Posted - 2008.05.10 19:13:00 - [32]

 

Originally by: ZW Dewitt

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And then they create a new trial account and start all over again... seems like nothing but a waste of time from our perspective, care to prove otherwise to the playerbase?

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Yes, they can create new trial accounts, but they then have to start all over again and build their farming characters from scratch. This takes a while and isn't bottabe to the same degree…

…but I think that what Atropos is talking about here is finding the toons who actually sit on the large sums of ISK that they actually sell, and putting those accounts (and anyone who's traded with them) into negative bazillions of ISK. That halts their efforts rather pronto-like.

With those gone, the spambots are gone as well. No reason to advertise for a service that you can no longer provide.

Posted - 2008.05.11 00:20:00 - [34]

 

Originally by: CCP Atropos

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I really hate this kind of disinformation that people spread. Please, please, please report every instance of isk selling or macro mining you find. The reason people always reply with some off the cuff remark of "Thats good in theory but CCP never do anything!" or "Our logs don't show anything" is because they want immediate results.

Unfortunately for them there are paper trails to follow and procedures to be gone through before we ban people for macromining, RMT, etc. The best analogy is to imagine it as a giant jigsaw; each time someone reports a seller or bot it allows us to put another piece of the puzzle in place. Sometimes it's a side piece allowing you to track down a whole slew of other pieces, sometimes it's just a bit out in the middle of nowhere that has no connection to the rest, as yet. Needless to say, all the reports are pieces in the jigsaw, and if some people weren't so stupid as to constantly tell people that CCP does nothing about them, the jigsaw would be completed a lot sooner.

Of course, it's an ongoing battle, so once this jigsaw is complete, there's another to be finished, but such is the way of the world.

/rant

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While i understand that it's an ongoing battle... You didnt say what section we should petition these players under.

It would be nice to have a section specifically for suspected macros. I've gone to petition a few, but cant figure out what section to put the petition under, so I usually just dont bother.

Posted - 2008.05.11 06:39:00 - [36]

 

Of course there are more chinese isk farmers than other countries, there are more of every type of person in China. Look up World Population by country someday.

I have a good friend who would do great in Eve. However as they're Chinese there is no way I'm exposing them to this. This kind of entrenched racism is sickening.

Posted - 2008.05.11 11:32:00 - [40]

 

Edited by: VicturusTeSaluto on 11/05/2008 11:32:42

Originally by: CCP Atropos

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I really hate this kind of disinformation that people spread. Please, please, please report every instance of isk selling or macro mining you find. The reason people always reply with some off the cuff remark of "Thats good in theory but CCP never do anything!" or "Our logs don't show anything" is because they want immediate results.

Unfortunately for them there are paper trails to follow and procedures to be gone through before we ban people for macromining, RMT, etc. The best analogy is to imagine it as a giant jigsaw; each time someone reports a seller or bot it allows us to put another piece of the puzzle in place. Sometimes it's a side piece allowing you to track down a whole slew of other pieces, sometimes it's just a bit out in the middle of nowhere that has no connection to the rest, as yet. Needless to say, all the reports are pieces in the jigsaw, and if some people weren't so stupid as to constantly tell people that CCP does nothing about them, the jigsaw would be completed a lot sooner.

Of course, it's an ongoing battle, so once this jigsaw is complete, there's another to be finished, but such is the way of the world.

/rant

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I wish I could agree.

It seems pretty clear to me that CCP is relatively happy to have the business of the chinese farmers. If they wanted them gone, they could get rid of 90% of them for good- tomorrow.

For starters- I don't see a good reason for even allowing anyone in a chinese ip range to access tq without special permission- they already have their own server for which we can not just casually sign up.

CCP is clearly profiting from their presence, as they are a much larger part of the subscriber base than anyone would like to admit or even think about.

I do see evidence that some of them are being banned, but the worst offenders stay in game even after being reported. The ones that get banned are the trial accounts, and the other newbish characters that don't matter so much.

