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EVE Online: GDC 2010: Fighting RMT
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood reports on a lecture at this year's Game Developers Conference given by EVE Online's Lead Economist Dr. Eyjo on how CCP fights RMT in EVE Online.
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The Game Developers Conference always gives reporters like those of us at MMORPG.com the opportunity to meet up with a large number of developers at the same time to conduct interviews and take part in demonstrations. So much so that we occasionally lose scope on the fact that this show is actually about developers getting together to share their successes and failures with one another all in the hopes of making the games industry that much stronger.
It is with that in mind that we sat in on a lecture given by EVE Online’s Lead Economist, affectionately known as Dr. Eyjo. While we’re most used to hearing the good doctor (PhD, not MD) talk directly about the game’s economy, today he was talking about Real Money Traders and the various strategies that CCP has been using to combat them.
Read GDC 2010: Fighting RMT.
Comments
I found it very interesting that such a small part of the population could cause such a large strain on the servers CPU. Glad to see the real money traders being banned, as doing so apparently makes the game perform better for legitimate players.
It's a Microsoft SQL database.
There are no miracles in space.
CCP has a good grasp of the effects of RMT and I do believe their policies have reduced the trade and driven it more underground.
Add in the players campaign to suicide gank miners on a regular basis and life has to be difficult for the botting farmer.
The result, EVE's economy remains largely in control of the player base and not at the mercy of the farmers.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Good thing they removed that ridiculous Spiider post or this thread would end up a rebuttal of those absurd ideas.
Anyone thinking that the RMT providers don't engage in illicit activities should ask the holders of all those hacked accounts in Wow.
I think CCP has a better handle on this problem than most developers. Take Aion for example, it is still filled with bots despite NCSoft's claims.
Eve is particularly sensitive to this because the entire economy is based on player input.
many other dev have to learn from ccp
BestSigEver :P
+1
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
Despite what they want you to believe, EVE is still filled with bots.
Despite what they want you to believe, EVE is still filled with bots.
No more than any other game.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
"CCP has seen their CPU dropped 30% for the 2% of the population that was banned"
The grammar is a bit hard to follow, but is he saying that 2% of the population was causing 30% of the CPU usage?
not sure myself, but if that 2 percent was running bots 23/7 then that perhaps would account for the 'distorted' useage figures, i mean, i consider myself to be a fairly active player, but i doubt i play more than 15 hours a week at the very most... quite often considerably less... i dont know how much time the average player spends online, but even if its 30 hours a week, thats still only about 1/6th of the amount of time a single bot does, or if their like me only about 1/12th so eliminating these farmers from the game, would i suppose have a greater impact than that of an 'average' player. Still, have to hand it to CCP, they really do their best to look after their players - real ones at least
They have always claimed it to be an ongoing struggle.
"Memories are meant to fade. They're designed that way for a reason."
I trust the other developers present at the conference LEARNED SOMETHING from this talk (looks at Blizzard).
DEFINITION OF REALITY: Graphics ok, Sound ok, Gold drops need more work...
CCP's answer to the problems of isk farming affecting the game's economy was....(drum roll) take it over themselves via Plex, thereby getting their own players to farm the isk that gets swapped for the GTCs bought from CCP.
I can't even think of a word to describe that kind of strategy from a company towards their own players. Machiavellian might be close enough for horseshoes, though.
Despite what they want you to believe, EVE is still filled with bots.
Proof or it didn't happen.
Yeah, the claim is made constantly, but little in the way of proof. Not saying they are all gone, and their primary focus is on people who resell ISK outside of the GTC system, which I think they have made great strides against.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
effective comes to mind : 0
Pretty much, most of the subscribers are alt accounts used as macro miners to support the few pvpers or the isk sellers. CCP saying they're fighting RMT is pretty much another crock from them. CCP have turned EVE into one giant RMT business for them, encouraging multiple accounts and botting.
I have friends playing EVE now that have multiple accounts running macro miners which they use to pay for plex and buy items in game and make real life cash. They use the same company to buy the macro programs and that company updates them for free after each patch. CCP knows the company and has a copy of the macro programs but if they stopped them their CPU usage would drop by alot more so they don't. They pretend to be doing something whilst encouraging macro mining, they say they banned 30k accounts 2 years ago? They said none of their developers had been helping corps or alliances cheat until they were caught red handed and it was exposed they'd swept it under the rug 8 months earlier! So really their word ain't worth squat.
You need proof? If you play the game have a look with your own eyes, most of the large alliances have their own protected macro mining systems in 0.0 and the rest use safer space to do it. Less profitable but it can easily be enough to pay for your game and earn some cash. CCP is like the Federal reserve, they need money they spawn more rocks! It all comes back into their pockets one way or another. People mine it, buy plex (game cards) and then sell them in real life for cash. People want isk so they buy the plex cards in real life for cash and sell it on for ISK or in game items John Smedley is no doubt kicking himself he didn't do this in SWG before he screwed it up!
