PvP An Investigation Into Frontier's Actions on Combat Logging, Part 2

[Riverside]

Yes.

If you pay attention outside of these forums, all evidence shows that they haven't done anything since around March last year (which strangely coincided with Part 1 of this thread) and then it was merely "stern warnings" via emails. Serial loggers are reported repeatedly, but you still see them in the game week in and week out.

FDev doesn't do anything about it, or the aforementioned serial loggers wouldn't be able to play every week. So, their claim of action is clearly a lie.

Just using the info within you post, clearly they do take action, the action is a 'stern letter'. You want more, sure but your basic point is wrong here.

There is too much hyperbole & not enough focus on basic, established evidence (& linking to it).

"I don't think they are doing enough" is fair comment, "they haven't done anything" is clearly an exaggeration.

 

[Morbad]

Where did the argument actually come from in the first place? Oh, right, it was because SDC decided it was a "problem" so they went about "proving" it with inadequate "testing".

The argument I speak of long predates the existence of SDC. People have been deliberately disconnecting and not getting punished for it since before I started playing the game and I started playing the game four months before release.

Except SDC isn't describing Newtonian physics. They aren't doing actual science. They aren't even doing actual testing that means anything.

All mostly beside my point.

If I tell you something that happens to be true, but clearly don't know why it's true, or clearly don't care if it's true or not, that doesn't mean that it's suddenly not true.

You keep telling me SDC has no credibility. I keep telling you SDC's credibility doesn't matter because the argument will stand without them. You could excise every SDC post from every thread on the topic and it wouldn't change anything.

You have two options here. You can believe FD here or you can believe SDC.

I believe my own experiences and the hard evidence I've been able to accrue from others. Neither is precisely in line with SDC or Frontier, but if I had to pick one of those groups that was closer to the actual truth of the matter, it would be SDC and it wouldn't even be close.

 

[Arguendo]

I have a bit of an issue with these claims. If someone is engaging a specific individual in PVP frequently enough to see them combat log that often then wouldn't they be guilty of griefing that individual?

Some of the worst serial loggers are the very "griefers" you have an issue with. Ask any long-time member of Adle's Armada, you know the group dedicated to protect Eravate aka noob-space, who have logged the most on them. The answer will be; noob killers in Eravate.

Do not confuse issues just to confuse them.

 

[Arguendo]

Just using the info within you post, clearly they do take action, the action is a 'stern letter'. You want more, sure but your basic point is wrong here.

There is too much hyperbole & not enough focus on basic, established evidence (& linking to it).

"I don't think they are doing enough" is fair comment, "they haven't done anything" is clearly an exaggeration.

LOL!
Do you actually surmise that a "stern letter" telling people to check their internet connection is "acceptable action" from FDev for serial loggers? The closed thread on DD was right; go ahead and combat log everyone. At worst you will get a "stern letter" from FDev, which is an acceptable response to cheating. Welcome to the wonderful world of FD Forums [where is it]

 

[Devari]

Some of the worst serial loggers are the very "griefers" you have an issue with. Ask any long-time member of Adle's Armada, you know the group dedicated to protect Eravate aka noob-space, who have logged the most on them. The answer will be; noob killers in Eravate.

Do not confuse issues just to confuse them.

Except the lack of consequences for griefing leads directly to the reason that many players combat log. You can't just look at one person breaking a rule and ignore another player who broke another rule first and think they should only punish the second rule breaker. If you want consequences for combat logging you should also want consequences for greifing if you want rules being enforced fairly in the game.

 

[Riverside]

LOL!
Do you actually surmise that a "stern letter" telling people to check their internet connection is "acceptable action" from FDev for serial loggers? The closed thread on DD was right; go ahead and combat log everyone. At worst you will get a "stern letter" from FDev, which is an acceptable response to cheating. Welcome to the wonderful world of FD Forums [where is it]

Read the words I used buddy Clearly they do take action, but you think it is not enough. I offered no opinion in my post, only advice on how to word your argument.

Clearly a system must already be in place to capture the undesired behaviour, you just disagree with the detail of how it is implemented. It's fine to disagree, it's not fine to imply there is no system at all when your own words belie that.

 

[Arguendo]

Except the lack of consequences for griefing leads directly to the reason that many players combat log. You can't just look at one person breaking a rule and ignore another player who broke another rule first and think they should only punish the second rule breaker. If you want consequences for combat logging you should also want consequences for greifing if you want rules being enforced fairly in the game.

