A generic post on customer services' response to cheating

Quibbles

I previously posted something more pointed on the topic of cheating and the cheating cheaters who cheat. This post has been revised to remove the name of the guilty and other identifying information so that we can focus on something a bit more important: will this game survive if Customer Service allows obvious cases of cheating to be unchecked for a full day?

1. [Name redacted] is one of the most egregious cheaters I have seen in a while. Look at the roster, Customer Service, and tell me that this roster is even remotely possible:
[5* Name redacted] - [level redacted, but really, really high 5* level]
[5* Name redacted] - [level redacted, but really, really high 5* level]
[5* Name redacted] - [level redacted, but really, really high 5* level]
[4* Name redacted] - [level redacted, but pretty good 4* level]
[4* Name redacted] - [level redacted, but pretty good 4* level]
[4* Name redacted] - [level redacted, but pretty good 4* level]
[3* Name redacted] - [level redacted, but unchamped 3* level]
Next highest [4* Name redacted] is level [minimum]

2. [Name redacted] has been sniping for more than 24 hours, and Customer Service has been notified multiple times by multiple well-respected players.

3. So far, Customer Services' response has been that they'll try to look into the ticket within 24-72 hours.

4. By contrast, high marks to the forum mods who were able to delete the less-redacted version of this post within 10 minutes. This is the sort of response something as serious as cheating should warrant for the benefit of those of us who play by the rules.

5. This means that it is acceptable to allow a cheater to wreck a PVP at a time before Customer Services gets involved.

6. I would never call out a questionable roster because, although I spend plenty of money in buy clubs, I know there are multiple ways to progress. That being said, this is not even close to a questionable call. For this reason, I do not believe I'm saying anything close to controversial, just changing the stage for the discussion.

If someone at D3 or DemiUrge actually cares about the integrity of the game, you need to sandbox cheaters quickly and mercilessly, or your money-spending player base will walk away. There is no reason I should spend the money needed to whale [Name redacted] to level 474 (and for those of you with that high a 5*, you know what I'm talking about) if the game facilitates a cheater coming along with three 550 level 5* to make a mockery of the game.

Love,
[Name redacted]

The rockett

Absolutely. They will react when certain people report them, but send about 10+ emails in from all different players and nothing is done. It is truly ashame. I don't understand why this cannot be done in a quicker manner. In fact, it is amazing how easly it is for these people to hack into the game, which is the bigger issue.

dsds

Yeah I hear weekends are bad because they are on a break so these types of players run rampant.

Also if multiple people report, it could be that they are colluding to report said player. So of course they have to investigate first to prove the claims. I too am surprised at how fast the forum mods are. They don't get paid by the developers, but they respond like it's their full time job.

JVReal

Instead of "guilty" you should put "accused".

I don't know the person, and unless you know first hand this individual cheated, it's an accusation.

The characters you listed (but are now redacted) are from the Latest Legendary pool. Without knowing when the account was created, how often it was played, records of placements, receipts of purchases or lack thereof... it's all speculation.

You list 8 roster spots filled... are there other roster spots unfilled? Is it 8/115? or is it 8/8?
Did this person join several buy clubs over time or suddenly?
It is possible this person had a stash of CP and LT's and pulled all from the Latest Pool, and then applied covers to their favorite characters or characters that could be maxed/champed, sold the rest and then leveled the remaining.

You have it in your mind the person is already guilty, and therefore expect everyone else including Customer Service to assume guilt too without investigation.

I'm sure if someone emailed Customer Service giving them your roster and name and accused you of cheating you'd want them to immediately Sandbox you prior to investigating the legitimacy of the claims, right?

It's amazing how much we actually don't know about things we often "know" about.

If this person is a cheater, and D3 (not customer service) finds sufficient proof, and sandboxes them, cool, good job, another one down. If it's someone that pruned their roster to max only their top characters, good for them as odd as it may seem to us.

Customer Service and D3 really don't care if a person is a "sniper". They are playing the game as it is allowed to be played. If they acquired their digital goods without earning or buying them from D3, then they will do something about it.

Quibbles

JV, totally understand your perspective on this. I have sent you some PMs with a bit more color on Line. I expect once you read them, it'll be pretty clear that I have a pretty clear basis for saying that [name redacted] is a cheater.

Basepuzzler

This case is both unique and obvious. It should only take D3 a few minutes to check this account's purchase history and remove it. You don't get level 550 5*'s by hoarding, only by whaling.

This person is ruining the experience for legit players/payers. Fix this fast D3!

Stax the Foyer

Yes. There are questionable cases that are reported and dealt with in time. This is not in any way a questionable case. On the microscopic chance that this is a legitimate roster, it would be immediately verifiable.

In a game where everything is built around ranking rewards, the impact that someone cheating like this can have is significant and irreparable.

That this player has been able to continue to affect gameplay in this event for as long as they have is mind-boggling. Whatever procedures are in place to combat this behavior need to be reassessed. Imagine if this was a season event.

fmftint

They auto sandbox players for beating seed teams too quickly, but there's zero roster cheat detection.

