Lin was right then, apparently, and I'll admit that my presumption was speculatively wrong (as even Stillman mentions the trend isn't big enough to be more than speculation).

Strangely, bot-friendly game design appears to have slightly reduced the number of bots caught in high-sec.

I've got to admit I didn't see this coming. I stand corrected.

I think I have said to you some days ago what now is stated by numbers.

The big cargo hold is all what real miners always wanted (since mining is so boring, then make it easy to AFK it).

Big cargo = no need for a bot to empty the ship for you, 1 manual unload per hour allows lots of AFKing without automated programs.

I operated under the impression prior to Stillman's comment, that because AFK mining only required one input per hour it would favor botting because bot activity would not be distinguishable from normal gameplay due to infrequent inputs.

I suppose it's possible that I'm more right about that than I realized and that the speculatively lowering trend is due to decreasing ease-of-detection. But I sincerely doubt that, so I'm taking Stillman at his word.

They're catching marginally less botters than they used to catch in high-sec post-barge buff.

Enjoy your "I told you so's," I guess, if that's what you need to do.

This changes nothing about my opinion of the barge buffs and their negative impact on Eve's economy. Those points remain clearly valid.

I operated under the impression prior to Stillman's comment, that because AFK mining only required one input per hour it would favor botting because bot activity would not be distinguishable from normal gameplay due to infrequent inputs.

This changes nothing about my opinion of the barge buffs and their negative impact on Eve's economy. Those points remain clearly valid.

Enjoy your "I told you so's," I guess, if that's what you need to do.

This changes nothing about my opinion of the barge buffs and their negative impact on Eve's economy. Those points remain clearly valid.

I am bad with maths. Does the data show anything else that CCP catches even less bots now after the changes that make bots indistinguishable from bot-aspirant AFK miners?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%3Dmx%2Bc

What screegs posted was the equation for a linear graph.

High-sec: y1 = -0.0011x + 0.773
0.0: y2 = 0.0008x + 0.1651

The y is the vertical part of the graph, the x the horizontal part of the graph.

The numbers above -0.0011 and 0.0008 are the gradient (i.e. the steepness) of the graph.

Anything positive shows the graph is increasing gradient (i.e. the line is increasing in y as x increases).
Anything negative shows a decreasing gradient.

tldr;
What these numbers show, is that in Hisec, the number of botters has decreased slightly, and increased in null.

I'm not sure what the graphs represent exactly (I think the y part is number of bots, x is time?), but that's my take on it.

Edit: Less in highsec, i.e. less being caught, as that was the context, more being caught in null.

Yeah, so CCP catches less bots in high-sec now as the average bot-aspirant AFK miner is indistinguishable from a bot?

Humans don't provide inputs precisely on-schedule down to the millisecond once per hour like a mining bot would.

I think the issue is what's already been posted above: Mining requires so little effort now that bots are no longer required to do the job for hours on-end without going insane.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%3Dmx%2Bc

What screegs posted was the equation for a linear graph.

High-sec: y1 = -0.0011x + 0.773
0.0: y2 = 0.0008x + 0.1651

The y is the vertical part of the graph, the x the horizontal part of the graph.

The numbers above -0.0011 and 0.0008 are the gradient (i.e. the steepness) of the graph.

Anything positive shows the graph is increasing gradient (i.e. the line is increasing in y as x increases).
Anything negative shows a decreasing gradient.

tldr;
What these numbers show, is that in Hisec, the number of botters has decreased slightly, and increased in null.

I'm not sure what the graphs represent exactly (I think the y part is number of bots, x is time?), but that's my take on it.

Edit: Less in highsec, i.e. less being caught, as that was the context, more being caught in null.

I'm finding this discussion very interesting indeed.

But from my perspective alone, it makes no sense to design things around the fact it could be botted. Because *everything* can be botted. That's something we can't change.

As to the lines from earlier, they're just macro trends. They give you an idea of the overall trend, but don't read too much into it beyond that.

I'm finding this discussion very interesting indeed.

But from my perspective alone, it makes no sense to design things around the fact it could be botted. Because *everything* can be botted. That's something we can't change.

As to the lines from earlier, they're just macro trends. They give you an idea of the overall trend, but don't read too much into it beyond that.

I'd counter that by saying that, as a rough rule of thumb, the more exciting and interesting a given gameplay mechanic is, the harder it is to bot it effectively and the less incentive. Making mechanics utterly predictable and repetitive (eg: mining, anomalies, missions) not only makes botting very easy, it provides a very strong incentive to do it in the first place. The more intelligence, intuition, decision making and pattern recognition required to accomplish a gameplay task, the better.