[runedev]

Currently the bot seems to charge people whenever they start a script, rather than based on how long they've actually used it, here's an example:

This occurred because the script wasn't working correctly and I had to stop and restart it multiple times to change the settings. I was charged $0.96 over the course of an hour instead of $0.16

I assume this is done to benefit scripters. Even when their script doesn't work right, they get paid for it.

Instead if RuneMate wanted to benefit it's customers more than their scripters/bottom line they could simply multiply the script's runtime by the hourly rate. So if you ran the bot for 15 minutes and the script costs $0.16/hour you would pay $0.16 * 0.25 = $0.04

This would also presumably encourage scripters to fix their bots faster so they still got paid.

Or if you have to charge upfront, please make it so if you start/stop a bot multiple times within an hour on the same RSN that it doesn't charge you more than twice the hourly rate.

 

[cuppajava]

I see you made 2 threads on this so I guess I'll paste my reply from the other thread here as it's relevant.

Just to give some context, yes bots charge on start & each subsequent hour.

Why am I charged every time I start an instance?
Upon starting the bot you will be charged for the first hour of use. If you only run the bot for 30 minutes, you will still have been charged for the full hour. If you stop the bot manually and restart it, you will be charged again. If the bot breaks, doesn't work or you are overcharged and you feel as though you deserve a refund, post in the relevant forum thread for the bot you are using, providing supporting evidence (eg: how the bug occurred and log files) and it is at the author's discretion whether they refund you.

Tutorial - Wallet and Premium Bots FAQ

I assume this is done because it benefits scripters.

It does not benefit scripters. I send out multiple refunds a day to people who request them with evidence that they used the bot. I'd love for this to be changed, it's really tedious giving out so many 10 cent refunds. I don't mind refunding botters, it's just tedious. (Also often the issues botters are facing are temporary Runemate issues, or issues with Runelite plugins, not even things I can fix)

Even when their script bot doesn't work right, they get paid for it.

Runemate, it's devs, other scripters, etc, all don't benefit by broken scripts staying up. If a script is conclusively broken and the dev isn't working on it, report it here: Tutorial - Report Outdated Bots & Inactive Bot Authors Here

If Runemate was more interested in benefitting it's customers they could simply charge people by multiplying the hourly rate by the amount of time ran.

The only person who can change this is Arbiter, and I'm not even certain if he is feasibly able to as transactions are handled by the forum software and it's limitations.

To be totally clear, I'd be in favor of the system changing to (at least) have some sort of grace period where the bot doesn't charge if it's stopped right away. (Or one of the solutions you proposed) But I'm not holding my breath on it as it's been requested before.

If a bot seems to be giving you issues, test using the lite version so you don't get charged. And feel free to contact the author for a refund.

 

[runedev]

I see you made 2 threads on this so I guess I'll paste my reply from the other thread here as it's relevant.

Just to give some context, yes bots charge on start & each subsequent hour.

It does not benefit scripters. I send out multiple refunds a day to people who request them with evidence that they used the bot. I'd love for this to be changed, it's really tedious giving out so many 10 cent refunds. I don't mind refunding botters, it's just tedious. (Also often the issues botters are facing are temporary Runemate issues, or issues with Runelite plugins, not even things I can fix)

If a bot seems to be giving you issues, test using the lite version so you don't get charged. And feel free to contact the author for a refund.

Yeah my bad, the first thread was meant to be a question on how the system works but I see now that there was an FAQ.

Thank you for the information, CuppaJava. I'll try getting a refund now

That does sound annoying having to refund people multiple times a day. I'm sorry to hear the system doesn't work for anyone.

That really sucks about the forum software... Maybe the client could send an integer on how long the script was running for before it was stopped. This way maybe the dev's could automate the refunds process at least
 
Also don't we already have tracking for how long a user has been running a script on all the TRIAL scripts? Maybe we could implement a system like that on the paid hourly scripts as well

 

[oogle]

Yeah my bad, the first thread was meant to be a question on how the system works but I see now that there was an FAQ.

Thank you for the information, CuppaJava. I'll try getting a refund now

That does sound annoying having to refund people multiple times a day. I'm sorry to hear the system doesn't work for anyone.

