You promised actions against the current rampant bot infestation in a post you made last month. It has been reported that CCP has restrained player driven initiatives to combat courier bots. Current market bots are everywhere and the number of RMT contracts like 100 AM rounds for 500 million isk keep expanding. Now, bots are sun bouncing to avoid conflict when neutrals enter a system.
We understand that you are very busy. We know that you have banned thousands of accounts. We know you promised action SOON, but your silence is most troubling. You have had months//years to track down and unravel the RMT cartels, yet the problem grows. Could we have an update or action to welcome the new year in? Starting the new year with a fresh start and a fresh dev blog would be a great way to wake up on New Yearās Day.
Wishing all at CCP and all the EVE family (except for the botters and RMTers) a new year that offers hope,health, and happiness.
We need more gankers. We need hisec gates to be riddled with NPCs that attack and destroy all ships and basically create a āBlockadeā that players need to band up to destroy.
If only the majority of botting occured in hisec that is, which it arenāt. You need endless spawning of anomalies with higher bounties than in hisec. So null-sec are where the majority of botting occurs.
Didnāt the security team also mention theyād banned 23,000 accounts already this year when they provided the update?
The bottling problem is big and clearly larger than the team can stay completely on top of, which isnāt surprising.
Thereās real money to be made for people, so botting is going to happen; and for CCP thereās a balance between having to few people to keep it under control and having too many people, which from a business perspective is wasted resources.
It seems they are on the too few side of things at the moment, but they are doing more than just being silent.
Itās just not a problem that is ever going to go away.
Adressing the problem only by detection and punishment is the wrong way. Reducing the scriptability and AFKability of ISK-making activities is the way to go.
From a security perspective, I totally agree. Prevention better than the cure sort of thing.
However, from a gameplay perspective, Iām not so sure. I donāt know that CCP are totally against semi-AFK and AFK playstyles. Thatās really for them.
Also, itās not trivial to do so and for every PVE development CCP make to the game that is active play focused, someone will eventually work out how to bot it. So if the focus of development is on minimising opportunities for bots, rather than making enjoyable gameplay experience for players, they could just end up chasing their tail, continuously playing catchup with script writers, while still needing an enforcement capability also.
Donāt know. You could be totally right, but I struggle to think of a way that makes mining enjoyable while constantly ATK. I get a sense from the lack of changes to mining over the years, that CCPās game designers also find it hard. Same for anomolies in null.
Wait until the new year and give these folks a chance to look at the data they have been provided.
Until then weāll keep hitting the bot farms until resources run out (or sec status gets too low).
The complaint filed against us came to an end without repercussions, it seems.
You donāt need to make it full time ATK. Two simple tweaks can already work wonders IMO, remove āaggressiveā option from drones, and create belt rats which tackle and scale with the mining vessel to be an actual threat when ignored too long.
Just imagine that CCP is actually very good in hunting down bots and RMT.
And everyone is always shouting that they are not.
Just imagine thatā¦
Just imagine that that image works for them.
Just imagine thatā¦
I would love to see an extreme and wide perma ban on all sorts of bots. Right now the game is getting so bad that legit players can no longer avoid interactions with them or indirectly using them.
For example, players joining null sec corps and end up using the intel bots regardless if they like it or not or buying locally built ships and equipment on their local markets which have been created in large parts via botting, either mining bots or ratting bots then the ISK was used to purchase and bring in the resources.
As far as botting goes, courrier bots are a drop in the ocean, and a lot of them are actual newb or alt players that just simply use the autopilot. The biggest bot culprits are all nullsec. Mining bots, ratting bots and AFK cloaky intel bots. The only other bots that are more present in High Sec rather then null, are market bots simply due to more markets present, and those do a lot of damage. So these are all the ones that need to get banned.
CCP also needs to make multiboxing much harder, that would reduce various hacks and botting across the board.
As is unfortunately, with its mechanics in place this game practically invites botting. Every retard that gets caught and kicked from other games ends up here cause its so easy here.
Something simple like maybe courier missions spawning a rat dangerous enough to kill a mission level APing ship at one or more random incoming gates that target the courier (or any ship in range for that matter) could make botted courier missions untenable. Of course, I guess they could script warp to zero jumps instead of AP? Maybe you can only get a certain number of missions from an agent over a 24 hour period. That would at least force them to change stations. Iām sure there are things they could do if they really cared.
I thought making the AI target drones more often was in response to AFK ratting/missioning, but maybe they just gave upā¦
The bots do not autopilot, the script warps from gate to gate. From scanning the ships, they are fitted with Inertial Stabs and Hyperspatial rigs and align within 6-7 seconds or less.
An AI program designed to attack at gates is not an effective solution without jeopardising regular game play.
I think a more heuristic approach by monitoring activity is a better way to go. Nobody legitimately runs missions 24-7. Not a difficult thing to monitor if you have the metrics of mission completions.
We were under some attention for attacking botting fleets. I dropped corp and reformed another to continue the crusade. I was notified that this came to a close with no punitive action. Was the right outcome.