Worried about false bans?

That's why I said if you do get banned falsely they have ways of finding out. Sometimes mistakes do happen, no company is perfect. But the alternative is far worse, try going to one of those f2p games that don't have any real hacking policy, enjoy the bots and hacking. Lol.

Cool, let's be agreeing buddies.

What part of my post implied SOE shouldn't try to stop hacking? I'll cut the post down to only the key points...

Unless the GM Team is corrupt, or has a poor understanding of the game mechanics, we have nothing to worry about, period.

Yes that is a big 'unless' I admit, so lets keep our methaphorical thumbs on the correct metaphorical nerves to prevent that, I've already had a thread deleted for it, and fully expect a forum ban as I proceed further, but that's a small price to pay to be part of the vigilant side of the community.

Ohhh really? lol.

The only time folks get 'unjustly' banned is if the Devs over-react and ban you by association. (Half your Outfit is caught doing it for real...so they remove all of you for good measure.)

Or they do it by blocks of IP addresses which is the worst way to do it. Most folks use DHCP through their ISP carrier... so your IP is always changing to some degree.

The flip side is that if the Devs move cautiously... then the hackers will linger for a long, long time before they are caught... (at which point new hacks will have evolved).

It's a fine line to walk. Glad I don't have to make the final decision.

I wouldn't say the GM team is corrupt... but Devs who are players will rarely be truly objective. Just have to hope they are not all playing the same faction in their 'spare' time.

Funny you made this post cause, it has happened. A guy I know who streams this game too got banned. not for hacking, for massive reporting crybabies. Making your OP, false with all those years under your belt.

FOS

Sometimes I think I do too good that people will report me lol since I kill them over and over again, sometimes.




One guy reported me because he thought a hacker that he shot and didn't take any damage was me since I was the one who killed him....I told him it wasnt me and we were cool.

I have had an IRL friend banned from a game and swear they didn't hack, and I never witnessed him hack. Only to find out literally months later when they fessed up to it. And you believe some guy who "streams" when he says he doesn't hack? Come on, and I stated permanently banned also. Mistakes do happen, rarely, when they are approached properly usually they are fixed. But your stories does little to sway me.

Also I believe Smed also stated on his twitter already that bans aren't automated and are actually reviewed. This means a massive amount of reports only puts people on the radar for a review. Further dis-crediting your story.

The problem/fear is the vagueness associated with what exactly will get you banned...
USING 3RD PARTY PROGRAMS WILL GET ALL YOU'RE ACCOUNTS BANNED

as the giant announcement comes to remind me every once and a while.

But exactly what type of '3rd party program'? After all, teamspeak and vent are 3rd party programs...
Does simply having one of these programs on my hard drive get me a ban? Even if i don't use it in this specific game?

No idea... as far as we know, we could be banned for running Windows Media Player in the background...

Back in the Counter-Strike 1.3 - 1.6 days... the most flattering statement was "nice aimbot, or hackerrr!!"... Personally, unless you invested money into this game... if you get perma banned in a MMOFPS and you actually didn't hack... stand up, take a bow cause you got some serious skills =)

It has officially started...Cheaters begun starting threads whining about getting banned....(actually i was surprised it took so long)...Luckily SOE will be deleting such threads so we don't fill the forums with them.

I think that when SOE speaks about 3rd party apps they mean Macro commands and such that will give you an edge over other players. For example i use NVIDIAS Geforce Experience program to optimize graphics, it's fully compatible with PS2.

Or you know, they are actually banning legit players, which happened in PS1.

Just because someone STREAMED part of his game and Didn't cheat while doing so doesn't mean he doesn't cheat at all.
Like i said i don't believe SOE has dumb people (certainly not perfect but not dumb) so they wouldn't start banning legit players. Perhaps they used Macros and not cheats ? Anythings possible.

I wish there was a way to make you cognizant of how ignorant you're being. SOE (as many developers do) do not make any of their "evidence" available to the public. They want people to believe that they're only banning hackers and removing foul play from the game in order to keep legit players happy. It's bad for business to admit they ban falsely, so naturally they won't. However they barely even offer an explanation as to how they go about bans, much less give us any evidence proving that a player is hacking. If anything at all everyone should understand that HUMAN ERROR is always a problem. False bans ARE going to happen when you have a system moderated completely by humans alone.

If a player can't even show you streams of himself playing legitimately then what option do good players even have to defend themselves? The answer is none. As soon as this company simply states that they only ban hackers, you immediately take that as fact. Yet when a player brings up a legitimate question or complaint about a ban, people like you will jump all over them in order to somehow feel good about yourself.

I really hope people do keep some skepticism about SOE's banning process, as there is plenty of room for it to be had.

That's the inherent problem with all kinds of tests and detections - you can't have both a high sensitivity and a high specificity.

If you don't want any false positives in your test there will be false negatives instead, but if you tune your test to get the highest amount of true cheaters, there will be false positives. There's just no way around it. A 100%/100% testing method has yet to invented.

The real question is, how will SOE handle those bans that (presumably) aren't justified? I've heard DVSDelrith got his account back, so there seems to be some kind of leeway once they revise the case.

You just have to use reason, if they banned people using teamspeak or vent they would lose probably half of their player base. WMP isn't even something that has anything to do with the client. Teamspeak and vent a little because of the overlay, but even if you are worried about that you can disable it very easily. It's really rather straight forward "Don't use any 3rd party program to effect the client in any way shape or form that isn't supported".

Then people such as the president of SOE shouldn't make comments like this to appease their fans:

Jay Kush
"@j_smedley check your reporting. It's a problem. Btw, you are banning non hackers. IE good players."

John Smedley
"@qu4ddmg completely false. I tweeted how many people we banned, not how many we investigated. We don't just ban people without solid proof."

No gaming company I have ever come across releases the evidence to the public for bans. None. I just have never seen it happen, ever. I'm sure there are some pretty good reasons for this, I know some companies will tell you if you email support personally but they usually never make it public. Really what you're saying makes just as little sense as not releasing the info. I could have all day and stream "clean", it would be sooooo easy. The thing you have to sit back and think about is, why would SOE ban someone who wasn't hacking or griefing? especially 3 weeks after launch. There really is no reason other than they were hacking or griefing, some guys "word" isn't going to change that fact.