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Tip.It Times - 16th October 2011 - Interview With Elias


tripsis

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No dear Jagex, if you wish to continue to lay claim to your old company name (JAva Gaming EXperts), the solution must be a radical one. I'm even willing to admit that the solution proposed by me in march [sic] is not going far enough. Mind you that was before we knew how bad Free Trade would impact bots, but the core of the idea (Jagex selling XP and GP) is still essential.

 

... and gear?

 

Should Jagex go the way of, say, Maple Story and make the game less grinding and allow people to buy cards that will allow them to "rent" better gear, et al?

 

Do we want "rich kids" to better, stronger and faster than those who have worked for it?

 

When I saw that there was going to be an Insiders' Session at RuneFest on bot-breaking I thought that they were going to tell us in the vaguest terms of what their next futile ideas will be. I had full well expected lines would form at the microphone in order for everyone to rant their personal little grievance on this. Now I know this is not the case.

 

Which is one of the reasons why I, personally, being the unbound cynic that I am, looked at these recent comments issued from Jagex with a certain amount of skepticism. Yes bots are an issue. Yes they are ruining the game. But .. why not ban them? Okay so if you ban one bot two more come in its place. So what? Ban them too. Why just roll them back? Ban them. Keep banning them and don't stop banning them.

 

To me it seems that this appeal to the Runescape faithful is more of a matter of Jagex trying to mitigate player dissatisfaction and possibly quell any potential for a real life riot that may occur at Runefest.

 

Frankly I will be very interested to see what Jagex does about bots AFTER Runefest than any of the "lip service" they are providing right now. To me, it all looks like a bread and circuses scheme ...

 

On the first quote: The idea Stormrage had was to make dedicated cheating servers - once you buy xp, items, or whatever, you can't go back. If you want to get your quest requirements without grinding, your extreme potions without work, your achievements without something to be proud of - go to the cheating server, be happy there(or not) but they won't be able to go back. If you intend to stay legit, compare yourself with legit players and just enjoy your time - you can still do that on the normal servers.

 

 

Tbh, unless there is a method that can at least detect bots reliably for more than a few weeks at best - this is honestly the best suggestion I've seen about what to do on the issue. I can't say I really like it - but it's better than everythiing else I've heard.

 

Ah yes - that's right.

 

Ya know, in light of the recent developments, maybe this isn't at all a bad idea. "Cheaters Servers" is more or less a win-win any way you look at it.

 

On your second quote: Oh if banning bots was so simple...but well I guess it isn't ?

 

What's so hard about hitting the "ban" button? :unsure:

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Sorry, I didn't get you meant ban in the sense of "ban, instead of doing a rollback" but rather took it for the whole process of detecting and punishing bots. Sorry!

 

I agree with that...but first of all, they have to be detected...and after that, you still have all the RWT bots that you will never be able to hurt with banning unless you have a detection method that has an extremely high rate of success and works quickly as well. I wouldn't know anything like that :/

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Sorry, I didn't get you meant ban in the sense of "ban, instead of doing a rollback" but rather took it for the whole process of detecting and punishing bots. Sorry!

 

I agree with that...but first of all, they have to be detected...and after that, you still have all the RWT bots that you will never be able to hurt with banning unless you have a detection method that has an extremely high rate of success and works quickly as well. I wouldn't know anything like that :/

 

Wall of text reply:

 

 

Well - I've seen an active "banning" committed in process, twice -- "back in the day", when they used to go world to world and hit some of the hotspots.

 

They made a slight alteration to the Wilderness Wall where the vast majority of Abyss bots were running across the wall on their way to the abyss to do runecrafting. What happened was, characters operated by real people came to the wall spot found it inaccessible and made an adjustment. The bots, would come to the wall, stop, turn left and right, stop, turn left and right, stop, turn left and right, stop, turn left and right, stop, turn left and right, stop, turn left and right, stop, turn left and right, stop, turn left and right, stop, turn left and right, stop, turn left and right, stop, turn left and right, stop, turn left and right, stop, turn left and right, stop, turn left and right, stop, turn left and right, stop, turn left and right, stop, turn left and right, stop, turn left and right, stop, turn left and right, stop, turn left and right, stop, turn left and right, stop.

 

Spotting the bot was, really, pretty obvious.

 

Then the Jmod banned the lot of them.

