FDevs vision conflicts with Elites features: Another win for bots.

[CMDR Tom D]

OK, I admit your point, I'll have a look at your link. I'm sceptical because I've seen people saying that turret boats are bots, that the attack on Mobius was bots, that they know there are bots just because they lost their PP or BGS battles, and I already think they're wrong in almost all of those cases. But at the same time I admit that bots are technically possible. I bow to your knowledge and leave the field to you until I've had a read. (Trouble is, it will have to compete with playing ED in my evenings...)

Thank you. If you have any criticisms of the evidence we have or think we're lacking anywhere I'd be happy to hear it.
But seeing as you have limited time let me point you towards the parts that relate to your points.

Our initial warning alarms were raised when one of our members caught suspicious behaviour in open. This is detailed in the section Suspicions raised from behaviour. (which includes video of their behaviour)

So from this, we tracked players in game known to be botting. After the initial ban wave they hid in solo and yes you have a right to be sceptical as to how we tracked them following that. This is detailed in the section Third wave “Baby” Bots. But here's an excerpt for one of the main points.

Since all the bots ran applications that reported CAPI data to Third party developer services, and were not using them anonymously, we were able to track their movements. (Their usage of these tools help the bots track their own location in addition to Journal Data, as well as keeping markets up to date to know what best or indeed worst to trade between stations)

Hope that saves you some time.

 

[Mangal Oemie]

Hey everyone, we addressed botting on a previous thread, so I'll pop the response here:

Paige, with all due respect, because you're nice, and haven't been involved in our attempts to get botting addressed by FD...

But that's an empty bit of boilerplate that we know is simply not true. I am sorry to say that the poster of that message himself has been part of the ignoring and general unresponsiveness by Frontier staff on this issue (with one exception, a QA engineer that cared, but didn't get any support internally).

AEDC is still open to discuss this topic with you. We've extended the offer to dialogue multiple times, but never succeeded beyond some messages relayed through Triple Elite groups, because you simply refuse to talk directly to subject matter experts and those trying to deal with the botting issue.

You're not "taking it seriously". You're not even trying... Come talk to us (or other bot victims), and we can make some progress. But until you do, nothing will change, and we will laugh cynically about that bit of boilerplate.

 

[Mangal Oemie]

.... Often it seems the losing side are more likely to loudly claim it was the other side 's overwhleming use of bots to win.

Interestingly, the biggest victims of bots (as far as I am aware) have been highly successful PP and BGS groups.

Of course, if there is a massive coalition of hidden players that managed to turn a mid 30s systems controlled faction into one with just 15 and in many systems entirely dispossessed of all in-system assets, AEDC would love to know about it. But there isn't.

 

[Mangal Oemie]

So, how are FD doing at the whole bot detection thing?

They're not. We offered a dialogue with our experience. Multiple times.

Conversation never happened.

 

[Ouberos]

They're not. We offered a dialogue with our experience. Multiple times.

Conversation never happened.

Now, I don't mean to question your veracity here but I do remember at one point you guys were saying you definitely were working with FD on this issue. I seem to remember even asking if FD was god modding things in your favour to counter the effects of Bots.

I seem to remember the answer to this question was no.

As a sometime BGS Freedom fighter I personally find Bots a bit annoying. How are you supposed to crow about something if it's been done for you?

 

[Agony_Aunt]

They're not. We offered a dialogue with our experience. Multiple times.

Conversation never happened.

Even if they didn't talk to you, it doesn't mean they are doing nothing about it. Maybe you can offer some insight into who is botting and perhaps how or the source of the bot code, but i very much doubt you can provide any help to FD in terms of how to detect the bots from a software point of view (unless you have some real world experience of coding bot detection routines).

I personally wonder how they could possibly detect a bot with some randomness built in, but that's not my problem to solve. Presumably something to do with watching for patterns and flagging anything that looks suspicious for human monitoring. Considering the game mechanics, and how some people play though, i'm not sure you could actually tell a bot from a human even if they were streaming live.

 

[Mangal Oemie]

Now, I don't mean to question your veracity here but I do remember at one point you guys were saying you definitely were working with FD on this issue. I seem to remember even asking if FD was god modding things in your favour to counter the effects of Bots.

I seem to remember the answer to this question was no.

