Why doesn't Jagex incorporate this to stop bots?

[WolfieMario]

"Because warden is likely protected by several patents and they don't want to pay to license it appropriately?"

 

I said something like warden that doesn't mean to just steal it but to work on there own kind of program.

They'd still have to be careful - copyright and patent aren't the same thing. Copyright means that it's only a violation if they literally copied its code (in whole or in part). But patents are rights to the idea/concept. If Blizzard does indeed have software patents on the idea (which would make sense for a multiplayer game company to do - it weakens the competition by getting rid of opponent companies' options), then Jagex's only options would be to legally request permission and likely pay a large fee, or just do it anyways and hope Blizzard doesn't notice and doesn't sue them.

"Because the Java Runtime Environment is very restrictive on what you can and can't do in one of their applications?"

 

If Jagex made some changes to there rs client they could make it so you have to download it to play rs and then the program would check if it sees any cheating programs

I doubt Jagex would do that - they've already prided themselves so damned hard on "no downloads needed to play!" and "best browser mmo". Sure, lots of benefits would come with making the game downloadable, but Jagex has been pretty adamant in saying they never intend for downloads to become necessary to play the game. Unless they change that business model, it's not possible for them to scan what's running on your computer.

"Because Jagex is too proud to admit that their anti-macro software isn't fool proof?"

Well, if they did do something like what Blizzard did, they would play it off as an "enhancement" of their existing system. In the process, they would also somehow try to make it seem infinitely more foolproof than their existing system, managing to disappoint players even more.

"Because even with a system like warden, applications and processes running in different environments can still be spoofed?"

 

That is true but you have to remember most of the people botting are probably younger kids with a short attention span I really doubt they know much about computers so while it wouldn't stop all the cheaters it would stop a large amount to really hit them where it hurts.

Well, "most of the people botting" is a bit debatable. There is still a huge rwt market, and where do you think a lot of their cash comes from?

Also, even kids with short attention spans can use Google. "Working bot that can bypass [Jagex's version of Warden]! Jagex has never caught it; their system's completely blind to it! Buy now for only [whatever price people pay for these things]!" You don't have to be a tech wiz to download the bot that already has bypassing methods incorporated in it. And even if some things (like having a truly different environment) would be too much effort to implement on a bot in and of itself, don't you think a tutorial video on how to macro via a virtual machine would suffice? Even for the kids with short attention spans who paid for their bot before learning that it's not as simple to set up as the push of a button.

Would there first be a massive crash in the amounts of botters? Of course. But things would stabilize after a while and we'll be back to square one again.

"Any of those suffice?"

 

And nope I don't want to play a game where half the players are cheating when there are so many ways to stop them.

He wasn't asking if those reasons make you happy to keep playing with the current state of the game. He was asking if that answers your question, "Why doesn't Jagex incorporate this to stop bots?" :-P

[sees_all1]

"Because warden is likely protected by several patents and they don't want to pay to license it appropriately?"

 

I said something like warden that doesn't mean to just steal it but to work on there own kind of program.

If I made my own tablet device which recognized pinching and pulling, you'd better believe Apple would sue me over IP infringement. It doesn't have to be the same code, the same implementation... it just has to use the same underlying idea. And I'm certain that Blizzard would not be so friendly to Jagex, especially since they compete for the same market.

 

 

"Because the Java Runtime Environment is very restrictive on what you can and can't do in one of their applications?"

 

If Jagex made some changes to there rs client they could make it so you have to download it to play rs and then the program would check if it sees any cheating programs

And JaGEx used to stand for Java Game Experts. Being able to play in a web browser is something they brag about, do you really think they'd change that?

 

"Because even with a system like warden, applications and processes running in different environments can still be spoofed?"

 

That is true but you have to remember most of the people botting are probably younger kids with a short attention span I really doubt they know much about computers so while it wouldn't stop all the cheaters it would stop a large amount to really hit them where it hurts.

