4-1-2013 Bots and Cheaters Banned

[GarryGarry]

just another pr stunt they do this every year like 2-3x since return of free trade

[Drazhor]

I've been hearing something to do with Woox and the banning situation..

 

Did he get banned or something?

Or did he abuse a glitch and not get banned?

[Blutters]

I've been hearing something to do with Woox and the banning situation..

 

Did he get banned or something?

Or did he abuse a glitch and not get banned?

Just from reading over the RSOF a bit I'm gathering that most of the uninformed don't know enough about the situation to realize that the reroll exploit and instant completion bug are not one and the same. However I haven't the slightest idea which one Woox purportedly took advantage of. I've been assuming thus far that he's done the latter as a credit to some more [seemingly] knowledgeable individuals I've seen commenting on it.

 

My original comment (on the first page) was made assuming that people did know the difference and thus were accusing him/that he was guilty of actual bug abuse but I'm no longer sure.

[Drazhor]

What, are there 2 different voyage related bugs?

 

Well the instant completion one speaks for itself I suppose, the bug/glitch allowing you to complete your voyage straight away.

 

What does the reroll exploitation do? Just enable you to have more voyages per day than you should? like instead of 15 normal ones you could get double that or something?

[jasignhagj]

This "botwatch" or whatever banned my friend. He was looking at HLF and saw an improved mining method at LRC (hopping worlds to active gold rocks). He did about 10 urns worth and then stopped. Started bankstanding at the Grand Exchange while talking to clanmates and was force logged. Says he was banned for two weeks and his mining was reset to level 1.

 

Here we go again with Jagex banning "bots"... Friend just maxed and wanted to try out mining. For some reason they detected that he was macroing when he wasn't. Pathetic.

 

Also, I haven't noticed a reduction in LRC bots so I'm not sure what is even going on

 

Your friend was probably botting. Every time I hear one of these stories from someone it turns out the person banned was botting.

[Miss Lioness]

http://forum.tip.it/topic/316186-11-dec-2012-player-owned-ports/page__st__1620#entry5350598

 

Explains it very well:

 

Okay, we'll just fast forward through the explanation (not really, the explanation is long) and then afterwards refuse to elaborate on this again. Please note that it is entirely possible that this is wrong and I'm missing something important.

 

There was one glitch that screwed with the voyage time so that it'd end faster. Unfortunately details are both hard to confirm and varied, so, for the most part, that one's not as bad on its own.

 

The second thing, however, made it a bit more complicated than that.

 

Ports have a chance of a random event after each voyage. Random events give stuff that can be used in ports. This stuff includes voyage rerolls. Normally, since the system is very random, the chances of getting one (or more) voyage rerolls per random was slim, due to the fact that there are so many different types of stuff that voyage rerolls on their own were just one of eleven options.

 

HOWEVER

 

Players are only allowed to have a maximum of three stock per item type. Because of this, the system would stop picking that item as soon as it was maxed out, and only pick items from the remaining types. A few players then thought, "what if I just let the stocks of every item fill up? then I can pick any items I want from the next event by using them!" followed by "hey, I can score 15 voyages per random if I force it to choose three voyage rerolls" and then "chances are if I do those 15 voyages, one of them will have a random event that will give me 15 more voyages!"

 

Some observers would be quick to note that by the fourth region, completing more than 12 voyages per day becomes a cumbersome task. This, however, was countered by gaining a third ship, and simply going back to the older regions to force through as many short voyages as possible to increase the output, in addition to being able to upgrade buildings much faster. A mix of large and small voyages could be conducted comfortably with three ships.

 

This was enough for some players to get to the bowl perhaps days or over a week in advance compared to people who played through without pushing this advantage. However, this wasn't enough for some players. They combined the effects of the time glitch with the effects of the voyage rerolls to burn through the fourth region within a handful of days compared to even the advanced group.

 

Of course, soon after most of these players reached the Bowl, it became clear that something was wrong to the rest of us who were still crawling along in the Scythe. Perhaps intentionally to secure their pole position, or maybe just because they could, somebody made this knowledge available to the public. Word spread fast...and then, because I guess Jagex staff seem to only read fansites whenever they're planning to do something that disappoints us greatly, changed the system so that it would be more fair, WITHOUT penalizing anybody already in the Bowl.

 

And so it was that a small group of players had shaved an enormous amount of time off of their bid to the top, increasing efficiency greatly by shaving off training and resource time for units and parts they didn't have to buy, having early access to later tier building upgrades which would make it easier to maintain their already faster pace (including the coveted FOURTH ship), and were that much closer to completing the adventurer storylines, gaining the subsequent piles of loot used to make the rewards (and by doing so, unlocking the means to pursue larger piles of loot), and in the future would be able to enjoy a month of unchallenged superiority in the best gear and boosting scrimshaws, without any cost to themselves.

 

Meanwhile, Jagex refuses to remove the trimmed completionist cape requirement of 5000 castle wars games on the grounds that it would put the earlier achievers at a disadvantage.

 

Anyway, the new system achieves what it set out to do, with the minor side effect of giving a huge competitive edge to anybody who took advantage of the prior system, and making it so that having even one item in your stock of any type is a bad idea, since if a random picks that same item three times in a single reward, the third item will be discarded. If they change it so that it'll only happen when you have three of a particular item, then having three of any item would be bad if the system picks that item three times. And so on.

 

An actual solution? Just limit the amount of times one can use a reroll per day. Better yet, cap the amount of randoms per day.

