Recently got a week ban for “pvp non-participation”. Still really unsure as to what this actually means…and, honestly, how to avoid a similar issue in the future.
I participate in games, basically never get kicked by the afk timer, and generally finish towards the top of leaderboards in everything except AV…where the entire point is to rush the map, stand on a hill for 5 minutes, and hope Van fails over 30 seconds faster than Drek.
GM couldn’t actually explain what specifically I had done wrong either… other than their ruling would stand. So I basically have no way to avoid a similar issue in the future. I’m inclined to believe the GM didn’t actually look very hard.
So I got a week off. I can live. It’s WOW and we all have other stuff to do I would hope.
Log back in today and my honor is reset to zero. Now, even if you want to assume the worst and say that I’m a filthy botting afk cheater (shame on me…great shame)…before the weekend in question I was well over 50k honor. Took me weeks to do. THAT particular pathway should be very VERY easy to track and confirm. I’m capped on basically all my tokens (which they didn’t delete)…so a conservative estimate puts me at a few HUNDRED games played. Realistically more…considering how abysmal alliance win rates are in my group. I got those WSG tokens 1 grueling 30 minute loss at a time.
Put in a ticket. Says the average wait time is 9 days. It’s a cliche to say “it doesn’t matter it’s a game”…but it really doesn’t. I’ll regrind the honor. It’s just weird that blizzard seems so uninterested in actually helping someone who buys most of their software releases and has paid literally thousands of dollars in sub fees over the years.
As I said above, I don’t even know what to do differently as I was legitimately playing on the days I got banned. So I have no idea what I did that shows up as “non-participating”.
If I was running a bot, sure…fair enough. I certainly get stuck in enough games with them. Maybe we could do something about that instead.
It means that you’ve been consistently reported as AFK from multiple battlegrounds usually.
As for the removal of honor, that does happen sometimes as a level of punishment when they feel that the honor was otherwise, not obtained legitimately.
You’re welcome to appeal again up until they say that no further appeals will be viewed. And no, they don’t take into account how much you’ve purchased from them. People who buy more Blizz stuff don’t get different treatment.
PvP non-participation basically means that you were found to not be participating in several Battleground matches. If reported by others in the Battleground as afk you will usually be given a temporary debuff that requires you to get into combat within a short duration. If you do not get into combat you are removed from the match.
It is important to understand that not being removed doesn’t mean nothing will happen. We have systems in place that collect data over time and those reports and that data are used to verify non-participation.
That you may participate in some matches does not negate those that you may not be participating in. I’m not saying specifically “you”, it is just an example as I have seen some that may not participate in one out of four matches. They do great in three, but are otherwise not active in the one, which is still non-participation.
Game Masters are not able to discuss with you the whys and wherefores. They review the original action and verify if the evidence supports that an error was made, that you were compromised at the time, etc…
If you feel an error was made you may appeal, the case will be reviewed, but again, our staff will not be able to discuss the particulars. Sorry.
The best I can suggest is to make sure that you are participating. That “defending” a tower by yourself for much of the game may be a strategy you like to employ, but it is not necessarily a strategy that everyone will be on board with. Again, that isn’t specific to you, but it is a style of gameplay that I see a good deal of that can result in non-participation reports/data.
Respectfully though, first that’s a terrible policy for interacting with people. GM’s aren’t forbidden by some arcane set of laws that prohibits them from explaining their actions on pain of death and torture…that’s just an internal company decision made on your end. There’s nothing actually preventing you from doing it other than your company saying that they won’t. That’s a conscious business decision for how to treat the people who pay for access to your product.
Second, if defending a tower solo isn’t a legitimate use of the game mechanics…then why is that precisely how a map like AV is designed? If that “style of gameplay” is resulting in players being banned…then perhaps the map shouldn’t be designed specifically to encourage that style of gameplay. That’s like punishing people for killing the end boss in a dungeon…sort of the point of the thing yeah?
I would be interested in what your take is on reverting gained resources (in this case honor points) that were clearly earned a long time prior to an incident causing a ban.
Again, appreciate the quick response (I honestly expected nothing), and not intending to come off as aggressive…but without proper clarification and a discussion of an infraction I fail to see how I can avoid it a second time. Unless the assumption is that your GM reviews are infallible and everyone is just sort of guilty as charged.
As my marks weren’t reverted, I could do turn in and hypothetically re-earn honor quite quickly. But I’m afraid to do even that because apparently if one person reports me and I’ve gained honor too quickly the earnings will just be reverted.
For what it’s worth, I don’t believe I ever received the inactive debuff you mentioned that weekend.
The GMs ain’t going to escalate something upon request when given an answer that one didn’t like. Going up the chain won’t really change the answer. More so to the point after being repeatedly told to stop putting in tickets on the matter.
They only tell u that if u open the same ticket over and over again and they keep telling you no eventualy they have to warn the player if there just not listening.
A Game Master isn’t going to go against the policies and procedures they are required to follow, Furtank.
Yes, it is a decision by our teams not to discuss or otherwise debate actions that may have been applied to an account. First, /afking in a Battleground is something we are actively trying to prevent and there are many out there that would like a better understanding of how our systems and investigations work so that they can better avoid getting caught. Just as with other systems, we wish to avoid providing those details for that reason.
I would argue that it isn’t designed for you to hold a tower solo, but that really isn’t important. What is, is that a Battleground isn’t a solo activity. It is something that you do with a bunch of other players working together to achieve a goal. If you are going against the majority of players, you aren’t really working together, you are doing your own thing.
