As we see, the idea can be implemented to software. Maybe in future it would mold also hardware.
Salvos these need to be integrated INTO the Eve game itself. Make the bot checks a part of Eve through gameplay and you will stay ahead of them.
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After reading the entire 52 new posts I still say that securing the client and forcing no alternative but CCPs full client to be run would reduce a lot of the Eve Lite client bots. This would force huge expenses in the form of better hardware to run more bots and remove a lot of them because there would be no more modification of the client itself.
Like Ive said in other threads this would facilitate other things than simply bot denial.
@Teckos_Pech youre spot on with the PLEX issue mate. Smartest move CCP has made in years past to reduce and squeeze out bots and RMT profits.
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I can see how you could be confused by you having two different conversations with two different people at the same time, but I am not Salvos. Here you are referencing your conversation with him. Our conversation was me saying that a bot, on it’s own, being a piece of software, cannot “evolve” and then you saying that I’m wrong.
Of course every proof or example you use to make your point involves a system containing a bot to evolve or change, and so it has nothing to do with our conversation. We could talk about how systems containing living things evolve, but we have both already agreed on that point.
That’s only if the “check points” are on botting activities for everyone. That is a dumb idea and no one has suggested it. The “check points” should only be on accounts/players who are doing the activity like a bot would do it.
At the point you do that, you give warning to the writer testing their bot that it throws up flags during the writing the bot stage.
Also at the point you can do that, you can just manually identify the bots far better.
And you will miss so many bots. Because how do you tell the difference between a mining bot & a player. Or a ratting bot & an afk VNI ratter. Honestly I don’t see how you would be flagging any accounts that don’t play 23/7 like this. Which… I doubt any botters actually do because it’s so obvious to flag that sort of behaviour.
Your inability to see how this would work, doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work. And honestly if you don’t see how this would work, you really shouldn’t be in the “how to fight bots” discussion.
Go on then, explain how you will get the bots but not catch a whole lot of players along side it.
I think they’re great and CCP should implement them into the game asap.
Course it’ll mean lower log-in numbers but hey, bot accounts don’t spend real life money for subscriptions anyway.
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All these captcha and mini-game things you guys posted are utterly and completely useless. Anyone even suggesting such a thing is already unaware and well behind of what is going on.
the old style bots work via scripts, reacting to data, combination of API, in-game provided key controls and console commands, etc. yes there are still a lot of them around, especially market bots, but there is an entirely new breed of bots in use as well, which is replacing those old ones.
the new bots work on image recognition, some use overlays to generate inputs just like a player would on their screen, others use different means, some are still mixed where they use both. but they are overall progressing rather quickly towards being fully operational via image recog.
the image recognition can be in fact more accurate then that of a human. all those captchas, even that thing with circles and lines posted some posts above, all pointless.
just google the subjects and you’ll see what I mean. research and learn a little pls.
add to that increasing number of them are using AI, self learning, they are no longer just simple scripts. if a mini-game of one sort or another was implimented, all a bot operator has to do is teach it 2-3 times and then copy to whatever number of other bots, and then let it learn on its own rest of the way.
the only things that can stop it is game redesigns that make botting pointless or difficult from the ground up, and human interaction, human verification and intervention. even then, as the AI gets better mistakes will be made.
I’d rather not. I do have to say that I really appreciate the honesty in your statement that your view was limited by your lack of understanding, instead of insisting it was a universal reality, like most people do. But you could read up on the subject on your own, and then you could better contribute to the discussion.
Also you have appeared to misunderstand something I said.
I had intentionally included the AFK VNI ratter in the target group. AFK “play” (I use that word loosely) would be “doing the activity like a bot would do it.”
If you think that bots and active players really do anything the, you are most likely taking a very narrow view of what the player is “doing.” From the server logs it is very easy to see the difference between an active player and a bot/AFK “player.”
The first quote disproves the second. The point is to get rid of the cheap bots.
But once again we are met with “if you can’t get rid of 100% of all bots for all future times, your idea is worthless.”
So you are going to include most players in this. Because most players at some stage will do an activity somewhat afk. Which means we are back to driving players up the wall again.
No, not players. “Players” are people playing the game. An empty chair isn’t playing the game, nor is it a “player.” If you go AFK in the middle of a bot like activity and come back to a captcha or your pod sitting in space, you deserve it.
If you want to play the game, play the game. If you want to ignore the game and do something else, then don’t expect to be treated like you are actually playing the game.
