- Perm bans on players who tried a simple bug in the game is very extreme.
- This banwave had absolutely nothing to do with botters, botters remain untouched (bots are extremely sophisticated).
- 17 passives was nowhere near the level of game breaking as blood shard goblins exploit, yet the passive bug was treated with much more extreme measures.
There seems to be some confusion, people believe that this banwave had something to do with botters or "cheaters" (thud,d3helper).
The banwave happened because of the bug that allowed players to equip all 17 passives in the game for the first two weeks of the season.
Not sure how blood shard exploit = rollback, hellfire amulet bug = perm ban
Too me it seems illogical
I don't see why people are being perma banned for such a silly bug that allowed players to equip all 17 passives when there are much more serious offenses currently happening in the game everywhere such as botting.
Botters were left untouched during this "banwave", I'm really confused to why botters in D3 aren't being taken more seriously.
I have seen footage of these bots in action, they are extremely sophisticated to the point that I would say it farms more efficiently than most players who are not focused on their game and multi-tasking other activities while casually farming.
But they didn't perm-ban people that just simply tried out the exploit once or twice (Mistakes happens - so not saying they couldn't have slipped into a "perm-ban" by accident)..
Not according to their statement at least - or according to the few people I know, that wanted to see what the exploit was all about.
They only got a 2 weeks ban. That's it.
I don't think it's about the severity of the bug itself - but more about abusing an exploit, over and over again (no matter what it was).
They'd have to come to a point, where they'd need to simply ban (either for a period or a permanent one, depending on severity) people that are abusing exploits. They've "threatened" with doing this - they can't just keep holding that above the players - they have to enforce it - no matter how silly some people find the terms.
...but I do agree, that the botters needs to be taken care of - but I just don't think Blizzard has a way of detecting them all - I refuse to believe, that they'd just ignore all the reports, just because they don't wanna lose attention (or something like that) gotten from a streamer that is now finally banned (Maybe not for botting - but he is still banned...).
It's gotta be because they haven't found a way to detect some of the bots - I really can't see any other way they would "leave them alone".
But seriously, any action against cheaters, be it botters or exploiters, is good. It's also easier for Blizzard to find the ppl exploiting the hellfire amu since that's something that their game can check for. It's not as easy to detect botters (although people will claim there is). You can't just ban people that are online for a long time. I don't have knowledge about how exact Blizzard is loging player's playing behaviour and screen time and I won't speculate. I'll just venture a guess to say that if they felt they had enough information to ban people using bots, they would.
it can't be that hard to track down botters, at least a vast majority of them.
most botters are using software/scripts that are made easily accessible by the few who actually program these things.
a bot in the end is a bot, as sophisticated the current bot that most users are using is, in the end it's still a bot and it's actions are all timed and rotated.
the real answer to botting is to create a game environment where the risk/reward for botting is not enough incentive that the majority of players will not bot.
but now we're going into some next level stuff that Blizzard isn't capable of these days.
just gotta stay on top of the latest trends in botting and clamp down on bots that get popular, it's not that hard imo.
My 4 accounts are banned, i used thie exploit for 2/3 hours. And i have a parma ban. Parma ban = Perm bans on players who tried a simple bug in the game is very extreme
But what is extreme 2/3 hours, i didn't have 10 amulets. Only testing for joke, never entered leader bords top 1000. And i did not tell anyone. Yeah 4 accounts.. but i am the user..
Maybe botting is better..wait i can not bot never WILL buy any Blizzard game.
You used it knowing the exploit, so yeah you should have got banned
Im starting to think that they permaban in hope of selling more cdkeys. There were more extreme bugs in vanilla but ofc none even got warning for them either (twice wizards were immortal).
Like wtf the emails include this.
"I'm sorry for the inconvenience that this has caused you, but
we will not be looking into discussing this matter any further and it
does mean that if you wish to play Diablo 3 again, you will need to buy a brand new account."
it can't be that hard to track down botters, at least a vast majority of them.
- snip -
the real answer to botting is to create a game environment where the risk/reward for botting is not enough incentive that the majority of players will not bot.
D3 bots all basically works by reading the game memory on your pc and making decisions based on these readings.
In fact yes, it's hard to detect them because they a) don't intervene on client files and they are just memory readers and don't actually change the data there too. In addition to that, Blizzard should be able to scan your pc memory to be able to detect thise bots, with all the privacy/ethic implications (which sound silly but it's a bigger issue than most people expect it to be).
The program themselves are not sophisicated at all, it's the way they work that is basically really really safe.
