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Missions & Complexes

 
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Regarding AFK Complex Farming

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Zapson
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#481 - 2012-08-12 00:23:53 UTC
Just to state: It is NOT suspicious if a person plays with X accounts simultaniously, since CCP allowed the use of multboxing programs, which states, that you are allowed to project an action on as many accounts as you want, as long as you performed it by yourself.
So it's legal to use automation software, if it just helps you to manage multiple accounts while(!) you are in charge of what happens.
Zapson
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#482 - 2012-08-12 00:29:20 UTC
Kyle Frost wrote:

P.S. It’s amazing how you skip everything I wrote, even when I directly address and develop scenarios that you brought up. You just go on and on about the same thing like a broken lantern. It’s ok bro, don’t feel bad – I’ve done it too, when I was talking to one of my ex girlfriends. Whatever she said, my reply was – It wasn’t me. Roll



I honestly don't think you're "scenarios" are worth anything, since they are only examples, never were happening in real or are just plain theory.
And we do not need any scenarios, because the point is HOW CCP dealt with the issue. The issue itself isn't the primary element of this discussion.
In my opinion it's obvious, that CCP took a slightly harsh / wrong approach to the problem, resulting in massive rampage and unclearness.

Again, no one tries to protect the action of making ISK in an "unfair" way, but we have to properly discuss and define this, instead of rushing.
General Xenophon
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#483 - 2012-08-12 01:20:37 UTC
Dregol wrote:
From: http://community.eveonline.com/news/newsFromEve.asp?newsTitle=regarding-afk-complex-farming-1

The original post:

What exactly is the problem here CCP? A pilot has to /actively/ probe down a complex, the speed at which he or she wants to complete the process shouldn't be measured. You also seem to blatantly ignore the fact that other people can probe these down and complete them while you're AFK boating around.

I do find it hilarious, though, that you want to go after complex runners. I'd like to see the numbers of how much isk is generated from plexing, but taking what I presume to be a fairly safe guess, I'd be astonished if it represents more than 1% of the total isk generated in EVE. I mean it's not like you just made it 1000% easier for other professions to do anything AFK.

I applaud your effort to remove any AFK actions from the game, but seriously, stop picking on fringe problems, and look at the real problems in EVE.


+1

This is really really a waste of time CCP. Why don't you fix fighters, fix station bugs, fix overview bugs instead of witch hunting people running plexes. McCarthyism much?

You guys are getting better at stuff, but just change the focus to what's really needed. Not this other unhelpful crap.
Korvin
Shadow Kingdom
Best Alliance
#484 - 2012-08-12 01:23:36 UTC  |  Edited by: Korvin
With all my respect to CCP Sreegs, this situation reminds me that people sometimes use a microscope instead of a hummer.

You made a tool to detect bots, suddenly you found out, that this tool can accidentally detect a broken part of a game devs should fix, like a deadspace with unbalanced afk income ets.
Instead of using this tool to locate this design flaws and polish your game, you still use it as a bad bot detecting system, confusing people with unclear rules they should guess here and there.

Let me give you and example.
DED1, (50000 isk an hour if you stay there with your drones all the time and noone else would show up, that is a rare case).
Someone just wait a gatekeeper thats spawns each 1-1,5 hours. Suddenly, they fall asleep, or had an emergency call or their fridge broke, forgot about the game and walk away. Or just stay there and sometimes check if a gatekeeper spawned. Your rules says, that they are exploiting, but that is not the case imho.

Just detect and fix those broken parts you find out with your tool, no need to ruin all the rest instead.

Member of CSM 4&5 ... &8
daddi0
Brooklyn Tax Dodgers
#485 - 2012-08-12 03:00:01 UTC
Kyle Frost wrote:
“Winning” or driving you off was never my objective. You think I would write one wall of text after another just to “beat you” in a forum war? And you call me a pompous ass?!



You just don't get the concept of an abstraction, do you? You defend yourself thinking I attributed some sort of motive to you. What I actually said was that if I did, you couldn't tell if I did or what it was. You are so grounded in the literal words, you can't see the theory behind them. Most of this discussion has nothing whatever to do with the present exploit itself, but the means by which this KIND of behhavior will be discovered, and the reaction to it by CCP.

