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How to utterly demolish bot mining easily
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Qweasdy
Dreddit
Test Alliance Please Ignore
#101 - 2014-03-04 12:43:42 UTC
Reaver Glitterstim wrote:
Anhenka wrote:
the primary payout for Incursions is in the form of Concord LP, not bounties.

Couldn't be further from the truth. The meager amounts of CONCORD LP you get from running incursions is watered down by the insane LP costs of items in CONCORD's LP store. People run incursions for the ISK, and there's a lot of it. You get about 10 mil per Vanguard site and those can be run in under 5 minutes by an experienced group with blingy ships. My first incursion run, I brought a Navy Megathron and ran with a mediocre group that was far from the best. In a little over 3 hours we made 300 mil each. Incursion Assaults pay significantly more and can also be run in highsec. I don't know the actual amounts but from what I hear, the people who can run assaults will never bother with vanguards if they don't have to. Apparently the difference is pretty significant.

I have not bought anything from the CONCORD LP store yet. I'm not just holding out, I simply haven't scored enough CONCORD LP over all of my incursion runs (maybe 60+ sites) to actually buy anything of value. My CONCORD LP is worth nothing compared to the ISK payouts.

edit: I have 116,206 CONCORD loyalty points


I'd hardly call it meager, if you spend it right you can increase your income from incursions by 50%

This is a terrible thread. As such, it's locked. - CCP Falcon
Matvey Aakiwa
Perkone
Caldari State
#102 - 2014-03-04 17:42:46 UTC
Reaver Glitterstim wrote:
People will still want ships and the industry will still be just as active. All that will change in industry is the price of materials, which will directly affect the price of output. The margin remains the same because it costs the same amount of work and has the same amount of access.


I don't think you understand that changing the price of base materials also changes the price of everything their made of.
Arthur Aihaken
CODE.d
#103 - 2014-03-04 18:03:48 UTC
Have we utterly demolished bot mining yet…?

I am currently away, traveling through time and will be returning last week.
Dave Stark
#104 - 2014-03-04 18:37:24 UTC  |  Edited by: Dave Stark
Kaarous Aldurald wrote:
Dave Stark wrote:
Pew Terror wrote:
Mining Minigame on par with hacking.
Mining fixed.


i look forward to the mini game you have to complete every time your guns cycle, that will be a fun one.


Keep on defending botting, bro.


not defending botting, also if you think a terrible mini game would stop botting you're hilariously deluded.

in fact, it encourages botting because a ****** minigame would be that much less desirable than the current situation that people would just bot it.

we've been through this, pretending to combat botting by making mining less interesting for actual players isn't going to fix anything.
i mean, you must really think a mini game is a terrible idea if you're disagreeing with it for guns.
Rowells
Blackwater USA Inc.
Pandemic Horde
#105 - 2014-03-04 19:28:23 UTC
Arthur Aihaken wrote:
Have we utterly demolished bot mining yet…?

No bur we've made mining even more of a detriment on my sanity though
Rivr Luzade
Coreli Corporation
Pandemic Legion
#106 - 2014-03-04 19:57:16 UTC
Kaarous Aldurald wrote:
Dave Stark wrote:
Pew Terror wrote:
Mining Minigame on par with hacking.
Mining fixed.


i look forward to the mini game you have to complete every time your guns cycle, that will be a fun one.


Keep on defending botting, bro.


No one is defending botting, but the forum and especially select PVPers think they are better gamers, while miners are trash. Change that mindset and then try to make meaningful additions to the discussion, because everything so far is only to make mining harder, even less inviting and even more prone for botting. Roll

UI Improvement Collective

My ridicule, heavy criticism and general pale outlook about your or CCP's ideas is nothing but an encouragement to prove me wrong. Give it a try.
The Nightfish
Doomheim
#107 - 2014-03-04 20:12:05 UTC
The solution to mining is interactivity.

