OFFICIAL: RSD #1 - Does Botting Defeat the Purpose of the Game of the Game

[uhitmeudie]

Everyone has valid and strong arguments in place which have been supported by cold,hard evidence.

Personally, I believe that it differs from person to person as each individual has his/hers own opinions.

However, for the sake of this argument I shall be supporting macroing. (Negative)


Macroing does NOT in any way ruin the game for others.. controversially it actually improves game play for both the botter and the average player who does not use any forms of 'cheats' or 'macros'. You may question this theory but if you think about it, Runescape is a game that requires hundreds and hundreds of hours to achieve the maximum skill level (99 or 120 for dungeoneering) which can potentially cause the game to become rather tedious and will take a lot of dedication to achieve. It burns a lot of free time which can be used more productively, such as attempting to rise one's GPA or maybe build stronger relationships with their peers. Not only does this game that Jagex has created burn a lot of time, the majority of players who become 'addicted' or devote time to the game end up spending on average $84 a year on a java based game where the only story-line available are from quests.

Macroing allows a user to gain those stats that they desire whilst still being able to complete their everyday real life needs whereas playing how the game was intended to be played would take guaranteed more than 2 years.

As well as having the daunted task of leveling up stats, there are also other matters to take into accounts :- resources.

Resources are how players level up stats and are required in order to advance through the game into higher tier/levels. Resources take time to collect therefore a user who does not macro will need to either save up gold to buy the resources which takes time or by hand, gather the resources which takes even more time in some cases. Combined with leveling and quests the game begins to drain more and more of your time.

I had a cousin who played in mid 2007-late 2010 and his addiction and dedication became so severe he nearly failed all his exams, never listened to his parents, always woke up 4 hours before school just to hunt 1,000-2,000 red chimchompas. In order for him to stop I literally had to smash his computer into bits.
This just shows the danger of playing how the system was intended to the point that real life activities and priorities aren't even existent and the only thing worth completing is Runescape.


I will now begin to talk about how the general economy in Runescape is affected by macroing.

http://services.runescape.com/m=itemdb_rs/Rune_essence/viewitem.ws?obj=1436 - In 2006-2010 (when I played) rune ess was 50gp at maximum which was extremely expensive and encouraged legit players to play more so that they could afford the rune ess.
Now it's 22gp and who to thank? Macroers. We have successfully made the price lower so that legit players can afford and we still make some money.


Resources (which previously mentioned takes time to collect) can we macroed and sold to others making their lives easier and since macroing is pretty user-friendly, users will tend to sell for less than the market price making both, easy cash for the botter and a happy legit player as he received what would have taken him normally 6 hours of flax picking into 4 hours therefore saving him time.

Personally, I play runescape legit and botted and enjoy it both ways. I tend to bot when I'm out doing activities that I deem more important than Runescape and play legit when I have some free time. I have enjoyed watching the price of rune essence and logs fall as I could use them to train my skills.

When people complain and rant and support the view of macroing to be a sign of weakness or something that its for people who are losers in real life, it's because they have not fully researched the topic and have not gained sufficient data to comprehend how the benefits of macroing outweigh the disadvantages.

 

[Monstar]

The aim of the game isn't to max out. It is to Role Play, hence RPG.

Sorry, The ultimate goal would have been a better choice of wording from me.

 

[Godlike_mybb_import19299]

My own opinion about this thread Does Botting Defeat the Purpose of the Game..
Well, some people like me love to bot and do less of the work when you can just sit back and relax and let it do it for you! It has some of its pros and cons they will be stated here
Pros-
~Less work
~Does it for you
~Faster leveling up

Cons-
~You can get caught
~People cry if you bot and say you bot
~You can get banned
~Most people like doing it legit

Well, that's about it but I did make myself clear about defeating the purpose of the game yet again if you get caught your screwed.

 

[ether]

Going to try and make this short and sweet..

I agree that botting accounts takes the purpose out of the game. Why, you may ask? There are a few main reasons I'll touch in this plethora of words I am about to throw at you.

