Suggestion to prevent unnecessary account suspensions

I just found out that when a player's game account gets suspended, the moderators will (at least in some cases) generate a support ticket for that account. As I didn't know this, and no email was sent to me, I was left guessing on the actual reason for the suspension. After the suspension I continued the actions that, for some unknown reasons, were deemed to be against the policies. Had I known about the first ticket, I would have obviously stopped and complied.

My suggestions: 1) Improve the in-game error message to say that a support ticket may have been generated for you. 2) Send an email notifying of such tickets in the same way an email is send about replies to tickets.

I think most players contact the CS Team when their account is actioned.
Either to find out why, or to dispute it.

Yeah, well, I didn't. :/ I know there are cultural differences and that I wouldn't get any actual explanations, because such differences can't be explained easily. :) I'm not American and I can't always tell what their motivations are.

Been bad, got caught, complain on forums, feign ignorance.

No I'm not complaining about the suspensions, I'm sure they have their reasons even if they don't want to share them with me. I'm just saying that if I had know about the ticket system, I would have been able to see what I had done wrong and avoided the second suspension.

So what you are saying is that you got suspended, made no effort to find out why or make any modifications to your behavior, continued exactly as you had before and are now a shocked pikachu that you got suspended again?

It honestly would be better if, as the OP said, either the in-game messaging was more specific or pointed you to Support, and/or an email was generated by the opening of the ticket notifying the suspension.

For the unfamiliar, I recently found out how this works for the first time, and it's not very easy to understand what happened. When they enact the suspension it just crashes your client - the screen goes white and the client locks up and dies. No explanation. When you restart, you get a message that just says the duration of the suspension.

I actually did go to support, and opened my own ticket to find out what was up. That then had to be closed and merged with the action ticket (that was never notified to me). I happened to notice the other ticket while logged into my account on the support site, but I imagine most people don't see that. It just adds confusion for the players and work for the GMs to not make it very clear what happened and what channel to use to follow up and/or find out more.

I did make efforts to find out what went wrong, but didn't contact the support or browse tickets that I didn't know were there in the first place. I presumed someone had reported me for who knows what and I decided to try to avoid any confrontation. Yet, I got suspended for another reason entirely, that I won't go into details of here. On a related note, the Code of Conduct isn't very specific and, I guess, open for some interpretation.

@kumiponi.6047 said:I did make efforts to find out what went wrong, but didn't contact the support or browse tickets that I didn't know were there in the first place. I presumed someone had reported me for who knows what and I decided to try to avoid any confrontation. Yet, I got suspended for another reason entirely, that I won't go into details of here. On a related note, the Code of Conduct isn't very specific and, I guess, open for some interpretation.

You didn't know support existed?

I know support exists and from reading these forums I know it's not very helpful to appeal to them in these cases.

@"Kunzaito.8169" said:It honestly would be better if, as the OP said, either the in-game messaging was more specific or pointed you to Support, and/or an email was generated by the opening of the ticket notifying the suspension.

For the unfamiliar, I recently found out how this works for the first time, and it's not very easy to understand what happened. When they enact the suspension it just crashes your client - the screen goes white and the client locks up and dies. No explanation. When you restart, you get a message that just says the duration of the suspension.

I actually did go to support, and opened my own ticket to find out what was up. That then had to be closed and merged with the action ticket (that was never notified to me). I happened to notice the other ticket while logged into my account on the support site, but I imagine most people don't see that. It just adds confusion for the players and work for the GMs to not make it very clear what happened and what channel to use to follow up and/or find out more.

I agree it would be helpful if the ticket was emailed to you. Especially since the same limitation might apply to other tickets created by Anet rather than the player. It's not very helpful if a Support person sets up a system to help you with a problem (whether it's your fault or not) and you never even know it's happening. Replies to tickets are emailed to you, so it seems like they should be able to email the initial ticket as well.

@kumiponi.6047 said:I know support exists and from reading these forums I know it's not very helpful to appeal to them in these cases.

