[DEVBLOG] Team security - banning bad guys and also bad guys

[Lady Spank]

reported by CCP Sreegs | 2012.03.01 17:22:39 | NEW | Comments (https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=877935&#post877935)

Greetings lovely Internet Spaceship pilots!

Hanging some bots out to dry

http://content.eveonline.com/www/newssystem/media/8744/1/Sreegs.jpg

Some of you have rather astutely noticed by virtue of reading various shadey forums that we've taken some administrative action against some botters. I'm saving pretty pictures and graphs for Fanfest (I don't have any yet) but I'll say that the total number of accounts actioned against was more than 1000 and less than 2000. I'm actually quite happy that the community cared enough to notice without us having to publish anything about it but I will take a few minutes to explain some things I'm seeing in the various discussions on the topic that are incorrect.

"This is a Publicity Drive for Fanfest" - Back before Fanfest last year we had a group assembled called the EVE Security Task Force. That group was tasked with performing actions like the one recently taken against botters. As a matter of fact that group took action the day prior to Fanfest and continued to do so on a twice-monthly or more basis for many many months. The process is designed that way because I don't believe that security is something you unwrap once every 2 months and pat yourself on the back about. What I said a year ago about the subject remains true today in that I believe it to be a continued process. This will be a slow burn and it will be regular. I do need to add to that the fact that these things were turned off for a period of time. As you are all aware the company has gone through a lot of changes in the recent months. Because of this there was a period of time where nobody had responsibility for handling the technology responsible for nuking botters. As of now there is a formal team on the EVE project devoted entirely to security, of which I am the product owner which is a fancy word for manager. This means that we've now thrown the switch again and turned on the catching bad guys machine because we own it and we don't like cheaters.

"This is nice but it should be something regular" - I agree. It was designed as such and as I stated above it was run for many many moons on a regular basis.

"Three strikes is too weak" - Here we disagree but there's a reason why. I've shown charts before and I'll have a set at Fanfest that shows that we're effective at changing behavior by using these bans (with a caveat). What I mean is that a fraction of people actually get a second warning and the amount of people in all time who have ever hit a third was something ridiculous like 3%. There's some new things though related to this that I'm going to be a good egg and share with you though in a separate paragraph.
So as it stands the old rules are in place:

Strike One - 14 days

Strike Two - 30 days

Strike Three - Perm

BUT WAIT, THERE IS EVEN MORE! From now on, and this current wave is included, characters who receive a warning such as this will have the characters locked to the account. This means that once you've received a warning for botting your character transfer privileges have been revoked in perpetuity. This is to prevent people trying to circumvent the rules by recycling accounts. Yes we know people pointed out this could happen last time around and if you'll remember we said "We'll keep an eye on it and if it becomes a problem we'll deal with it". Here is us dealing with it. We'll probably have to come up with some form of timing solution for the future, but as it stands today it's forever. If you care about your dudes don't to bad things.

This is what's most relevant to you guys today but there's some things on the horizon I think you'll also be interested in. One of these is the security team's focus on RMT as well, which will likely be the subject of a future blog (probably after Fanfest) and will help answer that other question about whether or not we actually take away terrible people's assets when they do bad things. I'll keep an eye on this topic for a while to answer any questions. On another note I was just talking to CCP Soundwave and he wanted me to pass the message that any Fanfest attendees who are Japanophiles like himself should come and have a chat about your favorite movies. He doesn't get much of a chance to practice his Japanese here in Iceland.

Don't do anything bad today,

-Sreegs

Yes.

[Shin_getter]

When I think about it, the best way ccp can detect those bots is to simply buy a copy for themselves and reverse engineer to find weaknesses. It takes either pretty damn perfect simulation of human behavior with no signatures or a closed project (thus relatively low impact) to work for long periods of time. Maybe the war on bots can be won after all.....

[Lorkin Desal]

I approve of this thread.

[Lilan kahn]

sorry the first real ai is already deployed running a 400k account bot network in eve, while the rest of ponyrea is looking to take over the world

[Grarr Dexx]

When I think about it, the best way ccp can detect those bots is to simply buy a copy for themselves and reverse engineer to find weaknesses. It takes either pretty damn perfect simulation of human behavior with no signatures or a closed project (thus relatively low impact) to work for long periods of time. Maybe the war on bots can be won after all.....

It's not that simple. A lot of these bots have a very randomized 'human like' algorithm that doesn't have specific timing and points to push buttons and such, which is generally the way to identify botters.

[Daneel Trevize]

your character transfer privileges have been revoked in perpetuityLove it

Related thread http://failheap-challenge.com/showthread.php?5791-pre-fanfest-macro-purge&p=385612#post385612

[StevieTopSiders]

The character locking is key; I'm glad they've tackled this issue.

[Freejax]

CCP Employees should just play the game themselves, and convo random players ingame, asking them: Are you a real person?

If: Yes I am. The account can be lest alone.
If: Brrqqqzzzzt.. A bot has been found.........


When CCP keeps this up for about 3 months, they should be able to claim that botting isn't taking place, no bots have been found for months......


;)

[Grideris]

I approve of this dev blog and it's repercussions for any botters out there that just got banned.

[cheeba]

Locking toons in place is a sweet change. That will really fuck up some people.

Prices rises across the board here we come!

[Alistair]

/support for CCP on this. Character locking is a good addition for banned bot-accounts.

[Rakshasa The Cat]

Supposedly Jita trading has become much easier for non-bots, with orders filling even several hours after updating.

Expect much less liquidity in the markets if they keep banning.

[Daneel Trevize]

Prices rises across the board here we come!Plex cost reduction here we come...

[notbitterenough]

This is some good shit!

[noobcake]

good policy. But even with character locking, I still think 3-strikes-and-you're-out policies should be one-and-done...

[Jack Coutu]

Prices rises across the board here we come!Plex cost reduction here we come...

Yes finally.

[Rakshasa The Cat]

good policy. But even with character locking, I still think 3-strikes-and-you're-out policies should be one-and-done...

The data seems to be against you~

3% go on to get the third ban, and the number giving up their characters after the first is also rather low.

[Snake]

/me buys trit.

[Zeekar]

¸repost

http://allaboutalpha.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/iStock_000006618952XSmall1.jpg

[depili]

1-2k accounts doesn't feel like a major dent to bots, as they at least feel much more common than that, that would be at max 0.5% of all account if the 400k figure flying around is accurate.

The locking of characters is quite elegant solution to prevent recycling of botting toons and I suppose that flagged accounts get more scrutiny in the future also. While the catch-you-once and out permanently might sound like a good idea I think with CCP's track record of also catching innocents once in a while it's good that the first possible missidentification doesn't lead to permanent bans. But that policy should also have room for per-account exceptions, like that if you get caught running 10+ bots then you deserve to DIAF.

[Daneel Trevize]

CCP's track record of also catching innocents once in a whileOh god, you don't actually believe those sob stories, do you?

Also, 1-2k accounts that are active 23.5/7, out of a peak weekly user level of 50k.

[punkboy101]

Need more bot forum pron :-P

[depili]

CCP's track record of also catching innocents once in a whileOh god, you don't actually believe those sob stories, do you?

Also, 1-2k accounts that are active 23.5/7, out of a peak weekly user level of 50k.

Don't read any bot forums or the eve-o forums so my dose of sob stories is quite low, but in the past there have been cases that have gotten some publicity where ccp as ended up overturning the initial ban.

[Snake]

Prime example Zekk Kromitrr, and Ralara.

[Tarminic]

Also, 1-2k accounts that are active 23.5/7, out of a peak weekly user level of 50k.
Indeed. Even if the numbers themselves are low, keep in mind that the average bot has 5-10 times the impact of a real player by virtue of being on 12+ hours a day.

