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Scarlet Letters and Botters

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Nemo deBlanc
Resource Acquisition Unlimited
#81 - 2012-03-27 03:04:25 UTC
Sisohiv wrote:
Revii Lagoon wrote:
Sisohiv wrote:

You will understand if people miss things on the tickertape forum.
If they are making Bot chars account locked, the motive for flagging them with stars is kind of not there.

Bot bann gets you -10.00 makes more sense.
I wouldn't even bann them. Just run Sec -10.00 and all 4 empires -10.00 on third offence.


Terrible idea, most bots operate in 0.0 anyways so it would do nothing.


Null bots are rare. I've done Null Mining Ops and 10/10 and there is no need to bot them. We could wipe a Plex belt in an hr or do a 10/10 in as much time. Everything is done in fleet out there. it's very efficient.


Funny, care to explain my recent trip through deep Russian space then? ~10 systems in a row, each with Raven and Exequeror. The second you enter system, Raven heads to POS, Exequeror cloaks. Only characters in system, each made on the exact same day, all members of two different corps. But oh, I suppose that's perfectly normal, and those were all legit players, right? Big smile

All of this stuff is ******* pointless if CCP is going to keep failing so hard they can't even break injection bots. ******* Runescape has got everyone forced to work in Color and OpenGL now, yet CCP flails along paddling the fail boat trying to do resource intensive manual investigations and bans. If they'd actually just break bots and obfuscate their code better, they could stop paying us lip service and show real results.
Roll Sizzle Beef
Space Mutiny
#82 - 2012-03-27 03:05:34 UTC
For punishment, first & second strikes. they should lose various ship privileges for an advanced time after unbanning like getting a DUI.
A caught mining bot loses Barge skills for a month on first strike and 3 months on second.
Caught ratting bots lose rights to BC and above for a month, then 3 month.
Get a first strike as a miner bot and a second as a rater bot jump to 3 month ban on both trees.
Benny Ohu
Royal Amarr Institute
Amarr Empire
#83 - 2012-03-27 03:07:27 UTC
Hi, only read the OP

Sreegs said that most botters clean up their act once they'd been banned for the first time (a week?). With the removal of their botted ISK there's no reason to mark someone who didn't gain anything from it, isn't doing it any more, and is probably sorry they did it.

There might be a reason to mark someone who has been banned forever...

Also taking the opportunity to request the next botting devblog include an animated GIF of a Maller shooting at robots
Tcar
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#84 - 2012-03-27 03:08:47 UTC
Roll Sizzle Beef wrote:
For punishment, first & second strikes. they should lose various ship privileges for an advanced time after unbanning like getting a DUI.
A caught mining bot loses Barge skills for a month on first strike and 3 months on second.
Caught ratting bots lose rights to BC and above for a month, then 3 month.
Get a first strike as a miner bot and a second as a rater bot jump to 3 month ban on both trees.


Now that. . . that I like.
Scrapyard Bob
EVE University
Ivy League
#85 - 2012-03-27 03:09:46 UTC
Voith wrote:
Name and shame.


I think that's a reasonable approach on the 3rd offense, resulting perma-ban.

Possibly a reasonable approach on the 2nd offense. Especially if they are warned after the first offense.

But naming / shaming or tagging with a scarlet letter for the first offense goes too far.

(For name/shame I want it at the corp/alliance level as well as information by region as to where people have been banned over the past 90 days. I don't think it needs to be finer-grained then that.)
Pedro Snachez
Red Horse Heavy Industries
#86 - 2012-03-27 03:10:22 UTC
Tcar wrote:
Pedro Snachez wrote:
People who are caught and shamed are probably more likely to just quit than to try to "become a better person". That or biomass the character.


Good, quit, or roll up a new toon. Either way works for me. They can play wow or spend more of some sort of subscription money while training a new character.


The problem with that is that it is redundant with what CCP is already doing with bots (bans). CCP Sreegs seems to be interested in a system to correct peoples' behavior via shame with the intention of them NOT quitting or rerolling a character. It's satisfying for those of us who don't bot to say GTFO to botters, but that doesn't seem to be what CCP Sreegs is aiming for here. With the reaction people have towards bots it is highly likely anyone caught would find quitting preferable to dealing with the malice they would undoubtedly experience. Therefore, shaming = self imposed banning.
Ai Shun
#87 - 2012-03-27 03:10:25 UTC
CCP Sreegs wrote:
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?


It would allow me to block those players, ignore contracts from them and generally ensure I don't need to interact with people that try to ruin EVE for the rest of us that play the game legitimately. This is not the same as scamming, can-flipping or similar but a deliberate breach of the EULA. I'd rather not play with those kinds of ass-hats and if I can prevent myself from actively interacting with them or supporting them through such interaction that would be great.