As a sometime BGS Freedom fighter I personally find Bots a bit annoying. How are you supposed to crow about something if it's been done for you?

We had a contact at Frontier we talked to (who we still deeply respect and hope gets more support internally in the future). After sharing a lot of info and this person being very concerned, it turned out that addressing botting was not part of that person's responsibilities, and while passing info on to those that did, the individual was unable to get traction with them. We had another pass-through-Triple-Elite with one of the community managers where we were collaboratively able to flag an account for further investigation. We had high hopes that that would lead to a wider conversation, and were promised one. That never happened.

We shared our info via support tickets. None of those went anywhere, but they did ask us to continue our data gathering. Any requests from our side to explain how they could get much better results out of their data fell on deaf ears.

There never has been any god modding. After months and months of trying to engage with Frontier, we managed to get one account flagged for further investigation because a Triple Elite group put them under pressure, and even then we didn't speak direct with the community manager but passing messages via another player group, who then relayed them to that community manager, and returned the response. A process that would have been much simpler if they'd just talked to us directly.

This is how little Frontier is engaging with those trying to report things.

 

[Mangal Oemie]

Even if they didn't talk to you, it doesn't mean they are doing nothing about it. Maybe you can offer some insight into who is botting and perhaps how or the source of the bot code, but i very much doubt you can provide any help to FD in terms of how to detect the bots from a software point of view (unless you have some real world experience of coding bot detection routines).

I personally wonder how they could possibly detect a bot with some randomness built in, but that's not my problem to solve. Presumably something to do with watching for patterns and flagging anything that looks suspicious for human monitoring. Considering the game mechanics, and how some people play though, i'm not sure you could actually tell a bot from a human even if they were streaming live.

I am not going to go into methods as long as I have a hope that Frontier will ultimately start that dialogue with us, as sharing this publicly would change the behavior of botters. But yes, you're on the right track.

 

[Pyelot]

After any mission and before being paid, an ingame GOOGLE ReCAPTCHA pops up to confirm human intervention

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I am not going to go into methods as long as I have a hope that Frontier will ultimately start that dialogue with us, as sharing this publicly would change the behavior of botters. But yes, you're on the right track.

Oh, you have real expereince of coding for this stuff? Cool. Perhaps you can apply for a job at FD.

 

[Ouberos]

Have the BGS changes not made any difference to the impact of Bots? With the diminished return of repeated actions I would have thought that a large, well organised group of players could happily sit on big population systems.

Smaller population systems fit nicely into the narrative that they aren't worth the big groups investing in.

 

[Mangal Oemie]

The botters had their code fixed for 3.3 in days. Frontier took about 2 months to make the BGS work somewhat rationally again.

@Agony_Aunt, they can make me an offer.... Although I would already be satisfied to just have that dialogue we were promised.

 

[IamNickMan]

Paige, with all due respect, because you're nice, and haven't been involved in our attempts to get botting addressed by FD...

But that's an empty bit of boilerplate that we know is simply not true. I am sorry to say that the poster of that message himself has been part of the ignoring and general unresponsiveness by Frontier staff on this issue (with one exception, a QA engineer that cared, but didn't get any support internally).

AEDC is still open to discuss this topic with you. We've extended the offer to dialogue multiple times, but never succeeded beyond some messages relayed through Triple Elite groups, because you simply refuse to talk directly to subject matter experts and those trying to deal with the botting issue.

You're not "taking it seriously". You're not even trying... Come talk to us (or other bot victims), and we can make some progress. But until you do, nothing will change, and we will laugh cynically about that bit of boilerplate.

Ahmen to this.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

The botters had their code fixed for 3.3 in days. Frontier took about 2 months to make the BGS work somewhat rationally again.

@Agony_Aunt, they can make me an offer.... Although I would already be satisfied to just have that dialogue we were promised.

Not surprising. Hackers, botters, etc, always tend to be able to react fast as long as the game code doesn't get in their way somehow (eg: anti-cheat protection). Surprised actually it took them days.

The BGS is a completely different beast, and its not like FD can just say to the devs responsible, fix it. The BGS is a complex beast, so bugs need analysing, defining what is wrong, proposing fixes, implementing, release to testing, etc. But i'm sure you know all this.

Botters/hackers are hobbyists, and don't suffer the same restrictions that official devs work under.

