Fix the auto ban system v2

Elsonso

Attackopsn wrote: »

Really? We have people on console with 576k scores where there are no cheat engines. People like [snip] definitely arent cheating and have tons of video proof. You should be ashamed to be attacking these individuals who do nothing but work hard and get banned while blatant cheaters run free.

I think the point being made by @starkerealm is that they are not being banned for having 576k scores.

My point is that the video evidence can be misleading. It cannot prove that they were not cheating. The videos cannot show what a player does when they are not being recorded. At best, they can show they were not cheating at the time the video was made.

If a cop pulls someone over for speeding, the driver cannot defend themselves by pulling up a video from last week that shows they were not speeding. They will just get laughed at.

Personofsecrets

The thing is @lordrichter , nobody is saying that people are being banned for having high scores.

The argument is more like that players who have very high scores are using skills to achieve those scores that may somehow be seen, by a computer that knows no better, as cheating. Higher scores necessitate pushing the game to it's limits and it at those limits that a computer system may not be able to distinguish between what is right and what is wrong.

While video evidence can be misleading, we have absolutely no evidence at all of how the so-called anti-cheat system works. All we do have is the evidence that many game parts have been broken in the past. That is why it is safe to be skeptical about the workings of the so-called anti-cheat system and that is also why I personally chose to believe the stories of my friends that have played for years over the information coming from an unaccountable company that has bigger issues to deal with than if a good player happens to get banned via a false positive.

Nobody has yet provided evidence of the so-called anti-cheat system working and, until then, anyone saying that it is working fine is doing so based on their faith in ZOS alone.

Dredlord

xblackroxe wrote: »

Its really pathetic whats going on atm. People getting banned left and right for being good. People getting permabanned for gapclosing into keeps. But obvious cheaters get unbanned. GOOD JOB ZOS, REALLY.

Andy got banned for a few days. Jace too now and seemingly permanently. Its just pathetic. And the worst are the responses you get for raising awareness. People just being bad bashing on people that dedicate their time to be the best, help people by showing builds, tactics. Its just lame.
People here don´t accept any evidence from the players but blindly believe in ZOS. I smell some hypocrisy right here.

starkerealm wrote: »

Personofsecrets wrote: »

Perhaps only a handful of players have such great skills that they could trigger a false positive via there regular game play. Does that make the system right?

That's not how it works. You don't use heuristics like this in an anti-cheat system. It's not about players being superhumanly good, it's about the game detecting unauthorized manipulation of it's memory. No matter how "awesome" you are, you'll never mess up ESO's page file. You'll never create the illusion of a code injection through superlative play.

I'm sorry kid, but you've been had. The people you're looking up to? Your heroes? The ones that just got hit with bans because they tripped the anti-cheat system? They didn't do it because they're so awesome. They did it because they've been ling to you this entire time.

This is the advice the ban boy fan boy's need to take to heart...

xblackroxe

Dredlord wrote: »

xblackroxe wrote: »

Its really pathetic whats going on atm. People getting banned left and right for being good. People getting permabanned for gapclosing into keeps. But obvious cheaters get unbanned. GOOD JOB ZOS, REALLY.

Andy got banned for a few days. Jace too now and seemingly permanently. Its just pathetic. And the worst are the responses you get for raising awareness. People just being bad bashing on people that dedicate their time to be the best, help people by showing builds, tactics. Its just lame.
People here don´t accept any evidence from the players but blindly believe in ZOS. I smell some hypocrisy right here.

starkerealm wrote: »

Personofsecrets wrote: »

Perhaps only a handful of players have such great skills that they could trigger a false positive via there regular game play. Does that make the system right?

That's not how it works. You don't use heuristics like this in an anti-cheat system. It's not about players being superhumanly good, it's about the game detecting unauthorized manipulation of it's memory. No matter how "awesome" you are, you'll never mess up ESO's page file. You'll never create the illusion of a code injection through superlative play.