It does not matter to me if this is the first time they have been caught or not; the anti-botting stance is fundamentally entrenched in almost every single MMO out there. They cannot claim ignorance and I don't care if they repent or not - they actively chose to break that contract with CCP and the other players of EVE Online.
Largo Usagi
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#88 - 2012-03-27 03:11:16 UTC
Well as a former CEO and one who had logs of all of his corp members ratting I realized I had a botter in my corp. The pilot was on 14 Hours a day and brought a HUGE amount of ISK into the corp. That stated personally I feel that it adversely effects every one in the game but at the time my corp was befitting from the botter and shortly was removed.

I approve the scarlet letter with another side effect, removal of corp taxes yielded from the botter.

Here is some quick Math lets say a decent bot can get 80m an hour(this is not unheard of)
80m an hour
1.12b a day at roughly 14 hours a day with scheduled variance.

Now with 10% going to the corp that's
8m an hour
112m a day in the corp wallet.

In a 30 day cycle that's almost 3.4b isk

That immense amount of isk is seen by the corp that recruits a botter, and that is incentive to recruit botters and turn a blind eye if it is going on. Now if the corp lost 3.4b isk with the botter that isk is out of the economy and the corp feels the punishment too. If the scarlet lettering is in place and the player gets punished for botting the removal should be double that to server as a deterrent from recruiting players that have been flagged as botting. So if the player isn't a problem and isn't punished as a repeat offender then the corp has no issue but if they are then the corp has to feel the consequences of its risky decision.

This is real consequence already in play with new ones stacked to deter corporations from recruiting known botters.

Also a public list of the players who have been permaband from the game and bio-massed is useless, they are gone and never to be seen again.

A scarlet letter for a year of visibility is a fair idea because that allows for the possibility of oops i ****** up please don't perma ban me. I dont think a 3 strikes system should be in place here either, 2 is plenty, if you get a reprimand once then you now know the rules in this area. If you get a reprimand a second time then you deserve to get permaband for botting.

TL;DR

Make it publically shown if a pilot has been cought botting
Wrap corporate level punishments for pilots with Scarlett letters if they get banned again.
Kenpachi Viktor
Perkone
Caldari State
#89 - 2012-03-27 03:12:22 UTC
CCP Sreegs wrote:
Ohh Yeah wrote:
Scarlet Letters should be implemented, but not visible to all players.

These should only be visible to corp CEOs when a pilot has put in an application to the corporation. Something along the lines of a notice that the applicant has had strikes against their account for botting.

This allows conscientious CEOs to turn away players with whom they seek to prevent their corporation members from exchanging ISK with. I say this because botters tend to be notorious for a certain type of transaction which is not allowed. I don't think any CEO would want potentially dirty ISK being passed directly from a "marked" botter to their corp members through trades, contracts, or what have you. There's also the possibility that one player's knowledge of botting could easily be shared to others (I think, Darius, you are familiar with a certain Space Captain Schettino who crashed his corporation into the rocks by spreading knowledge of botting).

Lying about your intentions ("Oh I'm not joining this WH corp to clean out the hangars") is one thing, but being able to lie about actions taken against your account is another.

TL;DR - Strikes not visible to everyone, only CEO/Directors of corps when a player with strikes against their account applies to that corporation. This allows them to make smart decisions and not accept players they would not otherwise.


Being familiar with how things work you know I'd just make a corp and publish the info using some really cool API app. :(


But if you can only see the mark when they've applied to your corp, you're not going to get many ex botters applying to it if you're doing a public naming of them.
If you combine this with a 6 (first offence) or 12 (second offence) month duration of the mark, you have an incentive for reformed botters to stay clean.
As for what the mark is, I'd suggest a time/date stamp and why type of botting they were doing.

A war that would’ve involved 20,000 players, 75% of nullsec space, and hundreds of supercapitals was halted not by diplomacy, but by a game mechanic so dreadful that those who have experienced it previously have no desire to do so again. - Fix POS & SOV
Gilbaron
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#90 - 2012-03-27 03:13:25 UTC  |  Edited by: Gilbaron
CCP Sreegs wrote:
Gilbaron wrote:
name and shame wont help the problem

bots will move away from corporations and stay in npc corps

players behind the bots will get better at hiding their true identity, bot isk, sell for money, buy plex with money, sell plex for isk, really difficult for CCP to find their true identity if stuff like TOR and Virtual Machines is used to hide the true ID and details of the computer

an anonymous list (3 market bots in jita, 40 ratting bots in XXX, 50 mining bots in YYY were banned today, they lost a total of ZZZ isk and assets worth XXX isk since they were aquired via botting) of those in their first and second strike and a a public list of those characters permabanned might be a good idea to state clearly that CCP is actively fighting bots


While I love the mythology that people have that they can remain anonymous on the internet it's a falsehood over time. The idea that, especially given EVE and all of the numbers involved, we can actually focus on this and any other *example here norms* apply is pretty silly.

