Player Features and Ideas Discussion

1) CCP monitors your computer and other heuristics to determine if you may be running botting software

2) Once you have been flagged your case will need to be reviewed by a human. At this point it will be easy for a human to tell if a bot is being used

3) If they have determined that you are indeed using botting software, They need to hit these people hard.
- Freeze all of their accounts ( it will be easy to tell which accounts are logged in from the same computer / the same network )

How about something a la incursions?

Nobody mines in systems with active incursions, as far as I can tell.
Stay in a belt, and some pretty strong BS ships may show up.

From time to time, have a message from concord show up, saying it has intel that a pirate fleet is mobilizing.

15 minutes later, a rather powerful rat wave spawns in the belts

Perhaps not local- but some dedicated "concord bulletin" channel for the constellation, specifying which system in the constellation will be affected.

*provided that the bots can't make sense of the intel messages* this should result in a lot of bots and AFKers getting killed by NPCs.

I would structure it in such a way that the initial spawn s mostly low DPS scramming frigs, that you should be able to tank - if you get caught AFK, you may still be able to call in some friends (hopefully you have some) to come put down the spawn

Concord "papers please" I wouldn't like so much, its not very interesting, you get concordukkened, or you push some buttons. I like the idea of NPC rat spawns that you can actually fight against much better.

If you insist on concord, perhaps you don't get concordukkened, but rather concord gives you a suspect flag, and a message appears in everyones local "illegal miner in belt X, has had his/her concord protection revoked"

Then... nerf local in lowsec, so you don't have bots that mine in low sec and just dock up when a non-blue enters the system.

That does seem like quite the invasion of privacy. Alex, could you please cite the source of that information so we could look further into it? +1 to Joe for bringing that up.

Sabre: +2 (Reading FIRST, then posting +Posting something helpful!)

Nikk: +2 (Reading FIRST, then posting +Posting something helpful!)

Roannon: +2 (Reading FIRST, then posting +Posting something helpful!)

Alex: Pending

Joe: +1 (for bringing up a very interesting fact...we might all be playing EVE for free if CCP is doing something illegal in that matter)


Kusum Fawn: -7 (This person doesn't like to read BEFORE posting angriness at people)

Hmmm... lot to respond to again.

7. so your issue is characters buying and reselling plex in game bought with mined ore/minerals obtained through botting? that still doesnt have any effect on ccp revenue streams (well actually it does as the bots accounts themselves have to use plex to stay active so its a +1 paying account per active bot)
Oh, you meant they are selling plex for real cash, which is a violation of eula and doesnt have any ingame function to support it. again something like that happens through oog sites and is not a function of the botter itself. nor does it have much influence on the game play.

Of course there are also the not bots that clear hisec belts, and many systems that are not cleared in hisec simply because there arent enough miners. try looking outside the busiest of caldari systems and you will see the rest of the eve world, which is not full of bots. Yulai, as an example is a 1.0 system, home of concord and one of, if not the most secure system in EVE. is not cleared out every day. this is not because there is a bot patrol by CCP but because it is not a caldari system. try exploring a bit.

8. Pointing out that a crap company like Jagex has made a better effort at weeding out bots still doesnt address the issues of difference in game style or complexity. nor does it even offer proof that it is effective in its efforts. CCP is trying to stop bots, perhaps not the way that you want them to but they are trying. It has seemed in the past that the were taking a very slow approach to stopping it and to some it still seems lackluster, but since every account is paid for one way or another, stopping the back end of rmt is more important for the company. once a character has virtual assets, its still virtual and can be taken away without any issues. If you arent saying that Jagex antibot measures work then what good is it using them as an example? CCP does do a lot to fight bots, they have a team in fact there to fight bots.....

9. The team is there to make up ways to stop bots. i sort of figured you would read that right.

10. still the team programs and thinks of ways to stop rmt and botting behaviors. you want to free them up to ... think of more ways to fight the new bots that will appear when the old bots dont work anymore?

11. was your complaint that mining does not bring in enough isk? or that the pay was too high? thats what that was there for. I am unsure if you think that ore is too cheap or too expensive.
Increasing the isk value of the ore does not help the introduction of minerals to the market. i think you are missing that raising the price of minerals on the market (to pay miners better) also raises the costs of modules and ships that are used by everyone else. More miners lowers the costs of minerals. lowering the costs of ships but also the pay of miners. you know this right?

