There are ways CCP can tell if someone is a botter 100%, certainly with the simpler botting programs. The inputs they give are not the same as humans and detectable so its a risk they should take.

Maybe you've never played the 0.0 Sov game but botting has ruined it and its a major cause for super cap proliferation. There are whole areas of EVE given over to cap and super cap production to sell on RMT sites. That needs the approval of the SOV holding alliance.

Do you realise that right now, you can go and buy any EVE product in an online shop and CCP has no way to detect that transaction happened? Why, because they do not have the ability to monitor contracts. Its an enormous hole thats exploited all day every day. The best way they have right now to combat that is to name and shame botters at the alliance level .

You remember incorrectly.

It was 2, not 1%, not 2%... two people out of thousands banned.

We'd need to know the amount of people banned but it's closer to 0.001%


If not, less.

Whether its 1 out of a 1000 or 10,000 thousand it doesn't matter.

If you have a character with say 80mil SP (approx 4 years of investment) and are then suddenly accused and convicted of using a bot and are tagged as such for the entire community to see, only then to be told.. oops, we made a mistake, your reputation in game is finished.

4 years of time of money that you have invested in that character has been destroyed.

Would you be happy if you were that person?

Here is something that could potentially benefit both CCP Games and those playing the market aspect of Eve Online.
If I was going to purchase minerals from the market for my manufacturing jobs that I have pending in a station, I want to make sure that I am not contributing ISK to some botter who is looking to ruin the in-game economy, which they all do anyways.

IIRC at fanfest 1% false positives where stated. Big can of worms indeed.

You remember incorrectly.

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.

Whether its 1 out of a 1000 or 10,000 thousand it doesn't matter.

If you have a character with say 80mil SP (approx 4 years of investment) and are then suddenly accused and convicted of using a bot and are tagged as such for the entire community to see, only then to be told.. oops, we made a mistake, your reputation in game is finished.

4 years of time of money that you have invested in that character has been destroyed.

Would you be happy if you were that person?

I am sure the flag would be removeable. This also happens in real life. People are sent to jail all the time for crimes they do not commit. It's not nice...it's not right...the point is, it is inevitable but a necessary evil for the greater good. In a perfect world prison or punishment wouldn't be needed at all.

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

Very true, and it follows them for life.

I friend of mine was doing some part time work as a taxi driver and decided it would be clever to have sex with one of his customers in his cab late one night.

She then accused him of ****.

A year later she fully admitted it wasn't **** and he was acquitted, but it doesn't matter as it has followed ever since.

This happened nearly 7 years ago.

Its all well and good saying its for the greater good when it doesn't happen to you, but when you are innocent and the spot light and accused of cheating, come back and lets see if you still think its for the greater good.

There's nothing you can do about it though. We live in an imperfect world after all. You are correct to assume that all is good until you are at the receiving end of a bad reputation. But that doesn't change the fact that there will never be a perfect system in this materialistic world we live in. We just have to make do with what we have and move on.

I say do it for a few reasons.

First off, if someone breaks the law there are consequences. You molest a child here in the United States, you are flagged as such for the rest of your life and everywhere you live people know about it.

Second. Knowing if someone has broken the rules or whether that person may or may not be a bad mark on your corp is useful to corp leaders. If I was leading a corp and found out someone was botting or breaking any EULA or ToS they would be instantly booted.

Third. Not only would this be an added deterrent to botting (every little bit helps, no matter how small of a deterrent it is) but personally I think that if given such a flag it should be treated like being a pirate. You broke the rules. You are now flagged as a botter and as such a criminal. You can now be openly attacked in Empire without the safety net of CONCORD to protect you. This would allow CCP to instead of banning bot accounts, put the control in the players hands. If you don't like bots. Go bot hunting. Of course this would also require heavier moderation by CCP and not rely on reports from players to prevent abuse. The identification and flagging of bots should only ever be done by CCP. On the other side of that there would obviously need to be a process for disputing the flag to prevent false positives and griefing of an innocent player. This would however enable players to actively hunt bots and kill them while allowing CCP to keep those accounts active and not lose income from banning them. Heck...put bounties on them too!

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.

This is actually my biggest problem with the thing. We'd be putting ourselves in the position of making a solid statement that would incur player consequences and I prefer to stay out of the sandbox if that makes sense.

But does simply adding risk without the capacity to become a good citizen by curbing action make sense is I guess what I'm curious about?

Casual botters and professional botters alike shouldn't be welcome in the game. So running any type of botters out of the game is for the best i think.

I believe there is really no true benefit to knowing the character name of a botter that has been identified or punished by CCP.

What I think naming and shaming will be do is perpetrate negative behavior towards the individual who has been caught. Even though the true person will remain anonymous this will not deter some of the individuals in the the EvE community who thrive on griefing and harassing.

There is a large negative presence of hate in this game. This hate is fueled by "it's happened to me, so what do I care if I do it to someone else" mentality in this game. It may be a pipe dream, but I wish for shift in this type of negativity in this game. However, I just don't ever see it happening. Over the years, it has gotten worse. I only expect it to get worse. Naming and shaming will only fuel this.

So in closing there is no point to naming and shaming. Issue stricter punishments to the offenders. There should be no double jeopardy.

In closing the only thing I can see naming a character would do is protect a potential buyer that the character they are interested in has been identified as a botter by CCP. However, with CCP's new policy of freezing a character to an account, the need to name and shame is mitigated.

Just my .02.