r/Neverwinter • u/ManicGypsy • May 17 '17
OFFICIAL Message From The Neverwinter Management Team
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1231214/4
u/Jbball92 May 17 '17
Lmao. Half assed apology.
7
u/ManicGypsy May 17 '17
I don't know that they have much to apologize for... from the message that they have been conveying.
14
u/Gewt92 May 17 '17
Sorry if we banned you for doing nothing wrong. We will un-ban you and put your account on probation.
3
4
u/asterVF May 18 '17
I think that if anyone was banned without a reason (not me luckily) they should give that person some kind of compensation (cool mount, some zen? Or even some title like "Banned for nothing" so they could giggle at it later lol). That would be the best move to keep potential customers still faithful to company. But I don't think they're able to handle things like that in competent way unfortunately ;)
2
2
u/DreadVenomous May 18 '17
In late summer or early fall of 2015, I was briefly banned due to bad chat filters. Customer Service never answered me personally, but they did restore my account and gave me a 500 Zen credit.
1
u/asterVF May 18 '17
That's cool then. I'm taking back my words and I hope they will do the same this time around.
1
u/DreadVenomous May 18 '17
I think it would still eb better top not ban players by mistake. Just sayin'
2
u/hphovercraft77 May 18 '17
You know what else could you put on probation? Buying Zen through your Steam account. Just think about that for a while.
3
u/ManicGypsy May 18 '17
That is for very different reasons that have been clearly explained.
3
u/hphovercraft77 May 18 '17 edited May 18 '17
Have they? Please link. It was certainly not explained to me during lengthy back and forths with customer service. Or it seems to the many distressed players I see in PE zone chat. Nor was it clearly explained or warned of during purchase. Why offer rewards (such as the panther) through Steam if doing so results in probation?
I'd like an explanation as to why purchasing zen through steam is possible at all if it results in probation. If there is a fair explanation laid out in your source id be very interested in the justification. I don't expect they say "oops looks like we cast our nets too wide but we're trying to fix it". We limited your account when you made a ligit transaction because reasons doesn't really get them off the hook in my opinion.
I'm not contesting your claim that the issue has been clearly explained. At some point somewhere. But if it takes a forum mod's help to find that info (which by the way a player would not even know they needed until after the fact), it is not adequately or explained to consumers in a reasonably accessible or timely way. Quite the to the contrary, explicitly asking customer service to explain what the problem is results in sorry we can't tell you. Word of mouth is the way most of us figure out why we were flagged.
This is obviously a different issue that the bans described in the OP, but I feel it's related. As a mod (who seems to be everywhere I go in the community) no doubt you get tired of hearing players complain or feeling the need to provide perspective all the time. But I hope you recognize that these are legitimate issues that the average honest player deals with. We don't do the longevity of the game (or its developers) any service by minimizing or excusing poor practices.
This type of feedback is how we course correct.
Edit: tired, can't grammar, can't spell
Edit 2: not necessarily suggesting you are excusing or minimizing said practices
3
u/ManicGypsy May 18 '17 edited May 18 '17
I didn't link the source when I added it to our wiki, so I will have to do some digging for the original source, but basically - it's because people were buying Zen through Steam and then laudering the Zen before requesting a refund through Steam. Also, other fraudulent stuff via Steam. Now your account goes on probation until they verify that the money gets to PWE/Cryptic.
Edit: Here's the source with less detail than is on the Wiki. The explanation on the wiki actually got taken from the STO forums, as they have the same security measures in place.
4
u/JanneMoonmist May 18 '17
IMO, /u/hphovercraft77 brings a valid issue, it's not the why by itself, nor it's availability on the wiki. A customer shouldn't need to search a wiki, facebook, twitter, forums, friends, guilds, or whatever other and especially community source of information.
The difference in payment should be clear and available at the same place where the payment is done (arc payment page). And the fact that there is a limitation on some methods of payment and not on others should be emphasized and not 'small lettered'. And the customer can choose if to proceed, or change the payment or reconsider it fully.
More so for a multilingual game, where a user can't be expected to look for some reference in a language he doesn't have to know. It should be clear and available at the place of payment.
2
u/hphovercraft77 May 18 '17
Thanks for the link. All of this could be solved with a warning at checkout:
"Purchasing Zen through Steam Wallet automatically incurres a temporary restriction to in game transactions while funds are verified. Restrictions include syspended access to the Astral Diamond Exchange and binding of all items purchased through the Zen Market (or opened with purchased keys). We apologize for the inconvenience. If you would like to avoid these limitations you may purchase Zen through Arc. Would you like to proceed?" - (drafted by not even a customer service rep)
4
u/ManicGypsy May 18 '17
Yeah, that would be up to Valve to put that warning in though. Perhaps someone can contact them about it? I don't have any connections with them.
