I think we probably hit on the exact reason for the bannings, which is suspicious transfers of large amounts of AD via the auction house. Everyone is focusing on "Why can't we do leadership with 50 characters!!!!" when that's not the actual issue. I'm betting there are tons of people with lots of leadership alts who are doing just fine and not getting banned - because ALL of their activity is restricted to one account.
Don't transfer large amounts of AD between accounts.
This.
Surely there was some misinformation in bearchasers ban - official Cryptic statement about ban reason (botting/generating too much AD) being one of them. Poor/incomplete german translations another one. I think their ban targets are ad sellers and transferring income from 50 toons to another account looks like selling it from their point of view and THATS why he got banned, leadership had nothing to do with it.
Of course we don't exactly know what other gamers are doing. But their is something odd about this german players forced exit.
Before there was a hint on transgressions, there was that talk of "fair use". If the player did botting, that talk would have been unnecessary. Official saying that he broke the TOS would have been sufficient to shut off any discussion. But talking about unwritten rules and "fair use" make me concerned that there has been no break of rules.
Break the rules and it is "he did wrong". No more words would have been necessary.
Break no rules and just think that this guy has been just more successful than you wanted him to be and it is "fair use" or something you can get no hold on. --> And that is what bothers me and I believe that it is bothering a part of the german community. How are you able to follow rules, if they are not stated somewhere.
I believe, we will never see that rules. If they sell 50+ chars and if we use normal game mechanics on farming (which the game requests us to do anyway) and we earn more ressources than expected, they can never tell us, we are wrong in a special way. If they sell stuff we are not allowed to use, they cheat on us. They will never say anything that will bring them in trouble that way.
As long as you have 50 characters on one account, you're fine.
If, however, you had 25 accounts (for instance), then you may well be in violation of the TOS. If they determine that excessive usage of leadership on multiple accounts is causing you to have too much AD, causing you to have an undue influence on the economy, well, they could take action.
This is incorrect.
I was banned (eventually it was lifted) for doing leadership tasks, invoking and running SCA multiple times a day on ONE account. I literally had to prove to them that I didn't bot during the audited period. I've logged in once since then.
They are auditing and banning accounts at the cyclic rate at this point. Probably an attempt to flush the player base whale/exploiter before the last big marketing push.
Wants a leadership army...
Spends a few hours making alt handles...
transfers(sells) a few mill between farm accounts to main..
gets banhammer.
Why do these nubs not realize how absolutley cheep character slots are for an f2p game. Besides your first two toons pays for new slots in about a month with leadership. Just extrapolate from there. I know people with 20+ characters on one account all free just from leadership in well under 5 months.
I have one of each class and that is all i can handle, i make more than enough AD to be happy and i dont have to be worried about looking like a robofarming gold spamming f-tard that are, as of late, getting the smackdown.
Here are a few words of wisdom from history I take to heart.
...
I was banned (eventually it was lifted) for doing leadership tasks, invoking and running SCA multiple times a day on ONE account. I literally had to prove to them that I didn't bot during the audited period. I've logged in once since then.
...
Perhaps Im wrong... or perhaps he also moved leadershipped AD between toons on his account and that caused ban (as macjae says). Obviously this would be a bug in ad seller detection engine, a pretty major one, I would say.
edit: That would explain ban of one of my friends - he didnt do leadership at all, but we run dungeons together and during AD x 2 weekend he moved, through bank, a lot of blue salvageable items on his alts and has recently moved the salvaged AD to main...
Reading this it feels like the company banned ppl just in case they have too much AD, sell too much stuff in AH , transfer AD between accounts etc.
Looks a bit like random decisions,
I read in this forum of player who spend real money to this game and got banned for no obvious reason, some of them took help from a lawyer and got everything back
The company would otherwise be forced to pay back the money you spend, bc its a contract that has to be fullfilled from both sides
Offering a broken product, never fixing it in time and blaming/banning the user for undifined abusive behavior?
No they will lose in any case because its their fault not taking care of this mess, otherwise they should stop accepting any money for it
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kreatyveMember, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 10,545Community Moderator
In the end, we do not know what information customer service has to support their ban. They will not reveal that information to any of us so sitting here arguing the reasons for it is rather pointless. If you have been banned from the game and you feel it is in error, your only course of action is through customer service.
