No. I know there are market bots. I just think that “bots are reason for market update” is total garbage. And mentioned bots don’t have significant effect on economy. Anyway I’m leaving this fight…
I feel the evidence says otherwise. I think CCP wants to get rid of bots that aren’t paying for Omega, and bots that become too visible, and bots that create a situation that can’t be ignored. Also sometimes, they want to nail a pack of bots just so they can publicly state “Look, we’re nuking bots! Yay us!”.
It’s been pretty clear for a long time that as long as people can’t conclusively prove botting, and as long as the bots involved are paying for Omega subs (eg., all in Rorqs, barges, caps or using Omega skills to bot), CCP isn’t at all interested in nuking them ‘en masse’. It would create way too much pushback from the groups that support alliances and large alt-farms. Plus of course it would cost them money and reduce player numbers.
Some white knight will come along and state how hard it is to detect bots, false positives, etc. I can state with certainty that it is possible to put systems in place that make botting programs themselves much harder to implement, that confirm whether a human is in reasonable control or not, and that track botting behaviour to build profiles of human/non-human behaviour patterns.
It’s also quite possible (and good for the game) to re-design base EVE mechanics so they are less grindy, repetitive, simplistic, predictable and easily managed. That is, move from the current ‘begs to be botted’ mechanics to more complex, variable and actively managed mechanics. To their credit, it is at least possible that the recent market changes are a step in that direction. Although personally I believe they made those changes for other reasons and just hung the “to combat bots” sign out to help justify them.
Even though CCP has had a ‘security team’ for years, they’re apparently using minimal tools and player reports to distinguish between ‘bot accounts we want to get rid of and publicly announce’, and ‘subbed bots that we don’t want to mess with because they’re associated with our largest groups of paying customers’.
Minimal effort to ensure that the maximum number of subs stay subbed, while ignoring the effect on the rest of the game. That’s the CCP way.
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Any bot is one bot too many…
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You don’t seem to have a very good mental picture of what bots do that make them effective in a game.
Bots are best at simple, repetitive tasks, that result in minimal expenditure of resources and can work from easily identified triggers. “Launch drones, set to aggressive”, “lock closest asteroid, activate mining laser”, “every 5 minutes, check if last item price posted is still the lowest/highest order. If not, repost at top order +.01”.
That sort of thing. Tasks that require judgement, that require evaluating the costs vs the benefit (if there is only 1 order in front of yours, do you repost?), or that potentially trigger large costs (instead of virtually non-existent ones), are not as bot-friendly as many EVE tasks.
Bots aren’t magic. They act in specific ways, with specific limitations and benefits. EVE is designed with many core actions that are very bot-friendly. Change the way the base action works, you change how bot-friendly it is.
I’m still not saying these changes were made to combat bots. But it has certainly changed the market from ‘almost entirely bottable’ to ‘bots will need to be significantly reworked and can no longer endlessly top the market every 5 minutes’.
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Bots are best at simple, repetitive tasks, that result in minimal >expenditure of resources and can work from easily identified triggers. >“Launch drones, set to aggressive”, “lock closest asteroid, activate >mining ?laser”, “every 5 minutes, check if last item price posted is still the >lowest/highest order. If not, repost at top order +.01”.
i see you are primitive
most of the actions for mining process could be done with hot keys.
sometimes you need to point with mouse and click.
that is why mining bots are possible.
and simple.
but require very specific setup for windows on the screen
price for mistakes is low
most of the actions for belt ratitng process could be done with hot keys.
that is why belt ratting bots are possible.
and simple
price for mistakes is low
market trading is not rly bounded to hot keys.
it is mouse clicking in very different areas on the screen,
bot needs to read areas, convert them to Numbers, calculate,
find Proper Orders and modify them.
any error could lead to very big losses
dont tell me any burger flipper can do it
If bots are such a problem, why doesn’t CCP introduce their own bots? They came up with plex to deal with rmt, why not a sanctioned bot that would give them at least somewhat of an idea of how many even want to bot, etc?
Long day, flame away…
Yes, the character recognition problem is not trivial, but it’s also not an unknown problem in software engineering. You’re talking about text in a standard format on a standard interface layout, about the easiest possible case for reading text from a screen. And once you figure out a way to read the screen the rest of the process of making 0.01 ISK adjustments is trivial. There’s never any meaningful decision to be made, if your order isn’t the highest/lowest you adjust by 0.01 ISK from the current high/low order, every 5 minutes almost without exception. It’s not like a PvP encounter, where there are complex decision trees based on incomplete information and a constantly evolving situation with fatal penalties for making an incorrect choice.
Real Market Traders use Oficial Real Market API and Oficial FIX protocol
your references to Real World are irrelevant
Your ignorance is laughable.
First, all your post does is repeat what I said: “Bots take simple repetitive actions with low expenditures”. Whether they use hotkeys, macros, mouse clicks or other methods, they’re all essentially the same.
Then you say market bots are ‘more complicated’ because they ‘have to read numbers from different parts of the screen’, and ‘any error could lead to big losses’. Which again, is exactly what I said that the new market changes are less bot-friendly than the old ‘.01 isk every 5 minutes’ bots. If you think that somehow old market bots were hard to implement because ‘getting numbers from a standard screen and calculating’ is difficult for computer programs, then honestly you shouldn’t be allowed to use a computer because you have no clue what they even are.
Just to update your ‘primitive’ notions, you’re thinking about automating how humans do things by having the bot program duplicate what a human does: read numbers off specific locations on the screen and ‘mouse click in very different areas’. It seems your knowledge of ‘botting’ stopped 10 years ago in the ‘keystroke/mouse-click macro recorder stage’.
Actual bot programs deconstruct the client program and read the information they need directly off the known memory locations in the data stack. Then they insert command tokens into the client output to accomplish the proper task. They don’t “read the screen” and “click the mouse” for you. At least, none but the most primitive do.
Of course it’s just propaganda. The change is meant to do exactly what it does,
with the effect of slowing down trade and the economy.
They’re trying to revert the game into an earlier state,
which makes it more accomodatable for newer players.
This change goes hand in hand with the ore-scarcity change.
Not only that, it goes also hand in hand with any change that increases PvP,
because too much wealth leads to stagnation and less wealth means more conflict.
More conflict increases consumption and thus also production.
Traders, who’s primary activity is to buy low and sell high, add absolutely nothing to this.
One of the effects of this change is the lowering of the velocity of money,
because that’s going to shrink the economy. Apparently that’s intended:
Shrinking the economy.
Because that promotes conflict.
Hey! Long time no see! I’m in need of your knowledge! 
Can you tell me If I’m wrong and where?
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“mouse clicks in the upper right corner warp_to_zero” are the same.
“mouse clicks on my order” are different most of the time.
now my order is here, 5 min later it is 10 pixels lines lower, or may be 30, or who knows
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