Basicly, Mining would work as follows:

1. Miner activates Miner Module cycle, a minigame pops up (call it "guiding the drill").

2. Player plays the minigame. The better they play, the better/more their yield of Ore and chance of bonus (see below).

3. A Bot plays, is unable to play the interaction-required minigame, and gets only a very small yield.

4. New content can be offered via the "bonus" for high-skill and adjusted for rarity, for example:

-Better Yield (More Ore)
-Bonus Higher-Grade Ore
-Special Ore only obtainable through Mining (use tbd)
-Gas Pockets in the Ore (automaticly collected), i.e. Bonus Gas
-Extremely Rare "Ancient Module" Drops, Officer Equivalent Drops found only buried in Asteroids

5. The minigame must absolutely not be repetative or easily predictable, it must be random.

These simple revisions, a minigame (along similar lines to the Hacking/Relic Minigame, but with appropriate mechanics), a very low base yield without interactivity, standard yield for decent performance, and great yiled (with chance of bonuses) for great performance, would serve to help lower the number of Bots, and increase the number of players engaged in this profession.

One last change:

6. Mining Lasers can be used as weapons. They'd be weaker than standard weapons, of course, but would provide miners additional self-defense, and frankly there is nothing wrong with that.

Done and done.
Notorious Fellon
#108 - 2014-03-04 20:26:21 UTC
Making mining more interactive would eliminate bots.

Doing what the OP suggested would only increase it and damage the economy and ruin play for a lot of people.

tldr: no.

Crime, it is not a "career", it is a lifestyle.
Sentamon
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#109 - 2014-03-04 20:45:04 UTC
Arthur Aihaken wrote:
Have we utterly demolished bot mining yet…?


Yes the OP has solved the all bot problems MMO companies have faced since the start with this clever idea.

~ Professional Forum Alt  ~
Sentamon
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#110 - 2014-03-04 20:47:56 UTC
The Nightfish wrote:
The solution to mining is interactivity.


How come people don't suggest all the amazing interactivity for PvP, you know there you actually want to pay attention 100% of the time?

~ Professional Forum Alt  ~
The Nightfish
Doomheim
#111 - 2014-03-04 21:00:56 UTC
Sentamon wrote:
The Nightfish wrote:
The solution to mining is interactivity.


How come people don't suggest all the amazing interactivity for PvP, you know there you actually want to pay attention 100% of the time?


PvP is already interactive, especially at the small gang/small fleet level where most fights take place.

PvP also involved two players (at the minimum), so by it's very definition it's interactive.

PvE activity, especially "turn on module, collect loot" type activity, is completely non-interactive. One player, one action, loot.

A better argument would be "why not have interactivity in Belt/Mission/Plex PvE", and I would agree. PvE in EVE is far too static and predictable, hence very easily botable.

What I don't understand is why anyone would argue for the Bots, or for a static boring botable PvE activity. Any active miner would prefer my suggestion, as they would reap far higher rewards than the bots, and thus be more profitable, with a higher chance of bonus loot, and a chance, albeit rare, for exceptionally valuble loot (same as combat PvE players).
Sentamon
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#112 - 2014-03-04 21:06:30 UTC  |  Edited by: Sentamon
.

~ Professional Forum Alt  ~
Sentamon
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#113 - 2014-03-04 21:08:22 UTC
The Nightfish wrote:

PvP is already interactive, especially at the small gang/small fleet level where most fights take place.


Lol Err no it's not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmNQEiJUthc

This is interactive PvP, not lock your target from overview and press F1.

The Nightfish wrote:

What I don't understand is why anyone would argue for the Bots.


Because they're not bots and any bot would eat up the simple minigame ideas that would do nothing but encourage botting.

~ Professional Forum Alt  ~
The Nightfish
Doomheim
#114 - 2014-03-04 21:27:46 UTC
Sentamon wrote:
The Nightfish wrote:

PvP is already interactive, especially at the small gang/small fleet level where most fights take place.


Lol Err no it's not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmNQEiJUthc

This is interactive PvP, not lock your target from overview and press F1.

The Nightfish wrote:

What I don't understand is why anyone would argue for the Bots.


Because they're not bots and any bot would eat up the simple minigame ideas that would do nothing but encourage botting.


Respectfully, I disagree with anyone who supports the Bot-laden status quo, or who thinks small-scale PvP is "noninteractive", or who thinks Bots can handle any mechanic CCP can create.

The game would be better all around with my suggestions above. Of that I have no doubt, and I find it hard to believe a miner would prefer no-interaction and current loot levels, to an interactive minigame that could provide them increased profit, ore and drops AND put them in a better situation than the Bots.

