There are 20 characters named Aronin… and I’ve seen up to 8 being piloted concurrently in convoy. I might start scanning them myself to see what they are moving. I expect some do end up being ganked but I’ve not spotted it happen.
I love your suggestion about, " … random errors or malfunctions that can’t be scripted out will require human input at random intervals … Course drift … autopilot too long, or particle energy storms or something can disrupt auto navigation landing you somewhere you didn’t intend …". sounds good to me. And it adds a degree of realism back into the game too.
“Traveling through hyperspace ain’t like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations, we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova and that’d end your trip real quick, wouldn’t it?”
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Well if Bots would be a banable offense, botters would not die on their way back to set up their operation again, after being exposed.
They would get banned and most certainly not just keep on botting again.
Right?
Wrong.
Same dude bringing back a pod in order to start the botting again.
Clearly shows that the security team is more engaged in escorting the community team out instead of fighting bots and RMT.
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Lots of kills on KB, smartly under 1B in cargo each time. Mostly heavy water and not packaged.
You may be right or not, but I would have a difficult time proving this is botting and not just someone autopiloting. Multiboxing a freighter convoy isn’t that difficult and ‘herding’ will increase the chance of success. If you factor in some ‘acceptable’ losses.
Bot accounts are something kind of rare in Eve these days: They are a paying account.
There is a reason that a few years ago CCP stopped publishing how many accounts they had.
Well you can publish numbers as long and as big as you want, if the same botter keep on botting it just indicates that the numbers are just lies.
Those of you who’re concerned about botting, both here and over on /r/eve where I’ll also be posting this message, are 100% right. It’s an absolute plague, and it’s something that every MMO feels the wrath of. People who bot don’t give a ■■■■ about the game, they just want either a fast way to accrue wealth and cool stuff, or they’re looking for an easy way to build the resources to RMT.
Regardless of their motives, it’s to the detriment of the game and it needs to be stamped out. It’s garbage behavior, it’s against the rules, and it’s something that has a magnified effect in EVE because of the single shard nature of the game, the economy, and the fact that everything on the market is player built or sourced.
Are we doing enough at this stage to combat it? No, I don’t think we are, despite the fact that our Security Team are doing a rock solid job and are working flat out to combat these kinds of issues. I also don’t think it’s acceptable that it’s making our pilots feel like their efforts are diminished, and neither do our security guys.
We discussed this both internally and with the CSM today over the course of several sessions, given that it’s a recurring theme that keeps coming up. We’re looking to change things in the coming weeks and months, and to see some more concrete action on RMT and botting.
I’ve also taken this to the leadership of the EVE Dev Team too, throughout December and January, in the regular meetings that I have with them. I’ll continue to do so, and I’ll continue to keep it a top priority until it’s addressed.
However, that’s going to take a little bit of time.
Over the course of the weekend, CCP Peligro and CCP Grimmi have been doing Bob’s work, and have taken out just under a thousand accounts that were complicit in botting. They’ll continue to kick the ■■■■ out of as many more as they can going forward.
There’s the undertone in this thread that we don’t care about botting because it brings in revenue. To be frank, that’s entirely wrong. We lose far more than we gain when the ISK and assets generated from botting go to the scumbags who’re RMTing it on third party sites.
What’s more troubling for me though, is when it gets used illegitimately to fund wars for corps and alliances that leave their adversaries who play by the rules on the back foot, at a disadvantage and demoralized. There’s few things more that annoy me in EVE than people who aren’t playing by the few basic rules that we do have.
I don’t really have much more of an update for now, we’re still exploring ways to tackle this effectively and I’m not going to ■■■■■■■■ you guys. Just wanted to post here and make sure that you were aware that this is something that’s firmly on our radar.
I spoke about more concrete action against it, and that’s something we’re exploring right now. There’s a lot of things to consider in terms of how to tackle a problem like this and it’s not just as simple as “ban everyone who looks like a bot”, because that ends up with a lot of false positives, which results in false economy.
For sure though, I want you all to know that this is something that’s top of the list, and that I’m working closely with our security guys (CCP Peligro and CCP Grimmi, who’re pretty vicious with this stuff) to make sure that we can effectively stamp it out.
We’re going to focus on getting through the CSM Summit this week, then we’ll have an update for you guys as soon as we can.
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This is a very motivating statement and I appreciate your candor. I’m looking forward to EVE being safeguarded a bit more in the way of a bot crackdown. I think your reasoning is spo-ton.
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Is it bad that I can hear you say all this, in your voice?
I do not suppose you could let us know a bit of the breakdown of type of bots being hit? Market vs ratting vs mining?
m
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So you’re saying after a little bit of crying on reddit you banned 1000 bots within a couple of days.
