Botting in Runescape

[Amonitas]

They are in fact banning bots. Thousands of them. It just doesn't mean a thing with the huge amount of them we have now, we don't even notice. There is a reason why I randomly rise 3k spots in mining hiscores without getting a single xp.

[Jaffy1]

They are in fact banning bots. Thousands of them. It just doesn't mean a thing with the huge amount of them we have now, we don't even notice. There is a reason why I randomly rise 3k spots in mining hiscores without getting a single xp.

 

The punishment for botting is having stats reset to lower levels. Bots are no longer banned.

It's also rather obvious Jagex has no control over them, nor any decent means of detecting bots.

[Stev]

nor any decent means of detecting bots.

This is what they need to work on the most. When a friend can purposely use the most obvious bots, taking 5 minutes to write, with no anti-ban, and get away with 7 99s and counting... What detection system?

[NoHopeLeft]

I'd bet that a script with no antiban that clicks chickens and does nothing else could be run for at least 24 hours straight without being detected. LolJagex.

[Stev]

These scripts that he's using are clicking exact coordinates, exact colors, has exact sleep values and does nothing random. It has been running for months. I told Cheesy and them months ago when he only had like three 99s. He now has 7.

 

Easy woodcutting, fletching, firemaking, fishing, cooking, thieving, and hunter. The whole purpose was too see how far someone could go with-out randomizing a bot at all, using no anti-ban, and taking a maximum of 5-10 minutes to write the bot.

 

I don't know what bots Jagex claims to be banning, or how they seem to be detecting them, but it obviously isn't the thousands at avansies with 99 range, constitution, attack, strength, etc. And how do you think all these bots got the stats and quests to do these gold-farming tasks? Hundreds more hours of botting.

[Ginger_Warrior]

nor any decent means of detecting bots.

This is what they need to work on the most. When a friend can purposely use the most obvious bots, taking 5 minutes to write, with no anti-ban, and get away with 7 99s and counting... What detection system?

Well, the cynics amongst us would suggest it's not in Jagex's vested interest to run anti-bot programs to detect cheats who simply want to avoid grinding. Firstly, it doesn't really harm anyone in terms of criminality. Secondly, I reckon the extent to botting doesn't really deter as many honest players as it does attract cheats, resulting in a net gain of players. In 'not really caring' they're actually profiting, in my opinion.

[Ginger_Warrior]

nor any decent means of detecting bots.

This is what they need to work on the most. When a friend can purposely use the most obvious bots, taking 5 minutes to write, with no anti-ban, and get away with 7 99s and counting... What detection system?

Well, the cynics amongst us would suggest it's not in Jagex's vested interest to run anti-bot programs to detect cheats who simply want to avoid grinding. Firstly, it doesn't really harm anyone in terms of criminality. Secondly, I reckon the extent to botting doesn't really deter as many honest players as it does attract cheats, resulting in a net gain of players. In 'not really caring' they're actually profiting, in my opinion.

[FastForce]

You people need to understand that botting is just common in any game that goes big. What you say, or do has no merit to Jagex. It's easy enough to make a script for any game, and yes the infestation of them gets annoying at times. But like I, and many others have said "Just another botting thread".

[pulli23]

My signature still applies it seems. Or maybe http://homepage.mac.com/steveklein/hangman.html

[SixFootOne]

You people need to understand that botting is just common in any game that goes big. What you say, or do has no merit to Jagex. It's easy enough to make a script for any game, and yes the infestation of them gets annoying at times. But like I, and many others have said "Just another botting thread".