I'll break it down for you:

1. Combatlogging is cheating and deserves to be punished out-of-game
2. "Griefing", unless it includes Harassment as defined by FDev, is NOT cheating and should not be punished outside of the game

The latter needs a better in-game response, but that's a matter of C&P and has nothing to do with this discussion which is about an out-of-game cheating mechanism. Again, don't confuse issues just to confuse them!

 

[DukeIronHand]

There was a post in this thread providing around 10 videos of the same guy combatlogging whenever he was about to lose. He still played the game week in and week out after that. There is even a subreddit dedicated to combatloggers, and some of the ones there even admit to doing it in the discussion of their own video. They still play the game week in and week out.

Just because you don't want to accept anything coming from SDC does not mean it's not an actual problem in the game.

All mention of combatlogging is in fact buried in this forum, which would make it appear to be a non-problem. Reddit and numerous Discords tell a different story however. If you never venture outside of this forum to discuss the game, I can understand that it does not appear to be a big issue, but that appearance is unfortunately false.

I could "venture out" but why? I care not a whit about Combat Logging. Sure I would like to see it end but, as a non-PvP'er, how does it effect me in the slightest? It doesn't. Do I wish FDev would assign 30 developers to investigate these claims? No. We have bigger issues with ED then logging that are far more detrimental to this game in the long run.

And you hinted at it but I will take it all the way - I fully believe that the bulk of CL'ers are the very gankers themselves. That's the mentality of these folks.

So we have a group who relishes it wrecking the gameplay of others (SDC) trying to toot a horn that FD is "lying" because of inaction in a case of 5 Clogs in 5 months?

You say your group has more and better proof. You may be right. But in this game, the way it is set up (Instancing, modes, etc) and with FD's not broadcasting what they are doing about it (granted if anything) it will take a little more for me to embrace the mantra of "FDev is lying." Especially when the accusations (here) are from a ganker group against other gankers.

 

[Arguendo]

Read the words I used buddy Clearly they do take action, but you think it is not enough. I offered no opinion in my post, only advice on how to word your argument.

Clearly a system must already be in place to capture the undesired behaviour, you just disagree with the detail of how it is implemented. It's fine to disagree, it's not fine to imply there is no system at all when your own words belie that.

You're obfuscating the issue, by delving into semantics.

There is no proof of FDev haven taken any action against combatloggers since around March last year, and that action was limited to a stern letter telling the user to check their internet connection.

Better?

 

[Weps]

You have two options here. You can believe FD here or you can believe SDC. I have no reason to believe that FD is not being honest. I have every reason to believe that SDC is biased and lacks credibility and I've identified several flaws in both their "testing" methods and the conclusions they've attempted to draw from them.

Every other day of the week I would have agreed with you, but FDEV's response and attitude to this whole mess has been insulting, frankly. A single ambiguous reply on Reddit, not a second post in this thread, then silently moving it in some obscure, completely unrelated forum section before it could gather more attention.

If anyone didn't catch up yet, the big issue here is not about some poor dude getting blown up, not about Spacy Joe's night being ruined by some CLogger, or about some obnoxious teenagers throwing a tantrum in an online game.

It's about Frontier Development's credibility, as a company, in front of their customers. When someone, regardless of their background, accuses of you of foul play, you respond! dangit! you take a stance! You do not cop out, keeping quiet, moving threads around and expecting things to die down and your customers to forget.

If the OP's case presentation was indeed flawed (which may very well be), all it would have took from FDEV was to point this out, maybe stating that there are more aspects pertaining to the particular case at hand, but that unfortunately they can't disclose that information. That would have maybe salvaged that joke of a reply.

So yes, my faith in FDEV went so low these days, I'm actually more inclined to believe what that band of ... nah I won't call anyone names.... is saying....

 

[Arguendo]

I could "venture out" but why? I care not a whit about Combat Logging.

Then this thread is obviously not for you.

 

[Devari]

The argument I speak of long predates the existence of SDC. People have been deliberately disconnecting and not getting punished for it since before I started playing the game and I started playing the game four months before release.

Like I said earlier, I have no doubt that combat logging happens. The issue here is whether FD is "doing nothing" to address it. The idea that FD is "doing nothing" came from SDC and it's a claim they have failed to prove.

All mostly beside my point.

If I tell you something that happens to be true, but clearly don't know why it's true, or clearly don't care if it's true or not, that doesn't mean that it's suddenly not true.

And why should I believe that SDC's claim is true in the first place? You're doing the exact same thing that SDC is doing right now by making an assumption that the claim "FD is doing nothing about combat logging" is true. You don't know that. SDC doesn't know that. It's not some sort of universally-accepted "truth". It's just a baseless claim that is propped up by manufactured "evidence" that proves nothing.

