+++ The Bot problem +++

[drapit]

the bot problem

 

I've been on karamja for a very long period of time already (almost 2 months) and i've noticed somthing which i couldn't help not noticing as it was very noticeable.

 

 

 

What i've noticed is as follow:

 

- The karamja fishing dock (or whatever u call it) is over

 

run with level 3s.

 

- These (level 3s) have names like afjs, asdf, sdfa, sadf

 

and random letters like dat.

 

- They all have the same shirt, pants, skirt etc.

 

- These level 3s do not respond however hard you try to

 

catch their attention.

 

- When the annoying mysterious old man, the evil chicken or

 

whatever random event comes, they dont seem to care.

 

- When they die, another bot comes and takes its place.

 

- After they got their invents full, they walk out of the

 

place and to the bank (yes i followed them but after the

 

2 months of course).

 

- Then they log out.

 

 

 

 

 

Isn't it obvious dat they're bots? who would wanna have random letters as their character's name?

 

 

 

In light of these events here is wad jagex has to say:

 

- We will not reveal the evidence that we have collected,

 

since most cheats only want to know the evidence so that

 

they can avoid getting caught the next time.

 

- Jagex will not reveal the exact mechanics of how this

 

system works because this would make circumvention easier.

 

 

 

Isn't it as good as saying,"we havent had any known methods of catching these bots"? Even if they have this "bot catching device\method" cant the people using bots put MORE bots? And as far as i can see, they really aren't making any effort to improvise the situation or as we now call it, The bot problem. They're just upgrading the member's part of the game to get money rolling into their pockets. Its no wonder these bots can reproduce in large amounts.

 

 

 

My suggestions:

 

Have more random events that TELEPORT subjects away from their locations (thats as good as killing the bot). They can have more of the sandwich lady. These randoms will appear frequently in places swarming with bots like the esscence place (i dunno wad its called). But these randoms will appear less frequently in places like barrows place. Even without the bots, why would jagex put randoms in the barrows? Why does the evil chicken appear when bots dont fite barrow brothers? These randoms will also occour less frequently with high lvl players as a lvl 86 (like me) wouldn't want to be disturbed just for a free sandwich or uncut sapphire.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please pardon me for my poor use of language and even poorer grammer

[Blaze The Movie Fan]

This is a very good suggestion. But there is an easier way. You should report them. If they won't leave in 7 minutes you've time to report 7. Trust me it WILL work.

[inferno_char]

Well if you join P2P there isnt a bot problem. But it sounds to me that the bots you spoke of are poorly scripted if they cant avoid randoms. Many advanced auto scripts have been designed to deal with them now and also avoid mods.

 

 

 

Jagex doesnt have any decent way to track bots because it is illegal for them to scan any other active programs on your computer without your knowledge.

[psudomorph]

Unfortunately it seems like you don't really have much of an idea of what bots are capable of. Fighting autoers is no easy task.

 

 

 

I am going to attach an old post of mine to the bottom of this post to give you some idea of what they are capable of. You can read it if you are interested, or ignore it.

 

 

 

As for Jagex saying that they can't reveal the workings of their system, or show evidence, what makes you think that this is not true?

 

 

 

Revealing evidence to a banned macroer would simply give that macroer a new goal to set ("Lets see, they defeated my last macro by finding a pattern in my clicks... I had better use a randomizer next time" )

 

 

 

Revealing the workings of their system, even in general, would be suicide. As you will see in the post I am attaching, advanced macroers are capable of doing pretty much anything under one condition: They must know what to do beforehand. In other words, the only way to detect and defeat a bot is to catch it off guard, do something that its program hasn't been set up to handle.

 

 

 

I admit that there is some remote possibility that Jagex could be hiding behind this secrecy and in reality not be doing anything about the problem, but really what are the odds of that? After all, they do have a vested interest in seeing the game succeed.

 

There really are methods for detecting bots. Click recorders are foiled by random events, color-clickers are foiled by pattern detection and color changes* , and modified clients/packet manipulators are caught out by traps written into the game code itself.

 

 

(* believe it or not, colors in the game shift gradually over time. The change is far too slow to be perceived by human eyes, but it is a nasty surprise for macroing programs that search out and click the exact same color each time. Even adding a single unit of saturation make a color look completely different to a computer.)

 

 

 

Finally, any bot can be detected if it does something that no human could do (like playing Runescape 20 hours a day for example).

 

 

 

The problem is, as you mentioned, that it is too easy to create a bot. According to some people I've talked to, (More specifically eavesdropped upon) the average lifespan of a bot is about 3 days (meaning an average of 3 days before the evidence being collected is conclusive enough to ban them). Sadly in this time more bots can easily be created, there are even macros specifically designed for completing tutorial island.

