Assuming one has a good internet connection, that's a "fine" (excuse the pun) suggestion. But us that live in third word (I'm in Mexico) have except in the centro areas of large cities the old system known as dial up. In my barrio, there is 25 homes with a dial up connection, there is no other choice. Each home has two parent and numerioys children. Doing the math, there's approximately 125 to 150 people using the same feeder from our local phohe company. When it's busy, the one who's been on line the longest or lives further from the companies connection feeder gets bumped off thus it would seem that I deliberately logged off, when in reality, I lost my connection. In a 10 hour play session, I get bumped off an average of 4 times, and have to reconnect which can take several attempts. It sucks, but if one wants internet service here, there's no other choice. So, how would your suggestion determine a deliberate vs a server or connection disconnect?
ED is the only game I have, that the powers that be changed it to now play on line all the time or not at all. There was a time it used to have an off line play, but halted it. Thus we using the outdated but only available connetion (dial up) are forced to play on line when because of the unreliable connection and the constant getting bumped off, we would really rather not.
I totally understand and support this statement. I also live in the third world (yes, is it real, is not just a word...), in Brazil. Here, I have cable connection, so not so bad, but the service is very unreliable: many times in a day I cannot get connection to the server, maybe due to poor traffic management; many times also we suffer of poor speed and frequent resetting of the modem. So, an off-line mode would be a very minimum - in term of a real life implementation, where many people do not have a proper, modern infrastructure - anyway, I simply cannot support some kind of behavior which could impair a, even if small, percentage of players.
A week ago I was mining, with my keelback and, suddenly, I was attached my a wing of pirates. I was escaping, when my connection got resetted. After I logged back, my ship was still under attach, forcing an eject. Hopefully, I contacted the support and I discovered that if was a bug. I got my the value of my ship back - I play in ironman mode, so no insurance for me... - but I had lost all the cargo and a full session of painite mining...
So, we need a proper mechanic to avoid more bugs.
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I suggested a system that just logs when your ungracefully exit the game during any form of danger, for any reason.
Then when you log in, you can only return to that game mode for 30 minutes or so.
It won't stop combat logging, but if there's a chance you'll end up back with your attacker, you'll think twice and just run away properly.
For PvE, random disconnects and crashes, or station ramming avoidance, it wouldn't matter, as you'd generally be logging back in to the same mode anyway.
It'd only effect those pulling the plug, and then logging in to solo to complete their trip, etc.
As I wrote in my last post, the one of us that live in third world county do not have proper, reliable connection. Many time my connection is resetted when I'm combatting, escaping, mining or jsut traveling around. I strongly prefer a proper escape pod implementation, as I asked for many times. And no, sorry, but unless the game could grant any player a strong, reliable internet connection, I do not accept that some player got impaired for that.