An idea that could fix logging?

[kofeyh]

As opposed to a garbage thread, created by a guy that treated the game like garbage, and the players he griefed like garbage? Sure.

Actually, they asked a fairly sane question. This is a game issue to solve, mate, not "let's just blame some guy on the internet because it's convenient". It's not constructive. And don't bother replying again. it's fine. We disagree. Let's move on.

His hypothetical case has both players lose the connection to each other but not to the server.

Thus the server initializes AI opponents replacing the players for both of them. Both players win against the AI, server updates and results in an exception.

This doesn't make sense. Because this isn't how it works. Even remotely. I still don't understand what this means. This also has nothing to do with CL'ing.

 

[Morbad]

If you're playing a board game, one of the players gets frustrated & walks off they still lose the game. CLogging isn't playing the game, it's refusing to play the game.

I'm not sure I like this analogy.

Combat logging isn't refusing to play the game, it's refusing to take one's turn when the result would be detrimental, then being allowed a do over.

Hypothesis:

Two players A and B are in combat and are the only two players in the instance. Their P2P connection goes down for several minutes and in that time A wins against the B AI and B wins against the A AI. Now you have the situation there they have both won and both lost. Since there were only two players in the instance it is not possible to determine who caused the disconnect of whether the disconnect was either's fault.

And therein lies the problem with any C&P, Karma or any other system that tries to determine who disconnected. Leaving out the fact that it is impossible to determine if the disconnect was intentional.

A scenario I've pointed out before. I've also pointed out that there are people who would deliberately sever the P2P connection with others and use anything other than an opponent vanishing to harm them.

In the case of the bot that would spawn in the suggested scenario, I could, for example, use the cheapest vessel I know could destroy any AI in my opponents vessel, interdict my opponent, block their IP at the router level (so that any monitoring/watchdog process on my system couldn't detect anything amiss), then destroy the bot. Next time we both log in, we both see a rebuy screen, but since I was using a Viper and my opponents was using something vastly more expensive, they get punished for more severely for my cheating.

I firmly believe that even a mostly automated system could recognize combat logging patterns and, with a human making the final call, get the false positives down to a near non-existent level. Serious consequences could then be imposed as a deterrent, but only then. I haven't seen a single suggestion for a real-time response that would be viable.

 

[Riverside]

Cannot disagree with that. I was simply saying that it's surely not the biggest issue in the game.

The Thing with PVP is that it's not the winner who gets a reward (or only a ridiculous bounty, if at all) for victory, it's the looser who gets a rebuy "fined" for loosing. So if the looser evades his fine, in the end, it's not at the winners disadvantage. So I don't see why the OP makes such an big issue out of that. OK it's cheating the game, it's bad, but it isn't remotely as serious as, for instance, the cheating said OP used to be engaged in, and the Networking issues, the design issues etc... And I can think of many more urgent work to do for FDev.

The 5 for 1 cheat has been dealt with. Are workable solutions for "the Networking issues, the design issues etc... " out there just waiting to be implemented? For most problems there is either dispute whether it is a problem at all, or the problem is not easily solved. Networking has received considerable attention recently too & hopefully FDev will get on top of it.

We can apply a fix to discourage CLogging now.

 

[Riverside]

I'm not sure I like this analogy.

Combat logging isn't refusing to play the game, it's refusing to take one's turn when the result would be detrimental, then being allowed a do over.

That is a better way to describe it

 

[Becks]

This doesn't make sense. Because this isn't how it works. Even remotely. I still don't understand what this means. This also has nothing to do with CL'ing.

It's entirely possible that two players lose connection to each other but not to the server.

The rest of that is a hypothetical answer to a hypothetical suggestion to solve CLogging. At no point was implied that this is how it works.

 

[Friedenreich Xante]

The 5 for 1 cheat has been dealt with. Are workable solutions for "the Networking issues, the design issues etc... " out there just waiting to be implemented? For most problems there is either dispute whether it is a problem at all, or the problem is not easily solved. Networking has received considerable attention recently too & hopefully FDev will get on top of it.

We can apply a fix to discourage CLogging now.

If they can do it, I'm surely not opposed, just to make that clear

I for one would agree to see the Clogging episodes logged for every Player and have the punishment triggered on the third Occasion. Because a Network Problem once during a fight right when hull gets low: OK. A second one: mmh suspicious, we already know what you are into, but let it slide. And on the third: Ban hammer, do PVP correcty or stick to Solo. Banned to Solo for at least a month + rebuy of the most expensive ship the Player has in stock as a fine.

