Frontier - Enough Shoulder Shrugging - Get Tough on Exploits and Exploiters.

[STARB0YY]

And how are they going to know that some Cmdr is a serial combat logger, because you told them? There is no technical way to determine if the payer pulled out the cable and was legitimately just disconnected. Yeah if your in a fight with them you can pretty much guess what they did but how does FDev really determine that?

Because they have been caught combat logging many times? How many people legitimately have timely disconnects every time they're about to lose their ship or cargo? Some players are very clearly just combat loggers and they get reported by many players. Besides, frontier have said that they can differentiate a legit disconnect/crash and a manual task kill with their data.

 

[Threeofseven]

Attempts to remove exploits often have unintended consequences like the sothis nerf effected ALL missions everywhere or the smuggling missions nerf. Now Robigo missions pay the same as shorter legit delivery missions. Smuggling was absolutely not an exploit and there is no logic behind the nerf.

 

[SeaFireliv]

Combat logging harms anyone trying to pvp, as it prevents them taking part in a perfectly legitimate game mechanic. If someone were able to sit there and at the flick of a switch disconnect players hauling, mining, exploring et al, there would be an uproar.

There was a time the developers stated they would track folks combat logging and asked players to report anyone doing it, and that habitual offenders would face consequences as they consider it "unsportsmanlike like behaviour" their words not mine. While their early determination to deal with folks combat logging seems to have evaporated, they certainly consider it an issue, and it is an issue that still needs to be addressed at some level.

So by combat logging you people mean those who quit in the middle of a fight? We have this in mature flight sims too: You`re on the 6 of a fighter, you know you have him, he knows he`s finished- Suddenly he vanishes cos he logged out. Annoying sure, but most people worth their salt don`t do it and you shame those who do.

If I understand right then it is impossible to fix this. Think about it. People suffer disconnections from the net all the time for various reasons often extrenal ones.

Are you seriously saying a person should be punished for simply losing their connection? Because that`s what you`re saying and this is what I mean when I say that such big daddy rules would do more harm than good.

All that can be done is to remember them and shame them.

 

[Omega Fighter]

There are also false positives, instancing simply breaks up....had this problem even in some friendly fights.

 

[Wescott]

I don't like it either but what would you do about it? How do you determine if they pull out the cable, shut off their router, kill the game or how ever they are dumping themselves out of the game. How do you make the determination between a cable pull and a legitimate network disconnect? I am sure if the penalty was "Boom your ship is destroyed and you get rebuy" you would be very angry if your ISP had a blip and it cost you millions of credits.

Now the credit exploits like stacking. I guess we have to fix them, but there were many more in the past but really, is that fair to the new player when established players are now billionaires because of exploiting "exploits".

I can see fixing a CG that is broken and people figure it out but cutting things out like stacking seems harsh when it has been in game for a while. Would you voluntarily give up a big chunk of credits to "balance" things? Yeah, didn't think so.

I don't know if there are any combat exploits, but of there are then yes, those should be fixed.

If proper event tracking is used, you would start to see a pattern develop for those individuals who " just by chance" always seem to have a "convenient" net fault when in combat at a particular stage in the combat, CCP managed to stop pretty much most combat logging in EveOnline and in there you loose your precious faction fitted T2/T3 ship, its gone, they cleaned up their game, it's basically a matter of FD having the will to do it. If they do NOT, then the message they send to the players is "we don't care, so keep doing it [wink] ".

 

[Stealthie]

So by combat logging you people mean those who quit in the middle of a fight? We have this in mature flight sims too: You`re on the 6 of a fighter, you know you have him, he knows he`s finished- Suddenly he vanishes cos he logged out. Annoying sure, but most people worth their salt don`t do it and you shame those who do.

If I understand right then it is impossible to fix this. Think about it. People suffer disconnections from the net all the time for various reasons often extrenal ones.

Are you seriously saying a person should be punished for simply losing their connection? Because that`s what you`re saying and this is what I mean when I say that such big daddy rules would do more harm than good.

All that can be done is to remember them and shame them.

Dunno what sim' you're talking about but it's always going to depend on the consequences.

If success is measured in terms of mission success then it doesn't really matter if the player logs out or whether you destroy them.
Either way, you've still gained the same advantage by removing an enemy aircraft from the battlefield.

