[savior]

Initially premium bots didn't have, and still have, no official quality standards to meet other than the regular bot store standards, and at first it was fine in order to get the ball rolling and populate the bot store with some premium bots.

Due to the absence of quality requirements, some authors rushed the development of their bot more than others, but I think most authors did a good job in the development phase.

Now, 3 months later, we have 30 premium bots of all different kinds.
The premium bot authors had a chance to earn some money, some are even paying their rent with it.
The authors had time to build up a user base for their bots, while the users had time to get used to the fairly controversial payment system.

Most importantly though, the authors had time to react to feedbacks from the users, and thus to improve their bots to actually being worthy of a "premium" bot.

In my opinion, it's time to introduce requirements and standards premium bots must follow, feature-, runtime-, and code-wise, controlled by executives pushing updates.

The reviews don't have to be nearly as complicated and time consuming as they used to be years ago, but having a standard feature-, and runtime-wise would definitely increase RuneMate's reputation because users can expect a certain stability and quality of genuine "premium" bots.

A code standard will help the author to enhance his practice, while also guaranteeing for a certain degree of performance and resource efficiency.


Essential requirements that crossed my mind:

• [Runtime] Bot's ability to change settings without restarting the bot. Especially with the current payment system this feature cannot be missing in any paid bot.
• [Runtime] Regardless of which combination of settings the user entered, the bot must be performing the desired activity. Misunderstandings of settings should not make the bot just idle or crash without any informative feedback.

•  In order to effectively maintain software, certain principles have to be followed, same applies for bots:
  [LIST]
  [*]When a bot breaks due to a game update, bot authors need to be able to fix their product very pointedly, without having to mess with unrelated stuff as an aftermath. (Separation of concerns)
  [*]Conceptual integrity would also be nice to require, as it keeps maintaining similar subroutines of a bot simple. 
  [/LIST]
  [*][Features] While this is hard to measure, a premium bot should support certain, category-related features. Most game activities have several complicated, optional additions which may not be needed in a bot (urns, juju potions, special equipment, etc.), but essential components of a skill for example should not be missing.
  [LIST]
  [*]For example, a woodcutting bot should support all popular locations and trees, a crafting bot should support all popular training methods, an agility bot should not go without the popular courses, a herblore bot has to support both cleaning herbs and mixing potions.
  [/LIST]
  [*][User experience] Besides providing quality bots, the author also needs to be able to actively maintain the bot and care about his userbase. For example, changelogs need to give a precise insight of updates, as in describing what bug was fixed, instead of just annotating "bugfixes", and authors should be able to deal with constructive user feedback.
  [/LIST]
  
  Feature requirements are not that crucial because after all the user can chose which bot fits his needs, but making premium bots require to support all basic related features will definitely increase RuneMate's population in terms of quality and integrity expectations.
  
  I think the existing bot authors will have no trouble in fulfilling those requirements, but we can't allow ourselves to settle because we have no standards to fulfill.

 

[snufalufugus]

I agree that there should be code standards, but I do not believe any feature standards should be enforced.

If a user isn't happy with the features provided, they won't pay for the bot. There is no need to regulate features any further than this.

 

[jhinn]

When a bot breaks due to a game update, bot authors need to be able to fix their product very pointedly

You can't really call this a rule or a principle because it's very vague. Either remove it or introduce some sort of deadline. Ex: You have 7 days to fix it, otherwise your premium bot will be set to hidden.

 

[max4186]

Yea I support this movement, especially not having to start and stop for settings to be changed. Party's NMZ bot doesn't have this feature, you have to stop and start it and it costs 20c for 1 hour instead of 10 due to it. His PC bot does though so I'm not sure... but definitely this would be good.

 

[savior]

I agree that there should be code standards, but I do not believe any feature standards should be enforced.

If a user isn't happy with the features provided, they won't pay for the bot. There is no need to regulate features any further than this.

You might think that, but with such an attitude, users can't be sure what to expect of a premium bot. If we had fixed standards, every new user could be certain about what quality to expect from runemate's premium bots, without having to test and babysit it for hours first.

You can't really call this a rule or a principle because it's very vague. Either remove it or introduce some sort of deadline. Ex: You have 7 days to fix it, otherwise your premium bot will be set to hidden.

The speed of which an author can fix his bot is irrelevant here. In fact what i wrote is a very important principle in software architecture. When someone ignores this principle, it shows that he is not capable of efficiently maintaining his product, because if he were, he would have thought about maintenance in the development stage.

Yea I support this movement, especially not having to start and stop for settings to be changed. Party's NMZ bot doesn't have this feature, you have to stop and start it and it costs 20c for 1 hour instead of 10 due to it. His PC bot does though so I'm not sure... but definitely this would be good.

