Having talked with the devs responsible for the bot bans at fanfest i can confirm that what he said is true. It's just not possible to fully remove bots, but compared to how the game was in 2014-2016, the difference huge. It's so much better now.
@@Microphunktv-jb3kj for many people multiboxing is used as a means to mine faster wich i know it lowers prices on items related to mining... But on the flip side it lowers the cost for new players getting in EVE to buy stuff that is used at the beginning instead of slowing down new players or in the worst case make them quit because it takes too long to get anywhere in buying ships/equipment ... Also it fuels wars within new eden because they cost ALOT to supply them and keep the war going AKA mine faster-get more ressources-make more equipment/ships/ammo.... in the end the number of people who ACTIVELY use multiboxing to PVP - RAT - MINE compared to the number who are just enjoying the other mechanics that requires ACTIVE playtime IMO are not THAT bad and not influencing the experience enough for CCP to step in but its just my input no offense meant :) cheers!!
@@gamerelite3989 didnt say anything about multiboxing, just noticing how playerbase is llower concurrent when in early days... i remember 40k people being online, and multiboxing wasnt prevalent back then my char is really old since 2008... but played on/off very little actually, only 40mil SP... have played a bit now, and realized its practically impossible to play this game without having atleats 3 accounts.... specially when u want to live in wormhole , unavoidable ganks are constant if u dont multibox and have scouts in multiple wh entrances , so u can acvtually mine lol... its prtetty safe if theres only 2 incoming wh in C1 to afk mine tho, 90% of the time.. but spawns generally way more connections... so u cant even play the content properly... not the mention how insane the inflation has become,, last itime i pllayed machartiel cost 700 mil and plex was also around 700-800 mil, now its 2.,5bil , wtf ... not to mention the disgusting Pressure to buy "discounted" packs and stuff what the game pushes all the time... skill injectors... MCT etc... people probably spend way more money than they used to on this game... only part i like, is how nice visually the game has become, lot of details compared to what it used to be ; ) well ive done AIR program, the new player experience tutorial with guided storyline is pretty good.. they should sell Storypacks instead.. i quiet actually enjoyed the tutorial almost forgot i was playing eve , the fact how much new skills they have put into game... and how long it takes to train things as always (i think some skills feel like they are lowered how much time it takes...) it def pressures specially new players to spend a lot of money on injectors etc.. wich i find to be EXTREMELY overpriced, even Paradox Interactive greed is notorious and pales in comparrison... :D comeone.. 500k injector bil or.. dont remember how many euros... it literally speeds training only a week rofl... Influence map doesnt seem to be changed at all almost, literally same 3-4 alliances in power.. wich makes the game stale in that aspect well not completely unchanged, glad to see NC / Northerenrs / PL have pushed out RUsskies from the east... and territory has Kalevala Express..... (not many people understand the psychology and symbology behind it behind it haha... i dont think that kind of level political mirroring of history shouldnt be allowed in videogames , onyl thing it does it literally create divide in real world )
@@Microphunktv-jb3kj while having alts is normal, multiboxing is not done by the majority of players. but realistically i would not surprised if we see a 15-25% drop in concurrent player count.
I don't understand if it was a fresh alpha account (I assume) or a fresh omega account. I think CCP will go harder to alpha because they are like leechers to them, instead omega are the one who pay the server bill and the salary of the CEO
@@giancarloriccio8890 that's not how CCP sees Alpha 😂 I covered this in my Alpha/Omega videos, but CCP know that Alpha are the free players who provide content and community. Same with games like Fortnite/Apex etc where over 97% of players never spend a single penny but exist to prop the game up providing teammates and opponents that keep the game alive. 2% of players barely spend. Less than 1% of players make up about 98% of the income for EVE.
@@captainbenzie yes ive seen your video, and I agree about the necessity to have alpha accounts, they are a bless... But you must agree that an alpha account caught botting or input broadcasting is punished with lesser concerns by CCP. instead if you try to bot with several accounts that has been 12 months omega it will be a different story...
@@giancarloriccio8890 no, I mustn't agree, in fact I actively disagree. To CCP, a rules break is a rules break. Alpha, Omega, some unknown, or one of the great names of EVE. They all get treated fairly. There is zero evidence otherwise.
ban waves are mostly done to prevent information for the cheat/bot devs to be obvious the longer the time the more patches the cheat/bot devs need to check what did detect them
(from 3:40 till 4:05) "so when main ship lock and start firing the other ships lock and firing as well" how? i dont mean about drone assist i mean about pre activated weapons
Interesting video, thanks. I heard some good points and some unfounded points too... On players perception of bots in EvE: Yes people are being daft saying "CCP don't do anything about bots". But I sympathize with those that might think this. The most egregious example is the Jita Chat spam bots. They are there 23/7 spamming, making Jita local chat all but useless. It really should be very easy to fix this but CCP do not. It's not surprising that players see CCP as doing nothing when something so visible is apparently accepted by CCP. Why do you think CCP act so slowly (or not at all) regarding spam bots? On RMT: 10:50 You make the assertion that "many bots are involved in RMT". Do you have anything to back that up? Yes I know RMT happens, but you're making a big claim saying that a majority of bots are related to RMT without providing any proof. Some players might say the majority of bots are supporting large null sec blocs (also without any proof I hasten to add!). I hear a lot of conjecture, but no proof or evidence. My tangible experience: We had the same 50+ FW bots operating around the clock for almost 7 months before being banned. 7 months of many players reporting them and no bans. We know this as we all received 50+ notifications when they eventually banned them. If CCP require 7 months to "shut down an RMT business" as you assert, they are very much losing this fight. Another wave of bots came back less than 2 months later all behaving in the same way as before. The FW bots were so prolific that they had quite a large effect on the FW map, making systems go from 90% safe to vulnerable. I took a break at that point as it made a mockery of FW. It was more Bot War, not Faction War. For peoples perception around CCP's (in)action around bots to be improved, they really need to step their game up and reduce the amount of time it takes to take down and negate each new bot variation. If they don't, no amount of "good publicity" is going to sway players perceptions given what they experience in game.
