These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

Missions & Complexes

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

Regarding AFK Complex Farming

First post First post
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
highonpop
KarmaFleet
Goonswarm Federation
#141 - 2012-08-09 15:37:58 UTC
CCP could just get rid on infinite respawns


TADA!

Problem solved

FC, what do?
MezriDax
BlackWatch Industrial Group
Memento Moriendo
#142 - 2012-08-09 15:38:22 UTC
Does this mean I can't go to the bathroom or get a drink while ice mining anymore? Do I gotta bring in my ship before I go potty?
Zapson
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#143 - 2012-08-09 15:38:41 UTC
Pro Tip: We call it "meetings", we have them before we announce important things or make important decisions.
Pro Tip: Bugs can be fixed by Developers, even if you are CCP and you have super large and complex cluster
Pro Fact: You should be able to fix such problems, even from a financial standpoint, last time I checked you weren't bankrupt, because some investors saved you.


WE players do not complain about something being bannable because it's "exploity", we are feared because CCP is going down a way, where hard bugged mechanics are reasons for bans.
It's like banning people in a public test alpha for encountering and using broken mechanics.

You are constantly enraging the community instead of searching any form of dialogue.
I think every EVE player would be very happy to participate in discussions about new PvE/PvP/whatSoEver experiences.
CCP Sreegs
CCP Retirement Home
#144 - 2012-08-09 15:38:58 UTC
EvilweaselSA wrote:
CCP Sreegs wrote:
Nobody ever said anything about passive income. Every example of passive income mentioned thus far has been designed purposely to be so. This was not. It becomes a security issue when it is egregious enough to be virtually identical to botting. The GM team is aware of this news item and the details and the game design team has committed to fixing the problem.

If you have some insight that I don't as to what is or isn't my team's responsibility however please feel free to clue me in because it seems to differ from that of my boss.

There was no botting issue here. This was started by your algorithm thinking that someone was a bot, them challenging that, and the decision being made to decide they were a bot despite no botting software, macro software, game hacks, or the like. Instead of fixing the issue with the botting algorithm (suggested fix: if the client isn't sending server commands it's probably not botting because it's not doing anything), team security decided to take over running enforcement of edge cases where 100% legitimate game behavior allows for something the game designers decide is a bad idea.

There's no good reason for team security to be involved because they don't know what has/hasn't been decided in the past, they don't have layers of review to handle hard cases fairly (if something's a hard case, like 100% legitimate game behavior doing something unexpected you want several sets of eyes on it reviewing it independently, such as regular and senior GMs). Team Security should deal with stuff the GMs are incapable of handling: botting detection, RMT, hacks, and the like that does not involve 100% in-game behavior. Things involving pure in-game behavior is what the GM team is designed to handle and it's their job to handle.

As for the "designed/non-designed" thing (which is nonsense: half of EVE is about doing things that were not designed, from hotdrops to defensive SBUs), here's this:

Say I idle in a NC. system with the name "down with goons" and a bio saying all donations go to fighting goonswarm in some verifiable way, say by a public api (though I keep a percentage, making it personal income). Every so often people go "damn straight down with those goons" and send me money. Am I a bot? I'm just parked in space, cloaked. I suspect I would be, because I'm logged into game making money and the combination of the two would trigger your algorithm (since it clearly doesn't take into account failing to send any commands at all to the server).

Hell, I make passive income every day from simply holding various items that will appreciate in value: fortunately your algorithms don't detect that sort of thing or I might get banned for holding guidance systems as they steadily appreciate in value even if I'm unsubbed.


Except that the strawman you're presenting isn't the situation we're discussing or saying we're going to be handling and has no bearing or relevance on this particular discussion. We would not be having this conversation based on that activity.

The activity we ARE discussing is identical in every aspect other than involving a 3rd party piece of software to botting. Therefore, until Design can fix it we are not giving people passes when the sensors are tripped.

This might be the 6th time I've said that in this thread.

"Sreegs has juuust edged out Soundwave as my favourite dev." - Meita Way 2012
CARB0N FIBER
Derailleurs
#145 - 2012-08-09 15:39:30 UTC
How do you know I'm AFK?

Are you hacking my web cam?

Is there a time limit on how long I can play?

What is this time limit?

Will this time limit be like other rules, where we don't know what it is till we are banned?


Since playing 23 hours a day is now a bannable offense will we be getting a dicounted rate?

So we pay for 720 hours of game time, in which we can play 690 hours. So how many of the 690 hours of the 720 hours we pay for can we play without getting banned?

