Should Investigations into cheating not be performed PRIOR to banning?

Haenk · August 2023

I don't really trust ZOS' judgement skills, but I don't trust "people on the internet" either - even if they are your "guild friends", you don't know what they are really up to.
Let's hope ZOS comes out with a reasonable statement.

zaria · August 2023

Elsonso wrote: »

zaria wrote: »

As I understand this has to do with an in game currency. Assuming its seals of endeavor.

We actually don't know what they are banning for. There are multiple theories out there, and at least two of them seem plausible to me. One of them might be correct. None of them could be correct. Maybe ZOS will tell us. I hope they do, because I am more than a little curious, now.

This is why it is too early to say they are banning innocent people.

I say the earning tel-var outside of IC would be hilarious.

Jierdanit · August 2023

Elsonso wrote: »

Jierdanit wrote: »

I really don't understand how anyone can be okay with players getting banned for something they didn't do.

I am fairly sure not many people are "okay" with that.

How do we know whether someone did it or not, though? They said they didn't do it? In the current situation, we don't even know what they are banning people for. Even if we did know, is it enough that they deny doing it?

If someone is banned, the best course of action for a positive outcome is to not run to social media and tell everyone.

If there is no proof for what happened them denying should absolutely be enough to not get them banned.

Potrimpo · August 2023

p00tx wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

No. There are valid reasons to ban first and then reverse any accidental extras, depending on the type of exploit.

I disagree. Especially if it takes time to unban all those “accidental extras”.

It is an awful way to treat customers, and does nothing but spread bad feelings & mistrust.

If this is that serious that it necessitates banning, then they should have done their investigations before pressing that button, to make sure only those involved affected.

You are assuming there were no prior investigations.

You're assuming there were.

#freeZanshii

Yes

FeedbackOnly · August 2023

Elsonso wrote: »

Jierdanit wrote: »

I really don't understand how anyone can be okay with players getting banned for something they didn't do.

I am fairly sure not many people are "okay" with that.

How do we know whether someone did it or not, though? They said they didn't do it? In the current situation, we don't even know what they are banning people for. Even if we did know, is it enough that they deny doing it?

If someone is banned, the best course of action for a positive outcome is to not run to social media and tell everyone.

It took two weeks for EU Trade guild situation to get looked it?

I remember everyone thought they were really guilty till social media made the situation get noticed

They made account after account till someone was like hey maybe we should look at this situation.

Social media is only reason it got resolved

Innocent till proven guilty is the correct way

Galeriano · August 2023

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

It's a bit like the very real "preemptive incarceration". Most country have them, and it can be usefull if the suspect is considered dangerous.

Not sure where you live, but in my country you can’t just lock someone up on the off-chance they might have done something wrong. We have due process and are innocent until proven guilty. We haven’t quite got to Minority Report territory yet.

I don't know where You live but most countries have both "innocent until proven guilty" and "preemptive incarceration". One does not contradict the other.

It's also worth to mention that most bans happens automatically not by human hand. It's not like ZoS have some team of one thousand people monitoring whole game 24/7 for the potentially bannable actions. Without automatic bans we would be risking situations where people would be exploiting something or straight cheating for days, ruining other players experience before devs would have a chance to personally look at the issue.

ghastley · August 2023

The first action is always going to be “prevent further damage”. If players are not knowingly exploiting because the error does not require them to take action, then it is going to look harsh. Some of the potential problems could be detrimental to the player, so preventing them from playing could be removing them from harm. Let’s wait until we know the facts for this case.

tincanman · August 2023

The way I'd be happier it be done:

software auto-detects problematic account, flags it internally and snapshots its state.
once a critical threshold of accounts is reached within 24/48hr timeframe , human decision made to either close server to implement fix or leave server open to implement hotfix. This is communicated to the official forum first, other media after.
flagged accounts individually investigated by PEOPLE - those that apparently exploited are banned with right to appeal ban. Those that gained via the 'exploit' are returned to the snapshot state with respect to the exploited parameter. If that creates an account currency deficit, account is informed why (in this case players would at least have option to appeal decision or make a decision to quit). In the case of a currency deficit, that would only occur if player had inadvertently spent their 'exploited' gain irreversibly so would neither gain nor lose from the issue(other than spending, maybe, a lot of game time getting back to zero to repay that unplanned overdraft...).

The way it seems to have been done is just to implement pre-emptive auto-bans and worry later about damage mitigation to player confidence with respect to all the potential false positives. In the meantime support is swamped with appeals and investigation crawls to try to work out AFTER THE FACT what went wrong rather than timeously and sytematically addressing it as above. Ditto with the forum: in can't be good for PR this happening immediately after the wholesale weekend queue debacle.

