Tip.It Times - 13th February 2011

[Racheya]

Time for a new release of the: >>>Tip.It Times!<<<

 

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[/hide]

 

When replying please make sure to clarify the article you are replying to! Thanks!

 

If you spot any typos or mistakes in the article then please PM them to me :)

 

Enjoy the articles!

[Nifflin]

Wonderful to see another issue. Nice DIY too.

 

Edited with comments on articles;

 

The first article, what happened was not exactly phishing but it has been an interesting drama to follow, apparently these people have made thousands of dollars selling the gold from the accounts they hacked at very low prices to gold traders. The irony is that they people who were hacked are likely to buy their own gold back at higher prices while rebuilding new accounts. I understand how RWT makes a lot of sense for people to do, especially people who work well paying jobs and want to skip the more tedious parts of the game, but personally I like the idea that success in game is disconnected from success in real life as much as possible.

 

 

Okay, so for the article on bots. We used to have a captcha and it was a nightmare, it really made skilling a pain in the ass.

 

Changing the interface would also be a nightmare. Imagine taking on Jad and having the prayers swap to the opposite side of the screen.

 

Furthermore, nobody would like more randoms, we used to have a decent number more and it was a hassle for all players, especially legitimate ones. Remember the combat based randoms or the old sandwich lady? They were changed back for a reason, they were annoying to players and bots easily circumvented them.

 

Jagex already shifts the minimap and map as well as color shades but due to the way bots function, they base their actions on ID codes, changes to the game layout would make no difference at all.

 

The only slightly viable suggestion is to look for patterns in behavior (the second suggestion) however this could result in legitimate players being penalized. Nobody wants that.

 

The biggest problem is the premise that bots are intrinsically bad, honestly, if you're a legitimate player they do little to cheapen your experience. I can't see a single argument for why bots are so bad other then that they are simply against Jagex rules. They provide me with numerous services that I find invaluable such as keeping raw material prices low.

 

Anyways, I digress, I find faults with the premise of this article as well as the solutions it offers, maybe others will feel better about it.

[Hawks]

I love randoms (at least most of them) and I wish Jagex would combat botting with more randoms; it seems like the best and least annoying way.

 

Good articles this week! :D

[Hegelstad]

To the writer of the first article:

 

You fail to understand two things:

 

• That a lot of Jagex's revenue comes from accounts that are botting, therefore it is very likely that they aren't trying to get rid of the bots.
  
• Bots are always a step ahead.
  

[foursideking]

I agree with nikolaih, and would like to bring up the ever-ignored 'ip-bans'. For all those wondering what an 'ip-ban' is, it is when the ip adress is banned, rather than the account, preventing the ip adress from being used on runescape. If jagex did that to botters, wouldn't that effectively neutralize it? Or at least reduce it a bit?

[Lose No Hope]

I agree with nikolaih, and would like to bring up the ever-ignored 'ip-bans'. For all those wondering what an 'ip-ban' is, it is when the ip adress is banned, rather than the account, preventing the ip adress from being used on runescape. If jagex did that to botters, wouldn't that effectively neutralize it? Or at least reduce it a bit?

They are "ever-ignored" because Jagex rarely, if ever, seems to use them any more. It honestly seems to me that Jagex doesn't care that much about botting anymore. They have become much more lenient with botters on bans and the new punishments don't do much at all. If you reset a botter's level, 99% of the time, within a few days (depending on how many levels were lost) it will have botted right back up to that level.

[Howlin0001]

I agree with nikolaih, and would like to bring up the ever-ignored 'ip-bans'. For all those wondering what an 'ip-ban' is, it is when the ip adress is banned, rather than the account, preventing the ip adress from being used on runescape. If jagex did that to botters, wouldn't that effectively neutralize it? Or at least reduce it a bit?

I think they stopped ip-bans because of dynamic ips and because of internet cafes or public places etc and there are sometimes more than person playing runescape using the same ip address.

[jettrider]

Randoms need another revamp.

 

For players botting for profit, 400k exp is a long time because high profit, "bottable" methods tend to give low XP. For high level players doing "unbottable" things, this results in a random every hour or more.

 

Randoms pay for the time they take but are ineffective in their fundamental design objective.

 

@Nifflin: bots don't affect legitimate players directly, but RWT (the objective of botting) does in a huge way.

