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The Bot-o-meter; How do you feel about Jagex's actions towards bots?


Ren

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Tip.it has created something that is likely the most useful thing I've ever seen (for this era of Runescape, anyway) in terms of discussing Jagex and their intentions, acitvity, and their financial goals.

 

My opinion may vary from yours, of course, so take that first line with some Morton's :D.

 

Anyway, I had come across and contributed to a few topics regarding Jagex's finances, bots in general, membership and microtransactions. A small part of it was the bots, but I think at this point I could start a separate post for it.

 

Here's a pic of Tip.it's http://open.tip.it/high-score-stats

 

Check the dates on it for references on when my pic was taken

 

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And one of the last 24 hours' updated graph:

 

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What I said when I posted the first picture originally:

Courtesy of Tip.It's Hiscore growth table (or whatever you want to call it), posted link by Lord Paul, you can see the hiscores as of the last 30 days is shown. There was a large cut-off about 1/3 the way through May. There are also a few more drop-offs on the graph afterward. Based on the growth, despite the drops, I'd say the big drop (not the straight-down one) was a bot bust. The rest are much smaller but I'd still say they're mostly bot ban waves.

 

Despite the ban waves, the graph shows growth no matter what. Only huge bans have a large impact (that one is about 350-400k accounts) on their player base. I believe that's because of them getting a small fraction of returning bots. If this is true, it's undeniable that Jagex is missing out on such a huge amount of bots. They don't even catch half of them each time, and I think it takes time for them to evaluate which are actual bots (not hard from a player's point of view).

 

I'm a conspirator of sorts, so I think they nail 'what they can guarentee is a bot', but only to not offset their income by a large portion. As long as the game doesn't die off suddenly, I can live with that. They also need to support the game better if they want me playing still. Ban waves are calculated actions, and bot busts (the big bans) are just 'proof' to show that they're doing something. Losing 350-400k subscribers (almost 1/3 their total) is a giant loss to the company. I'm sure they barely skimmed the surface too.

 

The most recent "bot bust" would be the 730k-ish accounts removed from the hiscores as shown on the 2nd picture. Aside from that, drop-off points currently show about 150k players removed from the hiscores. The peak number of players on hiscores in the first picture is about 1500k~. Again, on the 2nd picture, the peak is a flatline 2M+ accounts available to be shown on the hiscores (the limit is 2M period).

 

As I thought, and still assume, Jagex is banning only what is absolutely necessary, and over the past 3 months they have allowed at least 200k accounts by based on the lowest drops on each pic. Of course, not every account there is a bot, but I don't think I'd believe 200,000 new NON-BOT players have subscribed to Runescape in the last 3 months..

 

 

Beyond all this jibber-jabber and opinionated bullcrap I've posted is some actual info. What is Tip.it's forum users' take on it, and how do you feel about the situation(s) involving bots?

 

Edit: sorry for the messed up pics/urls. Haven't used Tif in a long while, and this new crap is bugging out on me.

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I'm going to assume that the drops to 0 are errors in retrieving the data. Is that correct?

Anyway, yes, it is either bot-banning or kicking players off the hiscores routinely.

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The problem is that the data has a sort of bias. The drops also account for the two week grace period that players get when their membership lapses. In this time, there could be minor-scale bans that we don't know about.

 

Ultimately though, I'm a bit tired of Jagex's methodology to get rid of bots. Clearly there's no deterrent, and banning high profile accounts isn't as stunning to the community's psyche as it once was. It may be better for them to move to a different platform altogether to relieve the player base of the long rooted issues that still remain.

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Can we see a fourier transform of this?

best drops (reasonably accurate/up to date): 1x Elysian Sigil (LS), 1x Arcane Sigil (cs), 4x Armadyl Hilt (solo at 100m, 100m, 50m, and 5m), 2x Saradomin Hilt (solo at 25m), 5x Draconic Visage (34m,1.2m,1.2m) and various cs/ls/ffa Nex splits.
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I was under the impression that Jagex manually removed the ex-members from highscores at regular intervals, and that it does not happen automatically after two weeks. This leads to sudden drops which people assume are bot nukes, but are really just a cleaning up of the highscores.

 

No source for this, but I don't understand why people assume a bot nuke is more likely. If Jagex identifies a bot, why wouldn't they ban it immediately? To think they wait for a month, allowing them to do a months more damage, then ban them all at once seems illogical.

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These aren't bot bans but rather people dropping membership...

 

Several hundred thousand on the same day?

 

When you drop membership, you will still be on the highscores until Jagex decides to purge them.

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These aren't bot bans but rather people dropping membership...

 

Several hundred thousand on the same day?

 

When you drop membership, you will still be on the highscores until Jagex decides to purge them.

 

And there is no proof that they don't also ban bots on the same day.

You make it sound like running through a few level 87 monsters is hard which it really shouldn't be at your level.