So, to use your words, let me try one last time to make it very simple.
I'm sure other players can come up with better examples but this should do.

A gamer takes his shield tank out to a mining belt, drops off a mining drone and a couple of combat drones. Soon the npc spawns come, get killed by the drones, and then the cycle repeats. Every once in a while he checks to make sure his drones are okay; they are, so nothing is done. Now this isn't very much ISK, but it has the same circumstances as the exploit in question, and will be flagged by the bot-detectors as AFK farming. Before writing,anything, just try to imagine this as an EXAMPLE, and not attack it as an unreasonable situation.


SO what's the problem. I'll put it into simple terms for you:

  1. This will be flagged by the anti-bot/AFK scanners as the newly defined AFK behavior.
  2. Even if reviewed by humans, no clear determination can be made.
    3. No problem you say. Well you'd be right except
  3. we don't know if CCP considers this legal or not
  4. A sizable population is afraid that CCP will ban first and ask you about it later. Which they apparently have done in this case, since they're reversing them.
  5. The workings of the ban appeal process sounds like its flawed.


So, in simple terms,

  1. we have situations that may or may not be "illegal" as far as CCP is concerned
  2. we don't know what the conditions are that will cause CCP to deem something illegal
  3. A sizable population has little faith in the manner in which CCP will handle a situation when it arises.
  4. At least some of the false positive banned players have been unhappy with the way the process took place


While the final solution to this exploit is not unreasonable, CCP has reinforced its past reputation for impulsive, high-handed behavior and further weakened itself in the eyes of many players. You may not care about now, but you will if you ever become one of the false positives. And don't get on a high horse about that never happening to you, because by your own admission, you don't need the rules, you know better than that, the rules are for everyone else:
Kyle Frost wrote:

P.S. I never claimed AFK farming is explicitly prohibited by the EULA. I live in Europe and here the EULA doesn't mean jack **** (legally anyway). I've never even read the damn thing. But then again, in most cases I am capable of figuring out what is and what isn't acceptable gameplay without extra help



So, you just click ACCEPT on every new set of rules of gameplay, and then ignore them because your judgement is better than that anyway. Just don't look for any simpathy if CCP decides it isn't.

Better let the gun do the thinking too.
Budsin Adar
State War Academy
Caldari State
#486 - 2012-08-12 04:06:53 UTC
The Major issue is the people that are Bot mining in systems and you come back on late at night and they are still there and they go for 23 hrs a day and there is some in fleets of 6 Yes i know who they are its 1 corp 1 person now to get bot miners out of the game. We don't say they should be banned because they come back ... My idea is to hurt them make them show up as NPC's if they want to play this way then when they get into structure they pop out and we get the ships and no Concord or we blow them up and take the ore and what have ya. this plan is better i think CCP IdeaPirate Let me know Peace everyone and anyone who is doing it watch out you may have no time codes to pay for loss of ships that will make alot of people happyTwisted
Cheers o/
Chainsaw Plankton
FaDoyToy
#487 - 2012-08-12 04:49:32 UTC
Korvin wrote:
With all my respect to CCP Sreegs, this situation reminds me that people sometimes use a microscope instead of a hummer.

You made a tool to detect bots, suddenly you found out, that this tool can accidentally detect a broken part of a game devs should fix, like a deadspace with unbalanced afk income ets.
Instead of using this tool to locate this design flaws and polish your game, you still use it as a bad bot detecting system, confusing people with unclear rules they should guess here and there.

Let me give you and example.
DED1, (50000 isk an hour if you stay there with your drones all the time and noone else would show up, that is a rare case).
Someone just wait a gatekeeper thats spawns each 1-1,5 hours. Suddenly, they fall asleep, or had an emergency call or their fridge broke, forgot about the game and walk away. Or just stay there and sometimes check if a gatekeeper spawned. Your rules says, that they are exploiting, but that is not the case imho.

Just detect and fix those broken parts you find out with your tool, no need to ruin all the rest instead.