[foursideking]

Still though...ip bans would effectively solve this once and for all. Sure, some people would be unfairly able to play runescape, but it isn't like every botter/rwt'er is doing this at public places/has a family member who plays legit. To jagex: either introduce ip bans, or make most skilling spots instanced. Either way, don't let us legit player suffer anymore...

[Howlin0001]

Sure ip banning might help to stop it, but could the botters just get a different ip address? (Granted I'm not 100% sure how you are assigned an ip address, but I'm assuming it probably isn't that hard to get a new one?)

[Howlin0001]

Sorry double post.

[uath13]

This is exactly why I voted NO to free trade. The inability to trade their ill earned GP & items limited the bots too much to make them feasible as a real business. Jagex knew this was going to happen when they reintroduced free trade. Had they been "prepared" as they claimed wouldn't they have already tried their new methods of bot busting BEFORE they even posted the referendum? They obviously hadn't since you could still find bots picking flax, chopping trees or mining essence in the weeks before the update.

 

It seems like Jagex has all but given up even trying to enforce the rules anymore. <_<

[Nifflin]

 

@Nifflin: bots don't affect legitimate players directly, but RWT (the objective of botting) does in a huge way.

Apart from the stolen credit cards, which is something that is controllable now, how does RWT negatively affect legitimate players? Oh and I would contest that RWT is the objective of botting as shown by how there were still many bots during the restricted trade era for simple personal in game advancement and not for RWT. The numbers of bots have gone up but bots are often for personal use as much as for RWT.

[sees_all1]

Furthermore, nobody would like more randoms, we used to have a decent number more and it was a hassle for all players, especially legitimate ones. Remember the combat based randoms or the old sandwich lady? They were changed back for a reason, they were annoying to players and bots easily circumvented them.

New, different randoms, not more frequent randoms. I think it'd be an easy way to keep small bits of content fresh, an easy way to sneak in an update every other month.

 

Jagex already shifts the minimap and map as well as color shades but due to the way bots function, they base their actions on ID codes, changes to the game layout would make no difference at all.

The wilderness wall instead of a ditch made a huge difference for a few days.

[Nifflin]

Furthermore, nobody would like more randoms, we used to have a decent number more and it was a hassle for all players, especially legitimate ones. Remember the combat based randoms or the old sandwich lady? They were changed back for a reason, they were annoying to players and bots easily circumvented them.

New, different randoms, not more frequent randoms. I think it'd be an easy way to keep small bits of content fresh, an easy way to sneak in an update every other month.

In the past we had more variety of randoms, the point is that they were really annoying to everyone and were eventually removed. Either way, randoms pose little challenge to bots, new randoms will waste developer time which detracts from more important updates (smithing) and annoy existing players.

 

Jagex already shifts the minimap and map as well as color shades but due to the way bots function, they base their actions on ID codes, changes to the game layout would make no difference at all.

The wilderness wall instead of a ditch made a huge difference for a few days.

Well it would be ridiculous to update everything that is botted every few days. Again, it would be too resource consuming and detract from the creation of content. Too small changes and the bots can easily adapt, too big changes and the developers are wasting time. Really, altering the content of the game is NOT the way to combat botting.

[Lose No Hope]

In the past we had more variety of randoms, the point is that they were really annoying to everyone and were eventually removed. Either way, randoms pose little challenge to bots, new randoms will waste developer time which detracts from more important updates (smithing) and annoy existing players.

Actually, the reason they removed certain randoms was because they could kill people. The only ones were annoying were randoms like the ent because they destroyed your items.

 

I personally would be fine with some small updates every once in a while to mix in with the bigger ones.

[Nifflin]

In the past we had more variety of randoms, the point is that they were really annoying to everyone and were eventually removed. Either way, randoms pose little challenge to bots, new randoms will waste developer time which detracts from more important updates (smithing) and annoy existing players.

Actually, the reason they removed certain randoms was because they could kill people. The only ones were annoying were randoms like the ent because they destroyed your items.

 

I personally would be fine with some small updates every once in a while to mix in with the bigger ones.

Maybe you weren't around for the randoms that made whatever you were skilling with fly away, the axe head random, the pickaxe head random and the big fish/whirlpool random. There were two unique randoms for mining, fishing and woodcutting and they did nothing to stop bots. Why continue to design more randoms when it will likely be only a few days before botters develop a script to circumvent the random? In the end that developer time is lost as soon as the bots are updated.