You keep telling me SDC has no credibility. I keep telling you SDC's credibility doesn't matter because the argument will stand without them. You could excise every SDC post from every thread on the topic and it wouldn't change anything.

Except that SDC is the group very publically making the "claim". They are very publically presenting "evidence". They aren't referencing a neutral third party who has done a "study" and who is reliable and objective. It is their argument that they are making and it is going to be held to appropriate scrutiny.

I believe my own experiences and the hard evidence I've been able to accrue from others. Neither is precisely in line with SDC or Frontier, but if I had to pick one of those groups that was closer to the actual truth of the matter, it would be SDC and it wouldn't even be close.

Again, how do you "know" what FD is or isn't doing about any combat logging you might have seen?

Keep in mind that FD's "punishments" even for a year of systematic cheating with the Engineering exploit are extremely mild so any "punishment" for combat logging would need to be appropriately mild as well. If you are expecting players to be banned from the game as "proof" that FD is addressing combat logging that is just not a reasonable expectation.

Going from "I saw someone combat log and they weren't banned" to "FD is doing nothing about combat logging" is just not a reasonable leap to make.

 

[DukeIronHand]

Then this thread is obviously not for you.

Oh it very much is.
You accuse a company that I support with my hard-earned cash of "lying" without a shred of anything to back it up.
The tail chasing will continue apparently.

 

[Riverside]

You're obfuscating the issue, by delving into semantics.

There is no proof of FDev haven taken any action against combatloggers since around March last year, and that action was limited to a stern letter telling the user to check their internet connection.

Better?

Yes. You are arguing in favour of sterner repercussions, not to get a system implemented. FDev know they have a system & probably think it is enough. It is probably very labour intensive, and would benefit from automation.

In addition, it seems clear (again, from your own supplied information) that they do not want to unduly punish these players, or perhaps that banning is too much.

So have a read of this proposal if you haven't already.

The simple version is that if you ungracefully disconnect, the next time you rejoin you are put back into the mode you left. It works independently of any existing system, it would cut down on FDevs labour overhead, it carries no penalty that FDev might consider excessive, it has minimal effect on normal gameplay (assuming refreshing instances isn't to be encouraged).

 

[Devari]

I'll break it down for you:

1. Combatlogging is cheating and deserves to be punished out-of-game
2. "Griefing", unless it includes Harassment as defined by FDev, is NOT cheating and should not be punished outside of the game

The latter needs a better in-game response, but that's a matter of C&P and has nothing to do with this discussion which is about an out-of-game cheating mechanism. Again, don't confuse issues just to confuse them!

Griefing, i.e., deliberately and repeatedly destroying a specific CMDR's ship in a manner that prevents them from making progress in the game is very much against the rules. In order to see a specific CMDR combat log over and over again then there is very much the possibility that the CMDR is being griefed. Obviously if that player is initiating the PVP encounter and then combat logs then this would not be the case but like I said you might find that the actual situation in many of those combat logging cases is more complicated than it might seem.

 

[Arguendo]

Oh it very much is.
You accuse a company that I support with my hard-earned cash of "lying" without a shred of anything to back it up.
The tail chasing will continue apparently.

The tail chasing continues because you, by your own admittance, won't "venture outside" the realms of this forum to see what goes on in the game. Go to reddit, search for the "cl" word, find the subreddit dedicated to that very topic, and come back with your findings.

Once you realise that these people play the game week in and week out, it would be interesting to see if you can make 1+1=2.

 

[Devari]

Every other day of the week I would have agreed with you, but FDEV's response and attitude to this whole mess has been insulting, frankly. A single ambiguous reply on Reddit, not a second post in this thread, then silently moving it in some obscure, completely unrelated forum section before it could gather more attention.

If anyone didn't catch up yet, the big issue here is not about some poor dude getting blown up, not about Spacy Joe's night being ruined by some CLogger, or about some obnoxious teenagers throwing a tantrum in an online game.

It's about Frontier Development's credibility, as a company, in front of their customers. When someone, regardless of their background, accuses of you of foul play, you respond! dangit! you take a stance! You do not cop out, keeping quiet, moving threads around and expecting things to die down and your customers to forget.

If the OP's case presentation was indeed flawed (which may very well be), all it would have took from FDEV was to point this out, maybe stating that there are more aspects pertaining to the particular case at hand, but that unfortunately they can't disclose that information. That would have maybe salvaged that joke of a reply.

So yes, my faith in FDEV went so low these days, I'm actually more inclined to believe what that band of ... nah I won't call anyone names.... is saying....

