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MikeBradley

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  1. Hey All, As we approach the end of the current PvP season, I wanted to share some of the things we’ve seen so far this season compared to last, give an overview of the actions we’ve taken, talk a bit about some of the changes we’ve made (or are discussing), and ask for your thoughts or feedback. Lots of bases to cover, so let’s dive in. Last Season vs This Season Although we have searched for and actioned cheating behavior at roughly the same cadence as prior seasons, I haven’t been posting these reports nearly as often as last season. I’ll dig into how often you’d like to see these reports below, but I wanted to call out some higher level contrasts that we’ve seen so far. The majority of the cheating behavior we saw last season was aimed at securing top 96 rewards as quickly and easily as possible, through a number of different avenues. In an attempt to discourage anyone trying to cheat those rewards, and to instead reward players who played fairly and consistently throughout the season, we added win requirements. We’ve seen some evidence that this has worked as we’d hoped, but we won’t have the full picture until the season has ended. The win requirement numbers this season will not change, however we may tweak them for next season based on the final data. While there are clearly still attempts to cheat ratings, what we’ve seen and heard more about this season has been a bit different. What we’ve seen is an increase in trolling, griefing, and other abusive behaviors, often centered around vote kicking. We’re discussing a number of different ideas as to how we could combat this, including potentially removing vote kicking altogether. We know this is a frustration point, we are bringing as many ideas as we can to the table, and I’ll share any further details on this front as soon as we have them. Actions Taken So far this season, we have banned nine accounts for cheating or hacking in PvP, and we have locked an additional eleven accounts from being able to participate in ranked PvP at all. We’ve received reports indicating that accounts locked out of ranked PvP have just gone into unranked PvP to continue throwing, griefing, afking, etc. so we are in the process of expanding this lockout to include all PvP rather than just ranked. All accounts that are locked out of PvP will also have every character’s rating reset and will not be eligible for end of season rewards. I’ve seen several folks here on the forums and in emails to PvP Reports express frustration at the perception that we unban accounts often, and I’d like to address that as directly as I can. We do not ban or unban accounts lightly. I cannot speak to actions taken or reversed many years ago before my time, but no accounts that were banned this season or last season have been unbanned. What we have seen an increase of this season is individuals creating several different accounts to evade new or existing bans, and coming back to resume cheating, hacking, botting, or abusing. I understand that this has fueled the perception that we unban accounts frequently or easily, but I think it’s important to underscore that this isn't the case. We are updating and adapting our detection methods to match the behavior that we’re seeing and that is being reported to us. I want to thank everyone who has taken the time to send us a report, either in game or to the PvPreports@swtor.com email. I recognize that it’s not something that anyone wants to do, and that it can be additionally frustrating to not get a clear response, or to not see immediate action taken. Our response times on reports, both with messaging and action, are not always where we’d like them to be and they’ve been even more strained throughout these last two months. Communication As I mentioned above, the cadence of our actions hasn’t significantly changed from last season, but the frequency of my reports has, and I’m curious to ask anyone who reads this forum if you think these reports are helpful in any way. Last season was my first being involved directly with PvP, and I wanted to report frequently in an attempt to shed the most amount of light onto what we do, when, and why. As much of that hasn’t really changed, I didn’t feel that I had too much new info to share this season, but we have been watching and reading as much as we can. My goal with these reports has always been to increase transparency around our actions in PvP. I don’t know the degree to which they have or have not been effective towards that goal, and so I would be very curious to hear how frequently (or infrequently) you all would like to hear from me going forward. I want to make sure that my communications have real information in them and I feel this has been going well so far even when it means potentially communicating less. If you can help me understand how often you want these reports, or what topics you’d like to hear more about, I can do a better job planning and scheduling them at predictable points throughout future seasons. Until next time...
