Recent Bans for Botting and Exploiting

Bans great.
Cheating bad.
False positives bad.
Gold deleted good.
Devs with spines EXCELLENT
Macros remain unclear.
Portalarium cross promotes Razer.
Razer synapse 2.0 makes macros easy!
Macros are not bots.

Damn I wish I was skilled enough to trigger false positives. Then I'd know I was on the right track. As soon as I get my account locked I'll put it in my sig.

Kvow Triumvir - Even robots thought he was a robot.

Did I miss anything?

8 pages? I figure it's not locked only because Berek started the thread.

 

This is the kind of attitude that concerns me?? Give me a break, get off your high horse and take a step back! You obviously don't understand, just another forum warrior hard at work!

 

I have a suggestion!!

I sympathise with most of the sentiments expressed here - we want to see the botters and exploiters expelled from the game, and there is a varying amount of sympathy for innocent people caught up in auto-triggered suspensions.

@Berek and @DarkStarr, I humbly offer an alternative.

Botters and obvious exploiters => Ban hammer, without mercy. Get rid of the scum.

If an auto alarm is triggered, the account holder should immediately get an email, maybe along these lines:

Dear (insert name here)

Our automated bot and exploitation detection system has highlighted an inexplicably large amount of gold , resources or activity (nature specified) associated with your account. While this may be legitimate, we are determined to eliminate botting, cheating, and exploitation in all its forms.

We require an explanation of the situation within two working days. If this is not received or is unsatisfactory, your account will be suspended for (x amount of time).

All transactions within the game are monitored, so transferring items or gold to other players or alts will not resolve the situation.

Looking forward to your speedy reply

This removes the possibility of a player getting hit with an auto-ban at the start of a weekend, and I'm sure we would all agree that Port staff can't be expected to be available 24/7. A two working day window should be more than adequate to effect an explanation if all is above board, and if not then the ban hammer will strike.

My 2c worth

 

Well, I see few issues here.

Not everyone playing the game is fluent in English to provide clear answer. They probably know someone who is good at English, but it might be hard for these people to explain what they were doin. Especially when it comes to simple macroes that can be very useful in this game because of its mechanics. And the line between macroing and botting can be very thin sometimes.
Not everyone uses their primary email to register the game, it would be ebtter to have this message popped out when logging into game, because the email might be overlooked. Or end up in junk/spam folder.

I think that accounts that trigger warning flags should have suspended transactions. All items could be transfered only to private chests, they should not be able to put anything on vendors and so on. Otherwise there is risk of either removing ill-gained goods from players who bought them not knowing it will be removed. Or there is risk the gold getting into economy and affectign it significantly.

Oh and there should be some really good monitoring system in place to see where does the gold generated by exploiters go in the game...it should be removed imho, but that gets tricky with real money transactions involved, especially when exploite buys rares with gold and sells them for dollars or bitcoins.

 

I could be wrong, however my impression is that using a macro to help/expedite the performance of some task that is NOT an exploit is fine, as long as it is "attended". Basically, nobody on the other end should be able to clearly see that you are macroing, and the gains from doing so should be within the confines of "normal".

 

So if i have 10 computers, all running a macro to click on a tree or an ore node and loot it and im there watching, its ok?

 

There is no "witch-style" hunt here except the one going on in your own mind. You have still failed to provide any evidence for your complaints, but instead appear to be attempting to forward a strained "slippery slope" argument.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/slippery-slope

Moreover, your analogies are rife with other fallacious thinking and hyperbole which has led you somewhat inexorably to attempt a Holocaust analogy which is not only highly offensive, but just plain wrong on so many levels.

People who attempt to make arguments that anything happening online is somehow equitable to real life tend to make me wonder just how privileged they must be to even consider such an argument tenable at any level.

And yes, it's mockworthy behavior, because engaging in that kind of nonsense makes a mockery out of people who are suffering REAL trauma from all manner of REAL atrocities and injustices. Somebody who feels "traumatized" over an accidental temp ban should probably be spending their time/money on therapy instead of gaming, as I would guess there are much deeper issues going on.

Getting temporarily banned from a game while under investigation for exploiting is absolutely 1000% unlike having one's actual liberties stripped away for false allegations.

Gaming is for the privileged, and we don't have any "rights" under a TOS or EULA since agreeing to them is entirely a free choice on our part. Try taking any of your arguments to a judge and you'd be laughed right out of court.

Unless or until you can present any evidence that you or anybody else has been unfairly banned, then all you are accomplishing is getting yourself worked up over a bogeyman, and disrupting the forums as a result.

Relax. We're supposed to be having fun.

 

Not sure about "OK" but it sounds like it would definitely be a huge waste of time and effort. What's your point?

 

my point is, at what time does macroing become scripting? does being active make it all ok and what if a GM watches this and then bans you, asuming its a bot and that you were not there?

 

As soon as it last longer than a few seconds and/or is looped.

 

Ah. Well it might be worth getting more clarity on this, but again I think if the in-game behavior results in a huge advantage, then it is going to draw attention and investigation. Remember, we've got a tiny dev team here... there really isn't bandwidth to go around investigating potential macroing that isn't resulting in an unfair advantage.

