This is great. Thank you and to everyone who is part of this initiative. I hope these continue to be a monthly thing.

Two questions I have:

1) Is it possible for you to add what servers these accounts were banned on?

-----For example:

-----Accounts banned on Satele Shan: 3

-----Accounts banned on Darth Malgus: 10

-----While remaining vague enough to not violate ToS, but specific enough for us to know that our server PvP -----experience will have improved.

2) What is your policy for violations and will you permaban if violation is egregious enough to warrant it?

Great post and very informative, I had faith you wouldn’t let us down Mike🅱️. And I’m extremely happy you’ve listened to all the feed back about cheating in all PvP and needing an easier way to report. With the new system, it would also be great if you could publicly announce/post/sticky on the forums how it will work and maybe have a button in the game that opens up an email to send to you. Or at least an instructional guide in the game for how to report.

My only other feed back and suggestion is the punishments still don’t quite fit the crime and aren’t the deterrent they could be.

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
  

It’s great that you’re applying punishments, but have you considered some of Snave and Krea’s Suggestions regarding zeroing all achievements and currencies on accounts caught doing it?

Or how about not letting them participate in ranked for the rest of the season?

Also, it would help if we publically knew how long those suspensions were. Are they :

1. One day

2. One week

3. One month

4. Three months

5. Etc.

Having those known and also harsh enough, would act as a deterrent all on their own and the term “suspension” would have legitimacy and also build confidence those people are really being punished.

Anyway Mike🅱️, great job, and thank you for keeping the faith

Win Trader Report

Why just not reduce the excessive grind around JcJ to solve a part of this issue !

Death Volumes

And I always thought they are called "exhaustion zones".

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.

I have to say that I find this kind of honest and open communication very refreshing. It acknowledges the feeling of the players, while at the same time explaining the reasons for the delay in a way that everyone who is not completely irrational can understand. Kudos for your way of communicating, Mike.

Death Volumes... who would have thought...

good that cheaters have been dealt with.

Maybe add a report function for extreme toxicity. reporting I've seen some pretty graphic cases over the last few months, (mostly in SR) directed at people who for one reason or another don't meet the exacting standards of other team members. Telling people they're inexperienced is one thing, telling them to log off and kill themselves crosses a line.

And fix the gap on the defenders side of Voidstar. that's a real deathtrap that I see a number of players dropping down there - who can only /stuck out and respawn.

Thank you Mike.

As others have said some other details on the bans would be nice.

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.

Although I'm not currently a PvPer, I've read your posts. One question I have is in Unranked, would you distinguish a cheater from someone who is woefully unfamiliar with, and bad at, PvPing? I'm not asking for specifics because I get that posting such things would show what you look for. I'm just wondering because if I were to try PvP in Unranked, my new-to-PvP ineptness could, likely would, be interpreted by at least some other players as cheating. Not obvious cheating, like going AFK, but just "I don't have a clue what I'm doing" type of PvP mistakes I can guarantee I'd make.

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…

 

you allowed one bot user to ruin solo ranked on DM for 4 days..... what about this?

you allowed one bot user to ruin solo ranked on DM for 4 days..... what about this?

Wasn’t most of that time over the weekend?

Wasn’t most of that time over the weekend?

It is still taken place, and not only on DM. I played 1 match on SF yesterday, and our tank promptly left when both teams was at 4 players. We got a DPS backfill and we won because they were clueless. I didn't bother reporting any of them as I don't care anymore.

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.

This is a great idea, but please make sure that if you do have a spam filtere make sure it will let stuff through cause people will be sending links, videos, maybe files etc. So that its not rejected by the server etc.

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.

Personnaly I am glad that you are being so honest and provide so much info in general! So even though I was hoping for stuff to be impletement in 6.0 but better late than never.

1) Is it possible for you to add what servers these accounts were banned on?

This is a good point, maybe it can be implemented.

One Question. How do you guys know a person is cheating? As i have wondered. Just if someone reports it. Do they have proof? LIke screenshots? Or videos. But it is good that the Cheaters are getting what they deserved

My opinion in all this would be good to stop ban people without proof If you are based on the reports made in games, Ca may cause problems, should at least have a direct contact with the player to really see if he cheats or not

lol is it just me or do these posts pop up more and more here. Kinda like people want Mike to tell them their secret People that post here have been playing the game for quite some time. They know the game, the players, the classes, the skills, possibilites etc, they are able to tell apart cheating and normal gameplay to maybe a certainty of 80-90%. Its easy to make a print screen, or even a video if you have the software and are fast enough. Sometimes it happens during a stream and can be simply linked.

okay. let us do such a report in our mind.

i see a guy flying around the warzone. but because he is behind a border, i cannot get the player in my target. so i tell you, it is darth revan cheating around. i tell you, it was on that time and you see the map, with a screenshot.

now you need to find out, who i am, because i wrote it with a non connected email adress. you need to find out the timezone, because nobody cares about. and you need to check, if that time is correct, because i could have been in a different time zone, anywhere else in the world in a hotel room. so a lots of time passed and you got it.

problem now is, that there is no darth revan, but a darth rêván and a darth rèván in the match. and both are wearing a nearly similar gear piece, so hard to identify by the screenshot i sent you. also your logs doesn't show anything suspicious, because if it would, the autoban would work. so case is closed, but you had tons of time wasted.

so what we need is a ingame tool to flag the player during the match, or after the match via the scoreboard. and here we would need to create a report with the possibility to add a text and upload an file, also with the possibility to add something to a report.

everything else is just wastes ressources.

and we already are having the mechanics behind that.

beside that mind game, i have some other questions.

as you said, the players were set to 1 point in the ranking. so we can search the leaderboard for them. thanks for that, because so we know the others, too. but you also could write the names here inside, too. and hey... renaming tokens are getting more expensive these days.

but i won't understand, why players who get banned for cheating or wintrading, keep their rating on a different server. i mean it is the same player. it is not the server legacy who cheats, it is the player. so there should be an account wide punishment, not just the current legacy.