I think I'd prefer to have account access while being aware of pending or ongoing investigation (that way I could take steps to check my own account to see for myself if there's anything amiss and thus fully cooperate with any such investigation) rather than just be booted, wrongly told implicitly or explicitly that the account was cheating in some undefined way and be left fuming and furious at zos for perceived heavy-handedness.

TLDR: Yes, check first, ban later where appropriate.

Elsonso · August 2023

Jierdanit wrote: »

It's also worth to mention that most bans happens automatically not by human hand. It's not like ZoS have some team of one thousand people monitoring whole game 24/7 for the potentially bannable actions. Without automatic bans we would be risking situations where people would be exploiting something or straight cheating for days, ruining other players experience before devs would have a chance to personally look at the issue.

I would suggest non-ban "social bans" and "message rate disconnects" are automated to the level of action. I think that the "suspension" and "permanent bans" are detected by automation but reviewed before action is taken. I don't think they have formally acknowledged that "social bans" exist, but it seems to me that I recall them saying that they do not actively ban based on automation alone.

Mik195 · August 2023

Wouldn't a temporary account suspension be a better customer experience than a permanent ban?

Caligulove · August 2023

All this made me think of something from a long time ago.

“It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished.

But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, 'whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,' and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.”

- John Adams

virtus753 · August 2023

Caligulove wrote: »

All this made me think of something from a long time ago.

“It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished.

But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, 'whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,' and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.”

- John Adams

Wonder what he would think of the fact you can be detained in the States for up to several days without being charged while an investigation is ongoing.

Dagoth_Rac · August 2023

Caligulove wrote: »

All this made me think of something from a long time ago.

“It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished.

But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, 'whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,' and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.”

- John Adams

People are acting like not being able to play a video game for a few days is like jackbooted government agents tossing you in jail and throwing away the key. This is more like a bank that has automatic detection software for credit card transactions that look for suspicious activity. The software is 95% accurate. They will absolutely disable your card immediately and worry about the 5% false positive later. This is a privileged service being supplied by a private business, not some kind of tyrannical government overreach.

Zodiarkslayer · August 2023

I don't see the issue. You allowed ZOS to do exactly that, when you agreed to the TOS.

Seriously, who is giving a heap of bovine secretions for the customer experience of someone who deliberately violated the Terms of Service? I don't.

Honestly, the process of ban, appeal and then investigate has serious advantages.
First, there is the time issue. In the entire time an investigation would need to gather evidence and make an "airtight case", the culprit is free to happily commit further violations and do more damage to game integrity and also the company.
Second, costs. Yeah, it's that obvious. The amount of labour that would have to go into investigating every little case of TOS violation suspicion is staggering. The balance between effort and gain in this case would never be considered viable by any responsible management.
And third, statistics. This isn't as obvious. Not only is the corrolation between false positives and appeals very high, but also the corrolation between real positives and no appeal is very high.
Or in other words: Those who willingly cheat or knowingly use an account for TOS violations are almost never going to appeal the ban. Whereas the falsely flagged will allost always do so.
The cool thing is from a company's perspective is, that nearly everytime there is a mistake on your side, it will present itself and deliver you the solution with it.
I mean come on, problems that solve themselves? Who doesn't want that?

The only thing we can talk about is wether the makro, bot, AI or whatever kind of programme ZOS uses to identify violations of TOS, turns up too many false positives. In that case ZOS will surely adopt, apologize to the falsely deleted account holders and maybe give a little compensation for the inconvenience.

SilverBride · August 2023

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

People are acting like not being able to play a video game for a few days is like jackbooted government agents tossing you in jail and throwing away the key.

This can be very disruptive for players that are in trade guilds and need to maintain a certain amount of sales or dues. Or players that may be removed from any guild for inactivity. Or players that may not be working for whatever reason and this is their main form of entertainment.

For these players weeks or months can feel like eternity.

CameraBeardThePirate · August 2023

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

Caligulove wrote: »

All this made me think of something from a long time ago.

“It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished.

But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, 'whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,' and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.”

- John Adams

People are acting like not being able to play a video game for a few days is like jackbooted government agents tossing you in jail and throwing away the key. This is more like a bank that has automatic detection software for credit card transactions that look for suspicious activity. The software is 95% accurate. They will absolutely disable your card immediately and worry about the 5% false positive later. This is a privileged service being supplied by a private business, not some kind of tyrannical government overreach.