1. Woodcutting
Before botting was around, besides the construction era, trees were mainly pretty free. No one thought much of taking woodcutting as a skill to make a lot of money. Ever since botting came around you are lucky to find a free tree even in a members world because everyone is trying to make a profit on one of the easiest skills to level in the game. These botters have became the main nuisance to every player trying to gain a woodcutting skill in the game.

2. Mining
I know even I have started botting mining and smithing, and I can tell from my first account where I worked for my mining skill, that it was more pleasurable earning it the hard way, even though i had 10 less levels on that account! Mining isn't as a bad as woodcutting in population on specific spots just yet, but it is definitely making its way up there.

3. Combat
This isn't one of the main things you see around, especially fighting random NPCs, but they are still used very often. Fighting Al Kharid bank guards was one thing I did non-stop on my secondary account in 2010, but i found it extremely hard because while I was botting, there were also around 20 other people in there with me. The same idea goes for Soul Wars especially after the official bot script for it came out.

4. Dropping Prices
Ever since botters came around, the quantity of everything has increased. As everyone who took an economics class knows, when the demand of something goes up, the price goes up. Soon after everyone goes after the high priced object the quantity of it raises and the price of it drops. With people bringing in over 2k logs a day on over 3 accounts alone, that is only a ticking time bomb for the markets to crash and everything revolving around that skill that normal users worked for will be demolished.

5. Time Spent Playing
Although Jagex now has semi-control over this with recent updates, it's still a big factor. Most players can't play, or aren't allowed to play over 8 hours a day due to real life factors. It is an unfair advantage that botters are allowed to train a skill of their choice throughout the day and night without any effort put into it. When I mined, I made over 3m in 24 hours of it just by sitting on my bed watching Netflix.

6. Total Level
Before botters came around, but after level 99's became a cool thing to have, selling an account with 99 level stats on it was a lot of money. I'm not saying it was the correct thing to do hence why Jagex has the rule to never sell your account for outside game profit, nor inside game profit. Aside that fact, today an account with one 99 only goes for around $10 USD at its maximum, unless it is a hard to train stat. But the fact that it only goes for $10 relates to the fact that it only takes a botter around a week to two weeks to get the 99 stat. Which affects people who try and get their 99s legitimately and it taking them a month or two compared to the two weeks it took a botter.

7. Account Stealing
Now that literally over 70% of the community uses a bot in some sort of way, everyone wants to get in on the action. This simple fact that "everyone does it so it must be okay" takes account stealing to a whole different level because everyone that bots also most likely has a phishing system out somewhere. With one small mistake everything that a legitimate player has worked for can crumble in an instant if he doesn't take good care of his account. This means over 2, 3, 4, or even 5 years of work can be taken away in the instant of entering your username and password. Although Jagex security can be made to be very strict, it still can't protect a careless user that just wants to bot.

8. Overall Enjoyment
Once you have literally done everything to be done in the game over a period of one year, what is the fun you have left in the game? Botting, if done correctly and you aren't banned, literally sucks all of the fun out of the game. You will beat years worth of fun in a year or two maximum by not even putting any effort or personal thought into it. Just a few clicks here and there and everything else is done through an AIO. It is cool to have everything done for the fact that you can say 'Yes, i've finally finished!', but Runescape was made to be unfinished. The reason i say that is they publish updates on a usual basis and have been doing so since the game came out. If they wanted you to be able to fully complete the game they most likely would've stopped updating it.


Overall, my personal stance on this subject is that botting isn't healthy for the game, nor is it fair to some people, especially the ones that lose their account. But seemingly, it isn't going to go away. So, if you can't beat them, join them.

Sources:
Runescape Prices Dropping: 2011
Woodcutting bot is a hindrance. (This thread was brought up in 2011. imagine the population growth of woodcutters since then!)
Bots Ruining the Economy: 2011 Version (This one is related to pretty much everything else i said in the thread.)

Footnote: All of my information was written before looking up the sites. The sites were found through google according to how I wrote the steps.


Did anyone like my use of the word plethora?

