And let’s all remember that months ago when ccp made their last blog about banning bots ccp said the 2 Team Security people came in ON THEIR OFF DAYS OVER THE WEEKEND TO DO THE MASS BAN.
Because it is not their every day primary focus throughout the normal work week
Yes, I agree with that entirely, and once again, I’m not disagreeing with anyone that CCP has a responsibility here.
I’m just taking to task the idea that they have ALL the responsibility here.
But … CCP believes, based on its own internal information streams, that any war on bots can never really be won, that - as there is no high level organisation since the presumed death of RMT - the only solid approach is to tweak existing content and mechanisms so that it frustrates more to bot, than not to bot.
Culpability in these matters is something that can and should be shared all around, if I may be so blunt. CCP has the issue of having compromised its own structures in these matters and now believing what little it sees as truth - perfectly understandable yet it is neither right nor correct. And players are just as culpable in terms of still making organised use of botting. Whether it’s for renters, ratting alts, courier alts, suicide alts, sp farming libraries, sovereignty sales and just about any segment where a higher level of organisation is possible than that of the individual on which CCP insists on focusing.
CCP needs to investigate…
If its true what this person says,
Then PIRAT needs to be forced disbanded…
Meaning all their ISK needs to be confiscated, and their wallets put into negative on every character in that alliance, for every single Botter ISK put into it.
Also every single ship and module that said ISK touched in PIRAT should be confiscated and vaporized, every structure, every item…
If the story is true.
It depends on what you do, people push a delayed local for example, well normal players use local as their gtfo call, while bots have intel bots in systems around the botting system as well as the bot program watching local. All that will do is screw over normal players and reward botters more who also bot in regions far away from easy access for roams such as Omist.
The drama debate of local / no-local / delayed local is what it is, drama. It’s a debate entirely driven by minority perspectives based on subjective gameplay as well as cumulative perception from constantly hearing the same thing in filter bubbles.
The reality is that other than within distinct niches the absolute majority of types and forms of human behaviour - on which eve pretty much stands - requires fixed constants of visibility, visual recognition and visually determined connectivity.
So local isn’t the debate to really throw into this. Besides, it’s an unproductive approach. Never engage in a tech race with customers, particularly when your focus is entirely on symptoms rather than root causes and enablement.
It is a bit disheartening to say, as I know from experience how easy it can be to miss things and to go by what you hear, see and even verify within one’s own environment, but CCP’s policy decisions are inherently flawed. I’m sure there’s a reasoning behind it, but let’s also be honest on a different level: the people players interact with, just like the people who do the actual work, are just as oblivious to such reasoning as players themselves. Because they are not part of any such decision processes. It’s derivative decision making, but it is a symptom, not the disease.
This holy grail of “if we can make things awesome then people will have no more inclination to bot so what we have decided to leave in place can then easily handle any bit of bots” is inherently flawed. Particularly since it is so heavily influenced by the - admittedly - heavy loads of both customer support and dealing with customers who come into New Eden with established and cumulative behaviour from what they are used to in other games.
I am not trying to be flippant here, but what are you actually trying to say here. I think you said that local is not part of what you suggested and if that is the case good.
I was just asking if local was one of the things you meant, glad to see I think, that it is not.
But that was rather like an answer one would get from a Eurocrat…, impressive use of English though.
It’s a bit of a reference to older days in eve, where CCP would actually engage on a technical innovation level with what - for example - botmakers or rmt networks would create. It cost a lot, didn’t give much result, and it also blinded CCP for a long time in thinking they were effective in dealing with those things. It’s probably something only someone who was engaged in anti-botting or on CCP’s end from those days will recognise as a reference.
Fortunately, they realised that at the time the easier approach was to cut off certain technical aspects (see the isboxer / broadcasting debate) and to provide content less suitable to automation. That had more and better results.
Unfortunately, this is also the origin of the idea that if CCP continues on that road they can eventually reduce the footprint of botting so dramatically that it becomes neglegible. Which is an assumption really. Theory, for a subset of the challenge, one which has a lot less impact than organised / higher level botting (and rmt, which has simply taking on a different form today).