His NMZ bot also supports that. Prime bots in general support it as a result of our framework.

 

[snufalufugus]

You might think that, but with such an attitude, users can't be sure what to expect of a premium bot. If we had fixed standards, every new user could be certain about what quality to expect from runemate's premium bots, without having to test and babysit it for hours first.

Having required features has almost nothing to do with the quality of the bot. A bot can have all of the features you mentioned in your OP and still have random crashes, unreliable performance, etc.

 

[savior]

Having required features has almost nothing to do with the quality of the bot. A bot can have all of the features you mentioned in your OP and still have random crashes, unreliable performance, etc.

No it can't because it would have gone through a review to prevent that.

The feature requirements is solely to give RuneMate's premium bot series a good reputation.
Think of the following: You are new to the runemate forums, see a woodcutting bot you want to use, and then realize it doesnt even support cutting ivy. What would your impression of runemate be? A money hungry platform that only cares about making money and not about implementing actually essential features.

 

[snufalufugus]

No it can't because it would have gone through a review to prevent that.

The feature requirements is solely to give RuneMate's premium bot series a good reputation.
Think of the following: You are new to the runemate forums, see a woodcutting bot you want to use, and then realize it doesnt even support cutting ivy. What would your impression of runemate be? A money hungry platform that only cares about making money and not about implementing actually essential features.

A performance review is a completely separate concept from required features. You're merging the two ideas together for some reason.

And I agree that a premium RS3 woodcutting bot without ivy support would be pretty pathetic, but I still don't see the need to regulate it when a user can simply go find a different woodcutting bot that doesn't lack the feature. Premium bot authors will add these things on their own if it's a significant feature. If they don't, they're missing the opportunity to increase their profits. That's not something any premium author would deliberately do.

 

[zyzz]

I'm behind this 100%. A poorly coded premium bot reflects poorly on the community. But I feel like you might be putting too many requirements. Personally the only things I'd expect and require from a premium bot is: Regularly updated and user feedback and suggestions taken into account. Also, obviously stuff like PlayerSense and Clause etc should be force implemented to keep the ban rate low across all bots.

Also, something you could consider as a requirement, streamline what kind of info the proggies should display. Like make it mandatory to include Time to level and profit per hour, but then again, that's kind of nazi.

 

[party]

Yea I support this movement, especially not having to start and stop for settings to be changed. Party's NMZ bot doesn't have this feature, you have to stop and start it and it costs 20c for 1 hour instead of 10 due to it. His PC bot does though so I'm not sure... but definitely this would be good.

???????????????

 

[savior]

A performance review is a completely separate concept from required features. You're merging the two ideas together for some reason.

And I agree that a premium RS3 woodcutting bot without ivy support would be pretty pathetic, but I still don't see the need to regulate it when a user can simply go find a different woodcutting bot that doesn't lack the feature. Premium bot authors will add these things on their own if it's a significant feature. If they don't, they're missing the opportunity to increase their profits. That's not something any premium author would deliberately do.

Exactly. It would be pathetic. Now what kind of a platform would runemate be to offer pathetic bots as a paid product?

I'm behind this 100%. A poorly coded premium bot reflects poorly on the community. But I feel like you might be putting too many requirements. Personally the only things I'd expect and require from a premium bot is: Regularly updated and user feedback and suggestions taken into account. Also, obviously stuff like PlayerSense and Clause etc should be force implemented to keep the ban rate low across all bots.

Also, something you could consider as a requirement, streamline what kind of info the proggies should display. Like make it mandatory to include Time to level and profit per hour, but then again, that's kind of nazi.

Yeah my requirement list was just some ideas, obviously it can heavily change.
Some feedback to the user of what the bot accomplished in forms of a GUI is actually a good idea, it perfectly displays what a bot is capable of and if it's worth using it.

 

[zyzz]

Exactly. It would be pathetic. Now what kind of a platform would runemate be to offer pathetic bots as a paid product?


Yeah my requirement list was just some ideas, obviously it can heavily change.
Some feedback to the user of what the bot accomplished in forms of a GUI is actually a good idea, it perfectly displays what a bot is capable of and if it's worth using it.

I actually meant more of the progress reports in the client. Like all bots do it differently. There should be some streamlining. Like profit per hour is a requirement, xp per hour is a requirement, time to level is a requirement. You know, the ones you get when you run a bot. Some hardly have any info given to the user while running.

 

[rob k]

I'm behind this, but with a couple of suggestions.

As Snuf said, it's not really right to force authors to put a ton of features on their bots. Although they're nice to have, I don't think that should dictate whether or not it can be premium. For example, Serene's Altar bot although simple, is the only of its kind, and works perfectly -- I'd pay for that.