It's very rarely helpful to appeal to them to change the decision. If your account is suspended you can't ask Support to reverse that and let you back in early (or to reverse a full ban) and it's extremely unlikely you'll be able to convince them to change the rules to allow whatever you did, or convince them you didn't do it. Although on rare occasions if you've got evidence to prove they've misunderstood the situation that might work - for example if someone was banned for gold selling and then they contact Support to show them the guild website where they were running a contest and prove that they were giving out the prizes.

But your situation is different - you didn't want to ask them to reverse the suspension and let you back into the game early, you just wanted to know why you were suspended, and that's something they could help you with. (It might also be helpful for Anet to know that you misunderstood the code of conduct, they might want to re-word it so it's clearer in future.)

Also, for future reference reports are not automated, so you will never be suspended just because someone reported you. A report is just a message to Anet that another player thinks you did something wrong - nothing will happen until a person has investigated the situation and you'll only be suspended if they agree that you broke the rules. So there's no need to avoid other players for fear of being reported, as long as you're not actually doing anything which is against the rules.

@kumiponi.6047 said:I know support exists and from reading these forums I know it's not very helpful to appeal to them in these cases.

No one is going to go to the forums and complain about good outcomes. So basing your opinion on support staff on that is not going to be accurate.

So, you knew about support and the ability to make tickets, consciously chose not to make a ticket to ask for information, continued acting exactly as you did when you got suspended, and are surprised when you got suspended again?

There is a pretty clear statement when you are suspended in the game. If it is still unclear what the reason is, I would always recommend contacting support and asking them. Just sitting out the time without changing what you did is foolish and a recipe to more suspensions. I do not see the need for any adjustments here.

@Mewcifer.5198 said:No one is going to go to the forums and complain about good outcomes. So basing your opinion on support staff on that is not going to be accurate.

As @Danikat.8537 said above, the good outcomes are probably rare. This was even reflected on the language of my tickets. Support seems to be very friendly on usual requests, but when you have been deemed to have broken the rules, there is little sympathy.

So, you knew about support and the ability to make tickets, consciously chose not to make a ticket to ask for information, continued acting exactly as you did when you got suspended, and are surprised when you got suspended again?

As I said before, I didn't continue acting the way I had. That's what I thought was enough to avoid future suspensions. Additionally, I'm not very inclined to ask for information if I know I'm going to be lambasted in some way, without an effective course of appeal.

@mercury ranique.2170 said:There is a pretty clear statement when you are suspended in the game. If it is still unclear what the reason is, I would always recommend contacting support and asking them. Just sitting out the time without changing what you did is foolish and a recipe to more suspensions. I do not see the need for any adjustments here.

No, the statement in the game is very general and doesn't direct the player to contact the support. And for the third time, I did change my behavior. The adjustment needed is some kind of a notice informing about the ticket that's been created.

I am surprised to discover that players are not informed of how they can discover why they are actioned when they are actioned, but even more surprised to discover how many players apparently feel like this is a good thing. OP's suggestions are asking for an email or a line of dialogue to be added to an error message. For those who have expressed their opposition to these suggestions, what are the upsides to not providing that communication . . ?

@"Gop.8713" said:I am surprised to discover that players are not informed of how they can discover why they are actioned when they are actioned, but even more surprised to discover how many players apparently feel like this is a good thing. OP's suggestions are asking for an email or a line of dialogue to be added to an error message. For those who have expressed their opposition to these suggestions, what are the upsides to not providing that communication . . ?

It's not as if they just can't log into their account and there is nothing saying why. It's clear that the account is suspended.Putting a reason in an automated email could potentially be seen as a privacy risk. And honestly it would probably just be a single line from a drop down menu like "violation of community guidelines" or something because it is unreasonable to expect someone to manually type stuff like that for every suspension that happens, it would bog down the whole process, especially if the reason was more complex than can be put into a single line.

It doesn't take very much thought or effort to file a help ticket and ask for the reason behind the suspension in order to better comply with the terms of service in the future. I have never been suspended from the game myself but I am pretty sure based on what I have seen posted in the past that it says "Please contact support for information."

So they tell you how to find out more information. If people choose not to and get suspended again for the same thing then I feel it is their own fault.

@mercury ranique.2170 said:There is a pretty clear statement when you are suspended in the game. If it is still unclear what the reason is, I would always recommend contacting support and asking them. Just sitting out the time without changing what you did is foolish and a recipe to more suspensions. I do not see the need for any adjustments here.

