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Cheating in Runescape and the Bigger Picture


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I've been reading threads on Tip.it and other fansites regarding botting.

 

Beyond the well-worn arguments on why people bot and why you shouldn't, I think there is a bigger reason that's lost underneath all that noise. I believe there's an important moral reason why botting, like other forms of dishonesty and cheating, shouldn't be done.

 

Players trying to justify botting by saying it doesn't harm anyone or that it's because botters have a better sense of priorities are just deluding themselves. I laugh at people who say that botters take real life more seriously than Runescape, so they're saving themselves time to focus on other, more "important" things. What you don't seem to realize is that this laissez-faire attitude also carries over to the other parts of your life as well.

 

People who justify botters are the same people who say that cheating on tests is acceptable. Hey, if you don't get caught, is anyone really hurt by your cheating? If you don't want to look after your sister because there's that movie you want to go to, what's the harm in lying to your parents and saying that you're heading over to a friend's house to study? Nothing of course, except that these people grow up to be irresponsible adults, who expect to get what they want with minimal effort.

 

Would you want to work with these people? I wouldn't. Who, after all, wants to collaborate with someone who does the bare minimum, cuts corners when they can get away with it, and avoids as much honest work as they can?

 

Would you want to be friends with these people? I wouldn't. As a friend, they'd probably be unreliable when you need a favor and it conflicts with their own interests.

 

What would a world full of these people look like? You only need to look around to see what happens when our moral integrity is broken. In America, we have politicians that lie and cheat, government in Washington that can't seem to work out how to get work done without pandering to the far left and far right. Every election season, televisions are flooded with ads crammed full of cheap and misleading sound bites.

 

Is it any surprise that Americans are "dumbing down?" Consider that more teenagers than ever consider it OK to cheat on tests when you can. People think it's fine to get away with as much as you can. It's probably what the good people at Enron told themselves when they inflated profit figures, or the folks at our nation's banks when they squeezed ever more money out of bundling together risky mortgages.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, being honest and having integrity isn't something that you can reason away when it appears convenient to do so. The consequences of such actions are all around us. You may say that botting has no relevance to these weightier issues. After all, it's only a game, and an online game at that. But I would say it does. The conscience choices you make, no matter how small, reflect the kind of person that you are, and the kind of person you will become.

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Just because someone bots on RuneScape doesn't mean they have no morals in things that count in real life.

 

And I personally don't think that people are dumbing down. It's that more stupid people are breeding. In fact, I think there are more smart people than ever. More people are getting better educations.

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Just because someone bots on RuneScape doesn't mean they have no morals in things that count in real life.

 

And I personally don't think that people are dumbing down. It's that more stupid people are breeding. In fact, I think there are more smart people than ever. More people are getting better educations.

To your first point, I see it as just the opposite. Botting and the defense of botting is just a symptom of how our morals are loosening across the board.

 

As for your second point, I don't really know how to answer that. I suppose that you could say stupidity begets stupidity, but does that mean we should sit back and let people wallow in it? Or will you try and change them for the better?

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I don't think that's his point.

His point is, people nowadays think cheating is fine if you don't get caught, regardless of what your cheating on. Botting my not hurt anyone, but its still against the rules and as such its a problem. But its not just in games, people cheat in real life and in important things and don't care because they get away with it in other things, like RS. Its a problem that people don't care about for some reason.

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Just because someone bots on RuneScape doesn't mean they have no morals in things that count in real life.

 

And I personally don't think that people are dumbing down. It's that more stupid people are breeding. In fact, I think there are more smart people than ever. More people are getting better educations.

To your first point, I see it as just the opposite. Botting and the defense of botting is just a symptom of how our morals are loosening across the board.

 

As for your second point, I don't really know how to answer that. I suppose that you could say stupidity begets stupidity, but does that mean we should sit back and let people wallow in it? Or will you try and change them for the better?

 

 

The internet allows anonymity. That alone allows people to throw their morals (that they would usually have in everyday real life while interacting with real people) out the window. Botting does NOT reflect one's true beliefs and morals in things that count. Now I'm not defending botting and don't bot myself, I'm just saying that people will be a lot more lax about "cheating" in a game, rather than in real life.

 

 

It is up to each individual to "change themselves for the better." They need to have a desire to change, otherwise what I "try" to do won't have an affect.

 

Botting m[a]y not hurt anyone

 

Botting definitely does hurt those that don't bot by killing prices and allowing unfair advantages for those that bot.