 

 

People complain about botting because this activity in the game will shorten the lifespan of runescape. Eventually all new players will just be competing with bots, and do one 2 things. Join in the botting, and soon realize they are not even playing the game and quit, or quit because they can't compete. People play to show off. That's why skill capes were so game changing. It's always been about bragging. Go back to the old arcade days of video games and look at the highscores. People sat in arcades trying to get a highscore so their name would be imprinted on some machine. Sure some play for themselves but i don't think that minority would replace the loss of player who like to show off. All the people that care for their personal achievements will quit, and then everyone else botting their personal achievements will realize it doesn't even matter anymore. I am not trying to be a doomsayer and claim rs will end soon. But i think it's pretty clear that having a HUGE botting problem like this will ruin the community and the game. Especially when you mention botting problems in other games, just look at silk road.

 

I don't think turning a blind eye on botting would be doing you any good either. It's like watching your neighborhood fall apart. You can sit there and ignore the problems, but after a while you will release where you live is a waste land and it's time to move. And i do understand no one wants to see a new bot thread every week, but i think it's better people talk about it in the open rather than having an elephant in the room. So while it may be true what we say has no merit to Jagex, excuse us for trying.

[Sala]

You people need to understand that botting is just common in any game that goes big. What you say, or do has no merit to Jagex. It's easy enough to make a script for any game, and yes the infestation of them gets annoying at times. But like I, and many others have said "Just another botting thread".

 

 

People complain about botting because this activity in the game will shorten the lifespan of runescape. Eventually all new players will just be competing with bots, and do one 2 things. Join in the botting, and soon realize they are not even playing the game and quit, or quit because they can't compete. People play to show off. That's why skill capes were so game changing. It's always been about bragging. Go back to the old arcade days of video games and look at the highscores. People sat in arcades trying to get a highscore so their name would be imprinted on some machine. Sure some play for themselves but i don't think that minority would replace the loss of player who like to show off. All the people that care for their personal achievements will quit, and then everyone else botting their personal achievements will realize it doesn't even matter anymore. I am not trying to be a doomsayer and claim rs will end soon. But i think it's pretty clear that having a HUGE botting problem like this will ruin the community and the game. Especially when you mention botting problems in other games, just look at silk road.

 

I don't think turning a blind eye on botting would be doing you any good either. It's like watching your neighborhood fall apart. You can sit there and ignore the problems, but after a while you will release where you live is a waste land and it's time to move. And i do understand no one wants to see a new bot thread every week, but i think it's better people talk about it in the open rather than having an elephant in the room. So while it may be true what we say has no merit to Jagex, excuse us for trying.

 

This was pretty much the main point I was trying to make. Would you mind if I quoted this in the first post? Also, Tip.It have designated this as the main botting discussion thread so no more small, weekly botting threads should pop up.

[SixFootOne]

You people need to understand that botting is just common in any game that goes big. What you say, or do has no merit to Jagex. It's easy enough to make a script for any game, and yes the infestation of them gets annoying at times. But like I, and many others have said "Just another botting thread".

 

 

People complain about botting because this activity in the game will shorten the lifespan of runescape. Eventually all new players will just be competing with bots, and do one 2 things. Join in the botting, and soon realize they are not even playing the game and quit, or quit because they can't compete. People play to show off. That's why skill capes were so game changing. It's always been about bragging. Go back to the old arcade days of video games and look at the highscores. People sat in arcades trying to get a highscore so their name would be imprinted on some machine. Sure some play for themselves but i don't think that minority would replace the loss of player who like to show off. All the people that care for their personal achievements will quit, and then everyone else botting their personal achievements will realize it doesn't even matter anymore. I am not trying to be a doomsayer and claim rs will end soon. But i think it's pretty clear that having a HUGE botting problem like this will ruin the community and the game. Especially when you mention botting problems in other games, just look at silk road.

 

I don't think turning a blind eye on botting would be doing you any good either. It's like watching your neighborhood fall apart. You can sit there and ignore the problems, but after a while you will release where you live is a waste land and it's time to move. And i do understand no one wants to see a new bot thread every week, but i think it's better people talk about it in the open rather than having an elephant in the room. So while it may be true what we say has no merit to Jagex, excuse us for trying.

