Platinum_Myr

I agree that this should've been their plan. Although I don't think they would've won GJA this year. LoL was just huge. Pretty much every gamer friend I know in real life played it this last year. (And I had never even heard of it before that). I think RS would've done a lot better to release the clusterflutter before (if possible, of course it may not have been possible).

It has worked better than any update they've made before (besides perhaps RS2!) So by that measure it has been a resounding success.

But from a purely time based efficiency method (where you value your time spent as infinity, therefor it is always better to spend gp rather than time) using them on thieving saves time as long as Construction is faster to use effigies on thieving, rather than on construction. Hence from this same perspective it would be better do use crawlers and save pp for later. Obviously this only makes sense from this perspective and only if you can value your use of time at 0gp an hour (would always rather save time over saving money) Time-left regardless of money is meaningless unless you are given all your gp, as of course you have to obtain your gps somehow.

They disappeared into the woodwork as soon as they realized that oh snap Jagex did just do it. Clearly jagex didn't stop all bots from working. However, I myself was not properly educated as to what methods the bots were using, and therefor was still thinking that all bots were image recognition based (not client hacks). This meant that I would never have come up with their solution. (Of course, hind-sight is 20:20, so it is easy to see how it would work now, but that doesn't mean I have the genius to actually create it originally). Pretty much all of the expert programmers didn't fullly understand the problem. It is common for people versed in a field to have distrust when someone makes a bold claim (that has never been done before.) Even understandable. I would be saying it's not possible. Also, no one is claiming the solution is a guarantee.. but we believe that it takes more effort to crack than it takes Jagex to re-scramble everything.

I would simply prefer two changes: a) cannot alch noted items (this doesn't make sense anyways...) b) alch has an option to work like the string jewelry does. It would either show up a "make-all" screen with that item, or it would simply auto-alch every copy of that particular item from your inventory (not every item ofcourse) This would mean no one needs an auto-clicker since it does it for you, and also it would slow down and not allow the alch to be abused on noted items. Too many people would complain though...

Being a programmer, I understand how things can come up last minute. They aren't talking about seran-wrapped and finished updates here. If they were already complete and ready to go on BTS update day, I would agree that it should happen when they say. However it isn't. This means that things can change. I know how things can change last minute easily. I don't mind them slipping into the next month by 1-2 days.

I don't think anyone maxed out during classic's reign. However I'm sure players have maxed on rs1 since then...

I use the bonecrusher, and I know people that use it. But it is not as widely used as methods such as the ectofunctus or the house alter (when aiming specifically to train prayer). It would have more of an impact on F2P where there is no alternative to training prayer other than burying bones directly. Sorry for the confusion :)

Honestly, I fail to see how transferring items which are P2P but have absolutely zero use in the game to F2P would make them lose money.. If i am F2P, I am not going to become P2P JUST to use snare or the bonecrusher. These never get used in the P2P game (well, not never... but rarely). and they are ALREADY DEVELOPED. Which means they aren't losing development resources. (Just change a p2p flag to be "f2p")

I agree. The only way to permanently make a reflection bot work would be to break the method that is used to scramble the data. As long as that method is unknown, then you can't automate the unscramble process. I am sure that it is mostly trivial to re-scramble it, and the algorithm to unscramble it is very easy to change. This means that the effort taken to unscramble it can be ruined by a single update that took jagex a few days to re-scramble. The real issue, is whether the scramble pattern has to be stored in the client. If the client has enough information it may be possible to crack the system. I don't know enough about the internals of the old/new client to be able to make any guesses here. I expect that color bots will be around for a while, but those were never really that big of an issue.

I think minimum should be to get rid of all of the items gotten for free.. Anyone who was super deliberate should be banned (or at least "rolled back" on loyalty points)

Correct. Also, the attitude that the only good way to train a skill is to get the fastest xp possible. (which is great for some). We focus on the goal instead of on the game itself. However, there is real grind that isn't just "omg this takes too long". For example, I spent ~3 weeks unlocking the maximum levels for all of my temple trekking companions. I don't have a single 99. Had I spent the exact same amount of time, (in game, and note I don't play for 8-10 hrs every day) I could've gotten things like 99 cooking or similar. But Temple Trekking (after the revamp) is great fun! I really enjoyed it. I do not enjoy cooking things on a range as much. Yes, this is mostly opinion. But if jagex provided minigames of that quality for skill training, that would be awesome.

At least we have world queues!! Can you imagine what this would be like if we had to get on manually? I know I probably wouldn't even try.

An example would be the brimhaven agility dungeon tickets but updated to remove the annoying "minus agility" levels. Though the real issue is the shear length of getting to 99 in skills. No matter what the method is it will feel grind based to some players simply because of the time it takes (unless they do the stupid thing which is just increase xp rates, as this doesn't solve the problem of devaluing other players achievements.)

