Eve Bots - are they a bad thing, is CCP complicit in their use?

Communications Center General Discussion
1680

Nope

Botters do not care for ethics, copyrights, TOSes, EULAs etc. Hence all the VMs are pirated. They pay nothing. Likewise with VPNs. They will not pay for any VPN service, just a host on somewhere like CloudFlare for the obvious reasons, then make their own VPN service for themselves, its actually super easy for anyone with some basic computer / tech knowledge, just google and follow instructions, thus bringing down the costs per IP used to negligible, almost nothing.

Often times pro botters that run this game, also run other games.

So this idea will do nothing, or next to nothing.

What will have an effect is perma bans. Not just botters, but also and especially lead players of corps / alliances involved with them and supporting them.

I’d start with all the main and alll known / verifiable alt accounts of those who are open about it and have been recorded on their VOIP or in some cases even posted on youtube.

Now that would shake it all up a bit and send a message.

Anything less then this is just beating around the bush.

1 Like
1681

This is also not entirely true. Only the stupid boys are online 23/7. They usually get banned quickly, those are the bots that probably made up most of the 1000 bots that were banned a few months back. The real bots that are difficult to catch are the ones that are only online in certain periods. Let’s take market bots for example: if you observe a certain item that seems filled with bot orders 23/7 it is most likely more than one bot. As the botter can run multiple bots setup staggered to only start after the other is offline to avoid outbidding each other. Another thing is these bots that run on timers the optimal time for them is when the most players are online therefore it is likely that during peak hours the highest percentage of bots are active. The reason why we can’t catch most of these bots is because the botters arn’t stupid, at this point it’s an arm race between ccp and botters. The botters are doing a decent job at making undetectable bots while ccp has to constantly fight back and ban them even though they are only getting the bad bots the good bots which are the real problem still exist. The only real counter to bots is more humans. Team security needs more employees, these smart bots with enough statistics and analysis they could be removed permanently. I suggest a manual permanent ban on accounts that have been determined to be botting. With the latest 3 day slap on the wrist, after the ban expires they can simply extract sp and transfer isk and assets to a new account and then begin botting immediately again. Either that or asset removal of assets that have been determined to have been bot-gotten gains as well as sp extraction locking on accounts that have been determined without a doubt to have botted. This solution comes as a surprise to botters and gives them no chance to escape the wrath of ccp, as it should be.

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1682

Your absolutely correct my good sir. To really hurt the botters we have to hit them by surprise and hit them hard. So they never know when a ban is coming and will always be in fear of losing their rmt money. As anyone with a brain knows rmt and botting goes hand in hand and if we kill one we will significantly reduce the value of the other.

1683

I know this.
But it puts a limit on maximum hours bots can be online without being flagged for investigation.

Atm we dont know if CCP monitors how many hours an account actively sends commands in, or what the threshold is, if they do.

This was fixed in part, in that afaik, the 3 day suspension also means the accounts cannot extract SP, in perpetuity.

We lack data on how far CCP goes in investigating and confiscating illegally gotten value.

Considering its only two guys on the Security team whom currently issue about 2k bans a month, I doubt they have much time to investigate the full extent of the value dispersal from those accounts, so as to confiscate them.

1684

The two poor mates on team security, honestly just sad by ccp they can only have two people on security. They say they are serious about botting. So they need to prove it, like I said before the best solution to botting is more humans, more humans on team security that is… And until that is achieved the botting arms race will only continue to go on. With more workers on team security the next step is a strong zero tolerance permanent ban first offense system. The fact is that some players in eve think the behavior of botting and rmt is perfectly acceptable, and that is unacceptable. We must send a strong message that botting is unacceptable if we truely wish to stamp out botters.

1685

Imagine.
With two guys averaging 2k bans per month, thats 1k each.
Thats 6.25 bans per hour, each, assuming a standard 40hr work week.
So one ban roughly every 10mins, each.
(Further detraction for breaks/lunch/holidays/sick-days/etc.)

Not much investigation can be be done in 10mins.
The pace must be break-neck, and the bots just keep coming back.

Botters must be laughing.

1686

With a rate like that investigation wouldn’t be possible your right. That’s why I suggest more team members so we can investigate the botters more throughly and once a decisive decision is made we then smack the botter down. Even if the ban rate was reduced to 500 or 1000 a week permanent bans would hurt the botters alot more than three day ones. It would be a long and slow process but as more and more botting assets were seized the rmters would come to the slow realization this game is no longer profitable and would move on to another game. As most rmters don’t actually play they just bot, then sell the bot-gotten isk.

And I mention a through investigation being nesscary to ensure with certainty that they are a bot for sure because the backlash if even a hand full of false bans were issued… Would be immense considering these bans would be permanent and I imagine reversing such bans wouldn’t be a painless process.