1. he said design will be looking into it here: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1770620#post1770620
Quote:
The activity we ARE discussing is identical in every aspect other than involving a 3rd party piece of software to botting. Therefore, until Design can fix it we are not giving people passes when the sensors are tripped.

2. it is a lot more than 50,000 isk/hour in the right spots, protip: the first room of a 1/10 is not the correct spot.

@ChainsawPlankto on twitter
Chainsaw Plankton
FaDoyToy
#488 - 2012-08-12 05:10:50 UTC
daddi0 wrote:
You just don't get the concept of an abstraction, do you? You defend yourself thinking I attributed some sort of motive to you. What I actually said was that if I did, you couldn't tell if I did or what it was. You are so grounded in the literal words, you can't see the theory behind them. Most of this discussion has nothing whatever to do with the present exploit itself, but the means by which this KIND of behhavior will be discovered, and the reaction to it by CCP.

So, to use your words, let me try one last time to make it very simple.
I'm sure other players can come up with better examples but this should do.

A gamer takes his shield tank out to a mining belt, drops off a mining drone and a couple of combat drones. Soon the npc spawns come, get killed by the drones, and then the cycle repeats. Every once in a while he checks to make sure his drones are okay; they are, so nothing is done. Now this isn't very much ISK, but it has the same circumstances as the exploit in question, and will be flagged by the bot-detectors as AFK farming. Before writing,anything, just try to imagine this as an EXAMPLE, and not attack it as an unreasonable situation.


SO what's the problem. I'll put it into simple terms for you:

  1. This will be flagged by the anti-bot/AFK scanners as the newly defined AFK behavior.
  2. Even if reviewed by humans, no clear determination can be made.
    3. No problem you say. Well you'd be right except
  3. we don't know if CCP considers this legal or not
  4. A sizable population is afraid that CCP will ban first and ask you about it later. Which they apparently have done in this case, since they're reversing them.
  5. The workings of the ban appeal process sounds like its flawed.


So, in simple terms,

  1. we have situations that may or may not be "illegal" as far as CCP is concerned
  2. we don't know what the conditions are that will cause CCP to deem something illegal
  3. A sizable population has little faith in the manner in which CCP will handle a situation when it arises.
  4. At least some of the false positive banned players have been unhappy with the way the process took place


While the final solution to this exploit is not unreasonable, CCP has reinforced its past reputation for impulsive, high-handed behavior and further weakened itself in the eyes of many players. You may not care about now, but you will if you ever become one of the false positives. And don't get on a high horse about that never happening to you, because by your own admission, you don't need the rules, you know better than that, the rules are for everyone else:
Kyle Frost wrote:

P.S. I never claimed AFK farming is explicitly prohibited by the EULA. I live in Europe and here the EULA doesn't mean jack **** (legally anyway). I've never even read the damn thing. But then again, in most cases I am capable of figuring out what is and what isn't acceptable gameplay without extra help



So, you just click ACCEPT on every new set of rules of gameplay, and then ignore them because your judgement is better than that anyway. Just don't look for any simpathy if CCP decides it isn't.

Better let the gun do the thinking too.


I thought I had little faith in ccp but **** you guys are relentless. Your example is like finding a five dollar bill on the ground, where what has been deemed "Sploits!" would have been like finding a box with $100,000 in it. there is a very large difference that people are just unable/unwilling to understand. if a miner falls asleep with their drones out first I doubt the bounty gains will be large enough to trigger the bot detection, and second it would be infrequent enough to warrant action, or cause detection.

Sreegs said that it was pretty much limited to a COSMOS plex or two.

CCP Sreegs wrote:
It was edited once because people misinterpreted my comments to mean that we were banning activity that we aren't. This seems to still be the case. There is a very specific situation which caused this detection which is essentially warping into a particular cosmos plex at downtime, dropping your sentry drones, applying reps to them then leaving your computer until the next downtime. This is possible because in that particular room the drones respawn.

This is going on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That is bad. If you haven't already heard from us then to date you haven't been doing it. However, there have been cases where people HAVE been doing this and complained that there was no announcement put out about it. Here is the announcement.