The people botting don't have to know s--- about anything, the people writing their bots have already taken care of all the obstacles.

[Makoto_the_Phoenix]

Two reasons, really.

 

1 - I fear that Jagex would have to search more memory than is allotted to Java to ensure that one is not running a botting program. And of course, there are false positives in this arena, too (take some existing assistive technology tools out there, like ZoomText - who's to say that the technology won't freak out over that?).

 

2 - I refuse to let Jagex scan any part of my memory if I am required to agree to do so in the ToS. I may have nothing to hide, but does that mean that I should just let them scan for the potential bad thing in their game? My guess is that this would get as much good press as Blizzard's attempt at stopping forum trolls.

People who actually consider Warden spyware are the cheaters themselves and crazy privacy activists - Blizzard is very good for only checking for known cheats and being generally very out of the way and all challenges to Warden on privacy have all been quashed.

 

Because it is really NOT spyware, Warden has limitations in detecting all forms of bots. If a system like warden were to be made for RS, it will be able to stop current 1 of the major free bots - namely [cabbage].org

however, the other major RS bot, namely [cabbage].net or N***** will be able to escape it.

 

Either way, a dedicated anti cheating client like this could easily stop 60%+ of the bots dead in its tracks - but will Jagex do it? Hell no. They'll continue to rely on their crappy detection system and "enforce" their rules.

 

60%, eh? But what about the 40%? And what of these random arbitrary statistics?

 

TBH I don't much appreciate watchdog security systems in-game. To me, it screams out limitations and unnecessary PR spent dealing with the backlash of it all. But then again, maybe they have their value - the game will have 60% less bots, if I were to take your word as truth.

 

Most of us want to see a real solution, though.

 

 

Just throwing this out there, without bots, yes ess would be more expensive, but expect RC to be more lucrative without, you know, RC bots. Just saying.

 

Now, if Jagex breaks/bans a bunch of rune essence MINING bots, but doesn't ban a corresponding amount of rune essence CRAFTING bots, then that is the time that RC takes a hit.

 

Anyways, considering one of Jagex''s main attraction is being browser based, forcing this Warden Software download on players doesn't seem like a good way to keep that particular attractive part of RS. I also have trouble imagining the Warden software actually being particularly effective, but I don't really want to go into that because I honestly don't know, and read maybe a paragraph of the wiki article lol.

 

So our resources become more expensive because automatons are no longer running the economy. Wait - I thought this was a player-driven economy.

 

As for the browser part, I'd be willing to presume that the software implementation would be Warden-like (so it could run in a browser).

[Den]

I wouldn't mind if they decided to do this, neither do I care. It wouldn't have any effect on me, only the people that have something to hide.

That being said, I don't think it'll ever happen.

 

Quote Removed ~ Jimmy_Jim

[Mike_Ike111]

Botting clients do not edit anything in the client. They all click, move the mouse and type like human beings. Think of a bot as an android that runs scripts designed to be as humanly as possible.

 

If only they could hold a conversation: then they would fill the gap the game is missing. Without bots most worlds would be empty and the game would be cold and lifeless. Nobody would be there to gather logs, mine, kill dragons, and the rest of the boring activities.

 

Look to your left, now look to your right. One out of those two players is currently a bot. I'm sorry but botting is what keeps this game thriving. Think of this game as a single player RPG (as it really is) with NPC's (bots) that run around gathering material to keep the economy rolling.

[Central_Keeper]

Bots really don't ruin my game experience to be honest - they do a lot of menial tasks that I don't so I have very little interaction with them.

 

Ye but im not being mean but your just one person they probably ruin the experience of 2/3 of the valid runescape population.

 

This is totally untrue - and random as well.

 

I do admit that bots do make me feel like I'm being cheated but think about the past few days for rune essences.

When the Jagex (either banned the rune essence mining bots) or somehow broke it - the price of pure essences shot through the roof - over 150.

