A Step Forward

This has been spreading around a few fansites and forums recently, but hasn't made it's way here yet.

On 12-Aug-2011, Andrew Gower and Mark Gerhard announced that RuneScape has been nominated for a Golden Joystick award in the category "Best Free to Play Game". Following this announcement, there has been some controversy over the quality of F2P gameplay in particular as a result of advertisement bots used by gold selling websites.



Vote for RuneScape









We at RSBuddy love to see people no longer spending hours of their time performing repetitive in-game tasks, and to see our software become more and more human-like. We're not intent on ruining people's experience of RuneScape when starting up their account, or taking part in activities with friends or clanmates. Our goal is to make our bots as seamless and human-like as possible.

Unfortunately, some people are fine with abusing automation software to spam their websites and have caused a spam-bot epidemic in F2P. Although Jagex is in the best position to end this activity, we don't want to assist in making this harder for them and as a result we have taken the following steps:

1. All scripts that support or encourage spam advertising are removed from our repository.
2. All scripts that are designed solely to "troll" or otherwise irritate legitimate players are removed from our repository.

3. All text input methods are added to our greylist and scripts will be rejected from the repository if they perform any of these actions (human-like talking is, of course, still allowed).
4. We will deny the use of RSBuddy by account and network bans to users reported and shown to be performing any of these actions.

Although we cannot put a complete end to this, we are wary that our continuing additions to our minimal-cpu botting features should not be allowed to make this issue worse. We understand that the companies in question have access to other automation platforms, and encourage other websites to take similar action against these activities.

Is this a step forward between botting companies and Jagex? Is it fair to say that even owners and coders of bots still want the game to be fun and enjoyable?

We also see here the power and inspiration that Jiblix has done. While he was demodded for apparent "unmodly" actions, I'd say that getting a botting site to remove certain scripts would be considered modly.

It has been posted

It has been posted

http://www.clansurreal.com/board/thread-2845.html

Vid is the same. Quote isnt.

Shows who actually read any of it xD

Interesting, ofcourse I'm against botting of all kind. It's nice to see that a botting company has seen what their programs are doing to this game. Hopefully even if we can't get rid of bots in the future we can atleast make them somewhat less annoying... I think it is a step forward, even if a small one.

This is certainly a step forward.

Whilst I realise bot spam is only part of the problem (they still have resource bots which ruin the gaming experience for legit players), I'm hoping it will reduce the overall spam in F2P worlds.

I haven't played on an f2p server in a long time, but the ad-spammers are something I could put up with if only the game was playable. As long as those guys continue to offer skilling/resource gathering bots, they are still contributing to the problem in a big way. They've done little to improve the situation and worse yet, they have the conceit to tell us that they are improving RuneScape by continuing to offer players bots to train and gather items/cash for them.

And of course the core problem has nothing to do with them, and everything to do with the rwt companies who use their bots. They will not stop what they are doing because this site took down the bots they might have been using. They will just move on to something else and continue on unfazed.

It's simple. Botters still pay memberships fees, and it's more than likely that that they have more than one account with membership on it. So Jagex is still earning money (fair bit) for people to not play their game.

It's hard for them to get rid of bots for good, although when they do find them they simply roll them back or ban them. I think that they are doing a lot of work behind the scenes, it would just be nice to see some of the work that they are putting in to re-assure us.

Yeah it would be nice, but like I said. They could remove/ban all the botters and earn 75% less than what they are getting now. So what would any business do in that situation?