Is this a viable tactic or exploiting?

[Captain Kail]

I have a question, aiming more for a dev answer than anything to make it clear. First off I want to say this is not crying in the red, I want to know if what this player is doing is allowed or not. I personally consider it to be dishonorable and abuse of the game rules.

There is a player on a server I play on who is famous for logging to avoid battles in the red. I previously thought this was not possible, that you would be stuck on the OS for 2 mins, but he does it this way:

First he will jump an NPC in the red, which cowardly, I don't have a problem with. He then kills the NPCs, or gets far away (im assuming) and logs out. after a minute or so his battle poofs, and he logs back in gaining invis and invuln. he looks around, and if the coast is not clear he logs out again. Sometimes in between, he logs on an alt in the area to pop out of port and looks around, to see if the coast is clear.

He also has managed to somehow log out in the middle of a pvp battle, something I am not sure how he pulled off, but while his opponent was still 'in combat' he poofed out, and was logged out, /tells would not go to him. he logged back in a minute later and did the same tactic i mentioned earlier until the coast was clear.

Is this a viable intended tactic? He has been reported for this via a ticket, and the person who filed the ticket got a cheeky response about 'we are terribly sorry this did not result in a victory celebration for you' which imho is terrible customer service and either indicates this tactic is approved and celebrated by FLS or the person responding to the ticket did not read the report fully and/or did not investigate the situation very closely.

If this is the way the system was designed by FLS and intended to be used, then on my freetrader alt I will simply use these tactics to move goods through the red, especially unrest bundles, because if allowed and celebrated it sure seems effective. If not, how are we supposed to report/combat this?

-Kail

[Blackbeard the Pirate]

Well, logging out in a NPC battle is a bit cheesy though I have done it a few times to aviod ganks while carrying ship deeds in my Hermes Sleek, but I am curious how he logged out of a PvP match? Normally that would be due to Port Battle invites, but can you be more specific as to what happened? Had he come from a reinforcement zone, gotten close, but then exited the battle and logged out from a portm or was he fighting, firing cannons, then all of a sudden disappeared?

[Captain Kail]

Well logging out of a npc fight is one thing. I think it is very cheesy,but not nearly as much as logging in and out of the OS after that with invis/invuln waiting for coast to be clear.

As far as the pvp fight went, he was picked up by a small ship (fallen snow), and this particular player has all his ships 'failboated' as the term goes. speed and not much armor/damage. Anyway, the snow was popping him here and there, and at one point turned out of range for about 30 seconds, got back in to range and the enemy just vanished. the timer could not have gone, because a) the snow was still in combat and about to be in range to fire, and b) i was just outside the battle, I saw the opponent leave battle, and c) when the snow said on vent 'i think he logged' i tried to send a tell, and indeed he was off the server. Not sure how he did it, and the snow could not say for certain if he had the discon tag on him, but he was certainly shooting back during that fight.

Like I said the main thing is him being able to log out on the open sea without being vulnerable. he is abusing that to be able to go through the red zone without consequence. He will wait you out for hours before he logs in to move.

-Kail

[jeramiah jones]

I've had the same thing happen to me a few times it seems FLS knows about it and doesnt care cause its been in the game for awhile now. It happened a few times to me i remeber one time the guy loged out but he was still in the server so i was able to sink em .

[Pir ate]

there was a problem recently with people timing out with their SOE connection, that caused them to dissapear straight away.

[Danicia]

My recommendation is that if there is ever a question in regards to bug vs tactic vs exploit, you should file a support ticket.