An investigation into Frontier's actions on Combat Logging

[Taimaru]

Like many others I am completely against Combat Logging. People who deliberately Combat Log have no honor in my opinion.

However, once the following conditions are met...

• The P2P networking code is perfect and never has issues.
• There are never any instancing issues.
• One never gets disconnected from the Frontier servers.
• Everyone has good and reliable Internet.
• Windows never crashes or freezes.

... then you can reliably detect deliberate disconnections - i.e. Combat Logs.

In the meantime, one can only decide whether a disconnection is deliberate or not by looking at past patterns.

 

[Jack Schitt]

There is a viable solutions to the "duplication" problem: cap the rewards from destroying/pirating the NPC stand-in at the same as those for killing or pirating a NPC of whichever rank was added. It will be a small extra letdown if the cargo or bounty of the player is better than what a NPC would have, but still better than the ship simply vanishing, and without any dupping issue (as the rewards would be the same as simply hunting down a NPC).

That would be slightly better insomuch as it removes the small but non-zero cargo exploitation risk, but the discontinuity problem remains for the non-disconnecting player. If the target ship has already been manifest scanned, last-second replacement of that cargo with something else might be even more annoying. It's very subjective of course; many players wouldn't be bothered by it. But to use an extreme example at the other end of the scale, there's a guy in another thread who admits to targeting players at Engineer sites specifically to pirate the engineering commodities they're carrying. That's a perfectly valid gameplay choice (whether it should be permitted without consequence is a discussion for another thread) which CLing breaks and which would not be "fixed" by random-cargo NPC replacement.

Anyhow this is all moot now because Sandro has categorically said that they cannot do this because they have no authoritative server. To be honest I'm not entirely sure that they couldn't do it client side if they really wanted to, because as V'larr says all machines do have the necessary data to render each others' ships in real time. I'm guessing it's to do with one client being the island/instance controller. If a non-controlling client disconnected then the controller could conceivably extrapolate around it. But if the controller is the one that disconnects then the instance effectively ceases to exist, which I'd imagine is more difficult to reconcile. Without knowing exactly how all this stuff works under the hood it's impossible to say.

But it's academic. If Sandro says they can't do it, it's not going to happen.

 

[DarkWalker]

Anyhow this is all moot now because Sandro has categorically said that they cannot do this because they have no authoritative server.

The "no authoritative server" issue is related to having the combat logger's actual ship remain in play, so it can be destroyed by the other players or NPCs and the logger can potentially come back to a rebuy screen. It isn't an issue if you are going to substitute it with a simulacrum whose fate won't influence the original ship in any way.

 

[Steve O B Have]

<Insert Frozen song - 'Let it Go' here> for goodness sake, this is so done...

 

[lenna]

The "no authoritative server" issue is related to having the combat logger's actual ship remain in play, so it can be destroyed by the other players or NPCs and the logger can potentially come back to a rebuy screen. It isn't an issue if you are going to substitute it with a simulacrum whose fate won't influence the original ship in any way.

While this is essentially true, the fact is that replacing a PC with a surrogate NPC would still not address the combat logging concerns to any significant degree.

As pointed out already, if people would be happy with a surrogate NPC then perhaps they should just give up on PvP full stop if they find CLing irritating enough to complain about it so persistently and profusely.

 

[crocodial]

Wouldn't a simpler solution be to implement something like what GTA Online does? Add a passive mode option to the status panel and let players enter passive mode if they want to play open, but dont want to engage in PvP conflict. Passive mode means the player can't attack, nor be attacked by, other players, but everything else is fair game. There would need to be a cooldown period (15 minutes or so?) when coming out of passive and perhaps when going into passive as well, so that a player couldn't just switch to passive when it looked like he was about to lose a fair fight. Of course passive status would have to be viewable by scanning, but also indicated in the target display. Having this option would not eliminate combat logging but it would eliminate any possible justification for doing it.

