But you can't combat log, you have to disconnect. It's also against the tos. I suppose your right fd don't seem to care but taking advantage of that doesn't let you off the hook, your still a poor sport if you do it.
Could you point out these terms of service where it states disconnecting from the game is not allowed?
For what it's worth, I agree with you, it's poor sportsmanship. But you are confusing sportsmanship with the ruleset of the game. If you want to impose sportsmanship rules, there are private groups for that. If someone wants to be obnoxious in Open, that's up to them.
Everyone has their own notion of what is and isn't fair play. Who are you to unilaterally impose your view on everyone else? If they agree with you that's fine. But for strangers in Open that can't be assumed. These combat loggers might not even be aware of 'the rules'.
Combat logging, in the sense of pulling the plug, is not a part of the game rules. It's a 'meta' action that occurs outside the structure of the game. It's the equivalent of tipping the table over when losing at chess - not part of the rules of the game.
Your chess example is a very good one. If I sit down to a game of chess with my wife and I sense I am losing, there is nothing in the rules of chess to stop me from getting up and walking away from the game (or tipping the table over) to avoid the loss. Just as in Elite currently there is nothing to stop me from walking away from the game at any point. You might say that is bad sportsmanship and I agree. In chess, my wife not be inclined to play me again. In Elite, players might add me to my ignore list. But in either case it is not against the rules, or an 'exploit'. Is it an exploit in chess that I can stop playing at any point?
The way to avoid bad sportsmanship with strangers is to agree on a code of conduct beforehand. In chess, I might agree with a player who has a reputation for walking away that if he does so it counts as a win. If I was to play in a tournament that rule would definitely be imposed. In elite the mechanism for a code of conduct is the group system.
If FD had intended players to be able to escape from combat at will, they would have added a in-game function to allow it.
It matters not one tiny jot what Frontier did and didn't intend. All that matters is the behaviour they encoded into the game. Since the dawn of gaming people have been doing things the designers did not intend. The designer of Quake did not intend people to rocket jump. The designer of association football did not intend the Cruyff turn. My favourite computer game of all time is an RTS called Total Annihilation and practically every action performed by players at the high end of that game were not intended.
Frontier talked on and on about 'emergent behaviour' in the run up to release. They encourage players going against their intentions. And frankly, if they didn't anticipate players would ALT+F4 in combat they've been asleep for the entire history of multiplayer gaming and deserve all they get.
If they don't intend this behaviour then they should
do something about it!
Instead, the code of conduct that all players agree to specifically states:
"No cheating or taking advantage of exploits in the game
We do not tolerate cheating of any kind in the game, this includes using automated programs or services offered outside of the game to generate player advantage, altering game code or using cheat codes.
We also do not tolerate the use of any exploits or the use of any possible bugs in the game to generate player advantage.
Any player caught cheating or taking advantage of any exploits or bugs will be penalise and could face a game ban."
https://store.elitedangerous.com/code-of-conduct/
Well, turning my computer off does not include using automated programs, services, altering game code, using cheat codes and it's not exploiting a bug. So nothing in this applies unless you define combat logging to be an 'exploit'. Which I contend it is not. If you think it is, perhaps the next step would be for you to define what an exploit is? Saying it's an exploit because it's bad sportsmanship does not really cut it.
Pulling the plug is an exploit, pure and simple.
It's obviously not that simple, otherwise there wouldn't be all these people arguing about it. As I say, the next step in this conversation is for you to define the term 'exploit'.
So if I get interdicted by a group of bounty hunters hired by merchants and I choose to say my firewall "block all but one" and kill them that way on by one instead of actually playing the game. That is by your rulebook a legit way to play the game?
No, I've never said anything about firewalls, and I don't know how you derived this absurd example from anything I said. But according to another poster above, this wouldn't work. So we're all happy: this is accounted for by the ruleset of the game.
And it's not
my rulebook. This is my whole point! It's Frontier's rulebook! I don't set the rules of Open! And neither do you!
BTW, the rational crowd here is not attacking people who use the regular 15s timer to logout while in combat, it about the guys who just alt+f4 or just disconnect the network cable. 15s might be a little bit short, but that is how the game is. frontier might give us at least an indicator when someone is logging off and maybe increase the timer at least a little, but that is not the problem that angers so many. The guys who just unplug the cable are the problem.
With respect, just because someone disagrees with you it doesn't mean they are irrational. Other possibilities exist. They might be rational but wrong. Or you might be wrong.
I think you and others might think I'm supportive of this business - not at all, I don't agree with people pulling the cable. I think it's poor form. I support their right to do it in Open however. But what I think and what you think is irrelevant as I have said. The only way to change this behaviour is for Frontier to change the rules of the game. And they could do this very simply: if you disconnect from the server and there are hostiles in your instance, it counts as your death and the nearest enemy to you gets the bounty. That's it, problem solved. Yes, this would hurt players with flaky connections, but we're playing an always online multiplayer game here. Players with flaky connections are not the audience - their ship sailed with offline mode.
I wonder how many l33t-pvp'ers bought two+ accounts, found a nice quiet corner of space for themselves, and proceeded to log in all their accounts and blow up their own free sidewinders in their Uber-Viper to up their killscore?
