Dear CCP, we seem to have found a Snip ~Buldath. We have emailed the results to security@ccpgames.com and linking it here as well.
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Egads, Project Discovery as a target for industrial size botting.
What is next, Resource Wars?
%#&@*&% cheaters; no target too small to ruin for everyone else.
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As one of our directors have said, the sad part is, Project Discovery has useful real-life, external use for science and research. Large bot nets could create issues.
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CCP can report big participation numbers, and the results are not taken into anything because they are below certain level.
Such low key botting, so invisible is the least concern for CCP. The real problem for CCP seems to be people flying free in high sec.
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Just wondering, how can you see a player is a bot in this project discovery?
I think same as most, continuous use. Repetitive patterns. Hundreds of alts funneling isk to a couple sources, etc.
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“Eve Online players abuse Coronavirus research to gain space money.”
There’s a headline CCP might want to avoid.
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Could you please also PM the details, I think it is time a science weekly has an article on this matter. if anyone else gets one published please pm the link.
CCP have for years allowed botting & cast shadow on how much it peppers this game. I was severely concerned with their previous back slapping over their promotion of citizen science regarding the planet discovery citizen science. At no word in any paper on the matter did any author hint at the massive amount of botting that goes on in this game & the developers unwillingness to tackle it. At no point did CCP mention botting numbers for the PD event, despite me hearing of massive botting in that event.
Make no mistake CCP is now damaging citizen science & dragging us backwards or at least willingly hampering our advancement as a species so that they as a minority may profit from a computer game because they are unwilling to tackle botting in it. Allowing botting to hammer real science is abhorent & I hope you have a PR nightmare on your hand in short order.
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I suspected the same for Planet discovery. PM I want a discord chat regarding this and some articles hitting both gaming press & science press.
Done with botting we played fair, CCP now we will play dirty.
Everything I asked is already being handled by RiotRick, go get’em!
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The use of bots in Project Discovery was already a known abuse in a previous iteration, Exoplanets PD. In its immeasurable wisdom, CCP decided to impose a maximum limit of 5 samples per minute and limit the number of possible samples, making this dependent on the amount of SP in the account, in order to prevent abuse by one day old Alpha accounts. This was supposed to make it difficult for bot to function.
However, for an incomprehensible reason, CCP has abandoned the ISK reward dependence on a high level of accuracy when making samples. Let me remind you - this was the case in the previous iteration, in Exoplanets PD. Now that the accuracy rating has reached 99%, it is actually possible to take samples in bulk one by one without worrying about the quality of the data transmitted. After all, you still get 99 000 ISK per sample…
Well, an unfortunate turn of events like the one described by RiotRick was naturally predictable: the lack of dependence of the prize amount on the quality of the “work” done in PD could only encourage various kinds of fraudsters to use the faulty system to their advantage.
And in fact, there will only be shame later on for the whole world when it turns out, that the data sent to the EVE Online community in order to work together in the hardship of fighting the virus came back to the scientists falsified to some extent, because CCP did not bother to adequately protect PD from bots.
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Well, that’s sucky.
I did a bit of this project discovery, stopped because I wore out my mouse button, and couldn’t figure out some of the weirder samples that I kept getting - it always worried me that submitting something that was wrong was harmful.
finding out that people are botting it, submitting things that aren’t honest attempts at classifying the samples, that’s jimmy rustling for sure.
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Great investigative work, everyone should talk about this with their corp & alliance leaders. Botters hurt all of us.
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…now with the added bonus of potentially hampering real life research into a pandemic.
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Brewlar Kuvakei likes to spread all sorts of unsubstantiated misinformation concerning botting and CCP complicity. Journalists who prefer reputable and trustworthy sources should give this tin-foil hatter a wide bearth.
God, I hope you don’t actually convince any journalists to listen to you. Lord knows what kind of misinformation you’ll spread.
To OP:
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I would assume that journalists would need to be more on the investigative side to get into the issue here, and would thus quickly determine the validity of his information.
This specific issue is potentially serious IF it can hinder real life research with unusable data. While there are some pretty contrasting opinions about COVID-19, I seriously doubt that anyone botting PD for isk gives a damn about how serious it is or isn’t.
Botting is a thorn in the side of most, if not all, MMO or similar games, but in general it only hurts the bottom line of the game company and causes the game to be less appealing to the players.
Causing potential harm to actual scientific research goes a little beyond that.
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The only point that journalists need to know is CCP perma bans RMT’rs without proof, CCP unbans botters previously only giving them written warnings, CCP does not publish either reinbursements or in game moderation & that CCP GM’s work on a whim & follow no set rules.
The writing is on this wall. Although Eve is not an E-Sport or even close to any sort of competitive game hence the abandonment of the tourny ect, even for a for funsys MMO it’s game moderation is shockingly bad.
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<citation and/or concrete evidence required>
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Dinsdale is going to be pissed when he finds out his stash is short.
Yeah, no, sorry, the video you have linked doesn’t remotely prove or even make a case for anything of what you’ve claimed. Also, just because you don’t like someone doesn’t mean you can undermine their credentials and qualifications; this guy clearly is not a 4th rate programmer.
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What actual journalists would care?