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Ankhesentapemkah
Gallente
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Posted - 2008.05.03 18:52:00 -
[1]
Now that Eve has grown over the past years, and due to a dev claiming that 80% of the accounts belong to an unique individual, I think it's time to get rid of these bots, as the dent in CCP's income is not that severe at this point.
Bots are bad for the economy, and they are very accessible I found, just a simple google query yields tons of these programs. These programs can also contain virusses and trojans, and players tempted to try them out, partially due to lack of action against botters from CCP's part, lose their account in this fashion.
However, I'm going to quote Raph Koster again, as he has a very appropriate quote:
 Quote:
Macroing, botting, and automation
No matter what you do, someone is going to automate the process of playing your world.
Corollary:
Looking at what parts of your game players tend to automate is a good way to determine which parts of the game are tedious and/or not fun.
Mining and mission running is a grind that is not fun, at least not after you have been doing it for a few months and go through the same loops over and over and over. I'd like to see these systems made a lot more interesting. |
Ankhesentapemkah
Gallente
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Posted - 2008.05.03 20:16:00 -
[2]
Don't forget that there are other games as well, and that there is a game that recently tackled the bots quite effectively.
That game is Guild Wars.
It was plagued by bots and the game masters litterally banned hundreds of accounts a day but there was no end to it.
They already had some automated systems in place that would flag suspicious players, I assume it was based on their time online, the amount of zones loaded and the intervals, and most importantly the amount of loot acquired.
But bots were totally crushed when they did the following:
1) New accounts could not trade for 24 hours, to avoid account purchases by stolen creditcards.
2) Mobilize the players to report the bots.
Players can now simply type /report and target a bot, and then select the offense (botting/spamming/leeching/etc). No further input is required, just type report, that's all. The account gets looked at immediately, especially if reported by multiple people. You can easily report 30 bots per minute, and watch as they get kicked. Thousands and thousands of bots got banned, and Guild Wars and Bergen is now again Bergen Hot Springs instead of Bergen Bot Springs.
A similar system would work quite well in Eve to get rid of them, once CCP is willing to undertake action, that is. |
Ankhesentapemkah
Gallente
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Posted - 2008.05.04 08:09:00 -
[3]
Originally by: Arithron
Quote:
In the EULA, Item 7-A-3: You may not use macros or other stored rapid keystrokes or other patterns of play that facilitate acquisition of items, currency, objects, character attributes, rank or status at an accelerated rate when compared with ordinary Game play.
I'm in full agreement with others on their stance against Macro's (and other 3rd party software). I was trying to point out that farmers present a different challenge, since they aren't technically in breach of the EULA (since anyone could do what they are doing, and they aren't accelerating anything). Thus, CCP can currently only address the RMT area associated with this. I see this as two different areas. Firstly, things can be farmed. Secondly, items from in-game activities are sold for real money (RMT). One is currently not in breach of the EULA, the other definately is and is acted upon already by CCP (and I'm in full support of them doing so!).
This question might provoke some interesting material for the discussion and move it forward;
How, apart from scale, is farming missions any different than alliances farming BS spawns and asteroids?
Take care,
Bruce Hansen
If they currently aren't in breach of the EULA, then the EULA should simply be changed to prohibit any AUTOMATED interaction with the client. That'd blanket 3rd party notification programs, macroing, and (spam)bots. |
Ankhesentapemkah
Gallente
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Posted - 2008.05.04 13:31:00 -
[4]
Originally by: Inanna Zuni
Whenever we see the apparent behaviour of macroers we use our experience of how 'normal' pilots behave to determine that we have found a macroer.
Not me. As a programmer, I've made a lot of stuff including relatively complex NPC AIs for my Ultima Online server (to be specific, henchmen AIs to assist the player in various flavours which responded to text commands).
Later on as a fun project I made a bot for Guild Wars that would fight in special event 'costume brawl' PVP matches. It actually managed to win a lot of the times. Disclaimer: I have not used the bot in Guild Wars beyond the initial test runs, and I have never botted or automated Eve Online in any fashion.
Anyway, to get to the point, I know how complex and relatively indistinguishable bots can be from human players. However, that does not mean that there are no ways to flush them out. But I think the game masters should work with the players on this one: Players reporting suspiciuos individuals and game masters sifting through the log files. Yes, innocent players get banned, and we need good support to make sure that the appeals are processed in hours.
I have actually been on the receiving end of an incorrect ban in Guild Wars, and immediately provided support with evidence with which they could determine I was not botting or exploiting. They unbanned me in less than 2 hours. I think the fair game we get as a result of lack of bots is worth any inconvenience suffered through incorrect bans.
Originally by: Inanna Zuni
I would very much like to see a roundtable discussion on how to recognise the macroers and create an effective ingame solution as one of the earlier topics in the life of the CSM.
I definately agree. This is a serious issue, which has a significant impact on the game. I think both CCP and the honest players benefit immensely if the CSM would spend some time looking into this. |
Ankhesentapemkah
Gallente
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Posted - 2008.05.04 13:38:00 -
[5]
Originally by: count sporkula
how about this. given that other programs are detecting if they are running twice (diablo 2 for example)
Easily taken out of the executable with a simple text editor. Plus there are many players that run multiple clients legitemately.
Originally by: count sporkula
why then wouldn't CCP purchase a few of these macro programs and write an anti-program like behavior if the client where to detect that program (kind of like a mini anti-virus program). if other programs are quite capable of doing this why hasn't CCP implemented such a thing? do you think a similar approach could be useful? or do you think this would be counter productive for them and/or cause too many player issues?
I'm not eager of having a warden/punkbuster spy tool running on my system that monitors what I'm doing. As much as I love to see the bots gone, I think this is a too severe invasion of privacy. It's like DRM, there are enough ways to fool even them, and in the end only legitimate users are harmed while the malicous ones continue on their merry way. There are other ways to get rid of the bots. |
Ankhesentapemkah
Gallente
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Posted - 2008.05.04 14:22:00 -
[6]
Originally by: count sporkula
i understand this but you can setup an integrity check. and i was only using this as a very basic idea as the names of a few others escape me at the moment.
Ah okay.
Ideas are always welcome  |
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