I believe Blizzard published an article stating that long, escalating suspensions are generally better at stopping certain behavioral patterns than permanent bans.
Players who receive permanent bans are more likely to simply make a new account and repeat their actions.
I think this is a solid policy for people who abuse exploits. At the same time, probably not as effective for people who spam racial slurs in chat.
First, a recap: My Cirriculum Vitae - I was recruited straight out of college to work for an unnamed company. My functions had a lot of hats that all fell under the term "Customer Service". At one point I was the Lead GM for a game that shall remain nameless here. When I started, there was typically one person in a company that did these jobs. Now companies have hundreds. There are companies that exist that have only the one function of providing support for one company or another and, in many cases, many companies all at once. There are thousands of people who do customer service for companies located in lands where English is most certainly NOT the primary language. I will delve on those issues some other time. Right now, we clearly want to discuss the "BanHammer". In every game I was a part of the discription for an Exploit was clearly stated prior to letting the end-user login. In most cases it was on the very long text-wall that you clicked the "I agree" button on. There is a lot of legalease on that page and you really should read it some time. Let's discuss an exploit from MY end of things. In short, most games can be summed in two words: database manipulation. That is a very friendly and VERY simplistic way to view it, but it is the part that we are concerned with here in this discussion. One day in a Design meeting someone asked "How do we tell if someone is cheating or if something is wrong"? I thought about it for about 15 seconds and gave them a list of queries I wanted run on the dbase every day. With skepticism, they reviewed my request. It didn't take long, it wasn't ground-breaking and the queries would take a short amount of time to complete. They tried it as a one-off for a couple days, liked what I did with it, and then wrote an ap that produced my reports daily at 4AM. SOme of these queries were simple things like "Show me the statistical mean of the XP gain in the last 24 hours" or "Show me the avg amount of coin gained in the last 24 hours" Simple things like that. I then had them give me the top performers in all cases (XP gain, coin gain, and quite a few others). I would then compare the performance of the user to the avg. A lot of time I was simply reviewing a well-played end-user. A lot of times it was an exploit. Using this manner I was able to identify suspected exploiters and commence a complete investigation into the player. Once I had a player ID, I could pretty much tell you every thing he did in game, every item he got, every coin he got, every piece of Xp he received, every person he told (by the way, just sharing info on a possible exploit is usually a permanent ban), and i could get all of this information regarding his account since it's creation. More importantly - MORE IMPORTANTLY - (really, this is the most important part here) - I was able to identify an exploit usually within 24 hours of an update. This means Design and Development could offer a fix very quickly. The team was also gracious enough to extend my powers in-game. What this means is that I had access to certain functions that if I idnetified an exploit at 230AM I could zap an NPC, Jail a player, remove ill-gotten items/coin/XP etc. They were very gracious with my powers - but they had a monitor on me the whole time. Every command I made was sent directly to about 3 guys. Sometimes they would call me the next morning and ask me why etc. but they always backed my decisions. The single worse part of my job was swinging the Daggum Banhammer. I always felt somewhat responsibble for ruining someone's game when this had to happen. I hated doing it and felt like I was responsible for the company losing an account. It has never occurred to me to cheat in a game. After all, it's not whether you win or lose etc. Still, having been around the world in a my younger years as a US Marine, I can tell you this: cheating doesn't mean the same thing in every culture. Some cultures view cheating as being smarter than the other users and devTeam. It is akin to saying hey, if you are all fishing, why would it matter if I use dynamite to catch fish when everyone is required to use a cain pole. I get more fish than you. They do not view it as cheating. You cannot hope to begin to see every person's point of view regarding the use of an exploit. Therefore you - as a company - MUST take a stand and inform EVERYONE - regardless of your status as an account holder, this behavior will not be tolerated. Knowing using an exploit is a bannable offense. No second chances. Your account is no longer able to login. Suspensions are punishments usually handed out for violations of Terms of Service on an increasing level: a day, a week, a month, etc. until they have simply had enough and they Ban you. Some violations will result in an immediate Banning. I have called the FBI on users twice. I have also handled "suicide" incidents twice. I can only hope I never have to handle that sort of thing again. Sometimes a user would notify me when they found what they considered an exploit. I would check it out. If it was indeed an exploit, I would give them a reward based on the level of the exploit. I had one guy say "I know this is an exploit - I repeated it 500 times". I easily verified this and then banned him. Let's be honest guys - we're all adults here. You know when your doing something wrong. The thing you MUST remember is that the DevTeam is going to be able to see every single thing you do regarding that exploit. THAT is what is going to get you banned. The smart thing to do when you find an exploit is repeat once or twice, report it immediately, and then get the hell away as fast as you can. And by saying do it once or twice i do not mean run to Befallen and use the Plat Dupe exploit to double, then quadruple your entire bank - I mean dupe a coin, then a coin again. My Psych Professor in college also happened to work for the state prisons. She told me that the prison is full of stupid people (below or well below avg IQ). That's kind of what happens with exploits. Once it is found, the DevTeam is able to track everyone who touched it. Don't be one of those people.