The margins on one hand are completely different and we allow PLEX. We've shown at least three times in the early days that we can focus and completely shut down a bot developer because the margins frankly aren't there.

If you think this is some world where someone doing a bad activity we care about can just magically vanish those dog days are pretty much over.


so you say that you can still identify me if im using TOR via 3g on my laptop for my bot and my normal Cable internet on my desktop for normal gaming, running two accounts who never ever have touched each other ingame and dont have anything in common on the account management site ? thats pretty interesting and i would like to hear more

concerning PLEX i think i have to agree with you, they are likely the single most powerfull weapon against professional RMTers but will do nothing about the guys who are simply to lazy to go and farm their ships via hard work like everybody else
Zleon Leigh
#91 - 2012-03-27 03:14:23 UTC  |  Edited by: Zleon Leigh
Personal and Corporate recruiting security is paramount - even if CCP can reverse harm and unwind round two of dirty dealings that takes a lot of time, which can significantly impact players and corps. They can still do business on the open markets, but at least I could avoid contracts and trades with probable repeat offenders. Let's set that deterrence bar as high as possible. Since you are determined to not make it a one strike and you are out (which is what is should be), then the Scarlet Letter it is.

Incarna - Newest business example of mismanaged capital. CCP - Continuing to gank independent PI producers every day

PvP's latest  incentive program ** Unified Inventory **  'Cause you gotta kill something after trying to use it
Dar Saleem
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#92 - 2012-03-27 03:14:52 UTC
Make an NPC corporation called something line "Concord penal legion" and put characters in it

Make a high tax rate, make it they cant leave for 6 months and possibly that you can war dec it.
Ordais
DARK ORCHESTRA
#93 - 2012-03-27 03:16:56 UTC  |  Edited by: Ordais
Why is it good?

- because as a CEO, i can identify botters and NOT let them into my corp.
- because if i think someone is a bot, and is already marked, i know you are on to it and i won't misuse the "report bot" function (less work for you)
- it detracts from botting, or at least they have to recycle accounts more often = more use of plex

how to make it work?
- make it a "after 2nd strike" rule, = you don't get marked for your first offence. No mercy for REPEATED botting.
- make it time limited, if you do well for 6months/1year, you are unmarked again
- make it VISIBLE...don't hide it behind x-menues. i would even like to see what market orders come from ex-tradebots

I normally are not for mob-justice, because it doesn't work. But in this case its not about determination of guilt, thats your job, so all what happens is ppl can keep themselves safe not interacting with botters isk wise.
Tcar
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#94 - 2012-03-27 03:17:13 UTC  |  Edited by: Tcar
Pedro Snachez wrote:
Tcar wrote:
Pedro Snachez wrote:
People who are caught and shamed are probably more likely to just quit than to try to "become a better person". That or biomass the character.


Good, quit, or roll up a new toon. Either way works for me. They can play wow or spend more of some sort of subscription money while training a new character.


The problem with that is that it is redundant with what CCP is already doing with bots (bans). CCP Sreegs seems to be interested in a system to correct peoples' behavior via shame with the intention of them NOT quitting or rerolling a character. It's satisfying for those of us who don't bot to say GTFO to botters, but that doesn't seem to be what CCP Sreegs is aiming for here. With the reaction people have towards bots it is highly likely anyone caught would find quitting preferable to dealing with the malice they would undoubtedly experience. Therefore, shaming = self imposed banning.


Except that generally, people who bot, by in large aren't doing it on their mains or even their main accounts. They are doing it on alt accounts with trash characters. it's not like it takes a heck of a lot to roll up a Hulk pilot or even a tengu alt, especially with the whole "power of 2" deals, buddy passes etc.