Who the hell is going to RC if it's

a.) one of the slowest skills in the game

b.) provides no real benefit

c.) takes a chunk out of your bank?

 

This is for a relatively unpopular skill such as RC - I couldn't imagine what would happen to the price in game if bots were totally banned.

It would be almost impossible to level prayer/herblore at any effective rate without massive merchanting involved.

 

For the most part - bots don't bother me in the game (other then the fact that they make my achievements feel not as great)

Either way - you can 99.999% beat a bot in whatever they do so I don't really consider them a threat.

In many cases, you can exploit a bot to make your own rs-ing more fun/effective.

 

I don't know about you guys, but I think many thread already has something like this talking the pro/cons of RS economy due to bots. From what I observed so far, the essence price do go in proportion with whatever runes you are making. When I start playing RS. Rune ess can go from 20 to 50gp (people merchant them and selling them in huge amount each, but airs usually hovers around 20gp each. Which means, if you mine your own essence for a while, and wait until your RC lvl make it profitable, you will not lose cash at all. Secondly, the influx of new players will want to earn income by mining essence, while veteran players provide Gp for their services. The method worked before bot becomes a real issue, and it will work again if all the bots suddenly magically disappear. It will just take some time for the price to stabilize.

 

Botting is always and has been against the rule, it seems really stupid to me that people just get used to them eventually or even seem them as a necessity. It's all fine and dandy, wait until you start gathering something, or want to train at your favorite spot, and watch it filled with bots so bad that it ruins your game experience. Then you will think otherwise. I still have nightmares walking to some yew tree and see at least 30 baldy bots surround it and clearcutting it in less than 5 seconds. Then again, I am F2P, so not sure how much impact it has on P2p. Oh wait, yes, the yew log price drops, everyone, keep on buying from botters (lvl 3 selling absurd number of logs and raw lobs), makes legit player don't want to gather resource anyone. Suddenly the market crash because you can no longer free trade (anyone remember the introduction of pure ess? rune ess go from 30 gp average down to 10 to 15gp ea). Low material provider since bots are gone, and all the legit players don't want to gather anymore.

 

Even with all that clear evidence, some of people out there will still go bots are essential to the RS economy. Then again, once you grow tired of RS, it will not mean anything at all. lol

[sees_all1]

Without bots most worlds would be empty and the game would be cold and lifeless. Nobody would be there to gather logs, mine, kill dragons, and the rest of the boring activities.

Bots are not filling a void, they're crowding everyone out. Bots are not the solution to the "nobody would do this", they're the cause. Realistically speaking, if there were no bots, the prices of everything would accurately reflect the amount of time, effort, and level investment it takes to acquire it.

[Alphanos]

Without bots most worlds would be empty and the game would be cold and lifeless. Nobody would be there to gather logs, mine, kill dragons, and the rest of the boring activities.

Bots are not filling a void, they're crowding everyone out. Bots are not the solution to the "nobody would do this", they're the cause. Realistically speaking, if there were no bots, the prices of everything would accurately reflect the amount of time, effort, and level investment it takes to acquire it.

 

This. I wish more people would understand that the elimination of bots would not result in their current common roles being equally useless, yet unfulfilled.

 

If there were no woodcutting bots, flax bots, essence mining bots, runecrafting bots, etc etc, all of the products these activities produce would be far more valuable. This would have all kinds of unexpected, far-reaching effects. For example, with all woodcutting bots gone, the vast supplies of excess logs would disappear. Unless MTK production could keep up, the wood supply would likely be insufficient to serve those wanting to level fletch. Imagine if fletching was actually of comparable expense, and thus respect, to crafting or smithing?

 

Runescape without bots would be very different. I hope to see what kinds of unexpected things happen when one day this becomes possible.

[Kata_Phfract__the_slayer]

I use a text macro for a game called Magicka that lets me type out complex commands with 1 keyboard press. For instance I have my 1 key bound to press fqfqasafq in quick succession to cast spells.