Awesome

Fightmastermpq

That's ****, but I understand their hesitation to insta-ban without doing a little digging. Imagine how much money someone would have to spend for that to be legit, and then how that person would feel after spending so much to not then be able to even play the game. Still, this is something they should be able to figure out and turn around before someone like that has the opportunity to completely ruin an event for a large portion of the playerbase.

rawfsu

There is one particular player, who I'm not sure this is the player being accused, who's roster is RIDICULOUS, but legitimate. They literally pour thousands of dollars into the game on a regular basis. We're not allowed to name names, so I'm not sure this is the person in question. I've seen D3 respond to cheaters in the past, but it appears that many things have changed as of late.

Quibbles

rawfsu wrote:

There is one particular player, who I'm not sure this is the player being accused, who's roster is RIDICULOUS, but legitimate. They literally pour thousands of dollars into the game on a regular basis. We're not allowed to name names, so I'm not sure this is the person in question. I've seen D3 respond to cheaters in the past, but it appears that many things have changed as of late.

Rest assured, rawfsu, this is not the player you are talking about. Here's something to think about, which I wrote in another place:

If you're involved in buy groups, you come to realize how preposterous that roster is. By way of example, I had maybe 3 Thanos covers before the end of the year. On the Amazon sale day, I participated in, I believe, 20 Stark buys overall, and a few of those saw bonus buys. So, it took roughly 2,800 CP for me to draw enough Thanos covers to max him out, and I had really good luck overall. Working without a buy group would have taken 400 Stark buys for the same result. Simply put, that would have resulted in a much better roster than that cheater has. If he was in a buy group, people would know. If he wasn't, he would be surrounded by a much, much better alliance. But if you look at *their* rosters, those rosters are all ****. And that's key--if [redacted name] was purchasing everything in the alliance, his alliance mates would *also* receive 2,800 CP, even without buying. Think about how much nicer each of our rosters would look if someone gave us that many CP. If you were a 2-3* roster holder, can you honestly say you wouldn't roll the legendary tokens even once?

Oh, and by the way, it was roughly 2,800 CP....just to get to 13 covers. This cheater has *113* covers to get to the level he achieved.

Quibbles

Hey all, important update: [Name redacted] has been dealt with.

Ooops, I read that wrong. Not a tinykitty (I actually typed that, rather than the word that would be turned into "tinykitty") thing done about the cheater. This is a joke.

Quibbles

J2L

Shinryuken

The rockett

Yep. Cheater still active after 24 hrs. Probably won't be sandboxed tomorrow and we have a 3 days weekend. So.......maybe Tuesday? Amazing.

Justice Jacks

JVReal wrote:

Instead of "guilty" you should put "accused".

I don't know the person, and unless you know first hand this individual cheated, it's an accusation.

The characters you listed (but are now redacted) are from the Latest Legendary pool. Without knowing when the account was created, how often it was played, records of placements, receipts of purchases or lack thereof... it's all speculation.

You list 8 roster spots filled... are there other roster spots unfilled? Is it 8/115? or is it 8/8?
Did this person join several buy clubs over time or suddenly?
It is possible this person had a stash of CP and LT's and pulled all from the Latest Pool, and then applied covers to their favorite characters or characters that could be maxed/champed, sold the rest and then leveled the remaining.

You have it in your mind the person is already guilty, and therefore expect everyone else including Customer Service to assume guilt too without investigation.

I'm sure if someone emailed Customer Service giving them your roster and name and accused you of cheating you'd want them to immediately Sandbox you prior to investigating the legitimacy of the claims, right?

It's amazing how much we actually don't know about things we often "know" about.

If this person is a cheater, and D3 (not customer service) finds sufficient proof, and sandboxes them, cool, good job, another one down. If it's someone that pruned their roster to max only their top characters, good for them as odd as it may seem to us.

Customer Service and D3 really don't care if a person is a "sniper". They are playing the game as it is allowed to be played. If they acquired their digital goods without earning or buying them from D3, then they will do something about it.

JV: Hopefully Quibbles cleared this up via PM, but running the numbers on this guy, he'd have had to have dropped $30k or so on the game in Buy Clubs (yet no whales know him). Without buy clubs, multiply that spend by 19x. Pretty easy to verify, and I suspect he'd be on D3's Christmas-Card list.

But assuming the player had spent all that money, this player somehow doesn't have enough HP to roster all characters, doesn't have enough covers to fill many of the characters he does have, doesn't have the ISO to raise his covered characters to champ, and doesn't even have all his 2-stars covered?

Quibbles

Amazing to me that this cheater is still not boxed...