The only player type I'd expect to be against such a system are the AFK Miners and the Bot Operators.

But I'm open minded, and happy to engage with you if you have a superior idea to buff player mining enjoyabillity and nerf the abillity to bot the activity.

Tyberius Franklin
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#115 - 2014-03-04 21:38:21 UTC  |  Edited by: Tyberius Franklin
The Nightfish wrote:

Respectfully, I disagree with anyone who supports the Bot-laden status quo, or who thinks small-scale PvP is "noninteractive", or who thinks Bots can handle any mechanic CCP can create.

The game would be better all around with my suggestions above. Of that I have no doubt, and I find it hard to believe a miner would prefer no-interaction and current loot levels, to an interactive minigame that could provide them increased profit, ore and drops AND put them in a better situation than the Bots.

The only player type I'd expect to be against such a system are the AFK Miners and the Bot Operators.

But I'm open minded, and happy to engage with you if you have a superior idea to buff player mining enjoyabillity and nerf the abillity to bot the activity.
How do you ensure a bot cannot complete your proposed activity? Explain that, in detail, and you might get some buy in. Until you can do that, the only type of mining you might kill off is AFK mining, which means that you effectively prefer EULA violators to those that play according to the rules.

Also, it should be noted that greater yield doesn't necessarily mean greater profits. Market values per unit tend to drop when supply increases without a new source of demand.
Dersen Lowery
The Scope
#116 - 2014-03-04 21:42:54 UTC
Catherine Laartii wrote:
1. Part of the reason why bot miners are a big issue is because of market inflation; Mining is bigger business now than it was simply for the fact that once they make the initial investment, it's basically free money for the amount of time plugged in. Ship and mineral prices skyrocketing after getting rid of drone minerals was a big part of it (and a rather myopic one on CCP's part, I'd like to think), so adding alternative methods of getting minerals would be an appropriate way to go about fixing botting.


Actually, the prevalence of botting has more to do with the need to do tedious gameplay to get a consistent reward. Consistent is more important than big, here. Every mining bot I've been aware of was run by a nullsec player (generally, an older one, who spent their first few years learning the game while CCP was indifferent to botting) who wanted to fund their PVP.

But of course, not all bots are mining bots. For instance, "gun mining" in the drone regions was nerfed in no small part because of the sheer number of bot-piloted Tengus running the anoms to mine the drones for their mineral drops. Most of EVE's PVE is fairly tedious once you figure out how to optimize for it--especially if you're optimizing for a consistent outcome, rather than for ISK/hour or yield/hour.

Heck, there was one veteran nullsec player I knew, who no longer plays, who used a legit bot for missioning: He'd get a big, juicy mission, warp his dual RR sentry Domis in and set them up, then take his kids to the mall.

Catherine Laartii wrote:
2. Divvy up belt types and difficulty a bit. An interesting way of fixing botting would be to have the asteroids actually do damage when you bump into them, and make it so they're spaced out a LOT more like in real space, and moving around. That plus a barge buff to speed would be an excellent route to go as it would promote such necessities as manual piloting and possible active tanking to make it a more involved process, and fun for those miners who actually do it. It would also spice up PVP a bit since you could have the mechanic of being chased by a pirate, doing a quick calculation of asteroid trajectory in your head, then maneuvering in such a way the unwary pilot doesn't make the maneuver and slams into an asteroid, exploding violently. The lore justification for this mechanic would be the every ship has anti-collision fields installed to prevent catastrophic impacts, and it would be its own EXTREMELY fun industry mini-game instead of just...sitting there. Firing your laser into a rock.


I love the idea, but CCP would have to fix their collision detection. Right now you can "collide" with an asteroid when you appear to be dozens or even hundreds of meters away. Unfortunately, fixing collision detection to conform closely to the model means hugely increasing the load on the physics engine when they're trying to reduce the amount of work that it has to do, so this is probably not going to happen for a long time.

Catherine Laartii wrote:
3. Change ALL belts to scannable locations. Currently you have specific locations with specific quantities that pop up specifically on your overview. This is a hilarious misrepresentation of real life astronomy, in which the asteroid belts in solar systems are either in the orbital path of planetary bodies or in deep space between the orbits. The more difficult you make the process to automate, the fewer bots you have and the more enjoyable the mechanic is as a minigame.