The point I was sorting of alluding to in this video is that the faster you take down bots, the bigger the issue arguably becomes because it's ineffective to take them down quickly and randomly. The only effective way is to take it slow, hit hard. CCP are doing fine. Compare EVE to botspam in games like WoW. Even Jita 4-4 is minimal.
@12:07 The difference is that the only one making real money with PLEX is CCP. Players may _save_ real money, when they pay for a subscription with PLEX. But nobody _makes_ money but CCP. With RMT, third parties make money by selling in game assets (PLEX included).
MacGybo has put out a few youtube videos on this topic Eve Online : Jita, Gankers, and Automation Eve Online : The Loot Bots of Jita IV-4 A couple of Videos with a bit more info on this topic that might be of interest to you Captain Benzie o7
@@captainbenzie I just got most of my stuff destroyed in an Iteron while trying to dock JITA, I think game lagged due to the number of people in the vicinity. It's a sad sad situation, not saying, I know I could've been more cautious, but once you clicked the dock button, you expect to be docked, 800m isk - mining and industry for 2 weeks.
Captain how active is the Corp Catskull? I’ve learned so much over the last week watching your vids seems only fitting. Perhaps a video on the benefits of a Coro for new players such as myself. Still on the fence about joining one but it only seems logical.
Interesting stuff, thanks. I do think sometimes people mistake coordinated fleet activities with input broadcasting or botting, but it's good to know CCP is actively working to limit bots.
As an aside botting behavior was a significant part of driving some miner bumping into the Code thing way back in the day. Have you ever considered a lore video on the history of that group from formation to relative fall from primary stated purpose? (if it's been done I'd like to see it)
@@captainbenzie Message sometime if you want an extra bit of personal knowledge for a starting point. A lot of that lot is documented on blogs as well.
I do miss playing Eve I have 2 acc and my friend had 3 acc use to have lot fun mining and doing lvl4 security missions sadly don't have the time or money to spend on it. do they count macro keys on your KB as cheating? use to use them all the time helped with mining and missions
I have a clear question that has been on my mind for a while now. I have 3 accounts now, is it possible to have all 3 accounts running on that one client? Or do I open the client 3 times and sign into each account that way? I play at a library so running multiple computers at the same time is impossible. But staying within the terms of service, can I play my accounts that way?
@@ericsachs9666 thanks a lot. I never done the multiboxing thing but I mainly fly solo anyway because I'm a bit all over the place when it comes to decision making lol. So to save other people headaches I just fly alone. Thought it would be cool to have my characters plow through an Epic Arc.
@@Acion_89 Same here, I play solo due to other problems etc. Have do so since 2006 when I first started. It is easy to do the multiboxing, I use alt tab to move between screens, I suppose you can play it in windowed though I have never checked or tried it. Good luck and enjoy it.
I'm not entirely sure I agree. It should be taken as a given that CCP somewhat know what they're doing and I'd rather updates on new content than "we banned X bots". I just don't see those as figures we need 😅 as it's ultimately meaningless as long as they're being banned.
Think you kisunderstand. The communication with the people that see this happening in their locality. Just a confirmation that investigation ongoing or similar. Often groups are on chat wondering if the situation is being ignored.
@@MrMejIT this. you report a bot, then keep seeing them, so you don't know, if you ended up reporting a genuine player, or whatever. They take away any communication, even the bug report website does not work anymore and you gotta report bugs ingame, with no confirmation if it ever reached devs
@Gildii this and terrible capsuller event has finally caused me to start shutting down my 4 accounts. Just getting better satisfaction from activities in rl than EVE. Hours/days trying new things with pathetic rewards seems to be a huge time sink-very much built in. May return one day but doubtful. Bye EVE! o7
Well said Sir. I'm getting to be an old man now (62) and I'm not known in RL for my reserves of patience but I wouldn't have stuck with Eve for 19 years unless I believed the majority of what you've just stated. CCP know themselves that botting is bad for business (and I do appreciate the difference between botting and multi-boxing). On a tangential note, I've often wondered how many subscribers would leave if we were not allowed three characters on each Omega account. True, you can only play one at a time, but it's irrelevant if you've got three characters trained up for Planetary Interaction (or Planetary Management as its often labelled). As a subscriber I feel pretty well served and I feel for you when you are getting shit-posts. Grow up people!
I came across one of these botters. He was mining with 5 or 7 ships with an orca sitting off to one side. I was wondering how long it would be for him to be banned. This video explains a lot of what I wondered about how this guy was getting away with it.. Though funnily the wife and I were about to jump.. I noticed some gankers suddenly jumping on grid where that Orca was.. I think they were waiting for the wife and I to leave. As I did notice that every few minutes I saw a ship pop on and off the dscan.
