CCP doesn’t refund/replace lost assets due to disconnects unless there was an issue on their end with their servers. And in those instances, if they do refund/replace stuff, they already have records of what was lost (it’s all in the lossmail), so there’s no need to implement any additional “snapshot” before entering an Abyssal Deadspace.
If you disconnect and die in an Abyssal Deadspace and its not CCP’s fault you are not getting your stuff back. Full stop.
What you’re proposing is redundant and wholly unnecessary.
The entire point is to eliminate the need to file tickets and wait for CCP to take forever to reimburse. This eliminates the burden on both players and CCP by automating the process. The proposal only concerns CCP-side Disconnects (when it is CCP’s fault), not player side disconnects. Remember: The original Player-Side DC Proposal has been shelved and this has zero relationship to the original player-side DC proposal.
No I didn’t. I see your point clearly, and indicated that it’s unnecessary and redundant.
Streamlining petitions seems like a good idea. Automating them completely seems like a horrible one. And either way, there’s no need for an additional “snapshot” because CCP already has a record of what was destroyed.
I also feel compelled to ask: did you get reimbursed for your recent Cerb losses in Abyssal Deadspace, or do you think you should be?
I’m not suggesting every single thing out there that could be automated should be automated. But here we have an a unique instance where it is highly beneficial to both players and CCP and there are virtually no problematic edge cases, and whatever hypothetical edge cases might exist are unlikely to compromise the whole (ie. they are unlikely to pose more of a problem now than the burdens to players and CCP are now).
You are in the Abyss. CCP disconnects. As a result, you die. Now we have two options:
You find yourself back in your home station in your capsule and have to file a ticket to CCP and wait for them to respond. Meanwhile CCP is wasting manpower responding to all the other players making the same requests and manually responding to each and every single one of them - manpower they could be using to improve the game (less money spent on support = more money spent on development). Once you get you stuff back you still have to travel back to where you were before the CCP-side disconnect. Inconvenience and time wasted all around.
Strictly with regards to players having entered Abyssal instances at the time of a CCP-side disconnect - not applying to any other player - everything is restored back to the way it was prior to the time of the CCP-side disconnect by the time you log back in: you are in your ship in the state it was in, in the location it was in space at the time when it opened a portal to the Abyssal instance at the time of the CCP-side disconnect. (Alternatively, you could be placed back in the beginning of a reset Abyssal instance, again with your ship’s state restored to its starting state; in retrospect, this is probably a better idea) No need to file a ticket. No need for CCP to waste manpower responding to tickets.
What could possibly be wrong with Option 2? Not going slippery slope on automating everything; the bounds are very clearly delimited here.
Of course not. I lost those ships because I was destroyed / ran out of time. I did not petition nor would there have been reason to. My proposal wouldn’t have provided me any reimbursement because my losses were not a result of a CCP-side disconnect; my loss was a result of my fair-and-square defeats. I bear no shame in acknowledging that.
Didn’t CCP already do this? I’m pretty sure they’ve already mentioned that in aspects of the game where CCP is directly at fault (example, the shifted decimal point on Guardian’s Gala battleship dps), they’ve implemented a new system to automatically reimburse.
But again, for only things that are an issue on CCP’s end.
Problems between your client and CCP’s servers does not (and really shouldn’t) result in reimbursement, ticket or not.
I fail to recall reading anything in the dev blogs or patch notes about any special CCP-at-fault mechanisms for players caught in Abyssal instances when the servers are down or >their< Internet cutting out, etc. If such a thing exists (above ye olde ticket filing by players), I’d very much appreciate someone citing the source for reference and this thread would be closed in its entirety, full stop - as our friend would say
Except that manpower is still involved. CCP staff still have to determine if the issue is on their end or not. And they’ll still be answering tickets for player-side disconnects (answering them “no” most likely, but still), and be expending manpower to correct the connection issue on their end.
I get what you’re going for, and I think it’s admirable, but it’s far too automated to be practical.
You’re basically trying to automate customer service, which in all of my experience in customer service, generally degrades the service and leaves customers frustrated.
It may not seem like it here, but I have a really hard time with words. Often times what sounds nuanced and precise in my head comes across as pompous and overbearing when others read it. That’s actually part of why I post here so often; I’m training myself to communicate better.
I think a 5 minute pause when disconnecting would be the most optimal solution. Just as protection from offensive accidents, which are completely independent of the player.
@Ololosha_Jouhinen I personally think this is fantastic idea that appears to address a lot of the exploitation and excessive-accommodation concerns regarding player-side disconnects. I wish I thought of it myself. A hard cap like “this instance will be frozen for at most X minutes total” in the event of one or more disconnects while doing it - brilliant!