I'm sorry kid, but you've been had. The people you're looking up to? Your heroes? The ones that just got hit with bans because they tripped the anti-cheat system? They didn't do it because they're so awesome. They did it because they've been ling to you this entire time.

This is the advice the ban boy fan boy's need to take to heart...

Nice one. First fo all I´m not a fan boy of anybody. I just respect players that are good, where I know what they are capable of. I´m honestly not that good but I´m also doing other stuff in eso than run vMA all day so ofcourse there will be people better. But I myself have okaysh scores where I can definitely see what improvements are possible.

Another thing is if you look on andy.s´s youtube channel you will find a video for pretty much every run that got a new highscore. So nobody can tell me that he cheated on his top scores. What happens off the camera obviously can´t be commented but wouldn´t it be pretty strange to get highscores legitimately but no improvement whatsoever when he is cheating?

So now to the comment of @starkrealm. I have read through the whole thread now and not seen one comment where he doesn´t look down on other people and shittalk them somehow. Like the use of "kid". As if he has any idea on how old anyone here is. Furthermore has he just stated stuff he assumes to be right because he got a degree in this field (which I obviously should believe without any knowledge of who he is). He has provided literally 0 evidence on how this system works (stating how it generally works means pretty much nothing as generally doesn´t necessarily mean ZOS).

The thing I see here is 2 groups. One group that has faith in that ZOS does the right thing. The other one either has friends that had this happen to them in which the have faith, or just looks at the fact the there are so many broken abilities, mechanics, whatever in this game and draws the conclusion that it is pretty likely that ZOS messed up yet another part of their program. Neither one will accept the opinon of the other group and thats why this discussion will not lead anywhere anyway.

Egonieser

starkerealm wrote: »

Personofsecrets wrote: »

reasons to trust our friends

1. They are our friends
2. We play with them in legitimate ways for years and not seen them using CE
3. We have never heard them talk about CE in the context of using it
4. We have watched them grow over time

reasons to trust ZOS

1. ZOS isn't run by teenagers trying to impress you with how awesome they are.
2. ZOS has nothing to gain by removing customers from their game.
3. Unlike your "friends," ZOS has no incentive to lie about someone being a cheater.
4. ZOS does not use Cheat Engine to decieve their "friends."

You forgot to finish your post, fixed that for ya.

The fact remains, when ZOS bans someone, they're removing a paying customer from their game. If they're going to do that, they need a good reason to do so, otherwise they're literally just costing themselves money for no benefit.

Meanwhile, players have every reason to lie about cheating. After all, when you've been lying to your friends, you never want to be caught out in the open, with all your deceptions revealed. If they lie about being cheaters, they can hope their friends will believe them, rally around them, and force ZOS to let them back in to continue cheating.

Now, there are false positives with any cheat detection system. If these guys have been banned, and it was actually their antivirus or recording software that tripped the cheat detection, then that's why there's an appeals process. But, ZOS decided these players were more of a liability than an asset. That should tell you a lot about your supposed friends.

Yes, but the problem with ZoS and most other companies is that they take the anticheat results in face value, they assume the Anticheat can do no wrong. This can easily be seen by the same automated responses and reasoning EVERYBODY gets, even after repeated tickets and appeal attempts. Yes, they can and would review it but only when and if the actual ticket/appeal goes THROUGH to somebody that's not Chet. Thats why successful appeals mostly only work via the phone because you talk to a real person who actually listens to you, checks things out and maybe goes like: "You're right, there was/is some flaw or you had a lagspike that caused a false positive, here's a unban and apology for inconvenience". Try and get same type of responses through e-mail support, i can guarantee most of the times you never will as they will close tickets and automated response given that the verdict is final and no further action will be taken. This is automated - literally everyone who posted their support emails had exactly the same copy-paste response which means nobody actually reviews neither the logs or the tickets.
The proof this is already there. It basically follows the principle: "Oh he/she triggered something in our system and got suspended, if he/she did it they MUST be guilty of something, but we don't have time to review what was it or what caused it, so - GUILTY, GUILTY AS CHARGED, carry on."