Do you not understand how that is a problem?
Why does CCP as a company constantly need negative PR in order to do anything?
It’s like you (CCP) only care about ego and bottom line, with the product taking a backseat. I’m sure there are people within CCP who care deeply about EVE but aren’t given the time/resources to do anything about it until someone from the top says “yo they’re making too much noise again, shut it down”.
I realise you (Falcon) can’t address this due to the nature of your position being below one of those people, but as someone who cares about the game a lot it’s ■■■■■■■ depressing to watch.
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From what I’m seeing, the answer is that this wasn’t in reply to Reddit’s latest crying fit. However, I don’t want to get banned by the mods for rumor-mongering, so I’ll just write a blog post 
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CSM: “Botting is bad, you need to stop bots”
CCP: “Wow, really, thanks for the suggestion, why didn’t we think of that”
Another productive session from the council.
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We discussed this both internally and with the CSM today over the course of several sessions, given that it’s a recurring theme that keeps coming up. We’re looking to change things in the coming weeks and months, and to see some more concrete action on RMT and botting.
This is literally nothing. We’ve heard this hundreds of times from you folk before and all it results in is a downplay of the community frustration and then for it all to boil over again 3 months down the line with a whole nother set of problems without anything having been done about the previous ones.
This isn’t just about literal constellations worth of bots running 6 gilas or nightmares per system for 12h/days and having done so for months, nor is it about the fantastically obvious networks of public contracts you can poke your head through and see huge amounts being RMT’d but actually about how little we see thats being done to correct any of the glaringly obvious and painful problems which have been around for months to years.
There is so much that could be fixed with simple value changes but you’re not willing to iterate upon any changes for months after their release even though the extensive testing we players do and share with you prove otherwise/ The people who actually take part in whatever the system is might tell you something but you just dont listen. What springs straight to the forefront of my mind here is the initial release of aegis sov; The entire set of mechanics being extensively tested thanks to the contest for naming rights showed the huge flaws in the system but nothing was changed until ~+6 months post release and even then it was a change that should’ve been done day one.
These citadel changes will be pushed through too regardless of anyone informed in the community informing you that they’re going to be utter dogshit. Screenshot this.
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Yeah, I have to call ■■■■■■■■. It’s not like you suddenly wake up one day and go “ohmagerd werd der berts cerm frem.” If CCP really cared about bots, then false positives would be a non-issue. If something looks like a bot, if it acts like a bot, even if it’s not a bot it’s hurting the game just as bad as a bot. Considering how thin CCP’s record of actually giving a ■■■■ has become, yeah, ■■■■■■■■. Even if something gets done soon, it’s only going to be the once-every-five-year mass ban like every other time. Then the bots come back a week later and last until the next once-every-five-year mass ban.
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And still to this day the bots that belong in the corporation Ukrainian Soviet Socialistic Republic [YCCP] still haven’t been banned…
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CCP’s announced past development “to do” list:
- Player built stargates
- Walking in station
- Actively and effectively remove bots from EVE
Well, it’s good to see that they are already down to item #3 on the list…
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Thank you for taking time to address this issue publicly.
Thank you to the security team for addressing these issues internally.
Thank you to the CSMs for engaging in the discussion too.
Don’t forget the playerbase, we can help.
Perhaps there is some way to use the Project Discovery system to analyse data?
I would also suggest a simple automated reply when people send in reports to security.
ty
edit.
OP Success! 
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How ■■■■■■■ many did they ban 2 weekends ago?
3 weekends ago?
Thats their job correct?
Fulltime correct?
This actually proves nothing is done until hissy fits are thrown on reddit/game articles and then you “ban 100 bots over the weekend”
Maybe you should have been doing that! Lol
Ccp needs to hire a true PR firm like some oil spill company or something.
The pr of this company is so sad
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Why this weekend? EVERYONE knows the botting problem is out of control and has been for a long time. Why does it take 8 botting supers dieing and heaps of users on reddit to sperg out for you guys to actually do something?
It doesn’t take a genius to find these bots, I can warp to almost any belt and find them sitting there in skiffs/orcas, kill them and they just come back the next day like nothing happend.
Hell I don’t even need to do that in some systems, in Poinen for instance there’s a guy with like 100+ haulers botting 24/7 doing missions or something. Some guys even kiling them, but players can only do so much.
And this is just from what I see personally in highsec, Null is way worse since the economic damage you can cause farming there is much greater.
I don’t know whats worse. CCP not caring about the problem or caring and only hiring 2 people to stop them and doing this pathetic a job.
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