“I want moar stuffs for free” is the gist of this thread. Am I wrong?
4 Likes
Quite probably. Or you may be only partly right. The OP makes some good points. Whether something is a good idea or not is NEVER determined by a personal motive alone, just like women who campaigned for women’s right to vote probably only cared if they themselves got to vote. Did they really care if it was better for the country or if some other woman got to vote? I don’t know. But they made good points and won out, as they should have.
The bot excuse is sad and old, if CCP cared about removing bots from the game Jita local chat would be swept regularly.
2 Likes
- Unless you think CCP has been straight up lying to us about their efforts to combat botting, they’ve been fighting against bots pretty hard.
- What evidence do you have that the people spamming jita local are bots? Personally, I’ve been accused of being a bot while .01 isking (people would message me and say things like, “just making sure you’re not a bot”) and while multiboxing (like I’d warp into a site and someone would say in local, “oh great, bots”). So, it seems to me there are quite a few players out there that can’t tell the difference between a motivated no-lifer and a bot.
1 Like
The most obvious examples would be the bots / scriptkiddies who have autoreply enabled (the ones that spam whenever their name is said in chat in addition to on a timer), that’s a large number of them. Lying is a strong word, i’d say, “grossly overestimating their effectiveness in keeping bots out of the game”.
Well, you still haven’t convinced me.
Humans do the same thing. Thus, it’s hardly evidence of a bot.
Once again, humans will sporadically spam stuff as well. Now, if you saw someone spamming every x number of seconds exactly (i.e. every 85s), or at exact times (12 second of every 3rd minute), then that would certainly be suspicious. But I’d imagine that if you were smart enough to make a bot, you would be smart enough to introduce an element of randomness to your spams. Thus, I’d be surprised if any bots were that predictable.
Now, if you are doing some form of simple Turing test on spammers, and they are failing that, then that would certainly be compelling evidence.
Anyway, I do believe that bots are a problem, and that CCP should be doing everything they can to fight them. But I’ve also been falsely accused/suspected of being a bot. So it makes me wonder how many players are being erroneously suspected of being bots.
1 Like
Said turing tests happen more often than you think, these spam bots get messaged regularly, new players go to rookie chat seeking out ISD and CCP staff to ask what to do about them, only to get told to just ignore them. When a game’s population is on the verge of crashing, kicking / banning users (whether automated or not) becomes taboo.
Oh, is EVE dying again?
To answer the main question of this thread: No I do not think alphas should have mining barges or a new mining ship. The venture is sufficient to give Alpha players a taste of how mining works in EVE.
A 17 year old game with less than 100k active humans is a dying game. Doesn’t matter what excuses you make, continuing to cater to the same group of addict level players causes the total human population to diminish over time due to a lack of focus on new player retention, basic logic.
Growth = new players, new customers.
Stagnation and death = the same old addicts hurr durring and backslapping eachother while chanting “calm down miner”.
1 Like
Well it will die eventually. On that matter, we’re all dying humans*.
*except some of the bots.
Yeah, I’m calling BS on all of this. I don’t know how much of this you actually believe, but I am accusing you of straight up lying about players getting told to ignore bots. I have never seen an ISD, GM, or dev tell players to ignore suspected botters. In fact, they frequently tell players to report suspected botters, and remind them that no one gets banned on player reports alone. If you have screenshots, logs, or video, then show it. Otherwise, stop spreading misinformation.
Not in Jita local they don’t. And if they happen a bunch in private messages, how would you know about them?
Really? PCU’s have been going strong for the past year (they were on the rise even before the covid lockdowns, although that certainly helped), Eve just broke 2 world records for largest PvP battle and most concurrent players in a PvP battle, there is currently a major war that is driving lots of player activity, and casual observation indicates a noticeable increase in player activity year over year. For example, WTM was hurting so bad for numbers in the AUZ TZ last year, that I frequently got to quad box. This year, we frequently have 2 hour wait lists in the same TZ, and I’m lucky if I get to dual box once before the focus goes down. But Eve has fallen short of your arbitrary line in the sand. Guess it’s dying.
