Most online games have rules governing running from a fight, abandoning a team, or exiting the game to avoid gameplay, be they MMORPGs or shooters or MOBAs. You’ll get smacked with some sort of penalty or timeout, at minimum – if you didn’t, why, you’d just quit out every time you were losing a fight.
In Elite Dangerous, that practice is called combat logging, particularly when you’re using dodgy means to achieve it, and it’s been a subject of contention in the game since at least 2016, when we first covered it. Back then, players were accusing Frontier of not doing enough to prevent and punish what both saw as an exploit of the game’s mechanics.
Turns out that accusation is alive and well in 2018. Players have posted on Reddit and the official forums a summary of what they say is their latest investigation into Frontier’s investigation. This time around, they used an alt to combat log in the middle of fights with multiple other players, complete with video and in-game reporting, over a span of five months. According to the players, Frontier didn’t punish the account for any of the incidents.
For its part, Frontier has once again asserted that its review team is on top of this and that indeed, the reports on that account were viewed.
“A huge number of factors go into reviewing each report and I can personally confirm, having been a part of the team that reviews these reports, that action is taken on a regular basis. However, we do not discuss the process, tools or systems for detection publically, as doing so would help people avoid detection.
“While we understand the frustration caused when met with combat logging, continuous attempts at uncovering our investigation methods is not the way to assist with this being dealt with, as any information we give could be used to avoid detection.
“As you likely know, combat logging is something that has been discussed openly with the community by our development team. There have been discussions and feedback on concepts such as a Karma system (here’s an example). This is one idea being considered in order to address such issues.
“I’m sure you can appreciate that finding a solution that allows for automatic detection against rule breakers while also being fair on honest players is something that holds a number of challenges. It is something under discussion and active consideration but we have nothing to announce right now.”
