We have received many reports this season about match manipulation both here on the forums and via in-game reports. Our investigation revealed that a few players were sharing a handful of accounts, which is clearly against our User Agreement.
While the investigation into this is still ongoing, at this time we have enough evidence to take action. As a result, we’ve decided to give dishonor to the offending accounts for the rest of the season. As our investigation continues, further action may be taken should we feel it appropriate.
So a clear TOS violation that has a deliberate, negative effect on other players and the entire game mode doesn’t result in bans? I had to have read that wrong.
Nice to hear. Tho I hope that in the future you guys become more active. In dealing with these guys. Some of them have been even caught red-handed, bragging about it on videos and streams.
I maybe a troll with class.
But at least I admit it!
PoF guys get ready for PvE joys
This is what happens when you give limited titles to the top players, either ban them permanently or suspend not only the alt accounts but their main accounts as well for the remainder of the season. As long as the top spots get there own titles people will cheat/wintrade however necessary to get them because it makes the account more valuable. A few days suspension on an alt account to players trying to cheat limited titles is nothing, if anything it makes cheating more prevalent because it’s such a light punishment.
So exploiting of the system, ruining matches for countless players, griefing, making actual real money of account sharing results in dishonor for a season? That is all? Just wow.
Why would Arena Net not permanently ban people who are intentionally cheating/ breaking the ToS? Knowing those people will be back in a month or so is kind of disappointing
That amount of Dishonor essentially bans them for the entire season. I doubt they’d care if they were banned from the main game or WvW.
I would IP ban them all together, permanently, at least those who abused account sharing. Adding dishonor won’t do anything.
They will just play other games for the rest of the season and then continue exploiting or “borrow” another account from someone. Think about it, if certain mes with big mouth, for example, asked his fanboys to give him their accounts, there would be line of willing players.
Why would Arena Net not permanently ban people who are intentionally cheating/ breaking the ToS? Knowing those people will be back in a month or so is kind of disappointing
Because some the players doing this are streamers, what’s left of the pvp streaming community anyways.
Larger punishments may be merited for more serious violations of the TOS. Account sharing is the only one covered by the listed season long pvp specific ban.
Other activities may or may not be violations of the terms of service, or less clearly so. Those violations may merit less punishment compared to account sharing.
AKA, this may be the clearest violation and the largest punishment metted out this time.
Northern Shiverpeaks (NSP)
Thief (Daredevil)
Commandant of Pistol-Dagger and Apex Predator
In fact, we have a User Agreement. Just to be clear, some call it EULA, some ToS, but it’s actually a UA. (The references are often used interchangeably — at the core it’s the policy document to which you agree when you join our game.)
Again the punishment is too weak worse if they’re the same players that did the last time, anyway it’s good that you’re at least trying to do something about it, thanks.
The “punishment” for this has got to have these guys rolling on the floor laughing. It’s bad enough that Anet refers to some theory on psychology as a reason to not perma-ban people, but now when someone exploits/cheats on a specific game mode, they are allowed to go full steam ahead with the rest of the game and continue making gold, getting daily login rewards, etc.?
From a players perspective, not banning these people (permanently in some cases) is not benefiting the game at all. The EULA/TOS/UA/term-of-the-month needs to be enforced in game and not with kid gloves.
Most of these people are going to look at “dishonor” with pride, and take it as a trophy of how amazing they are. You’re literally rewarding their actions.
Where are my gem sales? I want gem sales! Nerf EVERYTHING!
do not enjoy with players. you have not done it before and you will not do it future. you dont turn back about bug reports. and you dont turn back about tickets.
Hmmm. Very interesting conclusion! Galie I’m having trouble understanding how sharing accounts (which a lot of people in a lot of games do), is considered manipulating a match. To me, manipulating a match means deliberate behavior by a user in order to change the outcome of the match. I look forward to hopefully hearing from you soon and I love the communication you bring to the community.