This potentially impacts more than the one COSMOS plex which is why the specific COSMOS plex was not mentioned in the OP. Were I to mention it then they would move to a new plex and we'd be dealing with the same rage from them because THIS IS A DIFFERENT PLEX.

@ChainsawPlankto on twitter
Sjugar
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#489 - 2012-08-12 06:18:26 UTC  |  Edited by: Sjugar
I can't see how this is any different from AFK cloaking 23/7 in a system.

23/7 doing complexes while not at your computer: playing the game while not playing the game.
23/7 disrupting a system while not at your computer: playing the game while not playing the game.
Kyle Frost
Inagawa Kai
#490 - 2012-08-12 09:03:27 UTC
Zapson wrote:
Kyle Frost wrote:

P.S. It’s amazing how you skip everything I wrote, even when I directly address and develop scenarios that you brought up. You just go on and on about the same thing like a broken lantern. It’s ok bro, don’t feel bad – I’ve done it too, when I was talking to one of my ex girlfriends. Whatever she said, my reply was – It wasn’t me. Roll



I honestly don't think you're "scenarios" are worth anything, since they are only examples, never were happening in real or are just plain theory.
And we do not need any scenarios, because the point is HOW CCP dealt with the issue. The issue itself isn't the primary element of this discussion.
In my opinion it's obvious, that CCP took a slightly harsh / wrong approach to the problem, resulting in massive rampage and unclearness.

Again, no one tries to protect the action of making ISK in an "unfair" way, but we have to properly discuss and define this, instead of rushing.


You didn’t actually read any of my examples/scenarios, did you? Well I hope you at least remember your own words – I have underlined the interesting part, just in case.

The main point is how CCP dealt with the issue, not the issue itself – your words. One of the posters kept focusing on that, stating several times how unjust/unfair CCP’s approach is, because there were no actual EULA violations. That person suggested, that CCP change the EULA outright, before taking any actions against players. So I asked him – what would have happened if CCP did exactly that, change the EULA and then ban/penalize players. And he ignored me completely.

You are not happy with the way CCP handled things – ban accounts/outlaw certain tactics and then make announcement after the fact (even though they lifted the bans). So how about if they had done the reverse? Make an announcement and outlaw the specific AFK tactic with one action - changing the EULA - and then proceed with the bans. Think that would have been better? It’s a simple question. Straight

And let’s be realistic – there is no massive rampage here, please… not even a tiny, baby rampage Lol. Just some people who can’t read.

Let the gun do the talking!
TheSkeptic
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#491 - 2012-08-12 09:54:14 UTC
Sjugar wrote:
I can't see how this is any different from AFK cloaking 23/7 in a system.

23/7 doing complexes while not at your computer: playing the game while not playing the game.
23/7 disrupting a system while not at your computer: playing the game while not playing the game.


Remove local.... problem solved

...

Challu
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#492 - 2012-08-12 10:05:47 UTC
TheSkeptic wrote:
Erutpar Ambient wrote:

What is not reasonable is the snarky and sarcastic attitude. Sreegs you are addressing your customers not you're friends or team mates. A certain level of professionalism is expected when you release news with such strong implications to your customer base. Your ability to communicate in a non-aggressive manner can be the difference between a smooth patching period and a public relations "**** storm" as has been so specifically discriptive of this particular incident.


There is nothing wrong with Sreegs attitude tbh. The real issue lies in people have reading and comprehension skills comparitable to that of roadkill. People raised their initial concerns. Clarification was provided. Then page after page saw the same stupid posts with the same questions that had already been previously answered. If anything he has done a good job to keep replying to all the ragers.


This, tbqfh.

The :dense: in this thread is truly mindboggling.
Chainsaw Plankton
FaDoyToy
#493 - 2012-08-12 10:08:38 UTC
Challu wrote:
TheSkeptic wrote:
Erutpar Ambient wrote:

What is not reasonable is the snarky and sarcastic attitude. Sreegs you are addressing your customers not you're friends or team mates. A certain level of professionalism is expected when you release news with such strong implications to your customer base. Your ability to communicate in a non-aggressive manner can be the difference between a smooth patching period and a public relations "**** storm" as has been so specifically discriptive of this particular incident.