Another thing, ALT's. Obviously if you have multiple accounts logged in one is AFK. So should you banned if you have multiple accounts?

I know you saying something like I'm not AFK, I have a screen and keyboard for every account. How do we know that?
CCP Sreegs
CCP Retirement Home
#146 - 2012-08-09 15:39:43 UTC
highonpop wrote:
CCP could just get rid on infinite respawns


TADA!

Problem solved


That would certainly fix this particular issue yes.

"Sreegs has juuust edged out Soundwave as my favourite dev." - Meita Way 2012
EvilweaselSA
GoonCorp
Goonswarm Federation
#147 - 2012-08-09 15:40:19 UTC
CCP Sreegs wrote:

We aren't looking for that action. We're looking for bots. In this case the behavior is similar and it is being abused 24 hours a day. Therefore, we are treating it the same.

It's not a bot. It's 100% agreed its a NotBot. There's no reason for it to be treated as "the same" except that the algorithm to detect bots detected a NotBot as a bot. There was no reasoned decision to start treating cases like this where a NotBot is making money in a way that CCP has decided shouldn't be, and the bot detection algorithm changed to do so. Instead, the bot detection system decided a NotBot was a bot, and after proof was supplied the algorithm was wrong, the algorithm was redefined to be right. That's a bad policy and this should be given back to the GM team and the algorithm fixed.
Diomedes Gambito
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#148 - 2012-08-09 15:40:44 UTC
Bagehi wrote:
If you check out the COSMOS complexes, they are old, old code. They do not de-spawn. Horribly farmed. Biggest problem with completing COSMOS for a normal player is actually being able to get the things you need before the farmers grab them. Players have complained for years about that. The upper level COSMOS are basically unusable at this point because of farmers. So, I'm happy Sreegs did this, even though it is a bandaid fix.



Simple solution to the old code: Add a random direction warp out command as in log-off sequence within 5 minutes as last rat in the complex was killed at 400km radius. Without the person being around keyboard and mouse to cancel the warpout (collecting his drones etc.) the AFK pilot will find his ship out of the plex and thus unable to generate AFK ISK.
Unless the AFK farmers use 3rd party software to cancel the warp ( ban able activity) this will stop the AFK ISK farming.
CCP Sreegs
CCP Retirement Home
#149 - 2012-08-09 15:41:49 UTC
Bubanni wrote:
CCP Sreegs wrote:
cheese monkey wrote:
Sreegs... Before you alienate your entire player/customer base i suggest you withdraw this and have a think a bit longer. The mere fact that u have edited it 3 times is negligence at best! Its ok to admit you were wrong and say sorry. If anything doing so would GAIN you some respect.


It was edited once because people misinterpreted my comments to mean that we were banning activity that we aren't. This seems to still be the case. There is a very specific situation which caused this detection which is essentially warping into a particular cosmos plex at downtime, dropping your sentry drones, applying reps to them then leaving your computer until the next downtime. This is possible because in that particular room the drones respawn.

This is going on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That is bad. If you haven't already heard from us then to date you haven't been doing it. However, there have been cases where people HAVE been doing this and complained that there was no announcement put out about it. Here is the announcement.

This potentially impacts more than the one COSMOS plex which is why the specific COSMOS plex was not mentioned in the OP. Were I to mention it then they would move to a new plex and we'd be dealing with the same rage from them because THIS IS A DIFFERENT PLEX.


So what your saying is you havn't banned anyone for doing this yet? Because people have been doing this for years (very few of cause can do it because of the limited amount of these sites)

I think it's fine that CCP now decides this isn't okay anymore, and change the mechanics so it can't be done anymore, but as long as you don't ban anyone for using these simple game mechanics (drop drones, rep them, go afk)

You could simply make it so sentry drones got abandond or disconnected after 1 hour or so... that would fix the problem completly (and if people found a way around that, then they were cheating)


What I'm saying is that any bans that were applied (and they wouldhave been recent) will be undone but in the future they will not, as I stated in the news item. This only becomes a problem when it is abused.

"Sreegs has juuust edged out Soundwave as my favourite dev." - Meita Way 2012
highonpop
KarmaFleet
Goonswarm Federation
#150 - 2012-08-09 15:42:21 UTC
CCP Sreegs wrote:
highonpop wrote:
CCP could just get rid on infinite respawns


TADA!

Problem solved


That would certainly fix this particular issue yes.



I've never understood why anything would have a perma-respawn involved. Unless it was a glitch..