That really sucks about the forum software... Maybe the client could send an integer on how long the script was running for before it was stopped. This way maybe the dev's could automate the refunds process at least
 
Also don't we already have tracking for how long a user has been running a script on all the TRIAL scripts? Maybe we could implement a system like that on the paid hourly scripts as well

As a user of the bots and a bot author, I do actually agree with everything you're saying. I've personally requested this before but I just don't see anything changing sadly. Like Cuppa said, the software they use for this type of stuff is restricted with limitations and we can only work with what we've got.

 

[runedev]

As a user of the bots and a bot author, I do actually agree with everything you're saying. I've personally requested this before but I just don't see anything changing sadly. Like Cuppa said, the software they use for this type of stuff is restricted with limitations and we can only work with what we've got.

RuneMate could automate refunds by sending a refund for the remainder of the hour upon stopping the bot. Or RuneMate could offer the option to be billed every 5 minutes instead of every 60.

That should be do-able within the current system.

 

It does not benefit scripters. I send out multiple refunds a day to people who request them with evidence that they used the bot. I'd love for this to be changed, it's really tedious giving out so many 10 cent refunds. I don't mind refunding botters, it's just tedious. (Also often the issues botters are facing are temporary Runemate issues, or issues with Runelite plugins, not even things I can fix)

Well, you may give out refunds to your customers who were charged unfairly but not every scripter does. Moreover for every instance of someone asking you for a 10 cent refund there are likely many more people who could've asked for a refund but just didn't bother.

I told Defeat3d about being overcharged when his bot (Prime Zulrah) wasn't working and he didn't even respond, just sent me a link to the FAQ on how scr!pts are charged...

So it definitely does benefit scripters especially since they have the final say on whether to refund or not.

 

[oogle]

Hmm, what about if there were also options to buy time in 20 or 40 minute increments as well as 60 minutes? That way you can test a bot and start/stop it if it's messing up without losing much money

That should be at least do-able within the current system
 


Well, you may give out refunds to your customers who were charged unfairly but not every scripter does.

I told Defeat3d about being overcharged when his bot (Prime Zulrah) wasn't working and he didn't even respond, just sent me a link to the FAQ on how scripts are charged...

So it definitely does benefit scripters especially since they have the final say on whether to refund or not.

Because sometimes, it is down to user error and we aren't at fault for that.

We can only go from what the logs say.

 

[runedev]

Because sometimes, it is down to user error and we aren't at fault for that.

We can only go from what the logs say.

The bot was failing to pick up items after a kill and sometimes it just stood there doing nothing at all. And sometimes it tried to withdraw items from the bank when the inventory was full... There were no error messages or anything... I made sure to check every setting but nothing worked so eventually I gave up.

I still think it's pretty unfair to charge for over 7 hours of time when I only used the bot for an hour and a half which required me to babysit it the entire time to make sure it didn't mess up.

Edit: The part about it not picking up items was my fault (I had ground items plugin enabled)

 

[oogle]

The bot was failing to pick up items after a kill and sometimes it just stood there doing nothing at all. And sometimes it tried to withdraw items from the bank when the inventory was full... There were no error messages or anything... I made sure to check every setting but nothing worked so eventually I gave up.

I still think it's pretty greedy to charge for over 7 hours of time when I only used the bot for an hour and a half which required me to babysit it the entire time to make sure it didn't mess up.

Every bot is different. You're giving me one example out of 1000 bots on the store. Yes, I agree with what you're saying but unfortunately the bot author has the rights to deny refunds.

 

[runedev]

Every bot is different. You're giving me one example out of 1000 bots on the store. Yes, I agree with what you're saying but unfortunately the bot author has the rights to deny refunds.

I'm not saying every bot author does this. There is no doubt that there are some very conscientious and hard working script authors here.

The point I am making is that this system is poorly designed, charges people unfairly and is weighted to favor the scripter over the customer.

 

[defeat3d]

Hmm, what about if there were also options to buy time in 20 or 40 minute increments as well as 60 minutes? That way you can test a bot and start/stop it if it's messing up without losing much money

That should be at least do-able within the current system
 


Well, you may give out refunds to your customers who were charged unfairly but not every scripter does.

