I’m saying plex prices are immaterial to botters. The article at the beginning of this thread suggested that botting group was pulling more than a trillion isk a month. Botters costs are basically nothing.
They are immaterial to some botters perhaps. They are very important to other botters though. Botting on an industrial scale (meaning RMT businesses) are in the latter, rather than former, group.
EDIT: Cost of generation (which may be higher than you think after risk adjustments) isnt the cost center of an RMT network.
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I disagree thats why I questioned you earlier.
Or maybe they don’t have the resources? Would you rather no new content for a year and a chance to bam botters or less bans but more content.
And Captcha should give you some idea how difficult this is. It Already a losing battle as a few companies claim they have broken Captcha distorted text with automated systems.
Everyone acts like beating bots is this easy task. If it was, CCP would have already taken this low hanging fruit and proudly proclaimed they stopped botting. The reality is, for every bot squashed, 2 more minor variants with subtly different scripts pop up to take their place. It is a never ending struggle and CCP is stuck on the harder end of the struggle.
And all saying just to change EVE so you can’t bot, if it is a repeatable action, some one will figure out a bot. And if it is not repeatable, then it won’t make a fun game or will take way too much CPU to make feasible.
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I did not understand your question. The way its worded seemed to imply that you think scale allows for economically impossible outcomes. Which is why I asked you to clarify.
Consequences: isk per PLEX goes up, isk per $ goes up, they have to pay out more isk to stay competitive. Since they already have essentially infinite isk, it doesn’t really become a problem, at least until it ruins the game and the game has to be shut down, but poachers aren’t known for being particularly environmentally savvy.
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Truth
That’s why the price doesn’t matter to a botter.
See my edit. I think it will make more sense. Also make sure you are thinking about the opportunity costs if EVE’s $ -> ISK conversion is extremely low
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Quite the opposite. RMTers have to offer more ISK for the $ than the PLEX from CCP option does to stay competitive. More ISK required means more botting necessary to supply that ISK.
Name checks out lol
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If they don’t have the resources, it’s because they’re throwing it at projects that are then written off. World of Darkness, DUST514, Sparc, Valkyrie, …
You’re telling me they have the resources for that but they can’t hire a 3rd person for Team Security?
lol thats why I try not to engage on a real time basis. Making edits in a real time convo just gets things confusing for those engaged and the reader of a later time.
In essence you have taken comments that question your statements and make them not relevant or less relevant. Other than typos this kind of editing is madness.
Think it through before applying it to a post.
Considering the content they released over the past year?
I’ll take the ban option.
A customer who plays by the rules can pay for his subscription either with cash or isk. Cash cost doesn’t change from botting, only through currency fluctuation and CCP pricing changes. Subscription cost payed for by PLEX can be acheived by either purchasing it by isk on the EVE market or cash from CCP. For cash customer, no problem since CCP controlls price. However, if isk used you must buy it from a person who bought it with cash. RMT can buy as many PLEX as they want and set the price in isk, resulting in a big push on PLEX inflation cost. Since they can buy in bulk at reduced prices, their cost per average is lower, but through their volume they can influence the PLEX market to move higher. The inflated ISK is then sold to players through RMT for cash making a markup. Ditto for modules gathered by botting…
So RMT purchase large bulk of PLEX adding to CCPs bottom line. This is fed by the selling of both isk and items gathered by bots to players for cash. Part of the cash is siphoned off as RMT profit, the rest is used to buy more PLEX from CCP in bulk. By buying and stockpiling PLEX in volume, RMT encourages CCP not to come after those who share their botting profits and only concentrate on those who fail to buy more PLEX. In the meantime, those players who buy PLEX with isk pay gradually inflating cost and must work harder/longer to afford.
Tl;dr. By buying PLEX in bulk, RMT financially encourages CCP to look the other way. Whether they actually sell the PLEX doesn’t matter, since their cost to buy them is all financed by the bots. The RMT generate a larger number of PLEX sales than through players alone, benefiting CCP.
Sorry, typing on small pad. takes off tinfoil hat
Its all gonna be ok,Hilmar just needs to make few more failed games mobile or otherwise and than focus is back on eve.
We all just need to continue to give him money because…
…No money no honey.
Kinda worried that EvE gets TOO successful, CCP will sell it to EA…
–Gadget Shudders
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The article misses too much, it should have gone far deeper. Most common bots in the game are ran part-time by multiboxers of all sorts, regardless if its mining, ratting, market, hauling, even explo bots have been reported recently which is really sad. Also its obviously not just the alliance that they focused on. A huge chunk of the current cap proliferation comes from botting in one form or another. It doesn’t take a genius to fly through NS and see it.
The other aspect of this, is that the game fosters a “bot friendly environment” from the ground up due to its mechanics (multiboxing, AFK playstyles, spreadsheet based combat, too powerful APIs, the way plex and accounts work, etc., many more) and unless those are addressed nothing will change. Even if CCP gets rid of the current wave somehow, the bots are advancing at a much higher pace then developers and will return quickly. So the only way to truly minimize the number of bots is to make it a PITA and basically unprofitable for them to function.
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Is that your comical way of saying that you don’t understand the differences between buyer and seller and their motivations? Botters are the sellers and they only care about high PLEX prices in the regard that they have to offer their buyers more ISK for the $. A botter isn’t going to turn off his bot and instead buy PLEX to sell for ISK to then RMT that ISK at a loss, as that would be just plain stupid.
And even if the botter isn’t RMTing ISK, he’s not going to start buying PLEX to sell for ISK either, because why pay when you can get it for basically free. Instead he’s going to bot even harder to offset the increased prices of the stuff he buys with that botted ISK.
Either way, you’re wrong.
Tell me, if you were an Industrial scale RMTer which situation would (all else equal) attract you to EVE more:
1 ISK sells on black market for $1
1 Billion ISK sells on black market for $1
DO you think one of those situations might attract more people interested in dealing black market ISK?
Now add the following complications:
If your customers can purchase ISK legally, and the $ - ISK conversion rate falls (more ISK per $ spent) does that put downward pressure on your margins?
Might you start to consider allocating your resources and time to another game if the $ - Gold/item conversion value was higher than EVE?
We have had this same conversation over and over again, and each time the real life data gathered about this topic points to the conclusion that “cheap” legal ISK is correlated with decreased RMT. FFS there was a whole line of dev blogs and fanfest presentations about it.
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