 

 

This was pretty much the main point I was trying to make. Would you mind if I quoted this in the first post? Also, Tip.It have designated this as the main botting discussion thread so no more small, weekly botting threads should pop up.

 

 

Feel free to

[Earthman]

I really don't mind bots taking spots, I can deal with that. What I do mind is their effect on the economy. I mean, people have now started botting mahogany logs. You know what that means? The logs that are now worth 500+ gp and cut alot faster than yews, will just slowly fall in price, possibly beign even cheaper than yews. This method earns about 55m to level 99. And there has been an increase in price for trading sticks, which are used to bank these logs. They were worth 4 gp a few days ago and now they're over 7 gp ea, which is a huge increase for an item that was that cheap.

 

I just hope that they can be atleast 450+ each for atleast 2 months, so I can get 99 and be done with it. Bots didn't annoy me that much until now. They pretty much ruined my plan to get 99 Woodcutting with alot of profit. Well, actually not yet, but I'm positive that they will ruin this method of making money too. Just like every popular skilling moneymaking way in this game.

 

It's not like I'm crying over this, but I am mad about this. Jagex needs to start with bans again, not just rollbacks. It takes them like what, two days to get back to the levels to start gold farming again? Ridicoulous.

[Dragonlordjl]

Their detection system sucks donkey gonads, so even if they were to start banning bots again it would be like trying to bail water from a sinking ship using a spoon. Moreover, Jagex won't ban them because then they lose the money from the bots. It's more efficient for them to just rollback the bots, since that keeps the bots playing longer and they can say "we did something."

[LitterBug]

I really don't mind bots taking spots, I can deal with that. What I do mind is their effect on the economy. I mean, people have now started botting mahogany logs. You know what that means? The logs that are now worth 500+ gp and cut alot faster than yews, will just slowly fall in price, possibly beign even cheaper than yews. This method earns about 55m to level 99. And there has been an increase in price for trading sticks, which are used to bank these logs. They were worth 4 gp a few days ago and now they're over 7 gp ea, which is a huge increase for an item that was that cheap.

 

I just hope that they can be atleast 450+ each for atleast 2 months, so I can get 99 and be done with it. Bots didn't annoy me that much until now. They pretty much ruined my plan to get 99 Woodcutting with alot of profit. Well, actually not yet, but I'm positive that they will ruin this method of making money too. Just like every popular skilling moneymaking way in this game.

 

It's not like I'm crying over this, but I am mad about this. Jagex needs to start with bans again, not just rollbacks. It takes them like what, two days to get back to the levels to start gold farming again? Ridicoulous.

 

If you're looking at mahogany logs for making money, there's other things that's wrong with this.

Regardless from this argument, you also get skills a lot cheaper (prayer/crafting/construction/etc)

We can't really estimate the prices that it would be at without bots I guess that's a good thing.

 

The most annoying things about bots are when they stop game play.

Seriously, how can Jagex not ban all those hundreds of bots at black demons.

They're all swarming the same god damn black demon for a good 5 seconds until the bot detect that it's being attacked and then moves onto a new one.

It's ESPECIALLY a problem when there are more then twice the amount of bots as black demons.

 

GF slayer tasks.

 

To those people saying "it's not a big deal, you can always go on a foreign world/ct"

That's a horrible argument.

You basically have all the member world people who would be at black demons in the 10 or so foreign worlds.

It's also annoying having to hop around for a few minutes to even find a place that's relatively free, and on top of that - players have been crashing black demons cause it's so hard to find a spot.

Then you end up having to compete with another cannon/etc for black demons which can be just as annoying.

[Jackie_Clay]

I fear that this game is in serious danger if the current botting situation continues on the path it is currently headed down.

[Robert_R]

I love free trade as much as the next guy but taking it away again (to some extent) would severely limit the ability to sell gold with gold farming bots which are really the biggest concern. Players who just bot 99s with no intention of gold farming aren't nearly as big of a problem and just won't really be stopped with the path jagex is on. Which just happens to be rolling accounts with a 14 day ban because they don't want to kill profits perm banning players. They'll never admit that but it's kind of obvious when the perm ban free players but almost always only temp ban paying players.

