Player Features and Ideas Discussion

CCP have said many times that bots cause more harm than they bring in with subs.

Yet they exist still and will continue to do so. The training of a mining bot is minimal effort before it pays for itself. Destroy one and another appears quickly in its place.

Introducing AI to track what a mining ship is doing and applying 'smarts' to determine its bot-status would overload the server in a short time.

Having staff checking mining ships for bot-movements would send costs spiralling up. Remember: Eve is a business.

Blocking an IP address found to be used by a bot can't happen, as most ISPs reuse regularly addresses and some unwitting player could find themselves blocked from the game. Also proxies and other types of connections will render that useless.

As to the 'more harm than they bring in with subs' quote: has CCP quantified this harm in relation to the money they earn from it?

Even with bots mining is still an earner for those who can't, or don't want to, involve themselves in other activities. When the ability to earn from mining is compromised by bots to a much larger degree than it is at the moment THEN I'll start to take seriously these complaints. For now I consider it to be a non-problem.

But is that true?

Again, read this.

There are probably a few casual botters who more or less fit your assumptions, except that they almost certainly bot to pay for their accounts with ISK via PLEX, driving the price of PLEX to artificially high levels. CCP's first strike is designed to dissuade those.

The linked article reveals what the hardcore botters and RMTers do, and their tactics are incredibly costly both to CCP (and ANet, and Blizzard, etc.) and a risk to their customers.

It's not a small issue. CCP do not have a team dedicated to ridding the game of bots because a few of them got drunk one night and thought it would be fun. They're investing the time and talent in Team Security because, if they're successful, the return will be more than worth it--in terms of the health of the in-game economy and the security of their customers, and their own bottom line.

To further reinforce Dave's reply a bit.
http://lowseclifestyle.blogspot.se/2012/10/eve-vegas-ccp-stillman-discusses-bots.html

Edit: I removed poor suggestion.

I also wasn't aware of how bad botting was until I read the link I posted. I knew it existed but definitely not to that extent. So my question is how do you identify that a person is bot mining? Just sending a convo invite I guess? Any blatantly obvious things that a bot miner would do?

real solution to boting: turn the graphics model for asteroids into naked dancing women. Would also double subscriber base. Suicide ganking would end.

I would use an aspect of Lore to where the rats talk to the player in such a way that requires human interaction.

The ONLY way I see bots being taken out is to randomly display something garbled that requires a thinking response.

I would recommend in particular rats that showed up and hailed the individual using CAPTCHA and had them respond in local or by clicking a button in a series.

I would then, for an example, if the player did the actions correctly say something stupid like "don't plug that in" or "that doesn't go there" and watch the ship explode leaving behind a little loot to compensate for the disturbance. Failure to reply would result in a number of rats showing up that were relatively pissed off for you ignoring them, they could then go hostile after awhile of continuous cycles or just leave saying "well remember this."

I think pulling data from a game mechanic like that would make botters stand out like a sore thumb.

Within a week the bot is back in its barge and mining to pay not only for the month's sub for the newly created account but also for the plex for the next month. Hell, it's operational immediately in a venture.

This is most likely why mass banning doesn't hurt them in the pocket.

Incursions do a good job against Bots. I watched 2 orcas get popped in a 0.7 sec systems ice belt about an hour ago. Watch in delight as a single frigate and cruiser slowly dispatched them. As 3 capsules from what I assumed used to be in Mackinaws sat there dumb and motionless.

Then some guy tried to smart bomb them i tried to decloak my nemesis to whore in on concord's kill but he popped before i got target lock . Well he Failed to pod these bots so I Executed him forth with. Crazy when a capsule sticks around for 2 volleys from a nemesis.

Simple Solution Derj's Disease.

Strke 1 - You get caught botting and all minerals in your hold mined since last log in turn into useless, worthless Augumene.

Strike 2 - You get caught botting a second time and all of your minerals mined since eternity get contaminated with useless, worthless Augumene,

Strike 3- You get caught botting and your get Derj's disease, meaning you cannot be cloned ever! That's it, undock and if someone pops your clone you are never coming back and concord gets to auction all of your stuff.