That`s a very marginal issue, i would pay to have only this, the cancer is paragon botting 24h24.
Lol liking your own posts under a sock poppet account, kinda tragic don’t you think?
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Marginal? You think botting is only used to farm paragon? And you think they get the loot they need from paragon farming? Have you?
No. So they implement entire networks of bots running bounties for them on the side too and then achieve unlimited mats.
This is part of their holistic approach to seeking in game advantages and is most cettainly NOT a marginal issue.
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Don’t really like the idea of a banwave season.
I get that they might not ruin your games. But cheating in general should not be allowed.
And it seems like no one really cares if people are botting or not… Kinda sad.
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Ah, okay, but doesn’t this mean that there’s a bot involved on a separate account doing the farming of the bounties in order for there to be caches to be distributed to the invited players?
I presume you’re proposing that not only does the account that’s doing the botting for bounties get banned, but also the accounts that repeatedly benefit from the caches provided by the botting account. That sounds like a good idea, but it’s way, way harder to detect / prove, I guess.
You’re exactly right. But, since when was ‘difficult to prove’ synonymous with ‘not worth it’? I’m not saying that this is your position but the amount of action against botting in this game is so low as to suggest that it is a mutually beneficial relationship between the many, many bot accounts and Blizzard.
Not to talk about other games, but I think we could all think of a few (including at least one popular Blizzard title) where the reporting function against botting (including aim botting or other hacks) works a lot better; where the punishment is much harsher; and in short where the deterrent for hacking is credible and well-known.
Perhaps D3 is already in ‘maintenance’ sort of mode but perhaps with D4 Blizzard will be able to implement a far more structured and rigorous anti-automated play setup.
Either way I hope it is clear that I’m part of the ‘anti botting’ crew, in all its forms, including those that knowingly benefit from it.
This old chestnut again…The ban wave will happen, just be patient. Honestly though, the more i read whinging posts about it like from the TC, the less i care about bot corruption.
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You read the title and still decided to comment, even though you knew what it was about.
Besides, botting should not be allowed for an entire season.
Yes IS marginal, botting para, keys is NOT, is a sistematical and guaranteed huge advantage , getting only bounties tbh isnt. Anyway they should BAN THEM ALL, everyone that load that fking sh.t on his account MUST BE FKING BANNED ON SPOT, period, rest is fried air.
Latimer, Nostromo and Saturn are the same guy, he spammed the same crap in the old forums for months. One account got banned, he hopped onto the next account and picked up where he left off.
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This guy have mental issues…
You’re right, that’s most definitely not my position but it’s got to be easier to detect and ban the primary accounts that are botting than the accounts that are benefitting from those accounts.
Over on the EU forums I tried, over a period of more than a year, to ask for things to be done about accounts that were clearly botting. I provided example evidence of seasonal accounts, how to view their played time within the season, and that they were playing for 22+ hours a day, for weeks on end, and had done similar things for entire seasons, for multiple seasons in a row.
At some point I just decided that hitting my head against a brick wall wasn’t getting me anywhere and I just gave up.
This is nothing to joke around with nor mention on this forum.
A couple points on that - they don’t allow us to call out other players on the forums nor do they take cheating/botting reports that way. You know that though.
The other is that for legal reasons, they have to PROVE that someone was botting/cheating. If they can’t prove it well enough to withstand a court challenge they prefer not to ban people. Banning takes away the game license someone paid for. Sure, they EULA says they can ban for ANY reason, but most companies don’t do that sort of thing.
With Blizz, just because it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and waddles like a duck, does not mean they put it in the duck pen. They wait for the DNA test to come back saying 100% duck.
Oh, and in addition to legal and ethical considerations, false positives in ban waves increase the number of CS appeal contacts. That takes real human time to sort out and incurs additional costs. They like to be as sure as possible the ban was justified before doing it!
Personally, really hoping we get our long overdue bans soon.
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Right. I think what irks people like meteor, myself, and others that try to play the game regularly and (in doing so) regularly encounter botters, is that they seem to be able to play for entire seasons with impunity.
On the proof side, I bet this could be difficult - depending how the bot is programmed. Having said that: has a case ever been brought against Blizzard for wrongful banning of a 60 dollar account?
Finally: could you reach out to your contacts and perhaps let us know what the ‘gold standard’ for a botting report would be? Should it be a lot more than ‘user name, time range’ and be an ‘article’ describing ongoing behavior, arguments in favor of interpreting the behavior as botting, etc?
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Oh, I’m not new at this. At no point did I mention player’s account names in the examples as that is considered “naming and shaming” and means I’d technically be guilty of player harassment. I merely said how other players could find them, e.g. open the seasonal leaderboards, look at solo crusader, rank 1, view profile, and so on.
And, as for the burden of proof, I understand that Blizzard prefers “Beyond reasonable doubt” to “The preponderance of evidence” when it comes to banning people but when an account has been playing for 22+ hours a day, for months (sometimes years) on end, that’s clearly not something that a single human can accomplish. The clear implication is that the account is being shared, being botted on or both. Whilst that may not lead to an immediate suspension or ban, it should certainly place a flag in the player database that the account should undergo further scrutiny by an actual person.
The main reason I provided this evidence was in direct response to the EU Community Manager (yeah, I remember when we had one of those) making a post stating that banwaves happened regularly. My post gave an example of an account that had been doing 22+ hours a day for the entire season, and had done the same thing for the preceding 5 or 6 seasons, i.e. it had been cheating for over a year and a half, and had seen no action taken against it. Everyone reading the thread knew that the example account was far from the only example I could have used.
Not that I know of. The legal costs would be kind of crazy over a $60 account. Still, it is preferable to have proof vs just banning people on strong suspicions.
Blizzard is VERY reluctant to share detection methods with the players, or even most of the Blizz staff. The full range of what is helpful is hard to say.
In WoW they have a right click report function that captures everything about the reported account including account info, game server, in game location, in game activity, etc. D3 does not have those second by second logs so we don’t have a report function in the game.
I would try to email the hacks team with the names and reasons for your suspicions. Battletag, activity dates/times, type of behavior. The usual stuff. Do not try to argue that what you see should be enough evidence. Just stick to the facts you do have and indicate you suspect botting. You may be right and it may get them to look into those accounts and use them to test new flagging software. The outcome may take a heck of a long time depending on what they decide to do (manually find vs mass detection and banning).
They are not going to share plans about this with us though, nor methods.
I know 
It is very frustrating to see that sort of thing and deal with them not being removed. Account sharing from different IP addresses is easy to detect. Account sharing from the same IP address is much harder - especially when a Parent or Legal Guardian may share with one minor child they are legally responsible for. It gets messy to prove account sharing under those conditions. Now, when someone logs in from the US for 5 hours then the EU for the next 10, that should (and does) raise flags. The account can auto lock under those circumstances and it can escalate for investigation.
The whole situation sucks to be honest. I can only hope improved investigation and detection methods are migrated or developed for D3 and other Diablo games.
Yeah, I mentioned that back in the old EU forum thread too. If the defence of “parent and child” sharing is used, and there’s 22+ hours of play a day, for years on end then no matter what the claimed split is in terms of hours played by the parent / hours played by the child, in my opinion that would be a really terrible parent.
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Guys, I’m trying my hardest to uphold the Code of Conduct right now. Please participate in conversations that are already ongoing about topics you wish to discuss and do not post threads with a Blizzard employee’s name or “BLUES LOOK HERE” in the title.
That doesn’t help anyone. Just be constructive and straightforward.
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