Post-mortem of the Sandbox

DecoyDuck

One of our alliance members have been sandboxed right before the end of the Hollowpoint Kiss tournament. Sure, it impacted our alliance ranking, but what do we think is going on here?
As a biased alliance mate, I presume he's not running a cheater account.
Was he reported by someone or did the D3 automated algorithms flag the account?
Why would someone report members of our alliance? We're not a Top10 or Top50 alliance. We're more Top100. Who are we threatening?
His first sandboxing was after he spent money upgrading his roster on his Steam account. Although he submitted a CS ticket, there was no response/resolution.
Wanting to get back into the game, he created a second account and spent money on it to "bring it back up to speed" and rejoined our alliance.
He didn't have a Black Psylocke cover so he encouraged the rest of the alliance to place high in the HK tourney. Now why would a cheater account need help getting covers?
He's not bothering to submit another CS ticket since he's never heard back from his original one. In all likelihood, he's gonna quit the game now.

So I'm reaching out to hear from the experience of others.
Has anyone experienced a similar situation? What was your resolution?
Has anyone ever appealed and come back from the sandbox?

Dormammu

Help me out, what is 'the Sandbox'? All I know is that it is some sort of purgatory for cheaters, but I've never bothered to figure out exactly what happens to them.

Unknown

They're isolated so that they can see other players and the game appears to proceed normally, but other players can't see them. I'm vague on whether all the people put away for cheating are lumped in together, or each in their own container.

Alliances make sandboxing more obvious than previously, as people are pulled out of alliances by it.

Unknown

Decoy, which do you think is more likely:

A player is banned twice over no fault of his own.

or

A player who is cheating, when punished then cheats under a second, new account, to catch it back up to the first. All the while convincing those he plays with that it's clearly a mistake so they'll be none the wiser.


Things to keep in mind:
If the auto-detect was really so bad it would catch a guy by mistake, twice....It would be happening far more often.
If his device was logged in case he rejoined, it would have happened shortly after he recreated the account.
The normal player reaction to getting banned is not to start a new account and then spend money on it to "catch back up"

DecoyDuck

Tolken wrote:

Decoy, which do you think is more likely:

A player is banned twice over no fault of his own.

or

A player who is cheating, when punished then cheats under a second, new account, to catch it back up to the first. All the while convincing those he plays with that it's clearly a mistake so they'll be none the wiser.


Things to keep in mind:
If the auto-ban was really so bad it would catch a guy by mistake, twice....It would be happening far more often.
If his device was logged in case he rejoined, it would have happened shortly after he recreated the account.
The normal player reaction to getting banned is not to start a new account and then spend money on it to "catch back up"

Cognitive dissonance? AFAIK, people who cheat can always create a new legit account and progress from there. I don't think a device gets banned.

Bacon Pants

I can't speak for all of the CareBearStare, but I know that Decoy Duck and a few of the other members I have seen on here are good people. If you did have a cheater, that sucks. If not, I hope they figure it out for you.

Unknown

Tolken wrote:

The normal player reaction to getting banned is not to start a new account and then spend money on it to "catch back up"

I don't know anything about anything here (and let's be clear, none of us really do unless DD watched him pay/play in person) in regards to this player but this was my first thought too.


Also, him being 'targeted' if he actually was by another player on the look out for cheaters might not have anything to do with your alliance. Maybe someone in his bracket noticed something and reported it. That's just one other possibility.

Unknown

Ok. I see why u r upset but this post is a little ridiculous to me.

You act like he got reported *just* to screw your alliance. If he was reported and not automatically caught I can almost guarantee who ever did it did not have your alliance in mind at all. They report him because they are facing them in an individual bracket and that 1 person cheating pushes the entire bracket back 1 rank screwing like 10 people who are on the last slot if each rewards tier. It effects way more than just your alliance.

Like I said though, I see why you are upset and it does suck it hurt your entire alliance in its reward tier.

Clintman

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
- Nelson Mandela

There is hope for him...

Clintman

Oh then I started looking up other prison quotes, and it all went downhill as I am no longer quoting Nelson Mandela but Yakov Smirnov.

Homosexuality in Russia is a crime and the punishment is seven years in prison, locked up with the other men. There is a three year waiting list.

Yakov Smirnoff

DecoyDuck

Psykopathic wrote:

Ok. I see why u r upset but this post is a little ridiculous to me.

You act like he got reported *just* to screw your alliance. If he was reported and not automatically caught I can almost guarantee who ever did it did not have your alliance in mind at all. They report him because they are facing them in an individual bracket and that 1 person cheating pushes the entire bracket back 1 rank screwing like 10 people who are on the last slot if each rewards tier. It effects way more than just your alliance.