I think a big thing of quality control should be that the author actively updates their bots and treats them all as projects and if the author abandons them, they lose the revenue stream.

I've had bot authors when I suggest fixes for their bots, get completely ignored and they charge the highest rate / hr when the primary reasons one would use the bot doesn't work.

If this were to be enforced, I think instead the quality control should be the following.

1. Bot must be either tested for X amount of time by Y amount of people before premium is an option. This can be private testing to select group of people, supporters only, etc. The time would be used to analyze logs for failures, improvements, etc. Essentially leading to if Spectre has no problems, neither should the bot you're running.
2. The author is actively listening to suggestions on the forums. Almost like OSRS polls, if there is a demand for a feature the author should implement them however not implementing every feature shouldn't count against them.

I'd love to see how the hourly rate is set. Perhaps for incentive for the authors, the more premium bots that are released and are maintained the hourly rate can start higher. For example, Party makes some pretty amazing bots, I've never had a problem with any of his paid bots and anytime I had a question, they were addressed with a solution given. So because of this, we start his premium bots at .12 / hr. Meanwhile, you have Joe Schmo, a new developer, create a premium bot and goes through the QA program. Since he's new and we're not sure how capable he is yet, he starts off at .04 - .05 cents an hour.

I do think have automated break schedules and trackers should be baseline and everyone uses a similar format however this is about quality assurance, not little nit picky things.



Not for nothing, there are some bots on here that should be premium because of their quality (I'm looking at you Snuf & Serene).

 

[snufalufugus]

I still stand by my opinion: users are the most qualified people to decide what features they do or don't need, and they can decide for themselves by using or not using the bot.

Also, thanks @Rob K for the kind words, but I personally don't feel that any of my bots should currently be premium. Although they perform well enough to justify making them paid, there are things I want to improve on before doing so (Primarily playersense and UI).

 

[justcurious]

I believe in free market. If it's worth buying, people will buy it, if it's not, they won't.

Trying to enforce coding standards will ultimately result in fewer bots being made. I think most bots start as some crappy piece of code just to get the job done. Then the creator expands upon it and at some point realizes that, hey, I've actually got something here. I should share/sell it. Enforcing standards from the get go means the creator would be much less likely to create that crappy stepping stone. Enforcing them later means their bot will require a major rewrite, which might kill off the interest of doing so.

----

Most, if not all of the issues raised here can be resolved easily with 2 changes to runemate.

The first is the resolution of the issues raised in this thread (@Party this is the issue @max4186 was referring to):
Question - [PRO] bots consuming a lot more money than they should...

I proposed 2 ways to fix in in post #17 of that thread. The "rollover plan" I mentioned should fix any issues, since if you start the bot and find out that it's broken, you don't lose the money you paid. You just wait till it's fixed to use the botting time you purchased.

After that is resolved and people are no longer risking being charged multiple times/hour, a free trial function would alleviate all other issues (ie knowing if something's worth your money or not). I would propose the following:
You are given 1 hour of premium botting time per week that functions as a free trial on any bot you want. You can not use more than 3 hours of time per bot per lifetime. So if I launch the same bot for an hour a week, 3 weeks in a row, I can't use that bot free ever again. After 3 hour-long sessions, you should know if you want to buy or not. On the fourth week, I'll have to use my free hour on some other bot.

 

[aydex]

No support for a variety of reasons.

1) A free market is a good thing and will regulate itself. Does a script not work and users don't like how the developer handles bug reports? They won't purchase the script and leave negative reviews, therefore forcing the developer to step up their game or abandon it entirely.

2) "Code quality" checks are a complete joke. Sure it could be helpful to separate the 2 month Java hobbyist from the seasoned "JUST GOT MY OCJP CERT AYYYYYY" twat but anything past that won't make a real difference since there's probably only one or two people on this site capable of even writing basic industry level solutions. Hell, most seem to be still stuck using a static "Globals" class for storing their config (or even throwing it willy nilly in the actual script class itself).

There's only two points here but I'm to tired to write more right now.

Anyway, trying to force some sort of "standard" is a sure way to fuck your market up. You'll end up with a monopoly of developers that are fine with putting lots of time into building a fully fledged script with all sorts of gimmicks and gizmos (which helps you earn another like, 2 or 3 sales, yay) while the rest go elsewhere as they're motivation died when they realized they had to compete against a giant. The consumer won't even be happy because now they'll be forced into paying much higher premiums (as developers need to put lots of time into their product to even list it as a premium product) versus an unregulated market where more basic, cheaper products can come out for those customers looking for something simple.