But putting them on your killboard and then reporting them is ok 
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I would just be happy to get some free security tags and standings reset for anti-bottingā¦
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First of all, CCP is back to itās old āgood enoughā type of thinking that got them in trouble back in 2011. You see this in many things.
Secondly does CCP even HAVE a dedicated security/bot fighting team any more? They used to have one and advertise the ā ā ā ā out of it, havenāt heard from it in years.
I was like: this must be some made-up example. Now Iām not sure what surprises me more: that Ford did such a fked up thing or that Iām still surprised about something like this happening.
Does it though? I would think that bots consume PLEX, unless theyāre VMāed Alpha fleet bots. So yes, they generally create a larger market for real money related trade goods. At the same time, this means that they compete with real players for the ISK/PLEX ratio. Botting scales, real game activity only scales so and so much. I know a few guys who are grinding to plex their accounts or their alts from month to month. If they feel it gets too expensive, theyāll feel less motivated and fall into Alpha. Now, the PLEX will still be consumed by the bots and CCP will keep on selling PLEX to players because of it.
So far I think you have a point. At the same time though, bots have a highly negative effect on the motivation of real players. EVE players are notorious for both loving their game, but always having something they blame about it. Normally this differs from player to player, but botting really seems to be something that generally drags down the mood of anyone who meets them often enough.
I may not see something here, but from that it would seem that CCP will make less and not more money if they allowed botting.
You can never know if you have false positives. If you choose a conservative enough approach, you can limit the false positives dramatically. For me, this is enough to then ban anything that hits this treshold. The one innocent in 10k players - they can be compensated and we can hope they understand.
Itās much better than going ābeyond doubtā, because there is no such thing as beyond doubt. There is always doubt, if you want there to be. But this approach does not solve any botting problem.
No. Iām not argueing with what CCP is doing about bots. I donāt know the details and what @ISD_Sakimura said about their approach seems to make sense.
What I want to know is: why is it expected of me, as a player, to do the job and report bots, if all I ever get is not even feedback about steps being taken.
I know something like ābot bountyā could have potential negative implications, but at the very least Iād want something like bot-assets being re-distributed to those who hunt them or new players who have to compete against bots.
Compensate bot-hunters for the effort theyāre having and Iāll have a reason to report bots.
I do not think that itās that simple. To get similar result as Valve, CCP will have to create a program, that will have to run on the end userās PC, that scans the computerās memory which practically gives them acess to all your private data for each and every program you happen to be running while this anti-cheat program is checking your PCās memory.
Taking all this into account questions could be raised about the legallity of such a program. I would much rather see an approach as; a anti-cheat program that checks for source of input, does it come through USB, PS/2 or other hardware if not then it would be classified as cheat (with only few authorized software, as those used by players with disabilities). I guess that this is very difficult to achieve if not Iām possible?
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They canāt give feedback because that would mean they give you information about other peopleās accounts, which theyāre not allowed to do.
Weāre not expected to report bots, they tell us to do so because stating anything else would look really bad, but I doubt a high percentage of the people banned got their initial attention from us reporting them. Partly because people report the dumbest things and partly because we canāt tell if some character is a bot, afk, flown by someone who sucks OR is a fleet of characters flown by someone who just micromanages really well.
Example: Someone who puts his VNI on a large orbit and lets his drones do the work while heās afk will get reported a thousand times for ābottingā, while he isnāt.
So yes thereās tons of bots but no us players canāt tell with 100% certainty and even if they get banned after we reported them CCP canāt tell us that they did, because that would divulge personal info. All they can do is the āwe banned x amount of accounts in the last x weeksā, over and over again.
If you assume a capable opponent, itās quite impossible, as they control the computer and can manipulate data streams. The only approach in that regard that can work, is root level access secured by proprietary hardware components - which is absolutely not what Iād want to accept. And even then, itās not a guarantee.
