How to stop the cheats?

[Morbad]

There is no way to confirm that a disconnect is legit or not. If there was, it would be in place already.

On a case by case basis, no there isn't.

However, the intent behind a pattern of disconnections is not hard to determine. Poor connections will produce mostly random disconnections, or those not correlated with in-game actions. A cheater will disconnect when their vessels are in danger at a much higher rate than otherwise.

Caring or not caring aside he does bring up a good point. How does someone force a disconnect on another player?

I could give about zero !/@#s about clogging, but in your scenario here, how exactl does player 2 "force a disconnect" on player 1?

It's a peer-to-peer network model.

The game cannot tell who disconnects from who and if I block traffic to your IP on my end, it looks exactly as if you had pulled the cord to me, and if I had pulled the cord to you, and Frontier has no way of knowing who blocked who, or if even connection was disrupted intentionally or not.

The only good counter to cheating via disconnection or other network manipulations is to collect as much telemetry as possible, look for patters that indicate deliberate disconnections, then punishing that player in a manner that makes the consequence of cheating more costly than losing some ships. The game is not conducive to real-time protection or disconnection counters, which means the punishment when eventually caught should be that much more severe, if it's to serve as a deterrent.

Wouldn't that result in a desync, which can look very different than a log, and not have player 1 lose connection? The game data would surely reflect that

That's what a combat log (via disconnect) is an interruption in connection long enough to time out. It doesn't matter how the connection is disrupted...blocking an IP, killing the game task, or unplugging one's ethernet connection, etc.

Frontier can tell if someone loses connection to another peer but not Frontier, but in the case of port blocking, both peers report the same thing, and again, there is no way to divine the cause of this disconnect on a per case basis.

Even so, the number of people capable, let alone willing, to do this is far far lower than the number of people who log currently

This is true, but the best means to address both issues is the same.

Also, I have no idea what you mean by extra money I'm open

Stinja was pointing out that some people have advocated incentivising Open play.

This is impractical because it's not hard to make your self impossible to interact with, in Open, if you choose to. Hell, the game even provides tools for this in-game.

 

[heliman001]

I think a change of name for the game modes would help people to know what to expect.
Proper Hard.
Solitary
Circle of trust.

 

[CMDR ANCALAGON]

If you don’t care, don’t comment. Thanks.

But if Cmdr. Ancalagon doesn't comment, then we wouldn't know about his not caring, and I care about his opinion, even if he doesn't care.

I look forward to more commentary from Cmdr. Ancalagon.

I do not care one bit about the debates on the ethos (or morality, as some have stated) of combat logging.

I do care about the comment I quoted, which you can tell by the question that I asked.

Glad you enjoyed yourself though, and don't forget to clean yourself up.

This is from memory, as the idea of leaving a DC'ed ship remaining has been mentioned in other threads: but you know the IP of incoming connections (given Peer-to-peer), so you then have a script that blocks "unknown" IPs to your router (ie: not ones to your ISP, FDev etc, basically any other CMDR's IP), hence dropping them.

Hopefully someone else will chip in with the proper explanation, or not, if such discussion is against ToS.



Ditto when people propose the idea to give extra rewards for playing in Open. Disable uPnP, and you can join Open, but essentially never instance with another CMDR. Which would give a CMDR all the extra bonus credits from playing in Open, while being in Solo.

Ok, I get that FDEV couldn't tell the difference, but it sounds like both players would see the other timing out, or experience the same effects. Would that not mean that both players would be free to destroy the other, or both be sent to the menu? How would one be free to destroy the other, and the other be sent to menu?

 

[Phisto Sobanii]

Morbad, I'm confused (removed my snarky answer ).

I'll say it again but differently: how could I force a player other than myself to disconnect from the game? In case you missed why we cared, that was the concern in ANCALAGON's hypothetical situation above. I get that you can block IP traffic from my end and make it look weird... but is that it?

I think a change of name for the game modes would help people to know what to expect.
Proper Hard.
Solitary
Circle of trust.

That's pretty good.

 

[verminstar]

Caring or not caring aside he does bring up a good point. How does someone force a disconnect on another player?

If that doesn't get answered, then we're just using the merry land of imagination to shoot down an good idea.

I took a hit once after coming back to the bubble from a long time in the black...I lost 4 months of scan data so thats literally 4 months playtime...all fer someone to get their cheap thrill. Now I took the hit and didnt log...even though they told me afterwards they had taken on bets between themselves assuming I would...but I didnt. Didnt complain about it at the time either but then I would never personally clogout in such a way...not because its breaking the rules, just cos to me thats educational.

Thats why I stopped playing in open...not the loss itself which lets all think about and try not to admit the thought wouldnt cross yer mind if ye thought ye would get away with it...it certainly crossed mine but I wouldnt give them the satisfaction...Im hateful like that cos they also wont get another opportunity in the future.

Many will clog fer much less but the point remains the same here...if faced with a crippling loss of time invested...not credits as credits are meaningless in this context, and clogging out which is dishing out salt to the very players trying to farm theirs.

And thats why this so called debate gets so little sympathy from me...because the choice I made was longer lasting and legal and is still gaining salt on every hotel california thread there is...that in itself has been more entertaining than the game when its on slow burn mode. By all means, I agree that anyone caught clogging should be shadowbanned to solo fer a month at least. I would recommend just taking the hit and allowing the experience to give them a longer lasting impression of self awareness, and join mobius to avoid the moron element, or solo if ye love the game, not the players.