I told Defeat3d about being overcharged when his bot (Prime Zulrah) wasn't working and he didn't even respond, just sent me a link to the FAQ on how scripts are charged...

So it definitely does benefit scripters especially since they have the final say on whether to refund or not.

you're truly out of your mind if you think i'm trying to milk $1 out of you, instead of trying to gain or keep a longer term customer

i sent you the link because it was clear you had no idea how the system works, as a response i'm told i don't care about people getting overcharged (by me???)

come in with some respect and get it back

 

[runedev]

you're truly out of your mind if you think i'm trying to milk $1 out of you, instead of trying to gain or keep a longer term customer

i sent you the link because it was clear you had no idea how the system works, as a response i'm told i don't care about people getting overcharged (by me???)

come in with some respect and get it back

Just didn't seem like you cared since you didn't respond to my post on your thread about it, instead posted about the bot being updated. Then instead of responding to my pm you just sent me a link to the FAQ. Like what am I supposed to think when I get ignored completely twice?

It's fine man, you can keep the $1. The point of the thread is about how the system doesn't charge people fairly, not about you in particular.

And I'm sorry for being accusatory, but if you're going to just throw the FAQ at people who ask you for a refund without actually responding to their question you should expect these kinds of misunderstandings.

 

[defeat3d]

Just didn't seem like you cared since you didn't respond to my post on your thread about it, instead posted about the bot being updated. Then instead of responding to my pm you just sent me a link to the FAQ. Like what am I supposed to think when I get ignored completely twice?

It's fine man, you can keep the $1. The point of the thread is about how the system doesn't charge people fairly, not about you in particular.

And I'm sorry for being accusatory, I was just frustrated and yeah, it doesn't make that you would want to scam someone $1

those update posts are automated, i don't think i even got a notification about your message which was like a week ago

 

[runedev]

Ah... I see. Well, my bad.

I'm sorry for assuming you don't care about your customers lol. Though tbf with the info I had it wasn't the worst assumption
 
I see that you also get charged even if you pause the script because the runtime continues. I looked on the forums and saw a suggestion to pause runtime was denied because (and I'm paraphrasing here) "You're still connected to our servers".

Now as a developer myself I don't see why the bot has to have a continuous connection to RuneMate's servers to function. Plus the cost to maintain the connection server-side is likely many times less than how much a script would cost hourly to run. Not to mention the bot still has advertisements which should cover that cost.

As a customer I feel like RuneMate is only doing this because it's okay with maximizing profit at the expense of it's customer's experience.

 

[wet rag]

Now as a developer myself I don't see why the bot has to have a continuous connection to RuneMate's servers to function

I can tell you’re not a developer just from this

 

[runedev]

I can tell you’re not a developer just from this

I can tell you're someone who likes to make assumptions just from this. I'm familiar with Java, Kotlin, C# and a handful of front and back-end web dev languages.

I also created a bot client years ago that used reflection and injection (just for fun, didn't develop it much). To do so I to created an analyzer that used unique patterns each runescape class had to identify them. This was needed because Jagex obfuscates their client to hell ever since the clusterflutter (bot nuke) update. I'm also somewhat familiar with the JNI and how bot clients hook up to runelite and whatnot.

Test me if you'd like.
 
If you're wondering what an analyzer looks like, here's an example: GitHub - Soxs/OSRSUpdater: A simple (and outdated) OSRS deobfuscator. Performs field and method analysis using ASM and bytecode patterns for identification

That isn't my code, it's just an example. Here is a website with a bunch of people who have created their own bot clients, rs-hacking.com. I learned from people there how to use ASM (a bytecode manipulation library) to create the bot client.

Basically it identifies patterns in each class. Like the GameObject class may have 2 fields that are ints, 1 field that is of type Renderable and a method that accepts two ints and returns a double. So the updater scans the gamepack (jar) for a class matching that pattern, when it finds it it's labeled as the GameObject class.

I then created an interface with the same methods as my target class. Injected bytecode in the target class to make it implement my interface. Then used reflection to load the target class from the jar and cast that instance using my interface. Then I was free to call methods on the instance of the target class as needed

So yes, I am familiar with programming and with OSRS bots.

Though I see that you didn't argue with any of my points. Just went for an ad-hominem. Do you feel that it is fair to charge people for the time your script isn't being used?