There is nothing wrong with Sreegs attitude tbh. The real issue lies in people have reading and comprehension skills comparitable to that of roadkill. People raised their initial concerns. Clarification was provided. Then page after page saw the same stupid posts with the same questions that had already been previously answered. If anything he has done a good job to keep replying to all the ragers.


This, tbqfh.

The :dense: in this thread is truly mindboggling.


yeap, I mean at worst I can only fault him for being a bit blunt in one of his later replies.

@ChainsawPlankto on twitter
daddi0
Brooklyn Tax Dodgers
#494 - 2012-08-12 15:01:14 UTC
Chainsaw Plankton wrote:

I thought I had little faith in ccp but **** you guys are relentless. Your example is like finding a five dollar bill on the ground, where what has been deemed "Sploits!" would have been like finding a box with $100,000 in it. there is a very large difference that people are just unable/unwilling to understand. if a miner falls asleep with their drones out first I doubt the bounty gains will be large enough to trigger the bot detection, and second it would be infrequent enough to warrant action, or cause detection.

Sreegs said that it was pretty much limited to a COSMOS plex or two.

CCP Sreegs wrote:
It was edited once because people misinterpreted my comments to mean that we were banning activity that we aren't. This seems to still be the case. There is a very specific situation which caused this detection which is essentially warping into a particular cosmos plex at downtime, dropping your sentry drones, applying reps to them then leaving your computer until the next downtime. This is possible because in that particular room the drones respawn.

This is going on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That is bad. If you haven't already heard from us then to date you haven't been doing it. However, there have been cases where people HAVE been doing this and complained that there was no announcement put out about it. Here is the announcement.

This potentially impacts more than the one COSMOS plex which is why the specific COSMOS plex was not mentioned in the OP. Were I to mention it then they would move to a new plex and we'd be dealing with the same rage from them because THIS IS A DIFFERENT PLEX.



In general I agree with you. The problem is the in-between areas and CCP's patterns of behavior. This is not a discusion whether exploits should be illegal, or if this particular instance is even an exploit. Its about how exploits get defined and how CCP treats its paying customers when it decides to classify any particular behavior as unacceptable.

In this game we're SUPPOSED to find boxes occasionally, its not like walking on the street where boxes of money don't usually exist. So, If I find a $100 box, is that intended, or an exploit?? WHERE IS the line? If I suddenly get consistently good drops in exploration, am I lucky, or did I find an exploit?

CCP is completely entitled to declare certain patterns illegal, and change the game to prevent them and/or ban those performing them. Fear of being banned is okay but only if you know your behavior is illegal. It seems that CCP has a habit of banning first, investigating second and then announcing the newly defined illegality. It certainly seems to be what happenned this time. This is not a good way to treat your paying customers.

Obviously CCP banned people before the pattern was declared illegal, otherwise they wouldn't have to grant the one-time amnesty for it. and THAT is the real problem. Until CCP formally announces a policy along the line of the following, they will continue to suffer from a lack of player confidence and receive forum rage every time they make these decisions.

SAMPLE POLICY


  1. ALL behavior is legal until otherwise stated
  2. ANY newly discovered behavior will be announced very prominently (e.g. in a agreement pop-up similar to the EULA at new revisions). I not for spoon feeding or allowing illegal behavior, so those that feel they can ignore important announcements do so at their own risk.
  3. Players using this behavior are subject to being banned, etc etc
  4. The appeal process for will be prompt and open
  5. players flagged as false positives will be compensated for any lost time or fees due to the sanction


Its the high-handedness of CCP's dealings in these situations that bothers most people. Judging from the forums CCP is also weak on due process when it comes to false positives, though having not been banned, I can't speak firsthand about it, but secretive processes wrapped in a gag order do not generally instill public confidence in them. I realize this is not an American company or game, but even Europe has laws allowing those falsely accused (libeled) to sue for compensation. EVE seems to have no such safeguards. Until they do, there will be a segment of players who will not accept CCP actions without a challenge.
War Kitten
Panda McLegion
#495 - 2012-08-12 15:28:00 UTC
daddi0 wrote:
CCP is completely entitled to declare certain patterns illegal, and change the game to prevent them and/or ban those performing them. Fear of being banned is okay but only if you know your behavior is illegal.