 

[CMDR Dreamstate]

Actually, they asked a fairly sane question. This is a game issue to solve, mate, not "let's just blame some guy on the internet because it's convenient". It's not constructive. And don't bother replying again. it's fine. We disagree. Let's move on.

This doesn't make sense. Because this isn't how it works. Even remotely. I still don't understand what this means. This also has nothing to do with CL'ing.

"they"?

Anyway, I will reply again.

Combat logging will never be solved in this game unless Frontier exchange their peer-to-peer model with a purely dedicated gaming server model - since that isn't the case, nor will be the case in the forseable future, this thread is actually going nowhere, and nor will it, just like the issue it was raising; it was started by an exploiting griefer for sheer popcorn satisfaction.

 

[Stigbob]

"they"?

Anyway, I will reply again.

Combat logging will never be solved in this game unless Frontier exchange their peer-to-peer model with a purely dedicated gaming server model - since that isn't the case, nor will be the case in the forseable future, this thread is actually going nowhere, and nor will it, just like the issue it was raising; it was started by an exploiting griefer for sheer popcorn satisfaction.

Yep currently the best argument against fixing clogging is that it really annoys the players the game is better without. Anyone who thinks a CL fix would stop or even reduce pointless griefing is ignoring the fact that the griefers only want a fix to increase their victims and gatherable salt.

@Harry if they fix clogging tomorrow will you suddenly join the fuel rats and start helping out noobs, or will you upload some more griefing vids complete with taunting that "ha you couldn't clog" ?.

 

[Riverside]

Yep currently the best argument against fixing clogging is that it really annoys the players the game is better without. Anyone who thinks a CL fix would stop or even reduce pointless griefing is ignoring the fact that the griefers only want a fix to increase their victims and gatherable salt.

@Harry if they fix clogging tomorrow will you suddenly join the fuel rats and start helping out noobs, or will you upload some more griefing vids complete with taunting that "ha you couldn't clog" ?.

Sealclubbers CLog too. If Clogging is discouraged it gives the playerbase a better chance to police the game too. Player led solutions would reduce the pressure on karma to be all things to all people.

 

[Stigbob]

Sealclubbers CLog too. If Clogging is discouraged it gives the playerbase a better chance to police the game too. Player led solutions would reduce the pressure on karma to be all things to all people.

Yeah agreed. I'd say anyone who uses cheats or cheap tricks will clog, for example a player who uses engineers exploits, cash exploits, station griefing disposable ships and cheap kill exploits is pretty much certain to pull the plug whenever they feel the need.

 

[Powderpanic]

What is this thread, a cheater complaining about cheaters?

Cheater is a strong word and inaccurate.

He was an exploiter, like a huge percentage of this games player base.

Sadly for some reason, this particular exploit was frowned upon and SHOCKING FDEV actually took action.

Now they only have to focus on Combat logging.... Which is another Exploit FYI but one actually deemed as cheating.

I am glad the way I exploited bounty hunting early game and made 6 billion credits by scanning my friends T9 full of Imp slaves for 2hours with dual cargo scanners on a macro, while I watched Anime on Crunchroll was not considered an exploit.
Or recently the people who destroyed Skimmers because weirdly the game classed them as enemy ships in a CZ, making players around 400mil in 20mins, if they got the system down to a T. ( I did that too ) .. but that's ok.. I got to keep all my credits on that one too..

Ah this game.. isn't it wonderful how exploits fall like rain.... Imagine actually having to grind for that stuff.. I mean who would do that?

But the moment an exploit helps PVP players..... B&

 

[Vorxian]

At the end of the day, combat logging only exists because it's there. It's part and parcel of the game architecture.

There's only one way to fix it. Properly. Don't have it there!


It's like this. Picture a bunch of 4 year olds in a room. In the center of the room there's a bowl of Haribo. As the adult leaves the room, he says.. Kids, don't touch the Haribo.

At first the kids may listen, but, sooner or later.. all the Haribo will go.

If there were no Haribo in the room, the kids would get on and play.


Any and all of the suggestions so far about combat logging have been about either a) punishing the kids for taking the Haribo (how do you prove who took what? Some kids probably didn't touch them... or b) somehow poisoning / contaminating the Haribo so the kids are put off touching them... but in doing so, ruin the Haribo for everyone else.