Hi Benzie, I recently lost a Drake in a C2 due to a small group of other players. I'm relatively new to WHs and wanted to ask if you could maybe make a video on how to escape a wormhole when you're hunted or give some tipps and tricks what to do to increase your chance of escaping. Thank you for makeing these videos, they are always very informative and entertaining. Fly safe o7
As a person who lost some drakes in Wh before, so here are some tips: spam d-scan, set the filter to capsuleer. If something’s on d-scan, warp to a safe spot immediately. ALWAYS pre-align ur ship to your safe spot unless you are ABSOLUTELY sure that the Wh is completely safe. If someone warps in and you got tackled, it’s very likely that there’s stronger ships coming and ur pretty much dead (at least you can save your pod)
@@titaniummechsx3324 you're mostly right, altho' i've found a whole new twist to this pve ratting in whs... instead of pve fit, make it pvp one, like e.g.: 100mn ikitursa... you'll still be able to destroy c3 sites, and if you get jumped then you just turn it into a pvp affair and make them your chum \o/
All the other answers deal with not having a fleet drop on you; but that isnt always enough. If the entrance you used is being covered, and you cant escape - the safest thing to do - assuming you dont have a combat timer running - is to move to your safe spot - and log out. Come back a few hours later and see if the way out is clear; if not - log out again. I had one group of T3 destroyers hunting my little Corax for around 18 hours before I could get out.
Yea I found while mining then check it but it teleport I went back to another zone came back to that zone but it know when a player port in they automatically port out it like grinding on black desert online
"Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no desire to serve under them", "Live long, and prosper". quotes from Spock ty Captain Benzie
Thanks for this video, it covers a bit of the crossover of botting + multi-boxing which is why some get mad about multi-boxers as covered in some of the discussion on the related video. As a mostly solo player for the last decade though I've always kept an eye on what it costs by ISK to PLEX the game and one of the issues has been botters skewing that market and making that sort of thing more difficult by breaking the EULA rules. Maybe botting scripts should make the pilots involved go suspect and, at least in hi/low sec, the problem could be mitigated further before the player ban hits?
The problem is detection. It's highly unlikely that CCP is directly detecting a botting script being used. Their botting detection is probably indirect. They know how human players behave, and will ban accounts that are so far outside of normal human behavior. For instance, an account that is actively playing the game for 23.5 hours a day, 7 days a week in perpetuity is probably not a human player.
@@danschmidt6206 Absolutely, reaction time, instant duplication of effort and possibly a good deal of proprietary stuff go into it along with some just recording the behavior and reporting them etc. Sadly if CCP coded it so that that obvious bots went flashy yellow someone would likely figure out what the trigger was and just adjust their code to avoid it. Would be nice to see but not likely going to happen.
What I wonder is if the websites that keep advertising themselves (saw a guy advertise his website in the past, reported to CCP, website is still up a year or so later) are actually as uncatchable as they claim, and if CCP cannot do anything about those websites really.
Back in the day I was a lv iv mission runner I joined a Indy Corp was a security guard and a belt prospector id make surveys with a list of the estimated value of the belts in yoma I would mail the Corp the yoma report daily we had to complete with the Borg I personally have little issue with the multi boxers Borg was at least thematic one orca and a fleet of hulks he would mine out the belts but My Corp got the best belts before him due to the yoma report I made a little sub roll for myself in a Indy Corp I was helpful as a combat pilot speced into blockaid runners to haul for the Corp I lost one cepter to a drake theif I got concorded for pointing him😅 good times
Seting up barrier to go between computers seemless with keyboard and.mouse is easy, it's why i don't need a second keyboard and mouse for my streaming pc :)
you mention that people ask "why don't they hire more people to ban bots"... well my thought is that hiring more people casts more money and their job is to ban paying accounts... to literally get paid to work on lowering the income of the company... this is why anti-bot personal at development studios is not really a big thing. Many games are on Steam exclusively to get the protection from Valve's anti-cheat protection...
They are better at this than most, log into any other MMO and the time to RMT spam is about 0.00005 seconds, and that's the good ones, many of them you log in and there's already 3 RMT messages in chat. This was a big problem in EVE many years ago, all local in hisec was just RMT spam and then one day, just like that, they were gone. Forever. No other game has managed this that I'm aware of.
Hi Cpt, we spoke after the last video; part of the frustration is that CCP dont give you any feedback on your reports; I got really frustrated after reporting that entire Corp as being 99% bots, and getting ignored, and having to report each and every account - there were 150 of them !! And the despair of seeing the bot corp membership jump back up to 150, almost the day after I had gotten 50+ of them banned.
@@BrunoMoozika But you dont get any FEEDBACK, about if they acted on the report; such as, "As a result of your report and several others, this account has now been banned".
@@ianemery2925 they do. Heres part of their emails: "While we can‘t provide specific details about the results, your reports have led to actions being taken against a player and their account(s)."
Providing feedback on every case is an insane amount of workload. Imagine getting 1000 complaints a day and having to write bespoke follow-ups to each of them. It's not feasible for the same staff hire issues I mentioned.
I was put on a three day ban for botting, I have never and would never, my accounts date back to 2005, i was actually pretty insulted that they would think after 8000 hours of gameplay i would just throw my accounts away to bot. But I run homefronts over and over, and there are massive amounts of bots.
There's a Gallente ice miner who was banned for botting a few years back because he was "too efficient" to not be botting, he had a three ship fleet. He never botted and got his accounts reinstated after about a week.