 

 

 

Jagex takes steps against this as well. They have dropped a few hints that they track trade activity extensively in order to hunt down the mains of the people who create autoing accounts, and I am sure they have more advanced methods that they haven't hinted about.

 

 

 

Sometimes though, the people creating the autos don't even have main accounts to be banned. Maybe they sell the materials on Ebay, or feel they were banned unfairly and macro for revenge. In other words, many of them don't have any more to lose by getting caught than their mindless bots do.

 

 

 

This is the reason why macroing is such a horrible, epidemic problem, not just for Runescape but for almost all online mmorpg's; they quite simply have a force of numbers so great that they can keep profiting no matter how fast randoms eat them up or macro-detectors get them banned, and have very little to lose even when they are caught.

 

 

 

I personally believe that to fight macroers will require far more than a brute-force approach of throwing more randoms at them. I think it will require a whole new approach that nobody has thought of yet, something completely different from everything we know now. After all, a famous man once said:

 

 

 

"Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them."

 

-Albert Einstein

 

 

 

 

 

==========================================

 

I have devoted the rest of this space to a copy of a post from the thread http://forum.tip.it/viewtopic.php?t=516958"Ways to stop autoers, post here". It gives some basic information on what kinds of bots there are, and what they can do.

 

 

 

know thine enemy.

 

 

 

 

To fight bots effectively you really have to understand how they work.

 

 

 

My knowledge is obviously incomplete, but I will try to pass on what I know.

 

 

 

There are three kinds of autos that I can tell you about:

 

 

 

1. Click Recorders:

 

 

 

Originally designed to speed up tasks in the real world workplace, these macros record a series of clicks and then play them back endlessly.

 

 

 

This is the simplest kind and the one most people are familiar with. (Sadly these are also the ones that most forum suggestions are designed to fight, meaning that most people's suggestions will not work on more advanced autoers) (Your suggestions seem to fall into this category, they would work on type 1, but not 2 or 3)

 

 

 

They cannot adapt to new situations and thus can be stopped by anything from a random event to a simple closed door.

 

 

 

For this reason, they are only used by people who have no clue what they are doing. Any autoer serious enough to be a threat to Runescape will have abandoned these long ago.

 

 

 

2. Color-clickers:

 

 

 

These are capable of looking at the Runescape playing window and actually searching out objects based on colors, and sometimes shape.

 

 

 

They are the second most effective, because they can respond to new situations. They can search for and click on closed doors, detect and run from random events, find and replace lost axe heads, and find their way through the world (autoers have been known to die to a random event, then automatically get their equipment replaced and walk back from Lumbridge to continue autoing!).

 

 

 

The main weakness of these autoers is that while they can adapt to new situations, it takes them time. An autoer like this may stand still for a few seconds at frequent intervals while the software analyzes the screen and looks for its objective (This is most likely why random events so often strike people who stand still or get distracted reading the forums).

 

 

 

Because they analyze the screen, they cannot be stopped just by making things random, things must happen randomly and fast.

 

Think of all the most complex random events, from the mysterious box to prison pete, they all have you responding to fast moving things. Players must chase balloon animals, find a certain person among many constantly moving NPCs, or pick out shapes as they whiz by. Humans can do this, but a computer cannot analyze the screen fast enough.

 

 

 

3. Deobsfucators (I don't know the spelling)

 

 

 

The most powerful type of autoer (to my knowledge). These autoers actually decompile the client and use a modified version of it that they control.

 

 

 

Because they can read and send server packets, they are immune to most of the normal autoer-killers. They will see random events coming the instant they happen, never fail to find an item (be it an axe, tree, or fishing spot), and are unlikely to be stopped by any obstacle that other players can see (Maybe some random events are specially designed for them, but it is hard for me to imagine how).

 

 

 

Sadly this form of autoer is virtually impossible for players to fight. Anything we players can see, they can also see. Anything our characters can do, they can also.

 

 

 

Fighting this third type of autoer can only be done by Jagex themselves, by inserting small tricks and obstacles into the code itself to trip up the autoers.

 

 

 

========================

 

 

 

The point I am trying to make is that all of this must be taken into account when trying to fight autoers. Most people seem surprisingly unaware of what they are capable of, and we will never get anywhere if nobody realizes what we are dealing with.

 

 

 

I hope I've been informative.

[Blaze The Movie Fan]

I know. Pick me pick me.

 

 

 

I got a good idea how to stop them once and for all. Use the FBI. =D>

[Rokrin]

I know. Pick me pick me.

 

 

 

I got a good idea how to stop them once and for all. Use the FBI. =D>

 

 

 

 

 

Yeah, and we could get their children to play runescape then tell their parents how the autoers are ruining the game, then the FBI could contact the British Secret Service or whatever, and we could get the entire world on the problem! Mwuahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!

