I feel we need a discussion about “grey zone automation” following up a discussion in alliance chat.
Using applications might lead to an advantage ingame. I would love if CCP extends their rules about botting and automation to include these kind of grey area tools.
There are several kind of tools on different levels. Here are some tools that lead to an unfair advantage and according to smug programmers don’t break the TOS:
Scanners. People argue that reading pixels on screen and automating some kind of out-of-game response is unfair. Here are some usecases:
Have one alt who pings discord messages whenever people enter local or even relays what ships they are flying. Nullsec/WH scouts.
Have a script warn you when catalysts land on grid for example
Tracking Freighters -> track freighters movements and either log them or alarm.
Send eve-mails to people in a chat channel.
ping discord if certain anomalies spawn in a system.
Reading Logs: Reading logs and automating some out of game response is unfair:
Reading chatlogs in Intel Channel -> automate alarm in discord or other application
Reading Combat Logs -> bring polarized Maller to AT match -> enemy team switches in 1 second
Reading chatlogs -> invite people to fleet. Type "banana" in chat and get a fleet invite.
Send eve-mails following some chat response
I think all these things should not be allowed. People using them are mostly smug programmers (?) that are encouraged by CCP to operate in the grey area.
What is your take on this?
Fair Third party applications:
I think we can agree that using zkill or other intel tools, wormhole mappers that show friendly character locations give an advantage but are fair use since they usually only use ESI-information and are broadly available to everybody.
Asset managers that help finding lost assets are also fair.
Industry and market planners are also fair, even tho it could be argued EveGuru is lowkey RMT since access to an application is sold for ingame ISK. (?)
What is your opinion on this? Should the TOS/EULA include this kind of automation?
I do not think CCP should or could solve this with rules.
People would cheat anyway when this information is available on their PC, regardless of rules. That’s why it currently is a cheating ‘grey zone’, because there is no way to successfully enforce rules against such tools.
If you ask me such log-reading tools to warn players who aren’t paying to the game themselves are unfun and unfair advantages.
A tool that warns someone when they get decloaked so they can alt-tab out of Netflix to recloak on their cloaky camping campaign that day? Shouldn’t be possible if you ask me. A tool that gives a sound whenever a hostile player is reported in a system a few systems over? Leads to risk-averse behaviour and a reduction in conflict.
I’m fine with it if people themselves are paying attention to the game and see this kind of information, but if a tool does so for the player? I don’t think such grey zone automation is good for the game.
But this isn’t something CCP can effectively fix with rules. People would still do it even if the rules call this cheating and there’s no way to stop that as these logs are simply readable on the client PC.
Instead the solution against such grey zone automation is a mechanical solution: to remove such events from the client-side logs.
I don’t see a method how CCP should be able to detect if another program reads a pixel color on screen and then sends some kind of alarm outside the game?
They would need complete kernel-access to the OS to somewhat reliable “control” or “interrupt” what other programs are doing.
And if they would severly limit information that isn’t connected to your immediate vicinity, like removing local, we have seen how players do react. They quit. They can’t imagine playing the game with “fog of war”. And even then the remaining players could still “cheat” with placing cloaky surveillance alts on the chain and report activity gathered from “seeing” a stargate (overview) or “hearing” jumps…
Hide all those things from the logs that currently are abused with these ‘grey zone automation’ tools.
That’s not ‘grey zone automation’ though, that’s just outright cheating.
What the opening post refers to is all the log-reading tooling that is common for EVE players. Tools which warn whenever systems near your own system are named in an (intel) chat channel. Tools which warn you whenever the logs tell you your ship decloaked.
CCP could fix many of those possibilities by reducing what they print on the logs.
They could simply encrypt the logs and make them only visible for GMs as part of a support data package.
It’s the same with all that ESI/API data, it’s a cancer balance wise. Something like zKillboard shouldn’t even exist in that detail. But the ghost is out of the bottle, can’t squeeze it back in. Making so much information freely available (and thus bottable), was a mistake from the beginning, but CCP doesn’t realize that. Yes, it increased convenience and led to many many powerful tools. But it slowly but steadily took out the joy of the game, making everything just numbers, statistics, programs.
Too late to change that back now.
I doubt the it would increase the attractiveness of the game further. EVE’s reputation is already pretty bad, and unnessessary so, because the initial concept of a player-driven, persistent and mostly sandbox universe with a strong focus on PvP is in itself glorious. One of the best game ideas I ever came across.