Often times I don't bother to quit it when I exit the game.

Had Jagex installed spyware technology on my machine, I may be flagged for botting when I'm not

 

They is very little ways for them to detect you are a bot if you aren't using something that interfaces with java and interacts with the game via UIDs.

 

If someone creates a device that looks at the physical screen and physically moves and clicks a mouse depending on color and shapes, that would technically be a bot, but on the other hand it wouldn't be a bot.

 

Wait until 2017 when people have AI play the game almost as good as humans.

 

indeed. its hard to detect bots in a big scale mostly. more so with jagex's resources.

the only hope is that 2017 games that can be played by AI are obsolete :P

 

p.s. where can i get this magicka macro?

[Crocefisso]

Why can't Jagex do something like WoW does

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warden_%28software%29

 

Something like that would probably stop alot of botters and then we won't have so many zombies everywhere ruining the game experience for everyone.

 

It's a nice idea, but I'm pretty sure that Warden can't be used on browser based games. Let's face it, RS would need to be drastically revamped to be able to justify moving into WoW territory.

[das]

People who actually consider Warden spyware are the cheaters themselves and crazy privacy activists - Blizzard is very good for only checking for known cheats and being generally very out of the way and all challenges to Warden on privacy have all been quashed.

 

 

Warden and Punkbuster are installed knowingly by the person thus they are not spyware - however I frown upon both services because anyone who has ever spent time in those games knows how damn useless they are. They really don't improve their communities and do nothing but eat up resources - a minimal amount on todays machines, but still it's an extra feature that doesn't really serve it's purpose.

[Estoc]

As far as I'm concerned, Jagex put themselves in a corner by making botting against the rules. No matter what they do, bar removing free trade of course, it's the limited amount of employees at Jagex versus thousands of bot programmers. It's a fight they will eventually lose, or have lost already by the looks of things.

[SwreeTak]

Bots really don't ruin my game experience to be honest - they do a lot of menial tasks that I don't so I have very little interaction with them.

 

Ye but im not being mean but your just one person they probably ruin the experience of 2/3 of the valid runescape population.

 

This is totally untrue - and random as well.

 

I do admit that bots do make me feel like I'm being cheated but think about the past few days for rune essences.

When the Jagex (either banned the rune essence mining bots) or somehow broke it - the price of pure essences shot through the roof - over 150.

Who the hell is going to RC if it's

a.) one of the slowest skills in the game

b.) provides no real benefit

c.) takes a chunk out of your bank?

 

This is for a relatively unpopular skill such as RC - I couldn't imagine what would happen to the price in game if bots were totally banned.

It would be almost impossible to level prayer/herblore at any effective rate without massive merchanting involved.

 

For the most part - bots don't bother me in the game (other then the fact that they make my achievements feel not as great)

Either way - you can 99.999% beat a bot in whatever they do so I don't really consider them a threat.

In many cases, you can exploit a bot to make your own rs-ing more fun/effective.

 

I don't agree with you, Litterbug. If all bots were to disappear some basic, easily bot-able items, such as rune essences, would become a whole lot more expensive. But this is a price that most players would be willing to pay. The game would win incredibly much if the bots were simply deleted. As a player you could then know that whoever you met within the game that had high levels had earn those levels himself/herself. You could compare yourself against other players in a more "real" way since you know that everyone is playing with the same conditions. And you could finally go woodcutting, go red chinchompa hunting and pick flax (And thousands of other things) without having to compete with a huge load of level 3s in basic clothing.

So even if some items would rise in price, like rune essences, the removal of bots would be a very good thing. The game would then be played as it was planned to be played. The game would in my opinion become a lot more fair.

 

A bit more on topic: I think that this software is a bit too advanced for Jagex's tastes. RS is supposed to be able to be played on pretty much any computer, and without downloads. But then I'm really no expert.

