Originally posted by gainesvilleg

I actually don't think bots are against the spirit of EVE, to be honest.  Note that CCP also not only allows but endorses and profits from:

1) Players buying ISK

2) Buying accounts/characters from other players

3) Having multiple accounts and using them simultaneously

 

The above would be considered banable offenses in some MMOs.

I personally don't think CCP minds bots in EVE, especially if they are additional accounts bought (or funded via Plex which is the same in the end) by veterans who drive revenue by having multiple accounts.

If you are looking for "fair" in your MMO I don't think EVE is for you...

LOL, truer words were never spoken. 

And you could be right, they might not mind a certain level of bot activity, but do realize trying to catch botters costs real world money, not ISK and every effort has to be balanced against it's cost vs benefit.

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Originally posted by Yamota

You can apply deductive reasoning.

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I do and that is why I ask for data - to determine how much they affect the economy.

No data, no discussion.

I have a friend that wrote a program to bot in Eve and he did it on multiple accounts. We were at a party and he says to me guess what I'm doing right now. I said drinking beer? He said I'm mining in Eve!

He had it set up so that if a player warped in the the bots docked and he could remotely do stuff on his phone or another computer as well.

I think it is too easy to mine with bots in Eve and I think the econ of Eve would be changed a lot if some how mining became bot free. Or just make bots obsolete by making in game robots that mine for you all the time. That is basically what they did with planet interaction any way. You just set it and check on it every once in a while.

I don't see how allowing all players to mine completely unattended would help the botters.  I think it would hurt them.  Which is a good thing. 

As of right now, only those willing to violate the game rules and risk being banned run bot programs.  No skillpoint build-up is required to run these bot programs.  No real competition to these programs exists among the legitimate playerbase because even miners who alt-tab most of the time don't mine all day.  But if players could put points into a skillset that allowed unattended mining, the botters would have competition from anyone willing to have Eve running on their computer all day, whether they were alt-tabbed, staring with glazed eyes at an asteroid, or at work. 

And if having high skills in that skillset made a big difference in daily efficiency, anyone mining for RMT purposes would risk losing the time it took to build up those points. 

And really, as far as hisec mining goes, at any rate, who is actually sitting in a chair staring at asteroids hour after hour?  I should hope no one is!  I didn't play Eve very long, and because I did mine, I considered it more of a screen saver than a game.  That was my choice, I realize I could have played it in a way that made it far more interactive (doing just about anything except mining, for example).  But I rather enjoyed my screensaver.  I've said before that if I ever go on to grad school I'll resub to Eve for something to do while I study and write papers, much like I always had scrap paper around to doodle on before there were laptops in the classroom.

A captcha would just annoy me, and probably do nothing to stop the botters.  Just going ahead and allowing players to mine unattended won't stop the botters either, but it would give them some competition from legitimate sources.  It's that or try to stamp out all the botters forever in hopes of driving mineral prices up.  I didn't play this game long, but I still follow it, and nothing I've seen so far makes that second solution even a remote possibility.

They have bin around since eve started out, they do not become more, they do not become less, its as its now a part of the game, take them out and you be crying, Prizes off every single item in the game would sky rocked and youl all be flying newb ships into pvp course real ships would be to expencive.

Those mined minerals go directly into the market orinto production>goods, Its traded for Isk, Part of the isk is then used to buy game time cards and part of it is sold to players outside the game.

The isk reteurns into the game by those players selling timecards or buying the isk outside the game offical ways, Some isk never retuerns to the market keeping inflation down (destroyed goods,banked isk, gamers taking a break. 

In a other game it might have had a real game hurting impact, but in a "real" economic system like the one Eve has the market sorts itself out.

Some miners/indy corpsmight complain they loos income over it, but  whitout the mayor bot networks the system as its now would colaps on itself, Simply coz its a small % of players that actualy like to mine all day long and those will not be able to substain the game.

Teala...