 

It's like saying that producing more failing condoms is okay if we make more flavors of them. No, it's not okay because they still fail at their original purpose and things are better overall without them. Sure some people prefer the taste every once in a while but the vast majority prefer to proceed unencumbered. Rather then produce more flavors of failing condoms it would be more beneficial to move away from condoms all together to a more effective method of birth control.

 

Same with bots. More variety in randoms doesn't help if randoms don't work in the first place. Resources are better spent being put into alternative ways of combating botting rather then something which is known to fail.

[lahit]

I honestly thing the first article was plain overcomplicating, there are other efficient ways of getting rid of bots, I personally loved Hati's potential to do this (a few videos of people luring Hati to Catherby yews and killing several bots show his effectiveness), perhaps what jagex should do is make sure other moderately powerful seasonal monsters like Hati exist at the same time and in different places, allowing legit players to lure them to the bots, killing them in the process, and perhaps be "rewarded" for their efforts (for example, luring one of these to chinchompa bots, then recieving the chincompas

[foursideking]

I'd actually be interested in seeing a bunch of hati's all over runescape. Maybe have 2 per world, but have them randomly teleport in intervals of 30-90mins. Oh, and give them drops in the forms of tokens which, when presented to specific npc's, would restore things like the ba horn and brawlers.

[jettrider]

 

@Nifflin: bots don't affect legitimate players directly, but RWT (the objective of botting) does in a huge way.

Apart from the stolen credit cards, which is something that is controllable now, how does RWT negatively affect legitimate players? Oh and I would contest that RWT is the objective of botting as shown by how there were still many bots during the restricted trade era for simple personal in game advancement and not for RWT. The numbers of bots have gone up but bots are often for personal use as much as for RWT.

 

With unlimited cash and training available 24/7, botting produces more competition for higher leveled resources.

Legitimate players have to earn money to be able to make overloads, to name one example... RWT lets you buy them. The same goes for botting or paying others to train your account during restricted trade.

Through RWT, players can risk as much as they want at bosses, PKing, staking, etc, and not worry about that impact. Legitimate players are restricted by what they have the means to supply.

 

If your view of botting is limited to level 3s chopping yew logs, picking flax, and playing the archery game, then yes - these accounts do not have a direct impact on legitimate players. But main account botting and buying money (produced by these low level bots) to use on main accounts fundamentally change the game experience for legitimate players.

[Sir_Squab]

 

@Nifflin: bots don't affect legitimate players directly, but RWT (the objective of botting) does in a huge way.

Apart from the stolen credit cards, which is something that is controllable now, how does RWT negatively affect legitimate players? Oh and I would contest that RWT is the objective of botting as shown by how there were still many bots during the restricted trade era for simple personal in game advancement and not for RWT. The numbers of bots have gone up but bots are often for personal use as much as for RWT.

 

Yeah, people just pay for bots now. Incidentally, what I heard is that all the people using this infamous FREE bot were the ones who got hacked. Obviously the people selling the PAID bot aren't willing to jeopardize it, presumably because they make enough money off the bot as it is. The shift from bot accounts to botting on someone's main happened, yes, largely because you can't trade with a throw-away account; however, obviously it couldn't have been that risky to bot on your account if lots of people botted on their mains. Either the bots got better or, as cynical people believe, botters make up a large amount of Jagex' revenue and thus Jagex is being more lenient towards them.

 

Oh and I agree with the above poster - MMORPGs are, to a certain extent, competitions. Compete with people in bossing or PVP. Botting/RWT gives people advantages over others in those areas, like more money. Lots of money. For really expensive weapons/armour and herblore and prayer and stuff.

 

Now that I think about it though, stuff like WC training bots don't annoy me that much. Few more people at ivy isn't the biggest problem in the world lol....

 

In the past we had more variety of randoms, the point is that they were really annoying to everyone and were eventually removed. Either way, randoms pose little challenge to bots, new randoms will waste developer time which detracts from more important updates (smithing) and annoy existing players.

Actually, the reason they removed certain randoms was because they could kill people. The only ones were annoying were randoms like the ent because they destroyed your items.

 

I personally would be fine with some small updates every once in a while to mix in with the bigger ones.

Maybe you weren't around for the randoms that made whatever you were skilling with fly away, the axe head random, the pickaxe head random and the big fish/whirlpool random. There were two unique randoms for mining, fishing and woodcutting and they did nothing to stop bots. Why continue to design more randoms when it will likely be only a few days before botters develop a script to circumvent the random? In the end that developer time is lost as soon as the bots are updated.