Whatever the number is, it would be short enough that it couldn’t be used for exploitation such as avoiding emerging from the instance when you know there are gankers waiting for you (so let’s say the hard cap were, for the sake of discussion, 10 minutes, then at most the gankers would wait just under 20 + 10 = 30 minutes for someone to emerge from the instance), but provide enough time to recover from disconnects or to take a bio break if you really, really, really needed to take a ■■■■, etc.
The closest thing to an exploit I can think of would be the purposefully disconnect in the middle of a battle - of course, the instance is frozen for a short time and will be restored as is upon reconnect, so there isn’t any advantage in doing this unless you need to do something really quick RL and wanted to pause the timer for that brief duration. I think pausing the timer is more sensible than, say, simply extending the existing timer because that paused timer won’t allow you to kill more rats or loot more caches, so it doesn’t give you an advantage in abyssal other than keeping you from dying just because you need to tend to something quick IRL.
Extended disconnects (for any reason) would not be addressed, but I think most people would agree they don’t have to be (or shouldn’t be anyway). As far as I can tell, your solution addresses the objections of the posters to this thread. Although the thread had already given up on Player-side disconnects entirely (to focus discussion on CCP-side disconnects), you might have breathed new life into the discussion of player-side disconnects.
But this is an advantage. Where everyone else would have died and lost their ship, you’re able to “pause” the timer and stay alive until you come back. In fact, you’d be able to continually “pause” the timer by constantly disconnecting over and over again making the system think you’ve DC’d.
Everyone else would be able to do the same both intentionally and unintentionally, and there is a hard limit on the cumulative duration of the disconnects (regardless of how many there are, ie. one 10 min disconnect is the same as ten 1 min disconnects) so this is why I say there is no exploit.
This isn’t leveling the playing field. This would be introducing a mechanic to avoid the loss of a ship just because you’re afraid off losing. At best the only thing that should happen is you lose your ship regardless.
You should not be given any more additional time to clear the Abyssal site. If you can’t complete it in 20 minutes, disconnect or not, you lose your ship. End of story.
Because the instance restores itself to the way it was before the disconnect, the disconnect/reconnect provides no competitive advantage regarding ship loss due to the Abyssal instance itself (getting killed by NPCs or running out of time). If you were destined to die due to the PVE environment, this mechanic does not change that fact nor is it intended to.
The pause/unpause has no impact (nor should it have an impact) on your ability to complete the instance regardless of how many times you’ve paused and resumed. If you pause upon near death with low health, guns reloading, and surrounded by enemies, then you resume near death under the same conditions and consequently you’re just as likely to die. If you pause without enough time to complete the instance and resume then you still won’t have enough time to complete the instance (the abyssal timer and the pause timer are separate and don’t stack).
What this mechanic is intended to do, however, is prevent death due to RL issues. In contrast to my original idea, which were very aggressive and easily hammered down (to the extent that I did and still do concede), @Ololosha_Jouhinen’s idea is far more modest: provide a very, very, very tiny time cushion regarding maximum duration the instance is allowed to be paused before it is forcibly resumed whether or not you reconnect in time. This is an idea I can get behind.
But that’s not how Abyssals work, and they should not be changed to work that way.
You can’t finish it in 20 minutes for any reason, you lose your ship. It’s simple.
No. You’re still trying to avoid ship loss in 20 minutes.
You’ve made your position quite clear. Personally I find this principle to be unnecessarily rigid and believe these ideas can maintain the challenge of Abyssal space exactly the way they are while providing a modest cushion for RL. While I disagree with your stance, I respect it. You and I often comment on the same threads and you’ve always provided constructive feedback even if we find ourselves on opposite ends o7
I agree this is a discussion worth having; however, I do not believe it is appropriate to have it in this thread. I kindly request this “should we remove/completely overwork” Abyssals conversation to a different thread so as to not throw this topic off course.
(I, too, was, and to a large extent still am, in the “WTF NO PLEASE DO NOT ADD ABYSSAL” camp when it was announced. Still - different conversation for a different thread.)
The Player-Side DC Proposal has been shelved
A CCP-Side DC Proposal has been introduced
I fail to recall reading anything in the dev blogs or patch notes about any special CCP-at-fault mechanisms for players caught in Abyssal instances when the servers are down or >their< Internet cutting out, etc. If such a thing exists (above ye olde ticket filing by players), I’d very much appreciate someone citing the source for reference and this thread would be closed in its entirety, full stop - as our friend would say 