Having said that, i also find how long it takes FD to fix some issues highly frustrating.

 

[CMDR Tom D]

Paige, with all due respect, because you're nice, and haven't been involved in our attempts to get botting addressed by FD...

On a side note, Paige always takes the heat when things go wrong simply by virtue of her position at FDev, but even if she's just reiterating official lines from the company, I still appreciate her effort when I'm sure being stuck between a rock and a hard place is frustrating.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Paige, with all due respect, because you're nice, and haven't been involved in our attempts to get botting addressed by FD...

But that's an empty bit of boilerplate that we know is simply not true. I am sorry to say that the poster of that message himself has been part of the ignoring and general unresponsiveness by Frontier staff on this issue (with one exception, a QA engineer that cared, but didn't get any support internally).

AEDC is still open to discuss this topic with you. We've extended the offer to dialogue multiple times, but never succeeded beyond some messages relayed through Triple Elite groups, because you simply refuse to talk directly to subject matter experts and those trying to deal with the botting issue.

You're not "taking it seriously". You're not even trying... Come talk to us (or other bot victims), and we can make some progress. But until you do, nothing will change, and we will laugh cynically about that bit of boilerplate.

Well, if you truly believe what you are saying, that FD don't care about botting, they don't take action, they are not taking it seriously, then you might as well just give up. They aren't going to talk to you about fixes (as i've kind of implied, i don't think they will anyway, they have their own specialists), they aren't likely going to ask you about your experiences (that is what the report function is for anyway - and i guess you think they don't pay attention to those reports), and they are not going to do anything about bots.

Trust me, i understand your frustration, i understand how you think you can help, i understand how this undermines people's efforts working the BGS/PP/CGs (maybe my own faction has been affected by bots, it sometimes seems like it), but either you accept what the devs are saying or you might as well just throw in the towel.

 

[IamNickMan]

On a side note, Paige always takes the heat when things go wrong simply by virtue of her position at FDev, but even if she's just reiterating official lines from the company, I still appreciate her effort when I'm sure being stuck between a rock and a hard place is frustrating.

Unless frontier is run differently in some fashion I'm not aware of, you'd be right. I acknowledged that in a post way back. Support and community managers sadly are not the decision makers that can truly solve this problem & can see the anomalies in the data that would line up with what we're seeing and have reported in the past.

 

[Mangal Oemie]

Well, if you truly believe what you are saying, that FD don't care about botting, they don't take action, they are not taking it seriously, then you might as well just give up. They aren't going to talk to you about fixes (as i've kind of implied, i don't think they will anyway, they have their own specialists), they aren't likely going to ask you about your experiences (that is what the report function is for anyway - and i guess you think they don't pay attention to those reports), and they are not going to do anything about bots.

Trust me, i understand your frustration, i understand how you think you can help, i understand how this undermines people's efforts working the BGS/PP/CGs (maybe my own faction has been affected by bots, it sometimes seems like it), but either you accept what the devs are saying or you might as well just throw in the towel.

I guess we feel similar to PvP'ers around combat logging: we know it's against TOS, we know FD isn't doing anything about it, we live with it, but will raise the issue whenever it comes up, and remain willing to dialogue with the company who says it's something they take seriously, in the hope we can get the issue fixed for the wider community. But in the meantime keep playing the game we love.

 

[CMDR Tom D]

EDIT: Every one is complaining, but no one is offering much of a realistic solution here.

Thanks for your insight, I really appreciate the expertise here. That's an interesting solution and I'd really like to see how it plays out in practice.

But on the note of your edit, a lot of possible solutions like CAPTCHA codes embedded in gameplay, or just more complex gameplay, in general, were offered. This was very much emphasised in the original thread that evidenced the bots by many people.

It may seem like we're all complaining simply because we've gone over a year with the same basic response from FDev with no offer to address the issue or entertain our solutions.

 

[Ouberos]

There would be some dark irony if Auto-supercruise has been developed from Bot code.

You know, FD could have just decided that it's easier to lower the bar so every major BGS or PP group can have their own Bots. They have developed a few ideas from third party providers, why not Bots?

I've seen lots of people ask for automated surface mining or mat gathering machines. Perhaps Auto-spaceflight modules are just the beginning of "player exclusion" QoL updates.