Ok i'll just say this and see what you have to say. Major problems are bots near markets for 2 reasons one most gate camps are also sellers at those markets list high end loot wait for buyers then destroy loot and resell. This is easy to do because of second problem bots so many bots that you run into their ships undocking, if not destroyed then you will be within 3 jumps. This is major problem because they then turnaround and sell items or plex for real world money. this is also easy to do using contracts ccp made this even easier with abyssal upgrades which have no calculated value so I can sell them for 100 bil isk in game for $100 real world with no worries of being caught.
Interesting talk, most things are true but sadly given the clicky nature of the game where most actions can be automated botting will never sease to be. Hurts even more when you consider those people are directly correlated to the lack of newer players, as praying on newer players and hoarding becomes increasingly easy thanks to them. You find Eve's current playerbase being a mixture of botters, veterans, and the occasional newer players who abandon the game shortly after, understandibly so. I'm always up for civilised discussions, and although possibly an unpopular take specially for older players, but I'l always strife for whichever direction/decision is taken to make the game fairer on newer players. Eve has potential, as hard as it can be to learn, just sucks to see most of it is dominated by a small few ruining thousand's of other's experiences for the sake of making some money out of it.
getting banned almost immediately may not be a good thing actually, because it gives bot makers pretty good feedback on what is working, and what is not, making it easier to develop bots that don't get detected edit: well, I should have just continued watching
They gotta define terms.. To some multi boxing itself is "botting"... that's crap. Multi boxing has always been legal. .. botting uses scripts and or even ai to run impossible operations.. Fleets can follow without botting .. they can't all harvest the same rock with one button press because that would be botting. I can fleet 4 accounts at once and mine on the same pc without botting or issue. More than that and my attention is dangerously spilt up. I have run fleets of 4 without issue since 2005 .. None of my characters, my oldest character 2004, has ever been banned.
Well idk if it's bots or not but there's a real problem when you literally cannot profit off manufacturing, at all. You can buy a cap cheaper than you can build one. Literally no point in building things yourself. Not sure if this is because of botting but I'm mad about it 😂
Lmao not sure what you're trying to say here. If you're still playing, you must be enjoying something and I think it's ridiculous to suggest they're not adding new content 😂
If botters just earn ISK and buy PLEX for the ISK, its GOOD for CCP. When PLEX price in Jita rises, more players will spend Dollars for PLEX instead of ISK.
Drawing that thin line between botting and multiboxing is some serious copium. If you were meant to be more than 1 person then the game would be designed around that mechanic from the start. You know you're cheating.
@@captainbenzie no they were added in when ccp declared defeat, the game is intended to be played by an individual as an individual. Mental gymnastics bro, Gold star. Edit: and where's the multi box tutorial??? Every other feature has one.
@@crankyboris sorry, it may not be the ORIGINAL design, but designs change? So, you say "EVE isn't designed for multiboxing", but the people who literally make it have tools to allow you to do it and talk about it openly. I think I'll trust the Devs. Edit: Ah yes. No tutorial, ergo it must be unintentional. There's no market tutorial either.
In every game where I multibox I have a macro/chat spam for "Multiboxing without input broadcasting is legal. Read the ToS." There are thousands of midwits who will orbit your multiboxing squad frantically taking screenshots and spamming "reported" or "banned" while doing the rudest emotes available. Part of what we refer to in MMO's as "the social experience."
Multiboxing and having multiple accounts are the worst parts of this game. I get why people do it. Can't trust anyone in this game. But if teaming up with others is just not a realistic option at this point then just let us hire NPC bots to do things with us.
Having talked with the devs responsible for the bot bans at fanfest i can confirm that what he said is true. It's just not possible to fully remove bots, but compared to how the game was in 2014-2016, the difference huge. It's so much better now.
Exactly, it's an ongoing fight
the testimnent how dead the game is, ban multiboxing... and see how many people actually are online rofl.
@@Microphunktv-jb3kj for many people multiboxing is used as a means to mine faster wich i know it lowers prices on items related to mining... But on the flip side it lowers the cost for new players getting in EVE to buy stuff that is used at the beginning instead of slowing down new players or in the worst case make them quit because it takes too long to get anywhere in buying ships/equipment ... Also it fuels wars within new eden because they cost ALOT to supply them and keep the war going AKA mine faster-get more ressources-make more equipment/ships/ammo.... in the end the number of people who ACTIVELY use multiboxing to PVP - RAT - MINE compared to the number who are just enjoying the other mechanics that requires ACTIVE playtime IMO are not THAT bad and not influencing the experience enough for CCP to step in but its just my input no offense meant :) cheers!!
@@gamerelite3989 didnt say anything about multiboxing, just noticing how playerbase is llower concurrent when in early days... i remember 40k people being online, and multiboxing wasnt prevalent back then my char is really old since 2008... but played on/off very little actually, only 40mil SP... have played a bit now, and realized its practically impossible to play this game without having atleats 3 accounts.... specially when u want to live in wormhole , unavoidable ganks are constant if u dont multibox and have scouts in multiple wh entrances , so u can acvtually mine lol... its prtetty safe if theres only 2 incoming wh in C1 to afk mine tho, 90% of the time.. but spawns generally way more connections... so u cant even play the content properly... not the mention how insane the inflation has become,, last itime i pllayed machartiel cost 700 mil and plex was also around 700-800 mil, now its 2.,5bil , wtf ... not to mention the disgusting Pressure to buy "discounted" packs and stuff what the game pushes all the time... skill injectors... MCT etc... people probably spend way more money than they used to on this game...
only part i like, is how nice visually the game has become, lot of details compared to what it used to be ; )
well ive done AIR program, the new player experience tutorial with guided storyline is pretty good.. they should sell Storypacks instead.. i quiet actually enjoyed the tutorial
almost forgot i was playing eve ,
the fact how much new skills they have put into game... and how long it takes to train things as always (i think some skills feel like they are lowered how much time it takes...)
it def pressures specially new players to spend a lot of money on injectors etc.. wich i find to be EXTREMELY overpriced, even Paradox Interactive greed is notorious and pales in comparrison... :D comeone.. 500k injector bil or.. dont remember how many euros... it literally speeds training only a week rofl...