[Liptonez]

I just hope they also follow the traces of isk and especially drone alloys through the game, would love to see botted supers just taken from their current owners (unless they're laundered so well that you can't tell whether the buyer is an actual unknown buyer or just isk laundering).

[gleman]

I made this post on the eve boards. Do you think it's stupid?



Why lock the characters to botting accounts? I think they should be yanked and put into a pool.

Call it Sin Bin Corp.

Characters in Sin Bin Corp are free or for a plex available to accounts with free slots.

The Characters have the Scarlet letter B(ot).
It can be like a trial account or massive neg wallet.
The sponsor has to keep him in ships/ammo.

Redemption is earned in penal colonies in LoSec.
Redemption Points like LP stores.
Make it take about 3 to 6 months of casual game play.

I think it could really open up LoSec.
You get suppliers/traders and pirates.
Easy to roleplay.
Fun for all.

Win/Win


And 1st post!

[Daneel Trevize]

Prime example Zekk Kromitrr, and Ralara.IIRC Ralara didn't get banned for botting, but insulting a GM. False reason to ban, sure. False positive bot indentification? Nope.

[Lady Spank]

I made this post on the eve boards. Do you think it's stupid?

...
And 1st post!

Marlona?

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lol9pciHFq1qcm029.jpg

[gleman]

Not Marlona Dodixie troll.
I think the idea has merit.

[Varcaus]

Not Marlona Dodixie troll.
I think the idea has merit.

I think you can get out while you can.

[punkboy101]

Not Marlona Dodixie troll.
I think the idea has merit.

I think you can get out while you can.

Ban 12's

[Mashie Saldana]

Not Marlona Dodixie troll.
I think the idea has merit.
Terrible idea.

[Cortess]

Also, 1-2k accounts that are active 23.5/7, out of a peak weekly user level of 50k.
Indeed. Even if the numbers themselves are low, keep in mind that the average bot has 5-10 times the impact of a real player by virtue of being on 12+ hours a day.
Well, some ppl go on a roam and cry "in every system one bot" ... so now there are 1000 systems with no bots instead. Given that a roam goes for about 40 jumps, you should much less likely encounter a bot ....

Alliances just might start renting their systems to normal ppl again.

[Paradox]

Not Marlona Dodixie troll.
I think the idea has merit.

No, that's a bad idea. Putting characters that have had the 2nd warning for botting into an NPC corp that they can't leave with a 100% tax might be a better idea but would only really produce tears and clog up the database since no botter would use that character anymore.

[whispous]

CCP's track record of also catching innocents once in a whileOh god, you don't actually believe those sob stories, do you?

Also, 1-2k accounts that are active 23.5/7, out of a peak weekly user level of 50k.



On a side note, the VAC forums are hilarious to read the pleading

[notbitterenough]

I was wondering if someone would be a hero and post some charts of each null space region, who owns it and the number of npc kills for something like a month prior to the bot bannings and up to now. Hate asking someone else, but I only have access to my phone and we need to charts so we can start some drama on what alliances are botting and shit.

lol at my long and improper sentence not giving one fuck.

[Nick Danger]

CCP Employees should just play the game themselves, and convo random players ingame...)Look for accounts/chars that have an unusually high number of hours/resources pass thru them/etc., and target them for random convos.

A big part of fighting botting is fighting the perception that it's easy to get away with. Once word starts to get out that it's not, botting'll decrease substantially. The pathological botters will continue no matter how often they're banned or how likely it is they'll get caught, but the fence-sitters (folks who'll only do it if the risk is low) will generally quit.

[Varcaus]

CCP's track record of also catching innocents once in a whileOh god, you don't actually believe those sob stories, do you?

Also, 1-2k accounts that are active 23.5/7, out of a peak weekly user level of 50k.



On a side note, the VAC forums are hilarious to read the pleading

Links?

[whispous]

CCP's track record of also catching innocents once in a whileOh god, you don't actually believe those sob stories, do you?

Also, 1-2k accounts that are active 23.5/7, out of a peak weekly user level of 50k.



On a side note, the VAC forums are hilarious to read the pleading

Links?

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=35

[Daneel Trevize]

I was wondering if someone would be a hero and post some charts of each null space region, who owns it and the number of npc kills for something like a month prior to the bot bannings and up to now. Hate asking someone else, but I only have access to my phone and we need to charts so we can start some drama on what alliances are botting and shit.

lol at my long and improper sentence not giving one fuck.This should be totally do-able with DotLan, no? Players can name & shame where CCP won't.

[illectro]

Does dotlan keep history?
I just started a tracking the data myself about a week or two ago, planning to make a video of this kind of info, but I was figuring it'd be months before I had anythign interesting.

[Cue1*]

Does dotlan keep history?
I just started a tracking the data myself about a week or two ago, planning to make a video of this kind of info, but I was figuring it'd be months before I had anythign interesting.

AFAIK it does, but ask Wollari. Fuck if I know how to contact him anymore other than his ingame.

[Sponk]

dotlan has a blog. Just saiyan.

[Dierdra Vaal]

has he stopped hanging out on irc?

[Stoffl]

Supposedly Jita trading has become much easier for non-bots, with orders filling even several hours after updating.

Expect much less liquidity in the markets if they keep banning.

That'd be pretty fucking amazing.

[jadefalcon]

And there's the fact that some botters don't run 24/7 - some i know run them while they are actually at the PC only, running in the background, or a spare PC while doing work or studies.

But either way - yay ban moar botters. I'll go with 2 strike, rather than 3 strike tbh, making the first strike a 30day ban. Seems like a good middle ground, betwen outright perma ban, and what they have right now which is the 3 strike rule.

[Shin_getter]

Supposedly Jita trading has become much easier for non-bots, with orders filling even several hours after updating.

Expect much less liquidity in the markets if they keep banning.

That'd be pretty fucking amazing.
Lies, I just logged in and my orders are 0.01-ed by 4+ guys within the 5minute cycle for many of my orders and I totally did not notice abnormally large number of filled orders. Did have someone buy from a higher order for one of my items though, which is nice, but is totally human error.

Though I have been working mainly in buyer's markets which is might not favored by bots, since it have more downward price swings and can not leverage liquidity by margin trading unlike consumer products.

[Jack bubu]

So appearently the 0.01 isk war in jita and other place gone way down(Market Discussion is all happy), and sreegs replied that there where only 10 market bots banned

[25]

With a bunch of bots banned, people may be holding off running their bots until they can figure out how the other bots were detected.

[Shin_getter]

Its probably mostly just random error since the variance is huge. There are always days where you get a lot of filled orders and ones where nothing gets through. Given a random sample of traders, some will have a good day and some will not, and the results is often attributed to news when it fits.

That said, 10 bots can cover a very large number of items when its got maxed out market skills. I suspect the botter probably just unleashed the bot on a lot of very similar items with price stability and low volume orders, where liquidity bots advantage over humans is the greatest. I don't trade in those items myself. God bless you if you are trying to outflip a bot in high priced meta4 items and likes.

[Rans]

With a bunch of bots banned, people may be holding off running their bots until they can figure out how the other bots were detected.

10 bots in a market hub like Dodixie could own the entire market.

[Lallante]

Did have someone buy from a higher order for one of my items though, which is nice, but is totally human error.


Unless I am misreading you, this shouldnt be possible - if you buy from a higher order you still get the cheapest one, you just pay the higher price.

[Lady Spank]

thats what he meant

[OzzieA]

It's been long enough that i think i can rule out randomness, both jita and amarr where I trade regularly have improved noticeably. Still plenty of competition or some items, guess I can't hate in the bots when I get outbid now!

