Basically, a way to see if your target is logging out, preparing to explode, or timing out.

You would only be able to see this information if you have targeted a player.

See also: Target Connection info

I present this proposal as a competing alternative to:
Prevent /logoff if you have taken any damage in the last minute,
because I do not wish to delay logoff for more than a minute or two, and I do not wish to have to damage a target just to avoid concerns of them logging out.

I just wish to be able to destroy a player who tries to log off. More importantly, I wish to not be forced to damage or destroy a target that is not attempting to log out just because I do not know for sure if they are trying to log out. If I know I will get warning of a pending logout, I can hold my fire until that warning.

No.

You don't have any need to know what your target's connection is like or whether they are logging out.

@draugath

I already stated my need. Saying that I do not have any need, after I said I do, is like telling me I do not know what I want. I am relatively confident that I know what I want, at least in this case.

Do you mean to say that I should not have access to this information?
Do you mean to say that my need is not sufficient?
Say what you mean. Don't tell me what I mean.

And we can make it optional. You can set a flag that tells anyone targeting you "connection information not available", and that way, I know to just blast you, and not bother talking.

Edit: The more I look at it, the more it looks like some half assed jedi mind trick: "You do not need to see his identification..."

Introducing Roda Slane: All his ideas are better than yours!

1+ to Roda's ideas, they're better than yours! #rodasideaisbetter

Let me rephrase that then.

No.

There is no reason good enough to justify you being able to tell if someone has initiated a logoff procedure.

+1 to OP.

Why shouldn't I be able to tell if somebody is initiating a logoff? What is bad about that?

I do realize that it wouldn't help with people simply cutting their connection or killing the game, so it could be argued that it's pointless to bother with. It doesn't sound like that's your main concern though.

@Pizzasgood:

people cutting their connection or killing the game falls under "timing out". Yes, I want this to also be included in the solution. thank you for helping me clarify this point.

In effect, you can not leave the game in space while someone has you targeted (at under 1km) without them knowing that you are getting ready to leave the game. Unless you set a game option that hides this information from them, and even then, they know that you are hiding it from them (in which case they should just blast you). The option to censor this information would be off by default (for the noobs that are in the most need of extra time and instruction on how to pay a pirate, or talk their way out of it). players that turn on the option to censor logoff detection will tend to be instant kos with anyone who cares about it.

Notice of change in position:

On further consideration, I now feel that simply detecting that a player is exiting the game while is space is not enough.

I still support the idea of being able to detect it, I am just shifting priorities to preventing logoff while in combat. Please join me in supporting proposals that will accomplish this.

Example: Prevent /logoff if you have taken any damage in the last minute,

See also:
Target Connection info
Sep 11, 2009 incarnate: Longer delay for /logoff in space

Don't see what purpose it serves fer game immersion.

That was my thought as well: it interferes with immersion. Loggers are annoying, but I don't think the annoyance is worth adding something that defies immersion.

Yes it is. It allows us to prevent them from cheating by magically disappearing, which is less immersion breaking than them actually magically disappearing.

The reasoning is understandable, but the approach presented here is not the way it should be handled. Instead, VO should use the tried and true method of preventing logoffs (that has been used by other games since the 90's) by not allowing clean logoffs while the player is in combat. Some games do this cancelling (not resetting the timer) of a logoff attempt if you take damage while trying to logoff. Other games have a Combat flag that gets tripped if you become involved in combat in some way that is then cleared after a period of non-combat activity.

Whichever method is used, giving someone metadata about another player's client or intentions is not the way to do it.

Define combat. How does the game know that I'm holding somebody up? If I shoot them in order to inform the game that they're in combat, how long should it last before I have to shoot them again? We can do this already, as long as I shoot them every twenty seconds or so, but that tends to spook newbies, and sending them paragraphs of explanation about what I'm doing just confuses them. Changing it to a 5-minute cooldown (when not docked) would work, but it would be best if we didn't need to harm them at all. Thus why people make threads like this one.

My preferred way of dealing with this would be to just allow instant logoffs in space, but leave the ship floating pilotless for a solid five minutes. Any time it takes damage, reset the counter back to five minutes. Then the game doesn't have to tell me anything, nor does it interfere with anybody's ability to log off in a hurry because they're late for work. If my victim goes silent for more than a minute or so, I know something weird is going on, and if they fail to respond, I could then just kill them. People seemed pretty opposed to that idea when I proposed it before (granted, I originally proposed a 15 minute persistence). This thread provides an alternative.

To preempt anybody who says, "Why do you need five minutes to kill a moth? You suck Rin!", the issue is that it takes newbies a long time to figure out how to work the /givemoney command, despite me displaying to them the EXACT command they need to run when I hail them. Especially if they're on a tablet (slow typing) or if they don't know about tab completion and ignore the quotation marks. So, it's pretty typical for me and the newbie to just sit there motionless for a while while he figures it out. Five minutes (whether on a combat cooldown or on a ship persistence timer) provides them plenty of time to figure it out without me having to pressure them and make the situation worse because I'm worried they might be about to logoff.

As Pizzasgood points out, detecting logout is not nearly as immersion breaking as someone actually logging out in order to avoid an impending threat. By the time we destroy immersion, all pretense of immersion is well on it's way out the door.

@draugath. I do not want to know anything about the player's client. I want to know when the server is about to remove a ship from the game. The fact that a user action is causing the server to perform that action is secondary. I should have a right to be able to predict and react to immersion braking events on the server, regardless of the source of the event. This really has nothing to do with the user's intent, it is about the server's intent. I do not wish to know that the player is trying to log. I wish to know that the server is intending to remove a ship from my weapons range.

Edit: actually, I do want to know when the player has logged, so I am not sitting there chatting to empty space. how embarrassing. but that is more of a side issue.

If logging out in space was not immersion breaking, we might not have any need, or even excuse, to detect it.

I have already stated that I think this issue is secondary to preventing logout from being used as an escape from an impending threat at all.

+1 to any non-TRS sourced idea

what if TRS accidentally has a good idea? he did suggest the annihilator rebalance. try to keep an open mind. some game changes may still be here long after a specific player has come and gone.

If you want to know if someone has logged out, then join their group or guild or have them as a buddy.

People at the coffee shop are staring because I burst out laughing...

Still if the problem is instant loggoff then the solution should be preventin' that and not sending unwanted crappy info about someone's else connection.
Make logoff restricted in being docked and /or being standing still at zero speed for 30s and with a 30s timer. Otherwise if ye've lost connection, killed the client, logged on another char in the same account make the ship stay 1mn in the sector.

Draug, if you're trying to equate this to some kind of right to privacy, that doesn't fly when the things you want to keep private are done in public. Want to log off without people knowing? Do it where nobody can see you.