Disconnect to Avoid Death Exploit Fix

[Serrath 0]

Sometimes players disconnect when under fire from PvP. I've outlined a potential fix for this.

Player "John" wants to disconnect.

John:

John hits disconnect. He enters a 15-second wait (this can replace the 15 second wait that currently happens after the player leaves the server).

Everyone but John:

During John's 15-second wait, a vote is passed to all other players on the server. "John is disconnecting. Press to stall for 2 minutes. A 15 second penalty is applied."

Result:

If nobody presses the key to stall John's disconnect, he disconnects successfully.

If someone within a 2km radius of John presses the key to stall John's disconnect, John remains on the server for 2 more minutes.

Anyone who presses the key to stall John's disconnect, even if they are not within a 2km radius of John, has 15 seconds added to their disconnect period (i.e. if you vote once it goes to 30, twice it goes to 45, etc.) This prevents players from abusing this system.

If multiple disconnects are occurring in the same period, all votes to stall apply to all players (the 2km radius restriction is still in effect to actually prevent any individual player from disconnecting). The penalty, however, is only applied once per keypress, regardless.

Bandits, read this:

The only drawback to this system is that if players keep trying to disconnect to avoid being murdered by bandits, the bandit will incur a severe penalty when trying to disconnect. (Every 4 players is an extra 1 minute wait.) The upside is, if the system is effective in preventing players from disconnecting to avoid death from PvP, this won't be an issue.

The reason the message goes out to the entire server is to prevent abuse of the system.

[Womb Raider 92]

2km is fairly big, so this could be griefed, but to be honest it's probably one of the best ideas I've heard recently regarding disconnecters.

[Serrath 0]

The 15 sec penalty applies even if you're in 2km, even if you kill them after. Anyone spamming stalls will suffer quite the penalty for griefing.

[Tyrog 10]

Hmmmm it would make some areas impossible to disconnect into.

[Serrath 0]

The 15 second penalty for voting yes is to prevent people from spamming the stall button.

You suffer the 15 second penalty for every time you vote to stall; anyone spamming the stall button would suffer a pretty steep d/c time. Plus, you get to disconnect at the end of the 2 minutes, regardless; if no one is actively hunting you, you can easily find a quiet place to sit that out.

[KWilt 157]

This is a viable option, though I don't think you realize how big of a radius 2km is, so the numbers could use some tweaking.

However, I see no reason why someone should be legitimately punished for keeping a player in game. You outline how it is unfair to bandits trying to get their rightful kills, but give no incentive to actually follow through with this idea. To be honest, I'd rather give up loot and murders for potentially having to wait 5 minutes just to log out of DayZ.

EDIT: Also, a thought comes to mind. How do you know that the person you're stalling is the same person you're shooting at? I can definitely see a lot of confusion sprouting from it.

[murhis 4]

In other words "John is withing range of X km from you. Press to stall for 2 minutes. A 15 second penalty is applied."... No. It absolutely makes no sense that you know somebody is trying to disconnect withing specific range from you. I believe there's much better solutions...

Like this: http://www.dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=23764&pid=213096#pid213096

[Serrath 0]

A 2km radius is just over 12 km2 of a 225km2 map. I picked this distance specifically to be fair to bandit snipers.

The 15s penalty for stalling a quit is to prevent the system from being abused. It does punish bandits more than other survivors, but the benefits of this system should outweigh the costs as far as the bandits are concerned. It is noteworthy that the current system arguably favors survivors heavily.

The penalty is relatively low (15 seconds) because you don't know the person you're shooting at is the person disconnecting. However, I think it's relatively safe to assume that in a 50 person server, the amount of times that someone starts disconnecting while you're shooting a player will be low enough that this isn't an issue.

The server very specifically DOES NOT inform you that the player is within X km from you. That goes against the grain of what we're trying to accomplish. The server displays the same message to all players. If you're currently trying to kill someone, hit the stall key, just to be safe. It's just a 15 s penalty.

[KWilt 157]

A 2km radius is just over 12 km2 of a 225km2 map. I picked this distance specifically to be fair to bandit snipers.

I do hope you realize that with a 2km radius' date=' the griefing would be outrageous. As an example, someone standing at the Cherno hospital can block the D/C of everyone from Balota, up to the southern part of Nadezhdino, and out to just the edge of Prigorodki.

That just screams 'grief-potential' for people who want to simply inconvenience players for the 'lulz'.