For me it seems much better to go about pattern recognition. Think about it like Project Discovery. Actual humans are good at seeing patterns in convoluted sets of data. We are chaos and overly ordered behaviour stands out for us.
Like, there can be a multi-layered approach, further and further narrowing in on possible bots. First by collecting statistics within the EVE client and if they hit enough flags, escalate further for deeper inspection. I suppose bot makers factor in some form of randomness to avoid detection. But if you zoom out, youāll see that their randomness is totally predictable. While itās probably not feasible to scan all chars for such, it should be possible to run these checks for accounts that already have some flags raised.
Players can help with this, because we see unusual patterns, things that donāt appear to be human behaviour. But shouldnāt we have a better framework for this? I think everybody is really fed up with bots and while itās cool that CCP is doing something, it still feels like there is zero information coming back and reporting bots is even more of a uphill battle than banning them.
The Yulai event was mentioned. As far as I recall, some of the bots that died in Yulai were later seen ratting again. How can this be? Why donāt they get all assets, SP and chars removed across all accounts and simply kicked out of the game for good? Why even make the effort and watch/test/report them, when theyāll be back in game in no time and continue what theyāre doing?
This does not make sense. There must be a better way.
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Dont waste the effort or your nerves.
Its pointless.
Even if they are banned, they will just be back the next day on other alts, and their assets arent traced and seized.
why you should report bots? well its nice if you do ā¦ you dont have to and there is no need you do so ā¦ so if you do it its nice ā¦ if not noone cares too much
wow ā¦ so thats news ā¦ i never would have thought so ā¦ 
so why is police work not transparent? could be a problem getting the next guy? maybe?
how did you get this āabolute proofeā? anytime i hear about 100% sure and absolut proof i am think āhowā ā¦ and CCP cant make it 100% they cant do anything so your proof was not good enough i think
hunting bots is very hard ā¦ i know that ā¦ if you cant proof it you cant do anything even i you are sure it is a bot ā¦ you can only have an eye on it and hope this guy and his bot make an error ā¦
dont take this all toooooo serious ā¦ report if you think its a bot ā¦ leave it if you are not sure ā¦ enjoy the game ā¦ the most thing you see as a ābotā is a multiboxer mining, ratting or trading
JuuR
Steam had 18.5 mil peak concurrent users in January and 125 mil accounts created since its launch and 67 million active users per month according to an August 2017 article, yet nobody really has an issue with it. Such a company with so many users can not afford to do anything illegal as they risk a huge amount of profits for nothing.
Maybe CCP is not that big and could not be trusted by its users but I doubt that and donāt think most people would have an issue with it, just a guess though, though it is CCP weāre talking about so even if not malicious intentions, incompetent coding from their part is well known and people might not trust them not messing up and as a result break something on the userās computer, so the end result may be the same and people not trusting them doing this but for different reasons than youāve implied.
But that is a different problem, and if they hire some VAC developers maybe even that mistrust could be overcomeā¦ I guess.
As for legality, although Valve is a US company they conform to local laws as otherwise they could not sell to specific countries, and struggling with regulations and having to come up with solutions in the past is also part of their track record (just as they not long ago swiftly implemented the new privacy features required by EU law, also had some things going on with Australian regulatory authorities, and in general all the time have to adjust to meet local laws and regulations even new ones that arise) so based on that it is safe to assume they adhere to every law of every country they sell their products in.
Though I am not a lawyer of course and not sure if and how different CCP as an Icelandic company, but seeing Valve can do it makes it a likely assumption that CCP/PA can do it too so donāt see the legal concerns as valid.
As for the source of input approach you prefer, as another poster pointed out, everything can be manipulated at the end userās part unless wide enough range of access is granted to the cheat detection software (and even that might not be enough, just as VAC is constantly working to catch hackers over time, and a funfact that according to the latest trends in their methodologies they even implement machine learning to improve the process even further).
So I still think their approach is better AND they already have great expertise on the field, which lets be honest, CCP surely did not showcase so far nor is expected to do so. At least how it seems.