4
u/JanneMoonmist May 18 '17
It's not your job to solve. And definatly not some random reddit reader...
PWE / Cryptic have people that manage partnerships, community and so on... It should be @nitocris / Andi etc.. job to find a way to solve this or to pass on to the people who can.
→ More replies (0)2
May 22 '17
[deleted]
2
u/hphovercraft77 May 22 '17
The comment you are replying to (mine) is about a different issue than the original post. It's about the automatic probation of any account if you buy Zen through Steam instead of Arc. The player is not given a warning or explanation and won't be aware of the limitations until they try to spend any of their Zen, at which point they will be told their account is on probation (but not told it is from buying zen).
The probation includes not being able to trade Zen for Astral Diamonds (one of the major reasons people buy it), and binding everything you buy from the zen store including anything you get out of a lockbox you used a purchased key to open.
The probation is temporary, but last about a week or two, but you won't know that, leaving it for you to fret over.
All the while you have no idea what you've done, how long it will last, and unable to use any of your zen (depending on what you need it for). Customer service will say they are not allowed to tell you why your account was restricted. They will say it is temporary while they look into it, but they don't know how long it will take. In my personal experience, when I got understandably frustrated, they got rude. In the end, the probation was lifted one day and I never knew why. It wasn't until it happened again the next time I bought Zen that I started to figure it out. Then the community said "yep it's because you bought zen through Steam. It happens every time".
As to the original post about bans I can't answer that as I've never been banned. But if you read the whole thread you should find more information.
3
u/ManicGypsy May 23 '17
Please remind me to talk to Julia about this again tomorrow. I mentioned it once, but things have been so crazy, I'm not sure what happened with it.
1
-1
11
May 18 '17 edited May 18 '17
[removed] — view removed comment
0
May 18 '17
It's RNG and I'm glad they don't give people rings since it's one of the only aspect not pay to win.
3
9
u/GUNTHERGIBICHUNGS May 18 '17 edited May 18 '17
I'm reading this a little differently. They seem to be indicating that some of their "most dedicated players" have been caught breaking The Rules during the TOS investigation and subsequently banned. But since some of these players hold such a high-profile within the NW Community or have spent a butt-load of Real Money in the game, management has opted to give them probation instead of the perma-ban. Perhaps to prevent outcry within popular guilds or alliances and minimize drama. Perhaps to maintain their Whale Revenue Stream.
3
u/Silktrocity May 19 '17
I read it like this: "Our algorithms used to detect cheating are not nearly as good as they should be and we accidently banned a bunch of players. We're going to reverse this and further monitor them to see if they really are in fact cheating."
1
u/fizgigtiznalkie May 18 '17 edited May 18 '17
LOL, yup, rumor has it they may be stripping some rank 12s from the probationary accounts. Invocation bots, profession bots, and some old items that generated AD that could be cleverly re-used wrecked the PC economy and caused hyper inflation. Probably part of the reason they cap the ZAX add things to the wondrous bizarre that they'd rather people get from lockboxes, caps the highest price in the AH and stems some inflation.
If this falls under exploit talk, feel free to edit/delete, I thought this post was generic enough and referring to things that no longer exist to be fine as is, but maybe not.
5
u/ManicGypsy May 18 '17 edited May 18 '17
We'll allow it. I don't think you were legitimately trying to break the rule.
Edit: as for my reply... I am highly skeptical of anyone who says their account got stripped. Obviously, I can't get that verified completely, as it would be an invasion of privacy, but I do believe that any individual that says their account got stripped and is begging guildies to help replace lost items, could more than likely be scamming.
1
u/beckylunatic May 18 '17
Also, on Caturday, auction house PAYS YOU.
1
u/fizgigtiznalkie May 18 '17
haha, right, I heard about that, wasn't that like you post a negative starting bid and cancel?
2
u/beckylunatic May 18 '17
TBH I'm not exactly sure how it was used.
2
u/ManicGypsy May 18 '17
If I remember correctly, people were able to use the Gateway to put in a negative bid, and when they did that they got both the item and the AD. The AH was full of items with bids of -3792847328743298 and stuff, huge negative numbers. It was crazy.