12. think army, hurry up and wait. move here. jump in, shoot, do stuff wait, run away.
this can take many many hours. actual combat may be over in 15 minutes, or may be stretched out over many systems as you fight a retreat or chase an enemy. worst thing i can think of is a focus stealing popup right as you get that cap cyno, or the order to bridge (and the lag that that brings)

13. You seem to think that the added layer of antibot spam that you throw at people will make more people want to mine? why is this? since the drone regions change are there more miners? fewer? about the same? trit has gone from 2 isk p/u to 11, has that introduced a new wave of mining going on? (or rather was it the changes to mining barges?) even with all these new mining buffs, are there significantly more miners? or does it seem the same as last year?

I would argue its the same. just fewer goon alts ganking people in ice belts.

at what price point would you imagine trit to be worth mining? and how does antibot spam make more people want to mine when missions, non afk missions, make more isk then comparable time mining with no spam involved?

Sabre, Nikk. The two of you showed exemplary problem solving skills and brought an idea to the table that could evolve the way we gather resources / mine in EVE Online. I would like to see your Ideas implemented. If there is any way I can help this process along (Voting, etc) let me know if you do post a thread/vote and I'll be there. Thanks again guys for your brilliant input.


Sabre: +2 (Reading FIRST, then posting +Posting something helpful!)

Nikk: +2 (Reading FIRST, then posting +Posting something helpful!)

Roannon: +2 (Reading FIRST, then posting +Posting something helpful!)

Verity: +2 (Reading FIRST, then posting +Posting something helpful!)

Joe: +1 (for bringing up a very interesting fact...we might all be playing EVE for free if CCP is doing something illegal in that matter)

Alex: Pending

It is absolutely trivial for a bot program to get a screenshot and look for a particular window with a particular button on it, of the type that you are describing. Randomly placing it on the screen would slow down HUMAN players more so than it slows down bots (takes your eyeballs a lot longer to search a screen than it takes a program)


As for something constructive to add to the thread:

There used to be a hook in the MS Windows API that a program could use to determine whether or not a mouse click actually originated from a mouse peripheral, or whether it originated from within the operating system. In my experience with other games, this is one of the simplest yet most effective ways of catching bots, because it is minimally invasive, and no matter how fancy you get with making your mouse trajectories look human and your timings randomized, etc., it will still catch all but the most professional cheaters (since the only way to fool it would be to basically make a customized fake piece of hardware)

It's been awhile though, and I don't know if this still exists, or whether macs and such have an equivalent method to call.

Sounds about right.

I would suggest that the mining ships get huge boosts to defense so long as the associated player ships remained on grid with them.
(No ganking the mining devices if you can target the owning player)
This gives incentives for PvP brawls, with the survival of the mining ship as the prize.

This loses value if the mining ship is easily attacked despite player presence willing to defend it.

Call it whatever, but the mining ship should be unbeatable so long as the player is present.
(Player must be available to be shot at, no cloaks or other means that conceals them)

Trade off, the mining ship would be running a timed program the player cannot modify conveniently. It won't run off and get safe until x minutes or it's ore hold is full.
This means the player stands his ground defending it, or it gets plowed by opposing forces into the side of the nearest roid.

Look Ma, that veldspar got a crashed ship on it!

I think the best way to combat AFK mining bots at this point is probably just to hire a cognitive/perceptual psychology professional and a dedicated programmer to work together to find behavioral patterns that are not human-like. And then don't tell any of the players what the patterns are that you're looking for.

This would probably stop almost everybody, although it would be expensive.

I'm sorry I'm just now reading through your posts and yes, I agree with the Windows API thing. I would like to ask, would this info be voluntary by the player?

Also I think that with multiple policies, styles of mining, and anti-botting programs, CCP could save mining/indy as a viable career. There shouldn't be a 100+ mil gap between mission running and minning and I think is CCP simply changed it up a bit miners and other players would be happy with the results. I don't think they will solve all of the problems, especially by implementing only one or two changes.

I also think that your idea would be a crafty change in scenery when it comes to mining.

Thanks for all the helpful input by the way.

Fly safe =)

An API hook is involuntary. It's something the program automatically checks. The reason Warden and other anti bot programs work so "well" for games like Warcraft, is that they are hugely invasive, scanning every bit of memory, taking screenshots for review...and even then, people bot successfully in WoW.

Bots are almost never used in mining anyway. Running lvl4's via bot is much more ISK efficient. Most of the time, what you think you see as a "bot", is a multi-boxer, using multiple clients and command mirroring software, which CCP says is legal.