Account suspension discussion [merged]

[starhunter.6015]

Also considering that If Anet was going to ban TacO and Arcdps users. They would make a statement to let players know to remove them and that they are no longer allowed like they did with BGDM.

[Donutdude.9582]

@Chilli.2976 said:I understand that - but also doing something like this as a break down of the official TOS will be helpful.

Perhaps it might be. Nevertheless I doubt ArenaNet would invest time and marketing into something like this. The entirety of the ToS is there for everyone to read, both before and after account creation, so it does not make good business sense to essentially duplicate the work.

[Taki.2130]

@Voltekka.2375 said:

@andybear.1753 said:

@Voltekka.2375 said:

@Vault Girl.6792 said:

@"Pifil.5193" said:I think that the six month ban is the warning: next time it will probably be a permanent one.

By "warning" I meant something like "We've detected that you are using third-party software that violates our rules, you have one week to uninstall it".

Why should they give you a warning to uninstall... Its like someone robbing a bank, getting caught and asking "You have detected I robbed a bank, give me one week to return the money"...

Because it might help prevent false positives. Those of us that have never used 3rd party software and still got banned could have used support to prevent it.

I am not sure I understand (no sarcasm). How can they give you a heads-up, if you have no 3rd party software installed in your pc? Also, why should people (like myself) who have no 3rd party tools installed, be worried about a headsup, or a false-positive?

A game I used to play used xTrap when loading in, and upon recognizing software violating ToS, it would stop loading, pop a dialogue box that literally said "You have illegally manipulated the client." And then close the game. Granted, this approach would have to be modified in order still allow for approved third party software, but I would not be adverse to this method.

If say, parsing the data and you manipulate that program to beep you when to do something as mentioned in the previously linked reddit thread where Chris responded, the scanning program for loading could scan specifically for modifications like that rather than for the whole program- this would be ideal.

Scanner active while Launcher loads: Scans, sees DPSMeter thingy. Scanner sees an extra audio file set to play upon phase change. Scanner shuts down launcher.

Now this would be a more... lengthy launch time. But it would basically shut you out of the game until you removed the modified component. Ergo, bans not required- you just have to remove the software and be a pleb like the rest of us.

Also, totally just anecdotal, 1600-2000 accounts out of a reported 178,869 accounts listed with gw2efficiency is laughable. That's less than 2% of total known accounts through gw2 efficiency. Perhaps some of you are right that it was an unjust ban, but I'll bet with at least a decade of mmo gaming behind me that most of those are justified.

[Oglaf.1074]

Classic example of how two wrongs never make a right. Don’t stoop to the hackers’ level.

[Vegeta.9670]

@starhunter.6015 said:Also considering that If Anet was going to ban TacO and Arcdps users. They would make a statement to let players know to remove them and that they are no longer allowed like they did with BGDM.

That statement was released on reddit, not every player reads reddit though (unless they made a forum topic on it as well, if so do you have the link to it?)

[Ayakaru.6583]

There’s also temporary content ban.I once had 2 DC’s in one day, in PvP and was banned from pvp for almost 2 weeks.Bit of an overreaction if you ask me. I never leave matches early, and have maybe 1 DC a week, if I round it up ..

[Sojar.1495]

Funny... I use Taco and ArcDPS everytime I login. I wasn't banned. As do all of my guildies. None of them were banned.

The posts about this are pretty funny, because you're basically admitting, publicly, that you utilized an offshoot of ArcDPS that was used for hacking (teleportation, no-clip, enhanced speed, etc)

This whole "I was only using Taco/ArcDPS" is a bunch of bull. You hacked, and now you're banned. How sad. Maybe next time, don't hack.

[Ayakaru.6583]

@"Malediktus.9250" said:

Hopefully people like these are banned now?

This is straight up cheating, not even in the grey area. Pitch black, ink on paper “I’m cheating”.Why would you even post that on youtube?“Look, Anet, I’m cheating, please ban me”.Gotta be the worst hacker ever

[Etterwyn.5263]

I appreciate your honesty and forwardness. Enjoy your new puppy! She will fill up your free time beautifully.

And never say never... you may well decide to come back in 6 months. It'll be "just to see how things have changed" and suddenly you're hooked again. ;)

[GrubySzymek.1362]

@"Sojar.1495" said:Funny... I use Taco and ArcDPS everytime I login. I wasn't banned. As do all of my guildies. None of them were banned.