Hmmmm? They should inform what person done straight away.

@"Mewcifer.5198" said:Putting a reason in an automated email could potentially be seen as a privacy risk. And honestly it would probably just be a single line from a drop down menu like "violation of community guidelines" or something because it is unreasonable to expect someone to manually type stuff like that for every suspension that happens, it would bog down the whole process, especially if the reason was more complex than can be put into a single line.

You are misunderstanding the process. They do create a ticket, at least in my case they did, that has some context to what lead to the suspension. (They however refused to explain why, despite my explanation of the situation, my actions were against the Code of Conduct.) The email I think should be sent is a notification that such a ticket has been created. The only way to find out about it is to go to the support system and browse "My tickets", which one would naturally assume are all posted by me. I have never before heard of a ticket system where the person who asks for support is not the one who posts the ticket.

I have never been suspended from the game myself but I am pretty sure based on what I have seen posted in the past that it says "Please contact support for information."

That may be true in some cases but there was no such thing in the error message that I got, and am still getting if I try to log in. Reasons for suspension are not equal and similarly the lengths differ, I would assume.

@kumiponi.6047 said:

@"Mewcifer.5198" said:Putting a reason in an automated email could potentially be seen as a privacy risk. And honestly it would probably just be a single line from a drop down menu like "violation of community guidelines" or something because it is unreasonable to expect someone to manually type stuff like that for every suspension that happens, it would bog down the whole process, especially if the reason was more complex than can be put into a single line.

I have never been suspended from the game myself but I am

pretty sure

based on what I have seen posted in the past that it says "Please contact support for information."

Wait, did you or did you not create a ticket the first time you were suspended? Because everything you posted before this implied that you did not create a ticket to ask what you did wrong. Had you done so, support would have just merged your new ticket with the one they created automatically (as was previously stated by someone else in the thread).

No I did not create a ticket the first time, as I previously explained. This thread is not about what happened to me, but what I think should be done to improve the communication.

Are you sure they did not send an email? I can't say how many times players have posted they did not receive emails from support that were sent.

Also, if an account is 'hacked' and the email is changed, to whom should the CS Team send the email?
It's always best to contact the CS Team with concerns about the account.

(This must be something very new; never heard of the CS Team sending emails regarding bans/suspensions. Especially when they will suspend accounts they feel may have been tampered with.)

I'm sure I did not receive any email or any other kind of notification anywhere about the support ticket. No email at all before I did post my own ticket. My phone beeps on new emails and I regularly check the junk mail folder. If an account gets hacked and the email address changed, they should send a notification to the address that was in effect before the hack, of course. This does not apply to my situation though, as my account was not hacked nor the address changed.

In case you're thinking that posting details about the incident would pose a security risk, I sort of agree, but they do it anyway. Full replies to tickets posted by me are sent through email.

@Mewcifer.5198 said:

@"Gop.8713" said:I am surprised to discover that players are not informed of how they can discover why they are actioned when they are actioned, but even more surprised to discover how many players apparently feel like this is a good thing. OP's suggestions are asking for an email or a line of dialogue to be added to an error message. For those who have expressed their opposition to these suggestions, what are the upsides to not providing that communication . . ?

So then you agree with the OP that a line in the in-game error message should include a recommendation to contact CS, though there seems to be some uncertainty as to whether that line already exists. Either way, seems like everyone agrees it should be there, so not much to discuss here really I guess . . .

@Gop.8713 said:

@Mewcifer.5198 said:

@Gop.8713 said:I am surprised to discover that players are not informed of how they can discover why they are actioned when they are actioned, but even more surprised to discover how many players apparently feel like this is a good thing. OP's suggestions are asking for an email or a line of dialogue to be added to an error message. For those who have expressed their opposition to these suggestions, what are the upsides to not providing that communication . . ?

Yeah, if the line is not already there, it should be added. I have seen people in the past quote what they were seeing and that mentioned contacting support but they could have been quoting an email. But I haven't encountered it personally to know for sure.

It would be great if you posted the notification (screenshot) you get when you try to log in.