Once again ZOS Customer Relations drops the ball. (Mass Ban of Innocent Players)

Eivar

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/82424/recent-actions-against-exploiters-appealing-a-ban

wow really. the best they can do is tell us to stop complaining.

This ban is like the metaphorical bull in a china shop, they may have gotten some cheaters, but they shredded their customer relations in the process.......i absolutely adore this game, but if I have to wait 4 days for them to say, oops sorry......

Ragnar_Lodbrok

How do you know they are innocent? Because they came here and said so?

LadyChaos

Slye44 wrote: »

LadyChaos wrote: »

I'm sorry for the guys who got banned wrongly, and those who participated in the exploit unintentionally a single time, but I do not think people who had a couple "oops" double clicks were banned, it seems like the software had to reach some threshold level to be flagged.

Isn't this an assumption on your part?

I'm not assuming who is innocent and who is not. Innocent people do get caught up in these things, but they are not the majority without a serious flaw to the system. We can only wait to see if that's the case.

I was stating the likelihood of a person clicking once by accident getting banned for that alone is low, even if it is not impossible. If that were the case I do think there would be more bans. In all software that flags people, they have to have some sort of threshold to be flagged... There are too many players for each player to have been flagged by hand and the likelihood of there not being a certain flag of coin/items etc is low, there had to be something to narrow the search down, it's just too big to not have some threshold criteria. IDK what their criteria is, I didn't play any part in writing it.

I still do wish those who were caught up in it truly unintentional either by data error or just not knowing it, the best in being reinstated. I do not have sympathy for those that did it even once intentionally, after they saw it, or read about it.

Bucko5

Ragnar_Lodbrok wrote: »

How do you know they are innocent? Because they came here and said so?

I don't know that all of them are innocent. What I do know is that I'm one of the innocent ones who was banned. And judging from the community outcry, and those I know who were also banned, I believe strongly that a massive number of players were wrongfully banned.

I know I cannot convince you of this personally. And you're probably thinking to yourself that you're a stand up player. This simply can't happen to you because of that fact. And therefor, those affected must have done something wrong.

I used to think that way too.

Kaskako

I highly doubt the majority of people complaining about unwarranted bans are as innocent as they claim.

As for people claiming that players who had their bank reset and had multiple collector edition or pre-order items sent more than once getting banned, no. I had that happen to me and I have not been banned.

I will agree however that their customer support needs a LOT of work.

Baeleth

A great number of legitimate players were wrongfully banned in this sweep. I was one of them.

Here's an example of a wrongful ban: A legitimate player engages in an in-game transaction with another player to buy a piece of gear being sold via zone chat. The buyer trades gold for the item and goes about their merry way. The item, unbeknownst to the buyer, might have been duped by the seller. Both the buyer and the seller get banned.

Here's what makes the ban wrong - the buyer did not knowingly engage in any exploit or illegal activity. The buyer was following the game rules and was victimized.

Now, before you righteously spout off with "you shouldn't be buying gear from zone chat", keep the following fact in mind, legitimate in-game trading is an important part of the game economy and community and is, in fact, encouraged by the game makers.

This is just one example, I'm sure there are many other examples to illustrate wrongful bans.

If you're posting on the forums to say "if you got banned then you deserved it" then you're just plain ignorant. Honestly, that particular opinion of yours is worthless and you are contributing no value to the community.

Legitimate paying customers have been wronged by this mass ban and Zenimax has an obligation to make amends in a timely manner.

Requielle

Slye44 wrote: »

Dolenz wrote: »

Slye44 wrote: »

Dolenz wrote: »

I feel bad that innocent folks have gotten caught up in this but at the same time I don't believe everyone claiming to be innocent actually is.

Likely not, but from the amount of threads on this subject, I can guarantee you more innocents got banned than dupers. Dupers don't come en masse and complain about getting banned.

I would have preferred a rollback to this.

I doubt that is the case but there is honestly no way that either of us can know for sure.

The circumstantial evidence is in favor of mass innocent bans.

For those that might know about the exploit in question, it came from double clicking too fast in a bank. How many people do you know who would be aware of that when it accidentally occurred, as it will for so many? It stands to reason that "innocent" as defined by "not intending to exploit the system" would include these people...who most certainly were banned by any automated means.

There is significant posted claims that anyone who had the bank bug was banned. I haven't seen one posting from someone with the bank bug who was not also banned. Granted my sample space is small, but this adds up the evidence tally.

There are also confirmed reports of people falling through the world and then getting banned for that:

http://mmofallout.com/elder-scrolls-online-fall-through-world-and-get-banned/

Given the evidence, a scientific assessment would conclude that there are likely a good percentage of the bans that are innocent at the very least.

To keep discussions civil, I will agree to ignore all comments that fit the following criteria:

- "If zenimax banned you, you must have been cheating"
- "Anything zenimax does is wrong and everyone is innocent".

Both these extreme viewpoints are noise.

Had the bank bug. Not banned. No recompense on the bank bug, either. But I can at least put to rest the idea running around that "if you got ZeniMax duped items, you are banned". I have a bonus monkey pet and had 2 pledges of Mara (used 1), and those items did not flag me for the system as someone who had duped.

