A Simple Solution to Combat Logging

It's mostly not the fault of the isp (I work for a major one). Far more often, disconnects occuring because of faulty / old landlines. The only sollution would be then:
1. move to another place or
2. purchase the installation of a fibre connection (would cost about 10K+ Euros if you're the house owner, otherwise good luck in convincing him to pay that)
I can't argue with that, but let's be realistic - over 10 disconnects during PvP engagements in a month? Would a person with that kind of internet stability even be playing online games, nevermind going into open?
 
...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").



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



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.

So now players can DDOS your internet connection, basically making so that your internet connection is overloaded, and thus your client cannot maintain connection and you have now by your own suggested rules combat logged and upon next logon, you must now be punished....


No way this would be abused in any way... as the evidence that people are doing exactly this in other games, the DDOS part, do however suggest that this is something player do engage in, especially if they can gain something from it, like lulz for forcing you to the rebuy screen...
 
Establishing intent is difficult, in some cases it's going to be impossible. Where intent can be established (patterns of behaviour or whatever) then sure, some sort of punishment could be applied.

This is what I like about having to log back into the game in the mode you left (if your ship was in danger) - it automatically just works. If it was accidental the player will be happy to log back into the mode they left, it'll be where they wanted to be. But if it was a deliberate CLog they'll have to either deal with their foe potentially still waiting for them, or wait to rejoin (until they think it's safe) so they can't run that blockade or sealclub or whatever.
 
No way this would be abused in any way... as the evidence that people are doing exactly this in other games, the DDOS part, do however suggest that this is something player do engage in, especially if they can gain something from it, like lulz for forcing you to the rebuy screen...
It's even worse with ED's P2P network. With a client/server model all you can really do is flood a client's IP with packets in the hope of making one or more of its existing connections drop. With P2P you can manipulate the traffic to make other clients in the instance appear as though they've ungracefully disconnected.

You can't "punish" players for disconnections when other players have control over network packets that FD cannot see. It's a recipe for shenanigans.
 
I can't argue with that, but let's be realistic - over 10 disconnects during PvP engagements in a month? Would a person with that kind of internet stability even be playing online games, nevermind going into open?
I think the point is that if you are witnessing something like that with a specific individual then you should just report the occurrences to FD and let them deal with it and/or block the individual in question.

The case for employing draconian measures such as insta-death is unjustifiable, and while it may be feasible to employ some form of entity persistence after disconnect there are legitimate grounds for not allowing that persistent copy to affect the associated player's account. The net result of the persistence option is it would not really address the complaint really, would introduce some perhaps undesirable confusion in the co-op case, and overall would probably require too high a level of effort on the part of FD to justify persistence on disconnect being implemented.

Despite a certain individual claiming that various issues are NOT the fault of the ISP it very much depends on the specific root cause. There are cases of ISP representatives messing around with junction boxes (e.g. in the UK the green/grey boxes that are wired to people's houses) and disrupting the internet of one or more individuals in the process, or pushing remote updates to routers in a clients home without prior approval/notification of the client, or simply resetting/changing the IP address used by the router while a connection is in use. Sometimes these things are unavoidable or unintentional but the blame for such things clearly resides with the ISP. It is also fair to say that if any given ISP sells a specific service and the infrastructure they are using can not support that service in a reliable way then they would be irresponsible to sell that service in the first place to the affected client.

That being said, there are also cases of third party management of shared infrastructure being at fault for some connection issues, but ultimately who is precisely to blame in such cases is a bit moot. The overriding point is that in such cases it is out of the hands of the player and not a deliberate act on their part thus they are not to blame for the alleged incident if it results in effective combat logging.

As has been spelled out in this thread already, there are also other causes for disconnection issues and they can be unpredictable in nature.
 
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Just have an option at login you can choose , either pvp or pve , if you choose pve ,other players can't kill you and you can't shoot other players , you will also have a different colour on the hud so people know you are pve .
 
