Blizzard can do it, Why can't PWE / Cryptic ?

jaotut

Maybe because they have more (well everyone) paying customers that complain, so they have to use more of their resources and time to target these bots without hurting the innocent.

I think it's just different goals in a subscription game, and a f2p one. The financial goal of a subscription game is to have more players staying. But in a f2p game, their main interests is making as much money as possible, so priority works differently.

championshewolf

Because every time Blizzard does that, it's only for PR purposes as the bans are about as meaningful as a screen door on a submarine. Blizzard throws out that ban hammer statement when they feel their public relations are down due to either a hiccup, a new product coming out and so forth. Blizzard's resolve is special that way.

For instance, before WoW launched, Blizzard supposedly banned I believe it was over 100,000 accounts from Diablo 2 that were supposedly cheating, because people were grumbling about rampant hacks there. Blizzard did the same when people were complaining about cheaters in PvP before the PvP systems were implemented in WoW. Then they did it again when Starcraft 2 was about to launch, and again with Diablo 3. With Heroes of the Storm about to go officially live, they had to show face that they are "dedicated" to the integrity of their games.

In short I don't particularly believe it since every time these mass bannings occur, the people that I know are cheaters or exploiting and I reported are still around, as well as other people who have reported obvious cheaters (and you can't miss things like battleground bots and people that use a bot to farm resource nodes).

sockmunkey

The bans are temporary, so it IS pretty much like Cryptic.

I do find it rather ironic that this is being posted by someone who has been forum banned, several times already now.

blackxxwolf3

if you read the comments in it 1 person out of a small number got banned for (according to them) never even playing the game before. so what does this mean? its flawed.

championshewolf

blackxxwolf3 wrote: »

if you read the comments in it 1 person out of a small number got banned for (according to them) never even playing the game before. so what does this mean? its flawed.

If he never played the game he couldn't have been banned. More than likely he got a fishing email, I use to get those a lot on one of my alternate emails for Blizzard, NCSoft, Sony and other game types, designed purely to try and steal account info or implant worms into your computer. So, take comments with a grain of salt.

suicidalgodot

...to give the discussion a productive swing:

Finding and identifying bots is something that should require much skill. So all it would take is hire someeone with moderate education but sufficient integrity - some fresh-out veteran e.g. - and have them observe the game. Things like the New Sharandar Char Wash or the bot massings at some other locations would have easily been identified and terminated.

Also, even while bot soft probably has ways to mask its nature (RNG delays etc.) it still would be super-repetitve. And when you can see an account that has extremely little combat time, while being in the ever same rewarding section, put that online policeman you hired at that char's heels and you'll see soon-ish if this is a bot or not.

This doesn't / wouldn't have affect the Foundry farming fashion we've seen, but this became such a rampant problem IMHO just because the obvious industrial botting crowds have been left completely uncontrolled. Also, this has been discouraged quite thoroughly, without too much uproar and outrage from the collaterally damaged players. Weird to see, too, that the Foundry farmers got their bans (though with a rather limited timespan), but the New Shar Char Wash bot horde gleefully carried on during that time...

...but back to the productive part: Hire some cheap workforce and make them police the game - this won't be the end of botting, but definitely help controlling it.

blackxxwolf3

championshewolf wrote: »

If he never played the game he couldn't have ben banned. More than likely he got a fishing email, I use to get those a lot on one of my alternate emails for Blizzard, NCSoft, Sony and other game types, designed purely to try and steal account info or implant worms into your computer. So, take comments with a grain of salt.

very valid point.

dragoness10

Everytime I read the questions on "why is this not more like WoW" etc ......

I know too many fun people with good resources to really put much here other than "It may be a bunch of fruit, but apples are not bananas. Enjoy the variety of flavors."