EVE General Discussion

Hello wonderful Internet Spaceship Pilots!!!!!

Though not all of you have seen my presentation last Friday at this point I have some time to kill so I'd like to get this conversation started that I not only promised, but that I'm really looking forward to.

In some of my past dev blogs and conversations with players it's been mentioned by a number of you that you'd like botters identified publicly. As you will eventually see from my presentation once it's posted, I'm not entirely convinced that this has any real tangible benefit to you as a player in any respect other than as a tool to implement the metagame.

I'm also not convinced that it's a worthless pursuit so what I'd like to see from you, the players, is a discussion regarding how you feel about this and I'm hoping to see some really cool ideas.

If I'm forced to frame it as a question I'd like answered I think I'd frame it as "What would you, the player, stand to benefit from being able to identify which characters had ever been caught botting, whether or not they were still engaging in this activity?"

Please try to stay on topic. If this thread gets garbaged (Sarah Palin License to invent words) then we'll clean it but I'd rather we just stick to the topic and provide some really good input personally.

DISCUSS!

:)

Name and Shame. Do it!

Bot/Macros are fairly predictable, and once you observe them in action it becomes reasonably easy to gank them. If you identify botters, it would make vigilante justice easier, and players would know who to keep an eye on. I bet many of them are repeat offenders.

It would also act as a deterrent. Getting your account permanently marked as a 'cheater/botter' would allow us to avoid trading with those who have obtained their isk illegitimately.

It would also be useful for recruitment screening, helping to keep our corps bot-free.

I would hunt them down and make the botters wish they never discovered EVE

In game of course.

But I could argue that there are plenty of other deterrents in place. This one has the additional negative of also providing a disincentive for turning into a Good Guy, which is something we've been trying to prevent.

Naming botters will have a negative effect (kicking those who are already down) unless there is prior warning.

On the other hand, if there is a nice fat warning that occasionally pops up when logging in that says "automation and botting is harshly punished in Eve online, here is a list of those who were recently banned from New Eden", this would be a very positive thing, as it would make botting seem like a less attractive option.

I don't think botting should be an unspoken evil. A bi-monthly login popup with an anti-botting warning and a giant list of bans would really do wonders. Too many botters don't really know what they're getting into until it's too late, it's a shame really. On the other hand, industrial scale botting networks are entirely different, but at least they'll add a long string of bans to the list

Name and shame.

Leaving it as it is (between the offender and CCP) makes sense. Naming and shaming accomplishes nothing.

There are playergroups in the EVE Universe who wish in no way to be identified alongside botters.
They want no dealings with them since a botter doesn't play the game. a program runs certain keystrokes.

(Cursif text is out of date, but not gonna remove it just to look smarter than I am)
Also people who want to buy a character from the character bazaar would like to know if the character they buy in any way got flagged or even temporary banned because of botting.
It's like buying a house or car. You want to know a bit of history which could possebly affect your purchase.

I for one would be shocked if I were to purchase a character on the forums and then be forced in any way to explain to other people everytime that I wasn't the owner of said character which was caught with his hands in the cookiejar at some point.

If a character should go up for sale the potential buyer should be informed about a history which could affect him in the future if he were to aquire said character.


As for ingame policing. I personally think it's CCP's job to keep an eye on previously temp banned botters as to see if they return to their unlawfull ways of botting. This isn't something the playerbase should get into unless you would like to start off a witchhunt.
We all know how well the public responds to convicted criminals.
We also know how a large part of the EVE playerbase would respond by not letting a flagged botter get into the game as intended again.


Edit:
Being an oldbee I am very rusted in my ways.
Since not long ago character transfers of flagged people isn't possible anymore so that reason has no validation anymore.
However the rest in my post stays as it is.

A tentative date and explanation were given on Friday. We're looking at a release sometime in July and you can get the explanation for the delay from the stream as there's a lot of words involved. It'll be posted this week I imagine.