Influence map doesnt seem to be changed at all almost, literally same 3-4 alliances in power.. wich makes the game stale in that aspect
well not completely unchanged, glad to see NC / Northerenrs / PL have pushed out RUsskies from the east... and territory has Kalevala Express..... (not many people understand the psychology and symbology behind it behind it haha... i dont think that kind of level political mirroring of history shouldnt be allowed in videogames , onyl thing it does it literally create divide in real world )
@@Microphunktv-jb3kj while having alts is normal, multiboxing is not done by the majority of players. but realistically i would not surprised if we see a 15-25% drop in concurrent player count.
2:40 I literally clapped and cheered.... amazing really glad to hear this
Thank you
I don't understand if it was a fresh alpha account (I assume) or a fresh omega account. I think CCP will go harder to alpha because they are like leechers to them, instead omega are the one who pay the server bill and the salary of the CEO
@@giancarloriccio8890 that's not how CCP sees Alpha 😂 I covered this in my Alpha/Omega videos, but CCP know that Alpha are the free players who provide content and community. Same with games like Fortnite/Apex etc where over 97% of players never spend a single penny but exist to prop the game up providing teammates and opponents that keep the game alive. 2% of players barely spend. Less than 1% of players make up about 98% of the income for EVE.
@@captainbenzie yes ive seen your video, and I agree about the necessity to have alpha accounts, they are a bless... But you must agree that an alpha account caught botting or input broadcasting is punished with lesser concerns by CCP. instead if you try to bot with several accounts that has been 12 months omega it will be a different story...
@@giancarloriccio8890 no, I mustn't agree, in fact I actively disagree.
To CCP, a rules break is a rules break. Alpha, Omega, some unknown, or one of the great names of EVE. They all get treated fairly. There is zero evidence otherwise.
ban waves are mostly done to prevent information for the cheat/bot devs to be obvious
the longer the time the more patches the cheat/bot devs need to check what did detect them
Exactly
also pirate software mentioned that where use to work they picked a time outside the paypal refund policy so hackers couldent get their money back....
(from 3:40 till 4:05) "so when main ship lock and start firing the other ships lock and firing as well" how? i dont mean about drone assist i mean about pre activated weapons
Interesting video, thanks. I heard some good points and some unfounded points too...
On players perception of bots in EvE:
Yes people are being daft saying "CCP don't do anything about bots". But I sympathize with those that might think this. The most egregious example is the Jita Chat spam bots. They are there 23/7 spamming, making Jita local chat all but useless. It really should be very easy to fix this but CCP do not. It's not surprising that players see CCP as doing nothing when something so visible is apparently accepted by CCP.
Why do you think CCP act so slowly (or not at all) regarding spam bots?
On RMT:
10:50 You make the assertion that "many bots are involved in RMT". Do you have anything to back that up?
Yes I know RMT happens, but you're making a big claim saying that a majority of bots are related to RMT without providing any proof. Some players might say the majority of bots are supporting large null sec blocs (also without any proof I hasten to add!). I hear a lot of conjecture, but no proof or evidence.
My tangible experience:
We had the same 50+ FW bots operating around the clock for almost 7 months before being banned. 7 months of many players reporting them and no bans. We know this as we all received 50+ notifications when they eventually banned them. If CCP require 7 months to "shut down an RMT business" as you assert, they are very much losing this fight. Another wave of bots came back less than 2 months later all behaving in the same way as before. The FW bots were so prolific that they had quite a large effect on the FW map, making systems go from 90% safe to vulnerable. I took a break at that point as it made a mockery of FW. It was more Bot War, not Faction War.
For peoples perception around CCP's (in)action around bots to be improved, they really need to step their game up and reduce the amount of time it takes to take down and negate each new bot variation. If they don't, no amount of "good publicity" is going to sway players perceptions given what they experience in game.
The point I was sorting of alluding to in this video is that the faster you take down bots, the bigger the issue arguably becomes because it's ineffective to take them down quickly and randomly.
The only effective way is to take it slow, hit hard. CCP are doing fine. Compare EVE to botspam in games like WoW. Even Jita 4-4 is minimal.
@12:07
The difference is that the only one making real money with PLEX is CCP. Players may _save_ real money, when they pay for a subscription with PLEX. But nobody _makes_ money but CCP.
With RMT, third parties make money by selling in game assets (PLEX included).
Correct, this is a good way of explaining what I was trying to make
Awesome video. Really clarifies the situation.
Glad it was helpful!
MacGybo has put out a few youtube videos on this topic
Eve Online : Jita, Gankers, and Automation
Eve Online : The Loot Bots of Jita IV-4
A couple of Videos with a bit more info on this topic that might be of interest to you Captain Benzie
o7
Thank you
@@captainbenzie I just got most of my stuff destroyed in an Iteron while trying to dock JITA, I think game lagged due to the number of people in the vicinity. It's a sad sad situation, not saying, I know I could've been more cautious, but once you clicked the dock button, you expect to be docked, 800m isk - mining and industry for 2 weeks.
