Botany Bay & Ozan Quest Double Bill - Sept. 26th, 2012

[sarg1010 23]

 

How hard is this to fix. Honestly.

[Riqualyn 24]

Well I was doing my sandstone for the day and decided to head over to red chinchompa grounds to check it out. Had a nice little convo with the one person there who was busy looking for their strange rocks.

 

Now the big question, is whether this is still the post-update lull in bots, people not wanting to get their botted accounts banned and so not botting, or if the update is working. Quick look at the bot site sadly seems to indicate it's the first two, with people claiming to have been botting no problem for hours, and the only "omg I got banned" posts seemingly coming from people trolling the botters.

 

Hopefully it is working though.

[Ezkaton 199]

Earlier when I was online, Frosts were desolate.

[Blutters 446]

 

How hard is this to fix. Honestly.

Skin issues still abound as well. Even in newly updated Al-Kharid some NPCs are spotted light and dark. The same still happens with Robes of Subjugation, where the upper face and parts of skin that show are light skin by default. Not to mention Goliath and Spellcaster Gloves still have green particles, although perhaps there's no hurry to fix those since they'll soon be relegated to Chaotic clones anyway.

_______

 

The quest (singular, just because they decide to split it up to make it seem more filling doesn't make it 2 quests!) was actually quite satisfying and at least equivalent to One Piercing Note. As with that quest, the voice acting and music are both well done, and most of the quest features NPCs and areas that have been updated to current graphical standards. The future possibilities for desert lore are also quite intriguing.

 

I decided to go back to the tunnels for the extras and noticed one of the bugs shimmering like in the quest. When I hit it, I got the spin earning sound and in my chatbox it said I'd received a spin token, although I didn't actually get it...

[Platinum_Myr 349]

Well I was doing my sandstone for the day and decided to head over to red chinchompa grounds to check it out. Had a nice little convo with the one person there who was busy looking for their strange rocks.

 

Now the big question, is whether this is still the post-update lull in bots, people not wanting to get their botted accounts banned and so not botting, or if the update is working. Quick look at the bot site sadly seems to indicate it's the first two, with people claiming to have been botting no problem for hours, and the only "omg I got banned" posts seemingly coming from people trolling the botters.

 

Hopefully it is working though.

 

There is the three strikes thing.... We'll see how it goes though...

[Flutterr Shy 0]

Blue dragon bots are still alive though.

Though there are 25k+ players online less than usual. Earlier today I saw only 50k players as opposed to 85k now.

[decebal 99]

i was expecting World 1 to have some bots... none whatsoever at the moment.

 

As for the quest, I really enjoyed the atmosphere. The rewards were of course "meh", but I don't mind that at all :) .

 

Oh yeah: YOBO!

[Ruinous Edge 101]

Quests were fun and tie together the start of Icalathon's Little Helper and Do No Evil together nicely with previous desert quests.

Cutscene's were interesting, definitely a unique style to them, Did kind of feel like one quest cut in half though, understand why it was required with the f2p issues of access to desert etc.

My only issue were the skin tones on faces especially, leela had at least 4 skin tones on her face and body the entirety, as did kali/amuscat, maybe that was just me but I don't know.

Loved the new animations on agility.

Going to try W2 botany bay for pitchfork next :)

And one final note, QP Cape maintained :D

[Failed Acct 19]

Blue dragon bots are still alive though.

Though there are 25k+ players online less than usual. Earlier today I saw only 50k players as opposed to 85k now.

 

If you see a lot of bots in one area then make sure you report them. Jagex mentioned that they are using a "hot spot" mechanism where they monitor heavily botted areas closer.

[highlanders 71]

I wish we could get the prisoner costume the bots are wearing. That would make a good reward.

I actually like the normal pitchfork better, looks more authentic than the golden one. Jag is obsessed with golden things.

[Flutterr Shy 0]

Blue dragon bots are still alive though.

Though there are 25k+ players online less than usual. Earlier today I saw only 50k players as opposed to 85k now.

 

If you see a lot of bots in one area then make sure you report them. Jagex mentioned that they are using a "hot spot" mechanism where they monitor heavily botted areas closer.

 

Did that,

but you know, last I checked it's not a secret that blue dragons in tavelry dungeon are heavily botted. So kind of surprised.

But it does seem like there is a little bit less of them because I saw people that look like actual players down there.

but mostly bots.

[Kaida23 769]

Today's updates look great. I can't wait to get home and try them.

 

I'm glad Botany Bay is available to everyone. :)

[Makoto_the_Phoenix 69]

Today's updates look great. I can't wait to get home and try them.

 

I'm glad Botany Bay is available to everyone.

 

I'm not sure how much sense it would make to limit it to only P2P. But yeah, good that it's available for everyone.

[Zaaps1 234]

 

Not sure how I feel about Botany Bay. Yes, Bots are a blight to the game. But so is barbarism. I use the word barbarism loosely, since the subjects are not human and should not be thought of as full humans. I don't think that making a show out of the bans is the way to go.

