Yes, exactly that one. It just so happens to have a lot of information neatly laid down for you to read. It's a very convenient link.
Proposal Discussion Anti Botting Agreement Idea 3.1 Player incentivised, VR compatible in-station "not-a-literal-Captcha"
- Thread starter Jane Turner
- Start date
Yes, exactly that one. It just so happens to have a lot of information neatly laid down for you to read. It's a very convenient link.
So you acknowledge a course for players to take with suspected botting has already been in place for over 2 years.
This initiative is a slightly different approach.
And for the record I'm aware that nothing will convince certain nay-sayers who want this out of the forums, but rebuffing the denialism with evidence helps a lot with the silent viewers
This initiative is a slightly different approach.
And for the record I'm aware that nothing will convince certain nay-sayers who want this out of the forums, but rebuffing the denialism with evidence helps a lot with the silent viewers
We had all this with the cheat trainer stuff a couple of years ago. People raising issues because "a player untargeted themselves by shooting at me" "a player shot at me once and my powerplant malfunctioned" "That FdL was too manouverable and I couldn't shoot it", "my efficient beam lasers didn't damage that players shields".
You're right about the forums. Too much has been raised by players on here who are convinced of something and it turns out there were significant gaps in their knowledge. It's kind of what's expected here now. On that basis, it is naive in the extreme to think starting a thread about solving a problem that most players can not see would gain any traction, especially when FDev have told you what to do.
This is exceedingly funny, considering how many people have signed up for the agreement, and have decided to support the cause. Growing by the day as well.
Oh the irony lmao
Those numbers are so inflated, I bet if you count individual CMDR names instead of "the 'leader' of this squadron says it's squadron members all signed"
you're down to low three digit numbers at best.
Indeed it is... I can think of one of your posts in September of last year that describes it aptly
(https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/call-to-arms-for-a-free-colonia.553462/post-8721083)I don't want it out of the forums, it is a great read!
Ummm... there does seem to be a distinct lack of actual evidence, bar supposition and extrapolation though...
Currently your strongest illustration of the point appears to be that an account was active a couple of years ago, was suspected of working against somebody, and is active today... That could be said for many players here, surely?
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The irony of this whole thread is, that it is basically asking to keep BGS game play at the mind numbing level where it is now, so stupid and dumb, that the work can be done by a duct taped together script. You might think people would start asking to change BGS game play, no botting needs to be removed, its hilarious...
If game play can be botted, bots are not the problem, the game play is.
Are we talking about the agreement? Or captchas? Because the latter would be a pointless irritation... the agreement? Just feels like somewhat meaningless fluff, especially if it's going to be flung around as proof someone is botting if they haven't signed to it (and no matter what well intended thoughts might be behind it, that will happen)
... this however, remains the core issue.
You're saying a pledge to not cheat constitutes a belief there is a problem? One does not necessarily follow the other
Prove to the people here that this is enough of a problem right now that requires changes to the game.
By the way, if botting is so prevalent and effective, how many supporters of the largest minor factions are doing it? Or are you saying this is only done by small groups in a few systems?
You have had ppl sign up to this and say there is a botting issue when there has been no evidence of any such thing! I have casually watched some of these factions and there has been nothing that wasn't caused by being bombed last year.
Yet, all signed up...lol.
Jane Turner
Volunteer Moderator
I just want to thank the people sending DMs on this subject. If I've not included, or have misrepresented your suggestions, please let me know.
I, and others, are still waiting to see any proof that there is a problem with bots.
Could you link to the list of suggestions? Interested to see if you included removing the ability to automate faction territory management.
That is just the thing, you would "rather" see permaban, that is all fun stuff to see untill this UNFAIRLY happens to your accounts... We do NOT need more wimsy flimsy permabans from blocking legitimate players from games that they have bought.
And there are numerous tales of when game developers bans lots of innocent people due their misstakes, like when a game developer messed up their anti-cheat detection and banned THOUSANDS of innocent players with the famous last line, this is decision is final. Which is just anti-consumer behaviour, add to this how many game developer tries to limit your options to complain about this.
Then one of the players getting banned, used the new GDPR to get some of the stuff their anti-cheat software sent to their servers from his computer, and ha realised that they had been trying to hash every file that was loaded in a process in memory, so they could look for cheats running, but you see, you cannot always read a file that is open, as you might not have rights to even that file, so sometimes, there was a processes running with a file you could not read, so instead of failing in trying to hash the file, they silently failed the read and continued and hashed what they got, an empty file, and they had then later added this empty file hash, to the list of "forbidden" hashes... so they blocked THOUSANDS of players for this "obvious" cheating in the game developers eyes... The user could not be sure that they had forbidden the hash of the empty file, but since their code did not detect the file read error, he suspected and once again reached out to the game developer and simply asked if they had added the empty file hash to the naughty list. Some time later, THOUSANDS of players accounts where reinstated... so much for the developers word of this decision is final and that they have done a good job at detecting a cheater....
So NO I totally against permabans on flimsy wimsy evidense... because when this happens, you have very little protection to complain about this.
My (at the time 10YO) son had his Minecraft account banned from some public servers for botting. He wasn't, it was just a witch-hunt campaign of complaints from other players. I just gave him my account to use instead until his (successful) appeal went through, ironically giving my account yo my son probably broke some ToS
I think that initiative can be signed in good faith without evidence. But I think any changes the the game, or suspension of accounts for the sake of this that impacts regular players would require solid evidence that this is an ongoing & endemic problem. That FDev have given away (IIRC 8m) accounts for free fairly recently suggests to me their priorities are different.
A change for this reason I can agree with. If the game didn't push players to act like bots maybe this type of thread wouldn't happen.
Unless things like this and the PvP bounty BGS exploit are looked at, this whole idea doesn't seem worth getting behind.
Jane Turner
Volunteer Moderator
I agree with you about the bounties - but isn't making getting behind the A-BA contingent on it a bit like saying I'm not going to do anything about climate change until you put deal with the issues of factory farming?
Technically, if you can't distinguish one from another, both are the same. Taking a step back, its bonkers to favor one army over the other, while both are doing the exact same thing, thanks to FD's own automation.
The whole ABA thing is a diversion from the real underlying problem, its fighting symptoms and ignoring the cause. Its like getting people to drive electric cars and showing off how 'green' you are, while getting the electricity from coal fueled power plants.