Hey Guys,
Reaching out again with hopes of an update. I also have put together some new information.
This thread here: Unfair PER-BAN.. PLS HELP! - #26 by Xeed
Player’s friend is reaching out on behalf of the player they believe was hit with a false positive perma ban. Customer Service rep @Cathulhu responds assuring the OP that the ban has been checked and is legit for ‘cheating’. 24 hours later the banned player in question responds to the thread saying “Thank all for help look like iam unbaned.”
Screenshot: http://prntscr.com/1you5vw
One of the people that have reached out to my friend with almost the exact same circumstances around their ban has now been unbanned after the 3rd appeal attempt with them having added no extra information other than a screenshot of them hitting level60.
I have removed his personal information from the screenshots but have originals if a Dev requires.
Screenshot1: http://prntscr.com/1youedg
Screenshot2: http://prntscr.com/1youjwb
There are more instances and stories we have discovered and I plan to keep digging as I believe nothing will kill a game like this faster than false permanent bans on innocent players.
For most of you that have read this far you have everything you need to know above. Now for my rant on why I believe this is such a huge problem.
As someone who has worked in esports for many years and have had the good fortune of being able to travel the world to many events supporting my teams across different titles I was AMAZED when this game launched. I had never seen so many of my different gaming circles all playing the same game at once. FPS players, MOBA players, even a bunch of my casual friends so I knew I had to get onboard. Everyone here knows playing with a group of friends makes a game 1000x better and for me this game had so many people playing.
At first launch was a bit rough - especially for those who couldn’t ‘no life’ a game getting caught in brutal queue times. That however was handled pretty quickly and everyone moved on with leveling. Over time more of the bugs and QOL issues popped up and some people stopped playing for a while. The huge amount of friends that where playing in the first couple of weeks had dwindled and only the hardcore few had remained. All of this in my opinion is somewhat normal with a game like this and what tends to happen is:
- The hardcore players push through
- New content and updates get released
- Game becomes closer to finished product and the hardcore players attract a large amount of their friends back to play.
This is what I believe is going to help drive players back into the game.
Now let me tell you what I think happens when someone gets a false perma ban. That entire circle of friends never come back. This has been the hardest part about all of this for me personally. For those of us that pushed through all bugs etc this has been like a punch in the gut. Not only have you falsely banned our friend and labelled him a gold seller then spammer you have now removed all possibility that any of the others in our extended friend circle even come back to the game. So not only has this false positive ban ruined the victim of it. It has ruined the game for the rest of us who powered through the bugs because we saw the potential for many years of fun gaming.
A game like this can have some pretty big mistakes, bugs, exploits and still bounce back due to the simple fact that above all else you guys have built something beautiful with massive potential.
However in my opinion there is no coming back from a wave of false positives as the ongoing effect of that will completely ruin a game for anyone affected and a large portion of their friends/community permanently.
Now it’s fair to say that it’s probably too late for me and my friend group. With how much I love the game I am going to have a very hard time convincing people to come back, even if you guys rectify my friend’s problem. So for the next group of people that are in the same position we are - Please I beg of you to look into this issue before it’s too late, because if it continues I believe the game will suffer greatly.
More than happy to speak to anyone from Customer Service or the Dev team - I am also available on twitter and discord too and am more than happy to dox myself too AGS if required.