Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Install a CAPTCHA for the modification of market orders as a counter bot measure. Every trader I know is so sick of fighting bots to make isk on the market, especially when they provide impossible-for-human logs to CCP and get a response of 'We have no interest dealing with market bots.'

Not for creating them, that might be a bit too irritating for you folks who need your stuff sold NOW.

CCP you claim to be Anti Bot, so why be so apathetic to the point of mandating use of bots to compete?

We could add CAPTCHAs to activate mining lasers too! Then CODE. would have accomplished their goals of 0 bot miners. They could finally disband having achieved ultimate victory! All miners would be free to mine in peace, as long as they type in their CAPTCHAs right. This is one of the best ideas I have seen in F&I.



This is a horrible idea. If they won't ban market bots do you really think they are going to code CAPTCHAs into the game?

Guns and tackle should have captcha also and different ones from each other and like passwords they should be case sensitive and always have at least one capital and special character with a min of 10 characters long.

entering warp also.

This is a really strong point in my opinion that would instantaneously actually fix the entire problem. We currently have no implementation to report a character through the trader interface that is botting against us, only character info, drop down, report a bot. Which of course we have no method of ascertaining in high equitable trades aside from buying an extra item at full price to get their name and then report.

I have a huge issue with market botting as I'm new to the game and am not new to MMO's or GUI's at all as I'm a veteran of the scene by over 10 years. I've written my own WoW bots back in the day only to surmise them once I realized I was making more gold an hour by just market manipulating than having my one little lone farmer and I wasn't about to pay Blizzard for 15 accounts a month like some people do, nor did I ultimately even do much with my amassed fortune in that game aside from bankroll my guild and give it away in trade constantly.

The issue I find in high margin low volume items is that they are constantly botted against, for instance I go to sleep eventually after undercutting literally all day and know I'm going to be outbid and that's fine. What isn't acceptable to me is logging in 7 hours later after sleep, seeing the first and only undercut at about a 5-10minute differentiation from my own order, updating one of my orders and then instantaneously being undercut by the same item holder. I undercut again, and like clockwork the other item holder undercuts within his 5 minute window. And now it's back to the races where if I'd like to have a chance in the market for the day, my game is now my chat box, not undocking, and sitting here with 5 minute inputs against this obvious bot until either his item sells and I'm back to human competition, or I give up 14 hours later and go back to sleep.

Trading is WITHOUT a doubt in the world the MOST profitable thing you can do in this game, I'm new to the game and my low SP allotment severely hinders me from actually doing anything in the game atm beside running pve missions, but thanks to the knowledge I have being a day-trader in the real world, tackling this awesome market system has been exciting and fun to me as a player until I'm now past my first few billion and constantly facing off in botted arena's.

I haven't thought of an actual solution to this yet at all as there doesn't seem one aside from CCP stepping up on a case by case basis, but this CAPTCHA idea would solve the entire thing instantly. Go for it full on and add another single layer of monotony to our obscenely profitable profession in the game because for the real traders out there, I know for one I'd gladly welcome the added layer of prevention if it meant I had the ability to compete with humans instead of bots.

You could also add a type of stipulation, for example a simple if then statement requiring CAPTCHA's, don't irritate the majority player base as the majority player base is never selling more than 200-300m of items at a time, while someone like me is constantly selling my 4-5b wallet over and over again watching it grow. So the if then statement could be;
If Player Sell Order Total >= 1,500,000,000 ISK then instill CAPTCHA notification on Sell Order Modify
If Player Sell Order Total < 1,500,000,000 ISK then do nothing

^^^^^^^^ THE SOLUTION TO MARKET BOTS
The fallout would be more whining on the forums, but isn't EVERYTHING ANY MMO DOES EVER met with whining on the forums? I mean you guys changed your icons in the Overview recently and I think it's alot better looking personally, but the forums and Reddit were on fire with WTF WHY CHANGE IT POSTS?

This solution Anise has come up with, paired with my stipulation would affect a very small number of players, but it would affect the key number of players that are constantly at war with these botted players.

How about limiting how often you can modify the same order within a time frame? Are real player really .01 ISKing each others for hours on end?

Can we also get CAPTCHA for mining, AFK cloaking, Ratting and might as well add it for PVP also.

So why should I be forced to get a bot if I wanted to actually use the market?

I can't read most captchas, and my eyes aren't even that bad. How many people would you force out of the game entirely?

It wont stio any serious bot trader but it will inconvenience them with running multiple accounts. Making most trade skills non-trial is a good first cursory step in that direction.

No more than one market order modification per item per hour.
No more than 6 changes per item per day.

Lower the ceiling on how the bot operates and create the need for either more inconvenience with pathological traders (who currently have an extremely easy time) and introduce risk as they take bigger stabs on margins thanks to reduced response times to market order changes.

Not seeing how this works out in anyone's advantage. The seller trying to get stock to move quickly making cuts in margin loses the ability to respond to being -.01 isked. Serious traders simply create orders for the same item on different characters to allow for faster responses to being underbid, making the issue worse for people like op, and bots combine those tactics with perfect awareness to crush the market capabilities of those who think the current system is bad.

Well what else are you going to do? Point out that the eula is reciprocal and that CCP have a duty to deal with market bots?

Yeah.