EVE General Discussion

the way i see it is theres 1 rule that governs botting and 1 only:

The time spent to grind isk to buy a PLEX

if a plex takes the average player a week to grind for without using bots, then in that time that person could have made the money for that PLEX in other ways in RL 10 times over, then eventually that player will realise that grinding for isk is futile and buy GTC's. This increases the availablility of PLEX's and lowers demand initially.

If that same person instead, on average uses a bot to grind the isk for the PLEX, then theres less GTC's being bought and placed on the market. theres still the demand for them but the supply has deminished and the prices increase. when this happens it affects all players alike, some go the botting route, some go the GTC route and some who cant/wont do either end up unsubbed.

of course as prices shift up and down so does demand cause if a PLEX costs u 1/2 a Bil ur less likely to grind for it than if it were 250m. but when u increase PLEX prices u drive off those players who wish to play without buying GTC's.

those players have a choice to either use a botting program to gather isk while theyre away with their RL, or unsub and only play a few months at a time.

so to me, CCPs choices are either:
Keep bots and drive off more younger casual gamers, that cant stay subbed due to either time or financial constraints, whilst in game the higher availablilty of ISK drives markets towards hyper-inflation.
Remove as many bots as possible and allow the casual gamer more flexability to stay in game whilst keeping in-game markets stable and healthy.

to me the 2nd seems more beneficial to CCPs short and long term business goals, hence why i started this thread.

There is no money in that for CCP, but a larger need for staff to investigate it.