About time we steered clear of thinking of ways to turn the Haribo bad... or thinking of ways to punish the kids for taking something that is so in view it's almost baiting them to have some.

The only proper thing to do is make combat logging irrelevant through architectural change. If that's not going to happen, then combat logging will never stop. Human nature.

 

[MarkAusten]

AI don't combat log, nor do they disconnect. They're a product of the server and client. I have no idea what you are even trying to say. AI don't combat log, they don't ALT-F4, they suck it up like good little AI soldiers. The problem isn't the disconnect, it's that frontier have decided to toss player ships on rails when there's a disconnect, and cause the player's ship to become invulnerable.

The Player's ships do not suddenly become controlled by AI in a disconnect state; they go onto rails and become impervious to damage, until the game clients finally give up waiting and de-spawn the assets involved (ie the ship). This is incredibly handy if you want to avoid consequences, which is the actual thrust of the problem.

Frontier can't necessarily tell if the connection was legitimately dropped or the client killed. But I'm not sure that's really sufficient enough reason to keep a system that actually rewards CLing. Very very few multiplayer games do this on impervious on-rails business though, because, oddly enough, it's incredibly abusable.

You need to read the posts to which I was replying, starting at #147. If you do then you will understand the hypothesis in the situation that CMDR S Russell posited. The current in-game AIs operate the way you state but they are not the ones to which he and I were referring. It pays to read the thread back from the post you don't understand in cases like this using the (source) link conveniently provided.

To address your last point, It is impossible to determine if a disconnect is intentional or where it originated. So, FD have to fall back on a statistical methods. These statistical methods are not trivial and until they can devise a method that reduces false-positives to a rate of better than 1 per 1,000,000 then they should not implement such a solution.

The Internet by design is a disconnected network always was and always will be, it is at the heart of the design of the protocols. This means that even statistically it is very difficult to determine whether or not the connection between two computers has disconnected or not, since disconnection is the very nature of the network. Currently the only way is by timeout, that is you do not receive a reply from the computer you are trying to contact within a certain time period after having retried a few times. The retry count and the length of the timeout vary from application to application, but suffice it to say that even when you believe that Elite is running really well with little lag, the software of the game itself will be registering numerous potential disconnects.

All this combines to give a situation where it is entirely possible for many disconnects to be registered by two players in combat even though neither of them is combat logging and both are having a good fight. This really complicates the statistics.

As for the on-rails thing, since the connection has been dropped, the now impervious ship is the natural result. How can it be otherwise? All the data regarding the "real" ship is on the now disconnected computer. The ship that is left on the computer spinning away is merely a ghost and totally impervious to anything. Once the connection times out the ship disappears. It is the nature of the Internet and the P2P connection.

 

[babelfisch]

Cheater is a strong word and inaccurate.

He was an exploiter, like a huge percentage of this games player base.

Sadly for some reason, this particular exploit was frowned upon and SHOCKING FDEV actually took action.

Now they only have to focus on Combat logging.... Which is another Exploit FYI but one actually deemed as cheating.

I am glad the way I exploited bounty hunting early game and made 6 billion credits by scanning my friends T9 full of Imp slaves for 2hours with dual cargo scanners on a macro, while I watched Anime on Crunchroll was not considered an exploit.
Or recently the people who destroyed Skimmers because weirdly the game classed them as enemy ships in a CZ, making players around 400mil in 20mins, if they got the system down to a T. ( I did that too ) .. but that's ok.. I got to keep all my credits on that one too..

Ah this game.. isn't it wonderful how exploits fall like rain.... Imagine actually having to grind for that stuff.. I mean who would do that?

But the moment an exploit helps PVP players..... B&

My post got moderated so maybe it's not wise to further comment on it. But I wasn't entirely serious anyway. However, if combat logging is cheating using an exploit to gain an unfair advantage is also cheating. Keep in mind that Frontier never called CLogging a cheat, they called it an exploit. It was this community who told me that using an exploit to gain an advantage is always cheating.

Everyone who combat logs = cheater
Everyone who used the engineer exploit = cheater

OR

Everyone who combat logs = exploiter
Everyone who used the engineer exploit = exploiter

You can't differentiate between the two just because you think one thing doesn't affect you and the other does. Especially not after Frontier took action against one, but not against the other..

 

[S3B4ST13N]

I see the need for that here, but is this problem really on the same scale as combatlogging? Depending on the legislature of the country you're selling/working in such an abuse of the billing system could've led to damage and/or legal consequences for the company + it led to active damage for third parties if they were overbilled because of this. My point here is simply that this led to real damage unlike CLogging.

