An investigation into Frontier's actions on Combat Logging

[DarkWalker]

No I repped you.

It's awesome to think about. Any idea if there's a name for this problem?

ie two generals problem (which it isn't?)

Desynchronization.

It can spontaneously happen. For example, if for whichever reason you get a nasty lag spike, or if something in the route between you and the other player gives; ED is a fast-paced game, so even a couple seconds outage might cause a desync.

Not forcing the players to leave each other's instance when this happens would cause a lot of very noticeable rubberbanding, shots not registering, etc, which might be worse than the perceived combat logging.

 

[Jack Schitt]

This is why adopting something like what others games do and artificially keeping that person's ship within the game for several minutes is the ideal soluton. The problem would literally disappear overnight and free CS to actually do CS rather than respond to combat logging report tickets.

As has been pointed out, this simply isn't doable in this game as it stands. The only entity that has 100% awareness of what the player's ship is doing is the player's own PC running the client code, which is pushing its bytes over hardware controlled by the player. The player is totally in control.

The fail-deadly system proposed by Sundae may be technically viable but it would result in a lot of false positives caused by flaky connections or bugs in ED's own network code. If any of those bugs could be exploited to cause remote client crashes it would be chaos. I doubt very much that it's a risk FD will ever be prepared to take.

Problem with developing a full crime and punishment system is this: Everyone has their own idea of it. Some was it strict, some want a 50/50, some want a loopholed system, some desire for things to remain as is, some want a system that is beyond what i personally would define as fun.

Come on, Brett, surely you don't need to be reminded that the ED galaxy, even just human space, is huge. There is plenty of room for a C&P system that scales across all of those desires; fast and harsh for superpower capitals, non-existent for lawless space, with varying degrees in between. This isn't a difficult concept. Stop treating the entire gamespace as one homogeneous arena, every inch of which must please everyone. The lack of granularity in the simulation is precisely what got us into this mess in the first place.

Honestly, I don't know how to react to this thread. I hate combat loggers, I hate metagamers and I hate corporate . Right now I genuinely can't work out who is most deserving of my frustration.

 

[DarkWalker]

Regardless, if you choose to play a game with a mandatory online component, be prepared for the consequences of losing your connection. This is your responsibility, not anyone else's.

I don't think this applies to a game that was advertised as being playable on a train while using mobile tethering to get Internet access, like ED was.

 

[bitstorm]

Regardless, if you choose to play a game with a mandatory online component, be prepared for the consequences of losing your connection. This is your responsibility, not anyone else's.

Sucks for folk in AUS.

Sucks when the game crashes.

Sucks when there's a lot of people in an instance.

Sucks if there's someone exploiting that their peer is authoritative over yours.

A Frontier staff member "lost connection" on one of the recent streams, stream was fine tho.

 

[Heavenly-Hammer]

Regardless, if you choose to play a game with a mandatory online component, be prepared for the consequences of losing your connection. This is your responsibility, not anyone else's.

Of course.

Sucks for folk in AUS.

Sucks when the game crashes.

Sucks when there's a lot of people in an instance.

Sucks if there's someone exploiting that their peer is authoritative over yours.

A Frontier staff member "lost connection" on one of the recent streams, stream was fine tho.

Sure does. If your connection is so unstable that you're losing your connection in that 1% of the time when you're in PvP combat, it's your problem; not ours.

 

[Sundae]

Sucks for folk in AUS.

Sucks when the game crashes.

Sucks when there's a lot of people in an instance.

Sucks if there's someone exploiting that their peer is authoritative over yours.

A Frontier staff member "lost connection" on one of the recent streams, stream was fine tho.

You are right, they do need to improve their netcode, too. Doesn't make me wrong, though.

 

[Truesilver]

I'm aware, and it's a subject that's been debated on these forums and reddit (and to the extent, some discord servers) for quite some time. Myself and many others on the Elite team have been keeping tabs of it all. While I don't have any news regarding if, when, or how we will deal with such a system/revamped system, i can say we're watching, playing our cards close to our chest at this point in time.

Brett, I say this whenever re-vamped C&P comes up, in the hope that the baby won't one day go out with the bathwater ...

... if FDev ever do introduce harsher in-game penalties for killing clean Cmdrs, please exempt all Powerplay Pledger v Powerplay Pledger kills from those penalties.

Thank you!

 

[GluttonyFang]

Sometimes, a company needs to step up and not let their customers push them around so much.
I work in customer service, and often have to bend over backwards for customers, but if some customer came in and did something like what SDC did. We would kick them off the property.
Some customers are not worth it.

The question here is really that we have no idea what FD's customers are.

The game itself is a sandbox, PvE and PvP happen as long as you are not in solo.

If the devs don't want PvP or don't see it as important, they wouldn't do balancing for it or have features aimed at making PvP better. But they have done things to improve PvP and haven't offered a PVE mode.

If the devs don't want PvE, they wouldn't allow something like menu logging, but they do.

And what you have left are customers slinging mud at one another trying to prove that daddy FD loves them and their faction more than others, which is just sad at that point.

yet, both sides are yelling for crime and punishment, at least from what I can see most people are interested in crime and punishment improvement. But Brett C comes out and say that the company's too afraid to take complex steps out of fear of offending one side of the customer base.

The only conclusion I can draw is that FD is somehow happy with the current state of the game, that combat logging is fine and "griefing" is also fine. Which is a toxic cycle that goes to no end, which might as well call the game "Elite: ToxicMudSlingContest."

 

[bitstorm]

I fear the situation is a little grimmer than that, it's FD's attitude at question here.

And SDCs obviously.

 

[Sundae]

And SDCs obviously.

Our attitude is apparent.

 

[GluttonyFang]

And SDCs obviously.