This. It's not like you're getting thrown in jail. Systems will have false positives, that's just how it has to work or you'll have even more false negatives, which is a far worse situation.

Trust that you'll be able to get it resolved through customer service and take the time to either play another game or touch grass.

preevious · August 2023

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

It's a bit like the very real "preemptive incarceration". Most country have them, and it can be usefull if the suspect is considered dangerous.

Not sure where you live, but in my country you can’t just lock someone up on the off-chance they might have done something wrong. We have due process and are innocent until proven guilty. We haven’t quite got to Minority Report territory yet.

I'm pretty sure your country has it too. Every western country has it in one form or another. (actually, I believe that every country on earth have it)
We have due process too, and we're as free as can be, but a juge can consider you represent a danger for society, or a risk of fleeing the country, and can request a preemptive incarceration.

Take any violent criminal, let's say a school shooter.. should we let him free while we wait for his trial? I think not .. most people think not.

Of course, it happen that some people end up in prison wrongly .. there's mechanisms of compensations, when it happens.

zaria · August 2023

Caligulove wrote: »

All this made me think of something from a long time ago.

“It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished.

But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, 'whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,' and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.”

- John Adams

An legend who might be true is that an Chinese commander once called up all of his armed forces to fight the rebels and kill them, anybody being late to the call would be executed. This was during an storm so lots was delayed and knowing they would miss the roll call they joined the rebels who won.

Zodiarkslayer · August 2023

preevious wrote: »

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

It's a bit like the very real "preemptive incarceration". Most country have them, and it can be usefull if the suspect is considered dangerous.

Not sure where you live, but in my country you can’t just lock someone up on the off-chance they might have done something wrong. We have due process and are innocent until proven guilty. We haven’t quite got to Minority Report territory yet.

I'm pretty sure your country has it too. Every western country has it in one form or another. (actually, I believe that every country on earth have it)
We have due process too, and we're as free as can be, but a juge can consider you represent a danger for society, or a risk of fleeing the country, and can request a preemptive incarceration.

Take any violent criminal, let's say a school shooter.. should we let him free while we wait for his trial? I think not .. most people think not.

Of course, it happen that some people end up in prison wrongly .. there's mechanisms of compensations, when it happens.

While I wouldn't make that example, I totally agree. All western judicial systems know preemptive incarceration. And that usually has to be ordered by a judge.

Usually an indication or a reasonable suspicion is enough. For example, where I live Police only need to proof a suspect was at the crime scene in order to get an arrest warrant. After that both parties can provide evidence in their cases and a judge decides wether or not to let it go to trial.
If the arrest was wrongful, then the former suspect can demand recompense. There is even a law that specifies how much money you get for each day in prison, if you are wrongfully arrested.

AFAIK, in the US of A police can make arrests for 48h without providing any evidence. They just have to declare someone a person of interest and off you go to the jail. Isn't it?

wilykcat · August 2023

This discussion is going places. What did I just read 🙃.

Carcamongus · August 2023

Yes, automatically banning a bunch of accounts and sorting them out later may be more efficient from the company's perspective. But let's not forget there are people behind these accounts. I presume most of those complaining here are innocent based on the simple fact the devs are still investigating, which means they don't know all the facts yet.

Update: it appears I was right to presume innocence, as many people on the other thread are reporting they can now access the game again.

DUTCH_REAPER · August 2023

No ban ban ban. If you’re innocent they will reinstate you. So over the cheaters.

Jaimeh · August 2023

Preferably they should always investigate first, but in reality they probably won't have time and resources to do this fast so it should depend on the case, if the exploit isn't hugely impactful then it would be better to investigate first, if it's hugely impactful then maybe it'd be better to ban first and ask questions later.

spartaxoxo · August 2023

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

This is because bot accounts can be set up automatically and banning them by hand would be fighting an uphill battle after a sleet storm.

Except they had already fixed the exploit. So, it was not necessary to stopping ongoing abuse. They were able to hotfix the issue very quickly without even needing to restart the servers and then they banned for it weeks later. Afterwards, they sorted through who had truly exploited and who were only people who had very minor gains because they encountered the bug. They then unbanned everyone who were not clearly exploiting the bug because they gained only minor benefit. Those who did it an egregious amount kept their ban.

MasterSpatula · August 2023

If they suspect someone is actively cheating right now, then they are kinda obligated to put a stop to that right now.