As a side note, if you could also elaborate how selling raid kills (very obvious and common practice) is an acceptable act through ArenaNet’s eyes. Both these acts, in pvp and pve, alter the progression of an account in a way that the account owners actions are a non factor. To me this seems like an unacceptable practice that promotes values that seem to go against the spirit of the game that is championed by its true community and developers.
Best,
A long time silver player who loves this game
You should ban their accounts and/or at least remove any titles earned between Season 5 and Season 7 when the leaderboards and new rewards were introduced, along with the Dishonor penalty. People who cheat to win should be harshly punished, it’s the only way to prevent it from happening in the future.
Its Choo – 250,000 Kills in WvW and Counting…
WvW Commander – NA PST
Sexiest Level 80 Charr Guardian In The Game
You should ban their accounts and/or at least remove any titles earned between Season 5 and Season 7 when the leaderboards and new rewards were introduced, along with the Dishonor penalty. People who cheat to win should be harshly punished, it’s the only way to prevent it from happening in the future.
Exactly this ^, plenty of people have played 500+ games or more between Season 5 and Season 7 and if they were close to any of the titles in the top 25 but did not get them due to match manipulation then any kind of serious punishment should curtail that behavior in the future. Not to mention it’s bad for the game mode to have people cheating, it kills incentive to try and climb the leaderboards or get better when you know the algorithm is being abused by duo-queue boosting. Ban the offenders, or at least remove their titles and give them a full season of dishonor. Also remove the duo-queue option so people can’t do this anymore. Let the algorithm for matchmaking work properly! Make an example of these people, giving them only dishonor is not going to prevent this from happening in the future and if they retain their titles then they won’t care about a temporary ranked queue ban anyways. The reason most of these people “boost” their main accounts and use a bunch of low rated, underplayed, decayed second accounts is because they wanted the titles.
maybe even a hacker’s graveyard with their account name. Something has to be done to shame them for doing this in a video game.. i mean seriously lol come on kids
We have received many reports this season about match manipulation both here on the forums and via in-game reports. Our investigation revealed that a few players were sharing a handful of accounts, which is clearly against our User Agreement.
While the investigation into this is still ongoing, at this time we have enough evidence to take action. As a result, we’ve decided to give dishonor to the offending accounts for the rest of the season. As our investigation continues, further action may be taken should we feel it appropriate.
So now that you are talking, Gaile, I have a question:
Does ANET punish accounts by downrating them during the season so they get worse games? Was my account so punished? Is that why I got 68 straight losses?
I got inspired by this post. Id give 1k gold to see someone lose 68 games in a row and be able to prove it. I dont think itd be possible even if you tried.
So now that you are talking, Gaile, I have a question:
Does ANET punish accounts by downrating them during the season so they get worse games? Was my account so punished? Is that why I got 68 straight losses?
I got inspired by this post. Id give 1k gold to see someone lose 68 games in a row and be able to prove it. I dont think itd be possible even if you tried.
It’s actually not that inconceivable. There has to be at any given point, a “worst player in the queue” that player presumably will be losing nearly all their matches, and if for whatever reason that player is really determined and does not give up, they could end up with a loss streak with no upper bounds.
The match manipulation wasn’t the crime, sharing accounts was. So they punished them for that.
Match manipulation is only what they allegedly choose to do with the shared accounts, and so they dishonnered them.
I get why they didn’t ban anyone but I feel there is a bit of a vested interest
They don’t want to ban accounts for being shared. They would likely prefer to make sure only one person uses it for obvious reasons when you consider their business model.
They also don’t want to harm the already struggling PvP population and high rated scene.
Unless there is something brought to light in their investigation no one is going to get banned for a while, and they would probably avoid doing so.
The UA was already breached, I like many here would have preferred these people be made an example of. Not out of salt for the season, but because I feel we need the example. (kind of like what happend to ‘Suck at Love’ and hacking.) The investigation is likely on going though.
