Ok, so let me start by saying that this isn’t me crying over split milk no, I was Banned for 2 days for being falsely accused of ‘Botting,’ I couldn’t type on the forums because my account was locked out also, which is another issue I’d like to talk about – my brother, sister and friend posted on the forums for me. I missed the whole Sunday one time event and lost out on any loot that I could have obtained after the event.
This so called “evidence” that the system program, people or both pointed towards me, the player, to being a bot or have been botting; which is completely false – the only program used to play Guild Wars 2 is the Guild Wars 2 Client. For example, the way i see it is by killing trolls in Frostgorge Sound (or being in Frostgorge which seems to have happened to a few players), for lets say over the period of over 3 weeks; you get a flag on your account saying that you have been or you are Botting. Which wasn’t the case for me, I played in Frostgorge killing trolls for their blood drops for more than 1hr after doing the new instance with fellow players that were all in my party when I was banned. This activity on my account should have been accounted for before the consideration for a perma-ban, but was that activity even checked? Then you have your account gets terminated, until you open up a ticket, which in the end happened to me. The problem with that is there isn’t a back up system i.e. a way of fully investigation the difference between a Bot and a player by checking other activity on the account.
So one would suggest what is needed to make your current ‘Bot Banning’ system better to handle and more effective than what you have now. Currently it is just ‘Guilty until proven innocent’ – Bot, Ban, Bot, Ban, Bot, then people complain – “I’m not a bot here’s my ticket”, THEN you investigate it and end up restoring their account. Time AND money on both sides was well wasted, so here are my points on stuff that you could add in future to prevent your name from looking bad:
1: A warning email or in-game notification of some sort stating that your account or game-play has been showing signs of Botting, this could lets say for those that are guilty of Botting stop them in their tracks (even though they should be Banned anyway)
2: You need to tell the player(s) what ‘Evidence’ you have for Botting, I’m not sure if you can or can’t for reasons and what not but this is something that i think is a must.
3: An email stating that your account was Banned for “bot-like” behaviors and to appeal the ban state that the player needs to contact XYZ and show proof of you are not Botting etc etc.
4: The system needs a overall change – other activities needs to be check on the account before an account is considered for a ban. I’m not sure if it takes into account that a hour before I went troll farming that I was in a party doing the new instance or the fact that I was talking to the other players in my group about random things while killing the trolls.
5: In-game GM is a must, though I’m not sure you can do it with funds or whatever you have seeing as this isn’t a Subscription based MMO. Having a In-game GM that takes in tickets allows us to talk to you more often. We can share what we think In-game about areas that should be flagged or player(s) behaviors. Yes, I would like a GM to look over things EVEN IF the tickets take over 5 days or whatever helps to have it, I mean you have the support team there anyway and they get tickets everyday, why not make it in-game.
6: I feel like the fact that my game account was locked AND my forum access was locked also was adding salt to the wound. What I’m trying to say is that the game account and forum account shouldn’t be linked. Guys really, I was annoyed for getting banned and I cant talk to others about it; seriously?
As the saying goes Better to Prevent than Cure, instead of wasting your support teams time and the players time, fix the issue before it starts to get out of hand. My fun for this game has been ruined, and not only for myself but also for family and friends that play with me. Your system at the moment works hands-down but at the same time hurts you, with the system you have right now your killing off the players that haven’t done anything wrong and I want this game to be fun to play without the FEAR of being Banned for killing trolls. I’m not asking for you to give us the golden egg to your game (although you left me out of the BIG ONE TIME EVENT because you thought I was Botting…) but this does need fixing and shouldn’t be sugar-coated.