If the only reason we can’t deal with bots is “but think about the AFK accounts” then I don’t see this as a reason to let bots run amuck. It’s like @Fluffy_Moe just said:
Ending the AFK culture in EvE is (somewhat of) a ground up change.
Also once again you appear to be over stating the impact. It isn’t “your account once did something bot-like so now you will get captchas.” It is “your account is currently doing something bot-like, so prove right now, this time only, that you are a human sitting at the computer and watching/playing the game.”
You know the pro-AFK crowd likes to talk about how AFK “players” can’t “do” anything and how they aren’t taking any actions, Well, that would hold true the other way around, you can’t “drive players up the wall” when they aren’t there.
I dont want cachapchas in my game.
Also i dont think EVE bots are so much advanced to use image recognition because it would need a lot of processing power. Isnt those AI recognition patterns slow and AI must first learn? In such case they would be good only with nvidia DGX station(s), so very expensive.
They are still the old kind of bots, screen scraping and memory reading, judging from what I have seen.
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A truly afk player is taking no actions.
A bot is taking actions.
A mining bot is taking the same number of actions that a real miner would.
A VNI bot is taking the same number of actions a VNI player would.
Otherwise they would be pretty ineffective bots if they took no actions like a truly AFK player. I guess a cloaky intel bot might look like a truly afk player cloaked somewhere. But then why are we not permitting someone to cloak up and go out to dinner for 3 hours in that case.
@Nana_Skalski We know some EVE bots use at least limited image recognition to spot local changing without using script injection. To know when to warp off.
Thats valid.
I made my suggestion on the premise that we will all have to take a hit to convenience, if this system can infact prevent bots.
This.
Afaik, most, if not all bots, will be unable to complete the EVE internal bot-tests I suggested (those where only rough drafts, not concrete examples).
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Aren’t you mistaking image recognition with screen scraping? That is different process.
Thanks to being built into the EVE UI/client, these captchas can involve motion, color changes, randomness, interactivity etc a typical browers captcha cannot.
Im not talking about captchas in a conventional sense, im talking about them specifically as bot-tests.
I suppose player-side this could superifically be tested for CCP consideration, by developing a flash game, and then seeing if anyone can program a bot to complete it. (Note: Not one that datamines the flash game itself, in any way that would not be possible in a EVE UI/client environment).
Like I said before, you are taking a very narrow view of what the player is doing. I do highsec space trucking on my industrial toon, and yes, the jump to gate clicks are exactly the same actions that a bot would take. But what living breathing player while making 40 highsec jumps is just going to watch the screen and do nothing other than click “jump to gate”? Almost no one, I certainly don’t, I do other things while flying through space: I chat, I check my PI, I check the market for good deals on things I trade, I check my industry/research/copying queues, I check my current inventories to update my cost and production spreadsheets, I play with the fitting tool to make weird fits, I do Project Discovery.
Players, when doing these tasks either:
- do something else in the game
- these would not get flagged or challenged, unless the “something else” is also done in a bot-like manner.
- go semi-AFK
- these should be challenged, and they deserve it, but they will be able to solve the challenge, and go about their life. I don’t have a problem if the challenge even has an audible tone to tell them to look at the screen.
- go full AFK
- these will be challenged and will fail the challenge. The account would then be flagged for GM review for botting, a human can investigate, watch other aspects of the account and make a decision. And to be honest, if you go AFK at any time other than cloaking in a safe spot or while docked, you shouldn’t expect to come back and find your ship intact.
Edit: CCP improving some of the in game tools like the maps, and market (global) would do a lot to help with this as it would cut done on the need to use out of game tools like eve-central (RIP) or dotlan. Also bringing back the in game browser would help in the battle against bots.
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I dont think these bot-tests should be linked to inactivity.
Simple reason being, that a scripted bot will be periodically sending commands to CCP anyways, thus not registering as “afk”/inactive.
The purpose/function is not to prevent afking, but to disrupt bot scripts.
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Then in that case @Nevyn_Auscent is correct, your solution will not be able to do anything against farming bots, and will falsely flag real active players and “drive them up the wall.”
It is the difference in activity patterns that flags a potential bot. If you don’t look at activity then you have to challenge everyone, all the time, which is what everyone is complaining about.
Maybe I was wrong when I said others were fighting a straw man of your idea, maybe it really is as bad as others are making it out to be.
Simple reason: you failed to grasp the AFK/active distinction I made: it isn’t the activity related to the task at hand that is being evaluated, it is everything else you are doing with the game client.