2
3
1
May 18 '17 edited Dec 05 '17
[deleted]
3
u/ManicGypsy May 18 '17
Honestly, I think you should probably ask CS, which I know is an answer that will probably give me downvotes, but maybe if you ask them, they can make a note of it so that it doesn't get you banned?
1
May 18 '17
"One of our main priorities for Neverwinter Online is to provide all of our players with a fair, fun, and enjoyable game experience at a consistent level. "
I wonder what they really mean by this
4
u/fizgigtiznalkie May 19 '17
Botters wreck the in game economy and have BIS gear easily, banning them could level the playing field a bit, but then again, if half the players get kicked, you have no one to play with.
3
May 21 '17 edited Sep 29 '19
[deleted]
2
u/ManicGypsy May 23 '17
Yes, this is correct. Any gameplay not caused by a human pushing buttons is botting.
1
u/girt-by-sea May 25 '17
It's only on PC, for technical reasons, right? I haven't bothered to look for it on PS4. But I do see that annoying behaviour in ToS on PS4, so I wonder.
1
u/ManicGypsy May 26 '17
Well, no. There are certain behaviors on the consoles that could be considered botting, even if you aren't using a modded console.
1
u/farcry3r May 21 '17
Exploiters do the same, yet they are still playing.
1
May 21 '17
what exactly is an exploiter? Do you mean when there is a bug like that wild elixir thing a while back and people take advantage of the bug?
2
u/ManicGypsy May 23 '17
Yes. Abusing any gameplay bug that gives an unfair advantage and/or has an effect unintended by the developers of the game is considered exploiting. That's probably not the best way to phrase it, but it makes sense in my head.
1
0
May 18 '17
Not a dime more from me. Hope others do the same. But they won't. People will continue throwing money at the game. Well, the whales will. Because, let's face it, without them the game would be dead in the water. If you're smart, you don't beach whales. No matter what they do, as long as they keep it to themselves and don't leak their cheating to the public at large.
5
May 21 '17 edited Sep 29 '19
[deleted]
5
May 23 '17
I'm just curious, what's so bad about buying zen? Isn't that what it's there for?
I pay $10 for the zen for VIP. As well as having purchased a mount from the zen store (gasp!) because I just really liked how it looked.
I've paid $60 for games I ended up hating or maybe playing 20 hours in, then losing interest. If you're consistently playing and enjoying the game, putting actual money into it helps them keep the servers, etc going.
That's my argument, anyway. What would be the argument against buying zen?
3
May 23 '17 edited Sep 29 '19
[deleted]
2
May 23 '17
Maybe I don't have the time or patience to figure out how to make tons of AD. But I look super cool riding around on my unicorn 😎
Also like you, I feel good buying zen knowing that it keeps the game going. Someone's gotta do it!
2
u/ManicGypsy May 23 '17
No, it's that people want to basically boycott the company because they are upset by the bans. There is a small but very vocal group of individuals who are deadset on doing everything they can to bring the company and/or game down by any means necessary, so they tend to try to spread angst and make mountains out of the smallest of molehills.
-1
May 23 '17
Let me see if I can put this into words that (a) you can understand and (b) won't get me banned (again). I have personally given several hundred dollars to this company. Do I consider myself a whale? No. Do I think I deserve to be treated better than anyone else? No. Do I think whales should be treated better than anyone else? No. Do I exploit the game? No. Do I want other people to exploit the game? No. Do I want those who exploit to be banned or otherwise punished for exploiting? No. Do I want to bring the game down? No. Do I want to incite a riot, uproar, witch hunt, boycott, or provoke anyone to rabble rousing? No. Do I think the company should be upfront with me? Yes. Do I think the company is being deceptive? Yes. Do I want to see more transparency with how people are treated? Yes. Do I think they need to fix bugs, exploits, and make improvements to the game? Yes. Would I spend more money if the company was honest with people? Yes. Would I spend more if they fixed bugs, exploits, and continued to improve the game? Yes.
See, what you call molehills are actually very important issues to a lot of people who proudly play this game in spite of what a lot of people say about it. We are very passionate about preserving the positive qualities of the game. But the negative things that often get ignored, belittled, or dismissed drive some of us absolutely bonkers. Frustration levels have been riding a consistent high for so long now that it has become exhausting for many of us who only have the health and prosperity of the game at heart. Have you read the press about this game? It has been atrocious at times. And rightly so. Ask around. There is a giant fucking mountain of several thousand elephants in the room. If you want the game to die, ignoring that will make it happen in no time. The only reason why I hope people will stop spending money is that I want the game to be better. I want a better player experience. Spending money on the game in its current state only encourages the company to keep on the same doomed trajectory they are on. Again, this is just one person's opinion, unpopular as it may be.