Just have an option at login you can choose , either pvp or pve , if you choose pve ,other players can't kill you and you can't shoot other players , you will also have a different colour on the hud so people know you are pve .
The concept of a PvE flag is not new, but has been ruled out by FD in the past. Ultimately though, this is not a PvE v PvP topic in essence, deliberate combat logging is an EULA/ToS/CoC breech and incidents should be reported to FD for them to deal with. However, it is also known that not all alleged combat logging incidents are deliberate and the root cause for such incidents can be entirely outside of their control.
 
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It's mostly not the fault of the isp (I work for a major one). Far more often, disconnects occuring because of faulty / old landlines. The only sollution would be then:
1. move to another place or
2. purchase the installation of a fibre connection (would cost about 10K+ Euros if you're the house owner, otherwise good luck in convincing him to pay that)

Worked for the largest ISP in my area, hated it, but that's a different story. I do know that most of those "faulty/old landlines" at least as far as the US is concerned, are predominately POTS lines these days, with the occasional crappy aDSL service, but even that is dying rapidly.
However, faulty lines do occur regularly, usually from the pole to the home, or from the node to the pole. Your ISPs will, with some level of complaining, replace the pole-to-home run. More often though, it is the node-to-pole lines that have been there for 10, 20, or 30 years. The insulation on these typically crumbles when handled and even birds and squirrels don't like to get on them. Your ISPs hate replacing these however, as they are typically long runs, which means lots of cable, as well as not just taking you offline while the replace them, but an entire neighborhood.

There there is the matter of the nodes themselves. You've likely seen these, little, greenish, locked metal boxes, like the ones the electric companies use, though usually smaller, often not on a concrete slab, and what's in there? Mostly routers, usually expandable routers, a bunch of cable terminations, and...

Mice, rats, gophers, chipmunks, nesting materials, and water. Yeah, these things get to be straight up disgusting. I've cracked a few of these open and discovered a rat king. Yuck.
Getting your ISP to maintain these though... you'd need to get all your neighbors complaining at the same time, so you may need to have a neighborhood meeting prior to making those calls, so everyone can get their story straight at the same time.

Can't say if it works the same way on the other side of the pond, but I imagine when it comes to complaining, y'all could teach us a few things. ;-)

Finally, when it comes to the cost of a fiber run... yes, if you, individually, call your ISP and say "I want fiber, and I want it next week.", yes, your ISP is going to tell you "$10k, up front." However, there are ways around this. Again, talk to your neighbors. You might not want to soak a $10k bill, but 30 or 60 people might not balk at an extra $14 a month for the next year. See, thing is, your ISP's, especially here in the US, are just miniature monopolies - however, they are precision-crafted by the finest lawyers, to ensure they just skirt around the Truman Antitrust Act, and when they do get right on that line, they're greasing politicians with sums of money Bill Gates would actually miss. Your money, which they recoup from you, in the forms of strange little fees the law makers ensure they are allowed to pass right back to you.
 
No, I shouldn't apologise. In fact, given that I was responding to this: "Genuinely too long and waffley for me to read."; I reckon my response was entirely appropriate in both content and tone. I certainly would, and have, spoken to people with that kind of language when they are completely dismissive of anything that challenges an unsubstantiated claim they cling to. So, how about a recap - if you can muster the attention span.



Which you followed up by referring to this as an utterly obvious fact and undebatable, and this gem: It’s widely accepted one someone says “not debatable” it’s taken as meaning that the topic is either a priori true, obviously true or true by empirical consensus.

The fact is, you're wrong. No matter how many times you repeat it, your assertion is not a fact, an obvious fact, undebatable, an a priori truth, or supported by empirical consensus. Consider the following:

Some Cmdrs (explorers) might clog so they do not lose weeks/months of data - the first discovered tags, the record of their journey, the 100s of millions of credits, NOT because of the comparatively pitiful rebuy cost.
Some Cmdrs (miners) might clog so they do not lose 100s of millions of credits in cargo, NOT because of the comparatively pitiful rebuy cost.
Some Cmdrs (BGS) might clog so they do not lose days of work - a transaction tab full of completed ++++/+++++ missions, NOT because of the comparatively pitiful rebuy cost.
Some Cmdrs (PP) might clog so the do not lose a weeks worth of undermining bonds right before the tick, NOT because of the comparatively pitiful rebuy cost.
Some Cmdrs (PvE?) might clog cause they are simply fed up with being interdicted by wings of gankers just for lulz, NOT because of the comparatively pitiful rebuy cost.
Some Cmdrs might clog just to mine salt from ganksters, NOT because of the comparatively pitiful rebuy cost.
Some Cmdrs might clog to avoid the rebuy cost.

