A Simple Solution to Combat Logging

[Ozric]

As much as the conversations about restaurants and lawyers are mildly entertaining to read, it seems that it's not possible for some people to listen to what I ask. You're lucky that I'm feeling generous so I'm not going to stop any of you posting in this thread atm, if when I check back there's an off topic or personal jab then you're gone. I don't really care "who started it", I've warned you twice.

 

[Rat Catcher]

As much as the conversations about restaurants and lawyers are mildly entertaining to read, it seems that it's not possible for some people to listen to what I ask. You're lucky that I'm feeling generous so I'm not going to stop any of you posting in this thread atm, if when I check back there's an off topic or personal jab then you're gone. I don't really care "who started it", I've warned you twice.

It is an emotive subject for some, we all expect a bit of 'drift' for illustration
What is surprising is that we are 21 pages in on a subject that currently has no solution - roll on the January patch so we can resume normal, topical, complaining!

 

[Eliza]

@Ozric Wilco! o7

 

[Ozric]

And a bit of drift is always taken into account. Following the drifts just in order to bicker with each other is ridiculous.

 

[galahad2069]

"Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who."

https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Dwg30ino19Zc

Edit: sorry for the link format, damn phone

 

[babelfisch]

As much as the conversations about restaurants and lawyers are mildly entertaining to read, it seems that it's not possible for some people to listen to what I ask. You're lucky that I'm feeling generous so I'm not going to stop any of you posting in this thread atm, if when I check back there's an off topic or personal jab then you're gone. I don't really care "who started it", I've warned you twice.

Ozric, your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.

Spoiler

Is that off topic and personal enough in order to keep me out of the thread? I don't want to be anywhere near it but it's that odd curiosity, like a car crash you really don't want to see but can't look away.

 

[Total_dogus]

And a bit of drift is always taken into account. Following the drifts just in order to bicker with each other is ridiculous.

Fair cop. It’s easy to allow oneself to get dragged into slightly bemusing tangents. In my defence, I did say the restaurant thing was incommensurable to the topic in discussion but did allow myself to get carried along with it. Temperance will be exercised in future.

Now, back to my idea of PvP flag + karma system.....

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

No need to keep a copy of the player's ship on disconnection. Play a pretty explosion at one side, rebuy screen at the other end (when logging on the next time). How would you break it with or without an obvious cheat (trainer)?

OK so let's consider the scenario - you're in combat with someone, they are at full hull/shields, they disconnect (for whatever reason) and on your screen, they just blow up? That's not realistic at all (given that FDEV is, or were, trying to keep things relatively grounded in real science.) What's to stop me from forcing a disconnect for your machine? (I know your IP, we're in a P2P instance together ...) Moreover, there is no way to know if a disconnect was genuine or not - could be a loss of power to a house; ISP issues; could be a client crash (bug); could be deliberate .. the point here is that there is no way to know the intention of the pilot, be it during combat or not. (Repeated disconnects during combat FDEV claim to be monitoring for, but I have not seen any evidence of this.) For me, ED is a game, and personally I would rather err on the side of caution, and assume the pilot was not cheating, and deal with repeat offenders than to assume everyone is cheating.

Blizzard/WoW got it right with the server-client setup... If you disconnect in the battlegrounds (PvP) the server held your body in-game for a period of time, during which you could be killed. As ED is not a true server-client game (with many connections P2P) there is not an "easy" way to fix this, bar rewriting everything. Accept it, report those who CLog on you, and move on .. it's not the end of the world ;-)

 

[Crimson Kaim]

I haven’t read the full exchange and so I’m not taking sides or aiming at anyone. But the language in some of the exchanges here is really hostile and insulting. Can we not disagree on something that really doesn’t matter to anyone that much in a little more of a civil manner? It’s only a game folks. We can have different views without reducing the forum to it’s almost requisite level of toxicity.

If the topic would only be as uninteresting as you assume it to be. Clogging has been a heated topic since day one and with every additional log the memes over FDev and the amount of posts in the forzms and reddit will increase.

 

[Crimson Kaim]

Proof that they didn't reply. Okay...so what? Do you really expect that, if SDC makes the call, Frontier is urged to reply asap? Come on...we both know how chatty Frontier is in general.

