Bans Weren't For Surveys In Banks. They Were For VERY High Ratios Of Mats Per Survey

OrphanHelgen

Funny dreugh wax dropped 3k in price in one week

mdylan2013

It's a bit concerning that people might be suspended for having a farming session or clearing out a backlog of writs though. Hopefully that won't be the case going forward.

Tandor

mdylan2013 wrote: »

It's a bit concerning that people might be suspended for having a farming session or clearing out a backlog of writs though. Hopefully that won't be the case going forward.

Has there been any official acknowledgement that that is what has happened? I ask that without in any way seeking to judge those who have relied on that defence.

mdylan2013

Tandor wrote: »

mdylan2013 wrote: »

It's a bit concerning that people might be suspended for having a farming session or clearing out a backlog of writs though. Hopefully that won't be the case going forward.

Has there been any official acknowledgement that that is what has happened? I ask that without in any way seeking to judge those who have relied on that defence.

I don't think so, it's just a concern I have. Hopefully it's based on an amount collected per visit to the area rather than over a period of time... If that makes any sense.

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO

First time Ive heard of customer service being called "diabolical" lol. Maybe Comcast might have that title but ZOS is better than that heh.

mtwiggz

Hey @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_AlanG - are players that used the exploit going to be able to keep all of the exploited materials and gold made from said materials? Still haven't seen an official response about this.

Verbalinkontinenz

Greetings,

After further review, we are lifting the suspension on this account. We will make sure that this suspension does not count against this account’s record in any way.

We are making every effort to ensure Tamriel is a fair and fun place. Please accept our apologies for keeping you out of the game. While we know that it doesn’t make up for keeping you from adventuring with your friends for the past two days, we’ve added 1500 Crowns to your account. Please accept them along with our apologies.

Warm Regards,
The Elder Scrolls Online Team

anybody Else trying to tell we are lyers?

alexkdd99

llSRRll wrote: »

Love how you visit a prison and every one of the inmates will tell you they are innocent lol, seems like thats going on here and part of human nature. I do writs everyday and get surveys just about everyday and didnt get banned bc I didnt cheat. People will lie their asses off when they know they got caught smh.

Have you ever actually visited a prison? The people claiming they are innocent in prison are actually the minority. Why speak about something you know nothing about.

Inklings

...

Verbalinkontinenz wrote: »

Greetings,

After further review, we are lifting the suspension on this account. We will make sure that this suspension does not count against this account’s record in any way.

We are making every effort to ensure Tamriel is a fair and fun place. Please accept our apologies for keeping you out of the game. While we know that it doesn’t make up for keeping you from adventuring with your friends for the past two days, we’ve added 1500 Crowns to your account. Please accept them along with our apologies.

Warm Regards,
The Elder Scrolls Online Team

anybody Else trying to tell we are lyers?

So glad to see this. I'm sure in the next few days more people will be posting these. How many tickets did you have to submit if i may ask?

Tommy1979AtWar

@Verbalinkontinenz congrats, that's awesome news, hopefully other peoples accounts are cleared soon too.

Caradawc

[quote="jamesharv2005ub17_ESO;2936947" pretty non diabolical to me. I bet the other guys who insisted there was no point in putting in a ticket are wishing they had now.[/quote]

I apologise and take back what I said previously, it took some pushing but in the end ZOS did what we were asking for all along and investigated our appeals with the expected result that our good names have been restored

WhiteCoatSyndrome

Glad to hear you're back in the game guys!

Caradawc

Inklings wrote: »

So glad to see this. I'm sure in the next few days more people will be posting these. How many tickets did you have to submit if i may ask?

For me I just responded when they closed the ticket twice asking for them to investigate plus if the ticket went past their 6 working hour goal 1 bumped it. In the end it took 2 days but that's fine, as I've said all along the days off don't matter to me, my good name however does.

nimander99

Verbalinkontinenz wrote: »

Greetings,

After further review, we are lifting the suspension on this account. We will make sure that this suspension does not count against this account’s record in any way.

We are making every effort to ensure Tamriel is a fair and fun place. Please accept our apologies for keeping you out of the game. While we know that it doesn’t make up for keeping you from adventuring with your friends for the past two days, we’ve added 1500 Crowns to your account. Please accept them along with our apologies.

Warm Regards,
The Elder Scrolls Online Team

anybody Else trying to tell we are lyers?

Every shred of data is tracked in MMO's hence the occasional list you get from some games where they spell out number of player deaths, how much gold was made, how many of each type of monster killed etc. etc.

My point being anyone who just was banned on accident or incorrectly would be sorted, it would just take time, which sucks!
Glad its sorted and yer back. Im sure anyone else who put in a ticket and legit wasn't breaking the rules will be reinstated as well.

helediron

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO wrote: »

helediron wrote: »

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO wrote: »

helediron wrote: »

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO wrote: »

helediron wrote: »

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO wrote: »

helediron wrote: »

Nifty2g wrote: »

....snip...