“I control time and space; you can’t break free.~” “Maybe I was the illusion all along!”
Later, I was told that ANET employees can down rate an account so that it gets worse games.
This is just straight paranoia. While Anet can almost certainly change a account’s rating, there is no motive for them to active try to throw players under the bus.
So now that you are talking, Gaile, I have a question:
Does ANET punish accounts by downrating them during the season so they get worse games? Was my account so punished? Is that why I got 68 straight losses?
I’m almost positive that you’re really a mod posing as a really bad poster in order to bait flamings to infract.
There is very sound data to support that players that know they will be able to get their accounts back are significantly less likely to resort to the same behavior quickly (aka buying a new account and botting/cheating on that).
“There is very sound data”, yet they never provide sources for said data.
Where are my gem sales? I want gem sales! Nerf EVERYTHING!
So now that you are talking, Gaile, I have a question:
Does ANET punish accounts by downrating them during the season so they get worse games? Was my account so punished? Is that why I got 68 straight losses?
I got inspired by this post. Id give 1k gold to see someone lose 68 games in a row and be able to prove it. I dont think itd be possible even if you tried.
I guess some kind of stealth to prevent your team capping might help, sadly toss elixir X can’t be reflected to Moa your team. Maybe play as support but instead run a super glass build so everyone switches builds/classes around support that isn’t there.
The issue is this fall’s squarely into the manipulating area of the UA, so you can be banned for it, though starting at Legend I think the fall could be achieved after enough tries.
Also is anyone Notorious on this ban list by Mrs Gray?
We have received many reports this season about match manipulation both here on the forums and via in-game reports. Our investigation revealed that a few players were sharing a handful of accounts, which is clearly against our User Agreement.
While the investigation into this is still ongoing, at this time we have enough evidence to take action. As a result, we’ve decided to give dishonor to the offending accounts for the rest of the season. As our investigation continues, further action may be taken should we feel it appropriate.
So these players and their manipulation accs’ are getting Season length Dishonour for sharing accounts to enable ease of Manipulation. Are they being punished for violating the UA, or for the manipulation? One would assume for both but reading this, if these players Manipulated without sharing accounts (like many other players who queue dodge/sync), will they also be investigated?
I don’t think the offenders necessarily need to be banned.
Giving them a season long dishonor so they can’t participate is good enough for me.
This is a good start.
We have received many reports this season about match manipulation both here on the forums and via in-game reports. Our investigation revealed that a few players were sharing a handful of accounts, which is clearly against our User Agreement.
While the investigation into this is still ongoing, at this time we have enough evidence to take action. As a result, we’ve decided to give dishonor to the offending accounts for the rest of the season. As our investigation continues, further action may be taken should we feel it appropriate.
So these players and their manipulation accs’ are getting Season length Dishonour for sharing accounts to enable ease of Manipulation. Are they being punished for violating the UA, or for the manipulation? One would assume for both but reading this, if these players Manipulated without sharing accounts (like many other players who queue dodge/sync), will they also be investigated?
I personally don’t think players who queue dodge. Cheaters, Throwers, or Trolls should be punished. More so when the game evaluate their rating vs the whole of the enemy team.
All the other stuff. It’s in my firmest belief that ANet. Should just go full frontal and show no mercy. As these players had no mercy, when they pretty much made PvP completely unplayable for some of us. Remember ANet, all you have to do is look a the account metrics to see the type of impact these cheaters and trolls had on population directly. I am 97% these people are mostly directly responsible of the low population in PvP atm.
This is coming from someone would used sPvP like no tomorrow. To now can’t be ask to be a sheep for the cheaters to boost off of. Any other MMOs I’ve played, would have started deleting accounts, because of huge negative impact these people had on their game’s population. I’m just going to recommend the same be done here.
I maybe a troll with class.
But at least I admit it!
PoF guys get ready for PvE joys