That doesn't mean that real hackers will not and try to pull the same stunts, they have and they will, but the because of that - even those cought in the crossfire are painted with the same brush and ignored. A script is only a script, things would be much different if there were actual people working at CS not a bunch of Chets.

The same issue is not just with cheats/suspensions but nearly any other issue in the game. As we see - almost nobody is getting proper support these days regardless the issue. Massive gamebreaking issues are ignored, false positives ignored, payment/crown issues ignored - all because Chet is doing his thing. And yeah, while annoying if a CS fails to help with some broken skill or lost item, having being wongfully banned and being labeled a cheater when you did nothing wrong and any attempt to prove otherwise being ignored is a MUCH MUCH more bitter pill to swallow than any other problem in the game IMO which is why there's such a big fuss all over the forums.

Personofsecrets

The only thing I would add is that not only do we see players not getting their proper support, but we see players getting inconsistent support.

Some players get let off the hook because they had previously good standing accounts.

Some players don't.

Some players allegedly get computer scans.

Some players don't.

How about this one. Some players get items returned to them when they deconstruct said item by accident.

Some players don't.

We can have no idea about how any decision is made because support can and has been so inconsistent in it's answers.

starkerealm

xblackroxe wrote: »

Dredlord wrote: »

This is the advice the ban boy fan boy's need to take to heart...

Nice one. First fo all I´m not a fan boy of anybody.

"Methinks he doth protest too much."

I mean, if you're not, cool. Don't take it as a personal attack from Dredlord, it's simply good advice about people being too committed.

xblackroxe wrote: »

I just respect players that are good, where I know what they are capable of. I´m honestly not that good but I´m also doing other stuff in eso than run vMA all day so ofcourse there will be people better. But I myself have okaysh scores where I can definitely see what improvements are possible.

I can respect legitimately good players, and I honestly have no stake either way in the people banned from this. If they were, honestly, misidentified due to the detection systems in place, then that's very unfortunate, and it's what the customer support appeals system exists for. If these guys were cheating, then that's also tragic, but it skews the other way.

xblackroxe wrote: »

Another thing is if you look on andy.s´s youtube channel you will find a video for pretty much every run that got a new highscore. So nobody can tell me that he cheated on his top scores. What happens off the camera obviously can´t be commented but wouldn´t it be pretty strange to get highscores legitimately but no improvement whatsoever when he is cheating?

You're making an assumption that all cheating looks the same, and everyone who cheats will do so in the same way.

The logic behind, "well, shouldn't there be improvement?" applies independently of if someone is cheating or playing legitimately. You get better at a game by playing it, working through it's idiosyncrasies, and learning from what you understand and experience. This occurs regardless of if you're cheating or playing legitimately. You will get better over time.

It would be very strange if these players weren't improving even if they were cheating.

It's also very difficult to tell if someone's cheating and careful about it. If a player was using cheat engine to adjust their damage mitigation (which is never visible to the player), or their combat resource recovery rates (which would only be visible if they opened their character menu mid combat), and kept those values close enough to reality that viewers would be unlikely to notice, it would significantly increase their performance without tipping their hand. Can you honestly tell me, on sight, if a player was resisting 50% or 60% of their incoming damage? It's an absolutely massive balance change in their favor, but even if you were literally looking over their shoulder, you'd be hard pressed to see it.

And that's the hard part with cheating. Someone cheats in a game with a .dll injection to give them a wallhack, runs an aimbot in the background, or locks a memory address to give themselves unlimited ammo, that's easy to see. Someone who tweaks values you don't see clearly can be much harder to detect, even if they're live-streaming.

xblackroxe wrote: »

So now to the comment of @starkrealm. I have read through the whole thread now and not seen one comment where he doesn´t look down on other people and shittalk them somehow. Like the use of "kid". As if he has any idea on how old anyone here is.