[Spillrags]

Prices rises across the board here we come!Plex cost reduction here we come...

I don't have a solid grasp on how the EVE economy works, how would banning botters affect PLEX prices?

[Daneel Trevize]

Botters don't pay IRL for their accounts, they use PLEX bought with all their earned isk. Less demand, lower prices.
Also, less isk into the economy, less inflation of everything's prices.

[Shin_getter]

Botters don't pay IRL for their accounts, they use PLEX bought with all their earned isk. Less demand, lower prices.
Also, less isk into the economy, less inflation of everything's prices.
While botters consumes PLEX, botters is VASTLY superior to human accounts in generating wealth. If you replace bots with human players generating the same resources (eg. resubbing mining accounts), the total PLEX consumed is going to be higher.

Also, while bots generates isk, it also generates large amounts of minerals and small amounts of LP. Bots don't produce everything however.

The likely result is this:
The value of human intensive production chains change in favor of bottable ones, now bots are banned:
Human intensive production are:
Moon materials, production profit margins, reactions, activities that involve significant hauling in low/nullsec (eg. planetary interaction), complexes, Concord LP, tech 3, t2 rig salvage

Bot intensive production are:
Minerals, raw ISK, highsec corp LP
----
PLEX prices would drop relative to minerals and raw ISK, while increase relative to human intensive production.

Of course, the release of incursions and its new isk faucet means we have been in a period of inflation. I see minerals prices either raise or keeping steady, while most human produced items undergo deflation. Highsec corp LP have just been changed due to Q20 quality agent change, which many not have reached its logical end (thus may still drop in value) and may be further effect by glut of Concord LP so might not rise at all.

This is a supply side perspective on the matter however, while demand side can be heavily influenced by new fleet doctrines and fotm which render the above analysis void.

*I don't know whether bots accounts for much loot/salvage...someone need to help me on that one*

[Rakshasa The Cat]

Botters don't pay IRL for their accounts, they use PLEX bought with all their earned isk. Less demand, lower prices.
Also, less isk into the economy, less inflation of everything's prices.
While botters consumes PLEX, botters is VASTLY superior to human accounts in generating wealth. If you replace bots with human players generating the same resources (eg. resubbing mining accounts), the total PLEX consumed is going to be higher.

Your analysis started with retard, kept going retard and ended in retard.

Yeah, sure, more accounts will need to resub so PLEX prices will rise. Heh, let me guess... You're a poorfag cause your investment ideas always seem to fail for some reason?

[Shin_getter]

Botters don't pay IRL for their accounts, they use PLEX bought with all their earned isk. Less demand, lower prices.
Also, less isk into the economy, less inflation of everything's prices.
While botters consumes PLEX, botters is VASTLY superior to human accounts in generating wealth. If you replace bots with human players generating the same resources (eg. resubbing mining accounts), the total PLEX consumed is going to be higher.

Your analysis started with retard, kept going retard and ended in retard.

Yeah, sure, more accounts will need to resub so PLEX prices will rise. Heh, let me guess... You're a poorfag cause your investment ideas always seem to fail for some reason?
It is just a quick model made in 5minutes. Personally I wouldn't do anything in the PLEX market since I have no model for PLEX generation (why the hell do people sell them?, how is the supply determined?), character farming use and value storage. There is significant model error in any case.

Of course, some of the motivation at the thing is an attempt at contrarianism since a counterargument can generate new info for me, while standard models do nothing.

Two throw away lines do nothing though....

[Liptonez]

Botters don't pay IRL for their accounts, they use PLEX bought with all their earned isk. Less demand, lower prices.
Also, less isk into the economy, less inflation of everything's prices.
While botters consumes PLEX, botters is VASTLY superior to human accounts in generating wealth. If you replace bots with human players generating the same resources (eg. resubbing mining accounts), the total PLEX consumed is going to be higher.

So you're assuming someone who botted can be arsed to actually manually mine?

[Shin_getter]

Botters don't pay IRL for their accounts, they use PLEX bought with all their earned isk. Less demand, lower prices.
Also, less isk into the economy, less inflation of everything's prices.
While botters consumes PLEX, botters is VASTLY superior to human accounts in generating wealth. If you replace bots with human players generating the same resources (eg. resubbing mining accounts), the total PLEX consumed is going to be higher.

So you're assuming someone who botted can be arsed to actually manually mine?
The model goes like this: (very bad model, yes, but acts as starting point for discussion)

Assume plex sold and consumed is constant, say 100 arbitrary units.

Now 1 unit of plex is used to supply a large sector of the market via bots. Now bots are banned, there is unfilled market demand. Prices (and returns/hr) increase until people no longer find said items worth while, or new producers enter the market. Lets assume new producers enter the market and now 5 unit of plex is used in activity due to reduced efficiency.

Now, the other part of the economy used to consume 99 units of plex to operate and now only have 95 units. This means a loss of accounts which should come from reduced profits that forces the less efficient players out. Now, I should add that this does not mean the model implies in a increase in isk price of plex, not at all, since raw isk generation is botted. The model is about hous per plex and per ship in other industries.

There is many places where the model could break down when its assumptions fails to hold, of course.

Should have give it a little more time then the amount it takes to type before posting....

[Lucas Quaan]

The model goes like this: (very bad model, yes, but acts as starting point for discussion)

Assume plex sold and consumed is constant, say 100 arbitrary units.

Now 1 unit of plex is used to supply a large sector of the market via bots. Now bots are banned, there is unfilled market demand. Prices (and returns/hr) increase until people no longer find said items worth while, or new producers enter the market. Lets assume new producers enter the market and now 5 unit of plex is used in activity due to reduced efficiency.
This is where I think it breaks. No new accounts will be created to replace botters with human activities (there may still be new botting accounts, though) so PLEX demand will go down. The humans already in game will start doing those activities to meet the decreasing supply/increasing value of the markets influenced by botting (primarily minerals and lp), but will consume the same amount of PLEX as before. Botting also serves to inject a lot of raw ISK through bounties and mission rewards so where prices end up will depend on whether or not there will also be deflation due to this. Regardless, a new supply/demand point will establish somewhere and seeing as humans can also create a lot of ISK these days it will likely be higher.

tl;dr - PLEX down, mineral/lp affected markets up. IMHO.

[Frug]

The model goes like this: (very bad model, yes, but acts as starting point for discussion)

Assume plex sold and consumed is constant, say 100 arbitrary units.

Now 1 unit of plex is used to supply a large sector of the market via bots. Now bots are banned, there is unfilled market demand. Prices (and returns/hr) increase until people no longer find said items worth while, or new producers enter the market. Lets assume new producers enter the market and now 5 unit of plex is used in activity due to reduced efficiency.

Now, the other part of the economy used to consume 99 units of plex to operate and now only have 95 units. This means a loss of accounts which should come from reduced profits that forces the less efficient players out. Now, I should add that this does not mean the model implies in a increase in isk price of plex, not at all, since raw isk generation is botted. The model is about hous per plex and per ship in other industries.

There is many places where the model could break down when its assumptions fails to hold, of course.

Should have give it a little more time then the amount it takes to type before posting....
:facepalm:

[notbitterenough]

Only on FHC can any thread turn into some pointless derp argument over trivial shit.

[Rakshasa The Cat]

Only on the internet can any thread turn into some pointless derp argument over trivial shit.

Basically a retard who doesn't take into account such a major effect on PLEX prices as inflation due to bounties, has a failure of a brain.