  2. Hey All, As we begin season 12, I wanted to provide a bit of a recap of actions we took during season 11, talk a bit about the upcoming season, and highlight some of the changes that will be coming with it. Season 11 Actions During season 11 we took action against a total of 163 accounts for cheating, hacking, win trading, or exploiting in PvP, including 18 permanent account bans. You may have seen some of my reports trying to explain what we take action against, how we punish, what our goals for these punishments are, and what else we are seeing in the broader PvP environment. I hope that these reports have helped shed some light on these areas, and I would be very interested to hear from you all about what you appreciated from them, what you didn’t, or what other information you would still like to see provided. Throughout the season we also tried to gather as much feedback as possible from the PvP community to get a clearer picture of what their biggest frustrations have been. One of the recurring themes that came up (and that I attempted to speak to in the June Report) was that even with regular, harsher punishments, it felt like it was still too easy for people to cheat their way to the top or to just ruin the PvP experience for others. As a result, we created a new email for reporting this kind of behavior directly to our Live Production team, and in many cases the reports we’ve received have been very helpful. We also took all of that feedback and worked with our designers to come up with some changes for ranked PvP specifically that we are hoping will do more to discourage or deter cheating across the board. Season 12 Changes As you can see in the 6.0.2 patch notes, here’s a list of changes we have made for the upcoming PvP season: Made adjustments to matchmaking which previously allowed a single tank or healer in the Ranked queue to be able to lock up the queue from making any future Ranked PvP matches. Players who decline a queue pop or who leave a match early for a Ranked Warzone will now be unable to queue again for 15 minutes. Increased the Rating penalty received for declining a Ranked PvP queue or leaving a match early to 25 rating (up from 15 rating). In addition to minimum rating requirements, each Ranked PvP Rank now has a minimum games played requirement as follows: Bronze – 25 wins Silver – 50 wins Gold – 100 wins Top 96 – 200 wins Starting with this season, we will also have the ability to remove cheating players from the Ranked PvP environment altogether. So in addition to all our previous actions, if an account is caught win trading, cheating, or exploiting in PvP, they will be removed from and unable to queue, join, or play ranked PvP for the rest of the season. If an account continues to be disruptive and problematic in other areas of the game, we absolutely reserve the right to permanently ban those accounts and we will do so if we feel it is warranted. Top 96 Rewards As I’m sure some of you are wondering about these, Top 96 rewards will begin going out today, and will be completely distributed by Friday, December 20th. Going Forward I realize that these changes may not be all the ones you were hoping for from the new season. When we took a step back and looked at the trends of season 11 (and even earlier seasons), we consistently saw the sentiment that cheating felt rampant, that our punishments did not feel terribly effective, thus Top 96 placements felt like they had lost all meaning, and that few believed we could or would do anything about it. I do want to reiterate that we are by no means finished gathering your feedback or done iterating on ideas to make PvP a better experience for everyone, these are just the changes we were able to make before the new season. Here’s a list of areas that we have heard from you about, and are continuing to brainstorm and design around. Mixing up seasonal variety More Matchmaking improvements More choice in picking or excluding certain maps or game types Re-examining Group Ranked Balance Issues Vote kicking abuses Thanks to everyone who has read through or commented on any of my posts, sent our PvP email a report of any kind, and to anyone who has in any other way helped to foster a constructive PvP environment. I look forward to hearing your thoughts throughout season 12, and to further improvements in the future. Until next time…
  3. Hey All, As the team continues to be heads down on 6.0 work, and I didn’t have much to report on at the end of August, here is a summary of actions we’ve taken over the last month and a half: Throughout August and September so far, we’ve punished 2 accounts for win trading, cheating, or exploiting in PvP. One has been suspended, one has been banned, both have had their ratings reset on all characters. Why so Few? Given that this is by far the fewest number of punishments we’ve administered during any month this season, I feel like it might be worth sharing some of the thoughts that we (and I imagine some of you might) have about it. Players are still cheating and win trading, just less obviously, and maybe in different ways that our methods of detection haven’t entirely caught up to yet We’ve been able to gather better, more comprehensive evidence of cheating behavior with the new email for reporting Perhaps fewer players are cheating, exploiting, or win trading in PvP as a result of our actions and messaging To be honest, I think these is some truth to each of these statements and that some combination of them can be