I know it was a rather extreme example; but I was highlighting that precedents do exist where the majority are inconvenienced because of the minority. It sucks for the majority sometimes, but it is what it is. You cannot, ever, satisfy everyone all the time.

Take a long look at the PS4 servers then. After every update and occasionally after patches there's a period of increased dcs on the other versions, too. To counter your anecdotal evidence: Comparatively little time ago I had rather big issues with the servers and got booted several times a day. Sometimes mid-PvP. That's not nice but happens.

To be fair, the PS4 edition was only just released and they're currently in the teething stage. Give them time to find their feet.
Regarding your issues; was the issue determined to be on Frontiers' end, or yours?

How is the attacking CMDR penalised? The attacking CMDR has no active loss, apart from the ammunition cost, and eventually missing out a bounty. If the inflicted loss is simply not seeing your opponent rebuy his/her ship, then I don't see a reason to do any of this.

Financial loss from ammo, SCB expenditure, hull repairs and so forth.
Time loss, CLoggers waste another CMDR's time. Either in a piracy situation, or in a full PvP combat situation where one player doesn't have the jewels to see it through to the end (whatever end that might be).
Enjoyment loss, CLoggers are negatively affecting another CMDR's experience. Some CMDR's genuinely enjoy being pirates, if someone CLog's, their actions have a negative impact on their opponent. Either that CMDR is denied the right to enjoyment by defeating his opponent ( specifically talking about CMDR's who fight back against pirates, or in a legit PvP dog-fight encounter, not people griefing traders and such ), or (and?) suffers disillusionment that actually, no, he can't blaze his own trail because the developer isn't handling CLogging the right way ( whatever way that is ); which could result in him just leaving the game; which directly harms Frontier.

Why should CLoggers be immune from their actions ( because let's face it, I doubt Frontier is able to attend to all CLogging incidents, even if they are reported ) whilst the opponent suffers a loss?

Combatlogging is an out of game exploit. It should be punished out of the game, too.

I don't disagree; my solution simply didn't cover out-of-game punishments.

Taskkills are easy to detect.

Unfortunately, they are not; at best you can log when your application is closed gracefully, and if that graceful exit log entry doesn't exist, you know something closed the program; but you can't determine what closed it; it could be a power failure, it could be command prompt, or task manager.
The only time your application can detect a close by Task Manager is through the Applications Tab (pre-W10) as Windows sends it a WM_CLOSE message, which instructs the application to close; when you kill the running process no such command is sent to the application because Windows isn't asking the app to close, it's just closing it.

Shadowban those who do in their own PG with more Loggers and no effect on BGS/PP/CGs. There they can have their fun logging at each other.

I agree; remove them from the main game.

Disconnects are a bit trickier. You said it yourself, there's no method to determine whether the dc was accidental or forced when that happens mid combat. FDev could simply log the overall dcs of said account and create a statistical model to see when those disconnects happen the most. If they only happen during PvP --> Shadowban. If they happen regulary regardless of the situation, then I'd be willing to give the benefit of the doubt.

How do you determine if someone is guilty from CLogging versus if they are just experiencing a P2P issue when it comes to PvP? In addition, how do you know if the CMDR accused of CLogging, wasn't forced into it by the attacking CMDR through a form of P2P intercept? If I recall correctly, there was a brief period in ED development ( either during BETA or perhaps just after release, I can't remember ) which basically had some CMDR's packet flooding their opponents, forcing them to DC. I'll admit I could be remembering this incorrectly; it could have simply been a real concern raised by someone.

My solution attempts covers this by treating everyone the same; guilty or not ( except in the event of a P2P intercept .. then one party is unfairly treated through no fault or action of his own - but that's the exception, not the rule - and it might be able to determine if the user was attacked through DOS or P2P intercept ).

You have the same chance by simply logging back in. If your opponent is not the stereotypical ganksquad with the only goal of making you rebuy, then they'll wait a bit.

Not always; some CMDR's might wait - but there will be others who will wake-off in disgust. Perhaps report the player for CLogging ( they have no way of knowing ) which just makes Frontiers job all the more difficult.

There is no quick fix for this but my solution at least attempts to alleviate this issue.

