Concerns about clan leaders ban/lock

[Atoned Exile]

There have been a lot of word regarding random false bans recently, some of them affecting both established players and new accounts alike. Is there any possibility we can look into this matter? it discourages long term players from playing, and it really sets a bad picture for newcomers into the game.

 

A few days ago, the clan leader in one of the clans that I am apart of, was banned randomly while just standing in Hongmoon Training Room.
He submitted a ticket and it hasn't been looked at yet after a few days. I understand there is a heavy volume of tickets regarding the recent patch but i think addressing players who have been wrongfully banned is just as important, if not more important, than some of the other matters. These players are missing out on content, and missing out on the ability to participate in events, and its potentially affecting more people due to their inability to attend scheduled raids, etc.

 

I've known this individual for a few years now, they lead a clan with active members, participate in multiple raid groups with other clans, and is an active member within the player community. I doubt they would be doing intentionally anything that jeopardizes their account integrity.

 

In this instance, the ticket i'm referring to is #23292395

But as mentioned earlier, there is many more examples of such, as indicated in other forum posts.

 

There has to be an issue with how problems are being auto-detected with xigncode, and it needs to be dealt with. If possible, maybe explanations as to why this is happening, would be a good start. We're not trying to lay blame on any particular person or party, as we understand dealing with a game this large, especially over various regions with their own unique differences, will present many unexpected problems.

We just expect some level of communication regarding the game problems that we have to deal with, as players.

 

Thank you very much!

Edited March 22, 2019 by Atoned Exile
Spell error

[Hels]

I am also a member of this clan belonging to the banned player that holds the position of clan leader, albeit one of the newer additions to the clan. Although my time in this clan is brief compared to the other members, the banned player in question from my interactions is the most knowledgeable and ambitious player I have come across within this game regarding it's in game technicalities, economical situations and most importantly, hard earned his high end character specs through a long road of legitimate and arduous honest means.
I realize this display's to have a biased opinion towards my fellow clan member, however the attempts to reconcile and address this issue from the person himself has both been ignored entirely being closed by support without reason and still in a pending process for a reply from appeal. This gives a very unprofessional and unjust situation that has befallen our reliable leader from the support side, despite his efforts to shed light on this confusion. 
We hope these posts will help bring staff attention to hopefully shine a ray of hope upon this unfortunate situation to a resolved close.

Thank you for taking the time to read and we await for further response to this issue.

Edited March 22, 2019 by Hels

[Grimoir]

Truth be told bans dont "just happen" out of the blue. There is always a reason for it. and in all honesty unless you are standing right next to the banned player and watch with your own eyes what he is doing i wouldnt put my hand in the fire saying he didnt do anything etc. because you simply do not know.

 

A forum post will not really help in anything, he needs to wait until his ticket is handled, you should also tell him to not reply to the ticket by himself as that will reset his position in the queue and will take longer. Also a ban ticket, is not less important than a ticket of someone who has a in-game issue, they are all the same and go as a first come first serve basis, so ban or not he needs to wait his turn.

[NoxCanum]

35 minutes ago, Grimoir said:

Truth be told bans dont "just happen" out of the blue. There is always a reason for it. and in all honesty unless you are standing right next to the banned player and watch with your own eyes what he is doing i wouldnt put my hand in the fire saying he didnt do anything etc. because you simply do not know.

 

A forum post will not really help in anything, he needs to wait until his ticket is handled, you should also tell him to not reply to the ticket by himself as that will reset his position in the queue and will take longer. Also a ban ticket, is not less important than a ticket of someone who has a in-game issue, they are all the same and go as a first come first serve basis, so ban or not he needs to wait his turn.