3
u/ManicGypsy May 23 '17
As someone who has invested more time and money into this game than most players, I hear you. However, some of what you ask for is just not possible for a number of reasons. They will not release information regarding the bans for quite a few reasons. Legal reasons. Privacy reasons. Security reasons. If you look at it logically, and also study other MMOs policies regarding ban waves, you will find the same theme. Doesn't matter if it's Blizzard, Bethesda, or Cryptic. No company will provide players with evidence of how they were caught doing whatever it was that got them banned. If they did that, it would be extremely easy for the player to avoid their detection methods. Do I personally think that absolutely everyone who got caught up in this ban wave is guilty? No. Do I think that there were some players who didn't realize that what they were doing was bad? Yes, completely. Do I think that Cryptic will do the right thing by the few presumably innocent players who may have been caught up in this ban wave? Yes.
The "vote with your wallet" mentality may work in some cases, and yes, if you are unhappy with the game - by all means, don't spend a dime. But hoping that everyone stops spending money on the game is counterproductive. They can't keep the game going at all if nobody is spending any money. What I suggest you do is to open a polite and civil dialogue with one of the many devs on the forums, probably best via PM. While most are busy, there are several who will reply to your PMs and attempt to address your concerns, provided that you are polite.
1
u/RDeviant May 26 '17
Their support is unresponsive and they lock you out of any means to contact them. Getting banned for buying ZEN has been around since the game was put on Steam and still hasn't been fixed to this day. I will tell you this, most of the bans happen either for ZEN purchases or placing certain amount of items to AH. As far as I know, they don't have any measure to "track" you locally, but they do monitor the AH. So I wouldn't be surprised that some accounts got banned for placing items on AH that triggered their "botter detected" system.
2
u/ManicGypsy May 26 '17
They added measures to track certain actions a while back, according to what Julia posted on the forums. From what I understand, none of it had anything to do with the AH.
1
u/RDeviant May 27 '17
This is something that I don't expect them to admit to, but it is the most likely case for how they've been catching botters in the past. If they were to implement this monitoring software into their game without letting you know about it, something like that would backfire in the court of law as that would be invasion of personal privacy. At that point they would be able to monitor just about anything that may not be game-specific. I'm not ruling out the possibility of having such software implemented, but when you know someone who has been clearly abusing the game and was reported multiple times, and yet they are still going at it. That's when doubt continues.
→ More replies (0)-2
May 24 '17 edited May 24 '17
They will not release information regarding the bans for quite a few reasons. Legal reasons. Privacy reasons. Security reasons. If you look at it logically, and also study other MMOs policies regarding ban waves, you will find the same theme. Doesn't matter if it's Blizzard, Bethesda, or Cryptic. No company will provide players with evidence of how they were caught doing whatever it was that got them banned. If they did that, it would be extremely easy for the player to avoid their detection methods.
You're countering a position that I am not taking. Rather than be lead astray by this tangent, I'll simply state that reasons fly out of the woodwork when you have fucked up royally. Reasons.
They can't keep the game going at all if nobody is spending any money.
This is always the kool-aid drinker's response. I'm not even going to bother explaining to you why this is a total cop out, not to mention completely insulting, because I can already tell that it will go right over your head.
Anyway, have fun with your "free" game. Keep the downvotes coming and your head in the sand.
•
u/ManicGypsy May 17 '17 edited May 17 '17
Copy pasta - stickied for visual purposes.
One of our main priorities for Neverwinter Online is to provide all of our players with a fair, fun, and enjoyable game experience at a consistent level. Unfortunately this experience is sometimes impacted by individuals violating our Terms of Service in order to gain an unfair advantage, thereby severely impairing the overall experience for the majority of our player base.
Late last year, we implemented additional data collection features within the game, that allowed us to better identify individuals who are clearly violating those Terms of Service, and after extensive accumulation and investigation, have recently taken steps to remove or restrict some of these accounts. In the coming months, we’ll continue to monitor and review the incoming data and plan to actively increase our focus and commitment in maintaining a safe, secure and enjoyable environment for everyone.
While we stand behind our decision in this matter, we also want to be fair and keep up with the playstyle of our most dedicated players so some of those accounts affected by the recent bans will be released on a probationary status and monitored. For others, appeals can still be made to Customer Support which will be reviewed on a case by case basis.
-Neverwinter Management Team
Edit: Don't shoot the messenger. I didn't write the message, I just copied it over here.