There's a lot of whining on the forums lately about combat logging and what FD should do about it. The issue with combat logging isn't combat logging per se, it's that FD has created a situation in Elite where PVP is an inbalanced, unrewarding activity that represents either an annoyance (at best) or an interaction that blocks player progress (at worst). It doesn't serve any meaningful purpose in the game and as a result there is a sharp distinction between players who engage in it and those who have no interest in it, with the latter group either tolerating it or avoiding it completely (Solo or Mobius). I play exclusively in Open so I've seen quite a bit of interdictions by other CMDRs although I don't engage in PVP myself other than the times I'm interdicted.
I can go into detail about how and why the Elite PVP community, in general, is terrible and generally no better than the spawncamping snipers I encountered routinely in Battlefield, but a comms screenshot can explain everything I'm going to say much more easily. To provide some background, this conversation happened after a series of interdictions while I was returning to Bluford Orbital in LHS 3447 in my Asp. I was interdicted 3-4 times by the same CMDR in an Anaconda. The first time I was interdicted there was a voicecomms request (which I ignored) and shortly after the voicecomms request the other CMDR opened fire almost immediately. There was no other text chat until after the player gave up on interdicting me. Each time I was interdicted I simply submitted, boosted and jumped to supercruise again taking very little damage. My Asp has a boost of 450 m/s so it wasn't hard to get out of the Anaconda's masslock range in maybe 5-10 seconds. I took a bit of fire but not much, the Anaconda got less than one ring off of my 200 MJ thermal shields at which point I started dropping chaff and his weapons stopped hitting me at all. At no point was I in any real danger and the system security even managed to get his shields down at some point. I briefly considered engaging him to take out his thrusters, as my Asp has two incendiary multis and a quad missile loadout, but I really couldn't be bothered. After doing this 3-4 times the CMDR sent me this text exchange:
This player not only admitted that they were afraid to interdict other players on anything close to even footing, they even suggested that by jumping back to supercruise I was "griefing" them which I thought was hilarious. I was even going to tell them that simply jumping back to SC isn't called "high waking" but they had already left comm range at that point.
Unfortunately this is typical of most of the PVP players I've encountered in Elite, they almost always have an infantile need to "win" and specifically look for the most imbalanced, low-risk situations to fight other CMDRs. Usually the interdictions are dramatically imbalanced in the other player's favor, i.e., being interdicted by multiple ships or interdicting a target using a far superior ship where there is no real challenge. I have noticed that I am interdicted much less frequently when I'm flying a combat ship. So far I've never been interdicted by another player in my FDL and I'm only occasionally interdicted in my Anaconda or Python. The interdictions seem to happen much more frequently when I'm in an Asp, Keelback, Diamondback or other small or midsized ship. In this regard the majority of the Elite PVP playerbase doesn't seem to be any better than those I've encountered in other online games, whether it's the MMO or fps genres, they are all generally terrible at the game and are simply looking to "win" with as little actual challenge as possible.
I should also point out that this player wasn't very good at all. They did almost no damage to my ship (despite having only 200 MJ shields) and clearly didn't realize that their Anaconda wasn't ever going to catch my Asp and yet somehow expected that I was going to run right into his guns for him. They apparently had some understanding of how terrible they were compared to other CMDRs because they knew not to engage other CMDRs flying Anacondas or Corvettes but despite this they still needed to "win" so badly that apparently my Asp was the largest target he would risk interdicting. I should also point out that these interdictions occurred in LHS 3447, the starting system, so he's likely to find mostly low-level CMDRs and probably wasn't even expecting to meet my fully Engineered Asp which could easily get away from multiple interdictions with little to no damage. Against a new player in a slow, vulnerable ship, however, this sub-par CMDR in his sub-par Anaconda could have still ruined their day and left that new player with a rebuy or lost NPC pilot at a time when the mission system is still nerfed too badly to earn any reasonable incomes from the game.
FD clearly needs to completely overhaul the PVP and interdiction systems. The problems here are too numerous to address properly in this post, but in terms of the main issues we currently have badly broken and buggy interdiction mechanics, no real crime and punishment system, high death "cost" of losing NPC pilots and expensive rebuys along with no incentive whatsoever for sticking around to fight a player who interdicts you. When you add on top of all of these problems the tendency for the Elite PVP playerbase to be rather terrible at the game and look specifically for seals to club it's not hard to see why PVP in Elite is such a massive mess and why most CMDRs have no interest in it at all. When the PVP playerbase then turns around and complains about "griefing" when a CMDR simply jumps away repeatedly after being interdicted or whines about "cheating" when a CMDR combat logs that tells you that they seem to think the system should be designed to work in their favor. Unfortunately until FD addresses the fundamental flaws of the PVP system in Elite I don't see any of this getting any better and at present it is a major obstacle for new players.