While FDev is not chatty, their customer service is and their quality is outstandingly positive.
But since you combined asap with the fact that they didn't reply for weeks more than once leaves me with the ultimate conclusion that you either didn't read throgh the short reports fully or that your understanding of "not asap" is very generous. However mune isn't and if they don't respond within a week during normal cobditiin, I consider it as a timeout. Also since they claim the average response time is 1-2 days (and they are often far better than that) we can conclude that not reacting for multiple weeks is not a coincidence.

Lastly, the ultimate proof is on reddit where FDev admitted their failure in an official and public manner. You can research that in the linked reports from before.

 

[Total_dogus]

If the topic would only be as uninteresting as you assume it to be. Clogging has been a heated topic since day one and with every additional log the memes over FDev and the amount of posts in the forzms and reddit will increase.

I understand that to some extent. I would encourage people to have some perspective - it’s only a game, played for entertainment. We can disagree but there’s no justification in being unpleasant. I don’t think logging will stop, but it can be addressed to some extent if crime and punishment is a little more fit for purpose.

 

[Crimson Kaim]

I understand that to some extent. I would encourage people to have some perspective - it’s only a game, played for entertainment. We can disagree but there’s no justification in being unpleasant. I don’t think logging will stop, but it can be addressed to some extent if crime and punishment is a little more fit for purpose.

Or if FDev would finally punish exploit abuse properly with permabans on repeated evidence. The clogging itself is only half of the issue. The other half is FDev's weak punishment against players breaking the gamerules, which is tightly connected to cheaters in Elite that currently roam the verse with increasing numbers.

 

[Han_Zen]

The only thing that could be manipulated in the system I was talking about is the consequence (bypassing the rebuy screen), but ppl would need to use a client side hack for it, which is beyond doubt a TOS/EULA breach and can be treated accordingly.

Besides, it's no different now. Virtually everything can be manipulated using hacks.

You don't need any hacks. If you play on WiFi you can just turn on air plain mode and log calmly of.
Unless you want to send every Scarlet Krait error to the rebuy, there is no way to stop that.

Then there are all the router shenanigans people can do. That happens outside the client and makes it possible to block the connection to your opponent, but keep connection to the game servers. Server logs will not be able to tell who lost the connection and the clients know nothing. This kind of foul play can only be tracked by determining a pattern of disconnects. That costs hours and money, so it will never happen.

Combat logging is an undesirable exploit we just have to live with.

 

[galahad2069]

OK so let's consider the scenario - you're in combat with someone, they are at full hull/shields, they disconnect (for whatever reason) and on your screen, they just blow up? That's not realistic at all (given that FDEV is, or were, trying to keep things relatively grounded in real science.) What's to stop me from forcing a disconnect for your machine? (I know your IP, we're in a P2P instance together ...) Moreover, there is no way to know if a disconnect was genuine or not - could be a loss of power to a house; ISP issues; could be a client crash (bug); could be deliberate .. the point here is that there is no way to know the intention of the pilot, be it during combat or not. (Repeated disconnects during combat FDEV claim to be monitoring for, but I have not seen any evidence of this.) For me, ED is a game, and personally I would rather err on the side of caution, and assume the pilot was not cheating, and deal with repeat offenders than to assume everyone is cheating.

Blizzard/WoW got it right with the server-client setup... If you disconnect in the battlegrounds (PvP) the server held your body in-game for a period of time, during which you could be killed. As ED is not a true server-client game (with many connections P2P) there is not an "easy" way to fix this, bar rewriting everything. Accept it, report those who CLog on you, and move on .. it's not the end of the world ;-)

If you read my previous few comments, you'll see why I'd prefer the instadeath-on-disconnect solution. It's not other ppl clogging on me (that's cheating in my book, a waste of my time for sure, but only an annoyance after all). The bigger problem with the current system is that you might appear a clogger (=cheater) yourself, if your connection happens to fail during combat. I'd rather lose my ship than having to try and explain myself afterwards that "no I totally didn't clog, it was my connection blah blah".

As for you deliberately disconnecting me using hacks - well that's pretty surely a breach of the TOS/EULA, so if it 's not something you can get banned for, I don't know what is.