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I'm pretty sure that when membership lapses, Jagex chooses a time when they remove a number of those lapsed usernames from the highscores. This is most likely a large factor in the membership drops you see on the graph.

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I'm pretty sure that when membership lapses, Jagex chooses a time when they remove a number of those lapsed usernames from the highscores. This is most likely a large factor in the membership drops you see on the graph.

 

These aren't bot bans but rather people dropping membership...

 

Several hundred thousand on the same day?

 

When you drop membership, you will still be on the highscores until Jagex decides to purge them.

 

And there is no proof that they don't also ban bots on the same day.

You make it sound like running through a few level 87 monsters is hard which it really shouldn't be at your level.

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Due to the way highscores purges work it is possible that Jagex bans bots faster, but we don't see them purged from highscores until they do a regular purge, hence the purges could be lost members + bots. There is no real way to tell.

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Those look more like anomalous results to me. Try doing some proper statistical work before pulling up a graph and saying, "Ooo... that looks funny--let's blog about it!"

 

You've not explored alternative theses.

You've not established whether it's a causal effect.

You've not worked out whether the results simply "regress to the mean".

You've not worked out whether the results are statistically significant.

You've not established that the results are repeatable and consistent.

...

You've not even established whether the results are part of a trend at all.

 

Stop trying to sound sciencey. Just do the science first. Also, take away the "Why I will quit RuneScape" tag at the end. To me that said, "He's cherry-picked the results to form a conclusion that justifies his rationale for something entirely unrelated to what's being investigated here."

 

I'm not making any statement about bots. They may exist, they may not exist. I haven't got any information to form a judgement either way. I'm just saying you've investigated this uncritically and, therefore, not very well.

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Those look more like anomalous results to me. Try doing some proper statistical work before pulling up a graph and saying, "Ooo... that looks funny--let's blog about it!"

 

You've not explored alternative theses.

You've not established whether it's a causal effect.

You've not worked out whether the results simply "regress to the mean".

You've not worked out whether the results are statistically significant.

You've not established that the results are repeatable and consistent.

...

You've not even established whether the results are part of a trend at all.

 

Stop trying to sound sciencey. Just do the science first. Also, take away the "Why I will quit RuneScape" tag at the end. To me that said, "He's cherry-picked the results to form a conclusion that justifies his rationale for something entirely unrelated to what's being investigated here."

 

I'm not making any statement about bots. They may exist, they may not exist. I haven't got any information to form a judgement either way. I'm just saying you've investigated this uncritically and, therefore, not very well.

 

Apparently, though, he is correct:

 

"Some of you may already have noticed that we have started cleaning up the high scores over the last week...":-taken from [qfc]14-15-878-63948495[/qfc].

"Fight for what you believe in, and believe in what you're fighting for." Can games be art?

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My blog here if you want to check out my Times articles and other writings! I always appreciate comments/feedback.

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Now, I could get really semantic and say that isn't proof either. Jagex could, after all, be using that as a reason when, in fact, the drop in numbers is explained elsewhere by factors which don't favour their rose-tinted view. But I'll assume good faith and admit he's probably right.

 

That said, you could skin Jagex both ways depending on your personal viewpoint. Either there's no bots in the game, and there's simply been a substantial drop in membership; or there were (and probably, still are) bots in the game, and their rhetoric about a "bot-free" RuneScape when they made removed the limits on unbalanced trading didn't come to fruition.

 

It does seem more likely it's the latter, but that doesn't really compliment Jagex in glory when it essentially confirms they were wrong to make those promises in the first place.

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Now, I could get really semantic and say that isn't proof either. Jagex could, after all, be using that as a reason when, in fact, the drop in numbers is explained elsewhere by factors which don't favour their rose-tinted view. But I'll assume good faith and admit he's probably right.

 

That said, you could skin Jagex both ways depending on your personal viewpoint. Either there's no bots in the game, and there's simply been a substantial drop in membership; or there were (and probably, still are) bots in the game, and their rhetoric about a "bot-free" RuneScape when they made removed the limits on unbalanced trading didn't come to fruition.

 

It does seem more likely it's the latter, but that doesn't really compliment Jagex in glory when it essentially confirms they were wrong to make those promises in the first place.

I don't think that it's 100% bots, I think it's a majority of bots. Granted, you can say that it's a clearance of the hiscores and doesn't really show that x amount of bots were banned at once right then. However, you can still say that the bans occurred at some point, and are apparently active at that point. If you maybe made averages of increases based on this and knew exactly how many actual players start new accounts you could get a real figure? I really don't know.

 

If you're implying it's possible to identify bot population at all without being Jagex, I'd say you're kind of reaching the impossible.

 

 

I keep seeing the 'bot-free' sort of discussion come up a lot, but obviously it's not really possible. They just aim to kick down the rwt aspect of it a ton, or at least make it so the bots don't "rule rs" if you get what I mean. (in my opinion anyway)

 

Also, lmfao @ the first line theory. Loving it.

