Players randomly being accused of cheating/being banned on Tonberry

[Radington]

Lately on Tonberry there have been reports of players being randomly banned or giving a 72 hour suspension (Much like myself) for alledgedly breaking ToS rules 2.1. Cheating and Botting.

It looks like a ton of innocent players have been getting banned and they can't even defend themselves because the people that issues the bans is through another unreachable team.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/264435-The-anti-cheat-system/page1
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/3nov3w/my_account_just_got_suspended/
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/3ntmy8/square_enix_customer_service_reps_showing/

How does it feel knowing that you could be banned and it's completely out of your control that some unknown thing may have triggered alarms and you can't defend yourselves should such a thing happen?

This is pretty disgusting to be honest.
Put 2,000+ hours into the game
Paid my sub every month
and then it can all get taken away and you can't defend yourself.

I've heard horror stories of Square Enix's Customer Service team being really crappy.
But these guys are no help at all. I've filled out a compromised account form but I know it wont do any good because I know my account wasn't compromised. I was playing normally on my server like I have been for the past year of owning this game.

It's a real shame that other innocent players have been targeted on the same days as I have.

Thanks for reading.

[Nico Yazawa]

SE doesn't ban bots though.

Seen bots around for 3-4 months, and they're still around.

[Asphe]

I wouldn't expect them to explain how they proved that a player used something illegal [botting, auto-target from 'radar', teleporting (I've seen this boldly used in Tonberry during 'daylight' hours)], did something illegal [buying gil / selling gil - this has to be really dumb, buying/selling from/to a suspect account that's under surveillance] or benefited from something illegal [your friend 'giving' you a few mil gil by the market or the bank. If your friend had gotten it from someone else, the chain of evidence still leads to you. Both he and you, suspended. The original 'supplier' account gets banned.]

They might think that telling you all the details just helps you and your buddies become better cheaters so they just slap you with the "violation of TOS"/etc.

If you got suspended, it's probably cheating by proxy or some other way that you possibly had nothing to do with. If they knew for sure you are a cheat/botter, you'd get banned not suspended.

Just ride it out and get better [more careful] friends. And know that you now have, 'a record' or you've successfully raise the 'Cheat' flag. Big Brother is watching.

PS This issue has nothing to do with the multiple IPs logging / OTP.

Koishi Komeiji の投稿を引用：

SE doesn't ban bots though.

Seen bots around for 3-4 months, and they're still around.

Hard to get those, when players give their account details so they can buy 'leveling' services/etc... you get a new spamming account. Obviously the same guys behind it because the characters names are extremely original.

Almost wish they'd limit chat to level 50+s OR let us create AND moderate public chat channels.

Or maybe, certain players would just stop buying from them.

[Radington]

The thing is though I and many other users have never participated in such acitivtity. These accusations of me cheating and botting came out of no where and the users in the thread I've listed are having the same issue. These aren't my friends either but actual other random users who got hit by it on Tonberry.

I only have a VPN which has been approved by a community rep and steam to run the game.
This isn't the first time Square has banned random players.

I'm pretty determined to defend my case as many other users are.
They're currently investigating my account and I hope they can see that on the day I got banned I was playing normally as with the other users.

[Drakanoth, One]

Yea, I could agree their support is kinda crappy. The other day I had an issue with extra retainers, and I had to contact live chat 3 times to get it solved, and it was something really silly. Just felt like they didn't even try in the first attempts. I've also heard stories about them doing that kind of thing without a care or even justifying, most people assume you really did something wrong too. Anyway, wish you luck with that. Hope it gets sorted out.

[Freyar]

Their support may be lackluster, but you'll have to forgive me if I take claims of innocense with a grain of salt.

[Radington]

Freyar の投稿を引用：

Their support may be lackluster, but you'll have to forgive me if I take claims of innocense with a grain of salt.

Go ahead I'm not asking you to believe me.
But if other users on the forum are experiencing the same problems as me then that says something. I'm not gonna risk 2,000 hours of in game time thank you.

[Freyar]

Each case will be looked at if pushed. Since we're in the old portion of what.. 3.05 now, a lot are farming which can appear to be automated, I guess.. but then again I don't know anyone that's been hit.

[Asphe]

Celestia (sleep) の投稿を引用：

Freyar の投稿を引用：

Their support may be lackluster, but you'll have to forgive me if I take claims of innocense with a grain of salt.

Go ahead I'm not asking you to believe me.
But if other users on the forum are experiencing the same problems as me then that says something. I'm not gonna risk 2,000 hours of in game time thank you.

It's not question of your trustworthiness.

If you're suspended, then SE believes you cheated unintentionally or by proxy. Some times it can very circumstantial, i.e. you see an expensive item put up for sale for 1gil and snap it up. Or a FC member dumps 10mil in the FC bank and everyone who took out 1gil from the bank is now flagged.

Everything you do in the game is logged. They may not monitor you in real time, but it's just a matter of tediously going through all the logs and cross-referencing.

Remember the incident shortly after the re-launch where hundreds were temporarily suspended? All you had to do was walk by the hacker as you were passing near a store or market board. Or that abnormally dense individual who posted the how-to on Steam even... getting his Lodestone character out of his SteamID was trivial.

You can't even go by the # of complaints on the official forums. Everyone knows that the noisiest people are the ones with a problem or a complaint. Even if every thread there was 100% legitimate, that's a small fraction of the million+ subscribers.

Trying to say you couldn't have cheated because if you did, there must have been hundreds is not going to work. Using this game as an example [ https://steamcommunity.com/stats/Warframe/achievements ], 1.5% of EVERY player who has EVER played this game... is confirmed to have cheated.

VPNs / gateways are not prohibited. Whether it's WTFast or a more security orientated service.

What gets you suspended/banned... may not be the last thing you did before the hammer dropped.

-----

Make a thread on the official forums [once you can] and lodge a ticket. If it's SE's mistake, it will be sorted out eventually, hopefully.

That's it. I'd really avoid doing more, especially on Steam. Ever google "VAC banned" + "steam"? You're putting yourself in worse company when you act, talk and behave just like them.

[thepcguy2008]

You were reported for botting or cheating someone seen you either farming the same area for hours on end or something and they suspended you for botting i have seen it happen before to someone who was not a bot but did botting behavior.

[Magnusson]

Never forget.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1n9e24/highlevel_crafters_beware_you_may_be_suspended_if/

[Valkirth]

tbh FF14 isnt the first mmo to do this(prob wont be the last either) Anet managed to ban a big chunk of the communityin gw2 within the first few months for there own mistakes,atleast SE dont misprice an item and blame the community for not magically knowing what the price was meant to be and then ban your for it citing you cheated your banned for exploiting.

[Radington]

Well apparently I'm allowed to play again under a new account according to Service Reps.
but this statement contradicts with what's written in the ToS.

Very caution.
They also expressed it was my VPN.

[Drakanoth, One]

What you mean under a new account? You wont have your old characters back?

[Radington]

Nope, old account was banned for good CS said I can make a new account.
I don't really mind starting over as long as I can see my friends again. '
Still unsure what it was for though...

[Drakanoth, One]

Not having a hint of what caused it is the worst part. I understand that explaining what caused it could make it easier to "cheat", but it also leaves us with the sensation that they didn't really bothered while taking the decision, and also afraid of doing simple things because of what it could possibly make others think. I'm always scared when farming stuff with gatherers so I wont "look like a bot" when moving. I jump around and stuff. Well, it sucks to lose your character, but you at least got to play with your friends again. Hope you don't get into that kind of situation again.