Bounties alone are about twice the size of all the sinks (pre-crucible), and a botting reduction is likely to cut this by a huge margin. The reduction in LP store sinks are not going to be anywhere near large enough to offset this.

And as we know Crucible introduce some rather large ISK sinks in the form of PI empire tax...

Considering that the monthly ISK faucets of some 40 trillion ISK, compared to total ISK in the (active subscriber) economy of about 500 trillion ISK, means that the economy is likely to be very sensitive to changes in the faucet/sink balance.

Any analysis that doesn't even take into account the above is retard.

[25]

Only on FHC can any thread turn into some pointless derp argument over trivial shit.

You must be new here, welcome to a series of tubes.

[Tarminic]

Only on FHC can any thread turn into some pointless derp argument over trivial shit.

You must be new here, welcome to a series of tubes.
Lubricated by the abnormal brain chemistry of Asperger's.

[Bartholomeus Crane]

OK, perhaps time to step back from Shin's usual program of nuttiness, and back to our regular bitterness program:

Lets see if I understand this blog correctly. In this blog the vaunted security team at CCP claims to have banned basically a pitiful few botters, then stop with the whole effort for months. They plan or have decided to now pick this up again. No doubt lots of warnings and a few bannings will happen now as well. But there apparently has already been a massive improvement in the botting situation none-the-less. And so in addition CCP will now no longer allow player transfer if a someone gets caught botting.

Am I the only one who's wondering if this doesn't simply mean that those botters will just keep on botting with that character until it finally gets banned permanently, and only then switch to botting on a character on another account they've been training up meanwhile. If I were a botter, isn't this exactly what I would respond? You know, just diversify my bot portfolio over more accounts? How does this solve the botting problem in EVE exactly? I mean it is better than nothing I guess, but wouldn't it be much more effective, if, ohhh, I don't know, CCP really gets busy with banning all those botters out there? Why am I getting the feeling that CCP and Sreegs think that just saying they'll really get busy with the whole botting thing will be enough in itself?

Listen, I understand that if one hasn't done anything serious about an issue like this then there will indeed be some result to show for it when you start saying you will do so. But in the absence of any hard numbers (again), can I just ask this question to those still frequenting 'bot-land' in EVE (or the 'bot-land' that is EVE, depending on how bitter you are): Have you experienced any tangible decrease in the botting going on in there, something somehow commensurate to the results claimed in this blog? Or at all in fact?

I'm just asked for curiosity sake mind you. Well, that's not all that's to it: I don't mind being bitter once in a while again.

[Daneel Trevize]

Crunch some basic numbers on how much isk they'd have to spend on PLEX to have those replacement characters training up, compared to before when a character could be traded to a fresh account just before the other one's banned, and then still sold as a char to the market for a cash-out option.

[Liptonez]

Have you experienced any tangible decrease in the botting going on in there, something somehow commensurate to the results claimed in this blog? Or at all in fact?

Drone space has been my "home" for years now, I haven't really been roaming there that much recently (out of wormhole, gank carrier, go back), but the fact that 15 or 20 of the botters I have just recently added to my watchlist didn't log in for a good while now is already proof enough for me. Those were all the same people that have been botting there for 1 or 2 years, just with other characters obviously. Normally going through drone space you'd find 1-2 tengus and a cruiser with the same names and POS setup every few systems, now I kinda had a hard time finding at least the ships (should go looking for towers now). Looking at the map and the systems they've botted in, those systems aren't active.

It's really funny, CCP could actually ban by system name. 2 Tengus and a Celestis ratting in the same system in the same corp for 2 years, not suspicious at all. Feels even better knowing a single Tengu in drone space will probably push 60-80m/h.

[Rakshasa The Cat]

Am I the only one who's wondering if this doesn't simply mean that those botters will just keep on botting with that character until it finally gets banned permanently, and only then switch to botting on a character on another account they've been training up meanwhile. If I were a botter, isn't this exactly what I would respond? You know, just diversify my bot portfolio over more accounts? How does this solve the botting problem in EVE exactly? I mean it is better than nothing I guess, but wouldn't it be much more effective, if, ohhh, I don't know, CCP really gets busy with banning all those botters out there? Why am I getting the feeling that CCP and Sreegs think that just saying they'll really get busy with the whole botting thing will be enough in itself?

You would be completely right if they weren't pwning the ISK of prolific botters, which they seem to be, so even if you make new botting accounts they'll still track the ISK down and put your main's wallet to some negative value.

[Bartholomeus Crane]

Am I the only one who's wondering if this doesn't simply mean that those botters will just keep on botting with that character until it finally gets banned permanently, and only then switch to botting on a character on another account they've been training up meanwhile. If I were a botter, isn't this exactly what I would respond? You know, just diversify my bot portfolio over more accounts? How does this solve the botting problem in EVE exactly? I mean it is better than nothing I guess, but wouldn't it be much more effective, if, ohhh, I don't know, CCP really gets busy with banning all those botters out there? Why am I getting the feeling that CCP and Sreegs think that just saying they'll really get busy with the whole botting thing will be enough in itself?

You would be completely right if they weren't pwning the ISK of prolific botters, which they seem to be, so even if you make new botting accounts they'll still track the ISK down and put your main's wallet to some negative value.

So I gather that they also plugged the myriad of ways in which you can shift ISK from one account to another without it leaving a trace?

[Rakshasa The Cat]

So I gather that they also plugged the myriad of ways in which you can shift ISK from one account to another without it leaving a trace?

I also think it is possible to move around ISK without leaving a trace, since everything is run on servers to which CCP has full access.

What am I saying... that's just fucking retarded. There's no way to move ISK in EVE that cannot be traced, assuming they are willing to spend time doing it.

[Bartholomeus Crane]

Have you experienced any tangible decrease in the botting going on in there, something somehow commensurate to the results claimed in this blog? Or at all in fact?

Drone space has been my "home" for years now, I haven't really been roaming there that much recently (out of wormhole, gank carrier, go back), but the fact that 15 or 20 of the botters I have just recently added to my watchlist didn't log in for a good while now is already proof enough for me. Those were all the same people that have been botting there for 1 or 2 years, just with other characters obviously. Normally going through drone space you'd find 1-2 tengus and a cruiser with the same names and POS setup every few systems, now I kinda had a hard time finding at least the ships (should go looking for towers now). Looking at the map and the systems they've botted in, those systems aren't active.

It's really funny, CCP could actually ban by system name. 2 Tengus and a Celestis ratting in the same system in the same corp for 2 years, not suspicious at all. Feels even better knowing a single Tengu in drone space will probably push 60-80m/h.

So that's at least one 'yes' I guess. Well, sort of. Is this the general consensus? I have heard others describe a similar Tengu-Exequor combination still being out there in strength, quit undiminished by the anti-botting efforts.

I mean, all of this can only be anecdotal in the absence of hard numbers from CCP. Which, are, as usual it seems, absent. But the devblog seems to describe a 'major victory' over botting in EVE. Now I can see how if you go from doing nothing to at least doing something (for a period), there will be an initial effect. I'm just trying to gage how much of an effect there is in practice.

For the record, I agree that if CCP wants to tackle this problem seriously, a long-term strategy of persistent action is required. So it doesn't really help of that is put on hold every other couple of months. I'm just very wary of a CCP already counting their chickens, without any hard data to support that, and where the one positive anecdote is basically a qualified one. Quit frankly, if CCP had scored the hit like the devblog describes, I would have expected quite a lot of unequivocal anecdotes described that: "Yes, I'm seeing that botting is down significantly all over the place." And that's not what I'm getting at this point.

[Bartholomeus Crane]

So I gather that they also plugged the myriad of ways in which you can shift ISK from one account to another without it leaving a trace?