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Games are not real life so somebody cheating on Runescape is not comparable to cheating IRL. You may consider Runescape to be like a second life because you have become so engrossed into the game that you spend more time in the game than in real life, but most people play Runescape just for fun. The majority of botters are people who have more important things to do IRL than play a game, so they let a software program play it for them. They will play the fun parts of the game like pking and questing, but training mundane skills such as every skill but dungeoneering will be done by the bot.

 

Cheating on a game is not a moral decision. I once cheating on Grand Theft Auto to get every weapon and trust me when I say my life did not change afterwards.

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'True morality comes not from doing the right thing for fear of consequences, rather doing what is right even in the absence of them.'

 

Essentially, just because you put on a 'moral' face in real life does not mean that you are a moral person. I know of people IRL who 'show off' that they are all highly moral and 'above' the social tendancies and then spend their whole nights on 4chan looking at racism / porn / everything else that goes on there. What truly defines how 'good' of a person you are is what you do when no one is watching. These people who bot do so because they know they will not get caught. They may seem like nice people if you were to meet them on the street, but the fact that they take advantage of the system when 'no one is watching' says something about their true character as a person.

People use the "it's just a game" argument far too much. Regardless of whether it's real life or 'just a game', your morals do not change. What changes is whether or not you show who you really are.

 

I once cheating on Grand Theft Auto to get every weapon and trust me when I say my life did not change afterwards.

That is different then actual cheating. The programers of the game programed those into the game and intended for people to use them. Jagex intentionally did not build cheats into the game because of the fair aspect to the game.

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I don't think that's his point.

His point is, people nowadays think cheating is fine if you don't get caught, regardless of what your cheating on.

 

Reminds me of my favorite interpretation of integrity... "choosing to do the right thing... even if nobody is watching"

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I wholeheartedly agree with the OP.

 

While cheating or botting may not mean you are a mass murderer or are even likely to cheat on things in real life, it does show an amount of less reliable morals and less than admirable sense of right and wrong. Just because you can cheat doesn't mean you should. Because the internet is anonymous people think that things have zero relation to real life, but they are very wrong as your actions while not as noticeable or as influential, can have a bearing on your real life.

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I have to agree that, to a certain extent, morals in a game can have something to say on your morals in your own life.

 

What botting does, is indeed hurting others, but helping some. And even if it does help someone, it does not take away the fact that it is hurting anyone.

 

A lot of these botters do not think even one second that they are indeed hurting others. If botters did not exist, you could probably get a lot more money by mining pure essence than you would without them.

 

I believe they are not being immoral, they are just being ignorant/stupid, and does not think that it actually hurts anyone. At least most of them.

 

It is kind of sad, really. If botters did not exist, you might have been able to earn 1-2 million an hour doing skills.

 

A lot of people are immoral too though. Even if they do know someone is getting hurt, they will do it. (Take for instance the scammers)

 

So after all of this: Botters are either stupid/ignorant, or they have a moral compass that is not 100% accurate, only 90-99% because of this.

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Games are not real life so somebody cheating on Runescape is not comparable to cheating IRL. You may consider Runescape to be like a second life because you have become so engrossed into the game that you spend more time in the game than in real life, but most people play Runescape just for fun. The majority of botters are people who have more important things to do IRL than play a game, so they let a software program play it for them. They will play the fun parts of the game like pking and questing, but training mundane skills such as every skill but dungeoneering will be done by the bot.

 

Cheating on a game is not a moral decision. I once cheating on Grand Theft Auto to get every weapon and trust me when I say my life did not change afterwards.

I really dislike how some people will try and attack the person before ever addressing their arguments.

 

I think you're missing my point. True morals aren't something that you give up even when you're indulging in an online game. The fact that people defend botting as a legitimate response to how the game is structured speaks to the degeneration of our society's values as a whole.

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I play runescape for fun, I achieve fun in anyway I see fit. Whereas Counter-Strike 1.6, I play that competitively and cheaters make me very angry. You get the idea? At the end of the day, both are games, get over it.

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People who justify botters are the same people who say that cheating on tests is acceptable. Hey, if you don't get caught, is anyone really hurt by your cheating? If you don't want to look after your sister because there's that movie you want to go to, what's the harm in lying to your parents and saying that you're heading over to a friend's house to study? Nothing of course, except that these people grow up to be irresponsible adults, who expect to get what they want with minimal effort.

 

Two things:

 

1) Proof?