My opinions are my own. I do not work for PWE or Cryptic. - Forum Rules - Protector's Enclave Discord - I play on Xbox Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official. Any messages written in orange are official moderation messages. Signature images are now fixed!
You just mentioned most of the reasons, why they keep their answers and rules in vague wording: avoid legal consequences.
To me it seems, that when you are a bit to clever to streamline your operations and when it rewards you well, you're making yourself prone to a ban hammer. You may be lucky to receive a reason and then you may prove them wrong. But there is no guarantee on being successful.
In fact, you have to be careful to use ordinary game mechanics efficiently. This sucks. Although they say, they check manually for any suspected behaviour, the postings seem to say that the verdict tends to be light handed and to the harsh side. I don't like that as a legit player who has spend money on the game.
My conclusion: don't spend money on a game, where you don't have the right to use the game according the rules.
In the end, we do not know what information customer service has to support their ban. They will not reveal that information to any of us so sitting here arguing the reasons for it is rather pointless. If you have been banned from the game and you feel it is in error, your only course of action is through customer service.
Yes but pointless argument is one of the things the internet was made for.
In the end, we do not know what information customer service has to support their ban. They will not reveal that information to any of us so sitting here arguing the reasons for it is rather pointless. If you have been banned from the game and you feel it is in error, your only course of action is through customer service.
Yes but pointless argument is one of the things the internet was made for.
In the end, we do not know what information customer service has to support their ban. They will not reveal that information to any of us so sitting here arguing the reasons for it is rather pointless. If you have been banned from the game and you feel it is in error, your only course of action is through customer service.
Yes but pointless argument is one of the things the internet was made for.
And it helps you and others to decide where NOT to put your money.
I have learned that lesson well.
You just mentioned most of the reasons, why they keep their answers and rules in vague wording: avoid legal consequences.
To me it seems, that when you are a bit to clever to streamline your operations and when it rewards you well, you're making yourself prone to a ban hammer. You may be lucky to receive a reason and then you may prove them wrong. But there is no guarantee on being successful.
In fact, you have to be careful to use ordinary game mechanics efficiently. This sucks. Although they say, they check manually for any suspected behaviour, the postings seem to say that the verdict tends to be light handed and to the harsh side. I don't like that as a legit player who has spend money on the game.
My conclusion: don't spend money on a game, where you don't have the right to use the game according the rules.
Why are you getting so worked up based on the word of one banned individual that has every reason to lie? He may be being honest but no one can ever know that but him and maybe cryptic. You seem to be way more upset than you should be for something that may be nothing.
You just mentioned most of the reasons, why they keep their answers and rules in vague wording: avoid legal consequences.
To me it seems, that when you are a bit to clever to streamline your operations and when it rewards you well, you're making yourself prone to a ban hammer. You may be lucky to receive a reason and then you may prove them wrong. But there is no guarantee on being successful.
In fact, you have to be careful to use ordinary game mechanics efficiently. This sucks. Although they say, they check manually for any suspected behaviour, the postings seem to say that the verdict tends to be light handed and to the harsh side. I don't like that as a legit player who has spend money on the game.
My conclusion: don't spend money on a game, where you don't have the right to use the game according the rules.
Why are you getting so worked up based on the word of one banned individual that has every reason to lie? He may be being honest but no one can ever know that but him and maybe cryptic. You seem to be way more upset than you should be for something that may be nothing.
Because he was banned AFTER he posted his achievements on the forums. He asked, if it would be okay to USE the game mechanics with about 50 characters on ONE account to farm AD with leadership. He had no reason to lie at that point. And the first official comment, said something about "fair use" because he was simply to successfull. At that time there was no mention of breaking the rules. If he had violated the TOS, they would have said so from the start and nobody would have cared about him. It's those odd reactions, that made me believe him - more than anything else.
Somebody messed up something and I don't believe it was him. Now, they cannot get out of it without loosing face. And the fact, that it can happen to any of us while doing the things the game was made for, troubles me a lot.
You just mentioned most of the reasons, why they keep their answers and rules in vague wording: avoid legal consequences.
