Yes, I know it’s a wall of text. Please hear me out.
My Enemies Are Cheaters
Okay, perhaps I should clarify my concerns. I’m a hardcore filthy multiboxer who has personally had several people voice concerns that I was a cheater. This has included:
- People messaging me to confirm I was not a bot
- People saying I was a bot in local
- People saying I was using macros in comms, not realizing that I was in comms with them
Additionally, there have been posts/threads, like Ancantes’ above or this one accusing a ganker of using macros, where people have asserted that someone was a botter/macro user while simultaneously demonstrating that they did not understand how legit players multibox.
Of course, none of this is to say that cheaters don’t exist, or that CCP shouldn’t keep up the good fight against them. However, it is clear that some players assume cheating when they lack sufficient evidence to do so. Hell, it’s not even limited to botting/macro usage, or Eve Online for that matter. For example, I have seen several people assert that gankers were evading concord, but it turned out that they simply didn’t know the difference between a criminal timer and -5 sec status, and here’s a thread of someone accusing Adrian Vexier of being a cheater. But rather than prove that Adrian was a cheater, it mostly serves to (1) highlight all of OP’s knowledge gaps about the game, and (2) show how persistently people can believe their enemies are cheating in light of evidence to the contrary. And, of course, no post on the topic would be complete without the memes…
Why does this matter?
- Players like their games to be fair, which means that they don’t like playing with cheaters -real or imagined.
- Seeing CCP not do anything about these “confirmed cheaters” damages players faith and confidence in CCP to do something about cheaters.
- It undoubtedly leads to plenty of reports of legit players, which can divert security team resources away from investigating more credible reports.
Look, the average player probably doesn’t consider this a problem, because they probably don’t get a lot of false accusations thrown their way. But I know that this is a very real issue because I’m the type of player who does. I don’t know how widespread the problem is, or how much damage it does, but I know for a fact that it is a problem.
And, not for nothing, but I wasn’t too thrilled with your response to Ancantes. Yes, you did set him straight on the difference between input broadcasting and botting, but you also confirmed that he had found a cheater, in spite of his evidence being extremely lacking. And so now you’re in a situation where if you don’t ban the guy, it won’t matter if he’s actually a cheater or not -Ancantes will believe that he is, and that CCP is unable/unwilling to do anything about him.