A Simple Solution to Combat Logging

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

Wrong wrong wrong, wrong wrong old and wrong. Thats not how things are done around here.

If something doesnt affect you personally, then not only is it not a valid issue, it is part of an evil & deranged conspiracy to deprive you of your rights.

It is crucial to mercilessly persecute anything you dont care about that doesnt affect you personally. (DD 101)

I feel people punishing victimless crimes is one of the worlds biggest problems in society. It prevents too much from the people who are allegedly 'rehabilitated' upon leaving a 'correctional facility'. However these worda are meaningless once tagged as a criminal, landlords and employers dont care if youve been 'rebilitated' or not. Everyone is just out for blood. Griefers are way worse than combat loggers and likely the ones most likely to be combat logged out of.

What is more likely to make someone quit playing, occasional clogging or persistent griefing?

 

[Sup3rfluiD]

Victimless crime, lol
like punching someone in the dark.

Love me a good Simpson's quote.

 

[CMDR Crimson Raine]

 

[Balin]

How to stop combat logging? If it matters that much to you to kill players who don't want to fight, then maybe only mug players who want to join in your dominance games. Leave the others alone. There are more reasons why people play in Open than joining in wholesale murder.

Penalising people for having a poor Internet connection is no solution. Despite it being the 2020's, some people's Internet connections are still as reliable as the white-van-man goods delivery system in the UK.

 

[AbsinthSvK]

Penalising people for having a poor Internet connection is no solution.

it is, its multiplayer game. Play multiplayer or not, but game should not adapt to minorities.

 

[CMDR Crimson Raine]

The easiest way to fix combat logging? Make PvP consensual ie If a player fires on another player that player becomes open to PvP. The other player can then choose to participate ie fire back (at which point they become PvP enabled as well and the battle ensues) or they remain invulnerable to player attacks unless they choose to do so. The person triggering the original action then remains PvP enabled for a period of time ie 10 miniutes allowing for other aggressors in intervene (you asked for it!!) before reverting back to a non-PvP state. In one action Frontier could remove solo / private mode and the all the whining that goes on about combat logging and ganking.

 

[M00ka]

The easiest way to fix combat logging? Make PvP consensual ie If a player fires on another player that player becomes open to PvP. The other player can then choose to participate ie fire back (at which point they PvP enabled as well and the battle ensues) or they remin invulnerable to player attacks unless they choose to do so. The person triggering the original action then remain PvP enabled for a period of time ie 10 miniutes before reverting back to a non-PvP. In one action Frontier could remove solo / provate mode and the all the whining that goes on about combat logging and ganking.

Even easier solution, just get rid of PvP entirely in the game. Most won't even know it's gone, and those that do notice probably won't mind either way. Just think on the saving of global power saved, no more stupid, repetitious Open Only dribble, no more complaining about CLOGing, no more complaining about gankers/griefers and seal clubers. Sure there would be some that would be upset, but the worst they could do is to come back as one of the forum undead - and most of the are totally irrelevant to any discussion. It would be utopia

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Even easier solution, just get rid of PvP entirely in the game. Most won't even know it's gone, and those that do notice probably won't mind either way. Just think on the saving of global power saved, no more stupid, repetitious Open Only dribble, no more complaining about CLOGing, no more complaining about gankers/griefers and seal clubers. Sure there would be some that would be upset, but the worst they could do is to come back as one of the forum undead - and most of the are totally irrelevant to any discussion. It would be utopia

Nah, they'd stick around and make stupid posts how much better it all was with PvP and everyone and their dog told them they wanted it back.

 

[galahad2069]

Nah, they'd stick around and make stupid posts how much better it all was with PvP and everyone and their dog told them they wanted it back.

Removing the only challenging and fun part of the game would be an utterly stupid move tbh.

 

[Bashy81]

I was undecided on this until I read all the arguments against it. The terrible spectre of gankers who cant even seal-club using DDOS attacks to kill newbies? Lol ok, in the same vein, we shouldnt have space legs because what about space-zombies?

So then it begs the question, when desperate grasping objections and handwringing emotional appeals are all anyone has to oppose the idea, it must be a sound idea with some merit eh? Why else would there be only imaginary or nonsensical panicky responses against? So thanks for making my mind up for me, im fully onboard now:

Simple solution to clogging: disconnect connection for any reason when being shot at by another CMDR and your ship is destroyed (the game knows when youre 'in danger', it also knows when an attacker is a CMDR or NPC, so this is easily done)
Youd even get a warning your ship would explode if you go to quit via menu logging.

Ive played on all manner of dodgy net connections in the last few years (incl. A year on rural 4g wifi that was supposedly out of service range according to the ISP)& had many disconnects as a result, but never once during PvP. If my connection is stable enough to instance with a player, then it has always held up during combat with them. The infrastructure of Fdevs particular brand of P2P is robust enough to allow this IME.