This is an absurd conspiracy theory that makes absolutely no sense. Even one cheater can sour the experience of many legit players. And widespread perceptions of botting and cheating can (and have) caused mmo populations to take a nose dive. Bots and other types of cheaters cause significant damage to game populations and revenue, and that’s why the entire ■■■■■■■ industry fights so hard to combat it. Now, it does appear that some MMO devs who are having issues with fighting cheaters will deny the problem in a misguided attempt at damage control. So, I will concede that it’s possible that this is going on in Eve. Of course, I don’t think that that is the case, but I will admit that it is within the realm of possibility. However, I wholly reject the idea that devs will fail to ban the accounts of those that are doing financial ■■■■■■■ damage to their IP’s.
Oh, and by the way…
2 Likes
The sad mental gymnastics you kids will resort to in order to keep the addict model relevant, lmfao.
Well, I suppose I shouldn’t get too angry with you. You’re not necessarily lying. You could have heard this crap from another player and believed it. Still, asserting that ISD and CCP employees are telling players to ignore bots is a serious charge. If you have evidence, you should provide it. I guarantee you that it would have players (including myself in an uproar). However, I doubt that you do. I don’t know if you’re lying, or just repeating something you heard, but I do know that a lot of older players hang out in rookie chat (I have even spent a little time in there). And if that was actually happening, I’m pretty sure the forums and reddit would be full of angry forum threads with screenshots attached.
If, however, you have not personally witnessed an ISD or CCP employee telling players to ignore bots, then you should stop repeating it. Misinformation can have actual consequences. No one wants to play with a cheater, and perceptions of cheating can be just as damaging to player retention as actual cheating. Hell, you could even be an example of this. You could have heard this crap from another player, believed it, and then gotten frustrated with the game and the devs as a result.
3 Likes
Hang out in Rookie Chat, I see it daily when new players ask what to do about spam bots.
ISDs and CSMs say the solution to bots is “right click the name of the pilot you believe is bot spamming, click block”. Since they’re CCP’s representatives in the game, obviously they’re acting on their instructions.
1 Like
Interesting! I’m an alpha, and I don’t have a problem with mining barges being off limits to alphas. People who pay for content have a right to more content, I think. I should point out that alphas do contribute to the overall health of the Eve universe. Alphas mine ore, they make things, they take part in the battles that so many people here love.
2 Likes
I don’t get why it’s so hard to pay for a game you enjoy. Alpha clone status is meant to be a demo to the full game. Not every game should be completely free.
3 Likes
If you want to convert new players from alpha into subscribers, it seems that providing more tools to do the most mind-numbingly boring activity on offer isn’t the best approach.
If anything, don’t give them barges, take away the Venture also.
That last bit is facetious. No need to restrict the Venture, but also not a great activity to encourage new players into more of.
1 Like
Alpha clones can get a taste of pretty much everything in this game in cheap disposable ships. To get to know how mining works, the Venture is perfectly capable for that.
If you want to get bigger numbers, you can specialise and most specialisations will require Omega. But to get a feeling if you like mining or not, it’s not necessary to try out those ‘bigger numbers’. It’s exactly the same as the lower mining rate, except you earn a little more.
The Venture is perfectly capable of showing Alpha players if they like mining. And if you want to specialise and mine quicker, go Omega.
1 Like
I wish people would stop spouting this rubbish. It may have been true once, but just try looking at any of CCP’s current advertisements. I am afraid your opinion on what Alpha status is meant to be is utterly irrelevant - the question is what does CCP want it to achieve? Now, one can argue whether CCP were sensible to make Eve free to play - one can question their judgement on quite a lot of things - but that is entirely a different issue.
CCP wants Alpha state to be a viable choice for casual gamers, and an introduction to the full scope of the game for more vested gamers. Gamers attracted to the ‘free to play’ advertisements are already entirely familiar with monetization models that lock portions of a game behind a paywall of some form - EVE’s is simplified as a subscription model to unlock everything vs premium currency to unlock specific items on an as-needed basis.
2 Likes