[Datblob]

Why do people care so much about bots...

they keep resources down so much...

 

i cant imagine how i would of got some buyable 99s :thumbsup: without the prices being lowered by them

 

but on the other hand i did make less on 99 fishing <_<

[Awolo]

Why do people care so much about bots...

they keep resources down so much...

 

i cant imagine how i would of got some buyable 99s :thumbsup: without the prices being lowered by them

 

but on the other hand i did make less on 99 fishing <_<

That's part of the reason botting is bad. Now every low joe player can afford 99 prayer/99 herblore/99 smith when they were once respected 99's. Now the cost of them is less than 1/2 and they are extremely common(yea that might be because of overloads/turm, but they still cheap as hell now even with those added bonuses).

[The Dark Lord]

RuneScape: The game where honesty is never rewarded. Seriously, it's much easier to be dishonest and abuse the hell out of bugs since you get a benefit from them than it is to report bugs/not abuse them. I don't blame people for wanting to abuse bugs in this game, though I personally don't do it myself.

 

The day that Jagex makes leveling less repetitive and magnitudes easier/faster/more entertaining to train is the day that the number of bots will decrease. The game encourages botting due to long hours of repetitive clicking in order to train a skill, and the focus is too heavy on skilling. Once you shift this focus away from the leveling aspect and make it piss easy to level a character without it feeling long and repetitive, you will make a significant step towards bot prevention. Also, Jagex should focus on preventing the act of botting rather than punishing botters. It's a never-ending cycle, and when you ban a botter, more replace him. If you see botting as more of a symptom of a flaw in your game, you can find ways to prevent it, thus making steps to solving the problem at its foundation rather than hacking off the limbs.

 

I've played a game where there was a serious botting problem with people making extremely high-leveled characters through botting. Once the devs changed the XP system dramatically and made it possible to gather items and get offline XP off of them (of course with a cooldown, which varied by the type of item), botting for XP pretty much ceased. The game became a little more relaxed, and in general, people had more fun. The game's focus was more on PvP than grind, and it was more enjoyable, at least.

 

The only real threat to Runescape are gold farmers. [bleep] those guys.

 

EDIT: And for the record, I have never botted nor intend to bot on RuneScape. I used to be one of those skiller types long ago, then realized that gaining stats for the sake of gaining stats didn't make me any happier and just encouraged me to stop playing the game as it sapped fun for me. I speak from experience and try to offer an insight into the viewpoint of those who may be susceptible to botting and why they would do it. I think people blindly hate botters and fail to see the game through their eyes, which is the wrong thing to do and promotes misunderstanding.

[Deathknell]

Remember when cheap Chinese labor was exploited for making our shoes and purses instead of our MMO currencies. Gosh those were the days... :mellow:

[WildxYak]

I headed on down to Sorceress's Garden to play for a bit (only just back to P2P after about 3 years and I like it for the bonus Farming xp lol) and wondered why there are SO many bots there. They all go for herbs in the Summer garden so I'm assuming they sell the herbs they get? Not a single person in any of the other gardens either so all have to be at least 65 Thieving!

[ViT0C0RLEONE]

Knowing people bot for a 99 or multiple 99s doesn't bother me. Its not a big deal to me. I play the game to blow off steam, escape real life stress, and just relax. I don't play to have huge accomplishments. Don't get me wrong though accomplishing things on this game is cool for me, but I don't base my personal accomplishments on what other players are doing. I don't know if I'm being clear or not, but what I'm saying is that I know how hard I have to work towards accomplishments so I'm proud of them no matter how meaningless they are to others, they are meaningful to me and I play the game for myself.

 

That being said the bots overcrowding certain areas of the game does get annoying, but I deal with it and march on.