I know ya like to post on anything and everything in the forums, but of all people here, you know the least. Hes been playing for well over 3 years, and most people here in clan have known him for 2-3 years. Even now we are in the middle of raiding the top raid in the game but because of support, and their "suspicious" actions triggers that we DONT KNOW what caused it, he and us are missing out. Hes prob the most hard working player in and out of the game, and is important to our raiding and dungeon clearing. We need this solved now, or an answer. We all know for a fact that he isnt doing anything any other player is doing in this game. We have sent in to appeals with the same generic response given back despite properly explaining we have done exactly what the response was. I know they cant give specific information to someone other than the person in question. But the fact that they answered it and not out leaders ticket is just a little unfortunate when we have all been waiting days now.  I know theres a high volume ticket rate happening. We need to have a proper priority on certain things. And closing tickets that our leader made that were already hard to get ANY responses for is NOT one of them. This is not a fire anyone ever asked you to put a hand in or comment on mate. Comradery is going to happen in a social mmo. You mess over one player too long and it can effect a whole clan and raid that people work MONTHS to get far enough to do. 

[Atoned Exile]

To be honest with you in my 3 years of playing this game. People do from time to time get banned for "suspicious activity" and after a few days get unbanned with replies like this was our mistake or systems weren't working properly and your lock/ban has been lifted. but at the end of the day neither of us know how the ban system works exactly.

What we are saying right now just comes down to our personal experiences.

This post is also to address and or ask if this is a larger issue then just one person as I've seen more and more people complaining about this issue.

 

Also if you want to say that all ticket have the same priority that just simply isn't correct from this example of someone who created a ticket and is now almost 3-4 day with no reply. versus someone who within 17 hours of creating a ticket about the same issue gets a reply.

Again we dont want an unban ASAP we just want communication/answers.

This post is also just trying to reach out to someone who has control and insight on this issue.

Not someone who wants to tell me ban's dont "Just happen" this wont work get over it and wait.

Edited March 23, 2019 by Atoned Exile

[Grimoir]

18 minutes ago, NoxCanum said:

I know ya like to post on anything and everything in the forums, but of all people here, you know the least. Hes been playing for well over 3 years, and most people here in clan have known him for 2-3 years. Even now we are in the middle of raiding the top raid in the game but because of support, and their "suspicious" actions triggers that we DONT KNOW what caused it, he and us are missing out. Hes prob the most hard working player in and out of the game, and is important to our raiding and dungeon clearing. We need this solved now, or an answer. We all know for a fact that he isnt doing anything any other player is doing in this game. We have sent in to appeals with the same generic response given back despite properly explaining we have done exactly what the response was. I know they cant give specific information to someone other than the person in question. But the fact that they answered it and not out leaders ticket is just a little unfortunate when we have all been waiting days now.  I know theres a high volume ticket rate happening. We need to have a proper priority on certain things. And closing tickets that our leader made that were already hard to get ANY responses for is NOT one of them. This is not a fire anyone ever asked you to put a hand in or comment on mate. Comradery is going to happen in a social mmo. You mess over one player too long and it can effect a whole clan and raid that people work MONTHS to get far enough to do. 

I just want to point out i am not dismissing the fact that its important to you , your clan or even him. But i can tell you from experience that unless you physically are at the person and watch him, nothing he says or you think proves anything. Typically even IF he did something wrong would you really think he would admit to it? . I do hope it gets solved for you fairly quickly, but also make sure he does not keep replying by himself on his ticket because that will set him back in the queue. Also, food for thought, anyone else besides him sending a ticket about his issue also causes an influx of tickets which may set his back aswel.

 

[Aurinya]

Greetings!

 

If you think your account has been banned wrongly and you would like to appeal your ban, please send an email directly to appeal@ncsoft.com. They will then review this ban. Please note, however, that for privacy and data protection reasons, we cannot discuss these cases on a public forum or with a person other than the account owner. 

 

We are currently experiencing a higher-than-usual amount of tickets resulting in a longer response time. However, our Support does its best to reply to each and every tickets in a timely manner. Please be patient and give our Support a chance to get back to your friend.

 

A little note on the side: Updating and/or bumping your tickets actually sends them back to the end of the ticketing queue resulting in a longer response time so make sure all relevant information is entered before submitting the request.

 

Thank you! 

