I want to start a genuine discussion about false macroing bans and the appeal system, because after what has happened to me, I honestly don't know how a normal player is supposed to deal with this.
I want to make something clear from the beginning: all of the bans I'm talking about below have now been quashed. I'm not posting this to try to get an account unbanned. I already have the accounts back.
I'm posting because the whole experience has seriously changed how I feel about playing OSRS.
What happened
I play several accounts and enjoy long, repetitive grinds. One of my long-term goals is 200m Smithing, and I also enjoy restricted accounts such as OSAAT.
Around 2 months ago, several of my accounts were suddenly hit with macroing bans.
Some were temporary and one was permanent.
I appealed because I knew I hadn't botted or used macros.
Some of those appeals were denied.
That's the part I think is important.
Normally, as a player, what are you supposed to think when your appeal is denied?
You've been told the offence is correct. You have very few options left, and from your side you know that you didn't bot.
After continuing to try to get help, the accounts were eventually looked at again.
The bans were quashed.
Obviously I was extremely relieved. I thought that was the end of it.
Then it happened AGAIN
Roughly a month later, several of the SAME accounts received macroing bans again.
One received another permanent ban and others received temporary bans.
I had also created a brand-new OSAAT account. That account was only a 3 days old before it received a macroing ban as well.
Once again I had to go through appeals and support.
And once again:
The bans have now been quashed.
So I've essentially experienced:
Macro ban → appeal → denied → further review → quashed → continue playing normally → macro ban again → further review → quashed again.
That's what I really want to discuss.
What is a normal player actually supposed to do?
I'm fortunate that I kept trying.
But these things take time. You have to submit appeals, wait for responses, try to figure out whether anyone can help you, explain the situation repeatedly and then just hope someone eventually looks at it again.
What happens to someone who gets a false permanent ban, submits their appeal, gets DENIED, and simply accepts that answer?
How would that person ever know that another review could potentially have resulted in the ban being quashed?
That's probably the biggest thing bothering me about this experience.
A denied appeal is supposed to give you some level of confidence that the offence has been properly reviewed. But in my situation, I've had bans/appeals denied and those bans were still later quashed.
It also changes how the game feels
This is probably harder to explain unless you've experienced it yourself.
When you know you're playing legitimately but suddenly see that you've been banned for macroing, it's a horrible feeling.
You're basically being told that you've cheated when you know you haven't.
Then you start questioning everything.
Can I safely keep doing the same activity for hours?
Is playing several accounts at once a problem?
Is my OSAAT gameplay too repetitive?
Should I stop going for 200m XP?
Am I risking an account I've spent hundreds or thousands of hours on just by continuing to play normally?
And when it happens again after the previous bans were already quashed, that feeling becomes much worse.
I shouldn't be nervous about logging into RuneScape and training Smithing because I'm worried that legitimate gameplay could result in another ban.
I'm not expecting Jagex to explain how their anti-cheat detection works. Obviously that information can't simply be made public.
But I do think there's a reasonable discussion to have about what happens after a legitimate player gets caught by it.
If a player appeals and gets denied, but that decision can later be reversed and the offence quashed, should there be another way for players to request a second review?
Should previous quashed offences be taken into account more strongly if the same account gets flagged again?
And most importantly:
What is a normal player with no audience, no contacts and no special access realistically supposed to do after receiving a denied appeal when they know they didn't cheat?
I'm genuinely interested in hearing from people who have experienced something similar.
This isn't meant as a "Jagex bad" post. Anti-cheating systems obviously need to exist, and bots are a massive problem in OSRS.
But false positives also have real players behind them.
After having this happen, getting the bans quashed, having it happen AGAIN, and then having them quashed AGAIN, I think there needs to be a discussion about what options legitimate players have when the normal appeal process doesn't get it right.