The devs have to know by now with all of the tickets that have been provided to customer service. At this point, it's starting to look like they don't care that much about the integrity of the game for honest players.

dsds

Cheater or not, you have to give time for the staff to do their own investigation. It may be slow, it has to happen for each individual cheater report whether it is obvious or not. They can't just take someone else's/group's word for it. It's unfortunate, but that's the way it is. Yes, I agree that it ruins the experience a tiny bit for everyone. But it's just one pvp. Just hold tight. Putting more pressure does nothing and in fact will probably make it go slower. They know that people won't quit over one person in one or two pvp event(s). If the cheater is found to be a cheater, he/she will be dealt with but you will likely not hear from CS about it. If the person is not a cheater, you won't get any responses from CS as well.

You've done all you can.

Justice Jacks

dsds wrote:

Cheater or not, you have to give time for the staff to do their own investigation. It may be slow, it has to happen for each individual cheater report whether it is obvious or not. They can't just take someone else's/group's word for it. It's unfortunate, but that's the way it is. Yes, I agree that it ruins the experience a tiny bit for everyone. But it's just one pvp. Just hold tight. Putting more pressure does nothing and in fact will probably make it go slower. They know that people won't quit over one person in one or two pvp event(s). If the cheater is found to be a cheater, he/she will be dealt with but you will likely not hear from CS about it. If the person is not a cheater, you won't get any responses from CS as well.

You've done all you can.

No. Just, no.

1) Look at account
2) Look at revenue associated with that account
3) If revenue does not exceed 5 figures, instantly sandbox
4) Finalize investigation prior to perma-ban.

I work in a related industry except real money is on the line for players each and every play. We'd have boxed this account in less than an hour after first notice, even if the full investigation would take a week or two. And we have a far larger regulatory nightmare to deal with than a mere social-gaming company, so if we can do it, there's almost no reasonable justification that D3 can't. And again, we've seen their auto-detection sandbox non-cheat accounts until an investigation is completed, hard to argue they don't have the tools to accomplish this quickly in this instance.

The rockett

dsds wrote:

Cheater or not, you have to give time for the staff to do their own investigation. It may be slow, it has to happen for each individual cheater report whether it is obvious or not. They can't just take someone else's/group's word for it. It's unfortunate, but that's the way it is. Yes, I agree that it ruins the experience a tiny bit for everyone. But it's just one pvp. Just hold tight. Putting more pressure does nothing and in fact will probably make it go slower. They know that people won't quit over one person in one or two pvp event(s). If the cheater is found to be a cheater, he/she will be dealt with but you will likely not hear from CS about it. If the person is not a cheater, you won't get any responses from CS as well.

You've done all you can.

Sorry but if you would see the roster, it is so obvious it's not funny. This should be an auto sandbox. If you are on Line, PM me here and I will give you my Line ID and I will send you the roster. Trust me when I say, it is very obvious.

dsds

Justice Jacks wrote:

dsds wrote:

Cheater or not, you have to give time for the staff to do their own investigation. It may be slow, it has to happen for each individual cheater report whether it is obvious or not. They can't just take someone else's/group's word for it. It's unfortunate, but that's the way it is. Yes, I agree that it ruins the experience a tiny bit for everyone. But it's just one pvp. Just hold tight. Putting more pressure does nothing and in fact will probably make it go slower. They know that people won't quit over one person in one or two pvp event(s). If the cheater is found to be a cheater, he/she will be dealt with but you will likely not hear from CS about it. If the person is not a cheater, you won't get any responses from CS as well.

You've done all you can.

No. Just, no.

1) Look at account
2) Look at revenue associated with that account
3) If revenue does not exceed 5 figures, instantly sandbox
4) Finalize investigation prior to perma-ban.

I work in a related industry except real money is on the line for players each and every play. We'd have boxed this account in less than an hour after first notice, even if the full investigation would take a week or two. And we have a far larger regulatory nightmare to deal with than a mere social-gaming company, so if we can do it, there's almost no reasonable justification that D3 can't. And again, we've seen their auto-detection sandbox non-cheat accounts until an investigation is completed, hard to argue they don't have the tools to accomplish this quickly in this instance.

FYI, I am not disagreeing that the guy is a cheater. I am just against the idea of setting an unrealistic precedent for the devs to take action so quickly. It's reasonable to take a day or two to take action. It may be obvious, but they can't make decisions on a case by case basis. They treat all tickets for cheating with the same priority unfortunately?

Edit: It's just a game. Just put it down and watch some tiny kittens or something. Yes it's frustrating, but just look at it from their end. Even if they treat this as a higher priority, what would that gain them? Do they want to encourage a bunch of players to keep submitting tickets for one issue and flaming on the forums. Of course not. They probably don't even want to set an example that if you complain, you will get what you want, because then the forums would have a ton of those posts.

Justice Jacks

dsds wrote:

FYI, I am not disagreeing that the guy is a cheater. I am just against the idea of setting an unrealistic precedent for the devs to take action so quickly. It's reasonable to take a day or two to take action. It may be obvious, but they can't make decisions on a case by case basis. They treat all tickets for cheating with the same priority unfortunately?

I'll concede your point. Good thing we are now on day 3+.