That is where compromising CCP’s abilities to engage on these challenges hasn’t been the smartest decision ever. 1.5 person dealing with the challenge is, well, a bit of an issue. It’s a clear focus, a supported focus, one which takes a lot of work, but it is aimed at what essentially is a part of a complex challenge.
A lot of players who come from other games have a tendency towards not fully grasping EVE’s implementations of economies of scale, and are prone to botting where the CCP provided F2P shortcuts don’t provide or are unattainable for the player. CCP has adjusted policies, softenend them, to deal with that kind of learning curve. A lot can be said about that decision, but it is CCP’s prerogative to make it.
There’s quite a bit of automation / botting in EVE, but CCP’s perception has historically been focused on this being a realm of individual player activity. Even though in the past they got example after example of how group organisation always seeks to fill the same gaps as individual activity. But the impact of group organisation is vastly deeper and much more substantial than the impact of individual activity combined.
In a nutshell: CCP does focus on the problem. But on the symptoms of it. Based on an incomplete picture. Within constraints set for those who work on it by people who carry a different perspective on matters based on a different focus. It isn’t as if they are not addressing issues, it just is very fragmented and it comes from different angles.
This current drama flaring up is just a relatively small example of the actual disease. The real discussion should be about the question of why CCP’s focus is demonstrably on symptoms rather than disease. The real challenge here is to first figure out what the assumptions are and what is reality. A lot of that has - in my view - root in a strictly technical / analytical approach, completely sidestepping the painful fact that CCP is dealing with humans 
What’s really sad is that for the player perspective the days where it was a case of “ask what you can do for CCP” are over. Because of the symptoms focus. Because of the visibility of policy changes. The traditional marketing and communication formats have become counterproductive. So the ball is in CCP’s court entirely.
Thanks, I understand what you are coming from now, very well written explanation indeed.
A lot of highbrow, lofty, poetic rhetoric. To me the issue is rather simple and grounded. Lots of players find and expose bots. If they can do it (and they do), why not CCP?
The answer is, they really could give two flying rat’s asses about the problem. If it was a priority, they’d dump more resources into solving it. But they don’t, because it isn’t a priority.
I will try to explain where I am coming from, I did not look at botting in detail, because I worked back that it was an extremely difficult thing to police, and they had to take care not to do false positives. My VNI ratting could be taken by some as like botting. Sometimes I get a bit nervous to be honest…
So I had to accept in my play that there would be entities that would fund their PvP in nullsec by such activities and it was one of the balance issues with Eve. IMO that imbalance could be taken in nullsec to a degree, however when it impacted hisec it had a much worse impact.
Not a great answer I know, but CCP is always going to find it difficult to deal with this, but your perception that they could be doing a better job is one I share.
PS It was beautiful English though.
I would suggest the complete reverse. High sec botting was/is more visible, but much lower in value (isk wise) by a very huge margin and hence its impact on the economy is low, where as nulsec botting is massive both in size and in terms of isk value (and therefore impact on the economy)- but less visible as it kept largely invisible due to the support sov owning entities get from it’s income (yes, I am stating they are complicit).
What I was getting at there was nullsec botting being used to impact hisec activity by the funding of blanket war deckers, which is a massive imbalance. I was not looking at botting in hisec as such.
Ah, yes, I agree 
It impacts much more of highsec (and everywhere else) than just that. For instance, the massive economic distortion affects everyone everywhere.
Of course I did not say otherwise. What I was pointing out that as a player, I had to grit my teeth, recognize that it was difficult to eradicate and try to compete as much as possible. I was trying to point out to you that nullsec could to a degree take that impact, but when it was applied to hisec, it was really out of wrack. PIRAT did a lot of damage to their top line, i.e. turnover.
I asked in that Reddit thread what was his motives in supporting PIRAT, I don’t expect to get an answer.
Perhaps too much realpolitic but you know sometimes you have to step back a bit and grit your teeth.
I wonder if this is how CCP punishes a botter after blowing up their account control…
This post should have never made it to the forums. CCP doesn’t care.
Well we can confirm one thing:
https://eve-marketdata.com/price_check.php?type_name_header=PLEX
Prices of PLEX did drop.
I can’t read Reddit it’s blocked in Indonesia
don’t suppose you could copy and paste the confession and post it ?