Missions & Complexes

yes, stop afk cloaking!

So instead of fixing the problem, which is infinitely spawning rats in highsec complexes, you wrote an algorithm to ban people who take advantage (in the same way that OTEC takes advantage, for example) of your lousy game design for their own profit.

This is such a great way to fix the problem.

Instead of fixing the complexes, you have now opened the door to any kind AFK moneymaking being labeled illegal and AFK profits being wrong (after you redesigned mining ships to function much better AFK).

Your brilliance shines like the light of a thousand suns.

Why was the first priority to ban the player instead of fixing the game?

This ^

This is a worrying post.

As stated by others, you've just placed a monetary value on the acceptable limit of AFK performance.

You've just quite directly said that 23/7 AFK drone farming is perfectly acceptable in one form (belt ratting) because the income is low, but bannable in another form (these funky COSMOS things) because the income is high.


I really don't mean to sound as if I'm jumping on the "flame a dev" wagon here, but I'd rather be clear on details and you seem to clarify in one step then muddy the waters with another.

Of course this is about botting. It was detected by the "never a false positive" botting system, botting sanctions (presumably including the 'no character transfers' sanction) were applied, and the activity was described as being effectively the same as botting when - according to the rule players have for what botting is, "using a bot" - it isn't, all make this an issue where we're talking about botting. And we're talking about botting because Team Security is handling it instead of the GM team. And it's not that there was internal deliberation over who ought to handle this. The sequence of events was that Team Security had a false positive and flagged a NotBot as a bot. Botting sanctions were applied, and the player at issue petitioned to prove he was not a bot and did so successfully. In response, Team Security declared that it didn't matter he was a Notbot instead of a bot, and declared that the botting algorithms flagging him as a bot were not a false positive. That response wasn't from a GM. That was from a member of team security.

Only after outrage over this response, presumably, was this internal deliberative process invoked where Team Security had already taken over, to confirm what had already happened. That was a mistake. Team Security deals with botting issues, and we know this is a botting issue and not a standard "spirit of the EULA" issue because it's only botting issues that bypass the GMs.

You also, again, give us a really bad rule when you say you can't get a "tangible benefit" from afk activity: afk cloaking gives me an extremely tangible benefit. I deny my opponent income, give myself the chance for kills, get hilarious rage in local. Used en masse, I can shut down an enemy alliance's income stream (as in a post-tech environment ratting and renting fees are your income) allowing me and my friends to take over a region. In fact, this is commonly used for this exact purpose. None of these are raw isk, but it's still an extremely tangible benefit you can quantify relatively easily.

There's a reason the GM team deals with these rules: they're used to thinking them through and giving players good, clear, and fair rules that are intended to apply anywhere they would reasonably be thought to apply rather than simply one-off cases where the rule given doesn't apply anywhere else.

Apparently you didn't read the entire dev blog. I shall repost the parts that are relevant, but I doubt your ability to read words of more than a single syllable. You seem particularly stupid:

"While this activity does not necessitate the use of a 3rd party program in order to carry it out you ARE generating income in an automated fashion while sleeping which is not being present playing the game."

AFK mining is also "Generating an income in an automated fashion".

How exactly do you manage to live without a brain is a mystery for the ages.

So Sreegs has stated that there exists an automated system that bans players if they are AFK and making a lot of money. Should I be worried?

Look at you with all your wits about you. It's cute and mildly impressive. But it still doesn't discount the fact that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Keep throwing out those strawmen though. You totally don't like a tool because of it.

No.

Given your name, I should think you'd see it coming first.