Allods Online Forum

I'm sorry but nothing like this will ever work.

Noone here has ALL the information.
For example, you do not, nor will you see the exact information they used to base the bannings on.

your also not taking into consideration a number of things:
FACT - They have been working LONG past their normal working hours to investigate further information provided by the tickets, and to reply to as many as humanly possible.
FACT - If the banning has been entirely erroneous (e.g the detection scripted picking up false positives), they have put their hands up, admitted to their mistakes and apologised (as well as unbanning the account ofc).
FACT - So far, (to my knowledge anyway) the majority of people that have had their cases checked have been unbanned.

A lot of people complained about the exchange rate being too high, they tried something to fix it. But it did not quite work as intended (simply changing the rate will not change anything.. as the large amount of gold being used to inflate the exchange rate would still exist, and they would be able to profit further from it). We did how ever receive some valuable information about the process around the exploitation that we did not previously have.

other games don't go back and unban people that use exploits, even by mistake. at least allods is looking into this and unbanning people. The whole thing came down to people exchanging gold for gpots till prices went off the roof and then exchanging gpots for gold and creating "fake gold" and repeat. During this time, people still used the cs vendor, that's why some innocent ones were banned. Even though they didn't exploit trade route, they maybe bought gpots with real money and then exchanged them for gold, which only deepened the problem.

But when the banning was done, there was no record of player intent, all the GM's had to work with were numbers. Ofc all the people that spent alot were banned, because numberwise they looked like exploiters, and that's why they are being unbanned now after further investigation.

Trying to antagonize the GMs never helps, in any situation. So this poll is kinda stupid. If someone was banned with no connection with the exploit (like not using the cs vendor for a few months or even being inactive the whole time) then yes, an apology would have been in order. In this case, i'm not sure it applies. And even if it does, it is between the GMs and the players wrongfully banned.

there can be some banned by mistake, but what happened on NA between December 2013-March 2014 was hilarious, those who got banned for using that exploit should not be let to return to game ever again, NA was already behind EU server and it just made alot of ppl to abandon the game. Guess some convert their crystals into gold before every maint hoping that price gets lowered, if some did that and are banned don't wonder lol.

Quoted from "Splatter"

The Vote of Confidence is already working as intended, and provides a measure of you're customer's confidence of you're team's action's.
Not really, it turns it into a popularity contest, Bannings don't have to be popular to be correct, with your way it just comes down who has the most friends on either side.

Quoted

FACT - They have been working LONG past their normal working hours to investigate further information provided by the tickets, and to reply to as many as humanly possible.

That is what the customer pay's them to do, and irrelevant since they are obligated to complete task as a paid employee.

Nowhere what so ever is there a "I pay for extra support" item, what you PAY for is a Subscription to access the game, Or for Premium Crystals which can then be used to purchase additional items or the use of features. While the proceeds from the Subscription, or the Crystals may get spent on providing FREE support to everyone (and just because you may choose to purchase the premium currency that does not give you any additional rights to better support then any non-paying users), at no point do you actually pay for the customer support directly.

It was well into the early hours of the morning for my boss when he finished for the weekend. Is it in his contract that he HAS to stay online almost 1/3 of a day past his normal hours answering the tickets? No, like anyone else, he could have chosen to leave as soon as his hours were up if he wanted, but no.. instead of doing that he chose to stay online for almost an extra working day to reply to the tickets. If you ask me, he went above, and beyond the "call of duty".

Quoted

FACT - If the banning has been entirely erroneous (e.g the detection scripted picking up false positives), they have put their hands up, admitted to their mistakes and apologised (as well as unbanning the account ofc).
FACT - So far, (to my knowledge anyway) the majority of people that have had their cases checked have been unbanned.

As the team, and yourself have made customer's aware you have been negligent in you're ability to carry out a simple investigation. You have made termination decision's on account's without irrefutable evidence of these player's participating directly with an exploit event, and after conclusion by you're own admittance you are still learning about an investigation that was closed once you executed termination of customer account's under negligent circumstances since you do not have the necessary information to conclude a player's guilt, and are punishing player's due to a team member's "Assumption" of an exploiter's profile than actual compromising event's data.

