Hello friends on the CSM,
I am writing you in the hope that you will ask CCP to automatically pause abyssal filament timers when a player is disconnected from the server. Like me, many players have given up running filaments because they lost something due to a disconnection. This issue can be easily resolved by simply pausing the timer in the event of a disconnection.
Thank you,
Andos Inkunen
My scout reports enemy ships waiting at my trace, I better disconnect to wait until they’re gone before I finish this site.
-1 do not support. Abyssal should be ruthless if you want to attempt it. the server cannot associate if you pull the cable out of your PC, or if some other reason is why you disconnected. CCP was firm on this stance for no reimbursement on Abyssal.
Since we are getting the CSM involved - I would like to know if CCP can change the server disconnect timer inside the abyss. In other words, the server would keep the connection open longer and would not automatically disconnect people (at least not as quickly).
-edited first part out-
Keeping the connection open longer sounds like a nice idea (if it is technically possible 
) that could help people that often have short disconnects.
I am not proposing to pause the timer. Curretly, a one second disconnect forces a player to completely log in again (takes at least a minute). Can this be avoided? Can the player stay logged in during a communications interruption? I don’t know. Maybe?
Didn’t notice that, my bad. Edited my post!
Extending the time to disconnect sounds good. If it’s possible.
The issue with abyssal disconnects is a very thorny one, which is why things have shaken out the way they have - essentially you enter at your own risk. We have asked for things like this in the past, but whether it was over technical concerns or policy concerns, the system has remained the way it is and I don’t see that likely changing any time soon.
I believe I have a theoretical solution to eliminate any concerns over unfair advantages which could be gained from having DC protection in abyssal sites.
Upon a player disconnect, the state of the site would be frozen until the player reconnects. The player would then receive a short countdown (maybe 10 seconds) before the site resumes to make sure there are no issues with black screen or anything like that.
A limit on the maximum time for a single disconnection should be 10 minutes, after which, the site will be automatically unfrozen. This would prevent a player from disconnecting indefinitely upon seeing his trace camped by other players.
Each player is granted a disconnect time bank which resets daily, say 20 minutes. Disconnected time depletes the time bank. After the time bank is depleted, the player no longer receives DC protection for the rest of the day. This would prevent abuse of the previous bullet point by disconnecting and reconnecting in order to try to avoid trace camps. The maximum amount of time a camp would need to wait in theory is 40 minutes rather than 20 minutes.
For multiplayer sites, the players which are not disconnected can either choose to wait, or manually resume the site and continue without the disconnected player. The players in the site would use a shared time bank.
I believe this would provide a safety net for the vast majority of genuine disconnections and reduce the potential for abuse to an absolute minimum. As mentioned, the small downside is that PVP camps would have to wait slightly longer on average for their kill. But having DC protection would result in more players running sites, and so there are more players to kill for the hunters. Also, many players do not bother with scout alts. Therefore, it is less significant as a downside than some people may believe.
Whatever peoples opinions of safety nets may be, I think it is completely reasonable to expect that no player should lose assets due to a disconnect whenever possible, provided it is not open to abuse.
I want a solution to the disconnect problem, CSM please do something about it.
Hi, thanks for the reply. I appreciate it. I’m sure this has come up before, but could you explain some of the arguments made against a timer pause? So far, the arguments I’ve heard are:
Of course both of these are true even if the second argument doesn’t really need to be addressed. The first argument concerning gankers, however, is a real issue that effects PvP dynamics. Still, I don’t think gankers would lose out if my suggested reform took place because more people will start running the abyss meaning there would be more blingy targets for the gankers to shoot at. In short, this would actually make MORE content. Besides, using an alt to scout ahead is as intricate a part of EvE as high sec ganking (which is usually done by multiboxing as well).
Are there other issues that I haven’t considered? If there are, can you explain them and what the arguements/counter arguments are? Thank you!
Respectfully,
Andos
Why does a null sec/PvP representative is dealing with and speaking about Abbysal matters? What about Abbysal rep?
I don’t know if this is technically possible. Since apparently it’s not my job to ask questions for you, I’ll leave that to whoever is supposed to do that.
We all want a solution to it, but there are so many causes for disconnects, it’s not likely going to be something that is easy to solve (or else they’d likely already done it).
The primary policy issue is the concern that people will find ways to fiddle with the timer, especially in the scenario you mentioned, knowing somebody’s waiting for you to come out and just logging off til they’re gone. That, in and of itself, is a major issue.
This assumes that the only reason people aren’t running abyssal sites is because they are worried about disconnects. That’s not been my experience.
I think fundamentally, the entire point of the abyss was that it was supposed to be risky. The risk/rewards are balanced so that it’s next to impossible to reliably run these without ever dying, and the potential for disconnects are part of that.
There’s no such thing as a “null sec/PvP representative” or a “Abbysal rep.” We all represent the entire game. I’ve run abyssals (and have the loss mails to prove it) and I was in the room when Abyssal deadspace was first rolled out and we had these discussions with the Devs in the first place.
Dude, that’s straight up lie. It’s on your CSM ad that your “area of expertise” is not Abbys, that’s how you “promote” yourself to be in CSM.
Leave this topic for a CSM member with “Area of Expertise” in Abyss.
No, this is the straight up truth. We represent the whole game, and there is no reason why I can’t ask the developers this guy’s question and instead should leave it alone and assume someone else will do it.
Spare me the lecture on what my job is, and let me do it.
There is a very good reason why you shouldn’t: Abbysal is not in your focus - leave that to people who do Abbysal every day regularly.
Hey, if you guys would prefer nobody bring your concerns up, that’s fine. Lemme just go delete my request in Slack and you can sit here and wait for whoever you think the “abbys” rep is to bring it up.
I happen to think you and @Mike_Azariah along with the other CSM’s are doing a good job. Thank you again to you and mike for being the voice on the forums for the CSM.
Understandable if it is a technical issue.
I do believe this can be pretty much eliminated by capping the amount of time you are protected for in some way, just enough to accommodate brief disconnections. Also, given there are far bigger abuses of the games limitations which already exist - such as - alliances logging off their cap fleets indefinitely should they start losing a fight, I don’t think a brief protection from disconnects in abyssal sites is a major policy concern in that respect - especially when the ships required to run the higher tier sites are such a huge investment that the best thing to do currently if you experience any connection issues at all is simply not to play the content.
This creates another problem. If the rewards are balanced around players disconnecting, then players with stable connections gain an unfair advantage over players who do not have access to stable connections. They are able to absorb the extra rewards given out to players that are meant to periodically die from disconnects, while players with unstable connections feel they cannot even participate. As you say, the sites are designed with enough risk to kill players already, and there’s the risk of being ganked after completing the sites. Disconnects just make the sites unviable to bother with. Meanwhile, I can hop in an exploration ship that costs 50m and make more ISK per hour. I don’t think the reward of abyssals is even good.
Currently, to play the content I want to play, the high tier sites, I play on the test server. I don’t believe this is acceptable as the best solution to the problem. I think CCP need to relax a little and stop worrying so much about slight issues with policy. EVE is a game at the end of the day, and I think CCP should be a little more accommodating to players who want suffer from technical issues.
Thanks for your response anyway.
I agree that it’s a game, but this is a game filled with people who will push everything to the absolute edge to gain an advantage. Development that doesn’t take that into account can have pretty significant negative impacts on the whole ecosystem of them game, like we saw with supercap proliferation and the rampant Rorq mining in the 2017-2019 era.
I know it sucks, but there’s not always going to be an easy solution for every edge case out there, and this appears to be one of them.