The posts about this are pretty funny, because you're basically admitting, publicly, that you utilized an offshoot of ArcDPS that was used for hacking (teleportation, no-clip, enhanced speed, etc)

This whole "I was only using Taco/ArcDPS" is a bunch of bull. You hacked, and now you're banned. How sad. Maybe next time, don't hack.

Do you claim false positives are not possible?

[Sojar.1495]

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:

@"Sojar.1495" said:Funny... I use Taco and ArcDPS everytime I login. I wasn't banned. As do all of my guildies. None of them were banned.

The posts about this are pretty funny, because you're basically admitting, publicly, that you utilized an offshoot of ArcDPS that was used for hacking (teleportation, no-clip, enhanced speed, etc)

This whole "I was only using Taco/ArcDPS" is a bunch of bull. You hacked, and now you're banned. How sad. Maybe next time, don't hack.

Do you claim false positives are not possible?

Yes, in this situation, I 100% claim that false positives are, in fact, IMPOSSIBLE. Do you realize how heuristics work? ANET didn't exactly have to look very far to see memory injections occurring that are unwanted and disallowed.

So no, it's a bunch of lies. People got caught, and now they're sad. Too bad. Should have been perma bans.

[GrubySzymek.1362]

@Sojar.1495 said:

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:

@Sojar.1495 said:Funny... I use Taco and ArcDPS everytime I login. I wasn't banned. As do all of my guildies. None of them were banned.

The posts about this are pretty funny, because you're basically admitting, publicly, that you utilized an offshoot of ArcDPS that was used for hacking (teleportation, no-clip, enhanced speed, etc)

This whole "I was only using Taco/ArcDPS" is a bunch of bull. You hacked, and now you're banned. How sad. Maybe next time, don't hack.

Do you claim false positives are not possible?

Yes, in this situation, I 100% claim that false positives are, in fact, IMPOSSIBLE. Do you realize how heuristics work? ANET didn't exactly have to look very far to see memory injections occurring that are unwanted and disallowed.

So no, it's a bunch of lies. People got caught, and now they're sad. Too bad. Should have been perma bans.

There were cases in the past of unjustified bans related to 3rd party software. Since Anet doesn't publish any evidence, I have no reason to believe neither them nor players who claim innocence.

[Voltekka.2375]

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:

@Voltekka.2375 said:

@freeman.7315 said:

@Charrbeque.8729 said:

@freeman.7315 said:I think Anet could have actually saved all those who got banned by mistake if they would simply make an official in-game dmg meter and a build template. But hey,i guess instead of doing something that would actually improve the quality of the game and stop most people from using these 3rd party software, they would rather make sittable chairs. Yeah....

That's like blaming a grocery store for high prices when someone steals a loaf of bread.

This isn't ArenaNet's fault. They have rules in place. Just because there isn't a feature in the game you want, doesn't give you the right do do whatever you want.

I am not defending people who hacked,cheated or broken ToS in any way. But too many people are claiming they were using Arc and Taco only or one respectively, and still got banned. As far as i'm aware of both of those were allowed by Anet and even promoted in certain cases. Anet themselves made dmg meter and build templates essential with introduction of raids. But by all means,let them pour all their time for usable in game beds that we can have on the next update.

Keyword: They CLAIM. Mistakes can be made, from ANET's side, sure. But how many are the (self claimed) innocent ones who (reportedly) did nothing wrong, out of the 1600?

Even single mistake is unacceptable if they refuse appeals. Keep in mind that when suspending your account Anet also only claims things, they never show you evidence.

I agree with this. Even one innocent account banned/suspended, is a huge breach of trust.

[Sojar.1495]

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:

@Sojar.1495 said:

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:

@Sojar.1495 said:Funny... I use Taco and ArcDPS everytime I login. I wasn't banned. As do all of my guildies. None of them were banned.

The posts about this are pretty funny, because you're basically admitting, publicly, that you utilized an offshoot of ArcDPS that was used for hacking (teleportation, no-clip, enhanced speed, etc)

This whole "I was only using Taco/ArcDPS" is a bunch of bull. You hacked, and now you're banned. How sad. Maybe next time, don't hack.

Do you claim false positives are not possible?

Yes, in this situation, I 100% claim that false positives are, in fact, IMPOSSIBLE. Do you realize how heuristics work? ANET didn't exactly have to look very far to see memory injections occurring that are unwanted and disallowed.

So no, it's a bunch of lies. People got caught, and now they're sad. Too bad. Should have been perma bans.

There were cases in the past of unjustified bans related to 3rd party software. Since Anet doesn't publish any evidence, I have no reason to believe neither them nor players who claim innocence.