The entire game is an RMT trading card game now, nothing more with CCP pretending they're fighting it all. It makes me sick to the pit of my stomach personally.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
Machiavellianism is also a term that some social and personality psychologists use to describe a person's tendency to deceive and manipulate others for personal gain. Suggestive of or characterized by expediency, deceit, and cunning.
How does this cover CCP?
They have taken the RMT model (selling ingame currency to less 'time agreeable' players, and in return, instead of asking for $$$ for currency they have enabled a model that allows one player to pay $$$ for gametime and sell it for ingame currency, thus allowing players with lots of time to turn their excess ingame currency into free play time, Company is simply gaining a monthly payment that the Time rich player would normally have made and allowing the Time poor player to keep playing without quitting because he cant make money
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ab/Norsefire-logo.png
Despite what they want you to believe, EVE is still filled with bots.
Proof or it didn't happen.
Ill give proof but you know google is your friend
.Search for " open source ripper eve " without qoutes .Eve has every kind of bots you can imagine , ratting bots /mining bots /mission bots/trade bots
If you're going to get so sick you should think about knowing why. Unholy Rage was less than a year ago and it's effects are well documented. If you play often and long enough, you know bot's are a problem. You also have a fairly good idea how they operate. A few Null sec players will use miner bots, but only the stupid ones. Smart Null sec players will set up a mission running alt. The only players that really use miners are isk sellers. Like I said, you play enough and see why things happen the way they do. Miner and mission macro's work much the same way, but the miner bot's have limitations and are easy to spot, both for other players and CCP. It's simply not possible to mine like everyone else using a bot, and it takes much longer. They really have to run all day after day, doing the same thing over and over to be profitable. According to CCP many isk farmers have even stopped using them in favor of missions.
So 30.000 last year (before FFest) and as this interview indicates, you can probably count on it this year too. Seems to me CCP is doing as much as anyone out there. Especially, when you consider GTC's. Yes it is a problem and anyone who plays often enough can spot it, but maybe you should think about taking the tin foil hat off.
If you're going to get so sick you should think about knowing why. Unholy Rage was less than a year ago and it's effects are well documented. If you play often and long enough, you know bot's are a problem. You also have a fairly good idea how they operate. A few Null sec players will use miner bots, but only the stupid ones. Smart Null sec players will set up a mission running alt. The only players that really use miners are isk sellers. Like I said, you play enough and see why things happen the way they do. Miner and mission macro's work much the same way, but the miner bot's have limitations and are easy to spot, both for other players and CCP. It's simply not possible to mine like everyone else using a bot, and it takes much longer. They really have to run all day after day, doing the same thing over and over to be profitable. According to CCP many isk farmers have even stopped using them in favor of missions.
So 30.000 last year (before FFest) and as this interview indicates, you can probably count on it this year too. Seems to me CCP is doing as much as anyone out there. Especially, when you consider GTC's. Yes it is a problem and anyone who plays often enough can spot it, but maybe you should think about taking the tin foil hat off.
Well I respectfuly disagree with your opinion on the matter, my experiences have taught me otherwise. CCP are like the goverment that says well crack dealers are a problem and cause crime so we're putting them out of business by legalising crack and selling it ourselves as the only legal vendor. It doesn't cut down on the problem of crack in fact it increases crime, addiction and misery ten fold no doubt. What it does do is cut out the crack dealer and pulls in the goverment a nice profit.
That is what CCP has done, cut out the middle man and caused proliferation of RMT by making it legal through them. If they cracked down on botting it would damage their own business now, they'd be putting themselves out of business since people would close their multiple accounts and stop buying plex with isk and eventually quit.
Take away a crack head's source of income to purchase the drug be it through crime or not then he has to go cold turkey like it or not and he'll quit. Why would a dealer do that? Why would CCP do that to plex heads? It makes no sense.
As for taking CCPs word for anything you can call me a tin foil hat but they were caught cheating and helping certain alliances cheat in EVE. When confronted they denied it until the evidence was displayed for all by an independent whistle blower that got abused and banned. Then they admitted to what they had to but failed to keep to their promise of firing any staff if caught cheating. That wasn't just me hallucinating and wearing a tin foil hat was it? That's why CCP can say what they want and I won't believe it until I see evidence.
In short CCP does nothing but encourage proliferation of RMT and have turned EVE into a F2P RMT space mining simulator. The PvP era in EVE has been long gone since the ushering in of the plex era!
To believe anything else in my opinion is NAIEVE!
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
I think CCP did the only smart thing.
1. Mass banning of botters
2. Kill third-party RMT through their own PLEX-model that really does not have that much impact on the game's economy
3. Adds a benefit to longtime subscribers by offering them an indirect way to benefit from new subscribers
4. Stabilizes the market and adds more value to items in general.
Making ISK is really easy in this game and no doubt most PLEX are sold by new gamers trying to get into their first battleships.
Of course there are going to be botters left, they are never going to go away. However, RMT botters were the reason for majority of negative aspects seem pretty dead. I have not checked for few months, but it was not that long time ago that it was actually cheaper to buy a plex and sell it online than purchase gold from a major RMT company.
