Outgoing Communications Bug

Haywire30 · April 2020

So. I seem to have been afflicted with a bug that has essentially disabled all of my outgoing communications, but have left incoming communications intact. This includes:

- Whispers
- /say
- /emote
- /party

As a roleplayer, this has completely crippled my ability to partake, and I've already had to miss a week's worth of RP, including a major adventure event because of it, and am likely due to miss out on more of the events that are happening over the next three weeks.I have also contacted Zenimax, but am currently (As of the writing of this post) sitting on seven days without a proper response after confirming the automated suggestions were ineffective.

So far, I have taken the following steps:
- Disabled addons
- Deleted addons
- Relogged
- Changed phase
- Left it overnight
- Run the repair tool
- Deleted Usersettings
- Switched to offline mode and then back to online
- Verified integrity of files on Steam

So far, none of these have had any impact. I may have attempted other solutions, but these are the ones I can immediately remember trying to enact.

Has anybody else encountered this issue and/or found a solution for it?

Donny_Vito · April 2020

So, if you type '/w [CharacterName], Hello' -- it will not send anything? But on the flip side, [CharacterName] can still whisper you? Is that right?

Haywire30 · April 2020

That is correct, yes. My chat log will show it as having been sent, but nothing will be received by the other party. It's the same with /say and /emote. I will see my say and emotes as having been sent, but nobody else will receive them.

SofiDesune · April 2020

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_BillE @ZOS_KaiSchober @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

It's around a week ago my friend send his first ticket over his account being muted, please guys. Plus you moved his post to bugs despite it having been in the support wishing for help.. C'mon...

If you have time to move the post there is time to look into it...

Elsonso · April 2020

Social Ban. Best that can be done is to open a ticket and wait for them to lift the ban.

Why the ban? No idea. And, as an added bonus, they probably won't tell you, either.

SofiDesune · April 2020

Elsonso wrote: »

Social Ban. Best that can be done is to open a ticket and wait for them to lift the ban.

Why the ban? No idea. And, as an added bonus, they probably won't tell you, either.

He opened a ticket a week ago and 5 days ago, can it really take that long for this to be solved?

Elsonso · April 2020

SofiDesune wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Social Ban. Best that can be done is to open a ticket and wait for them to lift the ban.

Why the ban? No idea. And, as an added bonus, they probably won't tell you, either.

He opened a ticket a week ago and 5 days ago, can it really take that long for this to be solved?

Yes.

Haywire30 · April 2020

For reference, the ticket reference is 200401-003547.

If this is a social ban, I will admit to feeling it is overly heavy-handed considering the possibilities, especially given the lack of any sort of warning or notification.

As a roleplayer in a very RP-heavy time period right now, this has been utterly crippling, and has resulted in numerous lost hours or RP, as well as numerous hours spent troubleshooting and trying a variety of different measures to resolve what I thought was a technical issue.... including uninstalling and reinstalling the game from scratch. Had I been informed that this was a social ban from the beginning, time would not have been wasted, and I would have gone straight to some manner of appeal to contest it.

Elsonso · April 2020

As near as I can tell, from just watching these things in the forum, is that the "Social Ban" results when some automation sees the player doing something that it is programmed to detect and stop. The social ban is put in place to stop that activity, and it is a "permanent ban", in the sense that it requires a ticket and someone at Customer Support to reset it.

If this is the case, then anything could trigger it, intended or not. Saying or yelling "the pen is mightier than the sword" could trigger it, for all I know.

It would be nice if ZOS was a little more chatty about it and do a solid by sending a note to the player telling them that this has happened and how to fix it. However, as with anything ToS related, if they told you what you did wrong, then they would be obligated to shoot you. Paperwork. Police. It is all just too much for them to handle, so they keep quiet.