Why task-kill combat logging in Solo is a cheat and can affect others

[Rob At Work]

but - Nobody Cares!

correction (according to an ongoing poll) approx four fifths of people (who expressed and opinion; currently) don't care!

 

[babelfisch]

but - Nobody Cares!

correction (according to an ongoing poll) approx four fifths of people (who expressed and opinion; currently) don't care!

I'd say less, because this thread is about solo...

 

[Truesilver]

Not one player can distinguish between a timed exit and a true CL in game.

Actually, Mohrgan, some players are very good at telling the difference visually. The menu log means the Cmdr loses control of his ship for the final 15 seconds, so continues in a straight line while taking damage throughout.

The task-kill or disconnect involves control up to the point of disappearance or a lengthy period where the ship is simply completely frozen and cannot take damage.

All that said, I am not one of these gurus. I am not good at spotting the difference.

Therefore I just report them all via the in-game menu. It's very quick to do. While I don't wish to waste FDev time with unnecessary reports, as I say I can't spot the difference easily and I think it important (personally) that FDev get some data on impermissible loggers, particularly as the ones who log on me are either Wanted, seal-clubbers and/or Powerplay pledged.

but - Nobody Cares!

correction (according to an ongoing poll) approx four fifths of people (who expressed and opinion; currently) don't care!

Yes but that's the same about mining, or very long-range exploration, or 'traditional' smuggling, or Powerplay, or the BGS.

I think we should all support integrity and improvements to the many in-game activities that constitute the whole.

 

[Crazy Joe]

That's not been the case in any of the previous games - in those, you could quite easily (before you'd equipped your own ship to ridiculous levels, that is) be attacked by overwhelming force without warning and without any practical means of escape: your only guarantee of protection was to be able to identify dangerous locations in advance, and not go there until you had a ship which could take them and the skill to use it. In both FFE and the original Elite (less so in FE2) even the system you started in was not actually very safe - though there were nearby systems you could jump to which were.

(So, if I think it's fine for an NPC wing to destroy a Sidewinder, I can hardly object if a player wing tries the same with more success)

Except in the previous games I could save my state before jumping into a dangerous situation and when things went sideways I could reload my save game. Thus danger could be avoided on retry, something you can't do in Elite Dangerous. Thus overwhelming odds weren't as big a problem as they are in ED. The only loss you'd suffer was time, not credits.

In ED getting into a situation where you are confronted with overwhelming odds usually means a loss of your ship and/or cargo which can impact your gameplay significantly. Not only have you lost the invested time since you last docked (since you are reset to that station upon death) you also loose whatever benefits and/or investments you'd gained/made in that time (scanned systems, combat bonds, bounties or cargo).

Last time I died (through an NPC Fer De Lance that I thought I could handle in my Asp Explorer. Silly me, I know) I lost the equivalent of two play sessions in credits in the rebuy and fines, which for me meant that I lost all progress I made in two weeks (I'm lucky if I'm able to get 1 play session done in a week).

So I can understand people who combat log or exit to menu when confronted by overwhelming odds, I hate to lose that much progress myself as well.

 

[Asp Explorer]

Telling the difference visually doesn't matter when you can monitor wether a valid connection to that player exists. You can log when it is created, maintained, modified and terminated. That information is far more crucial than a "well it looked like a CL!"

You can also tell when an attempted desync has occurred. You can correlate all this with certain other tools and build up quite a nice picture of what another player is actually doing - at least as far as your connection to them and other people in the instance goes. That is of course completely at the whim of greater internet funnies which nobody has any control over.

 

[StiTch]

Didn't want to join in with this topic again but the following raises a couple of points that are worth answering.

The Mode Hopping exploit has a far greater impact on the BGS, and a players wealth than CL'ing of any stripe.

Actually, correct about mode swapping affecting the BGS more. However, there are some fundamental differences.

CLing is regarded as cheating. Simple. Mode swapping is not, which is a result of point number two...

Missions are in a moribund place right now (thanks Alan Partridge for making that word essential to use as much as possible). Check out a recent poll on what people think most needs care/restructure - missions are well at the top. On the other hand, CLing is not restricted to being part of mission running. It's part of the game overall. You cannot remove CLing as being an issue by restructuring anything, because you have to restructure the entire game.

Mission board swapping is accepted as negative, but can be resolved by making a logical mission system.

Not one player can distinguish between a timed exit and a true CL in game. Neither can the BGS.

Absolutely not true, and (respectfully here) shows a lack of experience in the subject. It's glaringly obvious. Timed exit, ship continues doing its thing and taking damage/can be destroyed. CLing, ship becomes immediately untouchable - you can fire a volley of missiles as numerous as the quantity of cells in your body, and...zilch will happen.