To me it seems, that when you are a bit to clever to streamline your operations and when it rewards you well, you're making yourself prone to a ban hammer. You may be lucky to receive a reason and then you may prove them wrong. But there is no guarantee on being successful.
In fact, you have to be careful to use ordinary game mechanics efficiently. This sucks. Although they say, they check manually for any suspected behaviour, the postings seem to say that the verdict tends to be light handed and to the harsh side. I don't like that as a legit player who has spend money on the game.
My conclusion: don't spend money on a game, where you don't have the right to use the game according the rules.
Why are you getting so worked up based on the word of one banned individual that has every reason to lie? He may be being honest but no one can ever know that but him and maybe cryptic. You seem to be way more upset than you should be for something that may be nothing.
Because he was banned AFTER he posted his achievements on the forums. He asked, if it would be okay to USE the game mechanics with about 50 characters on ONE account to farm AD with leadership. He had no reason to lie at that point. And the first official comment, said something about "fair use" because he was simply to successfull. At that time there was no mention of breaking the rules. If he had violated the TOS, they would have said so from the start and nobody would have cared about him. It's those odd reactions, that made me believe him - more than anything else.
Somebody messed up something and I don't believe it was him. Now, they cannot get out of it without loosing face. And the fact, that it can happen to any of us while doing the things the game was made for, troubles me a lot.
He had reason to lie back before he was banned. Other people looked at it as an achievement. You yourself just called it one. That's enough reason for some people to lie. I don't trust either side here, but I see a lot less reason for cryptic to ban a customer for kicks than there is for him to lie. You're talking about people loosing face and being on the hook for something that can't even come close to being proven.
You just mentioned most of the reasons, why they keep their answers and rules in vague wording: avoid legal consequences.
To me it seems, that when you are a bit to clever to streamline your operations and when it rewards you well, you're making yourself prone to a ban hammer. You may be lucky to receive a reason and then you may prove them wrong. But there is no guarantee on being successful.
In fact, you have to be careful to use ordinary game mechanics efficiently. This sucks. Although they say, they check manually for any suspected behaviour, the postings seem to say that the verdict tends to be light handed and to the harsh side. I don't like that as a legit player who has spend money on the game.
My conclusion: don't spend money on a game, where you don't have the right to use the game according the rules.
Why are you getting so worked up based on the word of one banned individual that has every reason to lie? He may be being honest but no one can ever know that but him and maybe cryptic. You seem to be way more upset than you should be for something that may be nothing.
and why should we be ignorants towards other people? oh yea if it's not happening to me, then i am fine, if it's happening to other <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> him.
you are that kind of person that if u see someone on the street choking you wont help him?
because its between him and GOD.
no dude.
Being ignorant? Ignorance is a lack of knowledge. Jumping to conclusions that the customer is an angel who would never lie and the company is evil is ignorant. As far as choking, no and I find that you calling me religious extremely insulting. I'm not that brain dead as to believe in the flying spaghetti monster.
He had reason to lie back before he was banned. Other people looked at it as an achievement. You yourself just called it one. That's enough reason for some people to lie. I don't trust either side here, but I see a lot less reason for cryptic to ban a customer for kicks than there is for him to lie. You're talking about people loosing face and being on the hook for something that can't even come close to being proven.
...
I admit that it is a possibility of him doing wrong, but as I said the first official comments did not mention any breaking of the TOS. If I would have been in charge, I would have checked that first and if there would have been any clue about wrong ways, I would have mentioned THAT. No more no less.
To me that way to answer officially is a very strong clue, that the player was on the legit side. And if you follow the posts in this thread, you will see that there have been bans on other people as well who had been using leadership to farm some amount of AD with several chars. And those had been partly reinstated after proving their innocense.
That coincidents feed my doubt! And that doubt is not directed towards the players.
so what happens in that perfect scenario of yours when the company lies?
It could happen but considering they have motives to not lie, (a customer is how they make money, banned customers make no money) where as customers have every reason to lie, it's going to be rare. When it does happen the company is punished by less revenue.
i've seen people like you doing 180 degrees in their opinions exactly when they will be at their final straw.
so yea, you problably came back to the game, and you are like "that guy has more than i have, so i hope he gets banhammered" more people that get ban makes you feel better.. until you end up being 'succesfull' and you also get banned.