For instance, the farmers use one character to interact with the agent and completely separate characters to carry out combat missions. The farmers that fly raven/domi/drake etc in missions are never banned. They just pick up bookmarks from a station and then complete missions belonging to another farmer character.


Also, some slight tweaks to the game mechanics would make it much harder for the macros. Eliminating courrier missions would be a step in the right direction. Or at least making them require t2-expanded haulers only and not shuttles/frigs. A lot of the most popular farming stations also have a natural insta in the form of a planet or whatever. Rotating these stations to face out into the middle of nowhere would make life much harder for the farmers. It would help even more if CCP would break the undock instas completely.

Sorry, I am not convinced that CCP is putting serious effect into killing off the farmers that are slowly killing eve.

Posted - 2008.05.11 11:39:00 - [42]

 

Originally by: Nyphur

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Edited by: Nyphur on 10/05/2008 14:16:35

Originally by: Tala Sasaki

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I just hate how it's always 'chinese gold farmers' or 'chinese isk farmers' with absolutely no proof what nationality they are.

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Bayes Theorem, which relates the probability of two apparently independant random occurances based on observations of their occurance, suggests that given a high observed probability of chinese players being isk farmers and a relatively moderate probability of a player being chinese, there is a high probability of farmers being chinese. When compared to the same probability for non-chinese players, it's possible to show that the generalisation is true. Maybe he wasn't being a bigot, just a bit of a mathemagician.

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ummm ya....what he said.....

Posted - 2008.05.11 11:45:00 - [44]

 

Bayesian probability says that trees are made of skin. It justifies nothing.

Posted - 2008.05.11 11:54:00 - [46]

 

Originally by: CCP Atropos

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I really hate this kind of disinformation that people spread. Please, please, please report every instance of isk selling or macro mining you find. The reason people always reply with some off the cuff remark of "Thats good in theory but CCP never do anything!" or "Our logs don't show anything" is because they want immediate results.

Unfortunately for them there are paper trails to follow and procedures to be gone through before we ban people for macromining, RMT, etc. The best analogy is to imagine it as a giant jigsaw; each time someone reports a seller or bot it allows us to put another piece of the puzzle in place. Sometimes it's a side piece allowing you to track down a whole slew of other pieces, sometimes it's just a bit out in the middle of nowhere that has no connection to the rest, as yet. Needless to say, all the reports are pieces in the jigsaw, and if some people weren't so stupid as to constantly tell people that CCP does nothing about them, the jigsaw would be completed a lot sooner.

Of course, it's an ongoing battle, so once this jigsaw is complete, there's another to be finished, but such is the way of the world.

/rant

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Since macroers, isk farmers and traders are such a big issue, maybe CCP should start an official thread (and sticky it) telling the community how to go about reporting them. Also, since some people seem to lack faith in CCP's ability to investigate the offenders and take action against them, it might be useful if some information is provided on how complicated and lengthy the process is.

Basically, tell us how important it is for us to report offenders and why. Encourage us to do so!

Posted - 2008.05.11 13:08:00 - [48]

 

TBH, if you took it that seriously, you would do exactly what Sony did with EQ. Add in a detector to the client that can "see" third party programs that directly access memory locations of certain data. For example, ships holds, jet cans, station hangar, overview etc.

On opening, cargo windows, container and jet can windows etc do not open in the same position so creation of a mouse move macro won't work either.

That leaves only the account sharing which can easily be detected when you see that a character has been playing 23 hours a day for several days. The logs alone will show past account login history so results for petitioning them could easily be immediate.

Either get serious about it or give us the tools to issue retribution.

Posted - 2008.05.11 13:40:00 - [50]

 

Originally by: Batolemaeus

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Originally by: Drizit

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TBH, if you took it that seriously, you would do exactly what Sony did with EQ. Add in a detector to the client that can "see" third party programs that directly access memory locations of certain data. For example, ships holds, jet cans, station hangar, overview etc.

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I do not want CCP to install a trojan like warden on my pc, thank you.

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Got something to hide then?