 

[AaronOliver1993]

Affirmative
Botting does affect the game, in many ways. I have been playing Runescape since i was in sixth grade, up until now, and i have seen a massive change in the game due to botting in that time. I agree with Pro on there being two goals of Runescape; those goals are Skills, and Money. Every player strives to achieve these two goals, that is to gain xp, and thus skills, as well as money.

Skills
Botting affects skills for every player, whether they happen to bot, or legit. Have you tried to kill green dragons lately? If you have, you might have noticed the exponential increase in the number of bots at each green dragon spot, whether it be the east, level 20 wilderness spot, or the west level 12 one, or even the Revenant cave ones. Every still which requires competition among players for resources (I.e. fishing, mining, etc. Gathering skills if you will) is now so saturated with bots, it is almost impossible to get any for yourself. And this leads to my next point,

Money
Money, or the "Economy" if you prefer, has been affected by bots as well. Due to the ridiculous amount of bots at every skilling location, (causing magic trees to be depleted of their logs within seconds, and coal in the mining guild to be gone virtually all the time, etc. etc.) The market has become overrun with every kind of gather-able resources, such as ores, logs, dragon bones, etc. This has caused the rapid drop in value of every one of these resources, sending the economy into a spin, in which the only way to get any sort of money in a reasonable amount of time is to purchase it online, with real world money.

Conclusion
Botting has affected the game more than any update Jagex has ever put out, and it will continue to do so, eventually spiraling so far downward it eventually crashes in upon itself, thus damning Runescape to a failed status as a game, unless Jagex does something about it.

 

[Ar tum]

I believe that it depends on the player, for me sometimes it does because some fun places to go to like certain mini games are like completely and utterly invaded with bots! Also some training spots are too. Like I would have loved to get 99 Hunter at first, but then the amounts of bots at red chins are immense. So I gave up on that goal, therefore the bots did affect me in negative ways.

But then again bots do also have a positive effect for their users, for example I got to 89 Woodcutting and 80 Fishing because of bots, I would have gotten 99 WC but I stopped hah. So yeah bots have multiple effects, and to each their own. But for me I would say that I AM leaning towards Negative.

 

[ctheamazing]

Well to be honest I believe it does ruin the game. The main reason I think botting take the fun away is this game was designed for people to play against each other not macros or another computer. What I am trying to say is this game is in my eyes about compitition and how can there be compitition when someone is using an unfair advantage of botting. Now I myself used to bot but as I stated above I relized that it does give the botter so to say an unfair advantage.

 

[Method_mybb_import12907]

I do believe that botting defeats the purpose of the game. I understand that most players don't want to spend 5+ years playing a virtual game, but that's what makes it so challenging and hard. Bots also have a negative effect on the economy, with well over half the population of Runescape being botters, the prices have crashed and just gone static. The purpose of Runescape in my opinion is to reach maxed out stats, and do everything there possibly is to do. By the creation of "Bots" this can be achieved over a relatively short period of time as opposed to doing everything legitly.

Short and to the point.

 

[Marine_mybb_import19927]

Negative

In this debate my opinion is based upon the statistics, relevants, time consumption, and a total over all look at the progress that it takes.

General Idea of botting: Most people use botting as a "advantage" towards faster leveling, meaning less time consuming, and alot quicker then manually doing it themselves.

Statistics: When people are looking at the comparisons for Runescape Vs Bots, they see it as "cheating", but in a different perspective can be seen as a "helper". The statistics of a "GOOD" bot can easily obtain any skill to 99 quicker then anyone manually. Combat skills generally are a 3 week process from level 1-99. Manually depending on the player, it will take approximately 2-5 months, atleast, and that would most likely be around 12-15 hours a day sitting there, killing over thousands of monsters.

Relevance: The relevance between Runescape manually and a bot authorization script is; the bot does everything you can do manually, for example : "Runescape Manual guy wants to kill a thousand chickens or bury 90k dragon bones" I am sure they 1. Do not have the patience to kill that many monsters, and if they do have the patience. 2. I am 100% positive that they will not sit there for the full amount of slaying, as to where a bot that is stable/undectable enough to get the amount finished a lot quicker, and at the same time you could being doing something else, such as : Working, homework, extra-curricular activities etc..