attributed to the lower number of cheaters that we have punished recently. We know this will always be an evolving struggle (cheaters find new way to cheat, we adapt to catch them, they adapt to continue cheating, etc.), but we have seen signs of progress throughout this season. We’re hoping to build on that progress with additional systemic deterrents and other improvements in the coming months. Concerns about Vote Kicking I’ve seen a couple posts expressing concern about vote kicking being used to exploit, abuse, or harass other players in PvP. As I’m a data-driven fellow, I’ll get with our analytics team and see if we can get enough data points to analyze present vote kicking behavior, compare it to historical trends, see if there has been an increase, look at the cases where we feel like it is being used exploitatively, and try to come up with ideas for how to discourage that. This will take some time, but I will report back as soon as we have any learnings or changes on this front that we can share. Season 11 Summary As I mentioned in the last report, season 11 will be ending with 6.0 on October 22nd. This season started in March, so by the end it will have lasted about 8 months in total. Some of you may have seen Dan’s Web Content Roadmap over on the General Discussion Forums, what articles have already been published, and which ones are upcoming. Look for an article early next week summarizing the season 11 rating breakdown, the rewards, and more about the upcoming season transition. My next report will most likely align with when we distribute top 96 rewards towards the end of October/beginning of November. I will put together a summary of the actions we’ve taken throughout the season once we’ve investigated and finalized the top 96, as that will be our last action of this season. With any luck, I might also be able to share some extra details on upcoming changes at that point, so stay tuned. Until next time…
  4. Hey All, In July we caught and punished 25 accounts for win trading, cheating, or exploiting in PvP. We have: Suspended the accounts Zeroed out all ranked ratings of every character on those accounts Removed all of their Ranked PvP Reward Tokens There were 4 accounts that we permanently banned this month for egregious abuse of an exploit. Actions From Recent Exploit We recently caught an exploit that could affect ranked ratings in PvP, and with patch 5.10.4 we have fixed the issue. Once it was detected, we were able to look back throughout the season and identify accounts that were using it in any capacity. It’s worth noting that this exploit was not possible in previous seasons. There were not many accounts that had ever used it, but there were clearly a handful abusing it pretty egregiously. Punishments in this case were administered according to the severity of the abuse, up to and including four accounts that have been permanently banned. As a reminder, if you ever hear about or discover any exploit you should immediately stop using it and report it to us. This can be done through an in game ticket, or if it pertains to PvP, the new email pvpReports@swtor.com. Season Transitions For clarity, season 11 will be coming to an end with 6.0. When the end of a season coincides with an expansion, we like take a couple of weeks to wrap up our investigations, distribute rewards, let players get to the new level cap, experiment with the new gear, and prepare for the upcoming season. Given that we’ve received a large amount of PvP-specific feedback from the community this year, we are looking at potentially extending this period of time before beginning season 12 so that we can also try to incorporate some changes and updates to PvP as well. There may be some things that we can change and tweak while a season is underway, but other aspects would ideally be changed between seasons, which is one of the reasons we are trying to extend that period of time in this case. We have also heard your feedback regarding desires for shorter seasons, or at least very clear and consistent season lengths, so please know that is a priority for us and I will have more details on that front in future reports. As a disclaimer, we won’t have the capacity to implement every change or suggestion that has been put forth, but we are rigorously evaluating all ideas and figuring out what we can do and when. I’m excited to share the specifics with everyone once they are finalized in the coming months. Thanks to everyone who has been using the new email address, and to all who have shared ideas for improvements or offered feedback of any kind. Until Next Time…
  5. Hey All, In June we caught and punished 24 accounts for win trading or cheating in PvP. We have: Suspended the accounts Zeroed out all ranked ratings of every character on those accounts Removed all of their Ranked PvP Reward Tokens There was 1 account that we permanently banned this month for repeated cheating offenses. I understand that many of you were dissatisfied with the contents of last month’s report, so I’d like to loop back and speak specifically to some points and questions that were raised there. CS Suspicions This is simply not true. I know our Galway team, we are in contact with them on a daily basis, and contrary to the rumors you may hear, they are one of our greatest allies in stopping cheaters in PvP, not helping them. Without going into too much detail, the tools our CS teams use have meticulous history of anything that is done to an account, it is simply not