Falcon Merge Best Merge
No it wouldn’t. Active isk delta literally means the net amount of isk coming in or out of the game through accounts going inactive and reactivating. It’s completely disconnected from other faucets and sinks. It was originally added to demonstrate that the isk supply isn’t as out of control as it would otherwise seem, that people quitting function as a sort of isk sink as their isk is no longer in active circulation. A positive active isk delta means the total of isk removed through bans (lol) and people going inactive didn’t remove as much isk as people coming back brought with them. Since there are a total of 2 instances in the data posted, 1 is probably when they changed the definition of “inactive” (so a measurement artifact,) and the other is likely some patch day that drew back inactive vets. You’d have to check for newsworthy events to identify the specific correlations, but you could also assume it wasn’t one of the months where CCP did bans.
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Holy Info-dump, Batman!
Oh… another thread merge.
I’ve read all this before.
–Bored-again Gadget
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Posting in a Salvoshed thread.
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Easy. People who had gone “inactive” became “active”.
They are not valid. For example why should there be seasonality in players going inactive? Maybe there is but why. I can tell you why there is seasonality in residential electricity usage. In a place like the SW U.S. summers are hot so people turn on their air conditioning units. Usage goes up. What is the explanation for players going inactive being seasonal? Now if he had said there might be serial correlation which often shows up in time series data he might be correct, but he didn’t look for that.
Also, he says players going inactive should correlate with ISK faucets. But if there is a lag between going inactive and ISK faucets his lack of correlation is not surprising.
He then assumes that because he wouldn’t keep much ISK on a PVP account now body will…so there should be a correlation with the previous year because WTFIDK.
Finally he asserts we should see GM activity from banning bots in the money supply. LOL wut? First off when the money supply is 900 trillion even banning 9 trillion in botting accounts is just a 1% move which could be partially obscured by other valid in game activities.
And he did not attempt to marginalize out these other effects. He simply proc eyeballed it and said, “Don’t see it therefore it must not be there.”
It is nothing but a pile of shitty statistics.
Edit: Also for inactive players correlating with isk faucets he is assuming that the players were playing just as much as when they earned the bulk of their ISK.
Also Gevlon has turned junk science on its head. Usually one looks for a correlation any correlation then trumpet it to the heavens as Truth™ even though it is likely spurious. Now Gevlon asserts the data is wrong because it doesn’t fit his hypothesis.
That link could be used in terms of how NOT to do statistical work.
Don’t understand the graphs, an old man here and tired of it all now, but what I can definitely say is that CCP hasn’t been tracing the isk which is sold to buyers and clawing that back. They are taking out sellers when pushed, but nothing proactive or investigatory is going on.
Going back 6 months I reported a number of times to CCP one account which had in excess of a trillion isk in RMT contracts against their name. CCP did nothing with him at first until I publicly posted his contract history here in this thread and highlighted their inactivity in dealing with this one account as an example of their complicity.
Within a couple of hours this their account was banned and the RMT contracts against his name ceased appearing hourly. However… if you looked at the names of those that had been buying isk off him, you could see many of those names had purchased isk off him multiple times over several months. Then, if you looked at their contract histories post that toon being banned, you could see them still buying isk off different toons many weeks later.
If the isk which the original toon had sold had been clawed back, then these ‘buyers’ would have been given a warning, their wallets put into negative, and they wouldn’t be in a hurry to buy more isk, certainly not with the same toons as openly as they were doing. Instead, they just shifted who they bought the isk off and carried on as normal - proof to me that no isk was ever clawed back off the buyers, just what isk the selling account held at the time would have been seized
Interesting week, CSM minutes published - despite several CSM members asking about what action CCP are taking they don’t provide any concrete replies, despite them knowing it would be raised and despite the public outcry to date.
Dev blogs out concerning botting
Does this go far enough? does this answer all the questions?
Personally I still see the Jita market and local still riddled with bots, many of whom I’ve reported multiple times by way of the bot report function. So on a personal level I’m not convinced until CCP start properly investigating and proactively targeting, as opposed to everything being reactive
And I’ve just clicked on the contract history of a random player in Jita local at the top the first one I looked at today, A1 Dabs, and guess what, 11 day old toon, NPC Corp with RMT contract history - this toons contract history in turn leads you onto another dozen toons with RMT histories, and again they lead you to multiple players that keep purchasing isk
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They REDUCED punishment for botting to a 3day wrist slap.
Oh boy, botters must be really crapping their pants now!
No mention of asset/value confiscation or paper trail investigation.
Botters will SP extract and transfer assets to another account, and start anew, laughing all the way.
Not sure.
Perhaps this is an attempt to confound CCP tracking of PLEX transfers/laundering to/from/between accounts otherwise involved in botting or RMT?
Okay…so it is a complex web of transfers of PLEX…not just a goofy scam contract?
“Selling 1,500 PLEX for 3.1 billion ISK.”
Where the scammer puts in 3.1 million to get the unwary to think they are getting a great deal, but if they have 1,500 PLEX in their hangar…whoops. Granted the ammo is weird, but hey, I’ve never scammed.
I’m inclined to go with Ockham’s Razor and the strange scam contract explanation.
Andy why do this on public contracts…where everyone can see it?
Could be a retarded scam.
Could be PLEX laundering between bot/RMT accounts through front accounts.
Could be associated with an OOG cash transfer.
Public might be a means to avoid CCP flags/tracking should an account become compromised for illegal action.
Can contracts like this directly access a PLEX Vault?
No idea…
Oh… Ramona
your waisTing
… your time.
IF THERE WAS ONLY SOMETHING BETWEEN US
You win +1 internets for discovering my inspiration!
And blowing up spaceships is NEVER a waste of time.
It would be an artcrime not to.
