Get rid of the bots.

[Verdicts]

Honestly it is pathetic. 8 Years on, and still a problem. Trying to compete with 5-6 bots to mine a bit of coal, having them flood the market with automated actions so cheating is done by some people just to stay on a fair field. I can be the only player in a field of automation, report them, and they will be there the next day. It is so painfully obvious.
Make the anti-bot ingame events actually punish them, or detect them better, or actually respond to reports, or something. I sure as hell don't see why I should pay money to play a game where most of the content is owned by a handful of players using automation to get an unfair advantage.

[Stan]

They aren't in every world, just change.

[m0xxy]

Jagex makes a lot of money off of bots. There have been known mods to make money from botting duel arena.

The bots will never go away.

[sudokek]

The events were super annoying cause no one wanted to do them. They werent fun. They're a chore. They actually do ban bots pretty effectively, it's that the botters (i used to bot and i'm informed on how this works) set up scripts to mass produce fresh lvl 3 accounts, or just buy them from someone who makes them legit for like 2-3 per few million coins. You can make infinite bots under one email address with a few tweaks in the login. They make so many new accounts that these new accounts could be real people seeing as they are manually going through tutorial island (there's also scripts to do it automatically) so they get watched less. Then they just train them up and make sure they arent default bob. It decreases their ban rates a ton, and being a member alone will decrease your ban rate. Ingame bonds tend to get people banned more but there's cheaper options that are against the rules to trade. Also, very often the usernames are very similar to equally as random. So you might be seeing multiple different bots. But yeah reporting people for botting isnt that helpful unless lots of people report and they can prove they are botting. You're better off just hopping as I said. I could go on but I dont want to write a novel in one comment.

However, with the above being said, member worlds are much better in general for dodging bots. Most bots are f2p. World hop a few times. You'll find one that isnt too bad eventually. Members has MUCH less botting, but still has bots.

Note: I do not condone botting, I am just informed. It does ruin the game for everyone.

[lIIllllIlIIIIIlI]

They're an issue in pretty much every MMO I've ever played.

[Dickie Sender]

"where most of the content is owned by a handful of players using automation to get an unfair advantage."
i dont think thats true

[Angryshooter]

have you ever tried talking to those "bots" before? i too go mine and keep silent, but im not a bot. lots of peeps report for nothing, so dont be surprised if your reports arent processed fast.

[Zoidberg]

Originally posted by m0xxy:

Jagex makes a lot of money off of bots. There have been known mods to make money from botting duel arena.

The bots will never go away.

All of these mods are no longer afflicted with Jagex. They do make alot of money from the membership from the bots, but i think in the long run they lose alot of money from not having proper bot detection.

[Alexalmighty502]

theyve been fighting bots since the early 2000's they do what they can but theirs only a few people on the anti botter team vs the thousands of bots (they also play it safe to make sure the account is in fact a bot which tends to take time)

[HondaRadio]

There are far too many, but they are paying customers so jagex does not really care.

[(っ● ‿ ●)っ]

Originally posted by andycronshaw:

There are far too many, but they are paying customers so jagex does not really care.

a large percentage of them are stolen accounts and the rest buy bonds with botted gp

Originally posted by sudokek:

However, with the above being said, member worlds are much better in general for dodging bots. Most bots are f2p. World hop a few times. You'll find one that isnt too bad eventually. Members has MUCH less botting, but still has bots.

there are a lot more bots in members than you'd expect
the only reliable way to avoid them is to go on 1250+ total worlds, and even then

[Friendly]

If only it was as easy as you make it sound. At the least there are total worlds though, if you want to avoid having to see them I'd guess they're a good place to go (if you have the level to get in yourself of course).

I can't say I've used them much in members, but I did use a 750 total world in f2p at one point and it was a nice improvement for sure.

[Reese]

You can't beat cheating. It doesn't matter if it's a bot problem(MMO) or an aimbot problem(FPS). Beating cheaters is an impossible task with current technology. Even if they managed to break every bot and be able to detect every bot that is currently in development today, come tomorrow there'll be a new bot to replace it.

Same for banning those bots. Every bot that is playing right now could be banned, and by this time tomorrow, every single one of them would be replaced with a new bot. Jagex cannot win this battle. It's impossible.

I hear they're always hiring developers. This seems like a great opportunity for you to offer your services to do what no other developer in the last 40 years of video games could do.

As for me, starting fresh with the release on Steam, I see a handful of bots on free worlds. I certainly don't feel like I'm competing with any bots. In the time since 2007, there are far more resources available that makes it unreasonable to assume you can't play due to bots.

[Matt & the Cat]

I saw one last night at the mine south of the GE. Dudes bot was broken as he was a bit west of iron nodes in the back, ~3-5 tiles away, walking back and forth but it would stop and defend itself from the mugger there then continue being broken.

[Doctor G]

Originally posted by Verdicts:

Honestly it is pathetic. 8 Years on, and still a problem. Trying to compete with 5-6 bots to mine a bit of coal, having them flood the market with automated actions so cheating is done by some people just to stay on a fair field. I can be the only player in a field of automation, report them, and they will be there the next day. It is so painfully obvious.
Make the anti-bot ingame events actually punish them, or detect them better, or actually respond to reports, or something. I sure as hell don't see why I should pay money to play a game where most of the content is owned by a handful of players using automation to get an unfair advantage.

the Dev could just offer the Materials for cash offline for lower then what these people offer, and make money doing it. it would crash the market

[Sir Benton]

The only 'bots' I see are the ones that do the flashy advertisements in the GE or outside the Lumbridge castle