Based on the exact arguments that PoS is making, I can hazard a guess to their general age. Here's a scary thing to kick around, when you're talking to adults and you keep talking, they can usually tell when the person on the other end of the conversation isn't old enough to buy a pack of cigarettes.

Could I be wrong about him or her? Yeah, it's possible. I've met adults that never intellectually progressed into adulthood. But, I'm willing to assume that PoS is doing their best.

xblackroxe wrote: »

Furthermore has he just stated stuff he assumes to be right because he got a degree in this field (which I obviously should believe without any knowledge of who he is).

I received an Associates of Applied Sciences in CIS: Programming in 2004.

Yeah, I know, you can accuse me of lying about that if you want. It's not a particularly impressive achievement. But, it does mean I'm better educated on the subject than PoS. Also, probably than you, judging by your next comment.

xblackroxe wrote: »

He has provided literally 0 evidence on how this system works (stating how it generally works means pretty much nothing as generally doesn´t necessarily mean ZOS).

Actually, it's not so much that. Cheat detection software isn't a "solved problem," it's something that is continually evolving, just like software designed to provide an unfair advantage is continually evolving.

You don't need inside information to have a vague idea of what ZOS is looking for when they're trying to identify players who are cheating. There are certain ways you can solve this problem, to some extent. None of these are 100%, but they work.

The issue isn't proving exactly how ZOS is working through their detection software. It's saying that they are working within solutions developed by the industry. What PoS has been advocating this entire time falls well outside of it. To use a crude analogy that PoS will mistake for a straw man fallacy, it's like someone telling you, "well, maybe that car works because there's really tiny hamsters under the hood." It can be a funny joke, but that's not how you power a car.

"ZOS is using a heuristic honeypot and banning players who are 'too good,'" it can be a funny joke, but that's not how people actually identify cheaters in multiplayer games. I don't need inside knowledge of how ESO runs to know that's not what they're doing.

xblackroxe wrote: »

The thing I see here is 2 groups. One group that has faith in that ZOS does the right thing. The other one either has friends that had this happen to them in which the have faith, or just looks at the fact the there are so many broken abilities, mechanics, whatever in this game and draws the conclusion that it is pretty likely that ZOS messed up yet another part of their program. Neither one will accept the opinon of the other group and thats why this discussion will not lead anywhere anyway.

It's not about faith. It is about some people, on these boards, having a vague understanding of how commercial software is developed. As I've said repeatedly, I have no doubt that there are problems with the cheat detection systems that ZOS uses.

You'll see a lot of people throwing around things like, "ZOS are the most amateur developers ever," or "they're greedy and don't care about the product." A lot of times these arguments are based on subjective experience, and I'm not going to deride people for having those opinions... except, I've actually seen what amateur developers look like. Where they'll turn a game out, and leave it to rot in early access, while hiding from criticism by saying "it's just a beta." I've seen legitimately greedy MMOs go F2P, and then literally slap a cash value on leveling up. I've seen other opinions on ZOS, with similar flavors of hyperbole. I can usually understand and respect where the people saying those things are coming from, but it doesn't make those opinions valid, or related to objective reality in the slightest.

Cheat detection isn't 100% reliable. You'll get false positives, and, honestly, it sucks. But, just like no professional sells cars that run on hamster wheels, no remotely competent developer would base their primary cheat detection off your scoring.

EDIT: Because the word filter censors my degree's abbreviation... good job guys.

Personofsecrets

Again, nobody is claiming that bans are decided based on a high score.

The argument is more like that players who have very high scores are using skills to achieve those scores that may somehow be seen, by a computer that knows no better, as cheating. Higher scores necessitate pushing the game to it's limits and it is at those limits that a computer system may not be able to distinguish between what is right and what is wrong.

starkerealm

Personofsecrets wrote: »

Again, nobody is claiming that bans are decided based on a high score.

Literally the first sentence in this thread:

asneakybanana wrote: »

The auto ban system is penalizing players for being at the top of their game and completing content too fast.