[Jessi321]

Hello Aurinya,

I don't want to minimize the work of NCsoft, but I do find the excuse about "time" ridiculous because that's not even the problem about people getting wrongly banned.
A player with which I played for 3 years got instantly banned, the ban was triggered by him Authorizing 5 different IP Addresses within an hour, because his router just decided to be a jerk that day.

I do find the situation ridiculous not because of your problem of experiencing high volume of tickets, but because you aren't even reviewing those case properly, and of course getting more tickets in response.
The guy was in vacation for 2 weeks in NL, came back, did raids on his both accounts, and got banned. Because of this he is sure that the reason of the ban is those 5 IP addresses that he authorized, but NCsoft jsut told him "the decision is final" with copypasta message generally talking about "In-Game Exploit", not even explaining him the reason of the ban, and he can only assume that it's about those 5 IP addresses authorized. NCsoft is just getting more tickets by not reviewing cases like that properly.

Furthermore, there is also another girl, she got permabanned instantly for trying out a VPN program, on the first day. I do understand that is against the ToS, but there were cases of people getting temporarily banned for those things, they got warned, and unlocked, and now you are permanently banning those? Honestly it's not fair that you apply your ToS as you wish, and sadly you are just "auto-banning" people for weird IP activities, not even reviewing the case, if it's about a Third Part Program or just Dynamic IP.
The friend of mine showed me the 5 different IPs, and there is only the Port Number of the IP changing, just checking that you can easily udnerstand it's a matter of a Dynamic IP, and not a VPN, but NCsoft doesn't review anything.

So ye, I'm sure you're having an hard work with all these tickets, but if you would review people more accurately this wouldn't happen. If you really banned the person for a valid reason, put out the evidences on their ticket, and they will stop annoying you to get unbanned understanding there is a valid reason.
Instead, there are people banned since 3-4 weeks, missing contents, and the only thing NCsoft can do is replying with copy/pasta message, feeling like talking to a bot instead of an human, and then complaining about an high volume of tickets.

The most frustrating thing is, people getting banned and explaining with valid arguments are getting ignored and their cases not reviewed, while people getting attention saying they are depressed and talking in a suicidal way, gets "forgiven" not even the case "reviewed", they just  get "forgiven" like if they were really guilty and then get unlocked.

I'm really sorry, but this is just ridiculous, start working better on your Auto-Ban System, because being perma banned for things like this is frustrating.

And furthermore, people are sending more tickets because NCsoft always answers with "future replies may not receive response", so of course people will send another ticket if they don't get a reply in 3 days, and they find the reason of their ban not valid, or even not even getting a reason, since the friend of mine got told "we can't give you the reason of the ban for securty concerns".. Just, Ridiculous, getting banned, and not even having to know why, very ridiculouse NCsoft.

If you want to help this friend of mine, I put his number ticket here (23288642), and also the number ticket of the girl that got permanently banned for a VPN program (23292705).
Old and estabilished player don't deserve a treatment like this for sure.

Regards,

[aKaidesu]

There is a problem with support itself. I know you may not mean it that way, but telling the people affected to contact support is kind of a spit in the face.

 

People that are banned can not appeal their ban properly because "out of privacy reasons" they are not given the reason for which they have been banned. Everyone knows the bans were automatic bans, yet the support staff uses very confident vocabulary explaining that the ban was justified in order to prevent a "malicious and unfun environment" for other players. You know what creates an unfun environment? Knowing that you can be banned out of the blue for a bot-hiccup and the support staff will go to all explanatory lengths to not help you, even worse when you are part of an active raid or clan.

 

On a appeal, players have to be asked to verify themselfes as proper owners of the account. Then they have to be given the full details of the ban. Be fair to your players.

Edited March 24, 2019 by aKaidesu

[Nemira]

@Aurinya @Cyan

I know of people who sent a ticket to support and got it replied to already, even though they've sent their ticket after the clan leader mentioned in OP's post sent theirs.

Can one of you please explain what's happening here? I'm also friends with the clan leader and some of the clan members and this whole mess is disrupting most of our activities.