Hardware Ban for Botters/Cheaters/Exploiters

All that says is why the bans are done in waves instead of case-by-case. And you didn’t understand it.

It’s about keeping the authors of the cheating apps as much in the dark as possible, not the players that were actually banned. The players aren’t the ones that are going to alter the apps.

I didn’t say that. I said it’s to create an uncertainly to slow the process down. There are lengths of time between detection and action that introduce the most uncertainty.

You’re basing your position on subjective, anecdotal, small sample observations. However there are those who make it their business to know what’s best based off objective metrics that we simply aren’t privy too. We see this kind of challenge to the system all the time in the CS forum from players that don’t understand the research and decisions behind it. Research and decisions done by those whose purpose is combating the cheating industry. And all the challenges are promptly met by Blizzard with the exact information I’ve given here.

And it’s not just Bliz acting alone. Gaming companies often come together to pool their data and discuss countermeasures on a larger industry-wide scale. One of the more recent decisions (that Bliz made public) was the result of getting together with several large gaming studios to determine the best punishment for cheating. Due to that joint research, Bliz changed the punishment from what they were currently doing at the time to something different based off the lowest, not eliminated, recurrence rate.

They should ask Square enix running Final Fantasy 14 online to learn how its done. They ban once a week and post results. They also have a reporting system. That’s way more effective and I’ve never even seen a bots in their games compared to activision-blizzard games which run rampant due to inaction. Theres also d2jsp website which blatant run 24/7 bot shops for years. How is that site still even operating after all these years from releasing cheats and selling items for real money?

as someone who has played ffxiv since 1.0 i can say they do have a bot problem, unfortunately, especially for gathering jobs. rmt is a big industry in any mmo and that causes bots to exist. yes they have done well at reducing chat spam bots but the gathering bots are not nearly as obvious.

Although on the chat bot front i can’t be certain that’s not just a chat filter either because i know using certain things like URLs will get your msg to be hidden but you wont get banned.

I’m not going to speak on the reasons behind other studios’ methods. I’ve only heard Bliz speak directly on their own. However,

… that reeks of bias, KamStar. All those definitives. Never seen there, rampant here. That’s either you intentionally exaggerating to artificially bolster point, or willfully ignore bots there and willfully seeking them here to artificially validate your position. Either way, that statement can’t be taken seriously. So, no, you haven’t shown that those others’ methods are better. It is however a good example of small sample, subjective confirmation bias.

That’s more of the limited perspective problem. One of the more common reasons is that these enterprises are setup where Bliz or the US doesn’t have any jurisdiction. It can be the same reason that similar illicit sites exists for any game.

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I just suggest to gather your friends and hop into private lobbys and enjoy it under trustworthy conditions and or grab out some new people from public lobbys to play with, if they are 24/7 online just remove them from friends and keep searching ^^.

But honestly it never has bothered me as much, back in the day there was a program that looted before the item has even dropped or made a noise, every time a good rune was dropping you had 5/8 or even 8/8 people teleporting on the exact same spot and i do remember the programs name to this day, as a clueless player you always thought they were trolling or sth untill you noticed your inventory was always empty lol.
Under these conditions you were also doomed because in order to get an item in these lobbys there was only one way to go.

That said, there also have been ALOT of friendly fairplayers that have formed an healthy environment and with those i made quite some friends back then and we went on for many years, even jumping into WC3 TFT and WoW - damn good times, even with these issues.

So no matter what, atleast for me, they wont ruin my enjoyment but i wouldnt mind if they would do sth about it but then im playing WoW Classic and there are many of these Bots. Since the Bans take so long and Blizzard drives some weird first offense policy with extremly low and harmless punishments… i honestly just want to push the issue aside, im expecting the worst and while doing so, the Game is good enough to not drive me away because of that issue and not having a Leaderboard that screams “YOU SUCK LEGIT USER IM FIRST PLACE BOTTER!!!” upon login into the Game… i think, i would be concerned way more if that was the case.
Like Overwatch was a Title where ive experienced exactly 8 Cheaters over 1400 hours playtime or sth wich was really surprising for me but at the same time the whole Top EU/US 500 Ranksystem was flawed in its core and easy to abuse and hence get a spot in there.
Like people forming 6 man Premade in the worst times possible to get matched against randoms and stomp them down, like just putting a Leaderboard isnt enough and it only causes more issues when you cant ensure the integrity, while removing it entirely wouldve been less hurtful overall, especially less toxic.

