Which is the right weighting btw. There are “simple” changes CCP can make to reduce botting, but this means hedging the income streams in general.
Can you elaborate on what these simple changes might be?
Put soft caps and more risk on anom farming, exhausting resources, cooldowns, make people switch systems/constellations, tags instead of bounties, resets on warp outs (lose your tick), proportional response based on what ships you bring, get scrambled in site, etc.
TL;DR cap afk-able ISK faucets. Require human-brain mitigated risk to keep a high ISK flow.
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That requires development effort which they won’t dedicate because on one hand it’ll reduce bots not really bring new players and on another it’ll drastically affect current nullsec players who without their isk sources will leave the game or cut down on their number of alts hurting CCP in the end.Everyone loves to hate on those null players because of cynos,blobs,rorquals etc fact of the matter is almost all of them pay for atleast 2 accounts and they are organised(look at goons for example) if you force their hand as a developer when you don’t have a position of power(by this I mean CCP relies on EVE sub numbers alot) you end up geting killed by the players.
What if drastic changes meant to affect bots cause grief to players and large organised groups decide to mass unsub in protest?
Totally disagree.
Unfortunately all games suffer from this scummy people because scummy people buy isk out of game.
These scummy people should feel bad about themselves, but sadly they don’t.
They don’t realise how much pain they cause other players because of it with account hacks and credit card fraud.
Anyhow - in a number of the cases CCP leave botters and such up they are gaining information on where the isk flows and then do mass bans. Seen it time and time again.
I see what you mean, but the problem is that will affect all non-botters harder than botters.
A botter will still be able to run bots while afk, albeit at reduced income, while non-botters have to do the same manually for that same reduced reward/hr.
In other words, the botters still come out ahead.
See what I mean?
Thats why I still recommend my bot-test system.
Everyone will have to share the inconvenience of a 5-10s bot-test/hr, but it will reduce all effective bot-time by botters into a max 1hr period till they have to be back at their PC.
No more 2-23hrs botting while asleep/working/with family or otherwise afk.
This will completely wreck bot capacity.
The price, is are we willing to complete a bot-test once per hour?
I’m prepared to spend 5-10s per hour on a bot test, in order to almost completely wipe bots out of the game, especially those that run bots for extended periods whilst afk and cause the greatest harm to the game.
5-10s of a few clicks per hour is a very small sacrifice compared to how utterly this will destroy botter operations.
Think of it as something we, as players, can do to eliminate the overwhelming majority of the bot plague in EVE harming a game we all love, and which CCP alone is struggling with stemming.
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Yeah, this proofs a point, the big groups and their monetization schemes (out of game professional organisation is not paid with ISK) are untouchable, because they made themselves too big to fail for CCP.
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Here is the problem. Most people [Players & CCP alike] are looking at this from the wrong angle.
You do not use coders, developers, a security team, or players to deal with botters.
Botters the likes of the 10 Nyx bot fleet are not doing it to gain anything in game.
It is painfully obvious these “Pro-Botter’s” end game is RMT [Real Money Trading].
And for that, you use something far more effective and deadly to them.
Lawyers.
EVE Online & everything in it is CCP’s “Intellectual Property”.
They are selling Accounts, Characters, PLEX, & In game items [All CCP’s property].
To them, this game is a business, and from the looks of it, a profitable one at that.
By stopping their ability to sell these items, you give them no reason to continue.
I will use EBay as an example. Go on it, type in EVE ISK and look at how many listing there are.
Some sellers have been selling the above items for YEARS.
Some sellers whole reason for being there is to SOLELY sell the above items.
Without a place to sell these items, they in effect become worthless to them.
I bet you too CCP can find at least a 1/2 dozen more places these Botting for profit Asshats use to do the same thing by doing a simple Google search of “EVE Online ISK”.
Hell, there’s website called “ISKShop.com”. Pretty much giving you the middle finger.
Now, Granted, this approach only covers the botting for RMT business model, but its a start.
Your delusional and kidding yourself - point to any evidence you like of the last mass ban of botters that CCP has done - it was years ago if my memory serves me right, 3 or 4 at the least
What exactly are you saying they should do, take down websites selling isk - its impossible. Not only are you dealing with cross country servers and jurisdiction and laws, but the sellers haven’t actually broken any criminal laws in any countries.
Look how long it took a billion dollar industry like the film industry to close down down pirate bay which was breaking copyright laws and that was one site, took years, millions of dollars of legal fees and even now I can get on it a million different ways using mirrors, so point of fact they failed. Tell me, what legislation or case law should they use to do this that the rest of the world hasn’t managed to find todate
PS - still waiting for the Dev posts on this subject promised in October and then again early January post CSM summit
Dated 27th Oct
Dated 15th Jan
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I used that site site as an example of how rampant and blatant Botting RMTs have become.