Schmackei

It seems a lot of people are throwing around that these bans are strictly down to the DUPE item issue, when this is not the case. People in many other threads have already reported being suspended for things such as being unable to move and having to use /stuck and /reloadui resulting in their client to crash. People have also already posted in threads about how they would fall through the world and upon reloading into the game, they would be suspended. I even recall seeing more than 1 post where people were suspended and notified that their suspension was in relation to excessive zone chat spamming for guild invites and item selling purposes.

So lets put the 'you have been banned for duping' clause to bed, that horse is done and dead already. No one knows for certain why anyone else was banned, no one knows the innocence of another player for certain, and besides speculations, unless you have been directly informed by Zenimax yourself on a particular banning, there is no way at all, you will know why your account or anyone elses account is suspended.

There is more than 1 cause for being banned, and although there are innocents involved in the suspensions, attacking and belittling other players will not assist in anyway with getting a united resolve for the problems that we all face with this game.

Remember, if you are attacking other players over being banned with 'you did it' 'it's your fault' ' there are no innocent', you may very well find that to be the most aggravating response you read on the forums the day YOUR account gets locked from you for no/unknown reasons.

WyeVxndzz

JinShepard01 wrote: »

...blah blah blah...
I havent even seen people talking about it in barrens chat.
...blah blah blah...

Dude, lol, you're on the wrong game's forum.

CapuchinSeven

I can guarantee you more innocents got banned than dupers.

Rubbish.

ptrayner

I have no idea what's going on. My husband and I both play. I come home from work, upload the patch and can't log in. Then get the 'suspended from site' on my account. I'm a mom, I work a lot, this is my relaxation time. Why was my account included in this ridiculousness? I have one toon that just turned 18 last night and a couple of name holders. I do not belong to a guild, I do is wander around, explore and pick the plants and ore. I haven't been to Cyrodiil, haven't done a multi person dungeon.

This is very upsetting for professional adults who really do not have the time to put up with a Risk Management department that doesn't know it's head from its rear.

I work in fraud and risk management for several financial institutions and this would wreak havoc for them. There is going to be a lot of fall out from this.

In the mean time, as a paying customer, I demand an explanation. If a reasonable explanation cannot be provided in a reasonable time period, then I demand that my account be handed back to me and a written apology be supplied. This is nothing less than what should be expected from any corporation that makes these sort of blatant mistakes.

cliveklgb14_ESO

Riiight, innocent. Because confusing duping with regular gameplay is oh so difficult.

Meld

WTF Zenimax??? Waiting for 4 hours on hold and someone disconnects the call.

Valaska

cliveklgb14_ESO wrote: »

Riiight, innocent. Because confusing duping with regular gameplay is oh so difficult.

I didn't confuse ANYTHING, and neither did a large majority of people appealing, we simple were banned while playing the game legitimately! Without explanation, rhyme, or reason, so they are asking questions here.

I'm going to enjoy when you get on the receiving end of this, you're going to be one of those loud ones I bed.

Firmament

Celurian wrote: »

Mass bans are better then nothing. I'm happy about it and i guess there will be much more people crying about beiing innocent then they are.
For everyone else: Really sorry about your ban. But i guess contacting the support if innocent will just solve the problem within 24 hours.

This ^^ 100%agree

Valaska

Firmament wrote: »

Celurian wrote: »

Mass bans are better then nothing. I'm happy about it and i guess there will be much more people crying about beiing innocent then they are.
For everyone else: Really sorry about your ban. But i guess contacting the support if innocent will just solve the problem within 24 hours.

This ^^ 100%agree

Have you dealt with customer support? They constantly drop tickets, you cannot reply directly to the tickets needing to launch new ones each time, phone tickets go without them ever attempted to call you ONCE, this isn't how any justice system should work PERIOD on a game or in real life, you don't assume someone is guilty then throw them at the ropes, that is literally the kind of crap facist dictatorships pulls!

You are ridiculously detached from reality, its innocent until proven guilty, not active a script ban everyone and then ignore them universally since their support system is so flawed. Literally, try to make a ticket right now, it DOESN'T WORK.

akalateralus

While you're banned pick up a book. Perhaps The Trial by Kafka.

Valaska

akalateralus wrote: »

While you're banned pick up a book. Perhaps The Trial by Kafka.

... An appropriate reference but it was an extremely unsatisfying book like virtually all of his others.

Firmament

Valaska wrote: »

Firmament wrote: »

Celurian wrote: »

Mass bans are better then nothing. I'm happy about it and i guess there will be much more people crying about beiing innocent then they are.
For everyone else: Really sorry about your ban. But i guess contacting the support if innocent will just solve the problem within 24 hours.

This ^^ 100%agree

Have you dealt with customer support? They constantly drop tickets, you cannot reply directly to the tickets needing to launch new ones each time, phone tickets go without them ever attempted to call you ONCE, this isn't how any justice system should work PERIOD on a game or in real life, you don't assume someone is guilty then throw them at the ropes, that is literally the kind of crap facist dictatorships pulls!

