Why Is EVE PvE So Easy To Bot?

Also there are capital ship bots as proven by that big uproar over those 10 nyx bots last year

That is only because drone alloy loot could be refined in the same system it was farmed in
they didn’t have to travel all the way to high sec to hand in the tags.

There is a lot of research going into this from various credible institutions and organisations. Eve is not unique in dealing with botting or automated gameplay and it would be naive to think we are alone. As players we seem to focus primarily on the mechanics of detection, but our general knowledge and experience is limited in most cases.

When faced with a persistent ‘pest’ problem it is usually advisable to call in the exterminators.

for examples:

https://www.iis.sinica.edu.tw/~swc/pub/bot_identification.html

South Korea has passed laws to specifically deal with game cheats, and other countries are also looking at their own legislation (criminal law as well as civil law) as this is essentially breach of contract or theft of services.

I would offer the opinion that CCP should look at forming some partnerships with some of the organisations that are studying this. Much like the "project discovery’ partnerships.

Bring in some experts.

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Following this particular post: And yet we have Abyssal space which was supposed to be unpredictable and a ship killer, that is already fully mapped out and easy to solo. People who believe that Abyss is bot-proof are just naive.

And with regards to another post about “Make ratting like W-space and give anoms blue loot”. I hope that person is aware that a few hundred people in W-space generated about 11T ISK with this method in near perfect safety and within an even shorter amount of time than it takes to farm the ISK in K-space. Judging by the regular occurrence of this claim, I doubt it, though.
On the other hand: That’s also fine with me. If I can get my daily income goal within 20 minutes instead of 3 hours, so be it. Not everyone is as sensible as I am, though, and this would lead to even more ISK influx. But at least I could spent more time in Delve and hunt stupids.

With the difference, that nobody can find and enter the system you are farming in. This is not true for k-space. The tags will not make botting impossible (this would be the wrong goal anyway), but less profitable due to increased risk.

I wonder about that. Where is the risk? All the bot developers have to do is put in a little extra bot bit in their packs for a frigate that flies around and collects all the tags. Considering how easy exploration bots work at finding the next can and even cargo scan them, having a frigate fly around space and looting wrecks can’t be too hard to program. Without an MTU, mind you.

Actual users are way more inconvenienced by this than bots. In particular if you have to go down the road of making wrecks scannable just so that you can create a risk, which would also create a whole host of new issues for PVE for actual users who pay attention and warp away from their site, for instance, when they see someone in system or see probes in order to prevent getting their site perma camped by a hunter. That is already a thing with missions and complexes if you didn’t pay attention for a moment and it would be even worse if wrecks were scannable.

If bot programmers would do this, they first reduce their profit, because the frig bot can’t do something else while collecting tags, and second expose themselves to probing hunters / loot thiefs (assuming its not only one wreck).

Normal users have no issue, because the standing fleet will protect their operation, as it should be in player-policed space. :wink:

You are severely overestimating hunters. As for profit reduction: The frigate runs can be triggered when the system is being camped or when neutrals appear in or nearby systems. The bot can’t do anything during that time anyway so it’s best to use the time to collect tags instead of just sitting in a structure/POS. And this is not even theory crafting, this is exactly what exploration bots already do when it comes to selecting sites and what things to do in a site.

Jeez, I am not even a bot programmer and I can come up with these easy counters to your efforts. In the end these things just inconvenience actual users more than bots. Good job.

Speaking of which: I think this is the far greater threat to EVE than bots. Bot can at least be inhibited from doing things by mere presence. AFK cloaking in a space under super capital umbrella doesn’t give a flying damn about that. Which led to the known detrimental outcome in all sorts of areas of EVE.

Looks to me like you paint it black because it hits a nerve. :wink: I can think of a new profitable tag thief profession. Just travel through botting/ratting land, warp to anomalies while bots/ratters dock up and collect their loot from unfinished sites (and bonus kill their looters).

And why is this bad? I actually consider this a nice side benefit to reduce the ISK printing in nullsec.

Because you only treat the symptoms and not the root causes. Plus, this kind of treatment is very poorly done. This is the CCP approach to “fix” things. Very sad that people like you would fall for the same lame and limited line of thought.

I paint things black because I, as an actual user, do not need even more inconvenience just because CCP is not competent enough to fix botting or money printing or because other users are too lazy and incompetent to hunt and interrupt ratters. There are ways to reduce money printing and botting significantly by other means that do not inconvenience me as an actual user. Namely Forlorn anom NPC aggression behavior and trigger behavior.

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One of the main reasons botting is a problem in EvE is because of Drones, and the role they play in the game.

On top of that, many drone boats have tanking bonuses, making them perfect for setting up for botting and then going AFK for an age, knowing the NPCs won’t kill you. The Guristas ships are the main protagonists here, and they need re-purposing away from either Drones or Tanking ability to make them less attractive for Botting or AFKing. Personally I have never understood why Guristas have the Drone role among the pirate factions, when in missions and belts they almost exclusively fire Railguns and Missiles at you, not a drone in sight. It just looks like CCP gave them the Drone role as a gap-filler. Either the Drone role or the Tanking bonus needs to go from Guristas.

All Drone boats also really need to have their tanking bonuses replaced with something else, to make them less attractive for botting. My own opinion is that Drones go much better with the SoE ships, and they do in fact already have some drone bonuses, but these could be extended by replacing other bonuses they have, such as the Laser bonus, to make them more Drone and Exploration focussed.

Just my thoughts.

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What tanking bonus does the VNI and Dominix have?

I misspelt. Not all drone boats have tanking bonuses, as I alluded to near the top of my post.

Maybe boting will not stop.
But maybe have the drones not doing things automatically and a bit more of input required could help.

  • Lock target
  • Attack target
  • Even maybe turn the drone boats into a mini carrier in a way (i haven’t played carriers)

the thing is i guess the people that play drones in a regular way maybe should not pay for it…

I will just program my bot to press the F key every time it locks a new Target and command the drones to attack.

Now real players suffer because they have to constantly stare at the screen and press F to attack, while my bot keeps running without a problem.

I like your idea. :slight_smile:

I know but, ok you remove drone boats, then the next best option is lasers.
My bot will lock plus press F1.
Its the same thing.
The only positive thing i see from this it forces me to find new play styles while i could have been comfortable in my chair.

I mean, yeah. This is because your approach is wrong, lol.

You trying to change something that isn’t the issue. How about you think about it bit more and try again?

well my good sir i just pointed the same thing you did.

they are proposing to change something that is not the issue, and on the side anoying people that might not be botting or afking.

I like that Idea Guristas could be rail/missile mix and not have to worry about drones at all, either that or all the npc’s launch drones to combat the guy running the pve site vs guristas.

I have no idea why people like you out botters. Is it to restore some pride? Are you a member of ccp? What is it?

Who cares…!

So people bot, is it your responsibility? Just play the game and log off when you’re done and stop worrying about nonsense.

As far as I can see botters do nothing that harms the game or affects YOU.

You’re basically encouraging ccp to make the game more difficult to exploit, which in turn makes it harder for us to enjoy - who knows maybe next month they will come up with some new mechanic that limits certain things that we currently enjoy as normal.

stop it.