To what extent can players help bot detection? Would in-game reward for fighting bots encourage players to do so?

(Rosov Aulmais) #1

I had seen so many “I found a bot, reported it and CCP does nothing” posts, and there is also saying that CCP’s security department is heavily overloaded. But my question is, how much potential in bot detection do we players have? To what extent can players help CCP in its campaign against bots? I got inspired by Project Discovery. For half a buck worth of in-game currency per hour(https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/76vdkm/project_discovery_40_million_isk_per_hour_alpha/) you can hire a guy to find exoplanet for you. What if you use similar rewards to find bots instead?

(Rosov Aulmais) #2

I am afraid maybe we had wrong impression on how much effort players can do. We can notice RMT contracts, or someone who never talk like a human(can be a multiboxer’s alt too). But is our collective human efforts really on the same order of magnitude as CCP security’s efforts with their resources?

(Rosov Aulmais) #3

Maybe that idea would never work… I must be drunk when I made this post…

(Yaosus) #4

The idea would work but it requires muscle from CCP, which they do not have or want to invest in. You need active investigators.

(Memphis Baas) #5

In-game reward for help finding bots does NOT help. We’re already finding and reporting bots plenty.

Reward for CCP to look at the reports and actually ban the bots would help. Because the ball is in their court.

Looks like instead of the carrot they get the stick though, via PC Gamer articles and similar.

(Lfod Shi) #6

This idea is pure fantasy and I know it: Everyone in space goes bot-hunting for the next… what, 6 months?

Let me dream.

(Iggy Park) #7

Botting has been going on for years and CCP is well aware of the ones who are doing it. Think about it, the game blocks you from having a second toon open if both are alphas but it cant detect when scripting occurs? LOL…

I can personally attest to 2-3 major botting groups in highsec alone that have been going on for years. Furthermore, I know for a fact that multiple people have reported them throughout the years (including myself) and CCP has yet to do anything about them. How do we know? Because we have been keeping tabs on them and they are still chugging along without interruptions. Most recent communication I had with the CCP security team was 1 year ago and it went like this: “Apologies for the late reply (6 weeks late btw), we are swamped with bot reports and we will take a look at your as soon as we can.” That was a year ago and nothing ever happened since then.

One of them got so bad that me and a friend created a few alts and a new corp to start bumping the scripted miners and gank them. After a few kills and successful bumps the IRL person finally flamed us in local and complained about the whole system turning against his bots. This dude was mining 12 hrs a day everyday. He eventually moved to another system.

IPO I truly believe that CCP encourages botting by not doing anything (or close to anything) about it. For what reason I do not know yet. But no organization that I have seen in my 5 years as a financial auditor has been this ineffective at solving a problem that has been going on this long.

Don’t get me wrong, I love this game. That is why certain things I see CCP doing makes me seriously question their inner-workings. I hope CCP can lock it down quick because if it continues like this this game wont last another 5 years.

(Salt Foambreaker) #8

Why doesn’t blowing up their ship work?

(Buoytender Bob) #9

Helmar has spent the last decade trying to get very last penny out of the EVE players; monoclegate anyone? They have crowed about how much information they have on what toons/players are doing what activity, where, and for how long. They claim they have a full grasp on what is going on in EVE in all it’s aspects. So when people claim that CCP is doing all they can to stop botting, I am highly sceptical. If Helmar thought he was actually losing money to another person, he wouldn’t have allowed the long term (10+ years) use of bots; especially in the last 5 years where their use has infiltrated all aspects of EVE gameplay. CCP must feel that bots being used to fund PLEX being bought by certain people/groups is acceptable as long they don’t generate further work for the company like generating CC fraud,etc. that would tax their customer service people.

Bottom line is that Helmar and CCP has always made it clear that generating income is vital (As it SHOULD be); they also MUST feel that the current status quo in regards to bots in EVE is compatable to that goal, while an aggressive removal of most bots is a less acceptable alternative. Knowing CCP’s history of management, past money decisions, and the devs known abilities to gather metrics from the game/players lends no other logical conclusion.

(Salt Foambreaker) #10

lol

Monoclegate was players who were butt hurt because they couldn’t have a monocle

(Buoytender Bob) #11

Incorrect:

An example of the “Greed is good” mentality; ofc, yvmv.

(Rosov Aulmais) #12

What if more people become aware of this bot problem because they’re encouraged to do so by tthe system?

Interesting idea. We can have system that reward killing or bumping bot-like players, whose bot-likeness is determined by a system like Project Discovery.

(Alpha Slow) #13

Its incompetence or laziness if they must rely on players to police bots for them.

(Alpha Slow) #14

Forgot about that.

It is no wonder that CCP has become accustomed to ignoring its clients when the community loses its ■■■■ after they try to sell vanity items that have no effect on gameplay whatsoever.

(Rosov Aulmais) #15

Why not call it “more player-generated content”?

(Rosov Aulmais) #16

I should read the data a bit, about how PD goes in the time of about one year:

By categorizing a database of more than 250,000 images of proteins within human cells, which included the submission of more than 25 million classifications of images, capsuleers contributed to real life science through their gameplay, providing thousands of man hours of analysis for the Human Protein Atlas.

I think that’s approximately the equivalent of 10 full time employees, not to mention that they don’t have the full resource as true employees do.

Botting Ban and PLEX
(Salt Foambreaker) #17

[

A system, why not blow them up with the system we have?

(Salt Foambreaker) #18

Don’t need a link I was a player at the time, most people were upset about WiS, about ship spinning not working and a whole bunch of other annoyances, like computers melting down.

A few people were really butt hurt about the monocle, mostly people who wanted one but thought it was too expensive or couldn’t afford it.

I will admit some of the people who were complaining about WiS were privately super butt hurt about the monocle :slight_smile:

(Rosov Aulmais) #19

I am talking about increasing the incentive for players to do so.

(QuakeGod) #20

Ganking bots in low and null sec is much easier to do than high sec. For example, there’s an ice miner in my system that has an Orca, freighter, and 14 Skiffs mining every single day, 24/7, all of them very well tanked. It would take a fleet of 200 ships to take out his operation. Getting enough players together to do that is the problem.