Now that scanning is much more newbie-friendly, I could get behind this. I'd have some sites be much more easily scanned than others, because newbies in Ventures need rocks, too.

Catherine Laartii wrote:
4. Failing at these changes, integrating in-game watch mechanics to penalize botters would be an appropriate route to take, much as how Retribution's new aggression mechanic made evading concord a bannable offense. The tech and programming should be fairly simple, and even failing at that, making pirate rat spawns more frequent and deadly would be another appropriate route to take.


One thing to keep an eye on is what WildStar is going to do: basically, they're making it so that you never know exactly what kind of gameplay you're about to get into. Resource harvesting? Hi, here's a huge monster. Exploring? Here's a cave full of resources to gather. And so on. The developer-stated goal is to make it much more difficult to bot. The game is not out, so this is still a stated goal rather than a successful effort, but I imagine that Team Security will have one eye on the game to see how well they do with that.

Proud founder and member of the Belligerent Desirables.

I voted in CSM X!
The Nightfish
Doomheim
#117 - 2014-03-04 22:11:44 UTC
Tyberius Franklin wrote:
The Nightfish wrote:

Respectfully, I disagree with anyone who supports the Bot-laden status quo, or who thinks small-scale PvP is "noninteractive", or who thinks Bots can handle any mechanic CCP can create.

The game would be better all around with my suggestions above. Of that I have no doubt, and I find it hard to believe a miner would prefer no-interaction and current loot levels, to an interactive minigame that could provide them increased profit, ore and drops AND put them in a better situation than the Bots.

The only player type I'd expect to be against such a system are the AFK Miners and the Bot Operators.

But I'm open minded, and happy to engage with you if you have a superior idea to buff player mining enjoyabillity and nerf the abillity to bot the activity.
How do you ensure a bot cannot complete your proposed activity? Explain that, in detail, and you might get some buy in. Until you can do that, the only type of mining you might kill off is AFK mining, which means that you effectively prefer EULA violators to those that play according to the rules.

Also, it should be noted that greater yield doesn't necessarily mean greater profits. Market values per unit tend to drop when supply increases without a new source of demand.


If your only retort is "but Bots can do it!" and you have no solutions of your own, you'res imply not being a productive part fo the conversation.

In point of fact, I cannot "prove" that you, sir, are not in fact a Forum-Bot. Using text recognition software and a library of resposonse fragments to create replies that appear human, but are not.

Quackbot says hi.

With that said, the aim in game design when combating Bots is to make gameplay enjoyable (with depth and proper reward) to encourage humans to play it actively, an active participation requisite gameplay mechanic, to eliminate simple bots and their ilk, and to, as much as possible, design gameplay mechanics that are non-preductable/random/ and hence less scriptable. There are a variety of ways to do this, from the CAPTCHA idea, to non-predictable key stroke requirements that flash on screen to achieve certain outcomes, to adding complexity to the activity itself (i.e. building bot-defeating mechanics in at every level, i.e. require scanning for asteroids with prompts a Bot has difficulty with so humans can find the best roids, then design active, bot defeating mechanics into the activity of mining, etc, etc, etc.)

Yes, some players might be put off by active mining. And some who would never think of it (but play Minecraft for ages) might just like a new, more complex, more profitable mining game in their EVE.

Again, since I cannot prove you are not a script-bot, I equally cannot prove these ideas would deter all bots, in fact Id say no game mechanic can defeat all bots.

But if we can design game mechanics that defeat a majority, thats still a win.

And again, my bot friend, it's highly suspicious that anyone would argue FOR that staus quo, knowing what that status quo is.
Corraidhin Farsaidh
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#118 - 2014-03-04 22:20:00 UTC
I argue against changes that would numb the mind of a miner who would have to play the same minigame dozens and dozens of times, and i'm definitely not a bot.

Although I could be a bot pretending to not be a bot.

