This got deleted so I’m gonna repost it word for word since I suspected this might happen:
I recently got unbanned from an unjust ban that came about from the (in my opinion) overzealous ban wave that occurred in late September due to the trophy and trading exploits. Let me tell you that fighting that wrongful ban was a painful journey and I had pretty much given up hope at getting unbanned but thankfully my last ditch effort gave fruit. There are still many who are wrongfully banned (I personally know of 2 others who didn’t do anything wrong but are still perma banned) which is what compels me to write this post.
The first thing I want to talk about is the lack of a human response when trying submitting appeals. For the first month of attempts the process went as follows: Submit a ticket, get an email saying it’s been received, and then finally getting a copy paste autoreply email (sometimes not even related to New World) stating that the ban is justified and will not be removed. I know these were automated as the replies were all over the place, sometimes it was about my ban in lost ark (I don’t play lost ark), sometimes it was about exploiting a bug, sometimes it was about using a cheating program and others it gave no reason for the ban but that it was justified. The worst part of this all is that when I reply asking for further clarity or what steps I can take I get no response despite receiving emails stating they’ll be in touch within 6 hours. The whole submitting a ticket feels like talking to a brick wall.
The second thing I want to talk about is perhaps the most inexcusable from AGS. The ticket submission system in place is beyond useless. You have one box with just 1024 characters, yes characters, to explain what happened and why the ban was unjustified. Every time I submitted an appeal I constantly ran into the brick wall that was the character limit. When I finally got unbanned the email I sent was over 8000 characters long with more words used than AGS gave characters. Quite frankly I find it insane how they can expect anyone to submit evidence and justify themselves when they put these limits in place. And submitting evidence itself is an ordeal. There’s no where to upload anything. You’re given one small box to write I can only assume url links to the evidence. However the character limit here is equally problematic so if you want to submit multiple links you have to use your precious explanation box characters. What even more insane here is that I’ve heard from people (some who even work for Amazon though not AGS) that they aren’t allowed to look at anything that is third party. So in the end the urls you provide are pretty much pointless. I gave my game logs every time via a google drive and I’m almost certain that they weren’t looked at once. So in the end, the ticket system in place fails in every way and URGENTLY needs updating to something proper with actual places to upload evidence and at least 3 times the character limit given at the bare minimum. AGS if there’s one thing you take away from this post please fix this. The system is fundamentally broken.
The third thing I want to talk about is what AGS wants as evidence. Other than game logs does anyone know what they want from you? The reasons they give for cheating end up being inconsistent, they don’t give you a timeframe to work with so you have to guess why you’ve actually been banned. When you inevitably ask for clarity on what it is you’ve been banned for ie “was it the trophy bug?” “was it the trading glitch?” “was it using a cheat program?” “was it some other form of cheating?” all they reply is that they can’t and don’t give out that sort of information to avoid people discovering their cheat detection systems. I find that answer to be complete and utter bullshit to be perfectly honest. AGS ban people, demand evidence to lift the ban and then refuse to tell people why they’re banned so they have to guess what evidence to submit. How can anyone submit proper evidence when they don’t know what it is they’re fighting to prove they didn’t do? This isn’t how legal cases are treated in real life. The defendant is always told what it is they’re accused of. Why is it that AGS doesn’t do the same? There’s no reason to it. Correct me if I’m wrong but I can’t figure out how anyone could discover AGS’s cheat detection system just from knowing what it is they’ve been accused of doing. All this reeks of is instead AGS silencing those they banned and refusing to give them a chance to get unbanned.
The fourth thing I want to talk about is how flawed their automatic flagging system is. There is no proper review system in place, or if there is they do an extraordinarily poor job at it. For one, a lot of people who were unjustly banned either took forever to get unbanned after spending hours and hours of effort at it (like myself) or are stuck in limbo with no real way to get unbanned (like 2 people I know). Now I can understand that the review process can take time as human hours add up more than using a bot. But the fact that there are so many account that never got properly reviewed and stuck in limbo or had to work around the system to eventually get unbanned just shows how poor a job they did at reviewing the flagged accounts.
The amount of false positives the automatic flagging system generates is unacceptable with a review process this poor. To see the extremes of these false positives have a look at this image that was shared to me by a friend:
as I’m sure many of you are aware, 4k is nothing in this game in terms of money. If you were going to cheat/exploit to gain more money you’d aim for much much more money than this. Even if you were playing it incredibly conservatively you’d be aiming for 40-50k at the least (which I think is still far too low). Most who cheated I expect were trying to gold cap or maybe even go over that via company banks. So for the system to flag 4k it’s obviously taking the detection to the extremes when it’s clearly apparent this was an accident and due to problems with AGS’ coding/server stability or however the trade glitch occurred and not due to the player who ended up wrongfully banned.
The fifth thing I want to talk about is using this forum as a banned player. If you are banned you are unable to create or comment on posts. Now I can understand why this might be in place but it reinforces the notion that AGS has created everywhere else with appealing bans that they are trying to silence those they ban. When other players were writing posts about the bans and how glad they were that everyone who was banned got what they deserved it was infuriating to not be able to defend myself as an unjustly banned player. And with how bad the appeal system is there’s no where to write your complaints or even try and reach out about why you were unjustly banned. It really added to the feelings of helplessness when trying to get unbanned.
The sixth and final thing I want to talk about is the lack of an apology from AGS. I’ve had 2 months of not being able to play the game. I missed out on the revitalisation of New World player numbers and all the fun of being the first to experience the new content in Brimstone. I’ve fallen behind my friends who still played the game. I missed out on so many days of daily cooldowns and dungeon cooldowns. I’ve missed any time limited events they had going on. I’ve had to spend 2 months in frustration and pain, working much harder than I should have to, to be unbanned. And at the end of it all I haven’t received a word from AGS. No compensation for time lost, no apology for wrongfully banning me and then refusing to unban me until I jumped through more hoops than I’d have liked. I didn’t even get told I had been unbanned by AGS either. I had to be told via the Amazon social media team who were the only reason I was able to successfully fight the ban.
Now I’m not expecting any compensation for my time lost but I’d like AGS to at least apologise and admit they’ve made a mistake, review other players who have been wrongfully banned properly and to please rework the appeal ticket system as it is atrocious.
If anyone else has had any problem with AGS support they want to share I’d like to hear it so I know I’m not alone in feeling that AGS has the worst support team I’ve ever seen in any video game ever.
TLDR: AGS ban appeal system is terrible and fundamentally flawed (look at my second point, third paragraph for more details) and serves to do nothing but silence those who have been unjustly banned
to see the thing i need to login to the internets.