Nice ad hominem. Ad hominem is a sure sign that you really have no argument, and instead want to distract. Yeah I take breaks, I get bored of grinding one game so I swap between a few. I don't care what pixels others have, I care about if I'm having a good time. The only time that I care what others are doing is if they are straight up exploiting, which has a large history in this game. A very large history. In fact while I won't name names many people who have posted on this forum about their success and what others can do to achieve success have been later banned for exploits, of which there was no doubt about what happened.
so stop acting like this
1 customer come here and complains and you guys treat him like he is a villain right of the bat, or it's not possible, because a customer it's the last one that should be doubted.
Have you ever worked in customer service? I did when I was younger. The customer is almost always wrong with their facts and will lie every step of the way to get what they want. Never trust a customer. Do the minimum to keep their business so as to maximize profit.
He had reason to lie back before he was banned. Other people looked at it as an achievement. You yourself just called it one. That's enough reason for some people to lie. I don't trust either side here, but I see a lot less reason for cryptic to ban a customer for kicks than there is for him to lie. You're talking about people loosing face and being on the hook for something that can't even come close to being proven.
...
I admit that it is a possibility of him doing wrong, but as I said the first official comments did not mention any breaking of the TOS. If I would have been in charge, I would have checked that first and if there would have been any clue about wrong ways, I would have mentioned THAT. No more no less.
To me that way to answer officially is a very strong clue, that the player was on the legit side. And if you follow the posts in this thread, you will see that there have been bans on other people as well who had been using leadership to farm some amount of AD with several chars. And those had been partly reinstated after proving their innocense.
That coincidents feed my doubt! And that doubt is not directed towards the players.
I don't doubt that some players may have been hit with false positive bans when doing bot banns, then later gotten the bans reversed. The fact that those bans were reversed and this one hasn't been, is more reason to doubt bearwhatever. (sorry can't remember the last part of the handle and am feeling too lazy to look it up.)
I don't and you should always keep that amount small, just because that looks exactly like what goldsellers do.
I have several accounts, but I needed them only to create a fleet in STO. I don't send much. Maybe a few Boffs or Doffs and some lowlevel equipment.
High level equipment, ADs or anything really valuable will stay in the account. I won't move it.
so what happens in that perfect scenario of yours when the company lies?
i've seen people like you doing 180 degrees in their opinions exactly when they will be at their final straw.
so yea, you problably came back to the game, and you are like "that guy has more than i have, so i hope he gets banhammered" more people that get ban makes you feel better.. until you end up being 'succesfull' and you also get banned.
so stop acting like this
1 customer come here and complains and you guys treat him like he is a villain right of the bat, or it's not possible, because a customer it's the last one that should be doubted.
It could happen but considering they have motives to not lie, (a customer is how they make money, banned customers make no money) where as customers have every reason to lie, it's going to be rare. When it does happen the company is punished by less revenue.
hey what would you do if your account is banned today? what happens if you get a poorly customer service also?
you have 1 player that plays this game for atleast 2 years around 4-5 hours per day, he gets banned, explain to him what should he do ?
Put in the service ticket. If that falls thru, don't get your blood pressure up and take your money elsewhere. But here's the thing. My account won't be banned as I don't bot and I don't exploit.
My guess is that they have some kind of automated system for banning people who meet specific cumulative criteria of bot-like behavior (50 characters grinding leadership, no money spent on anything other than character slots, not doing anything else with those characters, transferring large amounts of AD via dummy sales on the AH, whatever). So you're not in trouble if you do one or two things, but ALL of the things taken as a whole are automatically flagged as a bot account, and auto-banned. I suspect that maybe they have been banning a lot of people this way and now are having to sift through whether or not they were actually bots or not.
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lirithielMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 2,482Arc User
so stop acting like this
1 customer come here and complains and you guys treat him like he is a villain right of the bat, or it's not possible, because a customer it's the last one that should be doubted.
Have you ever worked in customer service? I did when I was younger. The customer is almost always wrong with their facts and will lie every step of the way to get what they want. Never trust a customer. Do the minimum to keep their business so as to maximize profit.
Except that if you work in customer service the first thing they tell you is the customer is ALWAYS right, no matter what...
Our pain is self chosen.