Cheaters only become an issue for me if the Game Developer decides to lock down all 3rd Party Tournaments while doing major nonsense themselves.
Like i wouldnt play CS GO if there wasnt ESL, Faceit or whatever with a better functioning Anticheat. Even there it sometimes takes them 3 months to find the dirtiest private hack but overall the Experience is much cleaner because it aint so stupid easily to get a Hack working undetected there. Like when it gets so expensive to bypass that the majority of players is simply too poor to afford it, then im already happy with the solution.

Thats just the Problem here, if you can just 1 click a a public download and get it working for months, thats the biggest issue you can have.

But im really curious with that, i mean there wasnt a change to WC3 Reforged either in terms of Maphacks as far as ive heard, yet still im not rlly concerned because i have better options to choose from and play at, like i said above, 3rd party solutions.

Either way, i can see why people want an official “trustworthy” experience since its easy to access and uncomplicated.
Its just like comparing Pservers from WoW with official WoW Servers, everyone would prefer to play official because Pservers always leave a bad taste in the background but when “you think you do, but you dont” :rofl:… suddenly they change the Game and make it worse when they shouldnt.

You can go login to diablo 2 right now. They’re spamming public bot games 24/7. Same with d2jsp theres automated seller bots. I mean it’s not hard to see which game has more prevention.

You said “activision-blizzard games”. Why add that huge layer of bias if you meant just D2?

And getting back to something I already said about legacy D2:

As for D2, you’re dealing with an antiquated game/service that has been out of development for a long time. It’s technologies are limited compared to modern games. It’s not going to be capable of the same countermeasures as the modern games/services. Fortunately, D2R is being ported to the modern Battlenet so it will have more sophisticated anti cheat methods

comparing a 21 year old games bot prevention to one still in active development and saying that 1 company is doing it so much obviously better is insane.

Also go try to farm the timed nodes that only show up every couple of hours in ffxiv and are needed for the highest end crafting. You will either see them disappear right away or not see them spawn at all because of how fast those bots take them.

Because I quit WoW for the same reason, same thing. Lfg is filled with gold sellers and boosters. Where as in ffxiv this doesn’t happen.

There’s that definitive again. Confirmation bias.

LoL

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscussion/search/?q=bot&restrict_sr=1

Many streamers leaving warzone for apex legends too due the lack of anti-cheat and enforcement. Its not only me confirming this bias but a whole community.

I don’t think this discussion is doing anything but enhancing typing skills. Here’s a thought, lets revisit the idea in 6 months to a year after D2:R has released, so we have some data on how thick the botmosphere is. Right now we have nothing, nada, zero, zilch information as far as botting activity in D2:R. I have a feeling that many are forming their ideas based upon on how bad the botting issue is/was in the original game. The original games botmosphere was so thick that lead floats on it.

Now search d2, d3, warzone, and wow and link those. At least in ffxiv they actually get banned every week instead of never or rarely. Night and day difference.

It’s not a matter of confirming a bias, it’s the phenomenon of Confirmation Bias. And once again, you fall victim to that mindset with the “whole” definitive. And unless the “whole” community is using definites in their reasoning, it’s not confirmation bias. But that’s too much of a tangent for the topic of the discussion.

On aside note, Blizzard has nothing to do with the CoD games.

Activision-blizzard is the same company, they merged together thats why cod games are on the blizzard launcher.

Another limited perspective problem.

First, merging doesn’t mean they have a hand in each other’s moderation methods.

Second, Activision doesn’t have any studios under them with PC port experience. Blizzard however has extensive PC experience and so only sells, installs and patches the PC ports of those games. Everything beyond those three is handled solely by Activision.

Didn’t Vicarious visions which is a studio under activision just remaster D2? After it was assigned to blizzard?

Dumbest thing I have ever heard. Hardware bans, and ip bans are stupid which is why they tend to not get used, especially when you can get around it easily, and you are more than likely gonna actually banning other people in the household, or that buy your used hardware. Stick to account bans.

For the last 20ish years VV has been primarily a console developer. They dabbled in PCs in their early years but are nowhere as experienced as Bliz. Blizzard’s entire history has been PC focused.

VV had been assisting Bliz on multiple projects for a while before it was publically revealed. There’s been time to orient their developers to Bliz’s IPs and Bliz is right there for support if their devs need it.

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