The 15s penalty for stalling a quit is to prevent the system from being abused. It does punish bandits more than other survivors, but the benefits of this system should outweigh the costs as far as the bandits are concerned. It is noteworthy that the current system arguably favors survivors heavily.

Ah, but you are wrong here. It does punish bandits more than any other survivors. Bandits are far more likely to use this system, as they are the people actively attempting to kill players who can D/C. And those 15 seconds eventually add up, so eventually, it does outweigh the costs.

Also, the current system favors neither survivors nor bandits. In the same way that a survivor can D/C to get away from a bandit, a bandit can D/C to not be found by a persistent survivor, out for revenge. It is just much more likely that a survivor will D/C, yes, but that is only because a survivor won't be the one firing the first shot.

The penalty is relatively low (15 seconds) because you don't know the person you're shooting at is the person disconnecting. However' date=' I think it's relatively safe to assume that in a 50 person server, the amount of times that someone starts disconnecting while you're shooting a player will be low enough that this isn't an issue.

[/quote']

How can you, indefinitely, say that there isn't another engagement going on just over a mountain? Going by your current range of 2km, you wouldn't hear small arms fire from that far away.

Although, I will say that's probably a slim possibility. So I won't push this issue too much unless I can come up with a more solid case.

The server very specifically DOES NOT inform you that the player is within X km from you. That goes against the grain of what we're trying to accomplish. The server displays the same message to all players. If you're currently trying to kill someone' date=' hit the stall key, just to be safe. It's just a 15 s penalty.

[/quote']

Not much to say here, but I would like to highlight something. You say 'it's just a 15s penalty'. But if you come across a group of players that you're sure you can wipe out, who's to say that that 15s penalty won't instantly become a 30s or 45s penalty?

Those penalties start to stack up. And unless you want to D/C after every kill to just get it out of the way (potentially sparking a troll within the 2km radius to give you a now 135s wait), you could potentially start spending quite a few minutes just waiting to disconnect.

It's a flawed system. A nice system in theory, and I'm not against it if the range was nerfed and a few kinks were fixed. But that doesn't change that it has flaws.

[frodevil 15]

This would so easily be used to metagame...

In a group:Hey, that John dude is disconnecting. Stall him and let's go find him and kill him.

[alexander_q 6]

At first I was like "done before, use search button", then I was like "Ooooh that's sort of interesting/clever" and then I was like:

No. Players won't necessarily know whose disconnection they want to prevent. Just have a general log off time for everyone, thus forcing them to get somewhere safe before they try.

[Serrath 0]

First let's clear up the misunderstanding:

If multiple survivors are quitting, you only press the key once to vote for all of them. The penalty is only applied once. So that penalty doesn't instantly become 30s or 45s.

I'll concede the range should probably be nerfed; if we reduce it to 1km or 0.5km radius it's less likely to be abused.

It's also possible to tweak this to prevent abuse (i.e. after 10 failed votes in an hour you can't keep stalling) or excessive punishment to bandits. (i.e. Your d/c timer runs down over time, so for every hour you're on the server it strips 15s or so)

I'll also concede that you don't know whose disconnect you want to prevent, but I'd like to ask:

1) How many times in an hour you kill someone? What % of your playtime does the time between the first shot and their death add up to?

2) How often do players disconnect from your server on average? With a 30 minute average life, if everyone plays exactly one life, that's every 6 minutes on a 50 player server. This would be a 15 second process.

3) Do the math. These coincidences WILL HAPPEN, but it won't be obnoxiously frequent, and certainly shouldn't cause you much trouble. I'd expect you mistakenly try to stall someone no more than three times in a long play session. Adding a system to slowly drain your disconnect clock would fix this readily.

[Bo0G 7]

This seems overly complicated to me.

Why not simply add a 1-2minute timer to dc for everyone that is only interrupt-able by the person who is disconnecting? At the beginning of the timer, a server messages says "John started disconnect timer". So if you are in a firefight and see that message, you can choose to rush in if you believe that your target is combat logging.

[adamtheheretic 106]

Oh look someone is disconnecting

Look, it stalled him for 2 minutes, he's in the vicinity.

This idea doesn't seem overly bad and people disconnecting are a pain and severely annoying, I know, but you can't inconvenience regular players to stop a few disconnects.