The most important thing in life is to be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. Always be Batman.
also You are banned because farming/botting , read the TOS there is no such term in there, when a customer service is sayin this they should pin point exactly what you've violated, but they dont pin point, because there is no evidewnce, its only no money has been found on this account.
Your Account has been banned because it has been found using 3rd party programs, and they should give a straight detail on when it happend.
but when they dont give no answers and the customer only choice is to come here on forums and they say go back at customer service, its not normal.
The Games are designed for play only as offered through our Service. You agree not to access, create or provide any other means through which the game may be played by others, such as through server emulators. You agree not to use any hardware or software, including but not limited to third party tools, or any other method of support which may in any way influence or give you an advantage in the use of the Services which is not authorized by us, including but not limited to the use of ‘bots’ and/or any other method by which the Service may be played automatically without human input.
23.1
P.S. Im pretty sure that bashing customer support is sure way of getting this discussion closed.
I don't doubt that some players may have been hit with false positive bans when doing bot banns, then later gotten the bans reversed. The fact that those bans were reversed and this one hasn't been, is more reason to doubt bearwhatever. (sorry can't remember the last part of the handle and am feeling too lazy to look it up.)
I've read the complete german thread on this player and believe it of not, he was banned for farming too many ADs from leadership. No mentions of other accounts. Does this sound very much like the other bans mentioned on this thread? Why do you think I thought it fitting to post here?
Not all false positives will be reversed. Support is full of humans. If they handle things wrong, they might try to cover up too. Both sides can be wrong. Sometimes you manage yourself to get in a corner where you don't get out. Reversing that is tricky sometimes or impossible sometimes. That is IMHO what happened here.
As you don't see primarily for mistakes on the company's side, I see to it that the player is not accused simply because he is a player.
I'm not that easy following someones explanation, but here my own thinking does not see any clue for wrongdoing on the player's side. It doesn't add up that way. At least not for me.
PS The officials said in the german thread, that they won't do automatic bans. They would always check it manually. But even if that is true, humans can make mistakes themselves quite well without programs to help them doing it.
so stop acting like this
1 customer come here and complains and you guys treat him like he is a villain right of the bat, or it's not possible, because a customer it's the last one that should be doubted.
Have you ever worked in customer service? I did when I was younger. The customer is almost always wrong with their facts and will lie every step of the way to get what they want. Never trust a customer. Do the minimum to keep their business so as to maximize profit.
Except that if you work in customer service the first thing they tell you is the customer is ALWAYS right, no matter what...
No they really don't. Most jobs I worked back then when I had to deal with people the bosses would say not to trust the customers at all. If the customers could prove something to do it, or if it was something simple that could be done fast go and cheap do it.
I don't doubt that some players may have been hit with false positive bans when doing bot banns, then later gotten the bans reversed. The fact that those bans were reversed and this one hasn't been, is more reason to doubt bearwhatever. (sorry can't remember the last part of the handle and am feeling too lazy to look it up.)
I've read the complete german thread on this player and believe it of not, he was banned for farming too many ADs from leadership. No mentions of other accounts. Does this sound very much like the other bans mentioned on this thread? Why do you think I thought it fitting to post here?
Not all false positives will be reversed. Support is full of humans. If they handle things wrong, they might try to cover up too. Both sides can be wrong. Sometimes you manage yourself to get in a corner where you don't get out. Reversing that is tricky sometimes or impossible sometimes. That is IMHO what happened here.
As you don't see primarily for mistakes on the company's side, I see to it that the player is not accused simply because he is a player.
I'm not that easy following someones explanation, but here my own thinking does not see any clue for wrongdoing on the player's side. It doesn't add up that way. At least not for me.
PS The officials said in the german thread, that they won't do automatic bans. They would always check it manually. But even if that is true, humans can make mistakes themselves quite well without programs to help them doing it.
We'll have to agree to disagree because after running that thread thru google translate my first thought was that he was lying about something.
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
Charononus has been explaining the situation as any experienced team leader would.
I have been in many leadership roles in my life and there's one aspect which has always remained true: when there is a disagreement with leadership if the person who is penalized complains they almost always give half truths if not less than that to make themselves look better.
That goes for jobs, criminal activity or even video game communities.