Guardian a tower is a viable method of play, but not necessarily when it runs contrary to
the strategy of the rest of the group.
As for the design of the Battleground, any feedback/suggestions you may have should be directed to our Game Developers. Customer Support has no involvement in the design or implementation of any of those features.
None of that falls under my purview, sorry.
The data is often pretty clear cut, but no, it isn’t infallible. If it were, there wouldn’t be a process to appeal.
That isn’t at all true. Appealing a penalty is fine, even appealing the appeal if you believe an error was made is acceptable. You, Murphhy, submit 12 tickets over 10 days. 8 about a forum appeal and 4 about the Mage Tower.
You were provided answers in both cases. We are simply unable to assist the way you would like with the Mage Tower.
You, as the customer, pay to access Blizzard’s servers. You agree to play by their rules. Some rules are pretty clear cut, some rules are more fluid to adapt to the players’ ever-evolving capabilities to skirt those rules. But we agree to play in their sandbox and accept whatever consequences they lay down if we are caught doing things that we’re not supposed to be doing (or not doing things we’re supposed to be).
If they didn’t care, they wouldn’t bother having an appeals process at all. They accept when mistakes are made and will work with the players to right that wrong. Perhaps in the future communicate with your team. You may not like not guarding a tower, instead participating in the bum rush to the objective. But that’s why BGs are a team effort, not just what one person wants to do on their lonesome. It’d be like the healer in an instance staying back to farm herbs in one corner of the dungeon rather than sticking with the group to ensure no one is dying.
Having personnally experienced a ban under a fairly generic reason (abuse of ingame mechanics) one could argue that maybe the reasons given are not really clear cut or explain what was done that is wrong.
Now, I do understand that Blizzard won’t be willing to go into details as the goal is to keep the way you have found the infraction to remain a secret so people cannot go around it. However, I do believe that if a customer reaches out and says Hey, I got this suspension but do not understand what I did wrong may not always be someone attempting to circumvent a ban/suspension.
I understand that it is a difficult situation, but it would be great to be able to know what we actually did wrong as it may have been an actual mistake. If someone would have said something along the lines of We see script usage on the account for example, it would have already made the ban more clear rather than simply saying that a player Abused an ingame mechanics
I feel like I should be pointing out here that Vrak isn’t a GM, has nothing to do with tickets in any sort of capacity. While pretty dang nifty, they’re pretty much focused on being a presence here on the forums to keep us hoodlums in line, and to provide what insight and advice they can. Since we’ve now got three different people with three different instances of sanctions ganging up now.
People who have suggestions and feedback to offer? It needs to go where the right staff sees it. Either in the appropriate forum (or General Discussion if it’s not particular to say, PvP or achievements and such), or through the in-game suggestion tool. Feedback is not collected here as no staff save for our SFAs come to this particular place.
This is a somewhat separate issue, but more or less shows what I’m getting at. The current strategy for the AV meta is to basically afk the map. Both teams rush past each other, ignore resources almost entirely, and aim to kill Van or Drek as soon as minimal towers drop. The winning strategy is to do as little pvp interaction as possible as wiping the other team in the beginning is likely to cause a prolonged resource war that takes much more time, yields similar honor gains, and is likely to make everyone else in the group mad at you. Hence, playing is actually MORE likely to get your group reported.
One of the best strategies currently is to stealth in Van’s room and cyclone the opposing team’s tank upon engagement…this often results in a wipe for the opposing team. Since the games are so short…that extra minute often nets you a win + superior honor games.
So with the way the map currently functions…the best way to contribute to your team is to pvp as little as possible, stealth in a room, and get like 1-2 hks a game. It yields better win ratios for the team and superior honor gains.
I would hazard a guess that most of the people responding to GM tickets don’t play the game overly much (which is fine)…but when it comes to making decisions they don’t have good context for what they’re seeing.
And I’ll drop it here…but obviously just a difference of opinion on GMs not being able to discuss particulars. The stance on your end isn’t "can’t…it’s “won’t”. I completely sympathize that they’re just following the policy set forth by their employers…I’m simply saying it’s not a particularly good policy for PR with the fanbase.
Whether they do or not, really is moot. They make their decisions based on the actual info in front of them and the policies in place. To get an account action for non-participation, it means that there is repeated behavior and it’s not a first time offence.
Your teammates are reporting you for being AFK on a more regular basis and that’s what has lead to your account action. Not whether or not a GM plays the game or not.
I don’t have the statistics on everyone’s gaming habits, but from my experience, you’d likely be wrong there.
Regardless, it is probably important to point out that Game Masters aren’t the ones applying the original penalty. It is part of what our Hacks team does, who are very familiar with the practices that take place within various Battleground matches and the data relevant there.
During an appeal, Game Masters check particular aspects of the character and action to see if an error is likely and go from there.
The issue you have is with the policy, which is fine, but your original posts seemed to claim that Game Masters were simply being difficult and refusing to provide an answer. When it comes to following the guidelines of your job, it isn’t a matter of will not when the policies state you cannot. To do otherwise runs contrary to those policies and can endanger your job.
If you wish to provide feedback about the policy and what information may be available to those who are penalized you are welcome to submit your feedback to our Game Developers who help determine those policies. There is the Submit a Suggestion option in the Support menu in-game that goes directly to them.
As this discussion really is getting off the rails here, and you said you said you were dropping it here, I’ll close this one up. Thank you for your participation and civility. Good luck to you.
Good luck to you.