This designs-out combat logging at a stroke & lets wings deal with griefers/gankers in-game directly, where the griefer cant escape without eating a rebuy. Show them some consequences, and the shine goes off for those eejiots. they get a buzz from the godlike impunity they feel, take that away and they lose interest. (and btw, let them try DDoSing a whiteKnight wing and see how quick they get banned. When something is cut & dried, fdev support is very quick off the mark)

 

[Brrokk]

Even if it was possible, some dedicated software would most certainly be required, they couldn't possibly do it manually. How would it work? "Okay, I'm under attack, so I'll just alt-tab out of the game, let's see what I should do now to be able to see the IP address of the other player, okay, now how should I overload his connection without overloading my own..."

How many times could the other player shoot down the drifting ship while its owner was fiddling around outside of the game?

And if the cheater used a dedicated software to do it automatically, he might as well have used the trainer to just give himself infinite shields instead...

No software is required.

Note to mods: if you think this post shouldn't be allowed because it's describing an exploit, please delete it and accept my grovelling apologies. I'm only posting because (1) I think it's obvious given an understanding of P2P and (2) it might cut through some of the debate in this over-long thread. I also want to say that I've not done it myself, I'm not going to, and I don't advise anyone else to. Given human nature, though, I think it would be surprising if some material on YouTube hadn't already been produced like this.

If you're playing on a laptop like mine with a side button to enable/disable wifi it's especially easy:-
Start recording a video in ED.
Engage another CMDR in combat.
When it's most artistic, press the wifi button.
Watch him combat-log.
Press the button again.
Finish up the video and upload it to YouTube.

This is why FD can't punish single reports of clogging and video is useless as evidence.

 

[Hossi]

I was undecided on this until I read all the arguments against it. The terrible spectre of gankers who cant even seal-club using DDOS attacks to kill newbies? Lol ok, in the same vein, we shouldnt have space legs because what about space-zombies?

So then it begs the question, when desperate grasping objections and handwringing emotional appeals are all anyone has to oppose the idea, it must be a sound idea with some merit eh? Why else would there be only imaginary or nonsensical panicky responses against? So thanks for making my mind up for me, im fully onboard now:

Simple solution to clogging: disconnect connection for any reason when being shot at by another CMDR and your ship is destroyed (the game knows when youre 'in danger', it also knows when an attacker is a CMDR or NPC, so this is easily done)
Youd even get a warning your ship would explode if you go to quit via menu logging.

Ive played on all manner of dodgy net connections in the last few years (incl. A year on rural 4g wifi that was supposedly out of service range according to the ISP)& had many disconnects as a result, but never once during PvP. If my connection is stable enough to instance with a player, then it has always held up during combat with them. The infrastructure of Fdevs particular brand of P2P is robust enough to allow this IME.

This designs-out combat logging at a stroke & lets wings deal with griefers/gankers in-game directly, where the griefer cant escape without eating a rebuy. Show them some consequences, and the shine goes off for those eejiots. they get a buzz from the godlike impunity they feel, take that away and they lose interest. (and btw, let them try DDoSing a whiteKnight wing and see how quick they get banned. When something is cut & dried, fdev support is very quick off the mark)

If you think DDOS is an important point of this discussion, you obviously haven't read much from it.

DDOS is just the icing on the cake. Yes, it would become an issue if measures like ship destruction on disconnect would be introduced (hint: they wont). Lets face it, there is a small number of players in this game that really go out of their way and use any exploit available to ruin the game for anyone else. I'm sure DDOSing would replace station-ramming in no time. But that not important.

Important is: Almost anyone gets random disconnects or game crashes every now and then. Almost noone clogs.
Thats means, if you punish people who get a disconnect like you suggest, you would end up blowing up thousands of innocent player for no discernable reason.
While on the other side the two or three habitual cloggers that may be in game would just resort to blocking the P2P connection (no third party tools neccessary, just a question of the router configuration) and therefore wont be effected at all.

 

[galahad2069]

No software is required.

Note to mods: if you think this post shouldn't be allowed because it's describing an exploit, please delete it and accept my grovelling apologies. I'm only posting because (1) I think it's obvious given an understanding of P2P and (2) it might cut through some of the debate in this over-long thread. I also want to say that I've not done it myself, I'm not going to, and I don't advise anyone else to. Given human nature, though, I think it would be surprising if some material on YouTube hadn't already been produced like this.

If you're playing on a laptop like mine with a side button to enable/disable wifi it's especially easy:-
Start recording a video in ED.
Engage another CMDR in combat.
When it's most artistic, press the wifi button.
Watch him combat-log.
Press the button again.
Finish up the video and upload it to YouTube.