I also think it is possible to move around ISK without leaving a trace, since everything is run on servers to which CCP has full access.

What am I saying... that's just fucking retarded. There's no way to move ISK in EVE that cannot be traced, assuming they are willing to spend time doing it.

Yes, but even if CCP is willing to follow the trace of the ISK all the way, CCP can't just go round taking ISK away, handed down several times, without eventually putting a 'legit' player into the negative. This is the problem and beauty of having a single shared system where everything one account does touches on everyone else.

Just an example. A bot has acquired a massive amount of 'illegitimate' ISK from botting missions. It then buys, say, an officer item form a legitimate source. It dumps that in space where another of the bot's toons picks it up from the can, making the interaction difficult to trace (not impossible but difficult enough). It puts it out again to, say, a legitimate mark. It now has ISK. The botter can rinse and repeat this through several toons, and botting networks aren't unknown. And you can do this many times at once, with all sorts of items, expensive and in-expensive, and in bulk.

Suppose CCP has full access to all these interactions (and there are many others), traced it down all over EVE. How do yo undo this? Do you give the legitimate sources their stuff back but take away their ISK? They probably have spend it already. You don't take away the ISK? So you've just created ISK out of nowhere. I hear the Dr Eggnog cringing already. Cast the net wider? Undoing the spending of the legitimate player as well? Yeah, he's going to love that!

And that's the point. You can do things in EVE that make it very difficult for CCP to find out what you did. And in volume as well. Touching upon a wider and wider range of players, either legit or bot. Suppose all of that can and is traced, as you say. Undoing all of that is not just a lot of work, especially if the bot has been around for a long time, it is also liable to piss off quite a lot of legitimate players as well. Now you can say: they shouldn't have interacted with bots. But what if they didn't know? What if it happened in the second or third degree?

In the end the point is: pwning the ISK of botters sounds like a good thing to say. In reality it is never as easy as it sounds. It would work if the bot is caught right at the beginning, when the damage to others can still be contained and hasn't spread. But again, in reality this is near impossible as well. I have the feeling that botters have long since adapted to this, not least since it has been around for ages. And as long as a bot can generate enough ISK to pay for itself and more bots through PLEX, the botter can make it difficult for CCP to contain. This type of money laundering by bots in EVE isn't really that hard, even if CCP has full access to everything (which I doubt), and so I just don't think it is much of a deterrence as you seem to think.

[Rakshasa The Cat]

Yes, but even if CCP is willing to follow the trace of the ISK all the way, CCP can't just go round taking ISK away, handed down several times, without eventually putting a 'legit' player into the negative. This is the problem and beauty of having a single shared system where everything one account does touches on everyone else.

Just an example. A bot has acquired a massive amount of 'illegitimate' ISK from botting missions. It then buys, say, an officer item form a legitimate source. It dumps that in space where another of the bot's toons picks it up from the can, making the interaction difficult to trace (not impossible but difficult enough). It puts it out again to, say, a legitimate mark. It now has ISK. The botter can rinse and repeat this through several toons, and botting networks aren't unknown. And you can do this many times at once, with all sorts of items, expensive and in-expensive, and in bulk.

Oh yes... The 'dumping stuff in cans' technique, favored by all idiots who think they can't be traced cause stuff in 'space' do not generate logs.

I was hoping you had a clever way, not amateur hour.


Suppose CCP has full access to all these interactions (and there are many others), traced it down all over EVE. How do yo undo this? Do you give the legitimate sources their stuff back but take away their ISK? They probably have spend it already. You don't take away the ISK? So you've just created ISK out of nowhere. I hear the Dr Eggnog cringing already. Cast the net wider? Undoing the spending of the legitimate player as well? Yeah, he's going to love that!

They don't undo transactions that are deemed legitimate. And when someone sells an officer module at market rates, why should CCP undo that transaction?

All they need to do is take the officer module or put the current owner in negative wallet for that sum.


And that's the point. You can do things in EVE that make it very difficult for CCP to find out what you did. And in volume as well. Touching upon a wider and wider range of players, either legit or bot. Suppose all of that can and is traced, as you say. Undoing all of that is not just a lot of work, especially if the bot has been around for a long time, it is also liable to piss off quite a lot of legitimate players as well. Now you can say: they shouldn't have interacted with bots. But what if they didn't know? What if it happened in the second or third degree?

It's pretty simple; if the player dealt with the botter fairly (e.g. sold an item) then the GM can easily verify that transaction. The 'I scammed him / he sent the ISK by accident' excuse doesn't hold, cause when ever someone accidentally gets 10 billion from a market order of 10 million due to the 'fill the cheapest order first' mechanism, the first thing they are told to do is petition to get the ISK verified as being legitimate.

And with the proper application of graph theory you can actually trace transactions to the main automatically, even when there's a large number of them. And no need to verify every transaction, as the flow of ISK will stand out. Don't think they don't do this, there's no way they'd ever track down RMT ISK if these tools were no already in place.

[Liptonez]

Have you experienced any tangible decrease in the botting going on in there, something somehow commensurate to the results claimed in this blog? Or at all in fact?

Drone space has been my "home" for years now, I haven't really been roaming there that much recently (out of wormhole, gank carrier, go back), but the fact that 15 or 20 of the botters I have just recently added to my watchlist didn't log in for a good while now is already proof enough for me. Those were all the same people that have been botting there for 1 or 2 years, just with other characters obviously. Normally going through drone space you'd find 1-2 tengus and a cruiser with the same names and POS setup every few systems, now I kinda had a hard time finding at least the ships (should go looking for towers now). Looking at the map and the systems they've botted in, those systems aren't active.

It's really funny, CCP could actually ban by system name. 2 Tengus and a Celestis ratting in the same system in the same corp for 2 years, not suspicious at all. Feels even better knowing a single Tengu in drone space will probably push 60-80m/h.

So that's at least one 'yes' I guess. Well, sort of. Is this the general consensus? I have heard others describe a similar Tengu-Exequor combination still being out there in strength, quit undiminished by the anti-botting efforts.

Oh btw I went through drone space yesterday, all the bots are back. "Entourage Corp", 2 Tengus + Exequror with an Amarr medium tower with 8 guns + a warp disruptor in those systems (same exact setup for over a year). All members I have seen were in corp for 7 days.

Nice try CCP.

Will be months till this particular corp gets banned, anyone want to place bets?

Edit: http://eve-kill.net/?a=corp_detail&crp_id=153187&view=losses&m=3&y=2012

Note the interdiction nullified Tengus. Love them.

That is why I always say: CCP, filter all active players by Tengu + nullifier + no covops sub, ban all those. Everyday. Once botters don't fly nullified Tengus any more they are no longe invincible to players.

[Bartholomeus Crane]

Yes, but even if CCP is willing to follow the trace of the ISK all the way, CCP can't just go round taking ISK away, handed down several times, without eventually putting a 'legit' player into the negative. This is the problem and beauty of having a single shared system where everything one account does touches on everyone else.

Just an example. A bot has acquired a massive amount of 'illegitimate' ISK from botting missions. It then buys, say, an officer item form a legitimate source. It dumps that in space where another of the bot's toons picks it up from the can, making the interaction difficult to trace (not impossible but difficult enough). It puts it out again to, say, a legitimate mark. It now has ISK. The botter can rinse and repeat this through several toons, and botting networks aren't unknown. And you can do this many times at once, with all sorts of items, expensive and in-expensive, and in bulk.

Oh yes... The 'dumping stuff in cans' technique, favored by all idiots who think they can't be traced cause stuff in 'space' do not generate logs.

I was hoping you had a clever way, not amateur hour.