Time Consumption: Ideally a manual Runescape account will take minimum 2-5 months for a 99 stat, I have seen people who haven't got one 99 in a year. It is all based on time, this meaning botting is 100% faster, and can be 100% safe if the botter has good clients/authorization Scripts that are undectable to allow them to bot for 24 hours 7 days a week. Majority of the people spend apporximately 3-7 hours on a computer; this varies for some, could be less or could be more. So if you were to take 3-7 hours a day, and total it up for for a week, that is 21-49 hours a week. Meaning manually is a waste of money and time, because that 21-49 hours a week, could be used for something better such as : Working increase the pay value in your cheque, or get a job, give you extra-time to go chill with buddies, or practice for sports. Little things like that build up. People may not realise how much time they put it, until its all summarized. So when it comes to running the bots again a manual Runescape player, the bot will over-ride the player, and you get alot more accomplished.

Overall Progress for (Runescape Manual player): The overall progress report of a Runescape Manual Player will eventually build up and start making progress over months at a time. You are 100% guarenteed not to get banned, for macroing anyways. I am not sure if there are any real/non-botted max accounts, because I cannot picture someone getting all of these 99's within 8 years or so of Runescape, including quests and all of that. Estimate time per 99 combat excluding prayer: 2-5 months, could increase/decrease as levels are gained. Prayer: Estimated 200-250m Runescape coins, which not alot of people have the laying around, and a total of 5-7 months. Skills : Quickest - Woodcutting or cooking approximately 1-2 months each. Longest : Agility, smithing, herbolore, farming etc.. approximately takes an easy 4-12 months if not longer.

Overall Progress for (Runescape botters): The overall progress report of a Runescape botter is alot more successful and less stressful for sure. You are "bannable" material unless you have a fully undectable Authorization Script for the bot. When it comes to skilling, combat, mini-games, quests; they all are easy obtainable with a bot, a bot also allows you to "multitask" for example : Bot 99 strength while making pizza pockets or doing homework or working. Estimated time for 99's are alot faster then manual, that is 100% guarenteed. For combat wise, a 99 stat can be obtained within 3 weeks. Some 99 skills can be obtained within a week, longest skill combat would take a approximate time of 1-3 months. For example : 99-120 Dungeoneering will take me 134 days 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Imagine doing that manually, I can't.

In conclusion to why I think botting does not defeat the purpose of Runescape, I see it as this; there is always going to be a cheater in the game anyways, and everyone likes to compete, so if your going to want to compete with the big dogs, your going to have to be a big dog and work just as hard if not harder. So running a bot doesn't defeat the purpose of the game, who is literally going to play the game to get maxed stats, quests and all legit without quitting. So why not try it yourself, feel the excitement of how it feels to actually get a 99 skill instead of spending hopeless amounts of hours trying yourself.

 

[Maxie]

I am just laughing at you guys with the one page arguments. It's not needed. You just have to have some good arguments.

Well, I think that botting do both.
It helps the game to run, membership costs, they can sell advertisements, which probably makes JaGeX able to run the game at all. Their 'source' or the server, is so deeply programmed now that they need huge servers to run them, which almost all of the membership costs go to. Without

Only downsides with botting for JaGeX is that it ruins the gameplay for the people who legit and the grand exchange prices.

Without the botters the resources wouldn't even get sold. I mean, if I wanted to buy 100k coal, I doubt 40k legit players could have gathered that. (If you think that I am probably not the only one that want 100k coal).

 

[Awesome]

I think that they are needed for the game to be successful, but are hated by many of the legit players on runescape. Like others stated, Jagex makes money for membership accounts, and there are tons of membership accounts that bot, so if every bot was banned, then Jagex would lose a decent chunk of money. Also, bots supply the economy, even though gold prices on websites and forums are down to around .50, items in game still depend a lot on bots and what they can produce. I don't mind bots, as long as they don't get in the way of what I am trying to achieve.

 

[DrecliN]

Yes, Botting defeats the purpose of the game because not only does it take away from the experience it ruins the established economy of Runescape.

