Abyssal Sites require very expensive ships. To complete the hardest sites, it takes active piloting to prevent death. You can also be ganked upon exit. These factors provide enough risk alone.
I would like to play the T5 and T6 abyssal sites, however, my internet drops out quite regularly (one per day on average, tried very hard to fix but cannot) and takes around 2 or 3 minutes to reconnect. I currently just cannot play T5 or T6 sites because it’s simply not viable due to the amount of ISK I would lose since a disconnect is certain death. The game is not balanced around disconnects either.
The game should save the current state of the abyssal site and freeze it at the moment the player disconnects so that disconnecting is no longer a risk factor for losing a ship. The game should then ask the player to unfreeze the current state of the site to continue playing. There is no advantage gained for the player by disconnecting deliberately since the player will simply die if they do not complete the site.
Anybody flying a 4 bill ship and clone is not running sites in it 10 minutes before downtime. If they are currently, then are they not abusing the very issue you bring up in the first place?
There is a difference between ‘Whoops, I didn’t quite get the site finished in time, I’m reset back into space and it cost me a filament’ and ‘I can just log off any time through the day and come back 15 seconds before downtime to get teleported to safety.’
The first is not an abuse, remember that downtime is in the prime play time for some timezones, so it’s easy to be doing something and be surprised by it.
I think you are making an issue out of something that is really not an issue. If you are starting a site 15 minutes before downtime because you believe that you have the safety net of the server reset, then I think it’s entirely appropriate that you should lose your ship if you do not finish the site before the server resets. Also, players who do these sites and not trying to game the system, they want to have fun in challenging sites.
The site failure is also completely predictable. Downtime happens at the same time every day, and like anything else in game, you should have your checklist of all the things you need to have in order to fly an expensive ship safely, in this case that would be watching the clock safely and not starting a site close to downtime.
This is a much better solution than being at the mercy of a completely unpredictable connection issue, which currently makes it unviable for me to run the sites at all. Why should players with connection issues have a significant disadvantage to those players who don’t? No disconnect protection makes sense in most parts of the game because it can be abused, however, it cannot be abused for abyssal sites -if- the sites are failed before the server goes down. Therefore, there is no reason why disconnect protection should not exist in abyssal sites.
Because it’s an online game and clearly a stable connection helps?
You are quite simply being inconstant here.
On one hand you want protection from something that even is partly controllable by a player, on the other hand you want punishment for something that isn’t controlled by the player.
But hey, by all means continue your campaign, just if you want it to be taken seriously then come up with something better than ‘Protect me but not those guys over there’
Yes, a stable connection is obviously better than an unstable connection, however, some players like me don’t have the luxury of a stable connection. Why should I be punished for having an unstable connection?
I have no control over where I get disconnected from the internet. I want protection when I am disconnected from the internet. I understand that it is not always possible when the protection can be abused, but for this issue, it cannot be abused.
What are you talking about?
I think you are just here to argue and you actually haven’t thought about anything I have said.
Wouldn’t it be possible to add a toggle (or something) that allows players to opt out of disconnects in the Abyss? If there are communication issues on either end, the connection is just held in limbo, not requiring the player to log in again.
Is there some technical reason this is not feasible? Because when I have a disconnect, it seems to last less than 10 seconds before I can reconnect again - all the wasted time is in the process of reconnecting and selecting my character again.
I imagine it’s because it’s not your internet dropping out, it’s something to do with your connection to the game server or something. If my internet connection drops out and connects back in a few seconds, then I don’t get kicked to the login screen, but while I am disconnected the game acts like I have infinite ping.
In the olden days, before the abyss, you WANTED to be disconnected, because the server would automatically attempt to warp you out and save you. However, in the abyss, the “courtesy” disconnect is not beneficial - you would be better off with a much longer disconnect timer. I don’t really know the technical reasons for disconnects - I am just guessing that there is some sort of timer somewhere that could be changed so that you aren’t logged out right away.
Abyss space was introduced as material sink. People losing stuff to disconnects works as intended since the NPC can’t kill enough people any more to offset the massive and unchecked ISK influx from Abyss.
Except it can be abused. I’ve already explained how.
And the only way it can be made not abusable instead punishes a different group of people.
While also focusing that punishment on a specific time zone as well, since it means a serious disconnect anywhere in the couple of hours before downtime means certain ship loss as well when people in other timezones get more of a chance to recover.
Hence why I am not in favour of this. It is not a solution, it just moves the problem from you to ‘that guy over there I don’t know’.
