Topic: The whole balancing around afking, mutiboxing and botting
Since a couple people fail to comprehend my condensed version, here is the long, explained one.
Afk mining is referred to when people go afk for at least a couple hours and their bot continues to mine. Without using illegal software, this can be done by either sequers or scarabs.
As these 2 bots have low mining capacity, they can NOT influence the market in any significant way. If you dont believe me, i can show you what 8 rivelers do in an hour. So, the ore is nice, but not big enough to cause game-wide imbalance.
Multiboxing is referred to when a person uses multiple clients (accounts) to play the game. No illegal software used. The balancing around this one is fragile. If you dont limit the multiboxers, they are going to run over the "normal" one-account people. On the other hand, if you limit the multiboxers too much you 1) piss off the biggest donators of the game and 2) the corp suddenly lose a lot of miners and producers (for example, gamma is unminable right now due to reds and energy usage by bases isnt negligible)
Botting is referred to when a player uses illegal software to automate his accounts. He can go to bed or do something else while his robots continue to farm as if he was manually controlling them. This is a major problem. Botting isnt even that hard from technical aspect, especially with farming npcs and old missioning. This creates massive imbalances to the game economy and should be controlled asap.
Now that we have the basic terminology down, here's my gripe:
1) The DEVs absolutely refuse concrete proof of botting that would get players banned in pretty much every other game. If players are able to see a guy's botting, then the DEVs should be able to see it from a mile using game codes.
2) The DEVs would rather implement some mechanics that indeed make botting hard and yet makes every other legit account feel like taking a bullet to the head.
The reintroduction (or "fix" as some call it) of reds on gamma made it inferior to mine there. Yet the buildings arent cheap and the upkeep takes many a cryoperine that the corp members are apparently going to be forced to mine at alpha freaking 2. Do you understand what this means for gameplay? You are finally a nullsec, gamma, base-owning corp that is forced to go to carebear islands because gamma and beta just arent worth it. (The field size is not even a close enough buff for reds out there wanting to kill your ***)
3) Upcoming reds on alpha 2. Again, by trying to combat botters, you are putting all accounts to risk. Especially the multiboxers. When I go to beta mining with 8 rivelers, im not going to run away from reds. I am going to die if they find me. But thats ok, im mining epriton and i am willing to take the risk. But on alpha, mining ore that is 20x less worth than epi? Nobody sane would want to do that. You are hurting everyone, especially the multiboxers that indeed supported your game. (past tense if you dont stop introducing changes that outright tell us to uninstall perpetuum)
4) Get a freaking botting detection sofware and start banning people. This is one of the few games i know that doesnt ban botters. I mean, why shouldnt i use botting software to get ahead? Its against the tos, but im not gonna get banned, so i might as well do it. <-- this kind of mentality is killing both the economy and the game
5) Stop making such extreme balancing changes. I dont see any DEVs playing. Which is ok, if they are busy coding, giving us new stuff. But if its balancing, please STOP doing it so quickly and harshly. It looks good on paper. But when it comes to real gameplay, it most often isnt how you want it. For example, getting reds to alpha 2 is just going to make my mining operations change to alpha 1, where i know you wont introduce reds due to n00bs and all.
6) The scarab incident - the scarab was able to use 3 nexuses that depleted his accumulator yet still managed to give us buffs. I have been to the game since october last year. The "bug" has been there since october last year at least (probably longer, but i can safely tell you this long). How can you make high-level balancing changes if you cant even find a bug that every player that is at least 2 weeks old knows? Disappointing.
7) The "it was intended" speech. Yeah, "it" might have been intended, but what good is it if its bad as hell and makes the game worse for everyone? (replace "it" with many of the balancing changes you disliked)
8) Good job on missions, but please, get your act together for balancing. Or at least start listening to the players when they tell you stuff about the reds and how its going to affect the game. Because apparently the devs dont play the game they are coding.
9) And the summary for botting: by trying to lower the botters using game mechanics, they are basically giving the middle finger to multiboxers (the biggest donators to the game). And if you believe a corp of 10-20 people can get any gamma rolling without some multiboxers mining, you're up for a surprise.