EDIT: Also, from you:

Personofsecrets wrote: »

Perhaps only a handful of players have such great skills that they could trigger a false positive via there regular game play. Does that make the system right?

Now, I realize you're trying to set up a rhetorical question... unfortunately it does leave you arguing that such a system exists.

Personofsecrets

That doesn't necessarily mean that @asneakybanana thinks the so-called auto-ban system is based on scores.

@asneakybanana , can you please tell us how you think the so-called anti-cheat system works so that we can disregard the straw man argument that is being made? If you think the so-called auto-ban system is looking at scores, then that is fine, but I would like to know for sure what you meant.

starkerealm

asneakybanana wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

asneakybanana wrote: »

Mojmir wrote: »

If the system in place is anything like VAC, I'd trust it before any "gaming friends"

Not 100% positive on how vac works but I believe it checks your background programs to see if there's any exploit programs running as well as looking at your in game play to see if there is anything out of line. As far as I've been told by my questions to ZoS their program only checks for potential in game problems. But zos doesn't realize what you can legitimately do in this game.

VAC also checks for .dll injections and processes altering memory locations.

Yes as I said I don't believe Eso's system is checking for much if anything outside of on game play.

I suspect that's what changed. Cheat Engine's actually a pretty crude tool for messing with games. If that's actually the software being used, it suggests that, "yes, before this, ESO wasn't checking background processes," and as soon as they revised their detection setup to look at the process list, suddenly, out of nowhere, bans everywhere.

Combine that with a long lag time, where it was usable and ignored by the game, and you have a recipe for a situation where users would start to saturate high level play. I remember seeing anecdotal information that some of these guys have been using CE to boost themselves in Cyrodiil for over a year now. If true, that's a long time to grow their numbers.

starkerealm

Personofsecrets wrote: »

That doesn't necessarily mean that @asneakybanana thinks the so-called auto-ban system is based on scores.

@asneakybanana , can you please tell us how you think the so-called anti-cheat system works so that we can disregard the straw man argument that is being made? If you think the so-called auto-ban system is looking at scores, then that is fine, but I would like to know for sure what you meant.

I don't think the system is built on scores. If you're now saying you don't, it doesn't change that you've been an advocate of the system punishing players for being "too good," regardless of the metric you want to apply.

Personofsecrets

Some of those skills of high scoring players may be keeping up major expedition for 30 minutes, regenerating ultimate for 30 minutes straight by using environmental hazard mechanics, and having having very fast actions per minute. Because we have no idea how the so-called anti-cheat system works, any habit that may only be utilized by a few very good players could, inadvertently, be a habit that tricks the so-called anti-cheat system into making a false positive.

So the so-called anti-cheat system isn't necessarily based on scores, but the very actions that lead players to having a high score could be the actions that are triggering false positives. That is why, several times, I have brought about the idea that scores aren't necessarily being looked at by any game system. That is why I am troubled by any attempts to setup such a straw man for the purposes of burning down the actual debate that is being had.

Furthermore, you have yet to grapple with the idea that customer support is inconsistent. You have yet to grapple with the idea that there is a broken system which has openly allowed cheat engine users to continue playing the game. You have yet to provide the evidence as to what expertise on this subject you actually have so that we can be more certain in utilizing what you write to form our view.

xblackroxe

@starkerealm

You're making an assumption that all cheating looks the same, and everyone who cheats will do so in the same way.

I´m not. I know that people can easily disguise there changed stuff like you said or a little more obvious, give more ressources, damage whatever. But you can see most of the stuff that could be changed and for most of the rest you can get a feeling by playing yourself if there is something iffy about it.

It's also very difficult to tell if someone's cheating and careful about it.

Actually it isn´t. I have played enough vMA myself to see that he is not getting less damage he just knows when to block/dodge and when not to. At least I get a feeling of this and can compare my health bar to his to see what happens.
Of course anyone can say I´m cheating to or lying to protect somebody but well whatever.