1688

Theres a fifth as well if ccp is unable or unwilling to hire more staff. That option is community/player bot hunting groups/flagging groups. These groups would be endorsed and funded by ccp with confiscated isk. The start of these groups would be those who monitor contracts and markets to find and flag suspected botters. The other part of the group would be a hunting service where the players go out on roams into areas with high suspected bot activity and attempt to kill or hinder bot operations. This is a slippery slope which I could see as being an exploited system but this system doesn’t put the power of a ban in the players hands, it simply allows a more direct communication with team security of suspected botters. Those who were flagged by a the bot hunting group would be put on a list which they would be investigated by ccp within 24 hours. Then after an appropriate determination is made, proper action can be taken. For the moment being this almost sounds like how the ‘report bot’ system would work in a perfect world, however the report bot system even that can be easily manipulated. This bot hunting system would use a trust system similar to the overwatch system in counter strike. This would allow only the most legitimate reports to be reviewed not those made to allude by botters. With this system in place we could also have some nice lore around it like with the bots being ‘sleeper’ or ‘drifter’ or even ’ jovian’ operatives, spy’s sent to infiltrate us. Could be an interesting story premise while helping to fight bots. Not only that but the most trusted hunters could be rewarded, isk/Plex/skins or maybe a different chat color or a name tag or something to show they did their part to help fight bots. While false bot hunters would be punished in a similar manner that acutal bots would be handled under this system.

1689

Five options:

  1. More staff.

  2. More automated monitoring/flagging.

  3. Minigames inside the game that stump bots.

  4. Harsher penalties for botters.

  5. Better player tools to report botters.

1690

Option 6: allow botting.

1691

Wat…?

1692

LOUD ENOUGH?

Botting is good for the game. Change my mind.

1693

Okay, let me elaborate.

Arent’t mission running, supercrabbing, mining and even some forms of PVP essentially not different from botting, apart from one being done by a somewhat energy-efficient machine and the other by a calory-burning mammal?

Wouldn’t botting the most mundane tasks force both players and CCP to become inventive? Wouldn’t that change the “win” conditions in EVE towards something more brainy, arty, strategic and less assiduous?

Or let me ask the other way around: wouldn’t it be better for PVE to be made in a way that writing bots becomes a much tougher if not an unfeasible job?

Just asking, because I think most people agree anyway that respecting the ToS is important. So tickling each others balls won’t really bring new enlightenment.

1694

Lets talk about how botting ruins eve online. Botting: In its most blatant form is the use of a completely automated macro or third party program that is used to automate or remove the need to check in on certain tasks in eve online. Market bots are the easiest example as most market bots at the simplest form are simply 0.01 isk bots that 0.01 isk orders every five minutes. Now on its own this is simply annoying. However due to the sheer scale and the fact that even some market bots are highly advanced capable of making market analysis decisions on its own and without any human intervention to turn a profit. This is where it is highly problematic as at this point the game is basically playing its self. Now if this wasn’t a multiplayer game it wouldn’t matter if people wanted a bot to play the game for them for some odd reason. Perhaps the devs might be upset since they arn’t truly experiencing the game, but thats another topic. My point being: bots in a multiplayer game ruin, or deter other players fun. This is caused from the bots essentially being well bots. A real player can never keep up with another who is botting. They could fund their pvp or just plex their account with their bot-gotten gains. The next point of why botting shouldn’t be allowed is due to RMT. RMT takes money directly from ccp. Botting is used widespread to gain isk to RMT. RMT pockets off the fact people want the best deal possible so they buy from someone else to get a 40-70 percent discount compared to buying from ccp. Which is bad since less profit to ccp means that the games life span will be shorted rather significantly.

2 Likes
1695

Well, there we have it.

@zluq_zabaa advocating for making botting legal.

1696

I love the theme of this idea.

ISK/hour for bot-killing should be made the most lucrative in the game. I do see at least one potential way for abuse, however. People could create bot alts just so they could hunt and kill them with their mains, and get big ISK/hour.

1 Like
1697

Agreed. 0.01 ISK Bots are a problem, because they can effectively shut out real players from this activity. The competition is much more direct, than for instance region vs. region ISK printing. Especially since the largest ISK printer are Goons and in the times I’ve roamed their space, the times I’ve seen ratters showing behaviour that could be botting, is very low.
“Playing the market game” is already decently complex. We’ve seen some examples of how people trick these bots into making mistakes and that’s awesome, but also something that shouldn’t be a required skill for real players.
So yeah, 0.01 ISK Bots should not be a thing or 0.01 ISKing shouldn’t be necessary part of trading.