 

[Asp Explorer]

Unfortunately having player controlled and completely invulnerable ships (PvP off flag) would simply lead to swarms of lulzbunnies stacking up and completely blocking the entrances of CG stations, shrugging off the stations fire and with no way for any other players in that instance to creatively get rid of them

 

[crocodial]

Unfortunately having player controlled and completely invulnerable ships (PvP off flag) would simply lead to swarms of lulzbunnies stacking up and completely blocking the entrances of CG stations, shrugging off the stations fire and with no way for any other players in that instance to creatively get rid of them

Another aspect of GTA passive is that players can pass through passive players, as if they were ghosts. In GTA the passive players are slightly transparent, so you can see them and they can see you, but they don't affect your game at all.

 

[Gunnet]

Unfortunately having player controlled and completely invulnerable ships (PvP off flag) would simply lead to swarms of lulzbunnies stacking up and completely blocking the entrances of CG stations, shrugging off the stations fire and with no way for any other players in that instance to creatively get rid of them

You're likely correct in general. But it's not possible to shrug off a station's fire any more, is it?

 

[Asp Explorer]

You're likely correct in general. But it's not possible to shrug off a station's fire any more, is it?

I am sure they made changes to the station defences, but it's not been something I've done myself for a very long time. If they filled the docking slot with ships with healing beams and those multi-megajoule monster shield ships - who knows?

 

[Ozram]

All right. That's it! I'm bringing out the meme:

 

[lenna]

Unfortunately having player controlled and completely invulnerable ships (PvP off flag) would simply lead to swarms of lulzbunnies stacking up and completely blocking the entrances of CG stations, shrugging off the stations fire and with no way for any other players in that instance to creatively get rid of them

Not necessarily, for one - the matchmaking server could only match make players with the same PvP Flag setting... and for another - the local law enforcement may not take too kindly to players or groups of players that loiter in that fashion.

In addition, such childish behaviour can easily be circumvented via solo/group mode.

 

[V'larr]

I have read your responses and you are in obvious and blatant denial over the concerns several of us have raised. It is sad that you do not see it but it is obvious to me.

So you're not reading my direct responses, got it.

The fact you just used the words "blatant denial" is extremely ironic.

That all depends on what the attacking player was hoping to gain from the encounter. If all they were after was the rush of combat, survival through victory and a pretty space-pixel explosion then an NPC replacement may suffice. If they were trying to send a rival player to the Rebuy screen? I'd guess not so much.

It's certainly correct that an NPC isn't a true replacement for a player. But short of requiring hair samples from every player in Elite Dangerous, cloning them in some lab to rapidly grow into fully grown people Star Wars Episide 2 style, and then forcing the clones to take the place of their original person any time there happens to be disconnect - well, it's just too bad.

If you flip the coin, though, and compare a fully-laden/equipped NPC to absolute nothingness, that's a massive improvement and I think more than makes up for the gap between a player encounter and an NPC encounter.

Disconnections during combat, whether unintentional or deliberate, are annoying to some players.

I'd argue that's it's annoying to all players, really, not just some.

Among a subset of those players (let's call them Group X) the annoyance stems from, or is amplified by, the possibility that the disconnecting player has avoided an in-game penalty as a result of the disconnection.

I posit that Group X is in the significant minority, and as that feeling is based wholly on vindictiveness, it's not nearly as important an issue to deal with compared to ships magically ceasing to exist in the blink of an eye.

I mean, we have EVE Online to cater to players for whom that's a deal-breaker....

(Also, with that thought, I haven't even mentioned the issue of "Immersion" with this....)

The technology makes this solution tremendously difficult if not impossible to implement without a ground-up redesign

Well, I don't know any more than you do about the technical side, but I point to Darkwalker's post, where he worded it much better than I probably could have:

The "no authoritative server" issue is related to having the combat logger's actual ship remain in play, so it can be destroyed by the other players or NPCs and the logger can potentially come back to a rebuy screen. It isn't an issue if you are going to substitute it with a simulacrum whose fate won't influence the original ship in any way.

To my (imaginative) mind, that means that all of the necessary work would be done entirely by Player B's game client.

That's without even factoring in the already-discussed "duplication" problems.

Which I've tried addressing, there's not much point to me doing that though when folks bury their heads in the sand and deny my responses...kind of a discussion killer, that.