My issues here are twofold. First, FD has given us a rather credible explanation of why they aren't telling us more details about their methods, i.e., players could use that information to evade punishment by keeping their combat logging just below whatever "threshold" FD acts on. Second, we know that FD's idea of "punishment" is very mild because other than removing the Engineering exploit they really didn't actually "punish" anyone for using the exploit as far as we know. So consequences for frequent combat logging might very well already be happening and it simply isn't preventing those players from playing the game. It's not like we saw the PVP players who engaged in the Engineering exploit disappear from the game, the only way we knew that FD had taken action is because they told us that they had done so.

Now, to be fair, I've witnessed some inconsistencies on certain claims that FD has made in the past about specific game issues. For the most part however these were related to bugs that FD thought that they had fixed and turned out to still be in the game. In those cases when evidence was brought to their attention that certain problems in the game persisted they acknowledged the discrepancies and reimbursed players for ship losses. It's certainly possible that FD's monitoring for combat logging needs to be improved in some way if someone is able to conclusively show that they are not properly catching blatant and systematic combat logging. That is not the same thing as FD lying about their efforts to address it however. I've never seen FD straight-up lie to players about a technical game issue in the three years since the game launched. I have no reason to believe that they would suddenly start lying about their ability to identify and address combat logging in general and I certainly don't believe that SDC's "evidence" has adequately demonstrated this in any way.

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

In a consentual PVP battle and one side CLs then that is, IMHO, an offence and the cmdr should be punished, especially if they have a history of it. A Karma system is going to be the only way that this is resolved with the present infrastructure. Frontier say they're working on it. They need time to work on it. We've already had one pass with crime and punishment that hasn't turned out too well but it goes back to the same old problem.

Combat logging is against the rules, griefing isn't. However, most people see CLogging as a legitimate defence against greifing. People who fly in open (especially around CGs) have to be aware of the risks. I also wish there was some kind of incentive to help people play in open to make that risk worthwhile. However, the PVP community have done themselves no favours by both the Engineering exploit and the Mobius invasion. Yes, I know that was only one group but it's given all PVP'rs a reputation of exploiting murder hobos. So the majority of the response is 'Oh Dear, the Murder hobos are complaining they can't kill anyone anymore. We have no sympathy'.

The more whinging the Pvp community does, the more this response is reinforced. People who seal-club are causing this perception and I go back to the example of Jumpgate where the game was ruined by this attitude.

Now it would help if Frontier published a count of how many players were warned, shadow banned and banned from the game, maybe once a month. just to people's minds at rest. The method that the SDC employed could be false positives due to the fact that they are known to frontier and therefore ignored.

SO TLR Karma need to be implemented, Frontier need to provide a little bit of feedback and reassurance that this problem is being delt with and the Pvp Community have to accept that some of their attitude makes normal people not want to play in the same game as them.

 

[Arguendo]

Yes. You are arguing in favour of sterner repercussions, not to get a system implemented.

No, I am arguing for FDev to actually do what they claim they will do. In that stern letter, if you have seen a copy of it (there is one in this thread) states that they will take action if it continues. Guess what...
What is a warning if it isn't followed through? It's words on paper worth about as much as the standardised FDev responses to this thread and the equivalent on Reddit.

FDev know they have a system & probably think it is enough. It is probably very labour intensive, and would benefit from automation.

Please give me some source for it being "very labour intensive". None of the responses from FDev indicate anything of the sort. They indicate that they have internal mechanisms in place that can readily distinguish a network loss from a graceful menu exit from a taskkill. They have said it repeatedly in fact.

In addition, it seems clear (again, from your own supplied information) that they do not want to unduly punish these players, or perhaps that banning is too much.

And that is the issue, because they have publicly said otherwise. They even included combatlogging as one of the things they want to shadowban players for with their new Karma system. So, they are saying one thing, but doing another behind closed doors.

And I've read your proposal before. It's a good idea, but it doesn't stop anyone from going out for an hour and log back in again. So basically it just limits the serial combatloggers to take an hour break every time they meet opposition they can't tackle.

 

[DukeIronHand]

The tail chasing continues because you, by your own admittance, won't "venture outside" the realms of this forum to see what goes on in the game. Go to reddit, search for the "cl" word, find the subreddit dedicated to that very topic, and come back with your findings.

Once you realise that these people play the game week in and week out, it would be interesting to see if you can make 1+1=2.

So. Go to Reddit and see what people say about "cl" and that is my proof. Okay, I'll put that on my list.
Hopefully 1+1=2 even there. Luckily...well I won't say anymore till I see it.
But if the "proof" and obvious agenda is the same as here I honestly don't expect much.
If only gankers would stay and take their medicine maybe we could focus on more vital game fixes.