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Svalinn wrote: »

Since all other threads are beeing closed and this seems to have become the "main one" i'll copy paste here what i wrote about this in another one:

As far as i know.. in the german part of the forum a ZOS staff member replied to a tread like this stating that they banned people that actually had 500+ materials obtained from 1 single survey.. there's a tread with the source and the translation of it searching the oldes posts and well.. i'm really too tired to go and look for it so just trust my word xD

Anyway... if that is the case, and it seems to be since it was officially said, it's totally useless to start saying "i didn't do it" because i doubt this kind of data can be "bad read"...

...and on top of that i've seen this happens in too many mmos for me to believe the players over the devs.. i mean in some mmos there were people claiming that they used the nickname "gold_seller" just as a joke and no, they didn't really gold sell and their ban for gold selling was totally unfair ad the company should burn to hell.

Sorry, i trust the devs on the people that were banned.

Glad you copy/pasted this one here, I was actually commenting when Alan closed it.

The german forum doesn't say "the criteria for banning people was a mats/survey ratio above 500". Kai said "the criteria used was the mats/survey ratio. Now if you come and tell me that you got over 500 mats from a single survey by pure luck, I just don't believe you". He was just giving an example, not a fixed figure.
The translation was googled so it's pretty much rubbish.

It is possible that people who have normally harvested a survey and then gone on farming normally for a couple of hours have been caught mistakenly. There are hundreds of reasons why a script can render wrong or partially wrong results. I'm not saying that everyone's innocent, but you should assume everyone's guilty either. We simply don't know, case by case.

And... do we really have to know ... ?

You can't go on and harvest the unique nodes these surveys give you.

ZOS get informed that there is an exploit going on with players harvesting "Lush Ancestor Silk" they write up a script for players harvesting x amount of nodes in x amount of time for suspicious behavior and I believe the number they would write up would be realistic enough to not catch someone who has saved their surveys.

They run the script from when assistants were introduced to now and ban anyone exceeding the benchmark.

But in saying that, yes I believe some people were wrongly banned, and this is all guessing but I'm fairly sure that's how they would have handled their script. From the time they were notified on this to the time the bans and fix rolled out it seems like thats what was happening.
I'm unsure how they would even handle fixing someone who was banned wrongly

Hmm, this is news to me. I DO harvest normal nodes at the same time when collecting survey mats, and do it fast. It's quite common i have over 500 mats after survey node route through Wrothgar. In fact i move from survey to survey by harvesting in-between.

You get 500 mats from one survey? If not the guy was talking about from one survey.

No, from the route through Wrothgar. Usually i have almost every survey with me. Äsch, i don't have exact statistics for you, this is just what i commonly see afterwards when saving stuff to bank. Stacks, lots. ZOS could have filtered people having lots of mats in their pocket, and the other then talks about one survey. Corporate confusion as usual.

Not true. It has nothing to do with how many mats you had in your inventory.

Please stay within facts. I have the suspense but i will not argue about evidence here. I keep it private between me and ZOS support. But It doesn't help if you start inventing things out of your head.

If you guys would actually read it had to do with having 500+ mats off ONE SURVEY. Doing surveys will not get you banned. Doing the same survey 1000 times will. The facts are the facts.

That is exactly the problem. They didn't check it that way.

How do you know that?

Because my suspension has been lifted, and it was part of evidence. I won't discuss details about their investigations. All i ask is to stop spreading false rumours.

Ch4mpTW

I can genuinely say for a fact that the way ZOS has handled this situation was absolutely ridiculous. Some people are still getting banned supposedly (how true that is, I have no idea), some people still have yet to get their tickets properly and fully investigated, and ZO$ has still not came out with a formal apology. Just a little bit of crowns deposited to some people's accounts for their screw-up, and a half-assed apology (in the innocent person's email). And yet and STILL, people will say, "Oh, ZO$ can do no wrong. They're fine. Stop bullying them, and all they did was get rid of the exploiters. They should've punished those caught longer and removed their items."

Just keep in mind at the end of the day, this is NOT their first major screw-up with ban waves being used. And yet and still, even with them continuing to treat us customers like crap -- some of you guys will still defend them to a tee... I really wonder sometimes what's going on mentally with some folks...

Ch4mpTW

I'll tell you what doe. I'll never again purchase another item from the crown store, buy another ESO Plus subscription, and never beta test another product for Zenimax.