Indeed, well said.

Quote:
It seems that CCP has a habit of banning first, investigating second and then announcing the newly defined illegality. It certainly seems to be what happenned this time. This is not a good way to treat your paying customers.


What habit? This is one issue, revealed because of automatic detection and banning of people engaged in an activity questionably definable as "gameplay", and more likely defined as an "exploit".

One instance is not a habit, or do you have previous ones?

Quote:

Obviously CCP banned people before the pattern was declared illegal, otherwise they wouldn't have to grant the one-time amnesty for it. and THAT is the real problem.


I would argue the pattern WAS declared illegal and used to detect and ban botters. It just so happens that this bot-free but still afk, user-interaction-free, money-making pattern matches the bot pattern.

Quote:

Until CCP formally announces a policy along the line of the following, they will continue to suffer from a lack of player confidence and receive forum rage every time they make these decisions.

SAMPLE POLICY


  1. ALL behavior is legal until otherwise stated
  2. ANY newly discovered behavior will be announced very prominently (e.g. in a agreement pop-up similar to the EULA at new revisions). I not for spoon feeding or allowing illegal behavior, so those that feel they can ignore important announcements do so at their own risk.
  3. Players using this behavior are subject to being banned, etc etc
  4. The appeal process for will be prompt and open
  5. players flagged as false positives will be compensated for any lost time or fees due to the sanction


Its the high-handedness of CCP's dealings in these situations that bothers most people. Judging from the forums CCP is also weak on due process when it comes to false positives, though having not been banned, I can't speak firsthand about it, but secretive processes wrapped in a gag order do not generally instill public confidence in them. I realize this is not an American company or game, but even Europe has laws allowing those falsely accused (libeled) to sue for compensation. EVE seems to have no such safeguards. Until they do, there will be a segment of players who will not accept CCP actions without a challenge.


Dream on.

Every EULA for every software service like this is going to basically say:

1) You can use this service according to our rules
2) If you break the rules you're subject to us revoking your access to said service at any time.
3) The rules may change if we detect the need for new ones, pay attention.
4) No refunds for people that get banned.

They're not going to restrict themselves too much with bylaws or constitutional rights or fancy appeals processes beyond "petition the GM team and we'll sort it out."

You can either trust these rules and CCP's judgement, agree to the EULA and play the game, or not.

I don't judge people by their race, religion, color, size, age, gender, or ethnicity. I judge them by their grammar, spelling, syntax, punctuation, clarity of expression, and logical consistency.
Georgiy Giggle
Senclave
Apocalypse Now.
#496 - 2012-08-12 18:32:15 UTC
Suqq Madiq wrote:
Georgiy Giggle wrote:
Bring a balance to game between real players and bots, instead of beating REAL players only!!!


You think these players who park their Sentry ships in PLEXes 23hrs / day, 7days / week are real players. That's your problem. They're no better than bots and deserve to be banned.


Still, there are players that play same way while they ARE near keyboard.
Ban your brain!

Not mastering proprieties, won't become firmly established. - Confucius
daddi0
Brooklyn Tax Dodgers
#497 - 2012-08-12 18:49:46 UTC  |  Edited by: daddi0
War Kitten wrote:
daddi0 wrote:
It seems that CCP has a habit of banning first, investigating second and then announcing the newly defined illegality. It certainly seems to be what happenned this time. This is not a good way to treat your paying customers.


What habit? This is one issue, revealed because of automatic detection and banning of people engaged in an activity questionably definable as "gameplay", and more likely defined as an "exploit".

One instance is not a habit, or do you have previous ones?


Sorry, I don't, that's why I said "seems". It's just my feeling from reading the forums over the years, that this has happened in the past. There is room for me to be mistaken about that. The immediate fact is that it did happen this time, and it seems that people have the feeling it can happen again. That appears to be the "fear" people have about these kinds of actions, not fear of being banned for known violations, that's a given and a good thing. Its fear of being sanctioned for something that up until now was not considered illegal or at all.