As I have stated before hand, I am not privvey to the exact process that was used, nor was I a part of it beyond writing an email template and some news posts. How ever I do know it involved searching the database for a certain few criteria, when this criteria was met the account was flagged etc. The decision to ban the accounts was based solely on that information, but the database doesn't care if the user is a CS user or not (or should we suddenly ignore all potential cheats made by people who have ever used the CS?), or if there are other, more legitimate reasons for such behaviour to be recorded, of which there is no way of knowing the exact method with out the input from the users.

Once the user has contacted the the support and provided additional information that fills in the additional information that reasonably explains the behaviour, then the ban is lifted. Are there other was of doing things? yes.. are they as effective at getting the needed information. No, I know from experience the ask questions first method, is not as effective, and more times then not gets ignored by the users.. (who then gets banned.. and has to explain ignoring the GM as well as explaining the suspect behaviour in the logs).

Quoted

We did how ever receive some valuable information about the process around the exploitation that we did not previously have.

The negligence of you're team can be measured, and for every player whose account was terminated only to receive a repeal of that decision is statistical value of the negligence you're team operate's under. For any player whose account was previously banned, and that decision was reverted for any reason I encourage you to reply to this post with only a "1+" to indicate to other's this measure of incompetence surrounding the investigating team. To the Staff: Even one account whose decision was repealed indicates a compromised investigation, and ALL termination decision's should IMMEDIATELY be reverted, the investigation revised, the player's compensated for you're team's negligence, those investigating members of you're team put on review as liability to the potential financial loss of that negligence, and after you have actually performed the task necessary to conduct a thorough investigation you check the information again to be sure you did not compromise it again.

Your wording in both your posts in this thread have been very hostile and even offensive.. Have you never made a small error in your work / schooling? I bet like everyone here you have. Just because something did not work as intended, or happened in error does NOT instantly make it neglect. Yes some people were banned that shouldn't have been, and that was rectified as soon as (certifiable) evidence was provided, information that there was no way of knowing before hand.

Its just like IRL, if your acting in a manner similar to a serious crime (e.g by coincidence wearing the exact same clothing / hair colour / build aswell as being in the exact (wrong) place as someone seen performing a bank robbery or something) you WILL get arrested on suspicion, with it being down to you prove that it could not have been you, if you can do that, you will be released without charge.
Same thing here.. users behaviour according to the database matched some behaviour of exploiters, so they were banned, and then cleared once additional information proving their innocence was provided.

Could I have worded the email template for it better to make it more of an investigation ban rather then straight permanent ban..? probably.. but does that come any closer to neglect? not really, Its called being human, and making a mistake, one that I have already learnt from.

This threat is stupid in every possible way. Take this crap down for the love of god. Now I might be wrong on this, but as far as I know, NO ONE has been "terminated" people have simply been BANNED. There is a fucking massive difference in there. Terminated means BOOM, YOU ARE DONE, SO LONG BYE BYE AND SUCK IT. Banned means there is a chance to come back.

The ToS also in a summed up way says "The account is not YOURS YOU do NOT own anything, we can do whatever the hell we want with your account. we will be fair as far as WE FEEL IT IS FAIR." So nothing matters in this thread. We have no right to demand anything from them nor do we have a right to take any kind of action. They are letting us play on their game. And they can decide when that comes to a end any time they feel fit.

I've seen quite a few games ban en masse, and very few to say "oops, we fucked up, we're fixing it". Yesterday, my ticket got response long after Wraith had left. Someone stayed answering tickets way past their work hours, man. I was lucky that the response I got was in the lines of "ups. Ban lifted".

Mistakes happen, and sometimes it stinks. I was ready to spend the weekend exploring the hole in the ground in Majula, or kicking radiant ass in DOTA, but at like 11pm I got a response.