 

 

BUT I DOUBT THE PEOPLE READING THIS RIGHT NOW WILL ACTUALLY DO THAT

[Yoko Kurama]

It's highly unlikely that anyone has any of the PoP stuff legitimately so Jagex should just remove any of those items from the game. Tuff luck to anyone that spend money on them, its on par with handling stolen goods

 

This is complete nonsense. Unless Jagex is willing to recompense the players who bought these items, why should people who legitimately paid for these items lose their money/items because of Jagex's incompetence? They knew this bug was here for weeks, whether it is due to their inability(maybe they tried to figure it out but couldn't) or incompetence or disregard for it, there's absolutely no reason why players should have to suffer such penalties.

[The Mysterious]

Have to say, I'm really enjoying the bot trials & waving my golden pitchfork/throwing rotten tomatoes at the bots!

 

it's a shame their items don't get put into a lucky door price for those who attend. :-)

[Sylpheed]

If the port bugs were being abused by a small group of players, why didn't they use it to advance to the pincers and then leak it?

 

It can't be because it would be obvious they were cheating because that is already the case. Has there actually been any word from Jagex themselves confirming or discussing anyone circumventing the ports system to gain an unfair advantage?

[strilmus]

After a while, the bug abusers figured out they could just force out resource missions and cash out without getting to the pincers to begin with, since the bowl region's missions are already near the point where the payoff isn't tiny. Some folks may have noticed the effects.

[Estoc]

it's a shame their items don't get put into a lucky door price for those who attend. :smile:

 

That would be just as bad as giving bot scripts to everyone who attends.

[Mercifull]

It's highly unlikely that anyone has any of the PoP stuff legitimately so Jagex should just remove any of those items from the game. Tuff luck to anyone that spend money on them, its on par with handling stolen goods

 

This is complete nonsense. Unless Jagex is willing to recompense the players who bought these items, why should people who legitimately paid for these items lose their money/items because of Jagex's incompetence? They knew this bug was here for weeks, whether it is due to their inability(maybe they tried to figure it out but couldn't) or incompetence or disregard for it, there's absolutely no reason why players should have to suffer such penalties.

That's why I said it was on par with handling stolen goods. You said it was a known bug so take this scenario....

 

You read in in the tabloids (forums) that someone has stolen (bug abused) a shipment of Brand new Ferrari cars which aren't officially for sale yet (tetsu gear). Someone in the pub (World 2) offers you one of these brand new Ferraris at a price which seems too good to be true. You know in your heart that it's probably going to be one of the stolen ones and if you accept the offer then you can't complain if the police (jagex) reclaim it. There should be no recompense other than the knowledge that the person who sold it to you is put behind bars (banned) and can't do it again.

[V O R K]

I still believe random events should come back but instead of an obsolete colour pattern it should be randomized rendering/colouring so bots can't pick up on it seeing as it's diffirent each and every time.

[Urza285]

I still believe random events should come back but instead of an obsolete colour pattern it should be randomized rendering/colouring so bots can't pick up on it seeing as it's diffirent each and every time.

God no.

[Auror]

No. No random events. No.

[dixon3133]

Was there actually an instant voyage completion bug?

 

I presumed the bug was using quick hopping to lower the timer by 1 min, which completed voyages 6-7 times faster, then rerolling from randoms. Fixed now as hopping increases time by 1 minute.

[Yoko Kurama]

That's why I said it was on par with handling stolen goods.

 

The analogy is ridiculous. Not all the players were aware of the bug.

 

You said it was a known bug so take this scenario.

 

I said it was known to Jagex(I know that because I have several friends who reported it to them), I never said anything about the general public. I, for instance, was aware that some players were getting instant voyages, but I was not aware that this could be manipulated at will. That, alone, should have set Jagex investigating after people such as my friends(who, too, were not aware of how to manipulate the bug at will, but suspected that would soon be discovered) reported it to them.

 

You read in in the tabloids (forums) that someone has stolen (bug abused) a shipment of Brand new Ferrari cars which aren't officially for sale yet (tetsu gear). Someone in the pub (World 2) offers you one of these brand new Ferraris at a price which seems too good to be true. You know in your heart that it's probably going to be one of the stolen ones and if you accept the offer then you can't complain if the police (jagex) reclaim it. There should be no recompense other than the knowledge that the person who sold it to you is put behind bars (banned) and can't do it again.

 

Not everyone, including buyers of this(particularly if they bought it from GE, as I am certain many people have offers on there) knew of the bug, So your entire analogy falls apart. If you really want to make real world analogies, you should be aware that Jagex is unique amongst authorities in that it refuses to return, say hacked or scammed items, or even items lost to bugs that are Jagex's fault: it merely bans the offending player, as well as the items(belonging to the victim, not the offender), if it ever does something about cases. It never returns items to their rightful owners, which is something that in the real world, authorities will typically endeavor to do. So making real world analogies is pointless as it is, because unlike real world authorities, Jagex behaves rather differently.

 

I don't particularly care for fat-cat rich players, and nor did I buy any armours, but I'm still opposed to this hypothetical measure.

[Auror]

Not everyone, including buyers of this(particularly if they bought it from GE, as I am certain many people have offers on there) knew of the bug, So your entire analogy falls apart.

[Cerri]

This "botwatch" or whatever banned my friend. He was looking at HLF and saw an improved mining method at LRC (hopping worlds to active gold rocks). He did about 10 urns worth and then stopped. Started bankstanding at the Grand Exchange while talking to clanmates and was force logged. Says he was banned for two weeks and his mining was reset to level 1.

 

Here we go again with Jagex banning "bots"... Friend just maxed and wanted to try out mining. For some reason they detected that he was macroing when he wasn't. Pathetic.

 

Also, I haven't noticed a reduction in LRC bots so I'm not sure what is even going on

Unsurprisingly, they turned down his appeal as well. It's a shame to lose a good friend and guildmate over such a mistake. And to rollback his mining all the way to level 1 two weeks or so after maxing? It irks me how Jagex claims to be so careful to not ban legit players, but when they do, they are loath to fix their mistakes.