 

It's like saying that producing more failing condoms is okay if we make more flavors of them. No, it's not okay because they still fail at their original purpose and things are better overall without them. Sure some people prefer the taste every once in a while but the vast majority prefer to proceed unencumbered. Rather then produce more flavors of failing condoms it would be more beneficial to move away from condoms all together to a more effective method of birth control.

 

Same with bots. More variety in randoms doesn't help if randoms don't work in the first place. Resources are better spent being put into alternative ways of combating botting rather then something which is known to fail.

 

Really? Really?

 

Your analogy sucks. It really, really does. I agree with your point, but still. There's no particular reason for a sexual reference, not to mention a whole flaw in mixing "flavour" and "birth control." If a person is using tasting it, they probably aren't making babies with it.

 

Then there's the fact that not only are condoms very effectively when people are able to use them correctly*, but you can MIX them with most other birth control methods. And, unlike all other birth control methods that I know of, they're the only ones that actually prevent sexually transmitted diseases/infections. Like, you know, the kind that can occur when your not actually doing something that has the potential to make babies, but does involve tasting them.

 

*Let's NOT discuss people using them correctly vs incorrectly and why that would happen.

[dow73]

I have been loving these last few topics relating to botting. Mainly because I am on the verge of leaving RS for good. After 10 years, I am reaching an ultimate disgust point. While it is true that the companies that create macros are making money and are able to recreate new ways to bypass detection, the fact remains that Jagex has deeper pockets. It is in Jagex that answer must come from. They receive a monthly subscription fee from me as well as someone who is breaking the rules. And in business, money is the bottom line. So how do I get the attention of the big company that does not seem to be on my side. (Now bare with me because this sounded ridiculous the first time I said it to myself.) I propose a "walk-out". One solid week from a huge group of people that refuse to log in. If a week is not enough, then a month. A threat to Jagex that we are tired of it. I will cancel my subscription if the problem persist, and in fact, I suspect it is only about to develop into a giant mushroom cloud.

[Sir_Squab]

I have been loving these last few topics relating to botting. Mainly because I am on the verge of leaving RS for good. After 10 years, I am reaching an ultimate disgust point. While it is true that the companies that create macros are making money and are able to recreate new ways to bypass detection, the fact remains that Jagex has deeper pockets. It is in Jagex that answer must come from. They receive a monthly subscription fee from me as well as someone who is breaking the rules. And in business, money is the bottom line. So how do I get the attention of the big company that does not seem to be on my side. (Now bare with me because this sounded ridiculous the first time I said it to myself.) I propose a "walk-out". One solid week from a huge group of people that refuse to log in. If a week is not enough, then a month. A threat to Jagex that we are tired of it. I will cancel my subscription if the problem persist, and in fact, I suspect it is only about to develop into a giant mushroom cloud.

 

Yeahhh.... I can't see that realistically happening, sorry.

[Big_Stingman]

The problem with this is that as easy as it is to change an interface, it is just as easy to modify code to detect changes.

No, it really isn't easy. Coding takes lots of time and debugging.

I enjoyed reading these though, and am saddened at all the people that bot. I just try to play abiding by the rules as best I can, and try to have some fun in the process. Kinda sucks that there are those who have to ruin it for the honest players.

[Pluckey]

 

 

Yeah, people just pay for bots now. Incidentally, what I heard is that all the people using this infamous FREE bot were the ones who got hacked. Obviously the people selling the PAID bot aren't willing to jeopardize it, presumably because they make enough money off the bot as it is. The shift from bot accounts to botting on someone's main happened, yes, largely because you can't trade with a throw-away account; however, obviously it couldn't have been that risky to bot on your account if lots of people botted on their mains. Either the bots got better or, as cynical people believe, botters make up a large amount of Jagex' revenue and thus Jagex is being more lenient towards them.

 

Oh and I agree with the above poster - MMORPGs are, to a certain extent, competitions. Compete with people in bossing or PVP. Botting/RWT gives people advantages over others in those areas, like more money. Lots of money. For really expensive weapons/armour and herblore and prayer and stuff.

 

Now that I think about it though, stuff like WC training bots don't annoy me that much. Few more people at ivy isn't the biggest problem in the world lol....

 

 

 

 

Actually,

 

 

The people using the PAID bots were the ones who were hacked.

 

 

People using the FREE bot were actually fine.