2) How can you compare hurting people in the real world to having a computer program run laps around a pixel agility course in a game? And why do your examples of poor morality end there? Surely those twisted, degenerate souls who bot must also be rapists and child molesters! I once saw a green dragon bot, and I have no doubt that he also sells speed to 14-year-old kids and cheats on his wife!

 

Like it or not, there are most definitely aspects of this game that are so mind-numbingly boring that I would honestly say that bots are completely justified in some cases. I would probably bot agility and mining if I was guaranteed to get away with it without any repercussions. And before you say something like "BUT OBATRION, OFFIC WERK IS ALSO B0RING SO WHY NOT U B LAZY THERE 2 AND CUT CORNERS BECUZ IT IS BORING AMIRITE?!2?@@," keep in mind that, once again, you are comparing the real world to a GAME.

 

I play Runescape to have fun, and though I wouldn't compromise my account for any reason, I do not blame people for doing it. Of course, I don't have any respect for botted skills, but that's another matter altogether.

 

Now that I've admitted to being a sympathizer to botters, feel free to call me a moral nihilist. :rolleyes:

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I play runescape for fun, I achieve fun in anyway I see fit. Whereas Counter-Strike 1.6, I play that competitively and cheaters make me very angry. You get the idea? At the end of the day, both are games, get over it.

 

I agree with you 100%.

 

People who justify botters are the same people who say that cheating on tests is acceptable. Hey, if you don't get caught, is anyone really hurt by your cheating? If you don't want to look after your sister because there's that movie you want to go to, what's the harm in lying to your parents and saying that you're heading over to a friend's house to study? Nothing of course, except that these people grow up to be irresponsible adults, who expect to get what they want with minimal effort.

 

Two things:

 

1) Proof?

2) How can you compare hurting people in the real world to having a computer program run laps around a pixel agility course in a game? And why do your examples of poor morality end there? Surely those poor, degenerate souls who bot must also be rapists and child molesters! I once saw a green dragon bot, and I have no doubt that he also sells speed to 14-year-old kids and cheats on his wife!

 

Like it or not, there are most definitely aspects of this game that are so mind-numbingly boring that I would honestly say that bots are completely justified in some cases. I would probably bot agility and mining if I was guaranteed to get away with it without any repercussions. And before you say something like "BUT OBATRION, OFFIC WERK IS ALSO B0RING SO WHY NOT U B LAZY THERE 2 AND CUT CORNERS BECUZ IT IS BORING AMIRITE?!2?@@," keep in mind that, once again, you are comparing the real world to a GAME.

 

I play Runescape to have fun, and though I wouldn't compromise my account for any reason, I do not blame people for doing it. Of course, I don't have any respect for botted skills, but that's another matter altogether.

 

Now that I've admitted to being a sympathizer to botters, feel free to call me a moral nihilist. :rolleyes:

 

 

Also agree with you.

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Everybody lies. It doesn't mean you'll be an irresponsible adult.

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I think the rather beautiful word we're looking for here is desensitization. Cheating and cutting corners in a fake world CAN definitely lessen those barriers between "wrong" and "right" in that individual's head. The mind carries between the game and life.

Perhaps not expressly in this thread, but often I see people here publicly oppose botting and yet defend the impulses behind it which is just... -.-

 

Also, funny thing is I started writing this post before the above 3 or 4, so... :rolleyes:

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Beyond the well-worn arguments on why people bot and why you shouldn't, I think there is a bigger reason that's lost underneath all that noise. I believe there's an important moral reason why botting, like other forms of dishonesty and cheating, shouldn't be done.

 

*Opinion* noted...

 

Players trying to justify botting by saying it doesn't harm anyone or that it's because botters have a better sense of priorities are just deluding themselves. I laugh at people who say that botters take real life more seriously than Runescape, so they're saving themselves time to focus on other, more "important" things. What you don't seem to realize is that this laissez-faire attitude also carries over to the other parts of your life as well.

 

Do you have any concrete evidence to support that claim? Any statistics?

 

People who justify botters are the same people who say that cheating on tests is acceptable.

 

Evidence?

 

Hey, if you don't get caught, is anyone really hurt by your cheating? If you don't want to look after your sister because there's that movie you want to go to, what's the harm in lying to your parents and saying that you're heading over to a friend's house to study? Nothing of course, except that these people grow up to be irresponsible adults, who expect to get what they want with minimal effort.

 

Evidence?

 

Your exam and sister analogies are straw man arguments.

