EVE General Discussion

tbh I think there should be some sort of visible flags on pilots that would show that a character is locked from transfer - be the reason botting or other reasons.

The reason does not need to be known and a flag like that could make CEO's make decisions about their members simply by knowing they done something that has locked the character.

As fun as it would be to be able to view names/track history and make wicked pie charts, I don't think there will be much good coming from actually outing the names.

Many botters are already known by the majority anyway since they many times get reported by players to begin with.

The visible flags should not be removed imo, a permanent mark is very suitable imo

Sort of not on topic with the flags, I would love to see (err I wouldn't but...) spambots getting silenced as well, they will keep thinking they are spamming everyone but no one will see their texts. That would be a win win maybe, CCP might still earn money from any spam account that do pay, and we wouldn't be bothered by their spam.

/c

I also wondered why a game so evolved like EvE can't silence Jita spammers. I mean, they do it in text based games and in way less decent MMOs than EvE.

I also think that if someone "paid to the justice" then he should be able to come out.
He could be in a "sentenced to jail" registry like in RL that can be seen if he tries to sell the account or to be hired in a new corp but not some flashing "here's leper" neon sign on the forehead.

Else, what's the incentive to stop doing it? You are done anyway.

name them and write it into the code that other capsuleers can shoot them down, without being concorded or loss of standings.

Make it a bot shoot and bring some fun into the game.

exactly what this man said. there's not a single excuse to use a bot in game nor should there be any kind of pardon with those

I don't like, basically because it "gamifies" the sanction against cheating and this kind of stuff shouldn't be handled out in the open through scarlet letters public or private or anything else.

The best deterrent is to NOT know what is coming or when it is coming, or who was punished or wtf is going on. The idea of CPP Sreegs constantly investigating everyone under the hood and that any account can be ganked at any moment of time is awesome and it works by creating a Kafkesque environment that actually promotes good behaviour.

If we start publishing scarlet letters, bringing it out into the open, putting it into the game, we are revealing too much information out about what is going on. Also we are effectively "gamifying" the cheaters, giving them space and visibility in the New Eden universe, which in a way is recognizing they are part of the world, which is actually better for them than just stating that they shouldn't be there in the first place and will all be eradicated...eventually.

In essence, by having a Scarlet Letter we are recognizing that we fail at effectively removing all of them from the game. Whatever this initiative requires in terms of investment, that effort is more productive if it involves directly ganking some more cheaters. Be relentless. They should not exist. Give them nothing. Keep it secret. Kill them all.

The term publicly "flagging" a botter would probably be easier to understand, rather than the hyperbole of "a scarlet letter".
I know it spices up your text, but the rest of the world doesn't speak English as a first language.

My first thought, it really doesn't make sense in view of the 3 strike policy. The first strike, there's usually the benefit of doubt, so it doesn't really make sense to flag it here. The third strike means an account ban, it's fairly pointless to do this after-the-fact (EVE makes it easy to remain anonymous ... probably would even extend to voice comms with a custom voice font). The only opening is narrowed to the second strike. If implemented, this is the only place where it makes sense.

Next, is to evaluate what would that achieve? You'd need to look at the kind of botters. It'll certainly impact casual botters, the type who runs in corps and everyone knows him. It may impact the hardcore botters, as players would have an indicator that makes his characters a valid target - however, by far and large, I'm fairly skeptical that this will affect them that much (due to their mode of operation). In a sense, you're making a fish net designed to catch the small fishes, rather than the big fishes. All in all, imo, the public flagging is a hoo-ha over nothing.

It would be interesting to see some graphs on the time period that elapses between the first ban and the third ban (minus the ban period) for the number of characters.
It can be used as a general indicator on the effectiveness of CCP countermeasures against hardcore botters.

P.S Does CCP have any dedicated GM operational staff (not technical staff), hired specifically to hunt bots 24/7 ingame? If not, why?

What this guy said!

IMO it won´t kill botting all over, but there will be individuals who won´t even trying once, because of that.

The one beeing flagged, will have to biomass sooner or later, buy another char, rinse and repeat. In that way, it will cut down every botters (illegally) achieved income, and that is a good thing. I also have no troubles when this (flagged) player is hunted down by the playerbase, at least he knew what he is up to when started botting.

My 2 cents.

As a CEO you don't want any botters near you because botting ISK can end up in your corp wallet (happened with RMT ISK before) and after being removed can turn the corp wallet negative. What if a corp buys an IHub with that ISK. Could that vanish? Could entire fleets of Nyxeseses vanish before your eye? If you don't give CEOs the tools to tell if ISK is clean petitions will have to be filed to get an OK from a GM. I would do that (because I'm mean).

You can't trust a cheater. When things get nasty they will try to do it again and this time your corp can be in it. Any corp has a reputation to lose. I did see your presentation and for some strange reason you seam to be unwilling to name and shame the alliances that got the most botters. Do you see the problem?

I don't want to play with cheaters because the achievements (in the non Valve sense) I have in game are devaluated by ISK-printing-machines (how about T2 BPOs btw?). Wars are won by ISK and cheaters have no right to win them. Nor do I want to win a war because some members of my team cheated. You know better then I how many empires will fall thanks to your bot banning actions. I would not want to be among them. (That's one of the reasons why I *beep*ed off to empire after MAX2. Neither winning thanks to botters nor competing with them is any fun.)

You may want to talk to somebody good with laws why there are so many countries that allow the general public, including employers, to find out if somebody committed a crime in the last 10 years. There must be a reason why it's healthy for a society to restrict civil rights of evil doers in such a way.

In the end this is all futile ofc. There are alts and ISK can be transfered in many ways untrackable by a CEO. If at all you have to mark players as cheaters not chars. And you can't do that because you have no way to tell if that newly signed up fellow is really new.

part of me would like the name and shame concept but if the plan is to hopefully reform these player's then i would think it will have the opposite effect.