I think I have read every post up til now. Your zeal for bot removal is admirable. I started this game in 2006 and started mining. I remember the hatred for bots on the Eve'o then. I can't believe no one has mentioned the obvious(and if they have, forgive the rest of this)....DO SOMETHING YOURSELF.

See that security status in your character sheet? Utilize it. I have killed a multitude of people in EvE. Killing suspected macro's is one of the IN GAME MECHANICS that EvE has equipped it's player base with. Some people call this suicide bombing. I call it macro killing. Either way, it achieves the same goal.

I can then go to a 0.4 system and kill 5000 rats and get my sec status back up...rinse repeat. Better yet..make a low sp alt just for this purpose.

CAPTCHAs would work fine in hi sec..which is apparently where your EvE experience is based on with this suggestion, btw. Malcanis has given you specifically why it would be a horrid idea in low/null sec...due to the instant/near instant aggresion that can come your way.

I can tell you this. If CCP implemented this..the amount of petitions would skyrocket. I would never lose another non combat ship legitimately again. CCP would be forced to recoup every ship lost this way, b/c it would be THEIR fault. If they didn't, then people would leave.

In closing, why don't you utilize the tools that are already in game now? I have killed people in hi sec that wouldn't leave my belt. Were they botters? I don't know...don't care. They left, I got the mins to myself and corp.

Facta, non verba.

Originally posted by Teala

Simple fix...

H  It would be for miners only.   It would never appear if you are engaged in fighting NPC rats who are attacking your vessel or vessels.    It would only randomly appear while just mining.

What about players attacking you? Would it still appear? If not, an easy fix for the botters would be to put two ships in a belt, and just attack eachother with 1 t1 drone each, easily tanked for even an unfitted hulk. OR just refuse to kill one of the rats and but a little tank on the ship. Voila, now it only works to inconvenience legitimate players.

Oh and if this has already been said, my apoligies, I didn't read the entire thread.

Originally posted by Lille7

Originally posted by Teala

Simple fix...

H  It would be for miners only.   It would never appear if you are engaged in fighting NPC rats who are attacking your vessel or vessels.    It would only randomly appear while just mining.

What about players attacking you? Would it still appear? If not, an easy fix for the botters would be to put two ships in a belt, and just attack eachother with 1 t1 drone each, easily tanked for even an unfitted hulk. OR just refuse to kill one of the rats and but a little tank on the ship. Voila, now it only works to inconvenience legitimate players.

 

Oh and if this has already been said, my apoligies, I didn't read the entire thread.

All of which can be easily overcome by simple scripting.    :)  Thanks for playing.    Next!

A blue posted this, but it's relevent to most anyone who deal with bots in game:

Investigating and taking action against players that are reported to or suspected by us to be exploiting is not a simple task. I realise that this is a pressing concern for you as your enjoyment of the game is directly impacted, but it's unrealistic to expect immediate action.

That said, please don't confuse a lack of 'immediate action' with apathy. We hate this sort of thing, and if I'm honest, we probably hate it even more than you do. That motivates us to put a lot of time into prevention and reciprocal action.

Over the years we've learnt that we can have the biggest impact by being patient and taking action once players have incriminated themselves wholly and without a doubt. It might not seem like it at the time, but please, trust us; we've been doing this for a while. :)

Your help is also one of the ways in which we tackle this problem. Whilst we do have our own ways to discover who is doing what, the reports that you send to us help a great deal. Please keep doing what you're doing, except for the posting screenshots and naming & shaming others bit. - Source

So.. Take that with what you will...

~Miles "Tails" Prower out! Catch me if you can!

In the first year of Eve, CCP did chase after botters, and caught quite a few, unfortuantly they also caught people who looked like botters. many people for example would just sit in an asteroid belt and press a button every now and then to mine the asteroids. They wouldnt read chat, and would in fact be reading a book or doing homework (yes this was me).

Becasue mining is mainly just sitting still and mining stuff then botters are not obvious unless you physically fly up to them and see how they react.