__

There is a viable solutions to the "duplication" problem: cap the rewards from destroying/pirating the NPC stand-in at the same as those for killing or pirating a NPC of whichever rank was added. It will be a small extra letdown if the cargo or bounty of the player is better than what a NPC would have, but still better than the ship simply vanishing, and without any dupping issue (as the rewards would be the same as simply hunting down a NPC).

Alternatively, you could have extra NPC "bodyguards" drop into the fight to justify the added reward. Make the player have a level of risk in line with what he gets to gain if he wins.

I glazed over this thought and dismissed it based on the "letdown" factor (or where Powerplay is involved), but on second thought? It could probably serve as a good compromise.

While this is essentially true, the fact is that replacing a PC with a surrogate NPC would still not address the combat logging concerns to any significant degree.

As pointed out already, if people would be happy with a surrogate NPC then perhaps they should just give up on PvP full stop if they find CLing irritating enough to complain about it so persistently and profusely.

Here's the head in the sand I just mentioned.

 

[lenna]

So you're not reading my direct responses, got it.

NO, I have read and you are talking IMO and not addressing anything to a sufficient degree.

There is no head in the sand, it is a simple fact that surrogate NPCs will not be a satisfactory solution for a lot of people unless it introduces the exploit potential. Even then it does not address any of the real issues surrounding combat logging.

Overall, my point still stands if people complaining about combat loggers will settle for surrogate NPCs and standard NPC rewards and get frustrated about PvP combat loggers then perhaps they should just give up on PvP all together. This is not sticking my head in the sand it is pointing out a simple truism. If they are not happy to settle for standard NPC rewards then the solution in it's "less" exploit ridden version (but still exploitable IMO) then it would still fail to address the related CLing concerns it is supposedly trying to address.

Your proposed solution would most likely require ALOT of work to ensure it works acceptably and even then the gains would be of questionable merit. The LOE to benefit ratio is most likely going to be quite unfavourably high for a solution like this IMO, there are plenty of more universal issues that FD could be spending that time on.

IF you are really insistent on pushing this idea as an option for FD to implement, then really a dedicated thread (with a poll - surrogate random NPC, surrogate full copy NPC, surrogate capped NPC, and other) would be most appropriate to ascertain if it truly addresses any CLing concerns for players in general or if it would just be smoke and mirrors that in the long terms solve little or nothing.

IMO it is you doing the Ostrich manoeuvre, not myself and others who have been pointing out the flaws in your arguments and counter arguments - but enough of this, I have already wasted too much of my time on this matter.

 

[Jack Schitt]

I'd argue that's it's annoying to all players, really, not just some.

Quite possibly true, almost certainly the majority, but I was deliberately trying not to quantify. I know that in the past I've read posts from PVP players who claimed to interpret a disconnected ship as akin to a hyperspace jump and thus "a win" but maybe even they've got fed up with it by now. Either way "some" covers everything other than zero, and we know it's not zero!

I posit that Group X is in the significant minority, and as that feeling is based wholly on vindictiveness, it's not nearly as important an issue to deal with compared to ships magically ceasing to exist in the blink of an eye.

You could well be right, but again I'm not trying to quantify groups or to judge the merits of various play styles. I'd just rather see a solution that works for all than one that only works for a subset, especially if it has the potential to further annoy a different subset. The game already has enough of that.

I mean, we have EVE Online to cater to players for whom that's a deal-breaker....

Like I said, I'm not here to judge. Well, sometimes I am, but not in this thread.

Well, I don't know any more than you do about the technical side, but I point to Darkwalker's post, where he worded it much better than I probably could have [...] To my (imaginative) mind, that means that all of the necessary work would be done entirely by Player B's game client.

Funnily enough I was about to post a response to Darkwalker because that post was well worded and it makes a lot of sense. I'll +1 it instead.

Having said that, I still suspect there are technical issues common to both the "full clone of player" and "NPC replacement" scenarios that would make either difficult to achieve with 100% success. The disconnected player being the island controller may be one of them. Perhaps that is what Sandro was alluding to; that they could do it, but not guarantee it would work in every case. I kind of wish he'd used words other than "take control of a player's ship" which sort of implies there's only one "real" ship, when of course each client renders a separate ship that just happens to share its characteristics with all the other clients. But it was on a Q&A live stream and not a tech conference so a bit of shorthand is probably forgiveable.