By extension the BGS is affected differently, because 15 seconds of inactivity is enough to destroy ships in many cases.

 

[Kubicide]

OP: it's not a cheat; it's called bad game design or bad mechanics that allows this to happen. Works for gankers as well as they often log to refresh their instance to find new connections/players to kill. And then there's the mission refreshes, and refreshing instances for repeated USS or mining gains, etc. With a game designed so heavily on RNG and instancing there's little that can be done.

So no, it's not cheating; it's simply a downside of the Cobra engine which relies so heavily on instancing and RNG versus having a persistence-based 'controllable' game.

 

[StiTch]

it's not cheating

Yes it is. Ask a dev. It's not punishable because they need clearer information on when CLing is illegitimate.

it's simply a downside of the Cobra engine which relies so heavily on instancing and RNG versus having a persistence-based 'controllable' game.

It's the downside of P2P.

Server side sessions, and we could have persistent ships on CL.

 

[Faybs]

As someone above said combat logging in solo or a PG environment is probably so small in number as to be virtually meaningless.

As usual though the PVP community would rather look anywhere else rather than 'in house' for the majority of their combat log woes.

PVP players by their very nature are competitive types, being competitive quite rightly means hating losing. If you hate losing then your make believe space pixels are more valuable to you than the average non competitive Joe. Given this, and given there has been plenty of evidence in terms of streams, videos and quotes of not only PVP'ers combat logging but also some of those most vocal against combat logging doing so, I'm inclined to suggest that a look in the mirror may be in order for some on these boards.

I will say again though, if you play open in particular and you combat log you are in the wrong mode. If you bleat about combat logging as a PVP'er knowing full well members of your group do it, or worse still do it yourself, then you are a special type of hypocrite that deserves no merit or sympathy.

Exactly. I would bet real money that the vast majority of combat logging happens in open, against other human pilots. OP is starting to look like one of those who wants to separate solo from open because there are literally hordes of cowards in solo who spend their entire time doing nothing but undermining all the efforts of brave open pilots - reminds me of the idiot last year who spent weeks blowing up anyone who entered "his" system then got all upset when his minor faction lost all influence (because "someone" kept on blowing up clean ships, which reduces the influence of the ruling faction) and blamed it all on all them tricky solo players avoiding his patrols. As I said in my other post, there are much bigger problems in the game, some of which directly affect this issue. Fix network instancing and crime/punishment first, which will take away most of the legitimate reasons/excuses for logging, then you can start worrying about it.

 

[Chrysophylax]

Good grief. To those calling the OP out saying it's not cheating, Sandro has come forward and clarified this issue nearly two years ago. I made this a huge link on purpose so you don't miss it.

I can't think of a completely infallible way of telling a loss of connection apart from a combat log, but you can leverage the client itself to provide this info, as a first approach. This will be trivially defeated by enterpreneuring players, however. Will your average logger bother? Probably, this would affect mostly the incidental logger.

As a second approach, you would look at when and under which circumstances the event happened - yes, the instances are client side, but the matchmaker knows when and how and why an instance change happened; for instance, following an interdiction, etc. You can build a pattern with this.

Neither are fool proof, but this is no reason not to do it.

E: On topic, the potentially minute amount of people doing this in solo or not has no bearing on whether this issue needs solving. Fixing it (punishing it per my suggestion) for Open fixes it for Solo.

It's the principle of the matter.

 

[Truesilver]

Enriching the content there, as you put it, merely means FDev, give us more targets, we can't catch them now! Sorry mate, I will not fall for your noble high stand.

What I mean is that I hope FDev make the BGS and Powerplay more interesting and engaging and less bugged and think of some way in which PvP can meaningfully contribute to the same (e.g. via scenario-based consensual content, which I haven't experienced myself but I'm told works well in other games).

 

[IndigoWyrd]

I've said this countless times now - there is one solution that nobody will really like, but is the only viable solution I can think of:

Separate the BGS in Solo, Private and Open.

What happens in Open stays in Open.
What happens in Solo stays in Solo.
What happens in Private stays in Private.

Then it truly won't matter what anyone does in any of these modes, as the effects will only be felt there. But this would also mean a true separation - Your ships, bank accounts, progress, discoveries, influence, reputation - everything will be tied only to the mode you're playing. The cost to FD to implement this will likely be quite high, as they're essentially have to implement 3 times the number of servers and maintain them, but at least the QQ'er will have nothing more to QQ about.

And if you combat log in open then, all progress since your last login should be purged, as it would only update during a proper log out. Of course, this means when there are server-side issues all legitimate progress will have to be lost as well, but it's what you people want, or think you want, since I've asked the question more than once, and no one is willing to answer.