While we are on the subject, we should also raise the issue of people falsely reporting players as botters.  If you report someone to be a botter and it turns out to be false, you should get flagged for a penalty.

Botters are people too

doubt anyone will read my post this far in, cuz i haven't read most past page 3 or 4... but my idea would be to make mining interactive, a combination of the captcha idea and blending it in the story line to make it immersive.

The idea is to have mining subject to constant "tuning" to maximize output of minerals.  Think about it, if you are pvping, are you doing it afk?  you have to be actively engaged to pvp, or to pve doing missions (more or less active depending on your ship and skills, but  u cant mission run afk), so anyway, why not with mining?  why is mining so boring? because CCP havent made it require and active participation, thus the botting.

My idea for "tuning" requires that the player key in a number sequence that displays from a "mining device" (let you nerds figure out what to call it) and as long as you key in the number sequence, your mining is maxed to whatever your skills dictate... otherwise the mineral return is so piss poor botting becomes near useless... the captcha becomes part of the sci-fi part of the game... because mining IRL actually requires participation... otherwise miners wouldnt be necessary and machines could do everything.  while this is not real life, we still want immersive participation with our game.  Mining should be no exception.

Nothing wrong with captcha idea, but it has to become part of the game and be immersive with the eve sci-fi universe... do people want to have to keep keying in numbers to "tune" their mining crystals?  no, but who cares... its because the current system is what people are used to, thats it... they are lazy and will complain... and that is because they are botters.  Everypart of EVE should involve participation... that was the flaw initially of mining and unfortunately lasted 7 years with no change... ccp assumed that mining was boring so keep it boring... wrong.. make it active participation like any other EVE activity...

Problem is Drokar, captcha doesn't work in any shape or form without it being more of a nuscience to real people then it is the botters. Its too easy to create a system where an external program takes a screen capture reads the numbers then plugs them in the appropriate fields without touching one ounce of client code. So any sort of show and enter system won't work for any lengtth of time. Not saying that it won't hurt them for a week or 2 but I'd be shocked anything passed that. Some sort of interactive system is needed but anything based around captcha or captcha like mechanic won't do it.

The reality is though that its better to just make something enjoyable for the players to do and not worry about designing an Anti-bot system because chance are you are going to spend 10x as long developing the anti-bot system then its going to take the botters to break it.

for anyone that is responding to this post....please don't assume that you are mining in high security space. Legitimate miners mine in low sec and null sec as well. As Malcanis has explained in an earlier post..if you are mining and an enemy HUMAN player warps into your belt...and you get ready to warp out... and ....you have to enter the CAPTCHA.

Let that purcolate through your brain for a minute. I would agree that most of the botting happens in protected null sec...but that's because the alliances renting out this space ALLOW it. Botters can be killed just like anyone else...I have seen them before as well.

Botting algothrims will always outpace the countermeasures. The best way to resolve it, CCP has already provided. Most people think it is the "petition" button. No. It is the modules that you fit into your medium/hi slots. You could take the approach that FPS's use...many servers I play on say.."no hackusations...frap and post on our forums."

If you want to sit and frap bots for hours at a time, fine.    OR....kill them. Add all of them to your friends list. Every time they are on...seek them out. Start your own jihad if you like.

Just stop complaining about it.

Originally posted by Nicoli

Problem is Drokar, captcha doesn't work in any shape or form without it being more of a nuscience to real people then it is the botters. Its too easy to create a system where an external program takes a screen capture reads the numbers then plugs them in the appropriate fields without touching one ounce of client code. So any sort of show and enter system won't work for any lengtth of time. Not saying that it won't hurt them for a week or 2 but I'd be shocked anything passed that. Some sort of interactive system is needed but anything based around captcha or captcha like mechanic won't do it.

The reality is though that its better to just make something enjoyable for the players to do and not worry about designing an Anti-bot system because chance are you are going to spend 10x as long developing the anti-bot system then its going to take the botters to break it.