 

Would you want to work with these people? I wouldn't. Who, after all, wants to collaborate with someone who does the bare minimum, cuts corners when they can get away with it, and avoids as much honest work as they can?

 

Does that really make them a bad person? Think of your friends in real life. None of your friends do what you just stated? I know plenty of people (including myself) who often choose to do the bare minimum. What's wrong with doing the bare minimum? First you're saying cheating is immoral, which is understandable, but now you're saying that not going the extra mile is also immoral?

 

Are you implying that there is a correlation between willingness to exert extra effort and friendliness/morality?

 

Would you want to be friends with these people? I wouldn't. As a friend, they'd probably be unreliable when you need a favor and it conflicts with their own interests.

 

So now are you saying that there's a negative correlation between willingness to exert extra effort and selfishness?

 

What would a world full of these people look like? You only need to look around to see what happens when our moral integrity is broken. In America, we have politicians that lie and cheat, government in Washington that can't seem to work out how to get work done without pandering to the far left and far right. Every election season, televisions are flooded with ads crammed full of cheap and misleading sound bites.

 

So...?

 

Is it any surprise that Americans are "dumbing down?" Consider that more teenagers than ever consider it OK to cheat on tests when you can. People think it's fine to get away with as much as you can. It's probably what the good people at Enron told themselves when they inflated profit figures, or the folks at our nation's banks when they squeezed ever more money out of bundling together risky mortgages.

 

Unethical decisions aren't illegal decisions.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, being honest and having integrity isn't something that you can reason away when it appears convenient to do so. The consequences of such actions are all around us. You may say that botting has no relevance to these weightier issues. After all, it's only a game, and an online game at that. But I would say it does. The conscience choices you make, no matter how small, reflect the kind of person that you are, and the kind of person you will become.

 

Do you honestly think that not taking the rules in a video game seriously leads you to becoming a law-breaking, immoral citizen?

 

If a person doesn't take RS seriously, then you shouldn't relate their in-game characteristics to their real-life characteristics.

 

Following your logic, it's also impossible for someone to give away free sets of rune in f2p and then be immoral in real life.

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I wholeheartedly agree with the OP.

 

While cheating or botting may not mean you are a mass murderer or are even likely to cheat on things in real life, it does show an amount of less reliable morals and less than admirable sense of right and wrong. Just because you can cheat doesn't mean you should. Because the internet is anonymous people think that things have zero relation to real life, but they are very wrong as your actions while not as noticeable or as influential, can have a bearing on your real life.

 

If the cheater doesn't take RS seriously, and therefore doesn't put too much effort/thought into their decision of cheating, how can you say that they're less moral?

 

Also, you should reexamine the logic used in your signature.

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Before I say anything, I want to clarify that I've never botted and probably never will. However, I can see the attraction. Personally, I only really play rs to dg atm. It gets annoying/slow when I can't do skill doors and it'd be really useful if I had all skills at 99 to make dg faster. I'm probably never gonna get 99 mining/rc/fish etc because I don't find them interesting and I'd rather dg so if someone offered me a bot to do them for me then I'd be tempted. Basically, botting a skill would make dg more fun so I would consider it. I think OP takes rs too seriously, it's just a game. Why do you care whether other people are botting? Yea they get in the way a bit when doing certain skills but otherwise it makes no difference to you. I don't think you can involve morals because it's a game and nobody takes it that seriously.

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People who justify botters are the same people who say that cheating on tests is acceptable. Hey, if you don't get caught, is anyone really hurt by your cheating? If you don't want to look after your sister because there's that movie you want to go to, what's the harm in lying to your parents and saying that you're heading over to a friend's house to study? Nothing of course, except that these people grow up to be irresponsible adults, who expect to get what they want with minimal effort.

 

Two things:

 

1) Proof?

2) How can you compare hurting people in the real world to having a computer program run laps around a pixel agility course in a game? And why do your examples of poor morality end there? Surely those twisted, degenerate souls who bot must also be rapists and child molesters! I once saw a green dragon bot, and I have no doubt that he also sells speed to 14-year-old kids and cheats on his wife!

 

Like it or not, there are most definitely aspects of this game that are so mind-numbingly boring that I would honestly say that bots are completely justified in some cases. I would probably bot agility and mining if I was guaranteed to get away with it without any repercussions. And before you say something like "BUT OBATRION, OFFIC WERK IS ALSO B0RING SO WHY NOT U B LAZY THERE 2 AND CUT CORNERS BECUZ IT IS BORING AMIRITE?!2?@@," keep in mind that, once again, you are comparing the real world to a GAME.