FC, what do?
Skippermonkey
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#151 - 2012-08-09 15:43:06 UTC
CCP Sreegs wrote:
highonpop wrote:
CCP could just get rid on infinite respawns


TADA!

Problem solved


That would certainly fix this particular issue yes.

Wouldnt it have been a better move to release a statement saying that you are changing the way that certain plexes work to discourage 'unsavory-but-otherwise-legal' activities of a few players?

COME AT ME BRO

I'LL JUST BE DOCKED IN THIS STATION
Zapson
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#152 - 2012-08-09 15:43:10 UTC
I'd like to see more entitlement for MMORPG customers, so that developers are forced to have a minimum standard of stability, otherwise you should be able to sue the hell out of them for banning you, just because they programmed the game terrible.
It sounds harsh, but sometimes I just have to shake my head
EvilweaselSA
GoonCorp
Goonswarm Federation
#153 - 2012-08-09 15:44:10 UTC
CCP Sreegs wrote:

Except that the strawman you're presenting isn't the situation we're discussing or saying we're going to be handling and has no bearing or relevance on this particular discussion. We would not be having this conversation based on that activity.

Exactly!

You're making rules. When you make rules, those apply to new situations you didn't think of. That's what the GM team knows, and that's why they're very careful about making rules because they understand those rules apply in new circumstances unforseen at the time.

The GM team has rules and gives rules to players to allow them to shape their behavior so they don't get punished after the fact for something legitimate. Rules are a good thing: but rules get applied to more than just the situation that made you make the initial rule.

It's not an excuse to say "well, that is different and not what we're talking about". You're making a rule, and that means that it needs to hold up in circumstances you're not looking at right now. That's why it should be handed back to the team in charge of working with players to make rules, so they can make a clear rule for players and deal with the situation appropriately.
War Kitten
Panda McLegion
#154 - 2012-08-09 15:44:13 UTC
Bubanni wrote:

You could simply make it so sentry drones got abandond or disconnected after 1 hour or so... that would fix the problem completly (and if people found a way around that, then they were cheating)



Disconnecting drones after an hour would suck for POS shooting or assigning fighters long-term and would probably cause a real uproar instead of this parade of hotheads.

I'm pretty sure I read that CCP were looking at ways to fix the problem too, and that this was the warning not to do it.

But then, one would have to read the entire news item to catch that part.

I don't judge people by their race, religion, color, size, age, gender, or ethnicity. I judge them by their grammar, spelling, syntax, punctuation, clarity of expression, and logical consistency.
Bagehi
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#155 - 2012-08-09 15:44:30 UTC
EvilweaselSA wrote:
CCP Sreegs wrote:

It was edited once because people misinterpreted my comments to mean that we were banning activity that we aren't. This seems to still be the case. There is a very specific situation which caused this detection which is essentially warping into a particular cosmos plex at downtime, dropping your sentry drones, applying reps to them then leaving your computer until the next downtime. This is possible because in that particular room the drones respawn..

So warn the GMs, have them pay attention to that plex, and don't have the botting algorithm banning people for not-botting? This isn't botting, it's someone figuring out a spot where money rains down on you and standing in that spot. It's not botting, it shouldn't be considered botting, and if you need to get told "sorry we decided you can't stand on that spot" the GM team should be doing it.

This is being delt with by Team Security because of a false positive: this should be used as a case study of types of false positives and the situation handled normally. Hell, it might be a good idea to tweak the algorithm to say "hey this guy appears to be making purely passive income but without botting" and use that to alert the GM team - but it shouldn't be banning a notbot as a bot.


The EULA does not say "you cannot bot" it says this:

Quote:
You may not use your own or any third-party software, macros or other stored rapid keystrokes or other patterns of play that facilitate acquisition of items, currency, objects, character attributes, rank or status at an accelerated rate when compared with ordinary Game play. You may not rewrite or modify the user interface or otherwise manipulate data in any way to acquire items, currency, objects, character attributes or beneficial actions not actually acquired or achieved in the Game.


This falls under the bolded phrase.
Bubanni
Corus Aerospace
#156 - 2012-08-09 15:45:14 UTC
CCP Sreegs wrote:
Bubanni wrote:
CCP Sreegs wrote:
cheese monkey wrote:
Sreegs... Before you alienate your entire player/customer base i suggest you withdraw this and have a think a bit longer. The mere fact that u have edited it 3 times is negligence at best! Its ok to admit you were wrong and say sorry. If anything doing so would GAIN you some respect.