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Pirate films and the film industry? Really? Is that your best?
That is completely different.
For One, its a downloadable content.
Two, the film industry does NOT have detailed records of where every bootleg copy was made.
CCP knows EXACTLY where every ISK in this game came from, and who owns it at any given time.
- EBay/PayPal [the same company] LOVE Swinging the Ban hammer way more then CCP does.
Why? Because, basically, they get to keep the money on the banned account[s].
Shut down EBay sales, WIN. Shut down 3rd party websites ability to get paid, Bigger WIN.
And doing both is a hell of a lot easier then you might think.
Who do you think EBay/PayPal will side with? Some lowlife or CCP?
I will give you a hint…
The 300 million dollar company that uses them to process payments.
Now sure, the truly hardcore ones will move somewhere else, open their own website, look to get paid in Bitcoin or some other form of electronic payment on their sites, ect, ect.
BUT, the harder you make it for them, the more likely they will move on to another, more easier target.
Look at your two posts and tell me exactly where you have posted what they are actually missing and what exactly they should physically do, I’m tired so I’m probably missing it
Are you saying they should target and shut down the websites selling isk, if so what legislation should they use
If you are saying something else, please elaborate
Really?
Can’t tell if you’re Trolling or just that Dense.
Let me spell it for you.
CCP tells Ebay sellers are selling their property = ebay removes listings / bans user.
paypal [owned by ebay] freezes, bans, ect the payment accounts of the sellers.
Cant list no more / cant get paid no more.
All the ISK you made in game = now worthless in the real world.
Some shitty 3rd party website that makes paypal $500 a year, or CCP who makes them FAR more.
Get whos paypal account gets canceled, frozen, banned, ect.
Don’t think paypal would do such things???
You are WAYYYY wrong. They do far more for far less reasons Every. Single. Day.
Your making sweeping statements and living in the world of make believe. Your statements are based upon beliefs, not facts or legislation
Yes, l know they wont do that, why, because I was a police officer for thirty years, the last 12 dealing with cyber crime and often dealt with Ebay, paypal and others and I know the way they work
If it really was that easy why haven’t CCP thought of and done it todate, or are you saying they are also that dense.
And if you take a minute, you will see multiple games ingame currency is also sold there. Again, if it could be done, why havent any of the games also taken this route.
And if you did manage it, what about the 50 to 100 other sites which sell isk and in game products that don’t rely on paypal or similar means - what are you going to do with them? Because its no point shutting a single feed down if they can easily move elsewhere
And if you looked closely at those ‘shitty’ webstes, you will see from feedback posted that many turn this in a week, even a day not a month or a year
And if Ebay/paypal says, “No, thank you,” what then?
How is CCP going to make foreign companies that are many times the size of it comply with their wishes? Especially in light that E-bay/Paypal is doing nothing illegal. What does CCP have to offer?
Bad press is the only thing I can think of.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m up for combating RMT and botting, but attempting to order around those that are not your subordinates generally won’t accomplish anything.
–Gadget looks for another way
Apparently your “30 years” of law enforcement and 12yrs of cyber crime experience haven’t taught you how to comprehend a simply sentence.
“Some shitty 3rd party website that MAKES paypal $500 a year,”
I did NOT say processes $500 [a day or week or month or year].
I did say MAKES paypal a profit of $500 a year.
Which at a standard US dollar processing fee of 2.3% per transaction [2.9% for a “limited” personal account] would relate to $21,750 in US Dollar sales for that person. NOT $500.
And to state the obvious, because its apparent I need to for you, $500 was a generic number to demonstrate how little they are compared to what PayPal makes from CCP’s business.
I NEVER said CCP needs to bully anybody.
EBay has their own dept, they set up all on their own, to handle this exact thing.
I would think someone with 12yrs of cyber crime and ebay experience would know that.
And no, I do not live in your fairyland world, and maybe if you took the time to actually read what I was saying instead of spamming nonsense you just might realize I know what I am talking about.
PS: Continue to blather on if you want, but do not expect another response from me until your second brain cell returns from its extended lunch break., which will probably never happen.
Have a nice day.
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The seller’s on ebay don’t list their items correctly. I don’t think there is a proper listing for such items so they list them as books or guides.
I do know an item listed improperly can be cause enough to have ebay review a seller’s status and validity.