Like I said though, I see why you are upset and it does suck it hurt your entire alliance in its reward tier.

Yeah, I seem to be have been a bit heavy with seeming like people are screwing with my alliance... No, no - I don't really think that at all. I'm upset because I like my alliance-mates and I share their frustrations. And given little information either way, I'm going to be biased in one direction. Could I have been bamboozled by my team? Certainly possible. Egg on my face then. Either way, gonna move forward.

Unknown

From my online experiences I've learned that people who seem totally trustworthy can also be blatant cheaters, and the fact that you knew them in real life doesn't change anything either. It's very rare to have false positives in these things since all companies tend to err on the side of player's advantage (falsely accuse someone cheating is indeed pretty bad). I remember in EverQuest 1 when they forgot to account for Teleport Bind as a teleport effect you pretty much have everyone flagged as a teleporting hacker 10 times a day, but nobody I know of got suspended over that. I don't even know of anyone that had to talk to a GM over it, even though you'd have a behavior that looks like blatant cheating to the poorly designed teleport hack detector. Companies simply don't take action against cheaters unless they're absolutely sure because it'd be very bad publicity if they got it wrong.

Unknown

Dayraven wrote:

They're isolated so that they can see other players and the game appears to proceed normally, but other players can't see them. I'm vague on whether all the people put away for cheating are lumped in together, or each in their own container.

That's kind of my understanding, too. So, how would I know if I'm sandboxed? For example, if I look at alliance score breakdown (the new feature introduced in R50), would it not show my points if I were sandboxed?

Unknown

Team_Xtreme wrote:

Dayraven wrote:

They're isolated so that they can see other players and the game appears to proceed normally, but other players can't see them. I'm vague on whether all the people put away for cheating are lumped in together, or each in their own container.

That's kind of my understanding, too. So, how would I know if I'm sandboxed? For example, if I look at alliance score breakdown (the new feature introduced in R50), would it not show my points if I were sandboxed?

the quick dirty way to tell is get yourself in the top 10 of a LR (even if only fir a min or two) and see if a buddy can see you there or not
if they can your not boxed if they cant then you likely are

Unknown

You are removed from your alliance if you become sandboxed , so if you are in an alliance you should be ok

Unknown

Team_Xtreme wrote:

Dayraven wrote:

They're isolated so that they can see other players and the game appears to proceed normally, but other players can't see them. I'm vague on whether all the people put away for cheating are lumped in together, or each in their own container.

That's kind of my understanding, too. So, how would I know if I'm sandboxed? For example, if I look at alliance score breakdown (the new feature introduced in R50), would it not show my points if I were sandboxed?

I think you get booted out of your alliance when you're sandboxed, which is the only way to tell if you're sandboxed aside from seeing if someone else can see you in the ranking list

Before alliances we had a couple of times where someone would comment that they were first in their bracket, and someone else would say "that's weird, on my bracket you show up as second right behind me" and then we would all mock them for not realizing they'd gotten caught cheating and accidentally admitting they were a cheater

Unknown

Team_Xtreme wrote:

Dayraven wrote:

They're isolated so that they can see other players and the game appears to proceed normally, but other players can't see them. I'm vague on whether all the people put away for cheating are lumped in together, or each in their own container.

That's kind of my understanding, too. So, how would I know if I'm sandboxed? For example, if I look at alliance score breakdown (the new feature introduced in R50), would it not show my points if I were sandboxed?

You would be remove from the alliance if you get sandbox.

Unknown

If I was wrongly sandboxed and I was invested financially/emotionally, I would do all in my power to try to make things right. I would not start over and invest more $ into a system that has treated me unjustly

Unknown

I'm pretty sure they do not have an automated tool for removing cheaters. Firstly because the response time is mucb slower during weekends. I've never seen a bot take a break over weekends. The cheaters I've reported during the weekdays gets responded to within 24 hrs. If reported over the weekend, the removal gets pushed to the weekday. In fact this past week, maybe because of whatever fiasco they had to deal with that delayed the LR and other tournaments, one of the cheaters reported over the weekend only got removed today (after he expanded the public alliance to 18 members) Coincidentally after all the tournaments are sorted out, I won't be surprised if it's someone doing double duty on the game and sandboxing cheaters.

Unknown

so if being in the sandbox means that you can fight whoever you want, but no one can fight you. and they will not retaliate against you because they dont see you hitting them.



isn't this like the best thing ever???

except for not being able to contribute to your alliance?

MarvelMan

You wont be in an alliance....


But yes, it does seem strangely beneficial. Of course, it also removes what most of us want: the thrill of competition.