possible that “secretly helping” an account could happen or go unnoticed. Which seems more likely… that several employees at every level of that office would risk their careers, reputations, and livelihoods to protect a cheating players’ points in a video game… or that someone is lying on the internet? Let’s Talk About Punishments Now that I’m sharing specifics on how many accounts we catch and what action we take against them, it’s clear that many, if not all of you, are displeased with the severity of the punishments in these cases. I’d like to talk about these punishments, what our goals are for having them, why I am also dissatisfied with aspects of them, and what we’re focused on trying to improve going forward. Our Goals The cornerstone of our game and our team is that we want people to play and enjoy our game. When players cheat, hack, exploit, bot, trade wins, scam, harass other players, or any other form of rule-breaking behavior, we have to make decisions on how to punish every possible infraction. In making these decisions, we look at the offense, what exactly they did, how they did it, what we believe they were trying to achieve, who was affected, how severely, and then we attempt to craft a punishment that we feel is fitting for each offense. This is absolutely an imperfect process, but it is one grounded in the goal that we want to change and deter the problematic behavior, so that as many people can play and enjoy our game as possible. We know that not all of our punishments are completely effective at changing bad behavior, but we have pretty good evidence that many of them are. I have no problem with any conversation revolving around the effectiveness of punishments, which ones seem to work, which ones don’t, and sharing ideas for deterring or discouraging cheating. Within our team, we are constantly having discussions on these topics specifically, and I do my best to ensure that those discussions are reinforced by the ideas and sentiments shared here on the forums. Banning Accounts Every account we action for cheating gets an email that spells out very clearly if we catch them again, punishments will be more severe, up to and including account closure. I’ve seen a couple posts asking that I clarify where exactly that line is, and what specifically will get an account banned. I’m reluctant to go into too much detail here because I worry that rather than be a deterrent, it would reveal the exact level of tolerance we have, and that those who cheat would know exactly how far they can push the boundaries. At the end of the day, the primary reason that we are not more regularly banning accounts is that very few cross that line after their first punishment. I’ve read sentiments that claim that we’re afraid to ban accounts that give us money (not true), that there is no amount of cheating that will get you permanently banned (also not true), or that we should lower the bar for banning accounts and do so more freely (honestly that’s a fair debate that several of us on the team are having every month). The truth is, we do permanently ban accounts that we repeatedly catch cheating. We’ve banned around a dozen accounts just this season, and I imagine there will be a couple more before it’s over. In some instances we’ve seen bans meaningfully change behavior and in others we have seen players simply make new accounts and continue cheating, so even these punishments are not the cure-all that they may seem. Why I am dissatisfied with some of our current cheating punishments… I’m also frustrated with some of these punishments because they are only treating symptoms of the problems and not the problems themselves. In my view, one of the biggest problems is that in some ways our systems, leaderboards, and PvP quest rewards can incentivize bad behavior. Given the tools that we have right now, and the specific actions that we’re currently able to take, these do not feel like problems that we can realistically punish our way out of. I know that it’s tempting to believe that permanent bans are the only solution to all of these problems, but we’ve seen that is not always the case. In these instances, I think we need a better solution. Given the bridges that I’m trying to build between our studio and this community, I’ve been asked specifically to work with our designers and analytics team to come up with some new actions that we can take against cheaters that will remove their ability to ruin the experience of others, while also staying true to our primary goal for the game. So far we have some promising leads, and while I’ll allude to some below, I’m hesitant to go into too much detail here until we can firmly commit the time and resources to them. What we’re focused on improving going forward As a quick caveat, I can’t promise that any of these will be enacted within a certain timeframe, but these are all specific areas that we’re doing our utmost to build consensus around within the studio. Conversations on these points are happening regularly, every week, and some are getting real traction. As soon as we have designs solidified and scheduled on our calendar, I will let you all know. A way to remove cheaters from the PvP ques altogether for the duration of the season How we can adjust our PvP rewards and/or systems to disincentivize bad behavior across the board Extra conditionals to improve the average quality of PvP matches, even if it lengthens que times somewhat Lockout timers for those who leave ranked matches or decline a que Better data on 3v4 matchups, how we can track them more accurately and do more to prevent them altogether How to grow overall player involvement in PvP (ranked and unranked) I appreciate the time and effort that many of you took to submit reports to the new email address, the additional evidence provided there has been very helpful in our ongoing efforts to clean up cheating in PvP. Look for an extra report later this month regarding another special investigation we’re wrapping up. *Spoiler Alert* There will be bans. Until next time…