I agree completely with the second point - only way to fight botters is to make their task so complicated that it's not worth anymore; though i don't really have any ideas about this apart crypting the memory data, but it would have very negative repercussions on game performance.
This whole post is just a joke. The whole argueing about what is 'more bad' or 'you should ban botters first' is nonsense. It's like telling a police man who catches you speeding to go solve murder cases instead. Wont work, sorry.
Anyone who used this exploit didnt do so on accident. The steps required were so specific that there is no way anyone just randomly stubled into this, especially for multiple passives. Anyone who sais he didnt abuse it extensively and got perma-banned is simply lying.
it can't be that hard to track down botters, at least a vast majority of them.
- snip -
the real answer to botting is to create a game environment where the risk/reward for botting is not enough incentive that the majority of players will not bot.
D3 bots all basically works by reading the game memory on your pc and making decisions based on these readings.
In fact yes, it's hard to detect them because they a) don't intervene on client files and they are just memory readers and don't actually change the data there too. In addition to that, Blizzard should be able to scan your pc memory to be able to detect thise bots, with all the privacy/ethic implications (which sound silly but it's a bigger issue than most people expect it to be).
The program themselves are not sophisicated at all, it's the way they work that is basically really really safe.
I agree completely with the second point - only way to fight botters is to make their task so complicated that it's not worth anymore; though i don't really have any ideas about this apart crypting the memory data, but it would have very negative repercussions on game performance.
Nonsense, if blizzard wanted to ban everyone using these bots they could do so easily. Apparently it has no priority.
"The technology behind the bot is quite safe.
It's like taking a picture of some location and analyzing the picture. We DO NOT interact with the memory (no injection, no memory write)
Still, no bot is 100% safe (do not believe anyone saying the contrary)"
Same with thud. These program dont inject into memory. Blizz could easily detect them by scanning processes but its illeagal
@Willemh: this. Both tech and legal issues makes detecting bots much more complicated than one thinks.
I can easily see 15 different patterns in those bots that I could use to detect them. Ontop of that blizzard can scan your memory, the fact the bot doesnt interect with the diablo memory doesnt mean it doesnt have its own memory entry, every program does.
Hell to catch the biggest offenders they could just ban everyone who had less then 4 hours sleep on average this season.
Scanning your ram is illegal, if they tried that in the EU, they will be sued for everything they are worth, just look at microsoft not obeying EU rules.
We had this discussion just yesterday, and a million times before. Can we just stop promoting this nonsense, which might lead some people to just "try stuff out" which then in turn gets them banned?
Of course scanning your memory is illegal, but not if you ask for explicit permission to do so. You give Blizzard this permission by signing the EULA at the first start of the game, otherwise you won't be able to play D3. Of course you can't just go and scan people's memory, but there are always loopholes - or what do you think how virus scanners and those things work.
Seriously, let's please stop promoting this nonsense hoax.
Back to topic (if that's even possible): I personally agree with you MannerCookie. Not with everything you say - I think the bans and suspensions for this thing were warranted, and I hope Blizzard gets even more aggressive in the future. I mean, no one just gets a second amulet when the first one breaks, you simply REPAIR it. I really don't see how people use this "by accident", sorry. But it's also pretty obvious by now that bots have not been banned, and while I'm happy about seeing some action being taken, it makes me sad. And as you said - it might be difficult to fight bots, but then at least design the game in a way that disincentives botting which was sort of the case in the first three season, but S4 is just a botter's heaven, as I predicted long time ago).
We had this discussion just yesterday, and a million times before. Can we just stop promoting this nonsense, which might lead some people to just "try stuff out" which then in turn gets them banned?
Of course scanning your memory is illegal, but not if you ask for explicit permission to do so. You give Blizzard this permission by signing the EULA at the first start of the game, otherwise you won't be able to play D3. Of course you can't just go and scan people's memory, but there are always loopholes - or what do you think how virus scanners and those things work.
A company can write what they want in their EULAs. It does not supercede a nation's laws. At least in Germany, any terms in a company's EULA, that conflict with national or case laws are nullified, even if you agreed to them. They can scan my memory based on their EULA, but they should try their best not to be caught in the act.
WHEN RUNNING, A GAME MAY MONITOR YOUR COMPUTER'S RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY (RAM) FOR UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAMS RUNNING CONCURRENTLY WITH THE GAME. AN "UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM" AS USED HEREIN SHALL BE DEFINED AS ANY THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE PROHIBITED BY SECTION 1(C)(ii) ABOVE. IN THE EVENT THAT THE GAME DETECTS AN UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM, (a) THE GAME MAY COMMUNICATE INFORMATION BACK TO BLIZZARD, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION YOUR ACCOUNT NAME, DETAILS ABOUT THE UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM DETECTED, AND THE TIME AND DATE; AND/OR (B) BLIZZARD MAY EXERCISE ANY OR ALL OF ITS RIGHTS UNDER THIS AGREEMENT, WITH OR WITHOUT PRIOR NOTICE TO YOU.