Agree.

Do this for two weeks of actual game time. Every time you jump from a belt, to a can or station. Be it you, the miner, or the hauler, whatever. Open a new text document with wordpad or other suitable program, [alt]+[tab] to it and write down the current time you warped.

Fight RMT but not by making legitimate players suffer, then you only have added a bad thing to the game.

This if nothing would just promote botting software that automatically fills in this annoyance for the players.

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Originally posted by Teala
Why have they not been more active in pursuing botters, especially the botters that mine?   These guys are everywhere and it doesn't matter if we report them or not, because they do nothing about them.   These botters can stay in game almost 24/7 mining ores and it is killing the economy.    Are there any other players that are concerned about this?

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1.) Botting behavior is basically difficult to discern in EVE vs the behavior of your non-botter due to the nature of the game play mechanics found in EVE.

2.) EVE has a huge security hole that botting programs can interface and exploit in the form of the Python scripting language that EVE is built on. Some botting software actually does not directly interface with EVE but instead the botting software uses an application abstraction layer that relays all input/ouput of data from/to the EVE client to the Botting client software. Thus ensuring that any changes to the eve client only proves a minimal hindrance to deal with to those programming authors who create EVE's botting software.

3.) Botting clients for EVE have grown to become tremendously sophisticated. There are bots now that can basically IM, email, text message, etc the user with the text of a GM chat tell and then the user is able to respond back with a message to GM via the botting client. Thus making detection almost impossible unless the user basically completely afk or is flagrantly botting 24/7 for months on end. Smart botters will usually only bot for about 6-10 hours and then have their bots log off.

4.) Lastly botting itself is basically supporting the entire economy in eve and is the reason why prices are so low for many items like ice products, high end minerals, officer and faction pirate mods, etc because of the share amount of thees items they bring into the market which in turns ends up deflating the prices of these goods for other players, which includes PLEX licenses.

5.) EVE pve is basically mind numbingly boring and time consuming endeavor in any MMO I've seen. Yet people have to pve to generate ISK. They then use to ISK to be able to participate in pvp. Thus botting is usually seen as the perfect way to accomplish this chore of a task for many eve players.

I could probably add a few other points but I hope you get the idea as to why botting is so hard to eliminate in EVE and why so many Alliances are basically rife with botters.

P.S. Bots in 0.0 are rampant and they are smart enough to deal with changes in local when new players enter. Most bots will have a designated safe pos or safespot that they warp too and for which you cannot get to them. Most know how to deal with tricks such as someone anchoring a warp bubble in a belt or directly in front of their safe pos. These bots usually scan for warp bubbles before leaving their safe.

OP, why do you think that a company that has implemented a system that allows currency to be purchased with RL money and is intending to put in a cash shop to sell in game rewards gives a flying crap about botting?

Whatever it takes you keep you playing on your two accounts tbh.

Whatever the rabid cult of EvE says this game is rotten to the core already, bots or not.

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Originally posted by Kyleran

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Originally posted by gainesvilleg
I actually don't think bots are against the spirit of EVE, to be honest.  Note that CCP also not only allows but endorses and profits from:
1) Players buying ISK
2) Buying accounts/characters from other players
3) Having multiple accounts and using them simultaneously
 
The above would be considered banable offenses in some MMOs.
I personally don't think CCP minds bots in EVE, especially if they are additional accounts bought (or funded via Plex which is the same in the end) by veterans who drive revenue by having multiple accounts.
If you are looking for "fair" in your MMO I don't think EVE is for you...

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LOL, truer words were never spoken. 
And you could be right, they might not mind a certain level of bot activity, but do realize trying to catch botters costs real world money, not ISK and every effort has to be balanced against it's cost vs benefit.

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He's wrong with number 3. Almost every MMO I've played does not have a policy against people with multiple accounts or then logging on to play these accounts at the same time.