Suppose CCP has full access to all these interactions (and there are many others), traced it down all over EVE. How do yo undo this? Do you give the legitimate sources their stuff back but take away their ISK? They probably have spend it already. You don't take away the ISK? So you've just created ISK out of nowhere. I hear the Dr Eggnog cringing already. Cast the net wider? Undoing the spending of the legitimate player as well? Yeah, he's going to love that!

They don't undo transactions that are deemed legitimate. And when someone sells an officer module at market rates, why should CCP undo that transaction?

All they need to do is take the officer module or put the current owner in negative wallet for that sum.


And that's the point. You can do things in EVE that make it very difficult for CCP to find out what you did. And in volume as well. Touching upon a wider and wider range of players, either legit or bot. Suppose all of that can and is traced, as you say. Undoing all of that is not just a lot of work, especially if the bot has been around for a long time, it is also liable to piss off quite a lot of legitimate players as well. Now you can say: they shouldn't have interacted with bots. But what if they didn't know? What if it happened in the second or third degree?

It's pretty simple; if the player dealt with the botter fairly (e.g. sold an item) then the GM can easily verify that transaction. The 'I scammed him / he sent the ISK by accident' excuse doesn't hold, cause when ever someone accidentally gets 10 billion from a market order of 10 million due to the 'fill the cheapest order first' mechanism, the first thing they are told to do is petition to get the ISK verified as being legitimate.

And with the proper application of graph theory you can actually trace transactions to the main automatically, even when there's a large number of them. And no need to verify every transaction, as the flow of ISK will stand out. Don't think they don't do this, there's no way they'd ever track down RMT ISK if these tools were no already in place.

Yeah, it's graph theory to the rescue ... now it is all simple guys!

:facepalm:

[Bartholomeus Crane]

Have you experienced any tangible decrease in the botting going on in there, something somehow commensurate to the results claimed in this blog? Or at all in fact?

Drone space has been my "home" for years now, I haven't really been roaming there that much recently (out of wormhole, gank carrier, go back), but the fact that 15 or 20 of the botters I have just recently added to my watchlist didn't log in for a good while now is already proof enough for me. Those were all the same people that have been botting there for 1 or 2 years, just with other characters obviously. Normally going through drone space you'd find 1-2 tengus and a cruiser with the same names and POS setup every few systems, now I kinda had a hard time finding at least the ships (should go looking for towers now). Looking at the map and the systems they've botted in, those systems aren't active.

It's really funny, CCP could actually ban by system name. 2 Tengus and a Celestis ratting in the same system in the same corp for 2 years, not suspicious at all. Feels even better knowing a single Tengu in drone space will probably push 60-80m/h.

So that's at least one 'yes' I guess. Well, sort of. Is this the general consensus? I have heard others describe a similar Tengu-Exequor combination still being out there in strength, quit undiminished by the anti-botting efforts.

Oh btw I went through drone space yesterday, all the bots are back. "Entourage Corp", 2 Tengus + Exequror with an Amarr medium tower with 8 guns + a warp disruptor in those systems (same exact setup for over a year). All members I have seen were in corp for 7 days.

Nice try CCP.

Will be months till this particular corp gets banned, anyone want to place bets?

Edit: http://eve-kill.net/?a=corp_detail&crp_id=153187&view=losses&m=3&y=2012

Note the interdiction nullified Tengus. Love them.

That is why I always say: CCP, filter all active players by Tengu + nullifier + no covops sub, ban all those. Everyday. Once botters don't fly nullified Tengus any more they are no longe invincible to players.

So, nothing changed then ...

[Rakshasa The Cat]

Yeah, it's graph theory to the rescue ... now it is all simple guys!

:facepalm:

No, graph theory on this level is hard, and I would probably need to get out my old Algorithms and Data Structures textbook to implement such a system, and read up on some extra material for how to best isolate flows in large datasets.

However these are solved problems and CCP does have some people who seem to have working experience with graph theory, as can be seen from the implementation of PI. So you're dismissal is based purely on ignorance of what is possible.

But then again, what to expect from a guy who has few skills outside of spewing text?

[Shin_getter]

There are probably easy ways to do this if you don't have to worry about computational time too much.

Try this algorithm:

1. Profile accounts for bot like behavior
2. For every wealth transfering interaction, modify bot like behavior value on both sides depending on what it is (eg wallet transfers, can drop movement ,etc) and the initial value of both characters
3. Wait for values to converge, then backtrack and unleash humans on the problem

[Rakshasa The Cat]

There is probably easy ways to do this if you don't have to worry about computational time too much.

Try this algorithm:

1. Profile accounts for bot like behavior
2. For every wealth transfering interaction, modify bot like behavior value on both sides depending on what it is (eg wallet transfers, can drop movement ,etc) and the initial value of both characters
3. Wait for values to converge, then backtrack and unleash humans on the problem

As informative as your economics posts.

[Shin_getter]

As informative as your economics posts.
Content free posts most informative

[Rakshasa The Cat]

As informative as your economics posts.
Content free posts most informative

Ok then...

You take the bots as the first nodes (let's just say one node for simplicity of explanation) and each other character to which any transaction has been done you make an edge. These will not be just market transactions, but _all_ transactions of any sort where ISK leaves the wallet or items are transfered. There's no need to trace them all, just sum up the unknowns and display the number should make it clear if 10 billion has been laundered through e.g. bounties on players.

Then you cull transactions by comparing e.g. market orders if they are deemed to be 'valid' based on regional market prices, which would cover a majority of transactions happening in EVE. One would of course not cull them, instead the difference from normal price becomes the flow to that node. You repeat this recursively until you build a decent-sized graph, and since you are interested in, and calculating, the difference in gain rather than total volume it will give you a good view of where the ISK is flowing.

E.g. if there's a guy producing ammo in that graph, he will end up showing a very low number cause he buys minerals at a reasonable price and sells his missiles at a reasonable price making his edges close to zero and connecting many nodes. If there's an corp/alliance ship reimburstment then that can be flagged as balanced and the graph re-calculated.

As you improve this system you'd get more and more accurate heuristics to validate transactions, and cover more 'valid' transactions automatically. Basically this is a 'I know how I'd implement that, if it was my job' thing.

Now... Your turn, show us how that amazing theory of yours would work.

[Lucas Quaan]

Just an example. A bot has acquired a massive amount of 'illegitimate' ISK from botting missions. It then buys, say, an officer item form a legitimate source. It dumps that in space where another of the bot's toons picks it up from the can, making the interaction difficult to trace (not impossible but difficult enough). It puts it out again to, say, a legitimate mark. It now has ISK. The botter can rinse and repeat this through several toons, and botting networks aren't unknown. And you can do this many times at once, with all sorts of items, expensive and in-expensive, and in bulk.
In this example, the net result is that the legit seller has isk and the legit buyer has item, so all you need to do is remove isk from the botter and all is well in the universe. There may be a slight difference in the actual sums, but not enough to be game breaking I suppose.

[Shin_getter]

There are probably easy ways to do this

Ok then... You take the bots as the first nodes...

nuff said

That said, are you looking at this as a competition or something? Whats up with the combative tone? Or is being smug the real reason you post?

The post talks about finding botter and related accounts automatically and does not go into detail on how the final number is computed in detail. Abnormal exchange value calculations works but was not necessary for the post, as a number of tell tale signs (giving seed money to bots, private contracts, repetitive contract acceptances, station trade, repetitive jet can transfers, and so on) of intimate relations can be detected without it. I should note isk flow is not the final goal of the tool, the goal is to find out if the account is owned by a botter or a rmter.