 

 

EDIT; I don't want Jagex to make the game easy. Or should I say any easier. Because over the years the game has become much easier. I mean its much easier now than it was when other people were maxing out. That's not to take away from anyone who's maxed out recently, its still a HUGE accomplishment that takes time and dedication. Honestly though, at one time 126 combat was a semi-rare thing, and if you had its because you had been playing for a long time. With things like Pest Control and such, its become much easier to level up to that point. I know it still takes a long time, don't get me wrong, but not nearly as long as it did for people who trained before PC and such mini-games.

[The Observer]

[qfc]14-15-190-63089129[/qfc]

 

Page 128.

 

First of all, thank you for patiently waiting for me to get back to you. I feel that a thread like this is worth a good investment of my time to explain some of the lingering issues.

 

I think the first thing I need to make sure is that everything I am going to tell is going to be the truth as far as I understand at this time. You need to understand that as an employee of Jagex there are somethings I cannot tell you and if I can't tell you these things I will tell you why. I suppose what I am trying to make clear is that I am going to be honest and that there are no conspiracy theories or hidden agendas.

 

The second thing you need to understand is that Jagex is a commercial company with shareholders and as such we have to provide a return on their investment. Everyone should be aware that there has been a lot of economic turbulence lately and any company (whether a game developer or supermarket) that isn't financially aware will cease to exist. The Board of Directors have a responsibility to you as customers and us as employees to ensure that the company is financially stable - this is pretty basic economics.

 

I've been through the thread and picked on general topics to discuss which I hope answers most of your questions. If any questions are left unanswered please ask them again and I will do my best to answer everyone next week.

 

So, the first subject is the Legitimacy of the wilderness vote. The vote itself was not the only factor in deciding whether the wilderness and free trade was going to return. The initial vote was just there to see if there was interest in it coming back. If there was no interest then we wouldn't have persued it further. However, no one can deny that it caused quite a stir and we looked further into the possibilities.

 

The referendum itself wasn't the only reason why we made the decision to bring the wild and FT back either. There was a huge amount of discussion and investigation which took place at the same time.

 

Now, there is some discussion as to work beginning on bringing back the wild before the referendum reached its target. To be honest, I can't tell you whether this was true or not as I wasn't party to that part of the process. However, it wouldn't surprise me if it did happen. It was pretty clear to me as an individual as well as most players that the target would be reached within the time limit set out (I think it was reached in 3 days wasn't it?) so it would make sense to start work on it early if you wanted it completed in a reasonable time frame. This behaviour is certainly not indicitive of some sort of conspiracy.

 

Ok, so next up is the word 'marketing'. Yes I know, to some people it is a profanity, but it is important. Now, remember in the third paragraph I mentioned about being a commercial company... well this is where marketing fits in. The bottom line is we have to make money. However, making money is not what is important to you and rightly so. What is important to you is what we do with that money. The money we make is ploughed straight back into Jagex so we can get more developers to make content or design systems to take out more bots. As a gamer, I can put up with things like the Katana and Refer a Friend if I know I am going to benefit from this money. Jagex makes money, but you benefit from that money with better games and content.

 

Now,this takes me on to the next and probably the biggest issue.... bots.

 

To make it clear, we know there are bots in game and we know you want to get rid of bots. We feel the same as you, as gamers and developers we completely understand why too. Never be in any doubt that Jagex is against bots wholeheartedly. I think the problem here is to with our communication over bots, rather than the bots themselves - I'll get to that in a minute, but first let me dispell some myths.

 

The biggest myth is that we make money from bots. This isn't true. If we add all the money we spend on wages, developing systems and lost revenue due to bots, we lose money of every single bot in game. So, even if you believe we are in it just for the money, there is no sense in us not doing our best to get rid of them all.

