*** The Official Elite: Dangerous Thread ***

[Felon]

There is a client-server element to our infrastructure so we do know when players disconnect - the trick is to fairly distinguish between genuine network issues and this kind of behaviour in an automated way, and decide what punishments to dish out. Fortunately we have a game design team to blame when it all goes wrong decide such things

Thing is - in my opinion there's no real way to distinguish between a genuine network problem and someone logging - if someone yanks the cable out of their modem or PC, it's impossible to know - if it was purely 1v1 you could perhaps detect it, if two players are shooting/damaging each other, and one disappears from the server then you could assume they've logged, but you can't be sure, and in situations where there's maybe 6 or 7 players shooting each other it becomes much harder to know.

I've posed the question a few times, about handing over policing of things like this to the community itself (similar to what valve did with Overwatch) where you perhaps have a portal that distinguished players can login to and can swing a ban hammer, for example;

Gregster records video of the obvious logger, hits the in-game report button and includes his youtube link, this "evidence" along with the report goes onto a portal that a pool of high-ranked players, in good standing have access to, they see the video and hit the "punish" button, where the guy maybe gets a 24 hour ban, and loses his ship (gets presented with the rebuy screen)

You'd have to have evidence, but so many people are flying with shadowplay turned on, that I think it could work.

 

[Dano]

You make no sense whatsoever there Screeech, first you say there is no way to distinguish between a genuine network problem and someone logging and then you contradict yourself by asking that players are allowed to do just that, if the players are able to then why cannot the developers?

It's either distinguishable or it isn't and sorry, but it is, given enough data it would be easy enough to spot patterns in disconnections, unless of course said logger starts disconnecting randomly to try and balance the data and I am sure there will be ways around that too.

 

[Felon]

What I meant was, that there's no simple automated method in principle, for a system to differentiate between a legit network problem and an someone who's logged, not in P2P where the clients hold authority and the actual gaming traffic isn't going via a server, (like it does in CS for example) in ED clients "register" with a server, but the gaming traffic itself is P2P AFAIK. (Sandro basically said this in the forums)

In terms of measuring patterns in disconnects - you have a real nightmare getting around a scenario, where two friendly players are just talking to each other in the same instance, like at a nav-beacon or outside a station (no combat) and one of them disconnects - unless the server knows they're fighting each other and is logging all of that information in real time it can't know whether the disconnect was harmless, or whether it was a log, and that sort of thing would be a nightmare to design, let alone manage....

However a human can quickly and easily see if the guy logged or not (as in Gregsters video and countless others) and I think it's a simpler solution to let a small pool of players decide for free and based on trust - rather than have people sat monitoring player reports in the frontier office.

A while back I fielded the idea on the forums that when a group of players in the same instance engage in PVP, the clients relay this information back to a server of some kind - if any of them disconnect after taking damage they're flagged as having logged, or something like this - I was told that it would require a complete re-design of the netcode from the ground up...

 

[Dano]

Oh right, yes I see where you are coming from now and yes, I'm not a fan of automated systems, they are be a recipe for trouble in this sort of situation

 

[Clairvoyant]

Its been a while since I played EVE. But didnt they have your ship still logged in for I think it was like 30s. After you logged off if you was still in space. As we all way had to make safe spots to log off.

 

[Felon]

yeah this was mentioned a few times by people on the forums, about how a "logged" player could immediately turn into an NPC, trouble is - it'd be really hard to make it seamless, normally at least 3-4 seconds elapses before the timeout, then a server would have to detect it and re-spawn the player in the same instance, but as an NPC, this would take time and it could be really clunky, it'd be bad enough in a 1v1, but with many people around could be really hard to actually make it work.

Alternatively you could have a system where your ship globally remains in space for 30 seconds after you disconnect as some sort of static entity, rather than an NPC - but this wouldn't be fair, as you could sit and wait for someone to disconnect - then in the remaining 30 seconds kill them, and they'd have no idea until they logged back in - the game server needs to know that the players are involved in active combat, and there's no system in place to know this atm..

It's really quite tricky without a central gaming server, my understanding of Eve (haven't played it) was that everyone connected to a massive central server and it wasn't P2P, which would be far easier.. but it's not the case in ED..

 

[arc@css]

So, what's the general consensus of this game so far?