That is true as long as the tasks real players have to compete in with each other are of an assiduous nature. The more complex it gets, the more manual piloting is necessary, the more “states” a site can have, the less we’ll see bots being feasible. I remember reading (with great joy) the stories of bot hunters, who find out the m.o. of the bot, anchor bubbles, leave system, come back after X minutes and kill the bot-nyx.

Yeah, RMT is ■■■■, because it steals from CCP and effectively takes away money that could be used to develop our game. However, CCP themselves stated that most RMT comes from Accounts being compromised, not botting. Which isn’t meant to say, that botting isn’t part of the problem here, but it surely isn’t the only one and may not be the largest part.

Hell, look at the MER. ISK printing in Delve was what - around 15 Trillion in April? Now, I’m not accusing anyone there of actually doing it, but one bad CEO, one baddie multiboxer could probably sell a couple of hundred billion ISK a month and it wouldn’t even look suspicious amidst all that ISK.

The essence of what I tried to say is this: you’ll rarely ever find anyone who will not agree to botting being bad, let alone openly speaks up for it. What happens if we stop tickling eachs others balls by making this discussion not about what we already agree on, but change the perspective and play the devils advocate?

If I were to answer my own question, it would currently go like this:
We’ve seen how botting has been prevalent for a long time. The salty ones will say CCP doesn’t do enough, even though they could. The tinfoil hats will outright accuse CCP of being part of it. Yet another sub-group of players might think more eve-ish and speak out against botting, while secretly doing it themselves.
The underlying problems continue to exist.

As long as we have PVE content that is bot-able, we’ll be seeing bots. As long as this exact kind of content provides a massive ISK faucet and/or material faucet, botting can be a lucrative way for those lowlifes who do RMT.

The moment CCP introduces content like the new Triglavian sites, content that is much more unforseeable and much more dangerous, is the moment we can see a way out.

If the highest ISK-printing activities and/or material faucets like mining, were all as difficult, complex and dangerous as Abyssal Deadspace, we’d be seeing high-income botting going down.

TL;DR we don’t need to convince each other that botting is bad. It doesn’t help to point the finger. Make high-income PVE hard enough so that botting becomes unfeasible.

1698

VS:

Hmmm!

Bots can handle a surprising amount of unpredictability, with certain fits/ships.
As long as tank holds, and dps is sufficient to complete a site, they can do them indefinitely.

Its unrealistic to impose the pocket specific conditions of Trig pockets to all PvE in EVE.

The real threat to bots, is other players or CCP detection.
More dangerous PvE conditions are not sufficient to stop botting, and impair non-botters as well.

1699

I’m sure if you took more time to think rather than insta-replying and falling for the obvious, you’ll start to understand.

Where do you take this from? All the bots people have outed so far show exactly the opposite. They fail to see their safe-pos being bubbled. They fall for people manipulating the market to trick them. Even the slightest thing the bots programmer didn’t account for and the entire thing has to fail.

Any bot running a Triglavian Site will at least face the same issue every player does: they can’t leave the site without completing it and someone can wait at the exit and kill them.

Make PVE harder, less predictable and more dangerous. It makes botting much less feasible. It also makes RMT from non-botting less feasible. There are many ways to do that. Abyssal Deadspace is one. Giving Anom NPCs better tactics and more e-war is another. For mining, not sure, but someone will come up with something.

Maybe that’s true for the single bot, but surely not for botting as a whole. It comes back again and again. If we are to fight botting and RMT, the underlying problems need to be looked at. Having CCP play the tedious job of a firefighter, only costs ressources and is currently a sisyphos job.

High income should come with high risk. Therefor the high-income PVE should be more dangerous and difficult anyway. This helps against botting and also equalizes certain issues with the weird state of economics we have right now. Yes, it will impact non-botters. Some of which may be RMTers or may be not. Things change. EVE was never meant to be safe, for anyone.

You don’t save a burning house by putting water on top of the hazard. You save it by making sure the fire can’t grow in the first place.

1700

Yes I considered that a possible issue as well. A solution would be the same as punishing acutal botters as when ccp catches one of your accounts botting they apply the ban to all accounts. Ccp bans the PLAYER not the ACCOUNT so this could be applied as well to abusing a system such as this for ill-intentions. Not only that but the system I propose would involve multiple players to be hunting so they could self police each other as in how overwatch in cs:go requires usually more than one person to review unless the reviewer is ‘trusted’. That’s why with hunting requiring more than one real player not just account it would be harder to exploit. I don’t doubt people will find ways around this anyway but I have faith the majority of people are against botting for the sake of the health of this game and wouldn’t try to participate in ill-willed manipulation of the system.