 

The other belief is that there should be a J-Mod constantly in game finding bots and banning them. This is a great PR stunt, but it is the most inefficient way of us tackling bots. In an hour one J-Mod can ban 100 bots if they are in a very busy location. However, we have other systems we can use which can catch many more. It makes much more sense for our resource to be used in the most efficient way. The same goes for the overall strategy we have too. Defeating RWT companies isn't just about defeating the bots, its about stopping them from trading either by removing websites, taking legal action or any other method which can disrupt their trading.

 

Just from the list alone you should be able to get a rough idea of the complexity of what we are doing and how many people it must involve. We have teams banning bots, creating systems to help ban bots, creating content to break bots as well as lawyers, copyright specialists and all the teams that back them up. Getting rid of bots is truly a cross Jagex effort.

 

The question you will now be asking is 'why aren't you telling us what you are doing?' The reason why we are not being vocal about it is because at the moment we can't. There are things going on which mean we have to be very quiet. This won't last forever and when we can talk to you we will. Once we do I think every reasonable person will turn round and say, "Ohhhhhh, that makes sense." We really want to tell you everything, and when we can, we will.

 

FunOrb - To be honest, there is not much I can say about FunOrb. I am not an expert in it, but I'll happily pass your concerns over.

 

As for Stellar Dawn, the only thing I can say is that we are not going to release it until we think it is good enough. If this takes another 10 years, then so be it. Let's hope it doesn't take that long. As things stand, it is still on its way.

 

Next, I want to look at Viper's 7 ways to improve things specifically.

 

1. Realisation that there are problems

 

I think we are aware of the problems that you are facing and their priority in your minds. It's not like you guys keep quiet about such things.

 

2. Apologize

 

I would much rather move forward than worry about apologising. People will use it as an excuse to attribute blame and to be honest, although some things are difficult, we are doing everything we can to make them better.

 

3. Improve communication

 

This is something we are trying to address over the coming months. A lot more focus has been placed upon engaging players within the CM team itself, so you should start seeing the effects of this shortly, if not already.

 

4. A new CEO

 

This is something for the board to decide rather than players or staff.

 

5. don't remove communities due to financial reasons

 

I can understand what you mean here. However, there is only a certain amount of money available within Jagex and we have to use it efficiently. Equally, one J-Mod cannot offer the support to a group of players which a whole team can, so in all honesty the resource and players are better off not segregated from the wider community.

 

6. Focus on improving current services before expanding

 

There has always been several different views on diversification versus consolidation. Within the gaming industry it is quite an interesting discussion to be had. Consolidating what we have and improving upon it makes what you have excellent, however you then run the risk of being left behind the curve as new technologies are developed and new demands are made by the players. So, I don't think it is right to either consolidate or diversify, but to make sure the balance of bothe is correct.

 

7. Aggressively go after feedback

 

Actually, this is one thing we have done for a long long time. What we haven't done is respond to this feedback. However, we are looking at getting more feedback to you about your ideas so hopefully this won't be an issue for much longer.

 

There has been a fair bit of talk about demodding of moderators and one in particular on this thread too. What I will say is that the demodding of moderators is a discussion that we will have with moderators rather than as a public debate. Just be aware that it is easy to jump to conclusions about why individuals have been demodded but it is rare that the general community is in full possession of the facts.

 

The final point I want to address is that the comment about forum trolls that is being quoted a lot at the moment. I think that it is important to differentiate between people who show their dissatisfaction about updates and those that show their dissatisfaction about EVERY update. We have some people who will rant and rave about every update that we make... without fail, I think we can call those trolls and we can safely give their feedback the consideration it deserves. Those that are persistent about what they don't like or join others in voicing their dissatisfaction when they mean are not trolls and their feedback holds much more credence.

 

As I said at the beginning, I am bound to have not covered everything you want me to, however post any questions you have and I will do my best to answer as many as possible next week.

 

Mat.

 

[Edit] 3 hours

 

Thought this would be an interesting read since it responds to quite a variety of points, including those pertaining to bots.

[SixFootOne]

Thanks killerred, that was an interesting read. Glad to see someone addressing some concerns.