EVE General Discussion

Legit sells a billion Zydrine units for X
Flagged guy sells a billion Zydrine units for X / 2

Tell me how many will follow your virtue path.

This is why your idea about implementing legal litigation would then be sort of required.

I agree with this suggestion. Perhaps make a separate record like a criminal history, somewhat like an employment history, that detailed what actions, like tempbans have been applied to the account. This seems like a reasonable thing for hiring corporations to know so it would only need to be made available though an API key. Also, as mentioned by others, it seems like a reasonable thing for someone to know when they buy a character. But only allow this information to be seen through an API key. We don't need witch hunts, just a way for people to be able to do the equivalent of a background check on the character. And for some the possibility of never being hired again or never being able to sell your character will be a deterrent. Not a huge one but it will be something and for the rest, permaban repeat offenders.

is it so hard to accept that some people just like to see information about things they care about? i love computers, and though i'l never have one i'l read benchmarks for high end graphics cards, high end cpu's and such.

i'l probably never be in 0.0 again but i still read about politics out there

this is the same thing, i care about eve so i would like to know where zee bots come from,

also could we get where by region/constellation? (this would allow us to kill them)

this scarlet letter may stop some of the small time botters but it wont' stop the major botters that play/bot just to sell their isk

Pardon me for what appears to be my lack of understanding, but what are you saying here? I don't get it.

That well maybe the case but I don't agree hurting the innocent to get the bad guy.

As others have said, their is also the issue of litigation.

I'm pretty sure in the world will live in today you would probably be able to take CCP to court if you were accused of breaking the EULA/TOS when in fact you hadn't.

We do live in crazy times.

Let me first tell you, what my corp did in the last weeks in Droneland (botland). Just two examples:

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=12787360

unstronted botter tower with bots in it. The bots did not move the whole time and we killed them after we killed the tower. Loot drop was appr. 1.3 bil. After that, we reinforced more towers of the "Dan Balan Fan Club". The day we came back and wanted to finish them, they were light blue. You can imagine, we were majorly pissed about this lame trick, that this very obvious botter corp got somehow blue standing and nobody talked to us. Because we had another case, where we got green light on an overnight-blue tower, which was red while RFing it, we thought, it would be ok to kill it still. We did. The next day we had in Corp chat a raging -A- diplomat, who threw around insane numbers of ISK. The botter corp had him paid 30 bil ISK for blue standing or we had them destroyed assets worth 30 bil ISK, it became more while the disput ... whatever... (on top of that we had also destroyed a red CSAA with a blue baby titan in it, because nobody told us) After that we let the "Dan Balan Fan Club" go, because in general we respect blue standings and apologized for our "**** ups" and even paid some compensation (for the baby titan).

Some days later this happened:

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=12846336

I found an anchored tower with bots on it "saved up". Jackpot! In the heat of the moment we did not realise, these tengus most likely were nullified and sent in a sabre as first tackle. If these were no bots, they would have not sit on an anchored tower or they would have warped away, when local blobbed, or they would have warped away, when the sabre bubbled them. They were bots and the inevitable happened. In the same system were also light blue bots (Solar Citizen), which we did not touch after the past incidents. Obviously they had already finished the transfer from X.W.X (shadow of death) to the now save Solar Citizens. Damage done: 14 bil Loot: 1,8 bil. Remarkable also the names of the blue and red corps in that system: "The third branch of the psychiatric hospital" (red) vs "Polibudinvest" (blue) vs "Loggaplula" vs "Is paranoid-depressive psychosis" = it is all the same guy.

You find bots of these 2 groups all over the Dronelands. We found more little hints. I.e in the loot:

- ano-bots drop BMs in the corp hangar, which the salvager bot picks up then
- the salvager bot drops the alloys, but does not stack them, so you find in the loot cans hundreds of little packs of alloys, until a real human comes and stacks them.

and more. We took some screens etc. You really need to be no genius to see, what is going on, IF you see it. It was a unique opportunity and who know, when the next time this will happen again.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Question to CCP Sreegs:

How is it possible such big and so obvious botter groups can do, what they do for so long? (We watch them already since last year. Countless petitions have been filed.)

