Dealing with Bots - An Experiment

I think some of you are a little too hard on Jagex for expecting bots to get banned so soon. Delaying bans like Valve's VAC can be a good way to do it.

It ensures that:

1. Only people who they are completely sure are macroing are banned. A lot of actions in the game are very repetitive and could be hard to detect whether they are generated by a person or a macro. For example when high alching, if someone is using mouse keys for their clicking (which is allowed), this could seem very bot like with the mouse not moving because bots could also be programmed to wait a semi-random amount of time between clicks.
2. It is hard for macro writers and users to know exactly what got them detected so it is harder for them to adapt and remain undetected.
3. More cheaters get banned. Because the users of the macro aren't banned so soon, they get their friends or other cheaters to use the software as well which also results in their eventual ban. More cheaters easily detected by using the same software and banned = good.

Of course it also has it's downsides as well, mostly that it appears to the public that they are doing very little against the problem. I often do think there is more they could be doing as well. They delay (or maybe just can't even detect the bots) for bans for way too long. An account that was created to bot only one skill shouldn't be able to get it into the 90s. They also seem to need to do more in stopping the transfer of money from mule accounts.

You can't say Jagex is doing nothing though because they clearly are. Sometimes on the high scores you can see when a massive amount of bans take place. June 1st had a decent amount of people banned, you can see by going to anyones progress on the rsbandb high scores and checking ranks gained where no XP was gained (or even just less ranks lost than on average days if less were banned). Some of bonsai's skills are quite decent so those were some high level bots who were banned.

Jagex can only do so much at any given time. They're already banning bots as fast as they can. Think about it this way: There are at least a thousand abuse reports (probably much more) every day per member of the anti-bot team. That means each one of the members of the anti-bot team would have to research over a thousand accounts that could possibly be bots.

Nice seeing they've started banning some of those

PMods actually get very little news about what they are doing besides those bot busts they do which most of are also open to non-pmods. I noticed this myself on our high scores.



I reported 55 bots today and their names are below.

Great work - Please keep going.

It reminds me of the time I tackled fishing bots and manually tracking such accounts is a crucial element in getting Jagex to take action.

If nobody can see if they are trying or not then why do they need to try? With transparency comes the need for visible action to be taken.

'CaP

Why are they even giving bots a second chance? Permanent ban please.

Welcome back! Been a long time since I've seen you on here.

You're right, I've added the names and a link to check above.

It is good to be back on here Mike, I did quit for many years but I have been listening in on the podcast and occasionally browsing the forum. I am back playing now though and will no doubt be more active on here now.

Back on topic- The whole rollback thing defeats the most important part of banning accounts.

It is not just about the punishment received by the person cheating.....It is (more importantly in my view) the deterrent it acts as to put others off even considering it.





The sheer quantity of dice and flower games should tell you how the majority of the RS population feels about gambling, consider the two choices above in that light and you can see why there was such an explosion in cheating as well as such a huge drop in morals.

The integrity of the game encompasses everything. Once you relax your attitude in one area people expect the same in all other areas and things rapidly get worse.

Simple solution and the wisest move Jagex could make is to announce a zero tolerance policy a few weeks in advance and then follow it up. Anyone greedy enough to carry on after being warned will get what they deserve. There is (as has been mentioned) a huge difference between those botting (on mains or throwaways) and goldfarmers, but the impact that each has is exactly the same.

Do not fall into the trap of thinking that bots are essential for low priced resources. The Jagex economy balanced much more effectively without bots and player sourced supply will rapidly fill any gap. Resource prices will increase short term but everyone benefits from that long term.

Merchers make the problem seem more dramatic than it is.

'CaP

808HiLyF Banned, only 3 have been banned/rolled back so far and none of them were the bots that were stuck.

Do you guys actually believe that Jagex has an automated macro detection system?