We don't know if that person is lying or not. Plain and simple. That truth remains between that user and Cryptic.
What we do know is that Cryptic has absolutely nothing to gain from banning an innocent player. That's public relations suicide. In fact it is almost in their best interest to not ban anybody because it's extremely rare for somebody to actually get punished and not make false accusations or claims to defame them for it. Sit back and look at the trend: everybody who speaks about being punished claims innocence. It makes absolutely no sense from a public relations standpoint to ban somebody just because they make a fraction of what a bit can make by spending all day farming 50 accounts. No amount of tin foil should have you believing that claim.
It's much more likely that a user who was penalized for breaking a rule is either giving a half truth to get revenge on the company, gain sympathy to get the ruling overturned or simply doesn't agree with the rule they violated than an arbitrary decision by the company. Two examples:
I once stumbled into a former co-worker outside of work who was fired for stealing. This person was caught on camera stealing, period. He spent 20 minutes on a train ride insulting my boss for every reason in the world but avoided the topic of his theft like the plague. More or less he got caught doing something he shouldn't have done and instead of accepting the consequences he relished in insulting the person who punished his actions.
An example I deal with all the time as a moderator is people not agreeing with rules and thus claiming abuse. I am not even talking about gray area comments. I am talking about receiving appeals asking for posts that were removed for insulting others using to be reinstated because "I didn't insult them! I just called them stupid!" Well calling somebody stupid is an insult so you broke the rules whether you agree with that or not.
[At the end of the day, you are all entitled to your opinions but I am certain this topic has now run it's course. You can either believe that PWE is evil and banning players for no reason despite the logical fallacy with public relations or you can take a step back and look at how much a players who has nothing to lose will gain by not explaining the full details in order to save face, get revenge or gain sympathizers to pressure the company into looking the other way to a rule violation. No matter what, though, whether he and the others who claim innocence are guilty or not it is between them and PWE.
If you want to appeal a ban then please contact support. That is the first and only recourse in getting as ban overturned.
Comments
This.
Surely there was some misinformation in bearchasers ban - official Cryptic statement about ban reason (botting/generating too much AD) being one of them. Poor/incomplete german translations another one. I think their ban targets are ad sellers and transferring income from 50 toons to another account looks like selling it from their point of view and THATS why he got banned, leadership had nothing to do with it.
Before there was a hint on transgressions, there was that talk of "fair use". If the player did botting, that talk would have been unnecessary. Official saying that he broke the TOS would have been sufficient to shut off any discussion. But talking about unwritten rules and "fair use" make me concerned that there has been no break of rules.
Break the rules and it is "he did wrong". No more words would have been necessary.
Break no rules and just think that this guy has been just more successful than you wanted him to be and it is "fair use" or something you can get no hold on. --> And that is what bothers me and I believe that it is bothering a part of the german community. How are you able to follow rules, if they are not stated somewhere.
I believe, we will never see that rules. If they sell 50+ chars and if we use normal game mechanics on farming (which the game requests us to do anyway) and we earn more ressources than expected, they can never tell us, we are wrong in a special way. If they sell stuff we are not allowed to use, they cheat on us. They will never say anything that will bring them in trouble that way.
This is incorrect.
I was banned (eventually it was lifted) for doing leadership tasks, invoking and running SCA multiple times a day on ONE account. I literally had to prove to them that I didn't bot during the audited period. I've logged in once since then.
They are auditing and banning accounts at the cyclic rate at this point. Probably an attempt to flush the player base whale/exploiter before the last big marketing push.
Spends a few hours making alt handles...
transfers(sells) a few mill between farm accounts to main..
gets banhammer.
Why do these nubs not realize how absolutley cheep character slots are for an f2p game. Besides your first two toons pays for new slots in about a month with leadership. Just extrapolate from there. I know people with 20+ characters on one account all free just from leadership in well under 5 months.
I have one of each class and that is all i can handle, i make more than enough AD to be happy and i dont have to be worried about looking like a robofarming gold spamming f-tard that are, as of late, getting the smackdown.
Here are a few words of wisdom from history I take to heart.
git gud scrubs.
