EVE General Discussion

You should also take the effort vs reward into consideration.

In highsec you can just push a button and then go AFK for 1h. After that hour you come back and have a full cargo hold of free AFK ore for no effort. There is almost the full Lowsec ore available now with anomalies, you don't even have to scan them down anymore.

Compare that to lowsec, nullsec or wormsec where you have to be on your keyboard and actually play the game to not lose your mining ship. No matter how better the ore is there, it does not beat the zero effort of highsec mining. It is absolutely out of proportion.

The only fix for this so far is a player initiative called THE NEW ORDER launched by James 315 that tries to balance the game with ingame assets, because CCP is obviously changing the game in the complete opposite direction. And this only works because it is even too much effort for most of AFK miners to take the few steps it would take to completely negate the threat of getting bumped or blown up. It is even written in the CODE what you have to do...

I recommend you read the Manifesto and Manifest II of James 315 which discusses the problem we face here in great detail:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=40762
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=101626

You will then see that the problem is not the bumping of miners. The problem is mining in highsec and it's destructive influence on the game. You will also realize that James 315 and his agents not only try to save highsec, but also nullsec and the whole game itself.

For once this was not RP, I really think this is a serious problem.

You realize this is a multiplayer game, right? A group of ships fit for specific roles, such as a mining ship or twenty and a PvP ship or twenty, is far more powerful AND profitable than a ship fit for mining, ratting and PvP. Don't be angry at him for utilizing game mechanics that so many others ignore.

But if done right, a swiss army fit is infinately more fun

I guess it depends on what you find fun, aff?

Well then maybe I may not be the only one to talk to about whats going on so I invite anyone to, without naming names" explain their reasons to WANTING to bot.

Better question: other than shooting miners what can CCP do to better remedy the botting problem? Other than make miners out of play.

FTFY

I don't talk about bots, I talk about the miners. They just try to be like bots because they try to automate every step as much as possible to maximize the time they can be AFK doing something other than playing EVE.

I know I only repeat what James 315 wrote two years ago.

And so far CCP seams to even support that AFK play stile. There is no other explanation for the barge buff that increased the ore hold of certain ships so much that you really can AFK for an hour. Cooperation in mining fleets is now completely obsolete. For the last few years CCP made the problem even worse by isolating the miners even more from the sandbox.

The only fix I see for this is to remove the current mining mechanic and replace it with something that can't easily be automated, profits greatly from cooperation and needs constant attention of the pilot mining the ore. I have no suggestions on how this should be done, I am not a game designer.

Meanwhile CCP's own data shows them that it is those isolated players that never find their way into the sandbox that drop out of the game the most (see resent CSM minutes). Now why would anyone be surprised that a "player" who essentially plays the most boring kind of "profession" in all of games, without a goal and in total isolation, that most of this people leave the game after a few months? I really don't know.

The bumping and ganking of this miners actually draws them out of their isolation into the sandbox. We force them to interact with us and I strongly believe that this has a healthy effect on their perception of the game.

They may insult us, petition us and wish us death in RL because we trow them into the cold water. But as soon as I log and my neutral alt remains in the system, I hear how excited they are about chasing me from belt to belt in an effort to stand up to our oppression. How glad they are that finally something happened, even if they lost a ship or got bumped out of the belt. Some will find their way out of their monotony this way. They occasionally write me and say thank you for the wake up call and that they will move on from their isolation to experience the sandbox.

"Bot Aspirant Behaviour" doesn't mean "You might be a bot so Ill have to bump/gank you to find out", it means that you are actually playing like a bot.

Botting isnt the problem.

Human beings acting like bots is a symptom of the problem.

The problem is idleness.

And you know what they say about idleness.

Confirmed, hunting people in Null in a multi-fit Widow is totally avoiding social interactions.

As is WH diving in a scan-and-retrieve Legion.

Its more of another symptom


Bumpery and gankery are fairly anti-social to their victims and the industrial player base as well dont forget.

While these play modes are unlikely to stop, techniques are already being used by those who are actively at the whell which have reduced the former to almost nil and the latter substantially.

The problem is that you have a game where interaction with others is often forced on you. That is one of the continual facts of EvE.

You are playing when you are actively working to stop it affecting you.

Devising a way to AFK mine without fear would technically also be part of that paradigm, but its much more practical to stay awake at the wheel