The fact is there are many reason Cmdrs might clog, not one single reason. Given the current state of credit acquisition, avoiding the rebuy is most likely the last reason anyone but a poor new player would cite for clogging.

I will give you credit for providing the most ironic post in this thread - your use of round/flat earth was spectacular... because in this discussion, you're the flat-earther.

Edit: oops, posted before finished while typing.
Cool story bro.
I only read the final paragraph so all I know is you don’t know what irony is or how a metaphor works. I’m sure the rest was very interesting but I just don’t have the time to read it.
 
It’s still truly amusing that grown adults are still whining that people won’t play with them.
I wonder how long it will go on...unfortunately I will be working the rest of the week so will need to let you all complain at each other without my helpful interjections. Laterz everyone. Try not to get too upset now - it’s only a game.
 
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I think your second point is incorrect and in essence contradicts your first.

When griefers wing up the only counter is for white knight squads to form up and combat them.
How do they achieve this if the griefers can just clog?

A lot of people in this thread seem to be asserting that it is only griefers who would like to see an end to clogging.
In my experience flying and chatting with thousands of players, this is simply not the case.

Ill add that I do not support the OP as a viable method,
just that there are many respectable pilots who would also like to see something done about what is ostensibly a cheat.
Huh. Nope, I don't see any contradiction. First point is about the risk that the interdictee feels and why they log - they log as the risk didn't add up to the reward. Second point is the alpha dog with meta-ship that lives for pixel glory - this player simply doesn't care about rewards and has little risk. Does this help?
 
It's even worse with ED's P2P network. With a client/server model all you can really do is flood a client's IP with packets in the hope of making one or more of its existing connections drop. With P2P you can manipulate the traffic to make other clients in the instance appear as though they've ungracefully disconnected.

You can't "punish" players for disconnections when other players have control over network packets that FD cannot see. It's a recipe for shenanigans.

And a great recipe at that.
 
The concept of a PvE flag is not new, but has been ruled out by FD in the past. Ultimately though, this is not a PvE v PvP topic in essence, deliberate combat logging is an EULA/ToS/CoC breech and incidents should be reported to FD for them to deal with. However, it is also known that not all alleged combat logging incidents are deliberate and the root cause for such incidents can be entirely outside of their control.

Ummm. No. Deliberately choosing to exit a game is a players right. Is it bad 'sportsmanship'? Maybe. But maybe not. If the other player had an overwhelming advantage at the time the player decided to end then I'd say no, it wasn't. See what's going on here?

So, no, there's no breach of any type of EULA if a player decides they want to quit. That's just silly...
 
I think that punishments shouldn't be as strict, and there should be a points system. Say, every player gets 10 points a month. Whenever they lose their connection during a PvP engagement, they lose one point regardless of whether it was deliberate or not. Once you run out of points, you get banned to solo for a week. This system would be more or less fair - everyone can clog from time to time and this covers people with unstable internet connections as well.

I can't imagine an active PvPer losing their connection during combat more than ten times in a single month - if there is such a person, I would recommend switching your internet provider.
Switching internet provider isnt an option everywhere. Somehow comcast is the only provider around here. Just pointing out how you suggest the potentially impossible for some as i wouldnt be surprised if, in comcast areas, they are the only one. Otherwise the rest seems like a good idea. Wasted here, but good nonetheless


So with the new 'terrorism', are griefers are an actual roleplay category now?
 