@@anon7036 Try Ctrl + Shift + f9 turns off outside view every time I get to Jita I do this. helps with that lag
@@anon7036 Sometimes your ship lands a few km short of the station. It’s a mechanic in the game.
@@_hootjohnson That's why you create docking bookmarks in those systems.
Captain how active is the Corp Catskull? I’ve learned so much over the last week watching your vids seems only fitting. Perhaps a video on the benefits of a Coro for new players such as myself. Still on the fence about joining one but it only seems logical.
Very active in wormholes and hisec!
Interesting stuff, thanks. I do think sometimes people mistake coordinated fleet activities with input broadcasting or botting, but it's good to know CCP is actively working to limit bots.
Tuning while on the train. Love the podcasty vids.
Awesome, thank you!
As an aside botting behavior was a significant part of driving some miner bumping into the Code thing way back in the day. Have you ever considered a lore video on the history of that group from formation to relative fall from primary stated purpose? (if it's been done I'd like to see it)
I haven't, since I wasn't aware of the story but it's an interesting idea, thank you!
@@captainbenzie Message sometime if you want an extra bit of personal knowledge for a starting point. A lot of that lot is documented on blogs as well.
@@captainbenzie He is right, this story is crazy and I'd love to hear your spin on it.
I do miss playing Eve I have 2 acc and my friend had 3 acc use to have lot fun mining and doing lvl4 security missions sadly don't have the time or money to spend on it.
do they count macro keys on your KB as cheating? use to use them all the time helped with mining and missions
So I've thought about making a macro that presses the V-key every few secs to keep up on my D-scanning. Would that be a bannable offense ?
Yes
@@captainbenzie #sadpanda
I have a clear question that has been on my mind for a while now. I have 3 accounts now, is it possible to have all 3 accounts running on that one client? Or do I open the client 3 times and sign into each account that way? I play at a library so running multiple computers at the same time is impossible. But staying within the terms of service, can I play my accounts that way?
You need three clients running and they all have to be Omega. I used to run 6 at a time on one computer.
@@ericsachs9666 thanks a lot. I never done the multiboxing thing but I mainly fly solo anyway because I'm a bit all over the place when it comes to decision making lol. So to save other people headaches I just fly alone. Thought it would be cool to have my characters plow through an Epic Arc.
@@Acion_89 Same here, I play solo due to other problems etc. Have do so since 2006 when I first started. It is easy to do the multiboxing, I use alt tab to move between screens, I suppose you can play it in windowed though I have never checked or tried it. Good luck and enjoy it.
You only need then one client. Add each account to it then launch the group or solo. Eve added that with the new client update.
@@mad-hate9009 Where do I find that option?
Great vid and needed to restore confidence. Communication from ccp to those reporting bots does need to be faster and clearer.
I'm not entirely sure I agree. It should be taken as a given that CCP somewhat know what they're doing and I'd rather updates on new content than "we banned X bots". I just don't see those as figures we need 😅 as it's ultimately meaningless as long as they're being banned.
@@captainbenzie also that's Intel for the ones that wrote the scripts and bots
Think you kisunderstand. The communication with the people that see this happening in their locality. Just a confirmation that investigation ongoing or similar. Often groups are on chat wondering if the situation is being ignored.
@@MrMejIT this. you report a bot, then keep seeing them, so you don't know, if you ended up reporting a genuine player, or whatever. They take away any communication, even the bug report website does not work anymore and you gotta report bugs ingame, with no confirmation if it ever reached devs
@Gildii this and terrible capsuller event has finally caused me to start shutting down my 4 accounts. Just getting better satisfaction from activities in rl than EVE. Hours/days trying new things with pathetic rewards seems to be a huge time sink-very much built in. May return one day but doubtful. Bye EVE! o7
Well said Sir. I'm getting to be an old man now (62) and I'm not known in RL for my reserves of patience but I wouldn't have stuck with Eve for 19 years unless I believed the majority of what you've just stated. CCP know themselves that botting is bad for business (and I do appreciate the difference between botting and multi-boxing).
On a tangential note, I've often wondered how many subscribers would leave if we were not allowed three characters on each Omega account. True, you can only play one at a time, but it's irrelevant if you've got three characters trained up for Planetary Interaction (or Planetary Management as its often labelled). As a subscriber I feel pretty well served and I feel for you when you are getting shit-posts. Grow up people!
Haha thank you, and I agree.
I came across one of these botters. He was mining with 5 or 7 ships with an orca sitting off to one side. I was wondering how long it would be for him to be banned. This video explains a lot of what I wondered about how this guy was getting away with it.. Though funnily the wife and I were about to jump.. I noticed some gankers suddenly jumping on grid where that Orca was.. I think they were waiting for the wife and I to leave. As I did notice that every few minutes I saw a ship pop on and off the dscan.
If nothing else, bots do make for good hunting 😂
Hi Benzie, I recently lost a Drake in a C2 due to a small group of other players. I'm relatively new to WHs and wanted to ask if you could maybe make a video on how to escape a wormhole when you're hunted or give some tipps and tricks what to do to increase your chance of escaping.