[Notorious_Ice]

psudomorph the colour changing thing started with the new game engine months ago, and it has been bypassed easily. Colour clickers have autocolours and tolorences in the colours they look for.

 

 

 

tolorences: Each colour has a number, a colour clicker looks for a colour via the number, but also looks for any colours with numbers close to it.

 

 

 

Autocolour: Basically the script finds the location its suposed to be clicking, and autoupdates the colour in the script itself.

 

 

 

And pattern detection? In a good script, absolutly everything is randomised, they have functions like

 

 

 

Wait(1585+Random(5092));

 

 

 

 

 

That basically means wait 1.585 seconds, plus a random amount of seconds betwen 1 and 5.092 before clicking the next rock or whatever.

 

 

 

 

 

Autoers know most of jagex's detection systems, not all of them but most.

 

Heck, even I know plenty of jagex's methods just from experiments, talking to people and looking through the client.

 

 

 

And deob bots last more than 3 days, more like a week, and they constantly make new accounts so when an autoers group of 20 or so accounts get banned they already have 20 more to start autoing.

[Blaze The Movie Fan]

psudomorph the colour changing thing started with the new game engine months ago, and it has been bypassed easily. Colour clickers have autocolours and tolorences in the colours they look for.

 

 

 

tolorences: Each colour has a number, a colour clicker looks for a colour via the number, but also looks for any colours with numbers close to it.

 

 

 

Autocolour: Basically the script finds the location its suposed to be clicking, and autoupdates the colour in the script itself.

 

 

 

And pattern detection? In a good script, absolutly everything is randomised, they have functions like

 

 

 

Wait(1585+Random(5092));

 

 

 

 

 

That basically means wait 1.585 seconds, plus a random amount of seconds betwen 1 and 5.092 before clicking the next rock or whatever.

 

 

 

 

 

Autoers know most of jagex's detection systems, not all of them but most.

 

Heck, even I know plenty of jagex's methods just from experiments, talking to people and looking through the client.

 

 

 

And deob bots last more than 3 days, more like a week, and they constantly make new accounts so when an autoers group of 20 or so accounts get banned they already have 20 more to start autoing.

 

 

 

That's so annoying. Nothing can stop these experienced autoers.

 

 

 

I still think FBI should take care of this. Since this is very annoying. And even if Jagex would ban the autoer's main account it would still collect the stuff.

 

 

 

Autoers should use Michellina instead of being what they are.

[Evil_Sabre]

This is a very good suggestion. But there is an easier way. You should report them. If they won't leave in 7 minutes you've time to report 7. Trust me it WILL work.

 

 

 

reporting bots is almost pointless, even if jagex can prove there actually autoing by the time they actually ban them 100 bots have alredy been made its basically impossible to stop bots unfortunately

[Blaze The Movie Fan]

This is a very good suggestion. But there is an easier way. You should report them. If they won't leave in 7 minutes you've time to report 7. Trust me it WILL work.

 

 

 

reporting bots is almost pointless, even if jagex can prove there actually autoing by the time they actually ban them 100 bots have alredy been made its basically impossible to stop bots unfortunately

 

 

 

Well, I think FBI could do the job about these autoers.

 

 

 

Well, I could be wrong. Can someone clear up my mind by explaining IF FBI couldn't do it why they couldn't?

[psudomorph]

[all posts addressed to me]

 

 

 

Yes, my information is definitely out of date. I guess I should have made mention of how quickly these people discover and bypass the various strategies used against them.

 

 

 

Despite flaws in a few (most?) of the specifics, I like to think the general idea of my ramblings was valid: Bots can do a lot more than people think, Jagex can (and probably does) do more about it than most people think (whether or not they are successful), it is beneficial to Jagex to keep their methods as secret as possible (since they are so easily bypassed once known), and autoers are more difficult to kill than roaches.

 

 

 

Wow, I just condensed my 2-3 page post into a single paragraph... Kind of makes you think...

[Notorious_Ice]

^^ Most of your information is correct though.

 

 

 

I just thaught I would add this:

 

 

 

Months ago jagex put a "trap" into their client.

 

 

 

A trap is something they use to stop deob botters (deob bots are explained in psudomorph's post) an example of which is the first trap jagex used. They stopped AR (the first deob bot) for a while using this.

 

 

 

Every 45 clicks of a rock/tree/fish whatever, the legit client sent a secret packet. AR did not. So jagex knew who was autoing. A few days later kait caught on and changed AR so it send that packet.

 

 

 

Jagex has put in many traps but I just thaught i would mention this one.