I feel like the best ways to counteract feelings of grind involve a) remove the bots, so that achievements have meaning (which they are working on) b) introduce methods comparable to current fast methods which are more engaging, and spontaneous. fun to train methods which are not comparably decent experience rates have proven to flop in the past. c) introduce "end-game" style content somewhere in the middle to upper reaches of the middle-game. Don't make me feel like I can't have fun bosses like nex simply because I am not willing to put so much time to get all of the contents necessary to compete. d) make sure that this end-game style content is not swamped by better players (hint.. instanced bosses help a lot. especially if the reward is somehow not useful for super high leveled players) e) provide, in game, features which allow performing chatting and other fun things. For example, allow me to play the types of games that are provided in the game shop from anywhere, IN GAME (no browser tab necessary) but still perform banking and doing skills such as that. Ala, words-with-friends style game against other rs players while performing levelup tasks. f) update the private message system to see individual logs with other players, and be able to sort out what you last said to certain people. Other good features which help eliminate grind would include proper team automation from across multiple worlds so that the time it takes to get a decent dungeoneering team for example, is minimized, and the game itself can be played. :)

Yeah.. The surprising thing is to see just how MANY of the F2P characters weren't legitimate. I mean, I watched the spam/adbot videos, but I didn't realize just how bad it really was :o

Other companies have made a stand, however not a public one. There are all kinds of spywaretools that they have made to help prevent running bot programs (Warden from WoW for example). But none of them made a public stand and said "enough is enough." However, I don't think the issue was as large. Take a look at the F2P populations.. Some worlds are <100 players... that hasn't happened since classic (that I recall) About the non-english servers, they rarely had bots on them. Most bots ran on the english servers...

An array of Object[][] is actually very hard to get around. The botter has to figure out the PRECISE object layout, since the type is (hopefully) hidden on the server. Also, properly encyrpting and randomizing the layout of the object array would make it difficult. The thing is, yes, you can crack the object array. But how difficult is it? Can jagex just shift things again and make you have to do the same amount of work on your end for little work on theirs... Being able to typecast out the object array is a very useful feature for explicitly hiding the contents of the object from the calling code.

I don't mind the time spent, but I really dislike the fact that the woodcutting isn't more automatic. It already takes a fairly long time to max out resources when doing woodcutting, and small clans simply do not have the chance. I know that I haven't done citadel resources in a while because it's so expensive. I would suggest allowing money to be spent to increase the rate at which you get resources, or spent for some parts, but not completely. I don't want to see citadels become "who has the most money", but I wouldn't mind being able to spend some coin to make it easier. Possibly a limit to the total percentage of resources can be bouht with GP.

Awesome :) Good luck on mining. *is jealous of the pin*

Increased account creation time was helpful against ad bots, because when one gets banned, another cannot replace it as quickly. However, it does not stop RWT or other types of bots.

But it can be. The bot can trigger on the textbox line showing up, all it has to be able to do is recognize that the event is necessary. Once this happens, then the bot would simply go attempt it. If a human can do it, it is highly likely that a bot can do it as well. It may become complex enough that bots can't program to do it, but I don't believe so. We already know that a bot can be programmed to check for lines of text, or items, or NPCs, or go to locations. These things have already been done. We even had Captcha style sleeping bags in RS1, that got broken. Even good captcha systems can be "screenshotted/videoed" and outsourced to the internet for cheap. (Not to mention how inconvenient this is for regular players..) The main reason that bots can't automatically log in, is because the user is smart enough not to give the bot their password (since many bots would likely record/transmit the login information to the bot creator.) Granted, they could simply install a keylogger on the machine, and get it that way. The other reason bots can't log in after a system update, is because things have changed, and the login page doesn't use the same IDs. It takes a few hours for the bot makers to respond to the system update.

The trouble comes because if you can get do botting with a high degree of confidence in avoiding punishment, which would you choose? The "ranked" server, or the "unranked" server? People would still bot and buy money on the ranked server, considering that it is already difficult to prevent. It would definitely help alleviating the issue as many people might be comfortable switching to that system. But I don't believe that it would prevent issues, considering there is fair evidence that you won't get caught now anyway.

But we know that randoms don't work, bots are programmed to do them after a while. So unless you can make new randoms faster than the bots can program around them.... I think the best technical solutions: identify and ban bots, and make the account creation much slower so that you have to spend/waste time doing that. Obviously the issue is how to detect bots, but I don't believe randoms work, as they get programmed around. (the Pit and other similar D&Ds can all be programmed to be performed.) The question is can we identify patterns? I know that most bots hack the client and use ID numbers for pictures, and we know that crowdsourcing the "unbotable" things like captchas can somewhat easily be done. Technical solutions apparently don't work.

That is true. But the same old attitude where they made the game incovenient for legit players because of RWT seems to still be there. RWT itself is inconvenient for legit players.