This is why FD can't punish single reports of clogging and video is useless as evidence.

Yeah but that would interrupt your connection not only to the other peer, but to the frontier servers as well, which would send you, not the other one, to the rebuy screen (in the instadeath-on-connection-loss-during-combat system I suggested).

 

[Brrokk]

Yeah but that would interrupt your connection not only to the other peer, but to the frontier servers as well, which would send you, not the other one, to the rebuy screen (in the instadeath-on-connection-loss-during-combat system I suggested).

ED goes quite long times between contacts with the FD server.

Have you ever had that annoying experience where you drop into a system, do a long supercruise and then get a disconnection just as you try to drop to the station? It's an amazing coincidence? No, more likely you were actually disconnected some minutes ago and the drop at the station was the first time since entering the system that your client needed to contact the server.

In my scenario, it's likely that the client wouldn't need contact with the FD server in the few seconds while the wifi was interrupted.

 

[galahad2069]

If you think DDOS is an important point of this discussion, you obviously haven't read much from it.

DDOS is just the icing on the cake. Yes, it would become an issue if measures like ship destruction on disconnect would be introduced (hint: they wont). Lets face it, there is a small number of players in this game that really go out of their way and use any exploit available to ruin the game for anyone else. I'm sure DDOSing would replace station-ramming in no time. But that not important.

Important is: Almost anyone gets random disconnects or game crashes every now and then. Almost noone clogs.
Thats means, if you punish people who get a disconnect like you suggest, you would end up blowing up thousands of innocent player for no discernable reason.
While on the other side the two or three habitual cloggers that may be in game would just resort to blocking the P2P connection (no third party tools neccessary, just a question of the router configuration) and therefore wont be effected at all.

Disconnections tend to happen most of the time while trying to drop into the instance, not during combat. I've certainly never once disconnected during a PvP battle, despite having spent several hundreds of hours PvPing on my pretty mediocre Internet connection. I'm not saying it's impossible, it's just very unlikely.

 

[galahad2069]

ED goes quite long times between contacts with the FD server.

Have you ever had that annoying experience where you drop into a system, do a long supercruise and then get a disconnection just as you try to drop to the station? It's an amazing coincidence? No, more likely you were actually disconnected some minutes ago and the drop at the station was the first time since entering the system that your client needed to contact the server.

In my scenario, it's likely that the client wouldn't need contact with the FD server in the few seconds while the wifi was interrupted.

Yes, and after relaunching the game you will be put back to a much earlier position (near the star, usually). But that's not happening because the game takes that much time to figure out that the connection has been lost. It's just that it never bothers trying to connect to the server unless it's absolutely necessary (i.e. when changing instance). But it would be quite possible to check it at any other point, were it necessary for some reason.

 

[Eliza]

Even easier solution, just get rid of PvP entirely in the game. Most won't even know it's gone, and those that do notice probably won't mind either way. Just think on the saving of global power saved, no more stupid, repetitious Open Only dribble, no more complaining about CLOGing, no more complaining about gankers/griefers and seal clubers. Sure there would be some that would be upset, but the worst they could do is to come back as one of the forum undead - and most of the are totally irrelevant to any discussion. It would be utopia

You can't be serious. No you aren't, I'm pretty sure.
That would be my time to get off this game and search for another. A game without challenge is no game.

Nah, they'd stick around and make stupid posts how much better it all was with PvP and everyone and their dog told them they wanted it back.

No, I don't intended to stalk you, BUT...

Your statement is plain hillarious out of your fingers, the one that "sticks around, making stupid posts how much better it all was without engineers..."

That just made my day today!

 

[IndigoWyrd]

Finally, I've come up with the ONLY solution...

First, we'll need to have a kickstarter to raise some funds.
Then, we'll need to find and hire a few million of these guys:

Then, we send one to every player's house, and if you touch that network cable, he touches your face.
With his fists.
Until you can't even remember how to play.

Then there is no more problem.

 

[Eliza]

Finally, I've come up with the ONLY solution...

First, we'll need to have a kickstarter to raise some funds.
Then, we'll need to find and hire a few million of these guys:

Then, we send one to every player's house, and if you touch that network cable, he touches your face.
With his fists.
Until you can't even remember how to play.

Then there is no more problem.

I know some of these. They are quite nice as long you can provide them with enough beer and Rock'n'Roll. Really a cute bunch of people.

 

[Northpin]

Not accurate - Menu Exit with/without Timer is allowed, deliberate forced termination of connection by any other means (in doing so bypassing any FD enforced timer) is an EULA/CoC breach.

Yea, and i'm pretty sure Microsoft and Sony will laugh their arxes off if FDev will claim that turning off the console at any given time should be a punishable offence - because FDev could not properly design the pvp component of the game.