But at this point we're back to assumption and speculation. It's frustrating because I'd really like to understand the technical issues behind this but it's mostly experience-based guesswork occasionally modified by a small but potentially ambiguous clue from FD. Kind of like the in-game mysteries in a way, but with no big reveal at the end.

 

[DarkWalker]

While this is essentially true, the fact is that replacing a PC with a surrogate NPC would still not address the combat logging concerns to any significant degree.

As pointed out already, if people would be happy with a surrogate NPC then perhaps they should just give up on PvP full stop if they find CLing irritating enough to complain about it so persistently and profusely.

The surrogate NPC idea isn't meant to solve the core issue, just to make it less irritating for those negatively impacted. It's why the same idea is used in some other online games (such as Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm); while it doesn't prevent players from logging off during combat, it does reduce the negative impact on the other players, making the whole experience less frustrating.

 

[lenna]

The surrogate NPC idea isn't meant to solve the core issue, just to make it less irritating for those negatively impacted. It's why the same idea is used in some other online games (such as Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm); while it doesn't prevent players from logging off during combat, it does reduce the negative impact on the other players, making the whole experience less frustrating.

I don't know those games from personal experience but as I understand it they are FPS games and do not carry the same kind of issues as games such as Elite.

I am not convinced that it would reduce the frustration as much as some people seem to think it would.

In addition there is an additional concern I have picked up on, the surrogate NPC approach could be used as a tool by griefers and gankers to frustrate players by initiating the attack and then logging off leaving NPCs to incur the major part of the in-game bounties and effectively cause griefing by proxy. I would not put it past certain groups to capitalise on this kind of exploit.

 

[V'larr]

NO, I have read

Oh?

and you are talking IMO and not addressing anything to a sufficient degree.

Uh-huh. You know what, I'm tired of my leg being pulled and continual ad hominem instead of meaningful discussion. You don't seem to like the rebuttals I've brought up for your concerns, and rather than form a coherent argument, you've resorted to insults, repetition, and acting like you're "above it all".

I could write another wall of text here (mostly repeating answers I've already given for points you're just repeating again), but frankly put, I've lost my patience. Congratulations on being the newest addition to my ignore list.

The least I can say is that yes, it might indeed be worth making a dedicated thread for the idea. For now I will wait and see what Fdev is planning with this next update.

Quite possibly true, almost certainly the majority, but I was deliberately trying not to quantify. I know that in the past I've read posts from PVP players who claimed to interpret a disconnected ship as akin to a hyperspace jump and thus "a win" but maybe even they've got fed up with it by now. Either way "some" covers everything other than zero, and we know it's not zero!

You could well be right, but again I'm not trying to quantify groups or to judge the merits of various play styles. I'd just rather see a solution that works for all than one that only works for a subset, especially if it has the potential to further annoy a different subset. The game already has enough of that.

When that subset exists to disrupt all the other subsets as much as possible & thrive on making sure the others suffer...?

I tend to disregard the importance of any social group with those characteristics.

Having said that, I still suspect there are technical issues common to both the "full clone of player" and "NPC replacement" scenarios that would make either difficult to achieve with 100% success. The disconnected player being the island controller may be one of them. Perhaps that is what Sandro was alluding to; that they could do it, but not guarantee it would work in every case. I kind of wish he'd used words other than "take control of a player's ship" which sort of implies there's only one "real" ship, when of course each client renders a separate ship that just happens to share its characteristics with all the other clients. But it was on a Q&A live stream and not a tech conference so a bit of shorthand is probably forgiveable.

There's no doubt that it would have to exist entirely clientside, "Player B"'s client specifically. I wager it's as simple as changing how the client reacts to detecting that a ship controlled by another player has disconnected; right now, it does the simplest and most straightforward thing possible: it ceases to exist. If they didn't make the client behave this way, strange behaviors could indeed happen - if they try to preserve that ship as a player's ship, one that a player can return to if they reconnect quickly, and so on.

But by doing the behind-the-scenes NPC replacement swap, those issues ought to go out the proverbial window.