I make 1.5 - 3 billion ISK a month when I am not really playing. Just logging on an checking my orders, research, inventions and manufacturing 3-4 times a week. Each time takes about 10 minutes. The PLEX sales has very little influence on my game. If anything, it supports my sales and market activities. Prices have stabilized and are less inflated. More rookie pilots can afford ships, implants and modules legally. Changes CCP has made have been very positive.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
If you're going to get so sick you should think about knowing why. Unholy Rage was less than a year ago and it's effects are well documented. If you play often and long enough, you know bot's are a problem. You also have a fairly good idea how they operate. A few Null sec players will use miner bots, but only the stupid ones. Smart Null sec players will set up a mission running alt. The only players that really use miners are isk sellers. Like I said, you play enough and see why things happen the way they do. Miner and mission macro's work much the same way, but the miner bot's have limitations and are easy to spot, both for other players and CCP. It's simply not possible to mine like everyone else using a bot, and it takes much longer. They really have to run all day after day, doing the same thing over and over to be profitable. According to CCP many isk farmers have even stopped using them in favor of missions.
So 30.000 last year (before FFest) and as this interview indicates, you can probably count on it this year too. Seems to me CCP is doing as much as anyone out there. Especially, when you consider GTC's. Yes it is a problem and anyone who plays often enough can spot it, but maybe you should think about taking the tin foil hat off.
Well I respectfuly disagree with your opinion on the matter, my experiences have taught me otherwise. CCP are like the goverment that says well crack dealers are a problem and cause crime so we're putting them out of business by legalising crack and selling it ourselves as the only legal vendor. It doesn't cut down on the problem of crack in fact it increases crime, addiction and misery ten fold no doubt. What it does do is cut out the crack dealer and pulls in the goverment a nice profit.
That is what CCP has done, cut out the middle man and caused proliferation of RMT by making it legal through them. If they cracked down on botting it would damage their own business now, they'd be putting themselves out of business since people would close their multiple accounts and stop buying plex with isk and eventually quit.
Take away a crack head's source of income to purchase the drug be it through crime or not then he has to go cold turkey like it or not and he'll quit. Why would a dealer do that? Why would CCP do that to plex heads? It makes no sense.
As for taking CCPs word for anything you can call me a tin foil hat but they were caught cheating and helping certain alliances cheat in EVE. When confronted they denied it until the evidence was displayed for all by an independent whistle blower that got abused and banned. Then they admitted to what they had to but failed to keep to their promise of firing any staff if caught cheating. That wasn't just me hallucinating and wearing a tin foil hat was it? That's why CCP can say what they want and I won't believe it until I see evidence.
In short CCP does nothing but encourage proliferation of RMT and have turned EVE into a F2P RMT space mining simulator. The PvP era in EVE has been long gone since the ushering in of the plex era!
To believe anything else in my opinion is NAIEVE!
So CCP is like corrupt government crack dealers, and EVE is a F2P mining simulator……Hmmm Think I’m just going to let that stand on it’s own merit.
Of all established mmorpgs I've played I am the least bothered by bots in EVE. There mights still be a lot around but they don' t annoy me as in; they aren't farming the same resources as I do and they aren't 'in your face' so much. In WOW and other games, they prey on the resources you need to make gold, to complete missions or gain standings and you encounter them everywhere you go. Not so in EVE; they are mainly out in belts where I have no reason to go anyway as a mission runner and if I would it would look like just another miner to me.
Server load, funding evil RMT companies and negative affects on economy are secondary consequences which shouldn't be underestimated though. But I am just happy that bots aren't a daily annoyance to me in EVE like in other games I've played.
My brand new bloggity blog.
"As for taking CCPs word for anything you can call me a tin foil hat but they were caught cheating and helping certain alliances cheat in EVE. When confronted they denied it until the evidence was displayed for all by an independent whistle blower that got abused and banned. Then they admitted to what they had to but failed to keep to their promise of firing any staff if caught cheating. That wasn't just me hallucinating and wearing a tin foil hat was it? That's why CCP can say what they want and I won't believe it until I see evidence"
Here we go again, way off the deep end, conspiracy theories enveloping the ether. Well sorry to burst your bubble, but any intelligent being knows what you wrote is complete nonsense. Anyone thinking CCP helps out alliances has lost it. You probably have bought the Brooklyn bridge multiple times.
Sure there are bots in EVE, just like any other MMO, I have to agree with the article that CCP does a far better job containing them, then most MMO teams. Try playing a NCSoft title sometime if you want to see the difference.
If you don't like EVE or CCP don't play their game, but please keep your Orwellian theories to yourself .
So I'm a crazy conspiracy theorist am I, well what is this then click ? Am I still just a mad man that is hallucinating and dreamed up what happened? Oh and this is what they were caught red handed doing, long term hardcore players of EVE all know what the real deal is and that this has been rampant since day one and continues to this day.
So is it all "complete nonsense" have I "lost it"? Because CCP themselves including the chairman admit to it so I guess they're crazy too? Better send them an email and tell them to retract their statements as it's all just the babblings of some crazy orwellian fantasy!
EDIT: gotta love the part he offers an alliance buddy a job at CCP even after he'd been "reprimanded" by the company for cheating!
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis