EVE General Discussion

I believe there is really no true benefit to knowing the character name of a botter that has been identified or punished by CCP.

What I think naming and shaming will be do is perpetrate negative behavior towards the individual who has been caught. Even though the true person will remain anonymous this will not deter some of the individuals in the the EvE community who thrive on griefing and harassing.

There is a large negative presence of hate in this game. This hate is fueled by "it's happened to me, so what do I care if I do it to someone else" mentality in this game. It may be a pipe dream, but I wish for shift in this type of negativity in this game. However, I just don't ever see it happening. Over the years, it has gotten worse. I only expect it to get worse. Naming and shaming will only fuel this.

So in closing there is no point to naming and shaming. Issue stricter punishments to the offenders. There should be no double jeopardy.

In closing the only thing I can see naming a character would do is protect a potential buyer that the character they are interested in has been identified as a botter by CCP. However, with CCP's new policy of freezing a character to an account, the need to name and shame is mitigated.

Just my .02.

For the most part I agree.

First of all I don't think adding a mark will act as a deterrent, and will make EVE intolerable for people that stop botting and decide to continue playing the game. Where as the people that it should affect - botting rings, systematic botters etc. - will be relatively unaffected since they will likely keep botting and will have their accounts banned eventually.

Perhaps just a security status penalty and fine would be more appropriate.

To be slightly OT. How big of a ISK fountain is the botting operation anyway? What would be the (speculative) negative number in combined botter wallets?

At the beginning of this thread, I was all for marking cheaters, botters and RMTers. But after reading many different opinions, I admit it made me reconsider. It is becoming clearer that it is not that simple. I now believe there are several important considerations on this topic

1) Education. I do not feel that CCP has done enough to educate new players about botting and RMTing. Yes, it is mentioned in the EULA, but in fine text the first time you log in, and lets be real, who actually reads all that before starting a potentially awesome new game. They scroll down quickly and click accept without reading anything. Thats it. They might play for months before a new player realizes that these rules exist.

Solution: Add in a section at the beginning of the tutorials that focuses on these rules in enough detail that players are formally notified of the policy on cheating and the consequences of violating them

2) Player involvement in enforcement. The 'Report botter' button is a good tool, but not complete. It could work better. Educate the masses on steps to identify a suspected botter. If a player report is found to be a confirmed botter, reward the player in a meaningful way. If the player report is found to be obviously an abuse of the feature, punish them in an equally meaningful way. It would leave some grey area where a suspect is reported, found to be innocent, and no reward or punishment is given. The bottom line is CCP needs to be quicker to react and players need feedback to see their efforts are having an effect.


3) Punishment. If a possible botter is identified, CCP must act swiftly. If initial investigation confirms suspect behavior, an immediate 2 week ban should be imposed. IF the banned player contacts CCP to refute the suspicion, hear them out and complete the investigation. If the suspicion is confirmed or there is no challenge, apply the following actions

a) Confiscate all assets and ISK
b) Remove from current Corp and place in NPC corp
c) extend the ban another 2 week

A second confirmed report should result in a permanent deletion of the entire account and IP ban.

It is obvious that this is a serious issue and I share many peoples feelings of not wanting to play with cheaters. I feel that banning a repeat offender is justified. There must be oversight by CCP and a genuine showing of action to the public. But I also recognize the lack of information for new players about this issue. Many new players will play for months before they get in deep enough to read forums or attempt to seriously engage the community. We need to educate them from the start if we want to discourage future botters and RMTers. CCP showing a heavy handed justice will reinforce this and set an example. And it must be handled in public for all to see.

Let's just say... It's okay to step into the kiddie sandbox when there's cat and dog **** all over it, to clean it up.

What would you, the player, stand to benefit from being able to identify which characters had ever been caught botting, whether or not they were still engaging in this activity?"

Absolutely nothing, I guess it depends on your perspective and if your looking at it from a player or corp / alliiance point of view. From my own perspective, I honestly couldnt care less if someone was using a bot to rat in blah blah system for hours on end, ive played eve long enough that i can make far more isk sitting around doing bugger all than they would running a bot farm anyway, apart from this they are often quite fun to kill if your really bored

Ive known quite a few people who have used these tools, and none of them were this stereotype russian botter lord that whores all the npcs everywhere and makes a gazillion isk. Most were pvpers + honest mature players that simply didnt have enough time to rat for 8 hours a day while trying to work

So from my own pov no it wouldnt really benefit me, however corp and alliance.. yes maybe, I think in that case some kind of infraction api would be feasable. That way when dodgy guy #555 joins your corp and you api check him, you can see he's been given an infraction from ccp and decide whether or not you want this activity in your corp

Another thing: the first BIG purple letter should be on CCP's forehead.

They allowed all the possible botting for MANY YEARS and then some.

They are not the only ones, there's a Bioware's subcompany who let some exploits run for 3 years to the point 99% of the playerbase just took them as basic game mechanics and all used them.

Therefore if they want to implement purple letters they should produce an HUGE splash screen for 2 weeks + a mandatory splash screen when a new player (re)subs, HUGE news (those you see at log on) and maybe an email to the subscribers about their new super tight anti-bot politics.

Only past that date they would start flagging people because they were warned.
I have the suspicion that if they really started flagging all people who botted say 5 years ago, you'd see a purple blinking universe all around you.

Not a fan of vanity item stuff like this.

Prefer it to be real bad to do this.

Real affects applied to deter

1st ranking = slap wrists, make pod as dense as a titan and apply this to all ships they fly
2nd ranking = apply warp speed nerf (Slower than a freighter) and even if unaggressed, takes ten mins to despawn
3rd ranking = carry on with the bio mass

Drop them down one strike ranking per 6/12 months of activity but not botting. Yah, you have to pay as well and log in rendering your other 2 unaffected accounts useless as well. You did the crime, you do the time.

This way, at least the good guys are thrown a bone as they are out there trying, but you're not helping them out one bit.

That makes no sense at all. In real life, we have judges in the United States that force thieves to stand in public in front of a store and wear a sign that says "I stole from [insert store name here]". Perfectly legal and the lawyers were not able to overturn that decision because the majority of the people in those communities saw no problem with the "name and shame" policy. Good luck trying to convince a lawyer to have CCP litigated over a "name and shame" policy if the majority of the players here support it.

Contrary to popular believes EVE is NOT the United States.

The only thing what would come from making public who got caught botting is a witchhunt.

Regardless we call ourselves a civilised world nowadays we are not.
The pitchfork and torch mentality is everpresent (and specially in the EVE world) and it won't do any good for EVE as a game to encourage that.

The flag showing up for people who can accept recruits in a corporation would be sufficient. And only when people apply to a corporation.
A corporation is entitled to know if someone who applies has been caught and punished before for breaking the EULA/ToS.