Has this guy run a similar contract before?
If so, how many times?
Cant login atm.
In answer to your question, whether this is RMT or contract scamming. Its plex laundering, bring the guy up I linked, bring his contract history up
In the case of the contract you’ve linked A1 Dabs is the guy who made the contract. (issued by) Buburuzza is the guy who accepted the contracted.
A1 Dabs made a contract where he passes some worthless charges to Buburuzza in return for 1500 plex and a token payment of 3 mill - Infact, their are two contracts made at the same time by A1 Dabs and both are accepted at the same time by Buburuzza, so infact 2500 plex are passed from A1 Dabs to Buburuzza for some worthless charges
Now, as a rule, the RMT’er will actually ask the buyer of the isk to make the contract, which they fill a couple of minutes later. so bearing that in mind as A1 Dabs isn’t following this rule you need to dig a bit deeper
Having brought the contract up, then click on buburuzza who accepted the contract and now look at his contract history
.
Now were starting to get somewhere as you will notice all the contracts for Buburuzza were made by other people and he accepted them.
Click on anyone of his contracts and you start to see those that set up the contracts which Buburuzza filled are actual, long term players as a rule
A1 Dabs was laundering the plexs over to other accounts which they are running. These accounts in turn are starting to become the sellers
So from the top of their contracts, working your way through them by latest first.
Sebieska received 2500 plex off Buburuzza, payment being some worthless charges
Cookiebobo Pappot 15 skill injectors, again for worthless payment
Mr Snowball 12 bill in isk, in return for 48 mill of hangar rubbish
eh bay 5 Injectors
Niki Casttle 500 plex
Calum Macleaod 8 skill injectors
Rilariel Vanacaris 5 bill isk
Misaka Mainbrain 25 bill isk
Alex Moldo 5 skill injectors and 2 bill isk
Rilariel Vanacaris 5 bill isk (second purchase)
Tobi Saru 1000 plex
Calum Macleaod 7 skill injectors (second purchase)
C’ynergi Rah’Ambr 12 bill
Graham1987 4 bill
Kurto Lee 6 skill injectors
Pietie Pompie 10 skill injectors
so, between 27.01.18 and 13.2.18 a total of 56 skill injectors (45 bill) , 4,000 plex (14.5 bill) and 65 bill - total 124.5 bill passed
Now, if you remember, A1 Dabs wasn’t selling, they were actually laundering, basically moving stuff around. If we go back to his contract history and look more closely at the other toons he moved stuff to in his contract history, then:
I Duke is his alt, who has - 12 RMT contracts to 6 players over the same period totalling 30 bill
Lexa Hot, again his alt, - 5 RMT contracts to 2 players totalling 10 Bill
Ryan Rummy, again his alt, 23 RMT contracts to 10 players over the same period totalling 51 bill
Jayden Tank, again his alt, 13 RMT contracts to 8 players over the same period totalling 31 bill
Axel Naga, again his alt, 15 RMT contracts to 7 players over the same period totalling 43 bill
Evil Smithy, again his alt, 1 RMT contracts to 1 players over the same period totalling 1 bill
So now we have from the first guy, links to 7 toons controlled by the seller, 290 bill passed recently to 46 buyers. So, we should have here 7 toons banned, 290 bill clawed back
And… its a lot more complex than this. I’ve reported Axel Naga numerous times over the last 6 months as the toon is used as a market bot, one of 100 plus market bots all operating under the ‘user’ which I linked evidentially and gave their details to CCP - the bulk were banned (and have since been replaced with more alpha toons) in the purge which happened a couple of weeks ago. Alexa Naga wasn’t banned and slipped through their net
He’s currently logged into Jita local as he always is, 24/7
So don’t think this is one individual above, A1 Dabs is just one toon in a huge botting network, probably numbering several hundred market bots, which is being run as a business by a single enterprise. Think of the time management and resources needed to run such a business - someones invested heavily in this and they wont walk away without a fight now as its turnover is obviously very good
And any good business will edge their bets and have several income streams. So the same enterprise could also be responsible for the wealth of hauler, explorer or faction warefare bots. Likewise they will have multiple launderers and sellers, so again don’t think this is the total isk they are moving daily, its just the tip of the iceberg
BTW, this took me an hour to find and un-pick from one single toon which I picked at random from Jita local. Think what I could find if I started to look hard. I lay my wife to rest on Friday, so I will have plenty of time in the future to start really digging if needs must
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This is all so depressing. Very easy to lose heart as a genuine player making a billion here and there. The amount of ISK changing hands in these RMT deals is ridiculous.
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Yes I agree, as far as I can see no one seems to want to employ a solid way of resolving this. What I do see is that people will spend time analysing corrupted data, players spend time reporting bots and devs spend time collating data on reported bots.
The whole process is inefficient and a huge waste of time. Even after the botters are caught and banned guess what?? they make another account and use extractors and injectors and just carry on, then the whole time wasting bot reporting and dev investigating begins again and again and again.
We live in a wonderful technological era where it is very possible to kill these bots on a grass roots level where it would be totally impossible for a bot to even access the game in the first place. I am in disbelief that CCP have a game where the takings are approx 50m a year and someone can so easily design a program which easily interacts with Eve and there is no security software stopping them from doing so.
I know I sound like a broken record here due to my passion on this issue, CCP please just employ a “punkbuster” type solution and stop wasting every ones precious time. For gods sake CCP it is 2018 and I am sure there are lots of companies who do “punkbuster” type solutions itching to work with you.
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We dont know EVE botters can be detected/prevented by a RAM scanning program.
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We dont know the cost of renting a 3rd party system, or developing one for EVE.
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We dont know how players will react to an intrusive program.
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We dont know the legal complications/costs of implementing one.
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