Yes, they should post evidence so that the hackers can find a workaround and cheat more. Nah.... not how it works.

Additionally, memory injecting modifications are CLEARLY and EASILY read with some clever code updates to the client. That's what ANET did, and that's what they looked for. Since TacO and ArcDPS use temporal and static data, these would not trigger a ban, as they are doing ZERO writes to active memory and ZERO writes to standby memory.

They don't need to accept appeals, because these people are 100% guilty. #sorrynotsorry

[Holykitten.3064]

@Ayakaru.6583 said:There’s also temporary content ban.I once had 2 DC’s in one day, in PvP and was banned from pvp for almost 2 weeks.Bit of an overreaction if you ask me. I never leave matches early, and have maybe 1 DC a week, if I round it up ..

Are you confusing actual content bans which Win Traders got, with Dishonored? Dishonor can stack onto an account, even if there's not a visible barring of entry. If you DC from matches on the regular, it's very common to have 2 week Dishonor periods.

[Awesome Guild Wars Guy.463]

Anet could have gave an explanation in tickets individually, why exactly person got banned, for what kind of software or w/e they were using. I mean it's not hard, they found and banned 1.6k players, might as give them explanation why that happened. Since many people are saying that they were not fairly banned and haven't done anything wrong.

[FyzE.3472]

@"Vyrulisse.1246" said:No appeals for anyone A.net? Really? You've been wrong before. Why do people hit by this have no option to have their situation looked at?

Also, there have been a lot of cases of people claiming "well, I have not done anything wrong" on which devs answered "well, u've been using x exlpoit/3d party program for x hours" sooo yeah. I would rather trust the devs. Also there have been literally videos made on youtube, saying "me and my wife are innocent!" and after devs explaining what they have done, those same videos were just removed by that same couple. Strange right?

[Silmar Alech.4305]

I'm pretty sure every single ban is warranted, and you know exactly why you were banned. I assume all of these accounts did play on a game installation one time in the past that was "enhanced" with some hacking tool that allowed things like superspeed or wall traversal.Perhaps they did not install such tool themselves, but logged in on a client on a friend's computer that has it installed without their knowledge (the friend will deny it, of course). Don't forget you can log in with your account on any GW2 client in the world.Perhaps they did not even do it themselves, perhaps they gave their account credentials to a friend in good faith, but who used that tool on his game client.Perhaps they did download this tool, tried it to see if it worked as advertised and uninstalled after. They either forgot about it or think this one try weren't ban-relevant.

But if Arenanet integrated a detection of that tool, for example by checking for some code patching this tool does, they have 100% proof that "this" account logged on "that" compromised client. Thus the account was flagged some time in the past when it happened, even if it were only once, and was collectively banned yesterday.

If someone banned claims none of this happened with his account, he either forgot about it or is trying to get away with it by claiming it didn't happen.

[GrubySzymek.1362]

@Sojar.1495 said:

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:

@Sojar.1495 said:

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:

@Sojar.1495 said:Funny... I use Taco and ArcDPS everytime I login. I wasn't banned. As do all of my guildies. None of them were banned.

The posts about this are pretty funny, because you're basically admitting, publicly, that you utilized an offshoot of ArcDPS that was used for hacking (teleportation, no-clip, enhanced speed, etc)

This whole "I was only using Taco/ArcDPS" is a bunch of bull. You hacked, and now you're banned. How sad. Maybe next time, don't hack.

Do you claim false positives are not possible?

Yes, in this situation, I 100% claim that false positives are, in fact, IMPOSSIBLE. Do you realize how heuristics work? ANET didn't exactly have to look very far to see memory injections occurring that are unwanted and disallowed.

So no, it's a bunch of lies. People got caught, and now they're sad. Too bad. Should have been perma bans.

There were cases in the past of unjustified bans related to 3rd party software. Since Anet doesn't publish any evidence, I have no reason to believe neither them nor players who claim innocence.

Yes, they should post evidence so that the hackers can find a workaround and cheat more. Nah.... not how it works.

Additionally, memory injecting modifications are CLEARLY and EASILY read with some clever code updates to the client. That's what ANET did, and that's what they looked for. Since TacO and ArcDPS use temporal and static data, these would not trigger a ban, as they are doing ZERO writes to active memory and ZERO writes to standby memory.