I mean...if any given game client has no problem rendering any given NPC ship in general, with little-to-no input from the main servers (as far as I know?), then there's no reason that NPC ship can't have identical characteristics/orientation to that of a player's, right?

But at this point we're back to assumption and speculation. It's frustrating because I'd really like to understand the technical issues behind this but it's mostly experience-based guesswork occasionally modified by a small but potentially ambiguous clue from FD. Kind of like the in-game mysteries in a way, but with no big reveal at the end.

True.

In addition there is an additional concern I have picked up on, the surrogate NPC approach could be used as a tool by griefers and gankers to frustrate players by initiating the attack and then logging off leaving NPCs to incur the major part of the in-game bounties and effectively cause griefing by proxy. I would not put it past certain groups to capitalise on this kind of exploit.

Meh. Partly a non-issue because whoever shoots first becomes the wanted one, partly comes down to proper balancing of ships to not be exponentially better the bigger you go. For most players that aren't totally new to Elite, I imagine it would be mildly amusing and lead to either an easy escape or a fun NPC kill.

Would be further mitigated by the crime/karma system Fdev seems to be cooking up, too.

 

[lenna]

Meh. Partly a non-issue because whoever shoots first becomes the wanted one, partly comes down to proper balancing of ships to not be exponentially better the bigger you go. For most players that aren't totally new to Elite, I imagine it would be mildly amusing and lead to either an easy escape or a fun NPC kill.

Would be further mitigated by the crime/karma system Fdev seems to be cooking up, too.

Nope on both counts... an example could be a combat Cutter/Anaconda/Corvette attacking a trader Cobra (not without shields just not geared up for full on combat) wiith light weapons initially (to initiate the attack without killing them outright), then said attacker CLing, the surrogate NPC will more than likely make mince meat of the Cobra. NPCs are not necessarily easy kills especially when they are in larger ships despite the claims of some. In such a case, the original PC aggressor would not get the full bounty for killing the target, just the initial short term bounty for unprovoked attacking.

I am not sure that the Karma system that FD is proposing will actually solve anything, it may or may not address the CLing concerns and if it does then surrogate NPCs will just be adding an exploit for griefers/gankers to use that will notionally allow them to grief/gank by proxy without an appropriate level of in-game punishment. On the flip side of that, I do not think griefers/gankers who CL should suffer the penalties that a surrogate NPC would incur in their place. Better to avoid the deliberate CLing situation by other means IMO.

I am tired of your apparent blind doggedness on this particular sub-issue of the thread and I have proposed a way to settle the debate once and for all (a poll in another thread) but you seem to be not interested in that and instead just continue to promote the rhetoric that suits some apparent personal agenda while not still IMO not actually addressing the underlying issue(s) raised. CLing is not just an issue of a target CLing but any participant in PvP combat CLing and your proposal could make the aggressor CLing situation worse (not better)

Rebalancing of ships would not address the underlying issues to a sufficient degree without making the larger vessels effectively pointless ships to have/own IMO. It is fair and reasonable that larger ships can not be taken down easily if at all with smaller ships in one-on-one battles and in 2/3 smaller ships to 1 larger ship it is fair that the larger ship can still win (but also can still loose assuming appropriate weapons on the smaller ships). The original v2.2 Guardians balance seemed about right to me, smaller ships could still cause some concern for my Corvette if kitted out appropriately but in general they are not a major threat in smaller numbers. An SLF launched from a larger ship can also become a major threat if not dealt with first. Personally, I see ZERO reason to rebalance. The only real concern on the balance front that I can see is if non-Horizons owners encounter engineered opponents (PC or NPC), in which case things become more muddy. Perhaps the most appropriate approach would be to segregate the v1.7 players from engineer upgraded opponents rather than messing around with the game balance in general. The exception being where a v1.7 player is winged up with a Horizons player, in which case all bets are off.

Overall though, balance is a very subjective thing with no real right or wrong answers... just opinions. In the context of CLing, it is largely irrelevant except for the case of an engineered Horizons aggressor attacking a v1.x notionally disadvantaged opponent (segregation being my preferred solution to that chestnut).