  6. MikeBradley

    May PvP Report

    Hey All, If you missed the live stream last week talking about the itemization changes planned for 6.0, here is a link to it on Twitch for those who enjoy the chat log (and for those that don't), check it out for lots of information regarding upcoming changes in September. If you’d like to give feedback on anything PvP related that was (or wasn’t) talked about in the stream, Musco has spun up a thread to gather that feedback. Win Trader Report In May, we caught and punished 18 accounts for win trading or cheating in PvP. We have: Suspended the accounts for one week Zeroed out all ranked ratings of every character on those accounts Removed all of their ranked PvP Reward Tokens Something I have seen a fair number of questions about is how appeals are handled, by whom, and why so many reversals happen, which leads me to… Punishments, Reversals, and Who Decides? I realize that there is a perception on these forums that we reverse many of the punishments that we administer, so let me provide some detail on exactly what is happening. Here is a breakdown of all the accounts we’ve punished for win trading in season 11 and all of the punishments we have reversed. For transparency, if there are any other reversals this season, I will include an updated number in future monthly reports. So far in season 11, we have actioned a total of 96 accounts for win trading related offenses. Of those punishments, we have reversed only 5. All 5 of these accounts were reversed because they were all caught in the same reporting error. In this case, these accounts had been caught once, punished, and then (incorrectly) punished again for the same original offense. We reversed only the second punishment, and by every indication that we have, these accounts have since been playing by the rules. Meaning that we actually still hit 96 accounts, those 5 were just incorrectly hit twice. I’ve seen a fair bit of misinformation around who actually handles appeals so let me provide clarity on that process as well. Every appeal that we receive is reviewed by our Live Production team (Keith Kanneg, Eric Musco, and myself), and checked against the data we have gathered. After investigation, if we feel that we’ve made a mistake, only we can reverse the punishment. This decision is made entirely by SWTOR Live Production, and no rating restorations or reversals take place without our express direction. That being said, let me take this time to remind everyone that although live production does have final say in reversal of any actions taken, contacting members of the live team directly is not appropriate. If action is taken against your account it is important that you follow the process outlined in your suspension. New way to Report Win trading / Cheating in PvP Per the previous report, we’ve created a new shared email specifically to make it easier to report win trading or cheating in PvP. The email address is pvpReports@swtor.com , and there will be a sticky post explaining the purpose of this email living at the top of this forum. This new email will go to all of SWTOR Live Production and we’re hoping that it opens up a better path for reporting PvP cheating or win trading, especially for those who wish to include image or video evidence. In game reporting will still work as it always has, and we are still looking at possible improvements we could make there, this is simply an additional way to report. As always, I look forward to reading your thoughts, questions, comments, and concerns throughout these forums, and will do my best to address them in these regular reports. Thank you for your patience and for continuing to help me understand what is most important to you. Until next time…
  7. Hey All, As we have added new ways to report cheating and win trading in PvP, I thought it might be helpful to condense the new and existing ways to do so for reference. Reporting PvP Cheating or Win Trading New email for reporting Cheating and Win Trading in PvP – pvpReports@swtor.com . All emails sent to this address will go straight to the SWTOR Live Production team for review. Here is the most helpful information to include when sending a report: Your account name The name of the character who was cheating or win trading The server you were playing on The time when it occurred Any screenshot or video evidence you have How to Appeal a Punishment If you believe that your account has been punished for Cheating or Win Trading in PvP without cause, there is only one place to go to appeal that decision: https://help.ea.com/en/help/star-wars/star-wars-the-old-republic/swtor-appeal-account-action/ This link and instructions for appealing will be included in an email sent to you if any action is taken against your account. Please DO NOT send appeals to pvpReports@swtor.com, or to individual members of the team. Thank you,