In ED it's not quite the same situation because engagements tend to be "personal" rather than strategic.
If you're bounty-hunting and your quarry CLs then you've lost that bounty.
If you're a pirate and your prey CLs, you've lost that cargo.
In either case, you've also lost any XP and rep' that might have gone with the kill.
And, from the other guy's POV, he's avoided the cost of a re-buy and (in some cases) he's retained the value of any assets/cargo/missions that he might've been carrying prior to the engagement.
Which means he's got more money to plough into new weapons and defences with which to put some holes in you if you ever meet again.

It's undeniable that CLing does yield a quantifiable benefit for those who do it.
The only question is whether it's an issue worth taking drastic action which is likely to penalise innocent players.
On that we agree. I don't think it is.

 

[Mole HD]

Is thread going to degenerate into yet another discussion by 'SturmAbteilung combat logger' on how they are they only people, ever, on earth, to have had someone rage quit on them in a multiplayer game?

It was pretty interesting up to now...

 

[STARB0YY]

Is thread going to degenerate into yet another discussion by 'SturmAbteilung combat logger' on how they are they only people, ever, on earth, to have had someone rage quit on them in a multiplayer game?

It was pretty interesting up to now...

In a thread about exploits it's bound to come up. It's been plaguing the game for so long.

 

[Mole HD]

In a thread about exploits it's bound to come up. It's been plaguing the game for so long.

It's been plaguing every adversarial mutliplayer game since we all trotted off with smiley faces to play Xwing V Tie Fighter on the Microsoft Gamezone or Tribes 2 on Barrysworld servers sporting our shiny and new ITU V.90 recommendation 56k modems.

Why do those behaving like slightly obnoxious and antagonistic children playing ED assume they're the first ever human beings to have encountered it? It counts as a win...nothing else. Those that played competitive division 1 Tribes on Barrysworld will know what I mean...if they're not all dead by now

 

[Pyrobee]

I quite like it if people didn't go round telling others how the game 'should' be played.

 

[Theodrid]

I quite like it if people didn't go round telling others how the game 'should' be played.

Nobody is though, I, and others, are asking the developer of this game to close loopholes that harm everything from making the rankings virtually meaningless/worthless to PVP in all it's aspects and a whole range of other issues. I am honestly struggling to think of another developer, (though no doubt there are some), that seems so downright 'meh' about the open promotion of exploits in it's game on it's own bloody forums, let alone the countless 'big hit' YouTube videos and such.

 

[SnowyNI]

I think the horse has already run off, has bought 50 ships, A rated them, and NOW you all want to close the gate??? [wacky] [where is it] [squeeeee]

 

[Theodrid]

I think the horse has already run off, has bought 50 ships, A rated them, and NOW you all want to close the gate??? [wacky] [where is it] [squeeeee]

Hehe, I know Snow, and there is no denying that, but, as I said earlier, no harm in hoping at least the genie's left leg can be put back in the bottle!

 

[m0rl0ck]

To be clear from the offset, I am not going to list the rather large amount of exploits available in Elite Dangerous, we all know what/where they are, we all know there are countless exploit 'tutorials' on YouTube and the like and we all know they exist.

Frontier, clean up your game, clean up the image of the game and regain the high ground that you have conceded all too easily.

Personally I admire that you seem to be posting out of a sense of fair play and i agree with the sentiment. If there is no sense of fair play in the game, there is no point in playing it.

But i dont think FD cares about fair play. If they did we wouldnt have the engineers. Multi-pips, from what i have heard, seem to be another example, but i havent seen them in operation yet.
A sense of fair play in ED would be great and would make it feel as though your individual efforts and skill mattered. I dont think that the current FD team is capable of seeing it the way you, i and others might. I think they are more concerned with sales than any sense of fairness in the game and cant see how the two are linked.

 

[CMDR _BigJay_]

Personally I admire that you seem to be posting out of a sense of fair play and i agree with the sentiment. If there is no sense of fair play in the game, there is no point in playing it.

But i dont think FD cares about fair play. If they did we wouldnt have the engineers. Multi-pips, from what i have heard, seem to be another example, but i havent seen them in operation yet.
A sense of fair play in ED would be great and would make it feel as though your individual efforts and skill mattered. I dont think that the current FD team is capable of seeing it the way you, i and others might. I think they are more concerned with sales than any sense of fairness in the game and cant see how the two are linked.

