bots

This is one of the main reasons I like slayer. You really don't encounter that many bots, and if you do, they usually aren't so disruptive. I'm not looking forward to gathering skills for this very reason but there's always places to train that are just as good and not bot infested.

Sorry do we play the same game? Slayer is getting INFESTED. Black demons for example- they used to be the best task in the game. Now, most people skip them. Why? You can't get a kill in because of bots.

Tried killing Dags? Tried being the key word here, with 1 bot per dag spawn it takes twice as long (and twice as many cannonballs) to finish the task. All that's left is Kuradal's cave (for now) and crappy tasks like Guard Dogs/Suqahs. There are ways around most tasks but I don't want to have to adjust my playing style to incorporate players who aren't meant to be there.

Jagex said they had good bot detection software which is one of the reasons why free trade was voted for so highly. Given the vote now I'm sure many players would convert back. I've seen none of this software in action. When training just about any skill in the game I've come across obvious bots, and reported them. Then tracked their progress. Not a single bot I reported had their stats wiped/account banned and many of these are walking around showing off their agility, thieving, hunter or what not capes. It's easy to tell whose a bot, why aren't they being banned when they've even been reported? I honestly think Jagex exaggerate their staff numbers. I don't think anyone reads reports (in game or bug reports). My evidence being glitches I've reported which would take mere seconds to fix (e.g. removing ", gt" from the swear filter) have gone unsolved for weeks. Why? It's not been read. There's also clearly very few people in the quality assurance- remember when they updated climbing boots and accidentally converted all the ones in the game into the ones worth 75k? No one checks anything, no one reads reports.

The only thing I've ever seen being done about them is the high level forums arranged "bot busting" events where they travel around to bot heavy locations and a JMod bans em all. As lovely as this is, why not hire a staff member to world hop in the major locations (eg frost dragons) and immediately ban anyone caught botting there. As it stands, it's EASY to tell whose a real player and who isn't.

Get rid of free trade, get rid of the grand exchange. With the grand exchange gone it's much harder to convert raw materials into gold to sell. Investigate any players with large amounts of a certain material and ban them if they've received them all for free from low level accounts. Problem improved.

Remember when the RC cape got moved from Aubury to Larryr? Bots couldn't teleport to the rune essence mine, something to do with the number in the code I heard. I was reading on the RS forums it's easy to change any number in the code without changing anything except slight appearance. A scheduled daily update forcing bots to rewrite their scripts would definitely aid the problem. (Not solve, but aid).

There are SO many things Jagex could easily do to assist with the problem. They're doing none of them. Obviously a company has to care about money as its number one goal but they've reached a point where the balance is wrong. It no longer looks they care about the game AT ALL nor do they listen to their customers. The way they come across is discouraging and this is why people are starting to cancel their subscriptions. There's no indication the problem affecting paying customer's game-play is going to be addressed. We're paying them for the game so it would be logical to listen to what we want rather than constantly wasting resources on updates no one gives a crap about. Would having a no update week instead of ever releasing livid farm cause members to quit? I highly doubt it.

Think of it this way; if a restaurant has rats and a customer complains the manager would do everything in his power to get rid of them due to fear of losing all his current customers. (If there wasn't controls about shutting down restaurants this would be the case at least). Sure, he could leave them alone but in the end he'll have a restaurant with no paying customers and rats everywhere.

When all the real players leave because of the bot crisis there'll be no one left to buy gold farmer's gold. So, they stop botting. No players, no bots, no game. I've never known a company to ignore complaints like Jagex. The corporation has been spiralling downwards ever since the whole CEO/staff change and they're soon to reach a point where there's no going back if they don't buck up their ideas.