 

 

 

They add useless stuff in the client. They have items that look like aprons and have names like "Double Helix" or a "9mm revolver".

 

 

 

Heres another.

 

 

 

public static String aStringArray809[] = {

       "attack", "defence", "strength", "hitpoints", "ranged", "prayer", "magic", "cooking", "woodcutting", "fletching", 

       "fishing", "firemaking", "crafting", "smithing", "mining", "herblore", "agility", "thieving", "slayer", "farming", 

       "runecraft", "yodelling", "hexediting", "-unused-", "-unused-"

   };

 

 

 

In the client it has a list of all the skills such as mining, strength etc (obviously) that get called on to show up on the screen when you play.

 

 

 

Jagex added 2 more skills, one was "hex editing" and the other was "yodelling" The idea of the trap was basically that the bot would not declare these new fake "skills." But it wasn't as much of as an affective trap as a little joke they had with the cheating communities. A while ago they also put a piece of ip ban coding to scare autoers lolz

 

 

 

if(k == 26)

           {

               aString881 = "This computers address has been blocked";

               aString882 = "as it was used to break our rules";

               return;

           }

 

 

 

They spelt it wrong too rofl, its ment to be "This computer's address....."

[Athyron]

While you wrack your brains about the stoppage of autoers i think the bigger question is why do we wanna stop them? call me crazy for asking, im not implicating anything. Would you feel cheated if an auto helped a person get ahead in the game faster, and you were legit? If it were your best friend using a macro would you report them?

 

 

 

In my opinion the autos get what they deserve. The point of the game is what they miss by using an auto. The only problem is it can create problems for the non auto trying to powerlevel where the autos are. I havent exactly seen these level 3s with random names. Seems they could be stopped easy if Jagex sent out a program (dont know much) which looked for level 3s without a coherent name and do their thing (again, not a comp wizard )

[jwrm22]

uhm... bots are mostly... 50 comps... 1 or 2 ppl that keep them alive when having a rondom... and they are proramed to run all rondoms... they indentifide them on colour, size, and m,ore things like that... dont think you can slove the bot problem that easy...

[Guitarted7]

wanna go kill RC autoers in varrock with me?

 

 

 

we're gonna use the mugger and trap them noobs in the store :D watch them die and drop their nooby stuff......they carry 3 - 4 picks to counter the broken pickaxe random

[jwrm22]

wanna go kill RC autoers in varrock with me?

 

 

 

we're gonna use the mugger and trap them noobs in the store :D watch them die and drop their nooby stuff......they carry 3 - 4 picks to counter the broken pickaxe random

 

all axes brake at once...

[Thrilla_Killa]

Well, they could do this:

 

 

 

Every five-ten minutes, a child walks up to your character and asks a simple question. (What is 1+2, What is this game called?) The answers are scrambled every time, and if they get it wrong, then they would be teleported to a cell. They would have to answer another simple question in order to get out and go back to what they were doing. The bots cannot react to the cell, because then they could not get out unless if they wern't macroing. The door in the cell is different every time so macroers can't react to it! :)

 

 

 

Example:

 

 

 

One time a room might look like this:

 

X=Door

 

__________

 

|................X

 

|------------|

 

|------------|

 

|_________|

 

 

 

And another time it would look like this:

 

 

 

__________

 

|...............|

 

|...............|

 

X..............|

 

|...............|

 

|________|

[Notorious_Ice]

The macro could still answer the question because it can read the packet which contains it.

 

 

 

Even if hell froze over, AND they got it wrong, the door out of the cell would still have to have an id.

 

 

 

Coding-wise, you don't even need a door. All you need is to send the java packet to open it. The door just has a right click option, which allows you to send it via the normal runescape client.

 

 

 

So the antirandom script would include "click the id of the door"-except in java.

 

 

 

Another example is an autofighter, just imagine a macroer is at the chicken farm. It is sending an "attack npc (11)" - or whatever the id for chicken is.

 

That tells the server, you clicked to attack a chicken. It doesnt say which chicken because it doesn't need coords. So the macroer just attacks any chicken.

 

 

 

If you understood my crap explaination you would realise that the door could be anywhere, and the macro would still open it.

[Freshwacka]

This is a very good suggestion. But there is an easier way. You should report them. If they won't leave in 7 minutes you've time to report 7. Trust me it WILL work.

 

 

 

reporting bots is almost pointless, even if jagex can prove there actually autoing by the time they actually ban them 100 bots have alredy been made its basically impossible to stop bots unfortunately

 

 

 

Well, I think FBI could do the job about these autoers.

 

 

 

Well, I could be wrong. Can someone clear up my mind by explaining IF FBI couldn't do it why they couldn't?

 

 

 

The FBI has more important things to deal than cheaters on an online MMorpg.