The rules, heuristic and data structures required for it was left as an exercise for the reader since I think it provide sufficient detail of how to do it with the help of some common sense, imo. (read a textbook and graph theory, sounds unnecessarily complicated)

[Rakshasa The Cat]

That said, are you looking at this as a competition or something? Whats up with the combative tone? Or is being smug the real reason you post?

YES


The post talks about finding botter and related accounts automatically and does not go into detail on how the final number is computed in detail. Abnormal exchange value calculations works but was not necessary for the post, as a number of tell tale signs (giving seed money to bots, private contracts, repetitive contract acceptances, station trade, repetitive jet can transfers, and so on) of intimate relations can be detected without it. I should note isk flow is not the final goal of the tool, the goal is to find out if the account is owned by a botter or a rmter.

The rules, heuristic and data structures required for it was left as an exercise for the reader since I think it provide sufficient detail of how to do it with the help of some common sense, imo. (read a textbook and graph theory, sounds unnecessarily complicated)

LOL

[ry ry]

There are probably easy ways to do this if you don't have to worry about computational time too much.

Try this algorithm:

1. Profile accounts for bot like behavior
2. For every wealth transfering interaction, modify bot like behavior value on both sides depending on what it is (eg wallet transfers, can drop movement ,etc) and the initial value of both characters
3. Wait for values to converge, then backtrack and unleash humans on the problem

Except screegs has already said a couple of times he doesn't favor heuristic behavioral detection, and as long as he's there i can't see that changing so it's a moot point.

spotting bot-like behaviour is a piece of piss. Hell, if i was doing it i'd have three of four different completely different algorithms (in-space, reaction to local, market and login behavior for a start) running in parallel and target the convergence. What ccp are interested in is identifying programs modifying the client-server exchange - presumably to guarantee no false positives. Also has the added benefit of putting code in place to spot injection exploits aswell as bots i guess.

i don't know what's worse - that they knowingly avoid banning unknown bots*, or that eve pve is so tedious a real player is apparently indistinguishable from a bot.



*yeah yeah, known unknowns and all that.

[Frug]

Ok then...

You take the bots as the first nodes (let's just say one node for simplicity of explanation) and each other character to which any transaction has been done you make an edge. These will not be just market transactions, but _all_ transactions of any sort where ISK leaves the wallet or items are transfered. There's no need to trace them all, just sum up the unknowns and display the number should make it clear if 10 billion has been laundered through e.g. bounties on players.

Then you cull transactions by comparing e.g. market orders if they are deemed to be 'valid' based on regional market prices, which would cover a majority of transactions happening in EVE. One would of course not cull them, instead the difference from normal price becomes the flow to that node. You repeat this recursively until you build a decent-sized graph, and since you are interested in, and calculating, the difference in gain rather than total volume it will give you a good view of where the ISK is flowing.

E.g. if there's a guy producing ammo in that graph, he will end up showing a very low number cause he buys minerals at a reasonable price and sells his missiles at a reasonable price making his edges close to zero and connecting many nodes. If there's an corp/alliance ship reimburstment then that can be flagged as balanced and the graph re-calculated.

As you improve this system you'd get more and more accurate heuristics to validate transactions, and cover more 'valid' transactions automatically. Basically this is a 'I know how I'd implement that, if it was my job' thing.

Now... Your turn, show us how that amazing theory of yours would work.

It's amazing that you can be such a moron talking about other topics and be capable of producing something like this. It's almost like you copied it off someone else.

I'd be interested in seeing this done and analyzing the results out of pure curiosity.

[Frug]

What ccp are interested in is identifying programs modifying the client-server exchange - presumably to guarantee no false positives. Also has the added benefit of putting code in place to spot injection exploits aswell as bots i guess.

i don't know what's worse - that they knowingly avoid banning unknown bots*, or that eve pve is so tedious a real player is apparently indistinguishable from a bot.
I'm sure they don't want people improving their interface. it's very important to the game that everyone has to use the same shitty interface because they know that their shitty interface is the best interface.

Also if I knew how I'd just hack it to give me wtz on autopilot again. Consider it an upgrade to my spaceship's computers.

[Rakshasa The Cat]

It's amazing that you can be such a moron talking about other topics and be capable of producing something like this. It's almost like you copied it off someone else.

I'd be interested in seeing this done and analyzing the results out of pure curiosity.

My mother once told me; you can do anything if you just apply yourself.

The implied part being that I am a lazy fuck. (true) The above was written while I was slacking at work trying to figure out how to implement L2 (MAC level) virtualized networks for virtual machines on a subnet without without any encapsulation or vlan tags. (And on the side doing some coding on the BitTorrent client, used by many seedbox providers cause it's fast and awesome, that landed me this job)

And thank you for giving me this opportunity to troll more~

[dpidcoe]

After much careful thought, I've made some slight modifications to Shin's proposal to make it even better:


Try this algorithm:

1. Develop an error free algorithm to profile accounts for bot like behavior
2. ban them
hay look guise, programmings ez, idkwtf ccp hazn't dun dis alraedy!



armchair programmers: pretty much as bad as internet lawyers.

[FatFreddy]

It's Shin_getter, he's pretty much an armchair everything.

[Shin_getter]

only lazy arm chair people go to the forums. its true.

[Joshua Foiritain]

After much careful thought, I've made some slight modifications to Shin's proposal to make it even better:


Try this algorithm:

1. Develop an error free algorithm to profile accounts for bot like behavior
2. ban them
hay look guise, programmings ez, idkwtf ccp hazn't dun dis alraedy!



armchair programmers: pretty much as bad as internet lawyers.
There are actually a few basic things one could code to find/hinder bots and macros;

- Most of the ones i've seen require you to point out spots on your interface, such as locations of icons on the overview, interface buttons, etc. Most macros will click this exact spot over and over while for real players this is almost impossible. Fortunately eve requires a lot of clicking so a bot would quickly rack up a lot of clicks on identical pixel spots and would stand out from normal players.

- Not sure how many bots/macros rely on recognizing interface elements by color these days, perhaps it gets used when telling npcs from gates and belts on the overview, if so randomizing the color slightly (ie not enough for people to notice but enough for the color code to not match during a comparison) would hinder bots.

- Randomize some window locations when you open them. For example mining bots would have to cycle cans every few hours, if the new cargo can window opens in a different spot from the old one this could trip up a few bots and shouldnt be too much of a hassle for players.

- Automate the GM "hello you are acting like a bot are you actually at the keyboard?" chat conversations by poking suspicious players with a chat convos pretending to be a survey and a relatively simple question like their favorite ship or activity in eve. GM convos always open on top of the stack and the blue text should get their attention. You can even ask the question in whatever language matches the one they've selected when they registered. No answer while play activity continues would be somewhat suspicious and be a reason for closer investigation. Any answer including gibberish could be considered acceptable or you could have someone scan over the daily list and point out odd answers for further investigation.

Obviously the first one is easy to counter once botters find out by simply randomizing the click location by a few pixels in various directions. But if you spend a month or two gathering a list of names, ip adresses and monitor them for suspicious transaction activity CCP should be able to ban quite a lot of them. Its hard to say how fast botters would be able to connect their clicking behavior to banning so its quite possible this system would be flushing out bots months or even years.

The second one is slightly more difficult but can be compensated by figuring out the range of random colors. It wont stop botting but it should break some bots for a while.

As for the third one, dunno how well that one would work but hey, everything helps.

The forth one wont identify bots on its own but would help filter out results from other methods that identify bots and since its automated it will means GM's dont have to manually convo players to see whats what.

[Daneel Trevize]

The window position one would be maddening for players, but the pixel location one sounds like a great heuristic.