  8. Hey All, It took a few extra days, but I wanted to gather some extra information and address some additional points here. Several topics to touch on, so let’s get started. Win Trader Report In April, we caught and punished 15 accounts for win trading or cheating in PvP. We have: Suspended the accounts Reset all ranked ratings of every character on those accounts Removed all of their Ranked PvP Reward Tokens I want to thank everyone who has taken the time to submit reports, evidence, or contacted CS directly. I know we can do a better job gathering these kind of reports which leads me to… Improving Ways to Report Cheating I have seen a number of you mention that you’d like an easier or better way to report cheating in PvP, and we agree. I’m currently in the process of having a new @SWTOR.com email created specifically for reporting cheating, hacking, or win trading in PvP. This inbox will be managed by myself and a handful of others who can take appropriate actions based on our analysis. Adding this additional method of reporting should make it easier for those that want to submit screenshots or video evidence, and will allow us another avenue of investigation. I want to reiterate that any reports of cheating that go through the existing in-game tickets are gathered by our CS team, are reviewed by myself and others, and do inform actions that we take against cheating accounts. These existing methods for reporting will not go away, but I do want to also add new and easier ways to report this kind of behavior. Punishing Cheating in Unranked PvP I’ve seen stated concerns that we are not doing enough to catch or punish those who cheat in unranked PvP in addition to our efforts in ranked PvP, and I’d like to talk about that. To be clear, some of the accounts that we catch for cheating, hacking, botting, or exploiting are from unranked and we punish those cases just as severely. We certainly see less win trading behavior in unranked, but I absolutely agree that we could be more transparent about what we are doing to combat cheating behavior in both areas. I will work with our analytics team to see what additional information I can provide in these reports that is specific to unranked punishments or that would in some way share insight into how we try to deter cheating there as well. Death Volumes This one may seem like a bit of a tangent, but bear with me, I promise it’s related to PvP. We have areas in our game that are called ‘Death Volumes’, we place these specifically in areas of the world that, for various reasons, should not be accessible. I have seen a thread or two on these forums discussing situations of instant death that several people have theorized are being caused by cheating or hacking. What we suspect is actually happening is that players are coming into contact with a death volume in a place that they would not expect one (up against a locked door on Voidstar for example). I can completely understand how this is an unpleasant or confusing experience, and after speaking with the level designers, we will be working to not only ensure that future volumes are being sized correctly, but also going back to review previously placed ones that may be a bit larger than intended so that they are not exploitable in any way. There have also recently been reported instances of players hacking or exploiting to get to areas of a PvP map that should never be possible to get to. On top of punishments for the accounts that do this, we are looking at adding death volumes to these places so that even if new hacks or exploits are created, these areas will automatically kill players who cheat to get there. Yeah, but when? I realize that there may be some level of frustration regarding the previous threads that have been made for gathering feedback, and the fact that I’m not regularly popping back in those threads to let you know that they are being read or that we as a team are actively discussing the feedback that has been offered. I am reading them (and others), we are actively discussing the ideas, and as we solidify plans, I will absolutely let you know what to expect and when. For context, right now the vast majority of the team is working on the expansion that’s coming later this year. Larger PvP changes are not likely to happen until after 6.0, as there are large, systemic changes coming with it. I know that the timeline from gathering feedback to actually implementing changes in a huge game is longer than any of us would prefer. I appreciate your patience, and am grateful to all of those that have offered ideas, advice, or suggestions of any kind. All of the points that I’ve mentioned above in this thread are areas that I can work towards improving now, during this season, and I’m expecting to have demonstrable results to prove it. I’ll have more updates for you in the report next month. Until next time…
