But he has reported them in the past and they have been banned.
Trade bots do definitely exist- and because they are a product thats make people cash irl they are easy to find on the internet and buy because these people want customers.
If you research what these bots can and cant do, and how they can be set up to avoid detection, you will realise that
a) some of the things people see as PROOF of botting are not conclusive proof, but they are suspicious and should be reported- but several of the behaviours declared
proof of botting in this thread could be and are done by real humans.
b) the bots that you want to worry about are not running 23/7 7 days a week, they are running for a few hours at a time, mimicking the actions of a real player, one operator may run several of these, many will be behind vpns and appear to be in different physical locations behind accounts paid for with stolen ccs or actually stolen accounts- one human ‘botter’ may run tens or hundreds of bots.
c) if CCP did not care then we would not be having this conversation because it would be impossible for a real player to compete and play the market at all, because they would be everywhere-
plus the OP has had them banned in the past.
d) it benefits the bot makers and RMT people to muddy the waters and to not ony mimick real players but to report actual real players as bots, just as the ‘its not worth reporting it they don’t do anything about it’ narrative plays into the hands of these same people
e) CCP make a massive amount of their income from plex sales- if botting becomes too common and is unreported the RMT traders will be able to undercut CCP and offer more isk per cash payment, and the market for real plex will fall, pushing in game plex prices up further, this will affect players in game and lower CCPs profits (but the botters can still plex their accounts because they have no opportunity cost and can grind 23/7)
f) banning individual botting character or accounts is less important than removing the networks that allow these bots to operate beneath the radar, the person behind the 50 alpha accounts all working in unison for instance- this is why the CCP team who do this cannot just play eve and ban characters who ‘appear to be bots’ even if they also have proof we do not have- they have to take down a bunch at once nd in such a way they do not reveal their hand.
g)CCP cannot provide players with information about these activities, because they don’t know if the guy reporting botting will use the information to hunt more bots, or to refine the bots he was actually running- because botters file bot reports.
Please report all suspicious activity, but do not behave like the old lady who keeps writing letters to the council about all the graphiti in town, they keep cleaning it up, but if the vandals wont stop and no one reports them to the police or steps in when they see it happening, what can the council do other than send the cleaning crews out day after day?
Yesterday I had mixed results, was able to rise the price a bit on another item but there were definitely more humans involved.