 

[S3B4ST13N]

Hypothesis:

Two players A and B are in combat and are the only two players in the instance. Their P2P connection goes down for several minutes and in that time A wins against the B AI and B wins against the A AI. Now you have the situation there they have both won and both lost. Since there were only two players in the instance it is not possible to determine who caused the disconnect of whether the disconnect was either's fault.

And therein lies the problem with any C&P, Karma or any other system that tries to determine who disconnected. Leaving out the fact that it is impossible to determine if the disconnect was intentional.

My solution would be to then implement a method that checks for such a scenario and if the condition passes, I'd have the client destroy the instance and the NPC ship; perhaps provide the affected user with a message; such as "unable to re-establish connection with instance" or whatever.

Because I enjoy programming (lol):

Spoiler

  procedure METHOD_NAME;
  begin
    // specifically check for an "A against B-AI", "B against A-AI" scenario
    if (currentInstance.playerCount = 1) and (currentInstance.previousPlayerCount = 2) then
    begin
      if currentInstance.player(currentInstance.lastExitedPlayerID).isNPCControlled then
      begin
        currentInstance.EmptyInstance;
        currentInstance.Destroy; 
        currentInstance := Instance.Create;           
        currentInstance.Owner := FPlayer;
        currentInstance.MoveToInstance(FPlayer);
      end;
    end; 
  end;

Ahh.. that was fun. ^_^

 

[MarkAusten]

My solution would be to then implement a method that checks for such a scenario and if the condition passes, I'd have the client destroy the instance and the NPC ship; perhaps provide the affected user with a message; such as "unable to re-establish connection with instance" or whatever.

Because I enjoy programming (lol):

Spoiler

  procedure METHOD_NAME;
  begin
    // specifically check for an "A against B-AI", "B against A-AI" scenario
    if (currentInstance.playerCount = 1) and (currentInstance.previousPlayerCount = 2) then
    begin
      if currentInstance.player(currentInstance.lastExitedPlayerID).isNPCControlled then
      begin
        currentInstance.EmptyInstance;
        currentInstance.Destroy; 
        currentInstance := Instance.Create;           
        currentInstance.Owner := FPlayer;
        currentInstance.MoveToInstance(FPlayer);
      end;
    end; 
  end;

Ahh.. that was fun. ^_^

Which is effectively what happens now except that the ship hangs there spinning around and impervious to anything until the timeout triggers and the pseudo code in your method runs.

 

[Theodrid]

It's all well and good saying we should take the OP's very valid point regarding combat logging in isolation and not base them on his previous decisions and actions but as that is never what goes on on these boards I think it is more than a bit rich to suggest doing so. There have been several occasions where known combat loggers have posted and some of the PVP community have been all over them like a rash, claiming their ideas, views or position are invalidated because they are cheats. There are many examples of known PVE players commenting on discussions regarding open and some of the PVP community have told them they have no right to post because of their choices.

No, I'm sorry, everyone gets judged on their choices, past postings, actions in game and more when making or responding to threads on these boards, why should Potter be any different or a 'special case'?

 

[Becks]

I know it was a rather extreme example; but I was highlighting that precedents do exist where the majority are inconvenienced because of the minority. It sucks for the majority sometimes, but it is what it is. You cannot, ever, satisfy everyone all the time.

I think that's the point where we disagree the most. I simply don't see CLogging as a big enough issue to inconvenience other customers to solve it. But that's a matter of preference and opinion.

To be fair, the PS4 edition was only just released and they're currently in the teething stage. Give them time to find their feet.
Regarding your issues; was the issue determined to be on Frontiers' end, or yours?

50/50, I'd say. I submitted a ticket and a verbose log because of repeated dcs after which the number of dcs drastically reduced. Another reduction of dcs came when we finally switched providers a few months back.

Financial loss from ammo, SCB expenditure, hull repairs and so forth.
Time loss, CLoggers waste another CMDR's time. Either in a piracy situation, or in a full PvP combat situation where one player doesn't have the jewels to see it through to the end (whatever end that might be).
Enjoyment loss, CLoggers are negatively affecting another CMDR's experience. Some CMDR's genuinely enjoy being pirates, if someone CLog's, their actions have a negative impact on their opponent. Either that CMDR is denied the right to enjoyment by defeating his opponent ( specifically talking about CMDR's who fight back against pirates, or in a legit PvP dog-fight encounter, not people griefing traders and such ), or (and?) suffers disillusionment that actually, no, he can't blaze his own trail because the developer isn't handling CLogging the right way ( whatever way that is ); which could result in him just leaving the game; which directly harms Frontier.