I'm on the gm/cm/dev/publisher/support/(whatever) side with this one. I admire their efforts to sort this all thing out in less than 2 days from happening.

If you actually READ the whole ToS which you get after every update, you will SEE that you are by all means powerless when it comes to facing the publishers. But I guess it's too long and you just skip to the bottom without reading it ever once to just log in faster.

Wanna make a difference in the game? Buy the company. Thats the only thing you can really do.

Kinda feel sorry for Mail.ru and the staff having to deal with this in the first place Lol Harsh Gpotato hope their pulling their finger out to help sort stuff out here regarding this matter. Kudo's to staff for taking this on the chin.

P.s Didn't vote, its stupid. Their game, their methods. If you can prove you're innocent then you shouldn't have anything to worry about.

Quoted from "MrFox"

[...]
Their game, their methods. If you can prove you're innocent then you shouldn't have anything to worry about.

That attitude is dangerous(atleast outside of virtual worlds), it's the same as if you say, that the gouvernment can do anything because it is the gouvernment. (I now that this comparison stincks as we all signed the ToS, giving up all our rights to our account willingly).

Anyway, it seems that they banned people with a generic message without giving any specific evidence. While they might not be required to do so, it might have reduced the bad noise that they created( and prevented many bans that are now lifted by hand, as they had to check bans by hand in the first place). I'm not going to say that My.com failed at communication here (compared to webzen they were quite good) but they did not everything to make this as understandable as many errornous affected players wanted it to be. However, they did what they did and as it sounds they try to make up for atleast some of the mistakes they made.

However(quotes by wraith):

Quoted

Nowhere what so ever is there a "I pay for extra support" item, what you PAY for is a Subscription to access the game, Or for Premium Crystals which can then be used to purchase additional items or the use of features. While the proceeds from the Subscription, or the Crystals may get spent on providing FREE support to everyone (and just because you may choose to purchase the premium currency that does not give you any additional rights to better support then any non-paying users), at no point do you actually pay for the customer support directly.

(Directed to the person this quote is answering to)
In my view, we are paying by investing time into the game, enabling the incame economy to function which makes people wish to spend more time ingame. Money spend on the game is just a different currency of time (Gained outside the game by investing time/workforce). It should be irrelevant where that investment comes from and how big it is. Even free players are paying the support in that regard. Since all people are paying somehow, all should be handled equally.

Quoted

Its just like IRL, if your acting in a manner similar to a serious crime (e.g by coincidence wearing the exact same clothing / hair colour / build aswell as being in the exact (wrong) place as someone seen performing a bank robbery or something) you WILL get arrested on suspicion, with it being down to you prove that it could not have been you, if you can do that, you will be released without charge.

I made that comparison with a different outcome. You should not introduce examples taken from criminal law into a topic which is only connected to contract law(which is irrelevant for that topic also) in a dubious way. Additionally your example strenghtens the point aggainst you. The evidence given by your accuser has to be beyond reasonable doubt in your spicific case to keep you in jail(You may be charged, but the charge should be dismissed without any additional evidence presented). (Talking about the default european democratic ideal here, obviously).

Which would to my understanding mean, that the bans given by the team are considered temporary investigative bans. If this message was clearly present in the mails informing about the bans, you handled the situation better than I expected (still not well, but going into that direction). But as My.com is judge and accusor (staying in that example), we are were we started at. It all depends on them. We the players have to choice but to follow their ruling or to stop investing into the game.

In the news regarding the bans, it says that everyone who was banned is to send a support ticket. If I remember correctly, it didn't say "if you feel the ban is unjustified". It said that banned people are to send support tickets.

The real issue at hand here other than using a generic profiling system for the criteria.

Next it's a matter of the the devs word versus that of the player's.

Let's face it. I'd bet that some of the people who claim to be innocent turn out to be liars. But no one here would openly admit to breaking the tos. That leads the developers with only one liable way to detect and punish players that fall under the profile they're currently using.

You know, if it walks like a duck, smells like a duck then it is a duck :/