No doubt I have my disagreement with SDC's take on many aspects of ED and some of their actions I wholly disagree with.

But the differentiation however is that SDC is at best a player group, and FD is the hosting company.

I think one causes more concern than the other.

 

[StuartGT]

What did I say about OP not having the result you wanted?

In about a month maybe two Frontiers reaction to combat logging will be back to the way it was. Unpunished baring a few cases here and there. We still wont have a proper C&P system, Frontier will be quieter than ever, and the community will be a lot more bitter. Angry with each other, angry with Frontier.

Are you now beginning to see my point about why this post was so unhelpful?

On the contrary. I'm very happy with how the community in general has unified in voice that Crime & Punishment and Combat Logging both need resolving, and the sooner the better. Both Reddit and the forums have been excellent in being vocal and gaining Dev attention through drama.

The facts to take away from this are:

• Many Combat Loggers haven't been punished.
• No immediate plans to further discourage Combat Logging
• No immediate plans to implement a proper Crime & Punishment system

And this is all on FDev. The actions of SDC, and the drama from the community, have brought the issue further into the open (and gaming media) to apply pressure for FDev to change their policy on this matter.

 

[bitstorm]

Of course.



Sure does. If your connection is so unstable that you're losing your connection in that 1% of the time when you're in PvP combat, it's your problem; not ours.

Well in fairness you can generalise "in PvP combat" to "when there's a sudden increase in network traffic".

If you're in AUS, I'm UK, we can still have issues despite both our connections being totally fine.

Sure it's easy just to say "your fault suck it up" though, you have the benefit of not having to implement a solution that actually works in the real world.

 

[GluttonyFang]

On the contrary. I'm very happy with how the community in general has unified in voice that Crime & Punishment and Combat Logging both need resolving, and the sooner the better. Both Reddit and the forums have been excellent in being vocal and gaining Dev attention through drama.

The facts to take away from this are:

• Many Combat Loggers haven't been punished.
• No immediate plans to further discourage Combat Logging
• No immediate plans to implement a proper Crime & Punishment system

And this is all on FDev. The actions of SDC, and the drama from the community, have brought the issue further into the open (and gaming media) to apply pressure for FDev to change their policy on this matter.

Very much so this.

 

[Red Anders]

Its a trucking sim, Not mad max trucks with spikes and guns! so I think that is a absurd argument. There is no core game rule saying that trucks can't park up in front of a depot, then go AFK either. That does not make it intended gameplay by any reasonable standard and both will get you kicked by the session administrator. You actually have to pass a peer review of your skills for some servers as its taken that seriously and, you know what, managing to force another truck into a ditch is not one of the tests.

So I asked you a question, and you replied saying I'd made an absurd argument. One which only actually applies (and I did make this clear) if the answer to the question was 'no it is not specifically prohibited'. If the behaviour will get you kicked by an admin then either the game has insane admins who are allowed to kick people who are not breaching any game rules, or the behaviour is against the rules.

Combat logging is against the rules here. So remind me, why do you think it's reasonable again with reference to your own logic.

??

Reductio ad absurdum pal.

Oh another one. Read my post again and take note of the question marks. Regardless, the concept that a game has rules regarding behaviour which are published hardly qualifies as r ad a.

 

[DarkWalker]

As has been pointed out, this simply isn't doable in this game as it stands. The only entity that has 100% awareness of what the player's ship is doing is the player's own PC running the client code, which is pushing its bytes over hardware controlled by the player. The player is totally in control.

Just for clarification, you can't send this information to the other players in the same instance; if the other clients had this information, it would be possible to develop undetectable cheats to show every small scrap of information about the other player's ship without any need for a scan, including cargo, fittings, ammunition, etc. The only way to prevent this kind of cheat from being developed is to simply not have that information on the other players' clients.

This is why any server used to keep a disconnected player online needs to be a Frontier-controlled server, one the players don't have direct access. Worse, it would need to have been monitoring the combat beforehand, as by the time anyone can detect a potential disconnection the disconnected client isn't available anymore to send that information. And, to make things even worse, unless Frontier had said servers on all continents, they would add (potentially unacceptable) latency to everyone's game.

 

[Patau82]

Rule #1: Don't fly what you can't afford to rebuy.

can afford it but wont be too happy having to pay rebuy if my connection drops, also will I lose my crew and missions bounties ect?

 

[Backelaer]

I'm aware, and it's a subject that's been debated on these forums and reddit (and to the extent, some discord servers) for quite some time. Myself and many others on the Elite team have been keeping tabs of it all. While I don't have any news regarding if, when, or how we will deal with such a system/revamped system, i can say we're watching, playing our cards close to our chest at this point in time.

Personally, I know that what we have right now could use a fair bit of TLC. At the same time, it's not something that we want to rush to the plate, ship-it haphazardly, with numerous issues accompanied with such.

I understand implementing this is not something to be taken lightly. And I don't believe the majority of the playerbase is asking for an insta-fix. If it takes time, that's no problem in my book. I'm just glad to hear this is in the works, and taken seriously.
Also, an actual well thought out implementation of a crime and punsihment system would really make this forum a little less glum. Don't underestimate that either

 

[CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost]

…
The only conclusion I can draw is that FD is somehow happy with the current state of the game, that combat logging is fine and "griefing" is also fine. …

An other conclusion would be that FD looks at their data and sees that combat logging and "griefing" isn't affecting the majority of players and that ignoring both things is fine, or trying to fix those things is to difficult for the little reward in resulting customer satisfaction.

Obviously it's bad for those who are affected by those two things.

Or FD simply has no clue what to do.

 

[Asp Explorer]

InfactIhave3PhDsInNetworkingandComputersInGeneralAndSpecific

My Lulzidris just exploded.

Why don't you get a job at CIG?