Top 250 F2P Skill Total List

[rudes7]

For those who are interested in jagex's bot detection techniques:

 

Our actual detection system monitors player behavior autonomously. As most bot programmers have unfortunately and conveniently guessed, it works on a comparison of expected human behavior to the observed behavior. Thus, macros that follow a set series of commands would be incredibly easy to catch, if they would even be operational. Random camera shifts usually thwart these, and finding them is a very rare occurrence.

 

We regularly dismantle macros, and the most common approach taken is object recognition with a series of programmed responses. One of our very first attempts to counter this was random color changes, usually not very noticeable. This turned out to be a failure as object recognition technology proved to be far ahead of this eventuality."

 

"Unless the appearance of the interface was changed sufficiently enough to make it unusable to even a regular player, it was not practical to make the game not recognizable to a macro program. All that we could do was analyze rather than inhibit, so to speak. By determining sets of behaviors that are not characteristically human, in "criteria", we would get the alarm from the system if all were met.

 

The first criteria is quite a bit similar to that of most first person shooter (FPS) games who take steps to detect "aimbots." This would be simple movement. Inhumanly fast cursor movements are highly suspicious, and consistent patterns of such movements (to discern from some player who gets bored and plays with the mouse .) I don't know the actual numbers involved, sorry. Some exceptionally skilled players frequently do trigger this, which is why multiple criteria exist. The second criteria is the "accuracy" of the clicks. The interface determines exactly here any specific click was made, and is further divided into the actual buttons such as the inventory, worn equipment, etc...

 

Primitive programs typically recognize the object, but click the same spot (often the same pixel.) This immediately raises the alarm if it is done consistently. Most programs do not do this, though, but rather have an "area of uncertainty" where the click will randomly fall in. This is still easy to detect. There is accuracy, and precision. These programs do not replicate human precision. Consider the dartboard as an example: The goal is to simply "hit it." A human will still aim for the bullseye, to increase the chance of hitting the dartboard. Thus hits will be concentrated towards the bullseye, but there will still be hits nowhere close, and some misses too.

 

A macro does not have human flaws, and can always hit the dartboard. However, if randomized in the "area of uncertainty" there is no such pattern." This will also raise the alarm. More advanced yet, some macros will actually form concentric regions of where the clicks will land. Still, we're always ahead of rulebreakers. Our final line of defense in this criteria is to analyze the regions most commonly clicked.

 

A macro tends to click in a perfect square, circle, or sometimes the shape of an interface icon. Sometimes even the region is randomized. Human behavior is not truly random however. The region most commonly clicked is related to placement, which is all I know about this. Highly advanced bots have made an attempt to replicate even this, but we have not seen anything convincing yet. Admittedly, we're disadvantaged in this aspect, so we cannot fully rely on simple movement and accuracy to detect a macro program.

 

The next criteria is the actual sequence of actions. A player that decides to cut some trees for logs, and sell them for profit actually has a longer list of actions to perform than you'd think. The efficiency of which this is completed can be analyzed, and much more easily compared to the behavior of a macro programs' attempt to replicate it. If each step is merely randomized with the same bounds of uncertainty like virtually all bots seem to do today, the actual time it takes to execute the actions in all converges to a specific value! It's similar to flipping a fair coin multiple times, and converging to a frequency of outcomes (namely 50%.) Humans are generally much less consistent, and once the consistency falls within a certain range, the alarm is raised.

 

One more of many criteria is the effect of total gameplay time. As expected, exhaustion will set in for most players and slow down their actions. This is not a completely reliable method, since some players have been able to keep up their concentration for remarkably long periods of time."

 

"The last criteria I really know of is probably the most obscure and advanced. Human players tend to have much better object recognition capabilities than a macro program, and the limitations of the procedure can be exploited. While a human may be able to recognize a tree at a very unusual and discrete angle, many macros lack this capability, and thus keep the camera angle within a certain range. Some fail to change it entirely. Macros tend to locate objects that are far out of reach by going close to the area in question, and then finding it. Normal players tend to look ahead first. There are probably many more techniques employed, and the genius and innovative capability of my coworkers is simply amazing. I am very confident in their ability to enforce the rules, and keep RS a fair, and equal environment. The detection system is definitely conducive to such, but that is not our only method.

 

 

The next is abuse reports. There are many new and better bots, just written, that can avoid at a few of the criteria, and not be flagged. The intuition of a human being can never be surpassed, and abuse reports give us an all seeing eye that brought many rule breakers to justice. Abuse reports are also helpful for locating the archives, and comparing the new behavior of the new macro that was previously able to avoid detection. We can update accordingly. We highly encourage abuse reporting, and we will not punish players who send in reports with a reasonable cause to suspect the player in question is using a macro.