Of course, if they'd just rely on paid GMs rather than algorithms to make decisions that require human judgement, we might not be having this conversation.

zaria · August 2023

Carcamongus wrote: »

Yes, automatically banning a bunch of accounts and sorting them out later may be more efficient from the company's perspective. But let's not forget there are people behind these accounts. I presume most of those complaining here are innocent based on the simple fact the devs are still investigating, which means they don't know all the facts yet.

Update: it appears I was right to presume innocence, as many people on the other thread are reporting they can now access the game again.

I totally agree, and I say this is an trainwreck who result should include excuses like the responsible has been fired.

JoeCapricorn · August 2023

I propose a system thus:

Automated system flags activity as potentially troublesome
It is reviewed by a person
Depending on severity, at the trained discretion of the person human, the following could occur:

E-mailed warning, as well as a warning pop-up in game. These pop-ups only occur when character is out of combat, and you must type a word like "Okay" just like with the one about destroying valuable items makes you type "DESTROY".
6 hour mute from social aspects (with further investigation into behavior considering context)
6 hour ban from game (with further investigation considering context)
Longer bans only make sense for more egregious violations.

If someone accidentally comes across an "eXpLoIt" / bug that rewards extra stuff, that does not warrant a ban. If anything, recent events are telling me that if I come across any such exploit by accidentally triggering it, reporting it is the last thing I should do, because that might lead to a false ban. Now, if someone comes across an exploit, or otherwise hears about it, and does it repeatedly... then that's a ban. But it sounds like people just visiting Reaper's March got hit with a ban without doing anything wrong. This is multiple posts on these forums and elsewhere saying the same thing.

Social bans should consider context. If I type a bad word that's not otherwise a slur in response to someone doing something rude, that should not be a ban. Not that I've ever gotten any sort of trouble (I'm rarely angery), but sometimes things get heated (especially if PVP is involved, ugh). I've also personally seen someone who meant to compare sizes accidentally hit a different letter on the keyboard and a yikes-inducing moment ensued, an automatic system (like that with Facebook) would've banned but a human reviewer would have seen the "OMG that is the worst typo" etc and forgave them. After all, we cannot edit our chat messages.

in short...

DO NOT AUTOMATICALLY BAN WITHOUT HUMAN REVIEW

Marcus684 · August 2023

JoeCapricorn wrote: »

I propose a system thus:

Automated system flags activity as potentially troublesome
It is reviewed by a person
Depending on severity, at the trained discretion of the person human, the following could occur:

E-mailed warning, as well as a warning pop-up in game. These pop-ups only occur when character is out of combat, and you must type a word like "Okay" just like with the one about destroying valuable items makes you type "DESTROY".
6 hour mute from social aspects (with further investigation into behavior considering context)
6 hour ban from game (with further investigation considering context)
Longer bans only make sense for more egregious violations.

If someone accidentally comes across an "eXpLoIt" / bug that rewards extra stuff, that does not warrant a ban. If anything, recent events are telling me that if I come across any such exploit by accidentally triggering it, reporting it is the last thing I should do, because that might lead to a false ban. Now, if someone comes across an exploit, or otherwise hears about it, and does it repeatedly... then that's a ban. But it sounds like people just visiting Reaper's March got hit with a ban without doing anything wrong. This is multiple posts on these forums and elsewhere saying the same thing.

Social bans should consider context. If I type a bad word that's not otherwise a slur in response to someone doing something rude, that should not be a ban. Not that I've ever gotten any sort of trouble (I'm rarely angery), but sometimes things get heated (especially if PVP is involved, ugh). I've also personally seen someone who meant to compare sizes accidentally hit a different letter on the keyboard and a yikes-inducing moment ensued, an automatic system (like that with Facebook) would've banned but a human reviewer would have seen the "OMG that is the worst typo" etc and forgave them. After all, we cannot edit our chat messages.

in short...

DO NOT AUTOMATICALLY BAN WITHOUT HUMAN REVIEW

Completely infeasible. ESO has literally millions of players, and if even 1% cheat you're looking at hundreds of thousands of flagged accounts that's have to be reviewed, requiring thousands of paid representatives to be done in a timely manner. Are you willing to pay the additional cost for all of their wages?

TaSheen · August 2023

Y'know, so much of this sort of "detective discovery" may rely on people who can dig through databases. If that's the case.... well, I work with small databases on a daily basis. They may be small, but Divines forfend you don't pay complete attention to what exactly it is you need to do, and choose ther proper action in the proper cell in the proper table - and also, Divines forfend you're messing with the damned database when the power goes out, or the cat scratches the youngest great grandchild, or husband falls and breaks his leg.....

Serious. It is NOT a simple thing to mess with.

geonsocal · August 2023