 

[savior]

Now as a developer myself I don't see why the bot has to have a continuous connection to RuneMate's servers to function. Plus the cost to maintain the connection server-side is likely many times less than how much a script bot would cost hourly to run. Not to mention the bot still has advertisements which should cover that cost.

There is no long lived connection, just a heartbeat every 15 minutes. It does that so that the server can properly keep track of sessions.

The reason why youre still being charged while the bot is paused is because "pausing" is only a concept at the bot's implementation level, how it pauses is an implementation detail. A malicious actor could program the bot to just keep going even if they hit the "pause" button, and benefit from unlimited usage.

There's ways to support this of course but doing so is probably not cost efficient..

 

[runedev]

There is no long lived connection, just a heartbeat every 15 minutes. It does that so that the server can properly keep track of sessions.

The reason why youre still being charged while the bot is paused is because "pausing" is only a concept at the bot's implementation level, how it pauses is an implementation detail. A malicious actor could program the bot to just keep going even if they hit the "pause" button, and benefit from unlimited usage.

There's ways to support this of course but doing so is probably not cost efficient..

That is a good assessment of what is going on. Thank you for your response.

I do understand the need for a heartbeat. Though a malicious actor with the ability to hack into RuneMate and change it to let them keep going for free would be a rare sight. Someone with that capability would likely have enough skill to create their own bot if they're able to reverse-engineer RuneMate.

Anyways what I was getting at was, does a heartbeat every 15 minutes really cost that much to maintain? Is it not covered by the advertisements on the side? Or the cost of people buying supporter or sponsor? I feel like RuneMate could at least let people who pay for sponsor pause their scripts.

There are also a bunch of free games (and apps) that run continuous or heartbeat connections, see agar.io for an example

 

[savior]

Anyways what I was getting at was, does a heartbeat every 15 minutes really cost that much to maintain? Is it not covered by the advertisements on the side? Or the cost of people buying supporter or sponsor? I feel like RuneMate could at least let people who pay for sponsor pause their scripts bots.

No of course it doesnt cost that much, but as I said the real reason why pausing doesnt prevent payment is a different one than people commonly type here.

 

[runedev]

No of course it doesnt cost that much, but as I said the real reason why pausing doesnt prevent payment is a different one than people commonly type here.

That makes sense.

Though I'd like to reiterate that if RuneMate charged people for how long they actually ran the scr!pt ((runtime/3600000) * hourly price), we could simply stop the bot when we want to pause it for a while and start it back up again as needed without incurring extra charges.

And I wanted to ask since you didn't give your opinion on it yet, how do you feel about the current system? Do you feel that it is fair as-is or do you feel that some change would be good?

 

[savior]

Though I'd like to reiterate that if RuneMate charged people for how long they actually ran the scr!pt (runtime * hourly price), we could simply stop the bot when we want to pause it for a while and start it back up again as needed without incurring extra charges.

The problem there is that you'd have to bill the user after botting instead of at the start of each hour, and then you're gonna have a hard time figuring out when the user hits $0.00 if he runs multiple sessions at once.

And I wanted to ask since you didn't give your opinion on it yet, how do you feel about the current system? Do you feel that it is fair as-is or do you feel that some change would be good?

I think the idea of paying what you use is great, but in practice it's been a pretty annoying experience. I've always criticized this model (i've been a bot author for like 8 years), and so did most other bot authors i frequently talk to.

Part of the idea is that you can experiment with a lot of bots instead of having to make a choice of spending like $5 on a month of script access. It should have also made it less dramatic if a bot is buggy, because you can just try the next one or wait a few days until it's fixed. By getting billed every time you start a bot however, I feel it subconsciously makes people much more anxious about crashes or wanting to restart a bot, even if it's mere cents on the line. The amount of people requesting refunds of a single hour worth of credits is crazy and confirms this effect.

It's gotten to a point where most of the premium bots have some sort of trial/lite version for this purpose, even if the hourly model was meant to inherently give people the chance to try bots without investment. I would have really preferred a monthly model like all other clients have with a built in trial system implemented by RuneMate instead of individual bot authors.

It also makes it an easy choice for goldfarmers to pick a different client than RuneMate due to the amount of hours they're spending.