They don't need to accept appeals, because these people are 100% guilty. #sorrynotsorry

I'm sorry but no. You judging other players guilty has equal value to these players coming here and saying they are innocent. I don't expect Anet to post evidence. I expect them not to automatically refuse any cooperation when appeals happen. That's all. Such things should be reviewed individually by CS, not here on forums.

btw I'm not banned, but some people probably think I am because I don't accept "no appeals" message posted by Gaile.

[SidewayS.3789]

Well i can say it here. I never used 3rd party software, until SAB. I have installed TacO for tribulation and i installed my gaming mouse software. And then i created a macro for double jump. Guess i broke the rules, and i have been banned. BUT 6 months for a petty double jump...

[Zedek.8932]

@andybear.1753 said:

@"Gaile Gray.6029" said:You'll find information about a series of account suspensions in

this thread

.

I have a regular weekend guild wars 2 Lan party with my kids. My son is 10 and isn't allowed to install software on his computer himself. I have checked and there isn't anything there not added by the gw2 installer. His account is banned, falsely. This has ruined our weekends for the next 6 months. So I guess none of the 4 of us are going to play since he cannot. Very not cool to do to people who have done absolutely nothing wrong.

Having to "install" something (via the Windows route over the MSI or other "installers") and just copy files (.DLLs for example) from A to B is a totally different thing. Especially 10-year olds might play with the idea to win over his siblings by cheating more than a 28-year old because of the lack of life experience, no matter how good your parenting is.

[GrubySzymek.1362]

@FyzE.3472 said:

@"Vyrulisse.1246" said:No appeals for anyone A.net? Really? You've been wrong before. Why do people hit by this have no option to have their situation looked at?

Also, there have been a lot of cases of people claiming "well, I have not done anything wrong" on which devs answered "well, u've been using x exlpoit/3d party program for x hours" sooo yeah. I would rather trust the devs. Also there have been literally videos made on youtube, saying "me and my wife are innocent!" and after devs explaining what they have done, those same videos were just removed by that same couple. Strange right?

There were also cases of people wrongly banned, where anet lifted the suspension. Even if amongst these 1500 players there's a single person that is banned becuase of false positive report, that person deserves to get their account back.

[FyzE.3472]

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:

@FyzE.3472 said:

@"Vyrulisse.1246" said:No appeals for anyone A.net? Really? You've been wrong before. Why do people hit by this have no option to have their situation looked at?

Also, there have been a lot of cases of people claiming "well, I have not done anything wrong" on which devs answered "well, u've been using x exlpoit/3d party program for x hours" sooo yeah. I would rather trust the devs. Also there have been literally videos made on youtube, saying "me and my wife are innocent!" and after devs explaining what they have done, those same videos were just removed by that same couple. Strange right?

There were also cases of people wrongly banned, where anet lifted the suspension. Even if amongst these 1500 players there's a single person that is banned becuase of false positive report, that person deserves to get their account back.

How many of those 1583 accounts wrongly accused? And how many of those are just pretending to be innocent? I'm not saying it is impossible. But come on man, let's be real. I don't think the wrongly accused accounts would exceed 10-15%.Anyway, it is still a great day for the people who play fair :DInb4 "Your account have been suspended" lol.

[Awesome Guild Wars Guy.463]

Maybe it's just a late April Fools by anet. Tomorrow all unbanned

[GrubySzymek.1362]

@FyzE.3472 said:

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:

@FyzE.3472 said:

@"Vyrulisse.1246" said:No appeals for anyone A.net? Really? You've been wrong before. Why do people hit by this have no option to have their situation looked at?

Also, there have been a lot of cases of people claiming "well, I have not done anything wrong" on which devs answered "well, u've been using x exlpoit/3d party program for x hours" sooo yeah. I would rather trust the devs. Also there have been literally videos made on youtube, saying "me and my wife are innocent!" and after devs explaining what they have done, those same videos were just removed by that same couple. Strange right?

There were also cases of people wrongly banned, where anet lifted the suspension. Even if amongst these 1500 players there's a single person that is banned becuase of false positive report, that person deserves to get their account back.

How many of those 1583 accounts wrongly accused? And how many of those are just pretending to be innocent? I'm not saying it is impossible. But come on man, let's be real. I don't think the wrongly accused accounts would exceed 10-15%.Anyway, it is still a great day for the people who play fair :DInb4 "Your account have been suspended" lol.

Oh I suppose false positives may be a case for <50 accounts if not less. However, as I said, it's not about believing people on forums, it's about anet stating they don't accept appeals. Sounds like unacceptable behaviour in company-customer relationship. How else those wrongfully banned (if there are any) can get their accounts back if they can't appeal?