You are ridiculously detached from reality, its innocent until proven guilty, not active a script ban everyone and then ignore them universally since their support system is so flawed. Literally, try to make a ticket right now, it DOESN'T WORK.

Damn I am sorry. Well they must do something against, but yeah the game support has this big problem. Sometimes I write a ticket and they answer in hours, sometimes it takes days. I just agree with the quotes since we know that not all the people complaining are innocents. Most of them are not and I had the fear they would just ignore the cheaters as Zeni made no statement about. Only in the patch notes we can read "
Changed the functionality of auto-stacking in guild banks. You will now have to stack items in your inventory before placing them in the guild bank."
Edited: I found a post where ZOS now talk about.

And I also think they should inform why people are being banned. But again, I doubt most of the banned people are innocent.

Neo

If you got banned, there was a reason for it...

Neo

JinShepard01 wrote: »

Exactly what Swoop said, I played legit, always have in any and every MMO I have ever played, I go after a few hours break to play some during the evening, I try to login, doesnt let me, so I try my password 10 times more, typing it in slow motion, doesnt work.

Finally I click the link go to my account, so I try to log in, you are suspended, suspended? Why? I check my email, nothing.

I go to the forum and I see 10 threads going, iam thinking what the ***! So I read and I learn about this item duping, never experienced it ingame and I havent even seen people talking about it in barrens chat.

I make a appeal, ask why they banned me, that i never heard about this item duping, but in the end, iam duped and the rest like me, with no answer, no reason, nothing. Awesome way to treat players this way.

Look mate, if your banned there was a reason.

Meld

NeoNeo ✭✭
1:57PM
If you got banned, there was a reason for it...

I disagree with you Neo.
My Partner was playing legitimately, went to bed and went to log in when he woke up and was banned.
I know he was not hacking, gold selling, duping etc as his pc is right next to mine and in the last 24-48 hours playing time he has done I have been watching him as I wanted a break from playing.
So therefore don't give me the crap that there is a good reason for it.

Daggers

Neo wrote: »

If you got banned, there was a reason for it...

Not all reasons are just or correct.

It should be fairly obvious to everyone that if it's true there is a mass ban, then nobody has sat through a list of thousands of players in the space of a week and manually figured out which should be banned and which were simply victims of circumstance beyond their control.

If someone comes up with a way to do this, you should get out of games and go work in Law - you could make a fortune.

It's possible to sympathise for both camps- players wrongfully suspended / devs trying really hard to deal with the bots - without calling everyone with a complaint a liar. That kind of automated judgement is what has led you all to this thread in the first place. </irony>.

Jenasy

For all of u who think the ZOS team is silent i urge u to look @ the Dev tracker they actually respond to issues alot... As for those of u who were supposedly unjustly banned. You should call ZOS on the phone for a quicker response . I have a friend who calls them and gets quicker responses most the time. I am pretty sure though the ppl who were banned for doing something wrong would also claim innocence lol.

Ragnar_Lodbrok

Did they finally ban these cheaters from the forums too?

Magdalina

Well, NOW they finally unbanned us "cheaters" here and I can finally RAGE. The silence of all the "lol you dupe omg deserved it" people is amazing, isn't it?
That said, my forum account has been unbanned about 12 hours after my game account. If it was an attempt to keep my voice down it was a failed one, because now I'm angry about that, too>_> This all should've never happened. Mistakes happen. But they COULD at least send emails telling us WHY we got banned, instead of having us kicked out of the game and left with no notice whatsoever for hours. And THEN having forum account banned so I couldn't even voice my opinion.
And yes, I got an apology to one of my tickets. Which is good and might've even sufficed, if I wasn't still banned on forums AFTER that apology still. Which made it sound a bit like "yeah, sorry, whatever".

Soliduparrow

magdalina157eb17_ESO wrote: »

If it was an attempt to keep my voice down it was a failed one, because now I'm angry about that, too

It was an attempt to keep banned players from flooding the forums with posts asking why they were banned.

Magdalina

mcconnell2_ESO wrote: »

magdalina157eb17_ESO wrote: »

If it was an attempt to keep my voice down it was a failed one, because now I'm angry about that, too

It was an attempt to keep banned players from flooding the forums with posts asking why they were banned.

If only you bothered to carefully read my post, you'd have noticed that my problem was with being banned on forum AFTER I was unbanned in game. And I think at that point I had every right to go on forums and ask why I was banned, as well as share some of my thoughts on this all.

Debts2bpaid

I was recently banned for what I am told was abuse of a in game bug. However when I responded to ask what bug I was exploiting I just got a response saying that they considered the matter closed. I was in a guild and frequently bought and sold items in the store. It is completely possible that I bought a duped item but I never participated or used the bug and didn't even know anything about it until after I was banned. I understand that they are trying to get rid of cheaters and am all for it, however it just looks to me that they have blanket banned anyone that came into contact with the dupe exploit and I am struggling to see how that is fair or even a good business practice.

alex394053

Very amusing thread. Didn't know of this 'duping' thing before, but now I know Even read the wikipedia article.
My message to all the dupers, sellers, farmers, etc.: go find a real job!