 

Circumstances (such as the usual range of playing time) is taken into account as well.

[BioIce]

Neat.

 

The biggest wrench thrown into their plans is the time factor. It still takes too long for evidence to mount on a botter before being banned.

[Isthatok]

Copy and paste a paragraph or two of that into google, and you will see all the bot companies talking about it on their own forums -.-

[BioIce]

It's pretty old, too. Got one dating back to July 2010 on another fansite.

[setelima]

Since some of you may want to hear my side of the story... I have a confession to make:

 

I made a mistake.

 

My mistake was to think that something that Jagex said might be true. The claim that the macro detection system is 100% accurate may be true, but only if you round up the real percentage. Now I know that, but it's impossible to prove to anyone else.

 

I always had some doubts about the accuracy, but I never imagined I would be one of the "false positives". I had never met one before, and even if I had, I don't think that I would have believed them. That's why I don't expect anyone to believe me, after all it's just my word against Jagex'. No-one has any proof to support or disprove Jagex' claim, so I would appreciate if there was no guessing.

 

I have talked about this in-game with only a few friends. Please don't be offended if I didn't contact you, you should already know how much I like talking. But since the cat is out of the bag (Took you long enough ;)), I might as well add my own thoughts.

 

Because Jagex gives no evidence for macroing offences, I can't be certain, but I have a pretty good idea why the detection system picked me. The only thing that makes me doubt my theory is that the time between the assumed "detection" and the ban would have been only a few days, at most just over a week. Anyone can check from their favourite XP tracker, what happened before the bang (XP-wise), and draw their own conclusions. But I will try to explain that in detail.

 

Someone who checked me on highscores before the ban, might have seen a few things:

- I like "hard" skills

- I like my skills in "order"

- I'm a little bit crazy

 

Also I like challenges. Earlier this year I thought it would be nice to get back the #1 spot in F2P runecrafting. And it wouldn't be too hard because Gota had stopped playing. So after a few months break from RuneScape, I started playing GOP once again. It was quite a shock to find out how bad the bot situation had gotten in the RC guild. However I don't usually back out from whatever I decide to do, so I began a quest for 1M tokens; something that I hadn't done before, and something that would easily be enough to complete the original goal.

 

As much as I like gopping, after some 670k tokens I felt like doing something else for a change. So I decided to up my resource gathering skills a notch. That meant getting about 1M XP in mining, fishing and woodcutting. Simple enough task, nothing new about it.

 

With mining I made a return to my favourite mining spot: Crafting Guild. I wasn't going for the ultimate XP rate, because I wanted to refresh some memories, and the Clan Camp tele had made it faster, and there were not many bots in there, or any other miners, for that matter.

 

After some experimenting I formed a mining method that best suited me:

- One mining urn from the bank

- Clan Camp tele

- Crafting Guild

- Mine all seven gold

- Mine all six silver

- On the way back to gold, drop all silver

- All gold

- All silver

- Drop silver, leave room for seven gold (six + urn)

- All gold, teleport the urn

- Daemonheim tele

- Deposit

 

At best I clocked about 25k XP/h, which was a huge improvement from the "old" times. At one point I started also high-alching between rocks, to make Magic my first combat 20M+ skill. I went for a minimum of 100k mining XP a day, which meant playing around 5 hours a day. On weekdays that was about all the time I had.

 

With mining, the only part where you need fast clicking is when you drop the silver. With fishing and woodcutting I went for the speed. That meant using urns and the "get-one-drop-one" method, or my variations of that. That again meant constant clicking, worse than burying bones. I won't start estimating, but I have clicked on RuneScape quite a few times, and I like to think that I know how to do it. For example dropping a full inventory of fish happens so "naturally" that it's a little bit scary. I have tried mouse keys just once, for dropping fish, but that only slowed me down. It would have required too much practise to make it more effective. I'm sure there are even faster clickers out there, but I have my moments.

 

However with fishing I ended up with a compromise. "Fish-one-drop-one" until I had seven free inventory spots (one column). After that dropping only full columns, until I was out of urns. I fished at Lumbridge. Fishing being as fast as it is, I don't really understand why anyone would even bot it. I got my million XP in about two days.

 

I actually made my own woodcutting urns, because I had no luck buying them on the G.E.. Some 200 urns didn't take that long to make in Crafting Guild. The new kind of willow took a moment to get used to. The maple island wasn't any better than any other willow pair anymore, so I went looking for another spot. After trying a few too many willows, I chose to stay at Port Sarim, near the church; the place where I got most of the XP for my first two 99 skills.