I received an Associates of Applied Sciences in CIS: Programming in 2004.

Yeah, I know, you can accuse me of lying about that if you want.

Its not about that. I was merely trying to mention that you making statements like this are no different from somebody saying he didn´t cheat.

You don't need inside information to have a vague idea of what ZOS is looking for when they're trying to identify players who are cheating. There are certain ways you can solve this problem, to some extent. None of these are 100%, but they work.

I would argue that you kind of do. I´ll take your knowledge on this matter but it still doesn´t mean that it can be applied for ZOS too. The thing is you can take a guess (and with knowledge in this field a good one) but however much you know about this it will stay a guess without actual evidence on how it works in this game.

The problem I have on this matter is that from past experience ZOS mostly takes an easy way out of problems. Examples: Reverbating bash made problems with CC imunity because it applied a stun + a disorient which stacked problematic making it impossible to break free. Instead of fixing CC in general which has many problems still they just removed the disorient in the end. (It started out with completely removing CC from this ability which was really cheap imo).

Such things often happend and dlc after dlc they implement many broken mechanics and often show near to know advanced knowledge on their own game.

Thats the reason why I don´t just trust ZOS that they did this system properly. Especially as it was quickly rolled out after the obvious CE exploiting got attention with meteor spammers in whole Cyrodiil. To me it seems like a quick solution to show the player base that something is done against hackers/exploiter without trying to make a solid program work that checks stuff like you suggested.

starkerealm

xblackroxe wrote: »

@starkerealm

You're making an assumption that all cheating looks the same, and everyone who cheats will do so in the same way.

I´m not. I know that people can easily disguise there changed stuff like you said or a little more obvious, give more ressources, damage whatever. But you can see most of the stuff that could be changed and for most of the rest you can get a feeling by playing yourself if there is something iffy about it.

It's also very difficult to tell if someone's cheating and careful about it.

Actually it isn´t. I have played enough vMA myself to see that he is not getting less damage he just knows when to block/dodge and when not to. At least I get a feeling of this and can compare my health bar to his to see what happens.
Of course anyone can say I´m cheating to or lying to protect somebody but well whatever.

Fair enough. The point worth remembering however is: it's entirely possible to mask some flavors of cheating from viewers, assuming those viewers have an average or lower level of familiarity with the content.

If you've been running vMA every day since it dropped, and you see someone cheating on stream, it'll be much easier for you to observe the difference, as opposed to someone with no prior experience.

In contrast, someone who's simply locked their resource pools at full will be fairly easy to spot while playing, if you were looking over their shoulder.

xblackroxe wrote: »

I received an Associates of Applied Sciences in CIS: Programming in 2004.

Yeah, I know, you can accuse me of lying about that if you want.

Its not about that. I was merely trying to mention that you making statements like this are no different from somebody saying he didn´t cheat.

I brought it up because my patience for PoS was wearing a bit thin last night.

xblackroxe wrote: »

You don't need inside information to have a vague idea of what ZOS is looking for when they're trying to identify players who are cheating. There are certain ways you can solve this problem, to some extent. None of these are 100%, but they work.

I would argue that you kind of do. I´ll take your knowledge on this matter but it still doesn´t mean that it can be applied for ZOS too. The thing is you can take a guess (and with knowledge in this field a good one) but however much you know about this it will stay a guess without actual evidence on how it works in this game.

To an extent. The difference is the ability to make educated assessments, with an understanding of what is possible, vs what is not, or is utterly impractical.

xblackroxe wrote: »

The problem I have on this matter is that from past experience ZOS mostly takes an easy way out of problems. Examples: Reverbating bash made problems with CC imunity because it applied a stun + a disorient which stacked problematic making it impossible to break free. Instead of fixing CC in general which has many problems still they just removed the disorient in the end. (It started out with completely removing CC from this ability which was really cheap imo).