Verbalinkontinenz

Mistakes happen, I accept apologies. What I dont like are the people, blaming everyone to be an exploiter, without accepting, that zOS also could have made an mistake. What I also dislike is, that this ban-script was also as ill-conceived as the last DLC. So you think, all that criticism does change anything? In the end, I believe, that stupid rush-ban-script is only the result of all that people, screaming "ban dis, ban dad". In my perception, ZOS only wanted to show balls in front of the community "oh look here, we found so many exploiters and banned them - we are doing sthg against exploiters, look now!!!" and failed again.

I didnt do as much as possible, to trigger the ban-script. i only do 4 of 6 crafters-dailies and also only with 5 of my 8 chars. i cant remember, doing more than three times same writ (the script couldn't detect wether blacksmithing writ in wrothgar 1 a, b and c are three different writs, or all the same, as example), i know, that i sometimes trigger the cp-related skill, that u have double-loot in a ressource. it wasnt that hard, to trigger the ban script, and was just a thing of RNG (for the people who are also doing dailies with many chars and argumented that they didnt get a ban): wether u got 2, 3 or 4 times same writ on same day with many characters, and wether u skilled double-loot in cp-system and how often it happened. people who are doing crafters dailies with more than 5 chars in one zone had quite a higher chance to trigger the ban, so at this moment i am suspecting, that more people were banned innocently, than zos-members admit and as zos would ever admit.

Tryxus

mkshepherd1 wrote: »

VINDICATED!!!! Email received!

Verbalinkontinenz wrote: »

Greetings,

After further review, we are lifting the suspension on this account. We will make sure that this suspension does not count against this account’s record in any way.

We are making every effort to ensure Tamriel is a fair and fun place. Please accept our apologies for keeping you out of the game. While we know that it doesn’t make up for keeping you from adventuring with your friends for the past two days, we’ve added 1500 Crowns to your account. Please accept them along with our apologies.

Warm Regards,
The Elder Scrolls Online Team

anybody Else trying to tell we are lyers?

gz

ZOS_DaryaK

We've removed posts that were not contributing to the discussion in any constructive way. We are aware this is a contentious subject, but we still expect everyone to avoid personal attacks, baiting and flaming.

mtwiggz

ZOS_DaryaK wrote: »

We've removed posts that were not contributing to the discussion in any constructive way. We are aware this is a contentious subject, but we still expect everyone to avoid personal attacks, baiting and flaming.

Any official word on what will happen with all of the exploited materials? ... @ZOS_DaryaK @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_AlanG

Korah_Eaglecry

HxC wrote: »

Korah_Eaglecry wrote: »

HxC wrote: »

FLuFFyxMuFFiN wrote: »

HxC wrote: »

Volkodav wrote: »

HxC wrote: »

Volkodav wrote: »

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO wrote: »

Volkodav wrote: »

If someone has no clue that this isnt supposed to happen,they shouldnt be banned.Someone might just think they found a glitch and is using it until it is fixed. Not realizing they could be banned for it. I dont think it's cool to exploit a glitch,but everyone did it with the troves until that got fixed and no one got banned.Perhaps this is the same situation,..only they broke rules they had no idea existed.

Ignorance of crime is not a defense. Otherwise people would simply claim they didnt know they couldnt do that and get off every time. As far as the thieves troves they just respawned quickly. There was nothing you had to do to make it respawn quickly. Thats the difference.

I can see your point.Forgive my ignorance.I was offering my thoughts.Sorry.

No you right you shouldn't be banned for exploit as exploiting means you intentionaly use a bug to gain an unfair advantage.

Didnt I just apologize for having added my thoughts? Is getting your two cents in worth that much to you? Fine,go ahead.Rant.
Personally.,I prefer the other more intelligent comment to mine,..instead of yours.

(there's 2 "l"s in intentionally,btw.)

Let's clarify , you're right people shouldn't be banned for exploiting if they use a bug without noticing it, because to exploit you need to intentionally use the bug to get and unfair advantage.

Yes but this exploit could not have been done by accident. You would have had to put the survey in your bank knowing that it would not go away. Take it back out and repeat the process. You can't honestly believe somebody would do all those steps by accident.

True, but people like me who doesn't purchased the assistant banker have their account suspended for survey exploiting. So the suspension is not about using the banker assistant but for gathering a "suspicious" amount of mats from a single map.

But you can gather multiple times the same node with multiple maps you got from multiple characters and trigger the automatic suspension script.

It's common for me to have to gather 3 or 4 times in a row the same map and it's like that from the begining of crafting dailies.With 6 characters doing all quest on a daily basis, i have 5+ maps each day.

Except others have stated that theyve used multiple surveys in one location without tripping the script. So it seems that those claiming the opposite arent being as forthcoming. And are likely exploiters who just cant fess up to their own behavior.

I already say to you and your friends, I don't care about what you think , i know i have done nothing wrong, so could you stop reply to this thread, we don't care about you're love of witch hunting and i already know that you'll never apologies when we'll prove our innocence.