[Serrath 0]

@Bo0G: I'd really rather it didn't take me 1-2 minutes to quit a server every time.

@FishIsTwonk: Spamming that button will bite you in the ass, is the idea. Any system is going to inconvenience people trying to disconnect somewhat. This system should punish people trying to abuse it more than it inconveniences the average player. Reducing the radius is probably important; I don't have access to data that will tell me what range is the upper limit (within two standard deviations from the mean) for murders by bandits. Obviously the devs could tweak this very effectively.

[Bo0G 7]

@Bo0G: I'd really rather it didn't take me 1-2 minutes to quit a server every time.

It doesn't. Feel free to alt-f4 if you are in a safe area and you trust that your avatar will survive for the next 2 minutes. It's a small price to pay to keep people from combat logging I think.

Not to mention the fact that it would discourage server hopping.

[Serrath 0]

This works just as well, all the complicated bits are behind the scenes. As long as it's not abused, you'll hardly notice it. Abuse it, and you'll feel its wrath. (Plus, if you're not in a position you can hunt them down and you elect to stall them, they can always Alt-F4.)

[adamtheheretic 106]

@FishIsTwonk: Spamming that button will bite you in the ass' date=' is the idea. Any system is going to inconvenience people trying to disconnect somewhat. This system should punish people trying to abuse it more than it inconveniences the average player. Reducing the radius is probably important; I don't have access to data that will tell me what range is the upper limit (within two standard deviations from the mean) for murders by bandits. Obviously the devs could tweak this very effectively.

[/quote']

I'm not talking about spamming the button, screen text would pop up to say someone is disconnecting, I simply have to push a button and I assume it'd say how long that person now has to disconnect. I could figure out if they're close by using the new time they're in the server for and I'd know they're either within 0.5k or not, meaning I could attempt to find them for the 2 minutes they're in the server or not bother if they're out of range. Also if I'm going to abuse a system, I could simply Alt+f4 or ctrl+alt+delete and close ArmA to avoid the penalty.

[A Man Named GOB 1]

I dont understand why it needs to be this complicated. Just add a timer that starts after you fire a shot or after a bullet passes within 500 meters of your character that prevents a log off for two minutes. If you force a log off then your character will sit down and stay on the server for 45 seconds or until you successfully log onto another server (which probably takes about a minute, maybe more). Some people may be caught in the middle innocently but I don't think that would happen too often.

[Dreganius (DayZ) 55]

This works just as well' date=' all the complicated bits are behind the scenes. As long as it's not abused, you'll hardly notice it. Abuse it, and you'll feel its wrath.

As long as it's not abused, you'll hardly notice it.

As long as it's not abused

[/quote']

It'll be abused, a lot, by idiots who think its fun to troll people like that. And they won't give a fuck about the "wrath" because they're here to grief, not to play this game seriously.

It's a no from me.

[alexander_q 6]

Make a two minute log out timer, that you can sit around in-game and wait for, in case you may want to interrupt it, or just log out immediately, if you want to risk being killed while your body still exists in the server without your accompaniment.

If the player logs into another server within two minutes, because the timer is serverside, the database can just have them wait for the remainder of the two minutes before it lets them in.

[murhis 4]

The server very specifically DOES NOT inform you that the player is within X km from you. That goes against the grain of what we're trying to accomplish. The server displays the same message to all players. If you're currently trying to kill someone' date=' hit the stall key, just to be safe. It's just a 15 s penalty.

[/quote']

Sorry my bad when I misread it a bit. But infact that would be even worse... when _EVERYTIME_ when somebody is trying to disconnect you will get a message in front of you. No I don't want some vote spam on my face everytime when somebody is disconnecting. I really believe there should be some automatic mechanism for this DC prevention.

[Serrath 0]

It already tells you every time someone disconnects; this is essentially the same thing, murhis.

[BL1P 252]

1 character per server.

Bleeding offline.

DC fixed Server swapping fixed ....

Next ?

[Bo0G 7]

1 character per server.

Bleeding offline.

DC fixed Server swapping fixed ....

Next ?

Yes!

But only if all servers are BIS hosted and regulated. No more clans/communities with their own DayZ servers. If a character is locked to one server, players need to know that their character is safe with the server they choose; that the admin isn't going to abuse their power (since the player would have no option to change servers anymore without losing their character).

Most MMOs require the player to choose one dedicated, company-hosted server for their character to live on. DayZ should be no exception.