I can go into detail about how and why the Elite PVP community, in general, is terrible and generally no better than the spawncamping snipers I encountered routinely in Battlefield, but a comms screenshot can explain everything I'm going to say much more easily. To provide some background, this conversation happened after a series of interdictions while I was returning to Bluford Orbital in LHS 3447 in my Asp. I was interdicted 3-4 times by the same CMDR in an Anaconda. The first time I was interdicted there was a voicecomms request (which I ignored) and shortly after the voicecomms request the other CMDR opened fire almost immediately. There was no other text chat until after the player gave up on interdicting me. Each time I was interdicted I simply submitted, boosted and jumped to supercruise again taking very little damage. My Asp has a boost of 450 m/s so it wasn't hard to get out of the Anaconda's masslock range in maybe 5-10 seconds. I took a bit of fire but not much, the Anaconda got less than one ring off of my 200 MJ thermal shields at which point I started dropping chaff and his weapons stopped hitting me at all. At no point was I in any real danger and the system security even managed to get his shields down at some point. I briefly considered engaging him to take out his thrusters, as my Asp has two incendiary multis and a quad missile loadout, but I really couldn't be bothered. After doing this 3-4 times the CMDR sent me this text exchange:
This player not only admitted that they were afraid to interdict other players on anything close to even footing, they even suggested that by jumping back to supercruise I was "griefing" them which I thought was hilarious. I was even going to tell them that simply jumping back to SC isn't called "high waking" but they had already left comm range at that point.
Unfortunately this is typical of most of the PVP players I've encountered in Elite, they almost always have an infantile need to "win" and specifically look for the most imbalanced, low-risk situations to fight other CMDRs. Usually the interdictions are dramatically imbalanced in the other player's favor, i.e., being interdicted by multiple ships or interdicting a target using a far superior ship where there is no real challenge. I have noticed that I am interdicted much less frequently when I'm flying a combat ship. So far I've never been interdicted by another player in my FDL and I'm only occasionally interdicted in my Anaconda or Python. The interdictions seem to happen much more frequently when I'm in an Asp, Keelback, Diamondback or other small or midsized ship. In this regard the majority of the Elite PVP playerbase doesn't seem to be any better than those I've encountered in other online games, whether it's the MMO or fps genres, they are all generally terrible at the game and are simply looking to "win" with as little actual challenge as possible.
I should also point out that this player wasn't very good at all. They did almost no damage to my ship (despite having only 200 MJ shields) and clearly didn't realize that their Anaconda wasn't ever going to catch my Asp and yet somehow expected that I was going to run right into his guns for him. They apparently had some understanding of how terrible they were compared to other CMDRs because they knew not to engage other CMDRs flying Anacondas or Corvettes but despite this they still needed to "win" so badly that apparently my Asp was the largest target he would risk interdicting. I should also point out that these interdictions occurred in LHS 3447, the starting system, so he's likely to find mostly low-level CMDRs and probably wasn't even expecting to meet my fully Engineered Asp which could easily get away from multiple interdictions with little to no damage. Against a new player in a slow, vulnerable ship, however, this sub-par CMDR in his sub-par Anaconda could have still ruined their day and left that new player with a rebuy or lost NPC pilot at a time when the mission system is still nerfed too badly to earn any reasonable incomes from the game.
FD clearly needs to completely overhaul the PVP and interdiction systems. The problems here are too numerous to address properly in this post, but in terms of the main issues we currently have badly broken and buggy interdiction mechanics, no real crime and punishment system, high death "cost" of losing NPC pilots and expensive rebuys along with no incentive whatsoever for sticking around to fight a player who interdicts you. When you add on top of all of these problems the tendency for the Elite PVP playerbase to be rather terrible at the game and look specifically for seals to club it's not hard to see why PVP in Elite is such a massive mess and why most CMDRs have no interest in it at all. When the PVP playerbase then turns around and complains about "griefing" when a CMDR simply jumps away repeatedly after being interdicted or whines about "cheating" when a CMDR combat logs that tells you that they seem to think the system should be designed to work in their favor. Unfortunately until FD addresses the fundamental flaws of the PVP system in Elite I don't see any of this getting any better and at present it is a major obstacle for new players.
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