  9. Hey All, Apologies for the power outage delay, here’s a recap of our latest actions. After looking into several different accounts that we saw suspicious activity on, we found evidence of a number of different Terms of Service violations including: Win Trading Flagrant Account Sharing To clarify, it is not against our terms of service for any player to have multiple accounts. It IS however against the rules to share the login information of an account with others, as that opens the account up to being compromised, to potential fraudulent activity, and other exploitative behavior. We take the security of individual accounts very seriously, and if an account is being regularly claimed as “compromised”, it will likely be permanently closed. [*]Defrauding Customer Support We have built systems to help players who have accidentally deleted an item or a character, who did not receive an honestly-earned reward, or who have had their accounts genuinely compromised. We look at restoration requests on a case by case basis, the vast majority of them are legitimate, and we will continue to grant those that are. Requesting that an item, character, or account be restored is not a guarantee that it will happen, and we have found instances in which it is obvious that fraudulent requests are being made. Please do not make fraudulent restoration requests. We can see when this is happening, we will not process them, and we will be increasing actions taken against accounts that do this going forward. [*]Botting, Harassment, Exploiting As a result of the evidence that we collected, ten accounts have been banned entirely. A separate ten accounts have been given lengthy suspensions, and a handful of others have been given lengthy suspensions with full PvP rating and token wipes. Just as a reminder, we know that there are places online where players can buy cheating services. Many of these services use exploitative behavior, such as the examples listed above. We want to stress that any involvement with these services will greatly increase the likelihood of action being taken against your account. There will be another monthly report towards the end of April. Until next time…
  10. Hey All, I know this report came out just last week, and I'm noting the ideas posted here, but I wanted to give you all a heads up about some additional actions that we will be taking this week. We are concluding a long, extensive investigation into a ring of accounts that we’ve found to have been win trading, sharing accounts, and violating numerous other Terms of Service rules. Fitting with the various, egregious violations we have found, this investigation will very likely lead to severe action being taken against the offending accounts, including account closures. A separate overall April report will still be coming at the end of the month detailing the actions we take between now and then. I will make a new thread with an update later this week as soon as the investigation is finished and actions have been finalized. Until next time…
  11. Hey All, This video and thread are full of useful information, constructive commentary, and helpful perspective, so thanks for that. As there was a lot of different ground covered, I want to personally dig in on the areas that I believe we can potentially make the most progress towards, and let Eric speak to the aspects of engagement, communication, and event support. Matchmaking Adjustments As there was a lot of talk about this area in particular, I wanted to share some thoughts here. Our systems for matching players into PvP games have evolved along with our total number of players and their overall participation in PvP. Balancing a desire for quick que times and ideal class/rating composition is a seesaw that we are always checking in on. I have seen many different people expressing concern about class imbalance, rating disparity, and overall satisfaction with matches that, combined with very few complaints about length of que times, leads me to believe that we need to look at adjusting the scale here. I believe that certain adjustments could go a long way towards addressing the concerns that have been raised, but I want to be clear that as we look at adding additional rules and requirements for matchmaking, a byproduct of these proposed changes will almost certainly be an increase in average que times. In the video you all expressed some level of willingness to tolerate longer que times if the resulting matches felt more balanced, and I appreciate you acknowledging that probable trade-off. Seemingly Popular Ideas It was very helpful of you to gather up as many proposed ideas as you could find on these threads and talk them over. Some of these ideas have previously bounced around within the team, but some others are new and deserve attention. These are the ideas that it sounded like there was a degree of consensus on (both in your video and throughout the forums), and I’ll be chasing down more information regarding: Adding a Ranked PvP cooldown to que if you quit a match (similar to the flashpoint cooldown) Minimum games required for each rank tier (exact numbers still to be calculated) Perhaps a rating decay for above gold tier that would still respect our current ‘highest earned rank’ system (so that nobody who ever earned gold, silver, or bronze tier at least once in the season would lose that if they stopped playing or played less) Matchmaking improvements that work harder to prevent the worst class imbalances, uneven teams, and large rating disparities There was a lot of other very detailed feedback provided about classes, PvP vs PvE gearing, the PvP metagame, Utilities, Abilities, modes, and balance. Please know that even though I haven’t elaborated on those areas in this post, that feedback (as well as ideas and comments posted elsewhere) has been heard, documented, and is being discussed with the relevant members of the team. Until next time…