Posted - 2008.05.11 13:54:00 - [52]

 

Originally by: Cutie Chaser

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I'm guessing peoples apathy towards reporting this comes hand-in-hand with receiving exactly ZERO feedback for thier efforts.

Have you considered handing out 'gold stars' (ie some sort of useless, yet tangible, reward) to people who report these guys? If handed out something down the line when these people were banned then at least those people reporting them would know they are not just wasting their breath.

Not only that, but you'd likely have people trying to gather as many 'gold stars' as possible, even though they serve no purpose.

It wouldn't take you much time, and you'd be giving feedback to the players who take their time to look for these folks.

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This!!

When I played WoW , I reported gold farmers all the time, and I'd always get a response, and not always a macroed one , made it feel like it was worth the trouble.

Posted - 2008.05.11 14:12:00 - [54]

 

Edited by: Big Al on 11/05/2008 14:17:33
You mean the players that store their CNR fits in GSCs when they log off aren't legit? I am shocked and appalled.

You're living in a dream world if you think CCP is ever going to be able todo anything on a large scale other than ban the trial account ISK sale spammers, as much as they want to post to the contrary the farmers are a huge portion of the player base. A huge portion that in general - doesn't whine, doesn't engage in blob combat, doesn't ragequit, and doesn't cancel their subs while training.

It's OK though, CCP will continue to bait you with promises of 'faction warfare, ambulation, fixing 'features' like the UI migrating across the screen on every session change.

It's not completely CCP's fault though, clearly the farmer handlers are further ahead of the game than CCP's dirty ISK interdiction team. They know enough to move it around several times to reduce the bannination chances of the origin accounts. Wholesale banning of every suspicious transaction on every account would just result in more emo posts on the forums about -15 billion balances and such. That's certainly publicity CCP doesn't need.

For people calling racism, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's probably a frakin duck. Chinese aren't the only nationality with ISK farmers by far, but they are clearly in the majority. I really doubt an angry Russian farmer would be spamming me in Traditional Chinese characters after removing him from his raven.

To the people on the opposite end of the spectrum calling for Chinese IP bans :facepalm: There are plenty of legit Chinese players who don't want to play on the festering pile of crap that is the Chinese server. Odds are pretty decent that farmers use US/EU proxies anyway - so this wouldn't do any good.

Posted - 2008.05.11 16:04:00 - [56]

 

IF you bother to do a whois on the sites the isk sellers are promoting, you will see that most of the owners are "wong" "tong" "mong" "liu" "chan" or whatever, located in Beijing, Honk-Kong, or any other yellow country.

10-15 yrs ago when I started to play online games I had nothing against those people.

Today after I've been abused with spam, hack & scam attempts so many years, I do have something against them. I realise that not all of asians are gold farmers or scammers, but 99.9% from the ones I've meet in any MMORPG are.

I have no intention to offend, is just the truth.

Posted - 2008.05.11 16:12:00 - [58]

 

Originally by: Iriana McNuke

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I realise that not all of asians are gold farmers or scammers, but 99.9% from the ones I've meet in any MMORPG are.

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Given how ready you are to say that is it any suprise that non-isk farming asians would make sure you didn't know their race?

Posted - 2008.05.11 19:33:00 - [60]

 

Originally by: Akita T

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To show people that CCP cares enough, a simple minor gesture would suffice.
Just introduce a brand new petition category : Macros and RMT.
Would that be so hard ?

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Too much effort for too little reward. What CCP should give consideration to is making it easier to report potential macros and suspected RMT users. In most MMOs worth their salt, there's a quick report function for common infractions like spamming. A quick-reporting function separate from the petition system would not only make players more willing to report macros but it would stop the issue where people can't report them because they're limited to one or two petitions active at a time.

I'll be honest here, I don't report it when I see a dozen "fguihdfgiuh"s in haulers because it's too much effort and I'm not the only one. The average eve player just doesn't bother because making them use the petition system sets the effort barrier way too high. If there was an option on the dropdown list for their name to file a quick RMT report requiring me to only write a few sentences, more people would report them.