 

All the Al-Kharid stuff is really cool, though. I always did like the Desert Pantheon and this was a great way to introduce them. I sorta wish they scrapped the involvement with Draynor entirely, though. It in no way ties into the theme or plot of the quest. It could've been written just as easily to be entirely within the borders of Al-Kharid. I see no reason to include Draynor other than to follow tradition.

Edited September 27, 2012 by Kimberly
removed off topic post

[Noxx 315]

You're supposed to get a Temp ban, then another, then a Perm ban. Not get muted.

[Failed Acct 19]

Depends on what you are doing. For auto-typers, they do start with mutes I believe.

[Sorator 161]

I really want to get in on some of this action, but sadly I'm still in the midst of account recovery... e-mail me back, CustServ!

 

Not too excited about Botany Bay itself (we get to vote on it being eaten wooo), but the other updates they're doing to deal with the bots behind the scenes are veeery cool. Neat to see that in-game reporting can have an immediate effect!

[stonewall337 66]

Need to borrow torva and divine so I can do these ASAP as soon as I finish gathering 15 bear asses for a quest in wow!

[n64jive 21]

Not sure how I feel about Botany Bay. Yes, Bots are a blight to the game. But so is barbarism. I use the word barbarism loosely, since the subjects are not human and should not be thought of as full humans. I don't think that making a show out of the bans is the way to go.

 

LEAVE THE BOTS ALLLLLL-HONE!

 

Seriously? Come back to reality. It's players who are cheating at the game and then become banned. Jagex just decided to introduce some fodder along with it. The real update isn't botany bay. The real update is the detection system. We will see how well it works....I'm reporting every bot I see in hopes of seeing the little hand come down. So far, no love.

 

To loosely quote Jagex "The new system works fairly quickly before they can cause any sort of economical impact". Either this part of the update is still in the works, or it's just another failed attempt at stopping botting.

[-Kngkyle- 42]

From what I've seen and read, Botany Bay is nothing more than a spectacle. Players have no say on who gets taken there or what happens to them. Every bot that goes there is getting banned regardless.

 

I'm much more interested in the supposedly coming second bot nuke, but I doubt it will stop bots for long.

[Blyaunte 279]

Blue dragon bots are still alive though.

Though there are 25k+ players online less than usual. Earlier today I saw only 50k players as opposed to 85k now.

 

If you see a lot of bots in one area then make sure you report them. Jagex mentioned that they are using a "hot spot" mechanism where they monitor heavily botted areas closer.

 

... "hot spot mechanism" ...? Seriously?

 

I wandered past the red chins hunting grounds yesterday while on my way to gather redstone on World 25, and there were tonnes of bots still operating there. I stood there for a good 15 minutes hoping to see a "fickle finger of fate" and didn't see one, nor did any of the bots seem any worse for wear either ...

 

<_<

[Sy_Accursed 1554]

I get the feeling though Botany Bay has launched the detection system may still be on training wheels as it were, sort of Jagex looking at data on who it *wants* to ban in a given area they haven't tackled yet to triple check for false positives before telling it yes you are picking these up correctly be free to ban hammer, afterall they did say it is a learning detection system or perhaps the sheer volume of bots is causing bottlenecking issues, many of the larger worlds seem to be rather laggy.

 

@above Jagex did say that though it was in reference to discovering loopholes and such rather than initial roll out, the point being player reports would create a 'hotspot map' of where bots are so they can look at the area and train the detection to deal with that area. Which would kinda fit in with my optimistic stance on this things rollout, could be a case of it's still being trained for the chin bots etc.

[n64jive 21]

From what I've seen and read, Botany Bay is nothing more than a spectacle. Players have no say on who gets taken there or what happens to them. Every bot that goes there is getting banned regardless.

 

I'm much more interested in the supposedly coming second bot nuke, but I doubt it will stop bots for long.

 

From what I understand, heat maps are supposed to build up in botting areas, and the system has been profiling accounts for a while now. Just visited green dragon bots. There was at least 30 bots there. So far, I'm not impressed.

[Zaaps1 234]

Not sure how I feel about Botany Bay. Yes, Bots are a blight to the game. But so is barbarism. I use the word barbarism loosely, since the subjects are not human and should not be thought of as full humans. I don't think that making a show out of the bans is the way to go.

 

LEAVE THE BOTS ALLLLLL-HONE!

 

Seriously? Come back to reality. It's players who are cheating at the game and then become banned. Jagex just decided to introduce some fodder along with it. The real update isn't botany bay. The real update is the detection system. We will see how well it works....I'm reporting every bot I see in hopes of seeing the little hand come down. So far, no love.

 

To loosely quote Jagex "The new system works fairly quickly before they can cause any sort of economical impact". Either this part of the update is still in the works, or it's just another failed attempt at stopping botting.

 

Yes, obviously the real update is not botany bay.

 

Doesn't mean it's not there. I never said I didn't like anti-boy updates. I just don't like the public spectacle part about it.

[Legionwizard 5]

May I ask where this notion of a heat map comes from in the first place? As in, was it mentioned in a livestream, did a mod tell... where's the link to the official source? I ask, because I saw it get dropped into the community, but I don't recall it seeing on any Runescape hosted webpage or in any of their livestreams.