It was edited once because people misinterpreted my comments to mean that we were banning activity that we aren't. This seems to still be the case. There is a very specific situation which caused this detection which is essentially warping into a particular cosmos plex at downtime, dropping your sentry drones, applying reps to them then leaving your computer until the next downtime. This is possible because in that particular room the drones respawn.

This is going on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That is bad. If you haven't already heard from us then to date you haven't been doing it. However, there have been cases where people HAVE been doing this and complained that there was no announcement put out about it. Here is the announcement.

This potentially impacts more than the one COSMOS plex which is why the specific COSMOS plex was not mentioned in the OP. Were I to mention it then they would move to a new plex and we'd be dealing with the same rage from them because THIS IS A DIFFERENT PLEX.


So what your saying is you havn't banned anyone for doing this yet? Because people have been doing this for years (very few of cause can do it because of the limited amount of these sites)

I think it's fine that CCP now decides this isn't okay anymore, and change the mechanics so it can't be done anymore, but as long as you don't ban anyone for using these simple game mechanics (drop drones, rep them, go afk)

You could simply make it so sentry drones got abandond or disconnected after 1 hour or so... that would fix the problem completly (and if people found a way around that, then they were cheating)


What I'm saying is that any bans that were applied (and they wouldhave been recent) will be undone but in the future they will not, as I stated in the news item. This only becomes a problem when it is abused.


That sounds fair enough :) as long all the "few" people doing it gets a heads up (not everyone reads the forums or login informations)

Supercap nerf - change ewar immunity https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=194759 Module activation delay! https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1180934
CCP Sreegs
CCP Retirement Home
#157 - 2012-08-09 15:49:50 UTC
EvilweaselSA wrote:
CCP Sreegs wrote:

We aren't looking for that action. We're looking for bots. In this case the behavior is similar and it is being abused 24 hours a day. Therefore, we are treating it the same.

It's not a bot. It's 100% agreed its a NotBot. There's no reason for it to be treated as "the same" except that the algorithm to detect bots detected a NotBot as a bot. There was no reasoned decision to start treating cases like this where a NotBot is making money in a way that CCP has decided shouldn't be, and the bot detection algorithm changed to do so. Instead, the bot detection system decided a NotBot was a bot, and after proof was supplied the algorithm was wrong, the algorithm was redefined to be right. That's a bad policy and this should be given back to the GM team and the algorithm fixed.



The activity itself falls within the same philosophical context we place botting within. I get it you don't like it. You can't change that however. With botting we concern ourselves with more than the technical limitations but rather what types of behavior and automation we find unacceptable.

You can say that you prefer that we allow people to AFK farm complexes with sentry drones 24 hours a day and that's a position we'd disagree with, but it's a position.

It's really hard to respond with facts to completely made up scenarios so if we're to have a dialogue of this sort at any point in the future hopefully we can stick to what actually happened instead of how you've decided in your head the process went or how the reporting structure works.

"Sreegs has juuust edged out Soundwave as my favourite dev." - Meita Way 2012
Brokers Clone
#158 - 2012-08-09 15:50:47 UTC
CCP Sreegs wrote:

Brokers Clone wrote:
...Stuff...
Wait
Watch rats spawn
See drones kill rats...
get bounty
etc...etc...etc...


Except that he stated mining then used ratting as an example, which would certainly still be detected and fall into the same category.


WOW.

Dude, I am beginning to think that this is an issue that is going to need CSM input.. I mean.... there are LOTS of cases where Rats spawn.... and lots of people sit and wait (at PC or away)

There are mining ships that mine all day long, unattended (with alts or team members lugging away can contents from time to time)

If ANY of this, NON-BOTTING, Activity is going to change, Fine
BUT YOU NEED TO SAY SO IN 70 point Font, Everywhere
And I think you might want to ring the CSM
Octoven
Stellar Production
#159 - 2012-08-09 15:50:53 UTC
CCP Sreegs wrote:


And how many times have you been banned for this?


Obviously he hasnt been banned any since this new policy hasnt been implemented before today so why should he be banned? Yes, I see it the same way. I mean your account can sit there for 24 hours ratting belts and do nothing else. Just tank up and set the drones out on aggressive. Now your making bounty you can go out and have a dinner and a movie, do some shopping. I mean your making money on a mechanic that is never designed for passive income, should this be a bannable offense as well?
Lord Helghast
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#160 - 2012-08-09 15:52:47 UTC
If this is the case does that finally mean AFK Cloaking is also going to be an offense since it is affecting the game while completely away from the computer?