 

[Runescape™]

Yes, botting in Runescape ruins it.

I think that if you play an adventure game and then let a computer complete it for you over night is pretty much pointless. If you are gold farming to sell then I can understand but to bot your firemaking to 99 and then quitting. Please reply if you have any query's :smiley:

 

[Awesome]

Yes, botting in Runescape ruins it.

I think that if you play an adventure game and then let a computer complete it for you over night is pretty much pointless. If you are gold farming to sell then I can understand but to bot your firemaking to 99 and then quitting. Please reply if you have any query's :smiley:

Botting is something that is used for an easier way to obtain a skill. Some people don't have the time and patience to obtain a skill like firemaking, so use botting as a short-cut, and risk getting banned.

 

[TheEpicDax]

Does Botting (Macroing) Defeat the Purpose of the Game (RuneScape)

Affirmative - For

Runescape 2 was developed in 2004. I personally started playing Runescape 2 in 2004. I was only 7 when one of my cousins, who plays as one of my role-models, introduced me to this fantastic world. It was massive, and it was a dream come true for my young imagination. I spent days trapped inside Runescape, searching, searching for what cool treasures may lie ahead. I was intrigued by this amazing game, and lost all sense when I engulfed myself into the beautiful sensation of delight this game had to offer.

In Runescape's early ages, bots were unheard of, literally. In that time, to have 1 million rsgp was to earn you the title of rich. To have 10 million rsgp earned you the title of millionaire.

To some people, it wasn't enough to simple enjoy the game. Some people lacked the patience it took to level up. Some people were greedy for rsgp. Soon, bots were developed. There were extremely rare, and practically unnoticeable. Then, on November 26, 2007, the Grand Exchange was introduced...

With the coming of the Grand Exchange, also arrived the first wave of bots. They struck lightly, and were not considered much of a threat. We were arrogant to think that, and over due time, they began to build up, slowly. Soon enough, a few of us intelligent players started to realize the threat, but none of us would stand up against it. Then, they kept coming and coming. Soon enough, Jagex took notice, but then it was too late. By 2009, an estimated 20% of Runescape's population now botted. But that still wasn't enough. They kept growing and growing. Soon, it reached 30%, and as of now, it is likely somewhere in the 40's to 50's of percentage.

The Grand Exchange allowed players to easily buy and sell items quickly. By doing so, prices would eventually change around. Bots overstocked the GE, and prices began to take deep drops. One example of these items is the Bandos Godsword. As of now, it is priced somewhere in the 4 millions. Before the bot storm, their costs were ranging in the 10s and 50 millions. Like the Bandos Godsword, many other items were destroyed. Other items of consideration includes Willow Logs, Yew Logs, All Types of Bones, Fishes like Shark and Lobster, Slayer Weapons/Weapons gained from slaying like Abyssal Whips, Commonly used Supplies like Feather, and many other items.

Botting, has not just killed Runescape's economy, but it has also completely CRUSHED Runescape's originally intended purpose. Runescape was supposed to be a game where people, children and adults alike, can roam around a massive game world only rivaled by leaders like World of Warcraft.

With ClusterFluster coming, Runescape may be restored, and it's original purpose restated and enchanced. Please let it, so that many of Runescape's original players may come back, and so that Runescape will no longer be Ruinscape.

Botting does undeniably defeat Runescape's purpose.

~By Demondax~​

 

[Legit101]

Affirmative. But everybody bots therefore if you don't you get a disadvantage. So not botting would be foolish.

 

[Cubs_mybb_import12687]

Lol no one argued my post Q_Q.

 

[Pink Floyd]

I am just laughing at you guys with the one page arguments. It's not needed. You just have to have some good arguments.

Believe me, I'll read them, make sure it's not copy pasta, etc. A one page argument make take home the prize if it's well constructed, follows the instructions and presents a great argument.

 

[Chewbaka]

Macroing is against the rules in RS. That's the only argument I need.

 

[Quagmire]

I dont like bots and think they should be destroyed. Accept IDungeonPro.