 

[Dano]

General consensus? No idea, I think it's brilliant though

Edit:

Yay!

 

[Gregster]

Nice one Dano

I went on a mass explore and was far far out and ended up being the first to discover around 20 different systems I wish I had stayed there now, as I quite enjoyed the exploring side.

@Arc - I also love it but no idea why. The game is fairly limited in what you do and I guess can be quite repetitive and very hard (especially for new starters) but I have put a minimum of 10 hours in every day this week (2 weeks off work)

 

[SPG]

Man exploring is so dullllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll takes way to long especially when you get 80+ planet system.

 

[Kieran_Burns]

Thanks for the replies to my daft question folks... my main monitor just died So I'm getting a new 27" 1440 one on Monday (roll on my GTX980 ) once that is fitted I'll dedicate an evening to nothing but learning how to fly.

 

[tbh]

Man exploring is so dullllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll takes way to long especially when you get 80+ planet system.

Don't say that, I just kitted my ship up for my first foray out into the void!

edit: Do you explorer guys equip your ships with shields/weapons? I've kept my ship combat capable, lost a few LY off my max range but I don't like the idea of having to run from every Eagle or Sidewinder that interdicts me at the edges of human space.

 

[ICDP]

This was discussed in the alpha forums, they deliberately avoided putting anything in to deal with it

They simply added a 15 second delay to stop players insta exiting to the main menu. Pulling your network cable/wireless adapter give you an instant way out of death. My opinion is if you play open you need to accept legitimate combat encounters. On the other hand I love insta quitting on griefers.

 

[ICDP]

Man exploring is so dullllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll takes way to long especially when you get 80+ planet system.

I tried exploring for a few evenings and it was complete mind numbingly boring. Then I saw videos showing there was nothing really out there and decided against it.

 

[Lunawolfy]

IS the war in Khasiri still on?

 

[Craig1981]

Why have they still not fixed combat missions?! I just took a mission in the latest system to get the smackdown from the Federation. I took a mission from a faction allied with the Federation. I killed their opposing ships in the conflict zone. I handed in the mission. And lost rep both with the faction that gave me the mission AND the Federation as a whole. Even though I fought on their side...

I mean. What. The. Actual. HELL!??!?!?

 

[Felon]

Why have they still not fixed combat missions?! I just took a mission in the latest system to get the smackdown from the Federation. I took a mission from a faction allied with the Federation. I killed their opposing ships in the conflict zone. I handed in the mission. And lost rep both with the faction that gave me the mission AND the Federation as a whole. Even though I fought on their side...

I mean. What. The. Actual. HELL!??!?!?

No idea, when I was doing stuff for the Empire my rep was all over the place and none of it made any sense at all, so it wouldn't surprise me if it's still broken..

I'm getting worried about Elite tbh..

I've reached the point tonight, where I just cba, I've got nearly 4000 kills and I'm a shade away from Deadly rank, but I just cba to login.. I've only played it 3-4 times in the past week, and I'm thinking of just putting it down for a while.. I had 2 other friends who were playing it - both of whom gave up weeks ago..

Idk, I seem to be waiting for DCS 2.0 to come out - that's the only thing I'm really excited about tbh,

Anyone else struggling with this game? or are you all enjoying it?

 

[Craig1981]

I like the game. Perhaps I have rose tinted glasses for it due to all my happy time spent playing Frontier so many years ago....

But right now I'm actually playing Borderlands 2 mostly. I got it in a steam sale a while back, tried it once and instantly hated dying every 30 seconds. Finally gave it another go and actually got really into it this time. Playing a Commando this time and loving the sabre turret.

 

[Bonjour]

Borderlands 2 is another great game. No shame in that.

 

[Besty]

Loaded this game up for the first time last night, i had purchased the game a while back but wanted to wait until 1.1.

Decided to play it oldskool with keyboard only and some minor mouse intervention on the galaxy map.

Due to the incomplete nature of the game I decided to stick to trading and I am very impressed by the flying mechanics and the general polish of the game in this context.

I can see from the posts above there there is some frustration at the mile-wide-inch-deep approach however, I would be surprised if this was the case same time, next year.

As it stands I think this game could be one of the greatest of its type, it just needs the addtional plug in modules.