Thank you for makeing these videos, they are always very informative and entertaining. Fly safe o7
all you can do is make safe spots, have a cloak, and watch dscan like a hawk
As a person who lost some drakes in Wh before, so here are some tips: spam d-scan, set the filter to capsuleer. If something’s on d-scan, warp to a safe spot immediately. ALWAYS pre-align ur ship to your safe spot unless you are ABSOLUTELY sure that the Wh is completely safe. If someone warps in and you got tackled, it’s very likely that there’s stronger ships coming and ur pretty much dead (at least you can save your pod)
@@titaniummechsx3324 you're mostly right, altho' i've found a whole new twist to this pve ratting in whs... instead of pve fit, make it pvp one, like e.g.: 100mn ikitursa... you'll still be able to destroy c3 sites, and if you get jumped then you just turn it into a pvp affair and make them your chum \o/
Check out my wormhole playlist 😉
All the other answers deal with not having a fleet drop on you; but that isnt always enough.
If the entrance you used is being covered, and you cant escape - the safest thing to do - assuming you dont have a combat timer running - is to move to your safe spot - and log out.
Come back a few hours later and see if the way out is clear; if not - log out again.
I had one group of T3 destroyers hunting my little Corax for around 18 hours before I could get out.
Yea I found while mining then check it but it teleport I went back to another zone came back to that zone but it know when a player port in they automatically port out it like grinding on black desert online
Message whisper the player but no reply been a week idk if they using Marco cheats or program that auto does it
"Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no desire to serve under them", "Live long, and prosper". quotes from Spock ty Captain Benzie
Thanks for this video, it covers a bit of the crossover of botting + multi-boxing which is why some get mad about multi-boxers as covered in some of the discussion on the related video. As a mostly solo player for the last decade though I've always kept an eye on what it costs by ISK to PLEX the game and one of the issues has been botters skewing that market and making that sort of thing more difficult by breaking the EULA rules. Maybe botting scripts should make the pilots involved go suspect and, at least in hi/low sec, the problem could be mitigated further before the player ban hits?
The problem is detection. It's highly unlikely that CCP is directly detecting a botting script being used. Their botting detection is probably indirect. They know how human players behave, and will ban accounts that are so far outside of normal human behavior. For instance, an account that is actively playing the game for 23.5 hours a day, 7 days a week in perpetuity is probably not a human player.
@@danschmidt6206 Absolutely, reaction time, instant duplication of effort and possibly a good deal of proprietary stuff go into it along with some just recording the behavior and reporting them etc. Sadly if CCP coded it so that that obvious bots went flashy yellow someone would likely figure out what the trigger was and just adjust their code to avoid it. Would be nice to see but not likely going to happen.
1:29 thats literally me lmao
😂
What I wonder is if the websites that keep advertising themselves (saw a guy advertise his website in the past, reported to CCP, website is still up a year or so later) are actually as uncatchable as they claim, and if CCP cannot do anything about those websites really.
no way Benzie eve vid dropped!
Haha it's been rough irl lately
Back in the day I was a lv iv mission runner I joined a Indy Corp was a security guard and a belt prospector id make surveys with a list of the estimated value of the belts in yoma I would mail the Corp the yoma report daily we had to complete with the Borg I personally have little issue with the multi boxers Borg was at least thematic one orca and a fleet of hulks he would mine out the belts but My Corp got the best belts before him due to the yoma report I made a little sub roll for myself in a Indy Corp I was helpful as a combat pilot speced into blockaid runners to haul for the Corp I lost one cepter to a drake theif I got concorded for pointing him😅 good times
Seting up barrier to go between computers seemless with keyboard and.mouse is easy, it's why i don't need a second keyboard and mouse for my streaming pc :)
Flick the toggle and away you go!
I remember the gold farmers and the power level services of WOW. It was annoying. CCP seems to be more on top of the game blozzard was.
Agreed
i like your channel :D also did i say smth bad? also also could u do a vid on null ratting?
you mention that people ask "why don't they hire more people to ban bots"... well my thought is that hiring more people casts more money and their job is to ban paying accounts... to literally get paid to work on lowering the income of the company... this is why anti-bot personal at development studios is not really a big thing. Many games are on Steam exclusively to get the protection from Valve's anti-cheat protection...
They are better at this than most, log into any other MMO and the time to RMT spam is about 0.00005 seconds, and that's the good ones, many of them you log in and there's already 3 RMT messages in chat. This was a big problem in EVE many years ago, all local in hisec was just RMT spam and then one day, just like that, they were gone. Forever. No other game has managed this that I'm aware of.
Yeah, I absolutely agree!!
Hi Cpt, we spoke after the last video; part of the frustration is that CCP dont give you any feedback on your reports; I got really frustrated after reporting that entire Corp as being 99% bots, and getting ignored, and having to report each and every account - there were 150 of them !!
And the despair of seeing the bot corp membership jump back up to 150, almost the day after I had gotten 50+ of them banned.
Thats not the case, I report Jita spam bots all the time and get emails from CCP thanking me for the reports.
@@BrunoMoozika But you dont get any FEEDBACK, about if they acted on the report; such as, "As a result of your report and several others, this account has now been banned".
@@ianemery2925 they do. Heres part of their emails: "While we can‘t provide specific details about the results, your reports have led to actions being taken against a player and their account(s)."
Providing feedback on every case is an insane amount of workload. Imagine getting 1000 complaints a day and having to write bespoke follow-ups to each of them. It's not feasible for the same staff hire issues I mentioned.
@@captainbenzie They could do it with scripts (lol).
The ganker Macybo has been complaining for a while about scripted loot thieves at the Jita undock. He's made a few YT videos on the topic.
Well, your sisters not playing eve any time soon 😜 your a braver man than me for running the hack to see
I saw someone in my alliance get called out for this the other day. he warped like 25 accounts in shuttles at the same time.
Has no one in your alliance heard of fleet warping???