Why should CLoggers be immune from their actions ( because let's face it, I doubt Frontier is able to attend to all CLogging incidents, even if they are reported ) whilst the opponent suffers a loss?

The financial loss is negligible, it has no observable impact. It would've occured in any scenario regardless of CLog or not. This also assumes that there was a previous attempt at piracy and/or fighting between both parties before the CLog. Whether this is usually the case or not is something the more notorious PvPer, murderhobos and pirates in this thread can answer.

As far as I've noticed CLogs seem to happen fairly fast. In any case, if someone CLogs on you it's clearly you're victory. Not being able to 'blaze your own trail' because one explosion animation wasn't displayed might be a bit of an overstatement.

The time loss is a valid concern and CLoggers definitely shouldn't be immune to their actions, which is why I'd like to take these people out of Open. The main problem I have with the solution you propose is, as I've said a few times, I don't see a sufficient benefit compared to the cost. It might end up with more players leaving the game because of the solution than of combatlogging.

Unfortunately, they are not; at best you can log when your application is closed gracefully, and if that graceful exit log entry doesn't exist, you know something closed the program; but you can't determine what closed it; it could be a power failure, it could be command prompt, or task manager.
The only time your application can detect a close by Task Manager is through the Applications Tab (pre-W10) as Windows sends it a WM_CLOSE message, which instructs the application to close; when you kill the running process no such command is sent to the application because Windows isn't asking the app to close, it's just closing it.

Unless you have a second program up and running which can monitor the game process and reports back should it be ended.

How do you determine if someone is guilty from CLogging versus if they are just experiencing a P2P issue when it comes to PvP? In addition, how do you know if the CMDR accused of CLogging, wasn't forced into it by the attacking CMDR through a form of P2P intercept? If I recall correctly, there was a brief period in ED development ( either during BETA or perhaps just after release, I can't remember ) which basically had some CMDR's packet flooding their opponents, forcing them to DC. I'll admit I could be remembering this incorrectly; it could have simply been a real concern raised by someone.

As I've said, this model would look out for the disconnects (to server and other player) in combat with another player. If a CMDR experiences a continous P2P issues they shouldn't instance in the first place.

For the second possibility you propose: That'd be a pretty specific case and even if someone would intercept the P2P between the players the connection of the other CMDR to the server should still be there, which would lead to matchmaking trying to rematch them and if not possible, separating their instance entirely. It'd be an extreme way of forcing instances apart and if people start doing this then something is seriously wrong.

My solution attempts covers this by treating everyone the same; guilty or not ( except in the event of a P2P intercept .. then one party is unfairly treated through no fault or action of his own - but that's the exception, not the rule - and it might be able to determine if the user was attacked through DOS or P2P intercept ).

Punishing everyone for the gery of a few is something I generally don't agree with. In dubio pro reo.

As I've said above, if players start to use P2P intercept and DOS attacks on each other, then it's truly over with PvP in Elite.

Not always; some CMDR's might wait - but there will be others who will wake-off in disgust. Perhaps report the player for CLogging ( they have no way of knowing ) which just makes Frontiers job all the more difficult.

There is no quick fix for this but my solution at least attempts to alleviate this issue.

Well yes, but not waiting is the decision of the one who was logged on. In your proposed solution with a waiting time of maybe up to a minute or more, the same would happen too.

I agree that there's no quick solution and that we can only speculate + propose attempts, but I kinda enjoy the discussion.

 

[Mohrgan]

Theodrid, the reasons are two fold. Besieger/harry has infamy in this game. His attention seeking has given him some 'name recognition'. This celebrity is akin to the how tRump manages to get elected. People are dazzled by their notoriety, and hope to gain some of this cache by agreeing with everything they say. They may not even know they are doing it.

The second is the nature of the discussion. Because besieger invoked the universally hated CLer, the focus of the conversation can be directed away from the OP. Kind of like how tRump runs to Fox News and yells 'Hillary Clinton' every time he needs to be rehabilitated. This ploy helps to foster a rehabilitation because people find themselves agreeing with a cheater, their estimation of the writer is improved.

So, in all. This thread is the first step in the rehabilitation of those caught up in the Modification Cheat scandal. Just like how real celebrities re-gain acceptance by the public. Because, as we all know, there is no worse cheat imaginable, than Combat logging. So for some, comparing themselves to CL'ers, is the only way to look good again.