Poetic Stanziel wrote that CCP Sreegs, the head of security department left because he wasn't allowed to do his job and ban the bots because bots pay subscription too. This claim wasn't reinforced and was mostly ridiculed by the community. As Jester adequately put: "Let's just say that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
I've found it. Meet S (full name sent to CCP as a bot report). S is an ice miner. Similarly to half dozen of his identically fit buddies: pretty tanked Mackinaws. I gank miners recently and he was in a Mackinaw. He wasn't anywhere near ore or ice, neither his buddies. They were flying in the open space, thousands of kilometers from the nearest object. It's not surprising on its own: many players set their Mackinaws on orbit (moving protects from ganking) and when the ice disappears, the Mack flies in straight line. If he goes AFK (which isn't illegal) his ship will fly far from the original ice. Nothing interesting yet, I scanned them down and one by one they exploded. Since they were somewhat tanked, some survived in low hull. Nevermind, they were AFK, I came back 15 minutes later to finish the job. This was the fate of S too, I hit him and left him in hull:
Soon after he was left in hull, he warped off. "Damnit, he came back to the computer, I wasted a pair of catas for nothing" - I thought. I opened the scanner to find another target and noticed that the ice is up. I warped there, and look what the wind blew in:
But maybe he was just very drunk and did not noticed. He somehow missed the destruction of 3 of his other Macks. So I continued with M, an identically fit (and later found to be identically implanted) Mackinaw. I stood on his face. I bumped him out of mining range. I warped Catalysts on him. I ganked him to hull. I invited him to duel, which he did not accept or decline. He just couldn't care less: reapproached the ice and continued mining until I put him out of his misery:
Let's continue with yet another member of the family, her name is also S. With her I recognized one more strange thing: she did not use drones. None of them did. Each and every one of them died with 10 light drones in the drone bay. Why did they have drones at all, I wonder. Maybe because the terrible homemade bot couldn't handle them? Well, having no drones is not a problem if you aren't alone in an ice belt which is usually the case. But when a big flashy ganker chased off everyone who are - you know - human players, the lack of drones introduces you to the true power. Literally:
The problem isn't the existence of bots in the game. There isn't a single MMO without bots. The problem is the horribly primitive nature of this bot:
On purpose. The existence of this bot is the extraordinary evidence that CCP does not allow Team Security to ban bots. They are only allowed to catch RMT-ers, because they cut into the business of CCP. Someone buying ISK from an RMT site is not buying PLEX. But botting for yourself is tolerated, even if you do it in a very obvious and primitive fashion.
Why were the careful botters (who cry on botting forums) caught? Oh the irony: because they were careful. They used virtual machines and proxies to hide the connection between their bots and their main accounts. So Team Security couldn't determine if they are farming ISK for themselves or for sale, so they were banned as RMT suspects. Had they run their bots on their main accounts, they'd still be farming!
After the bad news that bots are free to devalue your income, let's see some good news, another constellation is cleansed from those pesky Mackinaws, Hulks, Covetors and untanked Rets:
I've found it. Meet S (full name sent to CCP as a bot report). S is an ice miner. Similarly to half dozen of his identically fit buddies: pretty tanked Mackinaws. I gank miners recently and he was in a Mackinaw. He wasn't anywhere near ore or ice, neither his buddies. They were flying in the open space, thousands of kilometers from the nearest object. It's not surprising on its own: many players set their Mackinaws on orbit (moving protects from ganking) and when the ice disappears, the Mack flies in straight line. If he goes AFK (which isn't illegal) his ship will fly far from the original ice. Nothing interesting yet, I scanned them down and one by one they exploded. Since they were somewhat tanked, some survived in low hull. Nevermind, they were AFK, I came back 15 minutes later to finish the job. This was the fate of S too, I hit him and left him in hull:
Soon after he was left in hull, he warped off. "Damnit, he came back to the computer, I wasted a pair of catas for nothing" - I thought. I opened the scanner to find another target and noticed that the ice is up. I warped there, and look what the wind blew in:
But maybe he was just very drunk and did not noticed. He somehow missed the destruction of 3 of his other Macks. So I continued with M, an identically fit (and later found to be identically implanted) Mackinaw. I stood on his face. I bumped him out of mining range. I warped Catalysts on him. I ganked him to hull. I invited him to duel, which he did not accept or decline. He just couldn't care less: reapproached the ice and continued mining until I put him out of his misery:
Let's continue with yet another member of the family, her name is also S. With her I recognized one more strange thing: she did not use drones. None of them did. Each and every one of them died with 10 light drones in the drone bay. Why did they have drones at all, I wonder. Maybe because the terrible homemade bot couldn't handle them? Well, having no drones is not a problem if you aren't alone in an ice belt which is usually the case. But when a big flashy ganker chased off everyone who are - you know - human players, the lack of drones introduces you to the true power. Literally:
The problem isn't the existence of bots in the game. There isn't a single MMO without bots. The problem is the horribly primitive nature of this bot:
- There were half dozen of them, each behaving identically.
- They were online all day (I did not attack them until I found less tanked targets).
- They were flying into the nothing, doing nothing when there was no ice.
- They instantly responded to the appearance of the ice anomaly.
- They did not respond to convo, bumping, ganking, buddies dying, rats eating them.
- They mined ice like a clockwork. No waiting time on the station, no idling on the ice field with full hold (no lasers), mined, filled, warped, returned.
On purpose. The existence of this bot is the extraordinary evidence that CCP does not allow Team Security to ban bots. They are only allowed to catch RMT-ers, because they cut into the business of CCP. Someone buying ISK from an RMT site is not buying PLEX. But botting for yourself is tolerated, even if you do it in a very obvious and primitive fashion.
Why were the careful botters (who cry on botting forums) caught? Oh the irony: because they were careful. They used virtual machines and proxies to hide the connection between their bots and their main accounts. So Team Security couldn't determine if they are farming ISK for themselves or for sale, so they were banned as RMT suspects. Had they run their bots on their main accounts, they'd still be farming!
After the bad news that bots are free to devalue your income, let's see some good news, another constellation is cleansed from those pesky Mackinaws, Hulks, Covetors and untanked Rets:
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