But then if I'm that smart a bot, what chance does you mini-game have?

hang on...my brain just went afk...
Tyberius Franklin
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#119 - 2014-03-04 22:33:44 UTC  |  Edited by: Tyberius Franklin
The Nightfish wrote:
Tyberius Franklin wrote:
The Nightfish wrote:

Respectfully, I disagree with anyone who supports the Bot-laden status quo, or who thinks small-scale PvP is "noninteractive", or who thinks Bots can handle any mechanic CCP can create.

The game would be better all around with my suggestions above. Of that I have no doubt, and I find it hard to believe a miner would prefer no-interaction and current loot levels, to an interactive minigame that could provide them increased profit, ore and drops AND put them in a better situation than the Bots.

The only player type I'd expect to be against such a system are the AFK Miners and the Bot Operators.

But I'm open minded, and happy to engage with you if you have a superior idea to buff player mining enjoyabillity and nerf the abillity to bot the activity.
How do you ensure a bot cannot complete your proposed activity? Explain that, in detail, and you might get some buy in. Until you can do that, the only type of mining you might kill off is AFK mining, which means that you effectively prefer EULA violators to those that play according to the rules.

Also, it should be noted that greater yield doesn't necessarily mean greater profits. Market values per unit tend to drop when supply increases without a new source of demand.


If your only retort is "but Bots can do it!" and you have no solutions of your own, you'res imply not being a productive part fo the conversation.

In point of fact, I cannot "prove" that you, sir, are not in fact a Forum-Bot. Using text recognition software and a library of resposonse fragments to create replies that appear human, but are not.

Quackbot says hi.

With that said, the aim in game design when combating Bots is to make gameplay enjoyable (with depth and proper reward) to encourage humans to play it actively, an active participation requisite gameplay mechanic, to eliminate simple bots and their ilk, and to, as much as possible, design gameplay mechanics that are non-preductable/random/ and hence less scriptable. There are a variety of ways to do this, from the CAPTCHA idea, to non-predictable key stroke requirements that flash on screen to achieve certain outcomes, to adding complexity to the activity itself (i.e. building bot-defeating mechanics in at every level, i.e. require scanning for asteroids with prompts a Bot has difficulty with so humans can find the best roids, then design active, bot defeating mechanics into the activity of mining, etc, etc, etc.)

Yes, some players might be put off by active mining. And some who would never think of it (but play Minecraft for ages) might just like a new, more complex, more profitable mining game in their EVE.

Again, since I cannot prove you are not a script-bot, I equally cannot prove these ideas would deter all bots, in fact Id say no game mechanic can defeat all bots.

But if we can design game mechanics that defeat a majority, thats still a win.

And again, my bot friend, it's highly suspicious that anyone would argue FOR that staus quo, knowing what that status quo is.
Game mechanics defeating a majority of bots is a myth. The reason being bots aren't static. If one doesn't work after a change either they will update it or change to one that does. At that point you are making changes for the sake of making changes. That itself is the problem. It's a problem because it could well end up favoring bots. If they get better at the game than humans, then botting becomes incentivized. The more convoluted the mechanic, the more likely that is to happen. Even non predictable prompts for input have to be recognizable and reactable. Bots tend to be better at both criteria once they know what to look for, and can do better at full screen awareness.

It's also a problem because it's more of a hassle to your regular players than it is to a bot user, who just has to wait for the latest patch to their cheat. Also how much dev time do you think is worthwhile to devote to constantly changing the mechanic to stay ahead of those bots. If the solution is just change gameplay, it's going to have to be repeated constantly to ensure bots can't keep up.

Regarding CAPTCHA's, do yourself a favor, never make a game. If you think it worthwhile to sacrifice enjoyment of legit players to hunt bots, you will just be wasting your time.

If you want to create an active profession, ok, debate the merits of that rather than pretending to have a botting solution.

Lastly, baseless accusations are not proof of concept, valid reasoning, or even remotely close to contributing to the conversation. Someone who can objectively evaluate an idea has far more to contribute than someone whose only reasoning is "it's different than now" spiced up with "you may be a bot." Prove your idea better than the status quo, keeping in mind mining was intended as a passive profession, or justify changing that intention.
Rowells
Blackwater USA Inc.
Pandemic Horde
#120 - 2014-03-04 23:34:26 UTC
I honestly think we should leave anti-botting ideas to CCP. They've got way more tools and power to do anything without having to turn a whole gameplay mechanic on its head