"I don't think they are doing enough" is fair comment, "they haven't done anything" is clearly an exaggeration.
The most severe punishment I've seen evidence of actually occurring is a shadow ban, which is very nearly nothing.
And if a Cmdr remains logged out of the game for an hour, well that's an hour where they can't sealclub or blockade run or whatever. Which is the point, isn't it?
The punishment has to be severe enough to discourage the offense, meaning it has to be at least as punitive as what would have happened if the individual had not offended in the first place.
The idea that FD is "doing nothing" came from SDC and it's a claim they have failed to prove.
SDC weren't the first and have hardly been the only people to notice that Frontier's negligible consequences haven't been enough to mitigate the issue.
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.
I'm not making assumptions. My statements are based on multiple, repeat, observations of my own.
When someone comes into a CZ where I'm fighting, picks the opposite side, proceeds to engage my CMDR, disconnects five times in thirty minutes when I get close to stripping their shields, and, after submitting a report, with a complete video account of the scenario, I see this same CMDR still flying around in Open several times a week for the next month...it's pretty clear Frontier hasn't done much of anything.
When someone who has openly admitted, to cheating, on video, attacks my CMDR, loses badly, deliberately disconnects to save his ship, is reported (again, with corroborating evidence), then is still encountered in Open, it's pretty Frontier hasn't done much of anything.
Again, how do you "know" what FD is or isn't doing about any combat logging you might have seen?
Because I encounter parties that have admitted to combat logging rather frequently, in Open, and none the worse for wear...nor do they seem any less inclined to cheat in the same manner if they find themselves outmatched.
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.
Lenience in one area doesn't imply lenience in another.
There are also piles of exploits that haven't been explicitly forbidden where it's not reasonable to expect offenders to be punished, but deliberate disconnections were clarified as explicitly against the rules a long time ago.
I think the old way massacre missions stacked and the original incarnation of long range transport missions were at least as blatantly cheating as the 5 for 1 Engineering exploit...which is precisely why I avoided abusing any of them (if it doesn't make sense, and isn't explicitly allowed, it should be against the rules, IMO). Most of these sorts of things haven't been, and may well never be, denounced by Frontier, and whenever they have been, it's been long after the fact.
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.
Experience has taught me not to expect anything at all!
You could chain interdict my FDL with a T-9, record yourself with a web cam as you reset your router fifty times in a row, and we could both report you, both provide video, and I'd be astonished if you got more than a warning, even if you begged for punishment.
FDev know they have a system & probably think it is enough.
I'm positive they don't think it's enough.
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.
Someone breaking the rules isn't license to do so yourself.
When a goliath fell on top of my Corvette during the skimmer bug, I could have disconnected and saved my ship and Elite NPC crew. I did not, because I am not a cheater. I waited three days for support to restore my funds and crew member.
Either someone cheated, or they did not. It's not always immediately obvious if someone is cheating (I can provide nearly as many examples of non-menu disconnections that weren't deliberate as I can deliberate ones), but if someone is cheating, the circumstances are completely irrelevant.
Good, you've indentified the key challenge is to decrease CLogging, rather than focusing on the punishment itself.
The best way to decrease it's occurrence is to make the punishment much worse than the loss of a ship.
Presumably you man you don't want them to be able to instance with anyone.
I want them to be categorically barred from interacting with, or from acquiring/preserving assets that could be used in, the same game as those who aren't cheating.