 

I play Runescape to have fun, and though I wouldn't compromise my account for any reason, I do not blame people for doing it. Of course, I don't have any respect for botted skills, but that's another matter altogether.

 

Now that I've admitted to being a sympathizer to botters, feel free to call me a moral nihilist. :rolleyes:

 

:thumbup:

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You may say that botting has no relevance to these weightier issues. After all, it's only a game, and an online game at that. But I would say it does. The conscience choices you make, no matter how small, reflect the kind of person that you are, and the kind of person you will become.

 

I think you meant conscious choices, but whatever. A MMORPG like Runescape provides an escape, a short respite from your responsibilities. You can be whatever and whomever you please. Role-play, in short. The RP in MMORPG has to stand for something.

 

Most people don't play this way. They project themselves onto their avatar, so they only have a main and maybe a pker or two, share private info with their friends, take their relationships outside the game, etc. That's fine. It's very human. But if you take it too seriously to the point that you're raging like a greater demon every time someone sets up a cannon or crashes your spot, oh boy :rolleyes: It's just a game.

 

As for bots, leave that to Jagex to enforce (hah!) or spend your money elsewhere and get out of members. Or you can try to take matters into your own hands, sure, but do remember Runescape is not a second life. It's bloody entertainment. Trying to attach what you see as the breakdown of morals in current society to botting, is like...blaming domestic violence on Bollywood action movies. But by all means, if you suddenly get the urge to hunt bots and find it fun, go ahead. What I think of such doesn't matter, because it's your own idea of fun.

 

Because I've nothing to do right now, let me spin you a brief yarn.

 

 

Once upon a time there was a good person named Mary Sue, who after maxing her account - let's call it Chump the Chinchilla - grew tired of playing on it. Unable to get into the mood to play on her mules, she decides to make another, but for what?

 

At a loss of what to do ingame, she suddenly stumbles upon the minigame called the Great Orb Project. She sees this as an opportunity to start fresh. For Mary Sue, that meant getting into the character she would play: in this case emulating an innocent yet maniacal and mischievous young girl - let's call this new account Billyclub - who liked pking with magic and loved the game Viva Pinata. (She did in reality, but she borrowed it in this aspect for her RP.)

 

Over the course of her time spent in the minigame, when people asked her for private details as they got curious about her, she deliberately sidelined their questions or outright lied about it. This idea of playing coy reinforced the role she picked. (Any other way would have taken Mary Sue OOC, or out of character.) And over time, she acquired a small clan from a friend when he got hacked; after some exuberant recruiting sprees, she made it grow. She held in her hands the duties of managing a lively and freewheeling community. Wonderful times, some say.

 

Mary Sue got bored again. She quietly proceeds to fracture and factionalize the clan. (Gods, the drama. It was everywhere.) When she finally left Billyclub to go on another account, behind her lay two factions bickering like cats and dogs with feelings of betrayal aimed in her wake, and those especially bitter judged her a power-hungry god forsaken daughter of a female camel.

 

In time those she deserted got their act together. But they splintered from two factions, to three, then four. Mary Sue observed all this on her new account, roleplaying as a cold, aloof woman which was closer to her original self on her main. (But wasn't truly like her in reality. She was, after all, RPing.) On this new account, she took part in the hostilities. When all the drama settled some years later, at least three distinct communities had emerged. But that's another story.

 

So was Billyclub in the wrong and evil for what she did? Of course yes. The choices Billyclub made, no matter how small, reflected the kind of person that Billyclub was to those she encountered. But all that means is Mary Sue successfully played her character: a malicious little git of a girl. It doesn't mean she's like that in real life. In this case, she understood that reality != fiction.

 

 

TL;DR version - Girl makes new account that has no ties to her main, said account builds a clan revolving around a minigame, destroys same clan and community when it got boring and trolls them long-term, then plays something else on RS, blah blah blah moral or immoral person in reality or not, still pays taxes and abides by the law IRL.

Prepare to Die! Path of Exile RPG

 

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"Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends." Yeats

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I enjoyed that story, Biolce. Interesting scenario.

 

Have a shameless plug, below's a link to some proof it actually happened:

 

http://forum.tip.it/topic/241579-great-orb-project-a-night-in-the-game/

 

EDIT: one of my favorites out of that.

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Prepare to Die! Path of Exile RPG

 

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"Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends." Yeats

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