~Confucius
Perhaps Im wrong... or perhaps he also moved leadershipped AD between toons on his account and that caused ban (as macjae says). Obviously this would be a bug in ad seller detection engine, a pretty major one, I would say.
edit: That would explain ban of one of my friends - he didnt do leadership at all, but we run dungeons together and during AD x 2 weekend he moved, through bank, a lot of blue salvageable items on his alts and has recently moved the salvaged AD to main...
Looks a bit like random decisions,
I read in this forum of player who spend real money to this game and got banned for no obvious reason, some of them took help from a lawyer and got everything back
The company would otherwise be forced to pay back the money you spend, bc its a contract that has to be fullfilled from both sides
Offering a broken product, never fixing it in time and blaming/banning the user for undifined abusive behavior?
No they will lose in any case because its their fault not taking care of this mess, otherwise they should stop accepting any money for it
Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official.
Any messages written in orange are official moderation messages. Signature images are now fixed!
You just mentioned most of the reasons, why they keep their answers and rules in vague wording: avoid legal consequences.
To me it seems, that when you are a bit to clever to streamline your operations and when it rewards you well, you're making yourself prone to a ban hammer. You may be lucky to receive a reason and then you may prove them wrong. But there is no guarantee on being successful.
In fact, you have to be careful to use ordinary game mechanics efficiently. This sucks. Although they say, they check manually for any suspected behaviour, the postings seem to say that the verdict tends to be light handed and to the harsh side. I don't like that as a legit player who has spend money on the game.
My conclusion: don't spend money on a game, where you don't have the right to use the game according the rules.
Yes but pointless argument is one of the things the internet was made for.
Oh no it wasn't...
And it helps you and others to decide where NOT to put your money.
I have learned that lesson well.
Why are you getting so worked up based on the word of one banned individual that has every reason to lie? He may be being honest but no one can ever know that but him and maybe cryptic. You seem to be way more upset than you should be for something that may be nothing.
Because he was banned AFTER he posted his achievements on the forums. He asked, if it would be okay to USE the game mechanics with about 50 characters on ONE account to farm AD with leadership. He had no reason to lie at that point. And the first official comment, said something about "fair use" because he was simply to successfull. At that time there was no mention of breaking the rules. If he had violated the TOS, they would have said so from the start and nobody would have cared about him. It's those odd reactions, that made me believe him - more than anything else.
Somebody messed up something and I don't believe it was him. Now, they cannot get out of it without loosing face. And the fact, that it can happen to any of us while doing the things the game was made for, troubles me a lot.
He had reason to lie back before he was banned. Other people looked at it as an achievement. You yourself just called it one. That's enough reason for some people to lie. I don't trust either side here, but I see a lot less reason for cryptic to ban a customer for kicks than there is for him to lie. You're talking about people loosing face and being on the hook for something that can't even come close to being proven.
Being ignorant? Ignorance is a lack of knowledge. Jumping to conclusions that the customer is an angel who would never lie and the company is evil is ignorant. As far as choking, no and I find that you calling me religious extremely insulting. I'm not that brain dead as to believe in the flying spaghetti monster.
I admit that it is a possibility of him doing wrong, but as I said the first official comments did not mention any breaking of the TOS. If I would have been in charge, I would have checked that first and if there would have been any clue about wrong ways, I would have mentioned THAT. No more no less.
To me that way to answer officially is a very strong clue, that the player was on the legit side. And if you follow the posts in this thread, you will see that there have been bans on other people as well who had been using leadership to farm some amount of AD with several chars. And those had been partly reinstated after proving their innocense.
That coincidents feed my doubt! And that doubt is not directed towards the players.
Nice ad hominem. Ad hominem is a sure sign that you really have no argument, and instead want to distract. Yeah I take breaks, I get bored of grinding one game so I swap between a few. I don't care what pixels others have, I care about if I'm having a good time. The only time that I care what others are doing is if they are straight up exploiting, which has a large history in this game. A very large history. In fact while I won't name names many people who have posted on this forum about their success and what others can do to achieve success have been later banned for exploits, of which there was no doubt about what happened.
Have you ever worked in customer service? I did when I was younger. The customer is almost always wrong with their facts and will lie every step of the way to get what they want. Never trust a customer. Do the minimum to keep their business so as to maximize profit.