 

[Total_dogus]

Or if FDev would finally punish exploit abuse properly with permabans on repeated evidence. The clogging itself is only half of the issue. The other half is FDev's weak punishment against players breaking the gamerules, which is tightly connected to cheaters in Elite that currently roam the verse with increasing numbers.

Again, I would politely suggest this is an overly emotive response. If someone doesn’t want to play with you, move on. There will be someone else who does. You can frame it as cheating or any other way, ultimately it’s because someone decides to exit the game rather than play it with you. The difference between a legitimate exit (by FDev’s) definition and the illegitimate exploit is an arbitrary timer. The difference of 10 seconds seems, to me, barely relevant. Out of curiosity- are you fine with someone exiting via the timer but not by logging out? And if so, how do you know the cloggers you have encountered haven’t exited legitimately?

 

[galahad2069]

You don't need any hacks. If you play on WiFi you can just turn on air plain mode and log calmly of.

...which would send you to the rebuy screen on your next login attempt, under the system I suggested ("connection loss for whatever reason during combat = rebuy").

Unless you want to send every Scarlet Krait error to the rebuy, there is no way to stop that.

I would totally do that, rather than my Scarlet Kraits making me look like a clogger.

Then there are all the router shenanigans people can do. That happens outside the client and makes it possible to block the connection to your opponent, but keep connection to the game servers.

Then the servers would know it, wouldn't they? BTW it's a cheat in itself, so the same should apply as in the invulnerable shield cases. Keep doing it, get permabanned.

 

[Ezren]

Again, I would politely suggest this is an overly emotive response. If someone doesn’t want to play with you, move on. There will be someone else who does. You can frame it as cheating or any other way, ultimately it’s because someone decides to exit the game rather than play it with you. The difference between a legitimate exit (by FDev’s) definition and the illegitimate exploit is an arbitrary timer. The difference of 10 seconds seems, to me, barely relevant. Out of curiosity- are you fine with someone exiting via the timer but not by logging out? And if so, how do you know the cloggers you have encountered haven’t exited legitimately?

Stop conflating the menu log with disconnecting.

One is acceptable and intended behavior, and is a 15 second timer (not a 10 second timer, like you keep saying), where the player logs out of the game.

The other is an exploit to immediately bypass the timer requirement to exit a dangerous situation to avoid consequences, through either task-killing or connection disruption.

The way you continue to talk about this it seems you don't understand the difference between the two methods.

 

[Bryan K]

Every single exploit or bug does not need to be explicitly called out, individually, within the EULA. Anything deemed an exploit falls under the EULA's very clear calling out of "exploits". It is spelled out in the EULA, but you're doing some mental gymnastics around it.

Again, as many have said, that’s not how it works. When it comes to TOS agreements, it’s specificity or nothing. That’s why many EULAs are practically novels.

FDev’s EULA is a wet paper bag. Ask any lawyer.

 

[Riverside]

Maybe this was missed earlier.

A little late into the thread but perhaps it's worth pinning down some of the ways "Combat Logging" is defined:

At it's most basic, If you attempt to evade the consequences of in-game actions using an out of game mechanism (ie leaving the game) that's Combat Logging.

In some cases the game caters for this, with the ship in danger logoff timer, or if the ship is not in immediate danger allowing the player to log off straight away. Some have an issue with these but the game does have rules that cater for these events.

However if the player has what I think FDev refer to as an ungraceful exit (ie the game crashes, power cut, network disconnect etc) the basic program handles it but there is no in-game consequence while the ship is in danger as there is with a graceful exit.

I think there should be one. The proposal I prefer is that the player must log back into the mode they left. There would need to be a few other contingency rules but I think it would help to have a game rule of some sort that caters for these ungraceful exists while the ship/cmdr is in danger.

 

[Ezren]

Again, as many have said, that’s not how it works. When it comes to TOS agreements, it’s specificity or nothing. That’s why many EULAs are practically novels.

FDev’s EULA is a wet paper bag. Ask any lawyer.

Yeah, that's not how it works. Murder is murder, regardless of if the law specifies the method. "Oh, he killed that guy with a bowling pin, darn the law! He's free to go"

It's not "many" have said. It's basically you and Dogus who think that. The EULA binds players to follow the Code of Conduct. The Code of Conduct does not allow exploits.

Is Rockforth Fertilizer specified in the EULA?