War Kitten wrote:
daddi0 wrote:

Obviously CCP banned people before the pattern was declared illegal, otherwise they wouldn't have to grant the one-time amnesty for it. and THAT is the real problem.


I would argue the pattern WAS declared illegal and used to detect and ban botters. It just so happens that this bot-free but still afk, user-interaction-free, money-making pattern matches the bot pattern.


And this is where the discussion has its focus and we are each entitled to an opinion. There hasn't been, as far as I know, any prior statement that AFK income generation of itself is (or is going to be) considered for a bannable offense; it some senses, it can't be, since PI, trade, and other activities are exactly that. Bots are by definition outside mechanisms that allow a user to be AFK while performing some useful function. This was a simple use of the game mechanics. While that may well be an exploit, until it is so defined, the users should not be deemed criminals and summarily banned. They CAN be penalized or stripped of their gains, as in the recent LP exploit, and then banned if they continue.

The other issue in the discussion is when this pattern becomes an unacceptable exploit. If I set up this complex in a non-optimal way so it cannot survive completely AFK, start it in the morning, and remote into it while at work, checking on it periodically, and making adjustments, so that I only spend 20-30 minutes of effort over a 12-15 hour period but am not AFK, is that an exploit or is it a mining-like pattern that is acceptable?

As a side note, my understanding of "good" bots is that they don't behave in this fashion when single-boxing the game. Bots are meant to perform the necessary interventions that usually require being at the keyboard. They only become obvious when multi-boxing, or over long analysis periods. I have no problem with bots that are detected and banned.

War Kitten wrote:

Dream on.

Every EULA for every software service like this is going to basically say:

1) You can use this service according to our rules
2) If you break the rules you're subject to us revoking your access to said service at any time.
3) The rules may change if we detect the need for new ones, pay attention.
4) No refunds for people that get banned.

They're not going to restrict themselves too much with bylaws or constitutional rights or fancy appeals processes beyond "petition the GM team and we'll sort it out."

You can either trust these rules and CCP's judgement, agree to the EULA and play the game, or not.



I think we're pretty much in agreement here. Its just my feeling that the community wants somewhat better communication of what the rules are, especially when they change, and to have a better feeling about the appeals process for those players trapped as false positives.

I agree with you, if the game changes outweigh the enjoyment received from the game, its time to quit. That's the rational choice we each must make.

Thank you for well thought out and presented discussion points, Its a welcome change.
Lanalore Taim
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#498 - 2012-08-12 20:35:59 UTC
What I would like to know is what gives CCP the authority to declare what is more than "humanly capable" as far as gameplay is concerned. I remember when Starcraft came out and individuals would literally play for 36+ hours straight. I worked in the world's largest casino. An atmosphere where it was commonplace to see the same person at the same slot machine when I left my shift as when I had began 12 hours prior. Until they are running physicals on their subscribers and show me a medical degree they are completely full of it.

Next issue... Hmm. Let's see. Automated systems detecting afkers. Anyone else see an issue here? Perhaps show you care about the players, maybe perform something in this game with some integrity for once. Have GMs message players who are suspected of afk isking. If said players respond within, oh say 5-10mins, they aren't afking. Oh wait, MMOs have only been doing that since the inception of UO in 1997. But no, you go ahead and ban people who you can't prove are afk, by using afk non-human intelligence monitoring sytems? Complete and utter hypocrisy. Rather use an automated ban hammer than take the time to find out for yourselves what is going on? But who cares, eve already has their subscription money right?

And really, let's just be completely honest for a minute. BS in HS? Unlimited spawning complexes in HS? You deserve to be taken advantage of. CCP needs to ban themselves after this hoax.
Lady Zarrina
New Eden Browncoats
#499 - 2012-08-12 22:03:44 UTC
Wow I would hate to be Sreegs. Bad enough you have to try to hunt down people who play outside of the rules. Then you have to answer to every tom **** and harry to help ease their simple minds they will not incorrectly get banned. Use common sense FFS.

EVE: All about Flying Frisky and Making Iskie
Ensign X
#500 - 2012-08-13 00:48:11 UTC
You've quoted my post while adding nothing to it, so I can only consider you in full agreement with me and this issue as settled. Thank you for your contribution.