 

[Faybs]

What I mean is that I hope FDev make the BGS and Powerplay more interesting and engaging and less bugged and think of some way in which PvP can meaningfully contribute to the same (e.g. via scenario-based consensual content, which I haven't experienced myself but I'm told works well in other games).

That would be nice, yes. It would probably require players to "pledge" to a minor faction otherwise the BGS wouldn't know what faction to apply the wins/loses to though. Powerplay is a ton of grind but I wouldn't mind "signing on" with a minor faction in exchange for eg cheaper repairs or better profits.

 

[verminstar]

Good grief. To those calling the OP out saying it's not cheating, Sandro has come forward and clarified this issue nearly two years ago. I made this a huge link on purpose so you don't miss it.

I can't think of a completely infallible way of telling a loss of connection apart from a combat log, but you can leverage the client itself to provide this info, as a first approach. This will be trivially defeated by enterpreneuring players, however. Will your average logger bother? Probably, this would affect mostly the incidental logger.

As a second approach, you would look at when and under which circumstances the event happened - yes, the instances are client side, but the matchmaker knows when and how and why an instance change happened; for instance, following an interdiction, etc. You can build a pattern with this.

Neither are fool proof, but this is no reason not to do it.

E: On topic, the potentially minute amount of people doing this in solo or not has no bearing on whether this issue needs solving. Fixing it (punishing it per my suggestion) for Open fixes it for Solo.

It's the principle of the matter.

Cool story about events a couple years ago...to someone like meself who was playing other games 2 years ago, its absolutely meaningless...still must have been cool at the time though.

To get back to the point about cling in solo...unless the devs create a foolproof way of telling the difference, how does anyone expect this to be enforcable? How can ye tell the difference when no other player can be there to witness it?

How ye deal with it in open, I really couldnt care less about because I dont play in open...so why does an open player care about cl in solo? lack of targets getting ye down so ye decide to take a swipe at solo mode? Seriously...why should anyone care just because an open player thinks theres an issue with solo? Not like theres no other problems that hold a far greater priority than what is a trivial issue at best ^^

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Hi there!

I stay exclusively in Solo.

I have nearly forty insurance claims, about 5 of which are my mistakes; the rest are NPC's killing me.

Somehow, the background simulation is as wonky as ever, despite my *not* cheating.

Blame it all on me and my primitive graphics card!

 

[GilliganTX]

Can't rep the OP but it is 100% spot on. Absolutely correct.

 

[Chrysophylax]

Cool story about events a couple years ago...to someone like meself who was playing other games 2 years ago, its absolutely meaningless...still must have been cool at the time though.

This might be me springing the trap card but I'll bite.

This is like saying that the game flight rules laid down 2 or more years ago lost their meaning because they happened back then. They didn't and you're still bound by them.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

All Hail the Holy Background Simulation (The )!

Nothing must be allowed to disrupt it, just like the dev's never deliberately GM fiat Power Play!

Hint: combat logging is a symptom, not the disease.

Two possible diseases: In Open the high-skill players dominate, and the small fry get tired of being eaten. In Solo, you get tired of being killed by NPC's designed to kill high-skill players in Open, because the two share the same NPC's.

For people like me, who take their lumps, and insurance losses, we would like all of you complaining about combat logging to silence yourselves.

Frontier is *not* going to devote the dev resources needed to fix a problem that annoys the (guesstimate) 30% of players in Open. And only annoys the top 10% of them, depriving them of their kills.

3% of the population (maybe) shall be worshipped, and catered to. Terminator NPC's desired/created/inflicted on everybody else, because the high-skill players are bored. Complaints against combat logging, etc., etc.

Just. Shut. Up. We suffer enough in this game, already.

 

[JerryLove]

So the summary:
A player using combat logging might perform like a slightly better skilled or better equipped player. As a result, since the universe is shared they might, possibly, have some influence on the universe I am in; though it will be the same influence they would have if the "get gud".

Therefore we should punish both logging and skill... even though it's technically impossible.

 

[Spiridon]

All Hail the Holy Background Simulation (The )!

..................................

Frontier is *not* going to devote the dev resources needed to fix a problem that annoys the (guesstimate) 30% of players in Open. And only annoys the top 10% of them, depriving them of their kills.

3% of the population (maybe) shall be worshipped, and catered to. Terminator NPC's desired/created/inflicted on everybody else, because the high-skill players are bored. Complaints against combat logging, etc., etc.

Just. Shut. Up. We suffer enough in this game, already.

I fully support this rant, especially these last three lines.