How can ED not be fair? We're all playing the exact same game.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

I think the horse has already run off, has bought 50 ships, A rated them, and NOW you all want to close the gate??? [wacky] [where is it] [squeeeee]

Yeah.

It's all about improving the game's mechanics.

 

[Gunnet]

SWTOR is a multiplayer game. ED is more of a singleplayer game with a persistent world and optional multiplayer. Frontier's reaction to alleged exploits is consistent with the reactions of other developers of games where one player's progress doesn't impact anybody else. They change anything which they don't like, but leave it at that.

The only exploits that warrant punitive action are those which directly impact other players in tangible ways, like suicide ramming at stations.

 

[stormyuk]

It's been plaguing every adversarial mutliplayer game since we all trotted off with smiley faces to play Xwing V Tie Fighter on the Microsoft Gamezone or Tribes 2 on Barrysworld servers sporting our shiny and new ITU V.90 recommendation 56k modems.

Totally off topic I used to referee on Barrysworld (got the mug, t-shirt and everything) for the Unreal Tournament leagues. I was on swanky ISDN back in those days. (after starting life on a 2400bps modem eeek, now I feel old).

 

[Morbad]

How can ED not be fair? We're all playing the exact same game.

Because some people are trying to play a clean or immersive game and others are willing to game the system in ways that have no in-game explanation or context.

I personally will not engage in behavior I find to be clearly absurd and my ability to accrue assets suffers accordingly. Were I willing to play the game in a manner some do as a matter of course, I'd have many billions more credits, and countless more/better engineered equipment.

However, I am not willing to do this, and I am annoyed that Frontier has one set of rules for those who share a similar vision to theirs, and then a less restrictive set for cheaters.

The only exploits that warrant punitive action are those which directly impact other players in tangible ways, like suicide ramming at stations.

Frankly, I think it's ludicrous to consider this more disruptive than data/material duplication, disconnecting from NPCs, abusing relogging/mode switching to manipulate missions boards, or any of a thousand other things.

The station blowing up CMDRs that break traffic rules is eminently plausible within the setting's context, while all these other exploits you are so dismissive of are blatant intrusions of out of game reality upon in game events/capabilities.

 

[CMDR _BigJay_]

Because some people are trying to play a clean or immersive game and others are willing to game the system in ways that have no in-game explanation or context.

I personally will not engage in behavior I find to be clearly absurd and my ability to accrue assets suffers accordingly. Were I willing to play the game in a manner some do as a matter of course, I'd have many billions more credits, and countless more/better engineered equipment.

However, I am not willing to do this, and I am annoyed that Frontier has one set of rules for those who share a similar vision to theirs, and then a less restrictive set for cheaters.

So.... What I'm reading here is that you want FD to enforce rules to make people play the game the way that you want to play the game. I can't stress how much I disagree with that.

You don't need billions to enjoy this game (I'm pretty sure you know that). I could play this game with my Cobra MkIII and enjoy it nearly as much as I do now. I could play this game with only my Anaconda and I would be 99% happy. I could play with only my Anaconda and my FdL and be completely and totally satisfied. (My 'conda is worth less than 300Mcr so it's not top shelf, but close).

I have Billions.. Because I spent a lot of time working for them. I do some of the things you describe as exploiting, although I disagree with you there too. I follow Frontier's rules for the game closely. I even RP as a (mostly) law abiding citizen. I am no less than neutral with ANY minor faction anywhere. I have no fines, no bounties, I have committed THREE murders(accidental) in the ~1200hrs I've been playing. I happen to really like engineering. I like designing, building and tuning ships. This takes money.

During the course of my gameplay it is not my intention to hurt NPCs or humans. I don't want to mess up your game for you, and I'll try hard not to(for instance, I'll play both sides of a war if I'm in a system that I have no interest in). Meanwhile you're over here beating a drum loudly in FD's face trying to convince them that *my* playstyle should be nerfed. You're griefing me bro...

Just try to think about it from everyone's perspective. You'll grow as a person. I've found this thread interesting and had my mind changed about a few things, but at the core, I still really feel like people need to be able to play the game however they want. And if that means grinding hard for credits, then so be it.