I'll reply to whatever thread I please. And if you really didnt care about what I have to say. You wouldnt be responding and getting all bent out of shape over the fact that Ive made a comment now would you?

vyndral13preub18_ESO

*adjust tinfoil hat*

So do we think ZoS would willingly leave in a bug because it might cause them to sell more of one of the most expensive items then have in the store. Just trying to earn an extra buck of those cheaters. Then fixing the bug when someone finally post it on the forums.

Nah, no comapny would do that... Well except the ones in it for the money. So yeah, all of them.

Elsonso

.

vyndral13preub18_ESO wrote: »

*adjust tinfoil hat*

So do we think ZoS would willingly leave in a bug because it might cause them to sell more of one of the most expensive items then have in the store. Just trying to earn an extra buck of those cheaters. Then fixing the bug when someone finally post it on the forums.

Nah, no comapny would do that... Well except the ones in it for the money. So yeah, all of them.

No.

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO

I agree I dont believe this was some nefarious plot by ZOS to sell banker assistants.

vyndral13preub18_ESO

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO wrote: »

I agree I dont believe this was some nefarious plot by ZOS to sell banker assistants.

Come on now. Ive seen enough of your post, you are usually all in on this is a company and companies do stuff to make money. What is the down side of this evil plot?

Some cheaters pay some extra money? And no one else even blinks an eye. Heck look at this thread, even the people wrongly accused no one believes. So who would believe that they would do this?

Even if they did do this what did they do wrong? Again ive seen enough of your post to know that you are ok with bugs and problems and giving them time to fix them. Say they did release this with a know bug. How is it any different then the other known bugs they release content with?

It isnt really. Except for this time maybe they make a couple exrea bucks off people who want to cheat. Heck we could even raise the price over what might seem reasonable for that item. What company wouldnt see that as a win/win?

Ch4mpTW

vyndral13preub18_ESO wrote: »

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO wrote: »

I agree I dont believe this was some nefarious plot by ZOS to sell banker assistants.

Come on now. Ive seen enough of your post, you are usually all in on this is a company and companies do stuff to make money. What is the down side of this evil plot?

Some cheaters pay some extra money? And no one else even blinks an eye. Heck look at this thread, even the people wrongly accused no one believes. So who would believe that they would do this?

Even if they did do this what did they do wrong? Again ive seen enough of your post to know that you are ok with bugs and problems and giving them time to fix them. Say they did release this with a know bug. How is it any different then the other known bugs they release content with?

It isnt really. Except for this time maybe they make a couple exrea bucks off people who want to cheat. Heck we could even raise the price over what might seem reasonable for that item. What company wouldnt see that as a win/win?

There's a logic to this, that I haven't considered before. Very insightful.

Alcast

If you get 500 mats from 1 survey you deserve to be banned. I mean from 1 survey you get usually like 50 mats max?
get rekt

Innicents have been bannded. exploiters still in the game. Thats how ZOS rolls. Kappa

Verbalinkontinenz

Alcast wrote: »

If you get 500 mats from 1 survey you deserve to be banned. I mean from 1 survey you get usually like 50 mats max?
get rekt

Innicents have been bannded. exploiters still in the game. Thats how ZOS rolls. Kappa

u still didnt understand: the ban-scrippt wasnt able to distinguish, wether u used writ I a, writ I b, writ I c (if u have many chars and did more crafters dailies and got same writs from different char and were giving them through bank to main char), so it wasnt able to distinguish, wether u "duplicated" that item or wether u got it from different dailies (collected them in boxes over time or by different chars). even if u went through wayshrine to bankier and get it, and logged through to put them one afer another into bank to collect the mats then - the script didnt make any differences. so it could happen that u collected mats 3-4 times same day from same writ, but it were 3 or 4 different writs, not the same (but every writ of them had same id, so to script it was one same writ). if u have cp in one tree u also often get double ressources, so u dont get 50 mats from one writ, but f.e 80 till 120. so its not hard to get 500 mats from "one" writ (one writ regarding to ban-script logic, in truth it were 3 or 4 or 5 writs). the mximum of same writ one day i can remember was 3 writs (Blacksmithing wrothgar 1, remember it good because i like that, its so close to the wayshrine), so i must have gotten from that 3 enough to get caught by the script.

Krycek89

ROFL i was reading the first page of responses and i thought these were perma bans - due to the uproar of "i'm innocent" echoing through the forums.

i did a little further and discover the bans are only temporarily in effect for a period of 72- hours. Damn guys- be glad that was the extent of it, you were caught fudging the system so just take it on the chin; you know like the days of old when people wouldn't bemoan every little thing- you brought this on yourselves.

It's only for 72 hours, quit your whining.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL8chWFuM-s