For example, I've considered setting up a macro for a fishing run in Jannaford. Even if I totally automated it, there would be little gain over me doing it manually. I'd end up with the same number of fish... actually maybe a few less.

That's different from setting up a macro to mine a bugged ore node that is respawning too quickly.

 

I would say that is a perfect example over a macro that should result in a warning/ban. Where is the gain? The gain is that you can go and do other things whilst it is running.

 

Old news, but fits this part about Razer and macros, i guess.

Utilizing the G-keys as extra hot-keys? No problem.

Using them for macros (as long as they are the same as can be done in game)? No problem.

Using the programmable macro functions to include time delays, multiple keypresses per button press, and such? That can get you in trouble.

Merely having a logitech keyboard, and even running it's software, on it's own, will not get you into any trouble... as long as it's not used in an exploitative fashion.

http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/10496440004

 

so a macro to double press W with a delay in between.... Ban...

 

Well I suppose I could... but it's not like I'd be crashing the economy by cornering the fish market! What I'm trying to say is that, unless I looped it for hours and left it unattended, it would be pretty tough for somebody watching me to know the difference.

Plus the upcoming changes to the overburdening effect on focus will put a quick halt to pack muling, and also make it easier for devs to spot an unattended toon.

But all in all there does seem to be ambiguity surrounding the policy. Promoting a keyboard that is geared specially toward macroing, and then disallowing the user to deploy any of those features seems... curious.

My impression from what I've read/heard from the devs is basically don't be a jerk and do anything which would ruin the game for others and you're probably fine. And if not, you'd probably get a warning or a temp ban... certainly nothing to cry about or lose sleep over.

 

No.

They're targeting exploitation. Specifically, resource gathering. And they say "can" result in a ban. Not "will" result in a ban.
A macro that double taps W is none of that.

 

It seems using analogy approach doesn't seem to get my point. I apologize for using the wrong analogies that may offend other people.

Now, what if I point out from the long term strategic planning? The actual concern I have with this issue is a long term scalability.

Right now, Chris and/or other staffs will have to stop what they're doing on the game development side to go investigate the behavior of these botters/exploiters. As game developer progress further, they will have less time and less time to be putting into this type of investigation. When it's at the point where they could no longer spare their time to put into the investigate and make sure that those who got banned are those who deserved to be punished, not by accident or oversight. They could come to options like these:

1. Hire more people to work on this: While I trust that the staffs will do the right things and clear those who were wrongly detected eventually. These things take times away from the development. Again, I am not saying that we should not ban exploiter/botters, but the resource to put into the task isn't free nor trivial.

2. Rely more on automated detection system: No matter how much they fine tuning the detection conditions or even go as far as machine learning for AI-based detection, there will always be a small percentage of false acceptance. Let's assume the system is so sophisticate that they can say it's 99.9% accurate. When we have 1000 players and then only 1 player may be out of luck. That probably take a few hours for the customer service team to review the request and escalate issue to the investigation team. When we have 10,000 players, then 10 people may be effect by this. The amount of hours it take to get all of their account cleared would multiply up compare to just 1 person. If we have 100,000 players, then it will grow even more. Should we really be thinking that the game will only have X of players to play and the Y number of people who can't play the game due to false positive is negligible?

3. Relying on other players to report the activities: I already gave the example of the potential flaw on peer reports. While there is no evidence that it's currently happening for bot/exploiters, there have already been a situation with the bag renaming scandal before. Regardless of whether these reports were malicious intent to accuse or simply honest mistake, the staff will have to spend their time investigate into this as well. Should they just go ahead and suspend a person account because 30 people report on the same person and just wait until this person reach back to clear out his name? How would they handle it when there are 100 people being wrongfully accused?

Yes and yes, we need to crack down on botters and exploiters, but at the same time, we need to streamline the review and appeal processes as well. They shouldn't be ignore just because the small percentage of people are affected by it. As the game grows, we will have more players, that small percentages could turned into a big number eventually.

I could pull out couple more practical real world examples, but at this point, I will avoid that since everyone seems to take things literally

 

They need to ban everyone, that whole game is full of bots :3

 

Per Berek, no.

 

While you are going a llittle over the top with your reactionary sarcasm here, i do think you brought up a great point.

Lets use the example you pprovided.

Double tapping w to run is tedious and ovwr time, can be painful for those with carpal tunnel, or arthritis. Makes sense to set a macro with delay to run.

Lets say six months later, devs find an exploit where if a short enough delay is used, no stamina is lost, so you can run fotever.
So they check keypress logs for this anomaly, knowing, by research, how quick is too quick for the human hand to move in a doubletap fashio...thry would be searching for a range of speeds thrn. Still following?

Ok. You would then be in violation of exploiting the system, for the last six months, because you did not report it, regardless if you even noticed the gain or not.


The fix? Shoot them an email with the app name, and the macros you designed, with an explanation why you made them, asking if this is considererd exploiting or not. If it is, ask how you can make it within their threshholds, and still allow you to not damage your arthritic hand any further.