Nephretiti said:First, a recap: My Cirriculum Vitae - I was recruited straight out of college to work for an unnamed company. My functions had a lot of hats that all fell under the term "Customer Service". At one point I was the Lead GM for a game that shall remain nameless here. When I started, there was typically one person in a company that did these jobs. Now companies have hundreds. There are companies that exist that have only the one function of providing support for one company or another and, in many cases, many companies all at once.
There are thousands of people who do customer service for companies located in lands where English is most certainly NOT the primary language. I will delve on those issues some other time. Right now, we clearly want to discuss the "BanHammer". In every game I was a part of the discription for an Exploit was clearly stated prior to letting the end-user login. In most cases it was on the very long text-wall that you clicked the "I agree" button on. There is a lot of legalease on that page and you really should read it some time.
Let's discuss an exploit from MY end of things. In short, most games can be summed in two words: database manipulation. That is a very friendly and VERY simplistic way to view it, but it is the part that we are concerned with here in this discussion. One day in a Design meeting someone asked "How do we tell if someone is cheating or if something is wrong"? I thought about it for about 15 seconds and gave them a list of queries I wanted run on the dbase every day. With skepticism, they reviewed my request.
It didn't take long, it wasn't ground-breaking and the queries would take a short amount of time to complete. They tried it as a one-off for a couple days, liked what I did with it, and then wrote an ap that produced my reports daily at 4AM. SOme of these queries were simple things like "Show me the statistical mean of the XP gain in the last 24 hours" or "Show me the avg amount of coin gained in the last 24 hours" Simple things like that. I then had them give me the top performers in all cases (XP gain, coin gain, and quite a few others).
I would then compare the performance of the user to the avg. A lot of time I was simply reviewing a well-played end-user. A lot of times it was an exploit. Using this manner I was able to identify suspected exploiters and commence a complete investigation into the player. Once I had a player ID, I could pretty much tell you every thing he did in game, every item he got, every coin he got, every piece of Xp he received, every person he told (by the way, just sharing info on a possible exploit is usually a permanent ban), and i could get all of this information regarding his account since it's creation. More importantly - MORE IMPORTANTLY - (really, this is the most important part here) - I was able to identify an exploit usually within 24 hours of an update.
This means Design and Development could offer a fix very quickly. The team was also gracious enough to extend my powers in-game. What this means is that I had access to certain functions that if I idnetified an exploit at 230AM I could zap an NPC, Jail a player, remove ill-gotten items/coin/XP etc. They were very gracious with my powers - but they had a monitor on me the whole time. Every command I made was sent directly to about 3 guys. Sometimes they would call me the next morning and ask me why etc. but they always backed my decisions. The single worse part of my job was swinging the Daggum Banhammer. I always felt somewhat responsibble for ruining someone's game when this had to happen.
I hated doing it and felt like I was responsible for the company losing an account. It has never occurred to me to cheat in a game. After all, it's not whether you win or lose etc. Still, having been around the world in a my younger years as a US Marine, I can tell you this: cheating doesn't mean the same thing in every culture. Some cultures view cheating as being smarter than the other users and devTeam. It is akin to saying hey, if you are all fishing, why would it matter if I use dynamite to catch fish when everyone is required to use a cain pole. I get more fish than you. They do not view it as cheating. You cannot hope to begin to see every person's point of view regarding the use of an exploit. Therefore you - as a company - MUST take a stand and inform EVERYONE - regardless of your status as an account holder, this behavior will not be tolerated. Knowing using an exploit is a bannable offense.
No second chances. Your account is no longer able to login. Suspensions are punishments usually handed out for violations of Terms of Service on an increasing level: a day, a week, a month, etc. until they have simply had enough and they Ban you. Some violations will result in an immediate Banning. I have called the FBI on users twice. I have also handled "suicide" incidents twice. I can only hope I never have to handle that sort of thing again. Sometimes a user would notify me when they found what they considered an exploit. I would check it out. If it was indeed an exploit, I would give them a reward based on the level of the exploit. I had one guy say "I know this is an exploit - I repeated it 500 times". I easily verified this and then banned him.
Let's be honest guys - we're all adults here. You know when your doing something wrong. The thing you MUST remember is that the DevTeam is going to be able to see every single thing you do regarding that exploit. THAT is what is going to get you banned. The smart thing to do when you find an exploit is repeat once or twice, report it immediately, and then get the hell away as fast as you can. And by saying do it once or twice i do not mean run to Befallen and use the Plat Dupe exploit to double, then quadruple your entire bank - I mean dupe a coin, then a coin again. My Psych Professor in college also happened to work for the state prisons. She told me that the prison is full of stupid people (below or well below avg IQ). That's kind of what happens with exploits. Once it is found, the DevTeam is able to track everyone who touched it. Don't be one of those people.
Regarding bug exploits, why not just make the punishment poetic and publicly shame the character...let the community help