  12. As I promised in my previous thread, here’s the first win trader report for this season. So far in season 11, we have found and punished 43 accounts for win trading. The accounts have been suspended, we’ve reset the ranked ratings of every one of their characters, and we’ve also removed all of their Ranked PvP Reward tokens. To clarify what we mean when we say reset their ranked ratings, this reset does not put their ratings back at the default 1200, they all go to 1. This includes wiping out all of their highest earned ratings in the season. All accounts that have ever been caught win trading, botting, or exploiting are given extra scrutiny in all subsequent checks and investigations. Please keep the conversations going about how we can improve our processes here and with PvP in general. I will aim to share one of these reports every month going forward. Until next time…
  13. Thanks for this, I am a sucker for constructive feedback. I should have time this weekend to get through all of it, I'll chime back in next week to prove it. ...or maybe I'll record a few hours of my thoughts for you to watch / listen to... nah, I'll just make a post <3 the 🅱️
  14. This is exactly the format I had in mind . After running this plan past several members of the team, I believe I can get very close to this. Full disclosure, for privacy reasons there may be some cases where I have to be less specific than I’d like to be. I've already started on the first report for season 11, look for it as a new thread next week. Thanks for sharing this! I did see that Apex report, and it’s a great read. To clarify, we do issue permanent bans on players who cheat. We’ve been catching and banning cheaters since the launch of the game. There’s a range of ways that players cheat, and some methods are easier to detect than others. For the most obvious ways (botting, hacking, use of external software), we have systems that can automatically detect it, and because it often stands out clearly, we are much more comfortable handing out permanent bans in those cases, and we do. Conspiring with others to fix matches is a method of cheating that is more difficult to prove conclusively, but we are making strides with the tools we have at our disposal and the different ways we’re able to look for it. We know this particular area is one in which we need the most help, and I want to thank those who send us reports and explanations of this happening. These reports, combined with the improvements we continue to make, have allowed us to increase (albeit more slowly) our confidence levels in these cases. As our confidence grows in our methods, as we increase the frequency and thoroughness of our investigations, and as we better communicate exactly the behavior we won’t tolerate, we will be more comfortable taking increased action against win traders throughout this season and beyond. Until next time...
  15. Hey All, First off, thank you all for your participation in the broader PvP thread talking about win trading. I appreciate all of the feedback that was given and hope that I was able to shed some light on the topic. The goal of this new thread is to specifically focus on gathering ideas for potential systemic changes to Ranked PvP systems. To start, I’d like to share the high-level goals for any ideas gathered in this thread: Change rating distribution to better encourage prolonged, honest play throughout the season Reduce or eliminate mechanics that incentivize exploitative behavior Make matchmaking feel more balanced There have been a lot of specific ideas posted on the forums and discussed internally about how we could improve our current rating system, our matchmaking system, and to better deter exploitative behavior throughout. Please know that I have gathered (and continue to look for) as many of those ideas as I can find, and have been sharing them with the broader team in order to build some sense of how viable they each may be. Before we dig too deep into any of these ideas, I need to clearly set expectations. These are early steps in an effort to build a broad consensus towards as many of these ideas as make sense to potentially pursue. Depending on what we discuss here, follow up conversations will need to be had with our dev team to figure out exactly how much time each of the ideas would take to implement. With that information we'd need to find them a place on our schedule. Fair warning, this is not necessarily a short process. With all of that in mind, here are some of the specific ideas that we feel would best work towards the goals stated above: Reduce both the rating gained from a win and removed from a loss Adding minimum requirements for games played to achieve each rank Adding a rating decay over time Adjusting the matchmaking system to better prevent large class imbalances between teams We understand that there are obvious sensitivities to changing the rules of the game in a season that is already underway. For that reason, and the logistical hurdles mentioned above, I cannot promise that any of these changes will go live in season 11. It is possible that some ideas may be easier to implement than we expect or that obtaining one may lessen the need for another, but I want to be as transparent as possible regarding timelines. I realize that some of you may have previously put forth suggestions that are not captured in the list above. If anyone has a proposal that you feel is not covered by any of the above ideas, please share it in this thread (or link to where you have explained it elsewhere), and we can all discuss the pros and cons. I’m looking forward to digging in here. Thanks for making it through this mountain of text! Until next time…
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