(Of course not everyone who seems like a bot is an actual bot but the problem exists according to many peopleās observations, so there should be at least some merit to it I assume.)
Btw I do not imply CCP not doing their best to solve the issue but to me it seems still that is not enough, so they might consider more efficient ways of getting a solution to reach it faster than on their own.
This is not how it works.
If I have 10 good apples and 1 bad
I have a test that detects good and bad apples. However it has 10% of false positive.
First pass it tells me I have TWO bad apples. That means it finds the bad one and one incorrect good one. We remove the bad apple.
Second pass it finds one incorrect bad apple. Third pass etc. It still find one incorrect bad apple.
So at first the test was like 1 false positive to 1 correct found. Then as time goes, the result becomes infinite false positive ratio.
When does it become bad ? You donāt know ! What is the real true positive ratio ? you donāt know ! The apples have adapted to escape your program ! You did not think it deep enough and now the program your invested time in to find cheaters has became useless !
Your vision of ā0.01% false positiveā is too simple to be correct. First this does not mean to compare the false positive ratio over the true positive , because that would mean you already know the true positive ratio. So if you have 0.01 false positive but also 0.01 botter in the game, at first you will find one botter for one innocent. Then you will find only innocent people. And since you agree with banning innocent people when you canāt find any bot, players will tell you to ā ā ā ā off and stop paying you.
Thatās why your simplistic vision of āhow can CCP catch botā would only hurt the game.
Most of the time, if you think a problem is so simple you can find a solution that nobody else considered before, that means you donāt understand the issue and your solution is a bad one.
Thinking too much about bots and how much damage they have done, and continue, to this game will just enrage and demotivate you.
Wasting time and effort on compiling evidence for a report grants you no reward.
Threads trying to push CCP to be more pro-active on bots are trolled to death and invariabky locked.
Even if they are suspended, they just start up again the next day on alts, with their assets elsewhere intact.
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I absolutely agree Iāve reported bots who are clear as day botting literally making billions per day and yet CCP after weeks havenāt done anythingā¦why would they want to lose 20 paying accountsā¦rightā¦ When subs are pretty low as it isā¦
because 20bots are not 20 paying accounts ffs.
because bots = RMT = less money for CCP.
stop being dumb go to school.
Firstly donāt be so rude didnāt your mom teach you manners you childish imbecile?
The fact is CCP are doing nothing about it. Simpleā¦ donāt like itā¦ leave the game and donāt let the door hit you on the way out
And yes botting just pays for the accounts. Perhaps ccp should remove the ability to buy game time with iskā¦
You will never stop RMT everā¦ itās a thankless task
But when there is blatant botting happening accounts should be banned quicklyā¦
But I see rental the same as botting. When alliances can ārent outā hundreds of systems and make billions for doing absolutely nothing is just as badā¦ but thatās OK right. But Iām sure Iāll hear some terrible excuses to says itās Ok
Stop being dumb, go to school.
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No dipshit. I posted 100% proof.
100% proof isnāt judging. It is 100% proof.
Butā¦you did just judge me on why I was banned with 0% proof.
I posted their names/credit card info/account names and source of info.
Thatās not ājudgingā. Thats ā ā ā ā ā ā ā caught red handed.
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Umm, and you wonder why youāve got banned from the forums? It is basic common sense to know posting such info is not just against forum rules but is against the law of most nations as well. You could have gotten into far worse trouble than just a forum ban.
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No source for that = you are wrong.
donāt like it ? leave the game and let the door hit you. You are just puking baseless accusation.
You parents didnāt teach you manners ? When you donāt know, shut the ā ā ā ā up. Donāt affirm things you have no clue about. You present ZERO fact in your posts, only baseless interpretations. You are INSULTING. Talks about your manners.
And you will never stop people from making bots.
Then they will be recreated as quickly. What tells you CCP is not banning them ? nothing, just because you donāt see something does not mean it is not present.