EVE General Discussion

That's actually a technique that many companies employ these days. Since what looks like a bot may just be someone with poor English skills (or even soemone that's just temporarily away from the keyboard), the general practice is to confirm that the person is a bot by asking them a question that requires a specific and direct response.

No, they don't ban you for being hungry or any other silly reason you come up with. Chances are, you've been investigated many times and don't even realise it.

(To be perfectly blunt, most of those 'unfairly banned' complaints are from people who were legitimately banned and just won't admit that they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar).

Just don't put yourself in a position of risk. Log out for those 15 minutes. If you're away from the keyboard long enough to raise questions, CCP has no choice but to act, whether it's a ban or just a warning.

:Edit: The grammars! They do nothing!

Not once. Not ONCE have I EVER seen you say something intelligent. If you had half a moment of lucid thught you would know the following >> Bots cannot be stopped at the proverbial click of a mouse because the tasks they do are so mundane and so trivial that it is easy to mimic!

YOU need to report them and stop being so pigheaded about whose responsibility it is. If it's YOUR game being ruined either

1) actively fight the bots.
2) gtfo. (i.e. stop "paying" CCP!)

Bullshit like this does NOT make it any better. CCP are neither stupid nor tolerant about such matters. Learn that much yeah!!

PS: I reckon CCP really need to start reporting who, where and when bots are nailed. It will firstly tell everyone they are on it and two, put the fear of a ban on botters if they see it happening often enough.

Get rid of instant local intel. That should do the trick.

Sorry can't resist: Shag Sheep. lol. Come on over here Shaggy. You've been a ba-a-a-a-d girl. Time for your punishment.

If you are that bothered about botting, why not create your own bot that is better than theirs? CCP cant do **** against bots, accept it

If your ship is being controlled, switching roids, targeting and shooting NPCs, warping about, then you are not AFK and should be able to respond to a GM convo.

I find it amusing that we humans are even being automated out of our own hobbies.

The problem with this ^^ is that it completely ignores null. Go take a run through null. Use DOTLAN and look for ice systems with a constant pulse of NPC kills. These are the systems people are ice mining. Now go there. What you will find when you get there is nothing or half a dozen or more mackinaws POS'd all with the same names save one or two letters. What you will also see are fresh kills in those ice belts. Stay there for more than ten minutes and those guys will log. Leave and come back in an hour and they'll POS up again. Stay for ten more minutes and they'll log again.

All you're doing by killing HS miners is deterring competition for the real professionals in null.

And yet hulkageddon has turned into a sport supported for and by null for which CCP have turned a blind eye which in any other circumstance would be considered griefing getting the offenders kicked.

I think this thread is making a strong argument about CCP, null and botting relationships and none of it looks good.

You will never stop the mass bot operations that do it for profit. Here or in any game. If there is a market demand, someone will be more than happy to meet it. Selling currency for real money has been around since the 90's and so has game automation. It's not going anywhere.

Now If you want to stop the average player(s) in eve that bot you need to look at why they bot. If you can't figure out the game mechanics that turn an average 'player' towards automation, take your blinders off. It's the eve developers that would have to institute changes to the game to curb this behavior.

I'm sure CCP already has their own detection methods for all the popular bot software. Do you really think a company does not have their own security team that purchase this software break down it's functions and devise ways of detection? Give them some credit. What do you think would happen if CCP banned every account that ever used some type of automation? I would lay odds that their active user account graphic would be taking a serious nose dive. Just watch the stats after a major patch and all the bots are down to get a general idea of how much botting activity goes on in Eve.

The average player 'botting' is not hurting CCP if anything it's keeping them in business. I would gather that majority of bots here are not botting to RMT. They are doing it to support multiple accounts. Which if you play this game for any length of time you will see most players have 3,4,5+ accounts to play it efficiently. A guy in my last corp had 10 accounts! This leads back to eve real time mechanics.

Eve's mechanics push it's customers into multiple accounts. This artificially inflates their customer numbers. It also lets them garner more $$ out of a single customer than any other game. This is much needed when your game is so micro niche it doesn't attract a large customer base to support itself. They also have an insanely high turn around of eve / new players to the game because of it's general game play. Everyone knows eve is 'different' and is a 'higher' learning curve. (least that's what they like to say) Doesn't take a rocket scientist to play eve.. Just a patient player that's willing to spend years to get anywhere in quite honestly some extremely boring combat and a boring pve system. Then right when the player thinks they are at a good place they load up evemon and find out they can easily fill up another 365 day plan to take another year of their life. ... (ok, so I'm a little bitter)

So what does hurt CCP....

The large scale bot 'operations' that sell ISK. These operations hinder CCP's own RMT system. If people are purchasing ISK via websites or through in game traders this takes money out of CCP's pocket. These players are not purchasing time codes and turning them into plex to 'buy' their ISK properly. Thus CCP plex system is not working to it's full potential. So whom should they go after first. Joe-Bob that's simply trying to support his multiple accounts (that eve's own mechanics force him into) or (insert cheap labor cost country) that's running mass operations and selling ISK for $$ causing CCP to take a loss?

I'm not saying that normal players botting is right or wrong. I'm just pointing out that people should look at it more than from a torch and pitchfork stance and look at the big picture. Want to stop 'normal' players from botting look towards the developers of the game to address the issues on 'why' a 'normal' player turns to automation.