I'd argue that the best example is ZOS using a trusted client model to begin with. Which is the one shortcut that brought us to where we are today, with all of the CE issues. Sure, it allowed Cyrodiil to support way more characters than it should with minimal lag... but it also allowed the bots to fly.

Ironically, when you walk back from that decision, I kinda suspect that Cyrodiil would be in a better state today if they'd simply followed the basic "never trust the client" philosophy to begin with, and handled everything server side.

xblackroxe wrote: »

Such things often happend and dlc after dlc they implement many broken mechanics and often show near to know advanced knowledge on their own game.

Thats the reason why I don´t just trust ZOS that they did this system properly. Especially as it was quickly rolled out after the obvious CE exploiting got attention with meteor spammers in whole Cyrodiil. To me it seems like a quick solution to show the player base that something is done against hackers/exploiter without trying to make a solid program work that checks stuff like you suggested.

I don't trust ZOS to set up a completely reliable system either. I'm certainly willing to believe there are false positives. I'm just not incredibly inclined to trust people when they say, they're a false positive.

starkerealm

Personofsecrets wrote: »

Some of those skills of high scoring players may be keeping up major expedition for 30 minutes, regenerating ultimate for 30 minutes straight by using environmental hazard mechanics, and having having very fast actions per minute. Because we have no idea how the so-called anti-cheat system works, any habit that may only be utilized by a few very good players could, inadvertently, be a habit that tricks the so-called anti-cheat system into making a false positive.

So the so-called anti-cheat system isn't necessarily based on scores, but the very actions that lead players to having a high score could be the actions that are triggering false positives. That is why, several times, I have brought about the idea that scores aren't necessarily being looked at by any game system. That is why I am troubled by any attempts to setup such a straw man for the purposes of burning down the actual debate that is being had.

Furthermore, you have yet to grapple with the idea that customer support is inconsistent. You have yet to grapple with the idea that there is a broken system which has openly allowed cheat engine users to continue playing the game. You have yet to provide the evidence as to what expertise on this subject you actually have so that we can be more certain in utilizing what you write to form our view.

The thing worth thinking about is, it's much easier to set up software that will dig through your process at runtime and see if any other programs are messing with it than setting up a bunch of artificial rules by hand, and saying, "if you're this tall, you must be cheating."

More than that, we've seen, time and again, that there aren't any sanity checks in ESO. The flying bots, if you've been around long enough to remember them. The Night's Silence Vampire Express. The Nirncrux bug. All of these things should have tripped heuristics designed to identify hacked characters. None of them did. In fact the bots were a huge problem back at launch because the game had phenomenally poor tools for identifying them.

fastolfv_ESO

even if they were banned for vma runs (which zenimax wouldnt tell them) theres so much that could be going on, they could have been set stacking to get that edge or stacking multiple major expedition buffs which zenimax said would cause bans from autoban right after people posted on the forums how to stack them to cheat. At the end of the day you have no idea why they got banned or what they did. If they are innocent or even not theres still a chance they will get the accounts back

asneakybanana

Personofsecrets wrote: »

That doesn't necessarily mean that @asneakybanana thinks the so-called auto-ban system is based on scores.

@asneakybanana , can you please tell us how you think the so-called anti-cheat system works so that we can disregard the straw man argument that is being made? If you think the so-called auto-ban system is looking at scores, then that is fine, but I would like to know for sure what you meant.

The system isnt based on scores and to the best of my knowledge there is little to no background process monitoring. From what people who were banned have told me its a mix between what your character is doing in game as well as reports. If someone is running 100 miles an hour using orc, steed and major/minor expedition but they arent getting reported i dont think zos will look into it. But when they get a ton of reports on people, like would happen to someone typically on top of a leaderboard because of jealousy or what have you, and they look at what your character is doing in game and say wow this guy had a 30% movement speed increase for 40 minutes straight during vma seems a bit weird especially since no one else can give him major exped. buffs or anything. Then you will be flagged by the system and potentially permanently banned. I mean this may have changed but as of a week ago thats pretty much exactly how it was working.