Huh. Nope, I don't see any contradiction. First point is about the risk that the interdictee feels and why they log - they log as the risk didn't add up to the reward. Second point is the alpha dog with meta-ship that lives for pixel glory - this player simply doesn't care about rewards and has little risk. Does this help?
The point i was tring to make was about how risk vs reward plays out in relation to wings that hunt griefers.
If a griefer can sidestep the risk of being killed by these sheriff squads by clogging surely this just presents more imbalance.
With no effective in game C&P they get off scott free to rinse and repeat.
 
Worked for the largest ISP in my area, hated it, but that's a different story. I do know that most of those "faulty/old landlines" at least as far as the US is concerned, are predominately POTS lines these days, with the occasional crappy aDSL service, but even that is dying rapidly.
However, faulty lines do occur regularly, usually from the pole to the home, or from the node to the pole. Your ISPs will, with some level of complaining, replace the pole-to-home run. More often though, it is the node-to-pole lines that have been there for 10, 20, or 30 years. The insulation on these typically crumbles when handled and even birds and squirrels don't like to get on them. Your ISPs hate replacing these however, as they are typically long runs, which means lots of cable, as well as not just taking you offline while the replace them, but an entire neighborhood.

There there is the matter of the nodes themselves. You've likely seen these, little, greenish, locked metal boxes, like the ones the electric companies use, though usually smaller, often not on a concrete slab, and what's in there? Mostly routers, usually expandable routers, a bunch of cable terminations, and...

Mice, rats, gophers, chipmunks, nesting materials, and water. Yeah, these things get to be straight up disgusting. I've cracked a few of these open and discovered a rat king. Yuck.
Getting your ISP to maintain these though... you'd need to get all your neighbors complaining at the same time, so you may need to have a neighborhood meeting prior to making those calls, so everyone can get their story straight at the same time.

Can't say if it works the same way on the other side of the pond, but I imagine when it comes to complaining, y'all could teach us a few things. ;-)

Finally, when it comes to the cost of a fiber run... yes, if you, individually, call your ISP and say "I want fiber, and I want it next week.", yes, your ISP is going to tell you "$10k, up front." However, there are ways around this. Again, talk to your neighbors. You might not want to soak a $10k bill, but 30 or 60 people might not balk at an extra $14 a month for the next year. See, thing is, your ISP's, especially here in the US, are just miniature monopolies - however, they are precision-crafted by the finest lawyers, to ensure they just skirt around the Truman Antitrust Act, and when they do get right on that line, they're greasing politicians with sums of money Bill Gates would actually miss. Your money, which they recoup from you, in the forms of strange little fees the law makers ensure they are allowed to pass right back to you.
Other lands, other conventions. I can only talk about Germany. Here the landlines are (almost completely) underground and 90% of them are owned by the one and only sucessor of the former state-institution "Deutsche Post"...the almighty "Telekom". In the U.S. you know them under "T-Net / T-Mobile" ,the "magenta giant". An isp is literally only that: an internet-service-provider. So here an isp is dependend on the work and infrastructure of ONE lineowner. Sure they are others, but they are in a minority holding accessable landlines "for everyone". So if the line is shortcircuited or even damaged, it literally takes weeks until the line is fixed. Even if you just want to move from one appartment to the other within the same building, it takes 3 weeks in average to switch the landline, because...because.🤦‍♀️ Bureaucracy rules!🤮
As "our" chancellor once said: "Internet is the undiscovered country". Still we have places in major cities that are not sufficently provided with G4, hence 50MBit/s landlines (I have to live in one of these blind-spots, till I get my new job, hopefully within the next 3 month, but it's a stable 16MBit/s connection without any dropout the last 5 years, so I don't complain( so much)).😁

One other thing: "We" germans call ourself (but never commit it) as "the masters of complaining". We WILL complain about the tinyest things but heck, we don't want to get our fingers dirty. :sneaky: So I cannot count on my neighbores.
 
T mobile has got to be the shadiest mobile phone company ive ever dealt with. The sales rep sold my a wifi hotspot telling me it was unlimited 4g service. Three hours of netflix later and i was out of data. Returned it, got my money back. Still getting collection calls for a servixe i returned after 4 hours because what i sold in theory wasnt what i received. In the states this is called theft by deception.
 
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