 

Thanks for posting and sorry for no response. Gladly taking any views on it guys, it's all speculation and curiosity after all.

 

Edit: The trend part was supposed to be shown in my first pic comparison to the 2nd? :S I thought it was pretty apparent that the growth in players is higher, and the amount banned (or just removed, whichever works) is a little higher as well. I'm really not sure what exactly is going on but only Jagex or mass botting networks of rwters would really know I think. Even then they might not know what exactly is going on I guess.

-------

I realised I haven't addressed the recent ban of high-profile rwters and rwt networks yet. I find that Jagex definitely stepped up and did something good with this, and have shown that there is -something- being actively done. The F2P hiscores return makes me happy as well, and I honestly think that Optimus (at this point anyway) would just help reduce the effort behind all the anti-bot anti-rwt things Jagex tries to do. It's probably not as easy as one would think to just mass wipe suspected botters and not piss people off. I, however, think they should be a little more merciless when it comes to that area.

 

Good for Jagex, glad they killed off Smokin Mils (specifically this rwt network, huge if you know about 'em.).

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Well, Jagex themselves are probably equally unable at quantifying how many bots are actually in the game. The whole point, after all, is that they're hidden from public view.

 

Things immediately after the update did improve though. I can't argue against stark reality. I'm not as much interested in how the average player thinks about RuneScape's RWT/bot policies, than how Diablo's RMAH might change things across the whole genre. The latter has effectively absolved the company of any responsibility to stop it and said, "Let's all have a slice of this pie, instead of only those corrupt enough to abuse it." But where you have large amounts of RWT, you invariably find lots of (cheating, arguably illegal) bots, so there's a very complex interplay between the two.

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Unless you're an employee of Jagex, you're going to have to be making a few assumptions. By going, "OMG OBVIOUSLY WRONG" to the data presented that happens over time in line with bot wipes and using it as a platform to attack the topic creator is just silly. We all know what's happening here when they do these wipes. No need for us to play Statistician here, because that level of accuracy isn't necessary here.

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um everyone seems off topic.... but tbh this topic is bad. what actions has jagex taken towards bots? prime has been coming out for months, and every month its:OH JUST 1 MORE MONTH DW. sure they ban some bots every now and but that is like trying to stop a river by putting a net across it. all jagex cares about is money, not banning bots, or cleaning up the game. they have made it perfectly clear they arn't really motivated to end botting/rwting, because we still have free trade here.

 

tl;dr, jagexs greed and free trade are gutting rs.

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I really don't understand how people can think Jagex don't care about bots. Bots are a minority who potentially spoil the game for the majority. A lot of players have stopped playing runescape due to that unfair balance that exists and the lack of punishment. Jagex are obviously going to attempt to tackle it. Just because the update is taking a bit longer to bring out a very important update that I'm sure nobody wants to find glitches in, people are thinking they don't care. Would you rather they brought out a faulty product now or wait a few more months for something that might actually work?

 

In relation to bots, I think Jagex do now and again get rid of known bots on a certain day. I found the statistics really interesting and would love to have more indepth information to study them further.

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Your post reminds me of the movie Fun With Dick and Jane:

 

I've got no doubt that tackling the bot problem is on their to-do list. I just think it's so abysmally low because there is more money to be made elsewhere rather than trying to temporarily break a problem that has no end. They'll do it when the time period they pick gives them the most benefit, and from then on the clock starts ticking. I don't think making the changes they need to - that they're fully capable of - in order to improve what they're offering to their customers is very high on their list of priorities. Their customers who potential profiting, instead of being limited to just memberships, has opened up to almost limitless possibilities thanks to microtransactions.

 

So no, I'm not saying they don't care. I'm saying they don't care enough to fix things like account recovery, "duh" bugs in the game, and really hitting organized RWT groups. It's easier for them to continue as they are and gain more revenue via MT's while reciting hollow warnings about how botting will get you banned. (The thing about giving orders you know won't be obeyed is that it puts people in the habit of disobeying them.)

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I really don't understand how people can think Jagex don't care about bots. Bots are a minority who potentially spoil the game for the majority. A lot of players have stopped playing runescape due to that unfair balance that exists and the lack of punishment. Jagex are obviously going to attempt to tackle it. Just because the update is taking a bit longer to bring out a very important update that I'm sure nobody wants to find glitches in, people are thinking they don't care. Would you rather they brought out a faulty product now or wait a few more months for something that might actually work?

 

In relation to bots, I think Jagex do now and again get rid of known bots on a certain day. I found the statistics really interesting and would love to have more indepth information to study them further.

 

You must not have been playing when ClusterFlutter occurred, bots were far from a minority.

You make it sound like running through a few level 87 monsters is hard which it really shouldn't be at your level.

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