There are other discrepancies in their ebay stores which could be cause to consider them as some kind of fraud.
Being that the seller’s use skype,that leaves the possibility to identify them.
Ok, I bow to your experience and knowledge of this, its obviously far superior to my own. Put a ticket into CCP explaining exactly how they can do this and the fact they are missing the obvious (and you can do one at the same time to all the other game developers where their goods are also sold on ebay) and then you can tell us how you changed the face of RMT’ing, saved them a fortune and were hugely rewarded for your efforts
And after that success, you can tell us what your going to do with the other sites, which are the real money makers for RMTer’s
Its a nice idea, but much of the RMT is listed on Ebay under:
Video games and consoles > Strategy Guides & Cheats
So, potentially one could equally argue that they are listed correctly.
I do in part agree with you Becca, believe it or not, but its not as straight forward as you think, if it was bigger companies would have done it already. This problem actually needs a layered approach, target selling sites, both RMT and bot sites with test purchase, threats of legal action, change game mechanics in game to make it harder to run bots, properly investigate RMT sells in game, following the isk and increase levels of punishment for bot runners as well as those that actually purchase isk.
The problem is, as we have already heard, CCP just have two guys committed to managing all aspects of security and they are fire fighting on the back foot, not proactively dealing with it. When they did finally make some bans which was due to bad media, it was done on overtime over a weekend, not part of their core business and at best it could be described as a token effort
If the Devs put out their promised update on this, clearly setting out their response to it, then I might be tempted to re-sub my accounts. But whilst nothing comes out but broken promises, then its Arma 3 for me
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While all you say is true addressing my quote,company policies are based on the current law. With that said,when has a corporation in the last 100 years cared about the law? Imo they don’t. They only meet the minimum required. They weigh the cost of doing business against the penalty of adhering to the law. Many companies in the US repeatedly pay fines as opposed to adjusting their business practices. I could site 1,000’s upon 1,000’s of violations and that’s just the country of my citizenship. Corporations do as they will until either that cost is more or they get swayed by public or political pressure.
There is also this. When an individual issues a complaint it is often dealt with at the entry stage by someone who uses their subjectivity when making a determination for accepting or rejecting. Example: Someone contacts Ebay and the person of contact already has a predisposed view. It can be,by chance in favor of the issuer’s complaint. Which allows an equal potential for those listings to be removed. No offense to those concerned,but this also applies to law at every level. There is the letter of the law. Then there is the reality. Piss of a judge and they can and do rule against your favor. Even though the case is clearly saying otherwise. Policemen,Attorneys,Prosecutors,ect are all subject to the human condition. All i’m saying is subjectivity is always a factor to consider. It can and does work both ways,when one knows how to play the right song.
The above paragraph is neither here nor there in so as much to what the discussion is and is purely my opinion. What isn’t my opinion is that nefarious people have found a niche in online games for their own benefit at the cost of those communities and the companies that host them. Criminal minds count on the system to protect them all the while abusing the moral basis that provides that protection. Being a Policeman,you would certainly know this truth.
Another game I play is being decimated by bot farmer,currency sellers,RMT at this very moment. The sellers have openly taken off the guise previously worn. They have directly challenged that company openly in their forums and in their game. To the degree of issuing threats to crash the website. Which ironically had user functions altered 18 hours later. That games had a few servers needing restarted over this past weekend. I know how to crash their servers as do many others. The RMT agents do as well and have done so. Criminals emboldened to do those kinds of things deserve appropriate consequences where ever they may be. My point being,is this. If a gaming company doesn’t do all they can everyday,they can expect the same,when the criminal feels his comfort zone is threatened. Again all standing behind the protection of the law.
What can a company do? Idk
What do companies do?
- They weigh the loss and do what is possible.
- The weigh the cost verses their gains and continue on.
- They pursue justice and accept the cost of doing so.
- They do nothing and capitulate.
- They fight fire with fire and deal with the fallout.
- They enter into an escalation process of never ending circumvention enduring the cost.
In all those cases the customer pays an inherent price knowingly or unknowingly. All those roads lead up a mountain of rough terrain and never a clear path.
Changing the perception of the gamer can be a factor. It is also a challenge in its own right. Yet this can be done. Done as long as the parent company is persistent and intent. By telling a gamer if you are found in possession of illegally obtained items or currency you will be permanently banned. By that action alone being enforced does change minds. Word gets out and things change from within. When the criminal has no respite,fight or flight ensues. Either way they leave. By their own accord or led away in handcuffs.
tl;dr
If someone can manage to appease the sensibilities of Ebay,those sites will go down.
Does anyone care enough?