That'll do it
@@danschmidt6206 no what is this fleet warp. Can't fleet warp in standing fleet :p
I was put on a three day ban for botting, I have never and would never, my accounts date back to 2005, i was actually pretty insulted that they would think after 8000 hours of gameplay i would just throw my accounts away to bot. But I run homefronts over and over, and there are massive amounts of bots.
There's a Gallente ice miner who was banned for botting a few years back because he was "too efficient" to not be botting, he had a three ship fleet. He never botted and got his accounts reinstated after about a week.
good point's, i've ben accused of botting myself, just because i'm fast controlling 5 ships ..
that doesnt make me a bot .... still breathing ;)
Ok i'll just say this and see what you have to say. Major problems are bots near markets for 2 reasons one most gate camps are also sellers at those markets list high end loot wait for buyers then destroy loot and resell. This is easy to do because of second problem bots so many bots that you run into their ships undocking, if not destroyed then you will be within 3 jumps. This is major problem because they then turnaround and sell items or plex for real world money. this is also easy to do using contracts ccp made this even easier with abyssal upgrades which have no calculated value so I can sell them for 100 bil isk in game for $100 real world with no worries of being caught.
Interesting talk, most things are true but sadly given the clicky nature of the game where most actions can be automated botting will never sease to be. Hurts even more when you consider those people are directly correlated to the lack of newer players, as praying on newer players and hoarding becomes increasingly easy thanks to them. You find Eve's current playerbase being a mixture of botters, veterans, and the occasional newer players who abandon the game shortly after, understandibly so. I'm always up for civilised discussions, and although possibly an unpopular take specially for older players, but I'l always strife for whichever direction/decision is taken to make the game fairer on newer players. Eve has potential, as hard as it can be to learn, just sucks to see most of it is dominated by a small few ruining thousand's of other's experiences for the sake of making some money out of it.
getting banned almost immediately may not be a good thing actually, because it gives bot makers pretty good feedback on what is working, and what is not, making it easier to develop bots that don't get detected
edit: well, I should have just continued watching
Exactly 😊
I was hoping for a swapover mid video to an Ishtar.....
They gotta define terms.. To some multi boxing itself is "botting"... that's crap. Multi boxing has always been legal. .. botting uses scripts and or even ai to run impossible operations.. Fleets can follow without botting .. they can't all harvest the same rock with one button press because that would be botting. I can fleet 4 accounts at once and mine on the same pc without botting or issue. More than that and my attention is dangerously spilt up. I have run fleets of 4 without issue since 2005 .. None of my characters, my oldest character 2004, has ever been banned.
it's like police work. takes time.
Exactly
Well idk if it's bots or not but there's a real problem when you literally cannot profit off manufacturing, at all. You can buy a cap cheaper than you can build one. Literally no point in building things yourself. Not sure if this is because of botting but I'm mad about it 😂
A person can buy PLEX for cash. I can sell the PLEX that has been botted to aquire by buying with isk...then turn around and sell the Plex for cash.
"new and exciting content for their customers" ... sure, okay
Lmao not sure what you're trying to say here. If you're still playing, you must be enjoying something and I think it's ridiculous to suggest they're not adding new content 😂
If botters just earn ISK and buy PLEX for the ISK, its GOOD for CCP. When PLEX price in Jita rises, more players will spend Dollars for PLEX instead of ISK.
They don't. They earn ISK, then sell that directly
@@captainbenzie You can buy a lot of PLEX on RMT-Sites. But also ISK.
Drawing that thin line between botting and multiboxing is some serious copium. If you were meant to be more than 1 person then the game would be designed around that mechanic from the start.
You know you're cheating.
The game IS designed with multiboxing in mind. The options are in the bloody launcher 😂
@@captainbenzie no they were added in when ccp declared defeat, the game is intended to be played by an individual as an individual. Mental gymnastics bro, Gold star.
Edit: and where's the multi box tutorial??? Every other feature has one.
@@crankyboris sorry, it may not be the ORIGINAL design, but designs change?
So, you say "EVE isn't designed for multiboxing", but the people who literally make it have tools to allow you to do it and talk about it openly. I think I'll trust the Devs.
Edit: Ah yes. No tutorial, ergo it must be unintentional. There's no market tutorial either.
In every game where I multibox I have a macro/chat spam for "Multiboxing without input broadcasting is legal. Read the ToS." There are thousands of midwits who will orbit your multiboxing squad frantically taking screenshots and spamming "reported" or "banned" while doing the rudest emotes available.
Part of what we refer to in MMO's as "the social experience."
Haha yeah
Just fired eve up after years. 20 minutes later, looking for a mine bot.
If you feel you need to bot, you may just need to find something in the game that's actually fun for you
Bottling takes all of the skill out of multiboxing, it’s a cheap way out
Hence it's against TOS
What new and exicting content have ccp done? Theyve cut back on eveything. Even fanfest is terrible
What new and exciting content? Lol what?
Did you miss Havoc and Viridian? Homefronts? Faction Warfare?
Seems like Fraternity space is up for grabs bois.
Multiboxing and having multiple accounts are the worst parts of this game. I get why people do it. Can't trust anyone in this game. But if teaming up with others is just not a realistic option at this point then just let us hire NPC bots to do things with us.
Here he comes with the toxic videos just like on eve echoes…hold on tight guys!!
You still defending that trash? 😂😂😂😂
"Toxic videos" explaining how game dev works. Wow 😂
how is this toxic
@@lewisthehappypufferfish.857 🤷♂️ apparently "toxic" is the new "woke" or "communist". The "anything I don't like is X"