridiculous made up hypothetical to me. Correct me if I’m wrong (and be specific about it), but aren’t BOTH players the instance holder, with an adjudication server on top of that? Are people doing this right now? Because nothing in my proposal asks for a fundamental change in how the game handles P2P connections. I also seriously doubt that this type of abuse, if real, would ever become commonplace. Who benefits from doing this and how do they benefit from it?
No, one player is the instance holder.

The only reason this kind of abuse doesn't already happen is that there's absolutely nothing to be gained by it. Once it provided any combat advantage as suggested in the quote, or even just an easy way to "harvest salt" (e.g. by getting people punished unjustly) it would become a real problem. I imagine tools for automating the stunt would soon be available.
 
“And what is even worse, since this game is P2P, that means one of the players is the instance holder, that means that if I hold the instance, I can figure out your IP address and block you in my Firewall, and this basically kicks you out of my instance, and you did nothing wrong... and I get rewarded with a token to resume this combat at time I choose...”

This sounds like a ridiculous made up hypothetical to me. Correct me if I’m wrong (and be specific about it), but aren’t BOTH players the instance holder, with an adjudication server on top of that? Are people doing this right now? Because nothing in my proposal asks for a fundamental change in how the game handles P2P connections. I also seriously doubt that this type of abuse, if real, would ever become commonplace. Who benefits from doing this and how do they benefit from it?
Oh I'm not so deep into connection-architecture as well so I'm depended on those statements, to be honest.

But nevertheless, I think Frontier is aware of the issue of c-logging. And either they give a damn about it (wich I doubt) or they aren't able to fix c-logging within the current build. All we can hope for is, that the mentioned rebuild of ED will take that into consideration. Either way for now, I take a c-log of my opponent as a win. 🤷‍♀️
 
The majority of CL will come to an abrupt halt if and when the majority of Ganking comes to an abrupt halt; And not until then!
 
The majority of CL will come to an abrupt halt if and when the majority of Ganking comes to an abrupt halt; And not until then!

There are a few reasons why people do CL,

  • To avoid loss of NPC crew, as FDev have made no way to get them back if they "die"
  • To avoid rebuy cost, less of an issue today, but there are still CMDRs out there that do not have lots of credits...
  • To prevent another player the pleasure to see you ship go up in an explosion...


So stopping ganking will not really affect this... As NPC crew will stiill be lost, credits lost is easier to get back today, so is not that big of a deal at this time, and denying someone to see your ship blow is more gankers utilizing as their way to disgrace themselves even more...



I have said this before, without huge alterations to the game mechanics etc, I think the best way to reduce the ganking is to mostly reduce the effects PvP kills have, if someone just decides to blow me up, if I gett my ship, cargo, NPC crew etc, back, and my choice of where to start, with new options like: current system, closest station, previous system I lastly jumped from... then getting blown up only lost me some time, so I try it again, or now switch mode and complete my mission etc... and if the closest station was my destination, the timeloss could be in seconds.... And as a side effect, this could actually promote more players to actually try and engage in PvP, as they would not loose anything more than time... Of course this simple idea have LOTS of stuff that could be abused, like instant deliveries to Hutton Orbital for that free Anaconda etc... There are no easy quick fixes.




And FDev have already hinted how they can fix the CL problem, their Karma system... as Karma would move slowly, it could run a check on every "disconnect" and sort out almost every pplayer with bad net connection from the obvious abusers, by simply having a collection of last 10 disconnects was only when in danger, started the interaction... it is easy for us to see this trend, but do this is software is a bit trickier.


So solving the reasons why players do CL is a good way to reduce the impact CL have... and in the end it could make it a non issue...
 
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