I don't doubt that some players may have been hit with false positive bans when doing bot banns, then later gotten the bans reversed. The fact that those bans were reversed and this one hasn't been, is more reason to doubt bearwhatever. (sorry can't remember the last part of the handle and am feeling too lazy to look it up.)
I don't and you should always keep that amount small, just because that looks exactly like what goldsellers do.
I have several accounts, but I needed them only to create a fleet in STO. I don't send much. Maybe a few Boffs or Doffs and some lowlevel equipment.
High level equipment, ADs or anything really valuable will stay in the account. I won't move it.
Put in the service ticket. If that falls thru, don't get your blood pressure up and take your money elsewhere. But here's the thing. My account won't be banned as I don't bot and I don't exploit.
Except that if you work in customer service the first thing they tell you is the customer is ALWAYS right, no matter what...
The most important thing in life is to be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. Always be Batman.
23.1
P.S. Im pretty sure that bashing customer support is sure way of getting this discussion closed.
I've read the complete german thread on this player and believe it of not, he was banned for farming too many ADs from leadership. No mentions of other accounts. Does this sound very much like the other bans mentioned on this thread? Why do you think I thought it fitting to post here?
Not all false positives will be reversed. Support is full of humans. If they handle things wrong, they might try to cover up too. Both sides can be wrong. Sometimes you manage yourself to get in a corner where you don't get out. Reversing that is tricky sometimes or impossible sometimes. That is IMHO what happened here.
As you don't see primarily for mistakes on the company's side, I see to it that the player is not accused simply because he is a player.
I'm not that easy following someones explanation, but here my own thinking does not see any clue for wrongdoing on the player's side. It doesn't add up that way. At least not for me.
PS The officials said in the german thread, that they won't do automatic bans. They would always check it manually. But even if that is true, humans can make mistakes themselves quite well without programs to help them doing it.
No they really don't. Most jobs I worked back then when I had to deal with people the bosses would say not to trust the customers at all. If the customers could prove something to do it, or if it was something simple that could be done fast go and cheap do it.
We'll have to agree to disagree because after running that thread thru google translate my first thought was that he was lying about something.
I have been in many leadership roles in my life and there's one aspect which has always remained true: when there is a disagreement with leadership if the person who is penalized complains they almost always give half truths if not less than that to make themselves look better.
That goes for jobs, criminal activity or even video game communities.
We don't know if that person is lying or not. Plain and simple. That truth remains between that user and Cryptic.
What we do know is that Cryptic has absolutely nothing to gain from banning an innocent player. That's public relations suicide. In fact it is almost in their best interest to not ban anybody because it's extremely rare for somebody to actually get punished and not make false accusations or claims to defame them for it. Sit back and look at the trend: everybody who speaks about being punished claims innocence. It makes absolutely no sense from a public relations standpoint to ban somebody just because they make a fraction of what a bit can make by spending all day farming 50 accounts. No amount of tin foil should have you believing that claim.
It's much more likely that a user who was penalized for breaking a rule is either giving a half truth to get revenge on the company, gain sympathy to get the ruling overturned or simply doesn't agree with the rule they violated than an arbitrary decision by the company. Two examples:
I once stumbled into a former co-worker outside of work who was fired for stealing. This person was caught on camera stealing, period. He spent 20 minutes on a train ride insulting my boss for every reason in the world but avoided the topic of his theft like the plague. More or less he got caught doing something he shouldn't have done and instead of accepting the consequences he relished in insulting the person who punished his actions.
An example I deal with all the time as a moderator is people not agreeing with rules and thus claiming abuse. I am not even talking about gray area comments. I am talking about receiving appeals asking for posts that were removed for insulting others using to be reinstated because "I didn't insult them! I just called them stupid!" Well calling somebody stupid is an insult so you broke the rules whether you agree with that or not.
[At the end of the day, you are all entitled to your opinions but I am certain this topic has now run it's course. You can either believe that PWE is evil and banning players for no reason despite the logical fallacy with public relations or you can take a step back and look at how much a players who has nothing to lose will gain by not explaining the full details in order to save face, get revenge or gain sympathizers to pressure the company into looking the other way to a rule violation. No matter what, though, whether he and the others who claim innocence are guilty or not it is between them and PWE.
If you want to appeal a ban then please contact support. That is the first and only recourse in getting as ban overturned.