 

Likewise, they did a similar process over at Aubury's Rune Shop in Varrock only this time they locked the door. Again, real players came to the door and then stopped. Then they "unlocked" the door and walked in. The bots came to the door, stopped, and then ran all around the building trying to get to Aubury. They ran around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around.

 

Again spotting the bot was very easy.

 

Again large numbers of bots were banned.

 

If you keep doing this making minor alterations on the spot, and thereafter if you keep banning the bots you catch with them and banning the bots made to replace them. If you keep on it and not refunding the money spent by botting companies to open (paid) new accounts then eventually it becomes economically unviable to bot.

 

You can do this in practially every single spot that bots operate. Put up a portal here, lock a door there. Adjust the "interact" feature of certain familiars. Alter the colour of certain items. Just little things and each of these little things different to specfic worlds only.

 

You'd be amazed how many bots you'd catch in a very short period of time.

 

Yes -- more bots will be made to replace them. Yes, the bot makers will be quick to respond and make adjustments. So you change the adjustment you made. Catch the next batch of bots and ban them too ...

 

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Have you ever heard of 'Moore's law'?

 

It's a similar concept - bots will continually get better (at an exponential rate) as they figure out ways to circumvent the system. As the detection process is harder - it's a forever losing battle. It's like fighting super diseases with antibiotics; eventually they'll evolve to a point where botting would be literally undetectable. I don't think we're very far from that stage.

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^So what you're saying is... We need a radical solution ;) A non-technical one perhaps?

Former Leader of The Tal Shiar Alliance - An Original Tip.it Clan
Member of the Wilderness Guardians and Founder of the Silent Guardians
Founder of The Conclave - A Tip.it Clan institution
Tip.it Times author (click for all my articles) - When I use the wrong reasons to make the right statement, argue the reason, not the statement.
MSSW4 General - Did we kick your ass too?




Check us out!
wildsig3.gif
clanmotif.png
==> No seriously, if you like FREE GP, XP and Dung tokens, as well as Community, Opportunity and above all FUN... <==
CLICK IT!

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[spoiler=Quote Phox1515]

enjoyed the first article on bots, always nice to read stuff with sim opinions.

 

the 2nd article confused me... it started on one topic then moved to something completely different. no offense, but did the writer have an add attack or something?

 

the interview was interesting. I'm curouius about one of the pics though... what's this:

 

ie3uj6.jpg

 

obviously what's within the red rectangle i made... i'm 99.999999999999999 % sure that is not part of the normal runescape window and i have not seen it before, so i'm curious as to what it is. I can guess what it is for on my own, looks useful (esp the summ part, i never did forgive jagex for getting rid of the summ tab)

 

 

 

^Long text, try to inspect a player in dung :)

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^So what you're saying is... We need a radical solution ;) A non-technical one perhaps?

 

That's technically true - the amount of manpower required will also grow exponentially as the bot detection process is simply harder (the real catch would be to ban not on suspicion, but on certainty as even a relatively small 'mistakes margin' can have some catastrophic effects on their reputation) - and thus it's not viable to keep banning players as a solution. It would be interesting to see what they're likely to say at the RuneFest convention though - perhaps they will finally be more transparent about their actions.

 

It does depends what a 'non technical' solution really entails though: it could be the re-removal of free-trade (which may again kill off a significant amount of the subscribing players, but may work relatively effectively if the GE actually worked the way it ought to); it could be the segregation of 'cheating' servers (although this is likely to have other effects not foreseen at the time of the proposal); or it could be to remove every incentive to bot/rwt - perhaps a challenging task with some high short term costs, but may have the best pay-off in the long run.

 

I know that if they think that the trade-off between player satisfaction with alleged 'bot countermeasures' is fine then they're absolutely wrong - it goes against their primary purpose in the first place, which is to satisfy players.

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TBH, the solution I proposed, would even allow to remove other anti-bot measures as long as reporting is made easier and handled faster and fairer...

Former Leader of The Tal Shiar Alliance - An Original Tip.it Clan
Member of the Wilderness Guardians and Founder of the Silent Guardians
Founder of The Conclave - A Tip.it Clan institution
Tip.it Times author (click for all my articles) - When I use the wrong reasons to make the right statement, argue the reason, not the statement.
MSSW4 General - Did we kick your ass too?




Check us out!
wildsig3.gif
clanmotif.png
==> No seriously, if you like FREE GP, XP and Dung tokens, as well as Community, Opportunity and above all FUN... <==
CLICK IT!

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