 

I went into "ultra efficiency mode", trying to perfect the art of willow chopping. That included chopping and dropping two logs at once, instead of one like when fishing, adjusting camera angles just right, and what else: lightning fast clicking, with few short breaks. I'm pretty sure I raised a couple of red flags in the macro detection system. On Sunday, the day before the ban, I made a new own daily XP record on woodcutting, even if I didn't really try to. (Still nothing overly impressive.) On Monday I went to finish woodcutting with my last 26 urns. I didn't get to play for long, when I suddenly got kicked off RuneScape. At first I thought it was just my connection, but when I tried to log back in, I was greeted with this message:

Took me a while to even understand what had happened. There wasn't any message in the message centre; that came quite a while later. Eventually I went to Account Management to see if there would be any offence to appeal. And there sure was:

 

I don't know if the fast skilling part alone would have got me banned. But when you combine it with things like playing private chat off, looking like a hobo, and so on, you never know what may happen. Yet I haven't mentioned one factor, which added to all the above, might have been the tipping point.

 

Normally I play with the RuneScape Client. However I have some problems with it when trying to resize the window. The game area doesn't update correctly, and there are black rectangles covering part of the game. Normally that's not a problem, because I don't need to resize. When I started fishing, I wanted to get the inventory as close to the fishing spot as possible. So instead of starting a fight with the RS Client, I decided to use a (not that well known) web browser called Chromium, which I use to play some other games too.

 

That change of client, sudden XP gains after several months of slow XP from GOP, effective training, chat settings... I don't know how the detection system works, but I don't think I made its job easy.

 

I know this may sound like someone who didn't work for their XP, but I don't really care if I get the account back or not. If I do, and there are rollbacks, it just means that Jagex still thinks that I broke the rules. However I'm not interested in a "second chance", and in that case Setelima would be toxic to me. For me it's never been about being the best or beating someone in highscores (well a little). My style of playing has always been about setting personal goals, and trying to enjoy the journey. Icing on the cake is the sense of achievement.

 

Over the few years I have played, there have always been people accusing me of botting, even some "friends". Of course that's not that uncommon in RuneScape. Is it jealousy, or real concern about the Game, I can't tell. But I rarely bothered to respond to accusations like that or to try to dispel any rumors. I have always been a lone wolf, playing for my own entertainment, not caring about anyone's claims. Deep down I knew the truth, and that was all that mattered to me.

 

I don't like what RuneScape/Jagex has turned into with the loyalty program, refer a friend, etc... All that just makes them seem desperate for money, and I don't see how that would be good for business in the long run. I don't see why I would keep supporting them by playing. It's a shame, because RuneScape used to be (still is) a good way to relax after a long day, be it mindless clicking, minigames with friends, or just watching the pixel world whirl around. But with me you'll never know. I have come back before. For now I would just like to see what happens with the appeal.

 

This little incident hasn't changed me as a person, whether it's a good thing or not. In the end it's all about who do you trust. Thanks for the support.

 

P.S. The 1000 characters in the appeal simply isn't enough.

[BioIce]

But when you combine it with things like playing private chat off, looking like a hobo, and so on, you never know what may happen.

 

You always did look like a peon. That scruffiness is shady. Hah!

 

I don't really think the change of client is what pushed it. (Using a personal client here.) I had a sneaking thought it might've been something like this that triggered it:

 

At one point I started also high-alching between rocks, to make Magic my first combat 20M+ skill.

 

Thanks as always for supporting my griefing the runecrafters after I initially closed the guild chat down. Fun times.

[mackenzie14]

I've done some extreme mining xp with iron ores and low alchemy (50k minig xp per hour). This situation might hold me down for doing that anymore, which is quite sad.

 

Setelimas story seems very legit to me and I hope you'll get your account back with no rollback.

[Makkaravelho]

Good luck Setelima with your appeal and all other future prospects, hope to see you back on track as soon as possible.

 

I suppose the drastic change of XP-rates might have an effect on the bot detection, and also chat settings... probably the ones I would look out for the most.

 

------------------------------------------------

 

Mutta jooh, toivottavasti pääset pelaileen vielä mahdollisimman pian :)

[Youmu]

Sete you're not alone.

 

Like I said, at one point ALL of the top dungers were temp banned because they were rushing larges in quick times. Jagex did not expect players to be able to complete dungeons that quickly, so they banned them.

 

This is the exact same story. I'm starting to think the people over at Jagex headquarters are just a bunch of lazy inefficiency people.

[hfbrads]

It's not.

 

People were actually glitching floors and finishing larges in under 2 minutes.