Obviously this (what you wrote in your blog) :

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=75910

did not stop them at all or just a few days. They seem to know exactly, there is nothing, what stops them. That is, why they have such a poor cover. They do not think, they need it.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Now to the idea:

Needless to say, I DO want Scarlett letters for botters.

1) I want to see, if I file a petition or watch botters for months, that something happens to them at some point, any advance at least. That is the least you can do. You should not use the stupid 3 strike rule on them in the first place. Nothing is more frustrating for an honest player to see them doing their thing over months and months, sometimes years and nothing happens to them. If somebody has a weak character, he starts thinking of course about botting himself to even up, you know...

2) As you could read between the lines, my alliance and also Solar do not give a flying ****, whether their renters are botters or not. Also many players in my corp, which is in general anti-bot, are not interested, if somebody tells them, there are bots around them or the ISK/reimbursements, we get, are earned by bots in some percentage. They do not care much. This would certainly change, if suddenly lots of renters are marked as bots. Some of these careless, but honest, players would start to be more concerned about their image. -A- is offically anti-bot afaik. That is, how we recruit honest players, who like to PVP. But most do not take the time to check, what the renters do, we just check the bills, they pay. It would help to sort out bad apples.

They don't have it tattooed it over their forehead!
Botting is a EULA breaking, not a crime, don't go emo over it.

They're booted and if you never knew them, you would never even notice it.

Again, Breaking the EULA is out-of-character action, and shouldn't be brought in-game. Besides, they'll simply close the account and create a pristine one, no one would be stupid fly with such a tag.
If a person uses a bot and is caught by CCP, it's CCP's duty to deal with it, CONCORD doesn't exist in RL.

I tried to read all of your responses to gauge the issue, too many player responses to go through though. This one stuck out to me.



While I agree that CCP should "stay out of the sandbox" I think you're missing the point of how the sandbox is setup. For example, if you were setting up mechanics that specifically FORCED us to attack said players, that would be getting all up in our sandbox. What you are doing is, in my opinion, expanding the sandbox. You aren't forcing us to do anything to those players, either in a positive or negative way, some people won't care. You are however giving us the opportunity to identify them and deal with them in different ways. Some corps *cough* might seek out these players, under the assumption that they would increase profits at whatever cost. Some corps may hunt these players, or deny them access. You've created a mechanic that the players can deal with in whatever way they want.

I prefer to try to put everything possible into game mechanics. Don't bring real world "stuff" into the game if you can help it. Again, you've created a mechanic. Instead of CCP sticking some scarlet letter on an avatar or something create a skill and game mechanic for it. Players with the right skills and standings can bribe Concord agents to get information on characters, past violations for possession and use of illegal technology (hello isk sink). This would be a useful skill for at least one person in a corp to have, so they could check the names of applicants. It's not something that's visible to anyone, but neither is it restricted to only CEO's or directors or something. It's there for anyone to find that wants to put the effort in, and once they do they can use it as they see fit. It expands our sandbox.

I can see both sides of the argument really, but overall I'm in favor of anything that gives players more options and creates consequences for our actions. I think this does exactly that.

To answer your specific question, what would the benefit be to us, I think it would mostly be in the area of recruiting. However, the way I envision it there could (and probably would) be people that form "their game" around hunting botter accounts in the same way there's anti-pirate corps. The benefit is that our sandbox grows, there's more options for us.


If they don't want risk, then they shouldn't be botting, there's consequences in my Eve. Pirates run the risk of having neg sec status, a flashing skull, not being able to enter highsec, etc. They still do it though. In this example they can rat back up their sec status (curbing their action/good citizen). So maybe botters can have the same chance (1 year and concord seals your records or something has been suggested).

Edit: For another isk sink/game mechanic, tie the removal of the botting "tag" to bribing concord. You straight up pay isk to have it removed. It's kinda weak in the storyline area, but no more so than a hard time limit, and it has the added benefit of removing isk from the game (which I understand is a concern at this time).

For me the question is less "should it be done?" and more "HOW should it be done?"