Thats the problem with humans...too predictable ^

 

[oflow]

I've seen lots of videos in my feed of players that I know have ganked me combat logging when the tides turn against them. And the reason they do it is the same reason that they gank people: because they can.

Also, the people always spouting the 'you knew the risks/dont play in open' argument the most tend to be people who are 'endgame' players. If you have a billion credit A-rated ship, you also most likely also have a billion+ in credits so even a $50mil rebuy isnt much to you. These tend to be the same people blasting away at people in lesser ships and unarmed trader vessels in my experience.

They only view things from a myopic combat only perspective because they've done everything else (maxed all engineers, a-rated their ships and have a huge pile of credits) so nothing left for them to do but gank people out of boredom. But being in open isnt just about the risks. Sometimes you actually might want to meet other friendly players. I know its hard to fathom and mostly a pipe dream. But I also played on PC before Xbox and the Xbox Elite community seems more toxic in this regard than the other communities.

I mostly trade in unarmed ships (T6, T9 or smuggle in an Orca) and by far the bulk of the players that attack me are in fully kitted Corvettes or FDLs. I dont think I've ever been interdicted by someone in a ship that I had even a remote chance of actually winning a fight with. Whats the fun in that? I guess it could be fun if you are the type of person that likes to club seals.

And most of them dont ask for cargo they just start shooting. Heck I'll give you cargo if you ask. If these type of players play in open for the 'thrill/risk', whats the point of attacking mostly ships you know have no chance against you and/or unarmed trade ships? Wheres the risk involved in that? I've seen the flimsy 'I attack weaker ships to bring out the bigger fish' argument too. Doesnt really hold much weight to me since most people in open arent in player groups. All the behavior does is actually drive people away from player events which are supposed to bring players together.

The crux of the matter is this game doesnt really seem to be built with pvp as a core tenant of its design. Its really a pve game with tacked on pvp. Yeah, its there and you can do it, but its so poorly implemented its a game-breaking problem. Open pvp in ED is mostly an imbalanced, unrewarding experience that mostly penalizes new/poorer players and is at most an annoyance tolerated by people that arent new who arent really pvpers.

Instead of protesting the Thargoids, all these rah rah pvpers need to be protesting to get a better pvp dynamic in the game.

Combat logging happens because the way the game was built allows it. Yes its cheating and there probably isnt much they can do about it because of the way the game engine is designed.

So the fix would be to build some sort of in-game system where people are incentivized to NOT combat log. Either by implementing a better rewards system for pvp engagements or putting pvp specific events in the game where if you log you dont get the rewards.

Punishments as incentives dont work, especially with gamers many of whom love to find ways to cheat/exploit anyway.

 

[tafkabb]

It does happen. I was interdicted by a Cobra IV in my Orca (and killed). I was interdicted in my Federal Gunship by a player in an Imperial Eagle and it was a brilliant fight. He left when the police turned up, it was 50/50 who would have won that one.
I've never been attacked by a heavily overpowered ship. Except that time I went looking for trouble in my Courier at a CG; the Anaconda who attacked me combat logged before he blew up.
So, one kill, one draw, one win. And I've been playing in open for two years

 

[FH DIP]

Instead of protesting the Thargoids, all these rah rah pvpers need to be protesting to get a better pvp dynamic in the game.

Unfortunately most attempts at this get buried under "Go play CQC" "Elite isn't a PvP game" "PvP is evil" "I don't care about PvP" type comments, and any changes that are made take forever to be implemented (remember how long it took heat weapons to get patched? Twice?)

 

[Morbad]

Ok, I get that FDEV couldn't tell the difference, but it sounds like both players would see the other timing out, or experience the same effects.

Yes.

Would that not mean that both players would be free to destroy the other, or both be sent to the menu? How would one be free to destroy the other, and the other be sent to menu?

Frontier is never going to allow a client to continue to host another peer that has been disconnected, because of the possibility of each peer reporting different and irreconcilable things occurring and the potential for abuse of this.

Imagine you instancing with someone, kill their connection to you, then destroying their ship. Yes, they could also destroy your ship in their instance, but if you were trying to grief someone, you'd do this with a much cheaper ship than your target, and you wouldn't care. Wings or other groups could compound the issue. What happens when a wing of cheap ships interdicts a cutter, then each of them severs connection to the others? You now have five separate instances, four of which are going to be independently reporting the destruction of said cutter. Does the cutter CMDR get hit with one rebuy, or four?

With peers hosting instances and there being no practical way for Frontier to know who is disconnecting from whom (there is a limit to the telemetry that can be collected without the client or launcher turning into outright spyware, and even the most intrusive of spyware isn't going to reveal someone logging into their router from their tablet and blocking IPs or ports), it's not reasonable for the game to do anything other than have ships that time-out vanish.

 

[MegatronsFinger]

“Imagine you instancing with someone, kill their connection to you, then destroying their ship. “

From my admittedly limited knowledge, how are you going to ‘kill another players connection’? I don’t think you can. You can only affect what you do your end and not the other persons, with regards to connection.
Correct me if I’m wrong though.

 

[RadMadMonk3y]

If making someone else disconnect is so easy to do why are all the people being ganked not doing it?
There would be no need for shields or weapons anymore.
You could trade in open free from any worries. Anyone who attacked me I'd block. I'd be flying on my own soon, in solo...

Surly if I was blocked by someone I wouldn't loose my connection to the game, just to them. They might blow up my ship but I wouldn't have the rebuy as I'd still be flying off in it on my connection.