[rudes7]

@isthatok

Where would be a better place to find out about botting than from the makers themselves? >.>

[BiJay]

Sete you're not alone.

 

Like I said, at one point ALL of the top dungers were temp banned because they were rushing larges in quick times. Jagex did not expect players to be able to complete dungeons that quickly, so they banned them.

 

This is the exact same story. I'm starting to think the people over at Jagex headquarters are just a bunch of lazy inefficiency people.

Don't get things wrong. There was a bug where only a certain amount of objectives could spawn and after that it would stop. A few people actually abused it and thats why they banned people. And there are people at Jagex with a maxed account and a few really know how to be efficient.

[222champ]

Thanks setel, for your accurate explanation. I believe you, and hope that you receive ur acc back undamaged. If neccesary, we could make a forum topic about this? You could add this explanation? If jagex reads your story, im sure they will unban you.

[setelima]

To me, the only reason to really start fighting for my account, would be to help prevent the same thing from happening to anyone else. I heard there are a couple of other similar cases, and I don't think anyone of us would like to be the next one.

 

A forum topic could be a good way to bring this problem into daylight. However, this should be discussed in detail first, and not make any rush decisions. Also I would like to see if there's enough support for the idea.

 

So Isthatok, I hope you don't mind if I bring the problem to "Pure F2Ps" fc. See you there if you are interested.

[Isthatok]

List updated: http://www.runehead.com/clans/ml.php?clan=top250f2p&skill=Overall

 

Removed the following banned accounts: Beachee, B u c H, Kilatz

 

Still haven't gotten around to that spreadsheet...

[BioIce]

Bloody hell, they're banned too? Beachee was a mod like Setelima, this comes as a surprise. B u c H I've encountered at the guild. Kilatz I can't say I was familiar with.

[hfbrads]

The amount of banned people on this list are turning it into a joke.

 

edit: I don't mean that as a slight against you, the organizer. I meant the people on the list who bot.

[BioIce]

Don't jump the gun, it hasn't been confirmed that they've been banned for macro.

[Billycarrot]

B u c H was a good friend of mine, and he sold his account to a friend in an effort to prevent himself from playing too much while he attends university. I wouldn't be surprised if the new owner of the account has botted.

[Makkaravelho]

B u c H was a good friend of mine, and he sold his account to a friend in an effort to prevent himself from playing too much while he attends university. I wouldn't be surprised if the new owner of the account has botted.

 

Isn't simply selling an account enough to get it banned?

[wormy]

A bit sad to see beacher get the ban hammer, she was such a nice mannered person, quite bubbly.

[BioIce]

Isn't simply selling an account enough to get it banned?

 

No, not if there isn't any enough evidence, and it looks to me like only a few friends knew the account ownership changed. It's very rare for accounts to get banned for being sold if done carefully.

 

You'd be amazed how many people even share accounts, much less sell or buy them.

 

Even if the ISPs are different, laying it to rest for at least a day or two is enough caution. It just has to be from the same country or continent. It gets real fishy if the account logs in from Australia when before it was in the Netherlands. Now that is liable to get unwanted attention from Jagex's security team.

[Makkaravelho]

Makes sense, hard to prove someone buyed/selled an account, I really should think things through before I post ;)

 

You'd be amazed how many people even share accounts, much less sell or buy them.

 

Nothing related to rulebreaking in RS amazes me anymore, don't know what it says more about, me or the game :P

[LordAdib]

Nothing related to rulebreaking in RS amazes me anymore, don't know what it says more about, me or the game :P

 

I guess it shows desensitization to a big problem in this game. That's what happens after it becomes both so commonplace and apparently condoned—maybe even tacitly endorsed, at least as a business venture—by the administrators. When I have time to get on and train firemaking, all I see around me are bots, starting their lines in the middle of the FoG lobby, mechanically intercepting my own lines, etc. And I just think to myself, "That's just the way it is now. Money talks, and apparently it walks too, because these guys are walking moneymakers for Jagex. Maybe not the ones around me, but their counterparts who chop ivys and farm herbs."

 

You just get kind of numbed to the whole thing after a while. It's also really killed the sense of community in this game. If you're not already in a clan or don't have irl friends who play (I started playing this game with 8 irl friends. After 7 years of playing, my last irl friend finally quit a month ago), it must feel really lonely walking around cities and seeing hardly anything but macroers and autotalkers. I'm somehow reminded of Brave New World...

[Youmu]

Even if the ISPs are different, laying it to rest for at least a day or two is enough caution. It just has to be from the same country or continent. It gets real fishy if the account logs in from Australia when before it was in the Netherlands. Now that is liable to get unwanted attention from Jagex's security team.

Some people use VPNs to play the game. ;)