[Shin_getter]

Since there is the "emulate human behavior" flag on common bots, I'm sure suitable randomization have been added to this sort of thing already. After all, if you can imagine it, botters can code it. Even the chat method, you could probably pipe a chatterbot at it, while it won't fool a human for long, differentiating it automatically may range from hard to not possible, depending on acceptable false positive rate. Screen output randomization also doesn't work against python injections. Most of the thing you do in Eve can be botted, and even if full automation is not possible, by redirecting human attention to absolutely essential tasks (eg. occasional captcha) can result in order of magnitude improvement in performance.

Far out there speculation for this post: if Eve really uses some kind of captcha, and stuff like hacking memory space or crafting your own pockets don't work, some guys is going to figure out how to transform it into a standard captcha for some medium traffic website (say a download site) and pipe it back to Eve for full automation. If you need a human, why use the owner when you can mechanical turk that shit?

[Space Panda]

who is worse, sg:dr, or barth?

[Tarminic]

The window position one would be maddening for players, but the pixel location one sounds like a great heuristic.
If we're talking about bots that don't directly hack the client it would be a minor hindrance, but anything that injects code or alters the client itself could easily defeat this. Just add some random "noise" to the mouse's XY coordinates that get sent to the server. It's not hard to get a distribution of points that looks close enough to human behavior that anything designed to catch it would also scoop up a bunch of false positives.

[Tarminic]

The window position one would be maddening for players, but the pixel location one sounds like a great heuristic.
If we're talking about bots that don't directly hack the client it would be a minor hindrance, but anything that injects code or alters the client itself could easily defeat this. Just add some random "noise" to the mouse's XY coordinates that get sent to the server. It's not hard to get a distribution of points that looks close enough to human behavior that anything designed to catch it would also scoop up a bunch of false positives.

[Shin_getter]

On some fundamental level, I am not sure highly motivated and skilled botters can be defeated, the best one could do is get it into an arms race. The existing bots have weaknesses mainly because of enforcement has been low.

If one tries to attack bots based on behavior, one could simply write a bot that emulates behavior better. Take a standard character, put 10% tax on him, make him buy 30~40% above build price mods, use expensive station services, and have it fail-at-pvp to transfer the said mods back to the bot owner. You can probably transfer ~>50% of generated value to other characters in a totally legit way, as human players often do, and this is profit above plex costs. Now run it with reasonable hours, have chatterbots talk to each other in private comms and have the bots do other random stuff with the account that is not related to efficiency. It might just be possible to make a group of characters that is more human then human by a bunch of measures and still generates enough profit for a 3rd party to get it run.

The "ruthless efficiency" focus of existing bots is a kind of false economy when serious attempts at finding bots is on the table.

[Liptonez]

On some fundamental level, I am not sure highly motivated and skilled botters can be defeated, the best one could do is get it into an arms race. The existing bots have weaknesses mainly because of enforcement has been low.

If one tries to attack bots based on behavior, one could simply write a bot that emulates behavior better. Take a standard character, put 10% tax on him, make him buy 30~40% above build price mods, use expensive station services, and have it fail-at-pvp to transfer the said mods back to the bot owner. You can probably transfer ~>50% of generated value to other characters in a totally legit way, as human players often do, and this is profit above plex costs. Now run it with reasonable hours, have chatterbots talk to each other in private comms and have the bots do other random stuff with the account that is not related to efficiency. It might just be possible to make a group of characters that is more human then human by a bunch of measures and still generates enough profit for a 3rd party to get it run.

The "ruthless efficiency" focus of existing bots is a kind of false economy when serious attempts at finding bots is on the table.

CCP still fail to ban the most obvious bots, what are you even talking about?

[Liptonez]

doublepost.

[Rakshasa The Cat]

The window position one would be maddening for players, but the pixel location one sounds like a great heuristic.
If we're talking about bots that don't directly hack the client it would be a minor hindrance, but anything that injects code or alters the client itself could easily defeat this. Just add some random "noise" to the mouse's XY coordinates that get sent to the server. It's not hard to get a distribution of points that looks close enough to human behavior that anything designed to catch it would also scoop up a bunch of false positives.

Also the rest of the 'solutions' are easy to get around, and is the kind of armsrace CCP Sreeg has said is pointless. (cause it is, it is obvious how to get around each and every one of the suggestions)

Current bots use OCR, so it's not just about position and color, and real players still need to be able to play the game and not get bugged by the interface or GMs all the time.

[Shin_getter]

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/constructive.png

Man, if PvE is reward is scaled based on how much content it generates for the rest of the player base, bots and the rest of money farming are much less of a problem.

It is somewhat strange that Eve pve is not only boring, but often designed to be run independently of pvp.

[Xiang Jiao]

It is somewhat strange that Eve pve is not only boring, but often designed to be run independently of pvp.

I often wondered how successful Eve would be with no PvE, but then you run into the chicken and egg paradox. How do you get the resources to build ships in order to take them into battle and destroy them without other players sourcing the materials? If players are better off botting producer (PvE) content anyway, couldn't NPCs act as the producers (not the pirates)? Get rid of CONCORD and everyone can be shot everywhere. I thought I was on to something really cool for a moment and then I realized everyone would just do the same shit and macro the new NPCs. :defeated:

[Shin_getter]

I often wondered how successful Eve would be with no PvE, but then you run into the chicken and egg paradox. How do you get the resources to build ships in order to take them into battle and destroy them without other players sourcing the materials? If players are better off botting producer (PvE) content anyway, couldn't NPCs act as the producers (not the pirates)? Get rid of CONCORD and everyone can be shot everywhere. I thought I was on to something really cool for a moment and then I realized everyone would just do the same shit and macro the new NPCs. :defeated:
Just have a tower that generate mats, or something like that. We know you can't bot that....but oh wait~....

Now I don't fully understand what you mean by NPC producers (microtransaction for NPC ships rage rage?).

You can totally pay for combat as long as you accept a little bit of metagaming. For example FW lp rewards for killing enemy ships can be increased a lot. Now people will certainly try to farm alts, but lets add a restriction where LP is only paid in a capped number of contested systems, for example. In such a environment, someone trying to farm alts is under risk from other players trying to "kill steal" generating some amount of pvp.

----
As long as three requirements match up, pve that leads into pvp can happen, they are:
1. Rewards must be high enough for it to be a main source of income after factoring in losses
2. Running away must be difficult
3. The money makers must have a reasonable means of defending themselves. The type of force required to fight will determine that social organization in that space.

With liberal use of traffic controlled gated complexes, you can convert #3 to something that even a solo player can do, by allowing only two ships though a gate(but at different times so the player can't close the complex before opponent can threaten it). Add npc tackle for #2 to work.

[Xiang Jiao]

By NPC producers, I meant that bots do all the primary farming, and throw it up on the market for players to buy and produce, but that doesn't even really make sense because how do NPC sellers set price, and why would anyone buy them when you could just farm the NPCs in space on the cheap? Then that would eventually be exploited by macro. Then, if you rid the game entirely of mining, missions and all that PvE content, and award players for killing other players as the sole means of sustaining yourself, then you open it up to who can farm their noobship alts the fastest. You just can't win!

I tried to sustain a meager pirate existence for about six months. My only income was scamming, suicide ganking and raiding offline POSes and bears in null and low with small scale efforts. That's when I realized I was pretty terrible at piracy. It was fun while it lasted and then I got turned onto the popularity of incursions. Easy money, and I never looked back. If I was subscribed today, I would probably be back ganking in the Dodixie - Bei high sec corridor with a Tornado, Tempest or Hurricane while rapidly running out of sec status. At least incursions are also pretty pro for getting the status back up.