My opinion in all this would be good to stop ban people without proof If you are based on the reports made in games, Ca may cause problems, should at least have a direct contact with the player to really see if he cheats or not

Why do you think they are banning without proof? What good does asking the player if he cheats or not? All he has to say is "no."

You wrote a very strange post.

Why do you think they are banning without proof? What good does asking the player if he cheats or not? All he has to say is "no."

 

You wrote a very strange post.

They did a few mistakes with their last bans this year. Starting with closing accounts for several named reasons. And with several named reasons I mean literally a list of reasons that you maybe Exploited, cheated, win traded or shared accounts. They sent an email of which you can’t tell exactly why you got punished. Okay we gotta be fair - I bet a lot of people did all of these things on one account. But you get what I mean. Not starting with false bans and unbanning players. Didn’t Mike say he wants to tell us why they unbanned all these people last season? Maybe I missed his post but I am pretty sure I would have heard of it.

you allowed one bot user to ruin solo ranked on DM for 4 days..... what about this?

The problem is they do not have and have never had ingame GMs that respond to petitions. Probably one of the worst petition systems I dealt with on a game tbh regarding hacks and cheats.

Ingame problems need to be solved ASAP otherwise the product (the game) is ruined and compromised heavily every second some loser continues to ruin or manipulate matches.

It's hard to believe BW doesn't understand how much disruption even just one hour of cheats/hacks can cause. The effects are like a ripple and really do cost the game if not in subs definitely in less played time by players pissed off the hacks are rampant and not being addressed.

Either they need a way to sort out cheaters and punish them properly OR change up the scoring system so that it's not such a breeze to manipulate. Seeing for 7 years now they have failed to stop win trades, I believe it fair to say this is an impossible task.

They did a few mistakes with their last bans this year. Starting with closing accounts for several named reasons. And with several named reasons I mean literally a list of reasons that you maybe Exploited, cheated, win traded or shared accounts. They sent an email of which you can’t tell exactly why you got punished. Okay we gotta be fair - I bet a lot of people did all of these things on one account. But you get what I mean. Not starting with false bans and unbanning players. Didn’t Mike say he wants to tell us why they unbanned all these people last season? Maybe I missed his post but I am pretty sure I would have heard of it.

This is just nonsense. There were no false bans. Some of the players rightfully banned got their bans overturned, yes. One of those players is currently the top rated jugg on star forge. He's a well-known wintrader. Several other well-known wintraders also got their bans reversed. Bioware just doesn't seem to have the spine to harshly punish the people actively ruining meaningful ranked gameplay.

If they are doing the outdated system of script banning or banning people just on the number of reports on a player just refund me now. This system only worked for the people exploiting.

Let me go threw some a few things people don't know or may not understand.

Websites still sell services like power leveling and such. Those people have a group and they all grind together. Real people or sometimes a few people and the rest are bots. If someone sees a player that may threaten that guys income all he has to do is flip account's and report a legit player with every account he has access to. In the end its a legit player dealing with a ban or suspension.

Another problem is salty mental players who sit on a computer all day who cant handle a loss. If you are new to the game or class or even "under geared" after bolstered they will slander you in chat saying your a bot report them and whatnot. I just went threw this myself. These people do report you even more so if you don't respond to the slander's BS.

People have their guilds send false reports to something they never seen. Most games I played had someone in guild telling other people to report "X" for hacking and many of them will do it no questions asked.

Its 2019 and companies still act like its the early 2000's on how to handle problems like this. I mean yeah SWTOR is 8 years old and the game mechanics are way behind the times, some of which might be addressed in the next expansion but I don't see the game ever thriving again until they do a complete overhaul or on weeks a Star Wars movies hit theaters.

If you want to catch career bots I would look at time played, IP addresses, average ping. Once you have a pattern of that and mark the anomaly's you can shorten the list of potential violators. So for example some named "SDlgijglse Uninstall" has been logged in 30 hours on average from random countries with a 999 ping you would know to pay more attention to reports about that account and even go in a few games he's playing to make sure nothing else is out of the ordinary.

Another way that was effective is if staff would take a active roll in PVP. Talk in chat or spam messages "Staff is monitoring the battleground." If staff really are watching it or not is up to the company but it is a effective deterrent.

Another thing to consider is games with to many buttons to push are becoming a thing of the past. Other games have altered their EULA and implemented a type of chain macro to make the game more enjoyable. The original hardcore players are in their 40's - 50's and I know a handful that's in the 60's-70's. A guy with arthritis vs a 16 high on Redbull just does not work with any current MMO business model your eliminating the older age group, and in the case of Star Wars many of the 1976 era players might still be around. Short and simple to many damn buttons.

 

Another way that was effective is if staff would take a active roll in PVP. Talk in chat or spam messages "Staff is monitoring the battleground." If staff really are watching it or not is up to the company but it is a effective deterrent.

HAAHHA, my sides. I spit out out my coffee