Name them when they are banned. It's not like some dude is going to be macro mining ice,ark etc on his main. I also doubt a hard core botter is gonna do anom/belt etc botting on their main. If they biomass the toon, so what. I doubt that getting caught macroing is going to make someone quit EVE entirely, and if it does, then I am not sure I want that person in this game to begin with, since they want to play a different game than I am.
Kai Tel
State War Academy
Caldari State
#95 - 2012-03-27 03:18:03 UTC
It would just be a meta-gaming tool for griefing people out of the game. You’d be setting someone up for a lot of abuse from players where a more forceful perma-ban system would work better and be a lot cleaner for CCP’s image with media and its own. Look at the fallout from the alliance panel right now. Do you really want to give someone another stick to call “bullying” and beat CCP over the head with again? Though I am to a point where I wish you would look at a means of making miner botting part of the game so you can control and regulate it to our benifit and put the outlaws out of business. It all reads too much like alcohol prohibition age stuff from American history right now. LOL.
Ai Shun
#96 - 2012-03-27 03:18:10 UTC
Gilbaron wrote:
so you say that you can still identify me if im using TOR via 3g on my laptop for my bot and my normal Cable internet on my desktop for normal gaming, running two accounts who never ever have touched each other ingame and dont have anything in common on the account management site ? thats pretty interesting and i would like to hear more


Here is a piece on Forbes that shows how Target used their systems to determine a customer was likely to be pregnant and advised this customer ... well. Read the article. Do not underestimate the footprint you leave in terms of movement, actions, communication and so forth. I think it would be damn difficult, but I wouldn't write it off as impossible either.
Nemo deBlanc
Resource Acquisition Unlimited
#97 - 2012-03-27 03:19:43 UTC
Gilbaron wrote:
CCP Sreegs wrote:
Gilbaron wrote:
name and shame wont help the problem

bots will move away from corporations and stay in npc corps

players behind the bots will get better at hiding their true identity, bot isk, sell for money, buy plex with money, sell plex for isk, really difficult for CCP to find their true identity if stuff like TOR and Virtual Machines is used to hide the true ID and details of the computer

an anonymous list (3 market bots in jita, 40 ratting bots in XXX, 50 mining bots in YYY were banned today, they lost a total of ZZZ isk and assets worth XXX isk since they were aquired via botting) of those in their first and second strike and a a public list of those characters permabanned might be a good idea to state clearly that CCP is actively fighting bots


While I love the mythology that people have that they can remain anonymous on the internet it's a falsehood over time. The idea that, especially given EVE and all of the numbers involved, we can actually focus on this and any other *example here norms* apply is pretty silly.

The margins on one hand are completely different and we allow PLEX. We've shown at least three times in the early days that we can focus and completely shut down a bot developer because the margins frankly aren't there.

If you think this is some world where someone doing a bad activity we care about can just magically vanish those dog days are pretty much over.


so you say that you can still identify me if im using TOR via 3g on my laptop for my bot and my normal Cable internet on my desktop for normal gaming, running two accounts who never ever have touched each other ingame and dont have anything in common on the account management site ? thats pretty interesting and i would like to hear more

concerning PLEX i think i have to agree with you, they are likely the single most powerfull weapon against professional RMTers but will do nothing about the guys who are simply to lazy to go and farm their ships via hard work like everybody else


CCP uses hardware fingerprints as well as IP's. But it's still quite the fallacy on their part to try and pretend like people don't fake that as well. They've said bans are also on actual people, not just an account. But even if so, nothing stops Russians who bot EVE for a living from just using their grandmother for billing.
Mintala Arana
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#98 - 2012-03-27 03:22:12 UTC
Four things come to mind.

  • Some people don't want botters in their corps, so a "scarlet letter" would allow filtering applicants for this.
  • Some people don't want to do business with botters, so you get a benefit there.
  • Some people's play style is oriented toward, umm, making other players miserable; perhaps they'd prefer to pick on botters?

These are all positives, overall.

  • People identified as botters will be pariahs.

This is sort of a negative overall.
Razin
The Scope
#99 - 2012-03-27 03:22:21 UTC
Besides the fact that such a thing would be somewhat immersion breaking, I really couldn't care less about knowing if someone had been caught botting. All I want is Delayed Local so that the players have a chance to self-police in 0.0 at the very least. Why isn't this getting done??
Nemo deBlanc
Resource Acquisition Unlimited
#100 - 2012-03-27 03:25:59 UTC
Razin wrote:
Besides the fact that such a thing would be somewhat immersion breaking, I really couldn't care less about knowing if someone had been caught botting. All I want is Delayed Local so that the players have a chance to self-police in 0.0 at the very least. Why isn't this getting done??


This. But make it no local. There's absolutely no easier fix for CCP to address botting than simply not sending clients info on players in a system until the player is detected by scanning/entering grid. Unless I'm missing something, it's the blatantly obvious fix here, and it disappointing me that CCP won't actually make it happen. Sure, nullbears will cry. Who cares?