[Leximunium]

Haha

Warden is terrible.

[Storm]

Wait until 2017 when people have AI play the game almost as good as humans.

AI already plays games better than humans.

[Flareboy64]

God I would love for them to catch the frost dragon bots right now...

[Wkw]

Wait until 2017 when people have AI play the game almost as good as humans.

AI already plays games better than humans.

A bot can't reply dynamically to questions, nor can it think on its own.

[Nomrombom]

Wait until 2017 when people have AI play the game almost as good as humans.

AI already plays games better than humans.

A bot can't reply dynamically to questions, nor can it think on its own.

 

And because it can't think on its own, it could be baffled by complex, unknown situations and just shut down. Plus humans can learn tricks, timings, psychology, and can adapt to different opponents based on their levels/gear. Sure, some AI might be better than some humans, but the AI NEVER beats every human in a game.

[LitterBug]

Wait until 2017 when people have AI play the game almost as good as humans.

AI already plays games better than humans.

A bot can't reply dynamically to questions, nor can it think on its own.

 

And because it can't think on its own, it could be baffled by complex, unknown situations and just shut down. Plus humans can learn tricks, timings, psychology, and can adapt to different opponents based on their levels/gear. Sure, some AI might be better than some humans, but the AI NEVER beats every human in a game.

 

I understand what you're saying but - No human can beat every other human in a game.

Some of the bots sound to be pretty complex.

The amount of botters at some places (i.e minigames) baffle me.

These minigames aren't exactly easy to play, and coding a bot so that they can play a minigame (usually pretty decently) is pretty impressive. Obviously, they can't respond to any circumstances - but they're good for a lot of them.

 

I mean look at PC. The amount of bots there, who can successfully target a portal when the barrier falls, spec monsters, open doors, get onto the boats - make it seem like these bots are pretty complex.

I wonder how much time these coders actually spend on making these bots.

[Cheefoo]

Wait until 2017 when people have AI play the game almost as good as humans.

AI already plays games better than humans.

A bot can't reply dynamically to questions, nor can it think on its own.

Dragons don't riddle their prey.

[Flareboy64]

Wait until 2017 when people have AI play the game almost as good as humans.

AI already plays games better than humans.

A bot can't reply dynamically to questions, nor can it think on its own.

Dragons don't riddle their prey.

Mr. Mordaut begs to differ. ;D

[WolfieMario]

Wait until 2017 when people have AI play the game almost as good as humans.

AI already plays games better than humans.

A bot can't reply dynamically to questions, nor can it think on its own.

Dragons don't riddle their prey.

Mr. Mordaut begs to differ. ;D

That's going in my signature :XD:

 

EDIT: Damn, the forum won't let me do that. Oh well, still a funny post :P

[JoWie]

A few points:

 

Runescape has the same rights as any other program ran under your user. Normally, java applets that are ran inside the browser are sandboxed and are very restricted. However java applications can be signed and request the user for more privileges (the "yes/no/always trust jagex" dialog you see the first time you load up runescape).

You can then do everything other applications can by either executing another program or by using a Java Native Interface library.

 

Software patents are illegal in the UK (and the rest of the EU)

 

Personally I am against software like punkbuster and warden because of the privacy issues. I've played americas army years ago and punkbuster would take screenshots and send them to the server you are playing on. Some servers would even give a public link, which let everyone read in on your xfire conversations.

 

Bot writers could simply supply a virtual machine image which has only the bare minimums to run runescape. This would allow the average user to circumvent such anti-cheat software.

[Crossed_Body]

Bots are not filling a void, they're crowding everyone out. Bots are not the solution to the "nobody would do this", they're the cause.

They are neither the cause or the solution. They are a byproduct of a crappy system.

Gathering skills are grindy ,boring, and expensive. Make them exciting, and you'll see less bots, and more players skilling.

[Naraku893]

Because Jagex is stupid