The above is what you have to agree on before playing Diablo. Blizzard doesnt force you to agree on it, you can just press 'no' if you dont agree. But that simply means you cannot play their game.
Anyway I'm sure a ban wave will be coming to Diablo soon. Its not a matter of if, but a matter of when. Hell even the creator of the bot itself (if anyone would benefit from saying it's safe, its him) sais the bot is not 100% safe. You really are extremely stupit if you believe you're safe 'because the bot doesnt write memory'. As I said before, I can easily list 15 ways of detecting if someone is botting for Blizzard, with a few days work and a patch they could detect all with 100% catch rate I'm sure.
We had this discussion just yesterday, and a million times before. Can we just stop promoting this nonsense, which might lead some people to just "try stuff out" which then in turn gets them banned?
Of course scanning your memory is illegal, but not if you ask for explicit permission to do so. You give Blizzard this permission by signing the EULA at the first start of the game, otherwise you won't be able to play D3. Of course you can't just go and scan people's memory, but there are always loopholes - or what do you think how virus scanners and those things work.
A company can write what they want in their EULAs. It does not supercede a nation's laws. At least in Germany, any terms in a company's EULA, that conflict with national or case laws are nullified, even if you agreed to them. They can scan my memory based on their EULA, but they should try their best not to be caught in the act.
Please show me the German law that states that software cant scan a persons RAM after explicitly asking for permission to do so. I really do not believe such a law exists. I guess there are no virus scanners in Germany then?
Anyway I'm sure a ban wave will be coming to Diablo soon. Its not a matter of if, but a matter of when. Hell even the creator of the bot itself (if anyone would benefit from saying it's safe, its him) sais the bot is not 100% safe. You really are extremely stupit if you believe you're safe 'because the bot doesnt write memory'. As I said before, I can easily list 15 ways of detecting if someone is botting for Blizzard, with a few days work and a patch they could detect all with 100% catch rate I'm sure.
Jesus, this defeatist mindset regarding legal issues is really telling.
We had this discussion just yesterday, and a million times before. Can we just stop promoting this nonsense, which might lead some people to just "try stuff out" which then in turn gets them banned?
Of course scanning your memory is illegal, but not if you ask for explicit permission to do so. You give Blizzard this permission by signing the EULA at the first start of the game, otherwise you won't be able to play D3. Of course you can't just go and scan people's memory, but there are always loopholes - or what do you think how virus scanners and those things work.
A company can write what they want in their EULAs. It does not supercede a nation's laws. At least in Germany, any terms in a company's EULA, that conflict with national or case laws are nullified, even if you agreed to them. They can scan my memory based on their EULA, but they should try their best not to be caught in the act.
Please show me the German law that states that software cant scan a persons RAM after explicitly asking for permission to do so. I really do not believe such a law exists. I guess there are no virus scanners in Germany then?
The basic right to "Informationelle Selbstbestimmung". Your virus scanner comparison is lacking. Of course the virus scanner is reading my memory but it doesnt tell its company anything UNLESS I want it to send data to them regarding malware. The issue lies in sending data of myself to 3rd parties without my explicit case-by-case consent
TL:DR
- Perm bans on players who tried a simple bug in the game is very extreme.
- This banwave had absolutely nothing to do with botters, botters remain untouched (bots are extremely sophisticated).
- 17 passives was nowhere near the level of game breaking as blood shard goblins exploit, yet the passive bug was treated with much more extreme measures.
There seems to be some confusion, people believe that this banwave had something to do with botters or "cheaters" (thud,d3helper).
The banwave happened because of the bug that allowed players to equip all 17 passives in the game for the first two weeks of the season.
Not sure how blood shard exploit = rollback, hellfire amulet bug = perm ban
Too me it seems illogical
I don't see why people are being perma banned for such a silly bug that allowed players to equip all 17 passives when there are much more serious offenses currently happening in the game everywhere such as botting.
Botters were left untouched during this "banwave", I'm really confused to why botters in D3 aren't being taken more seriously.
I have seen footage of these bots in action, they are extremely sophisticated to the point that I would say it farms more efficiently than most players who are not focused on their game and multi-tasking other activities while casually farming.
Just made a short video to share my opinion/thoughts, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwrDo9Gknhs
http://www.youtube.com/mannercookie
http://www.twitch.tv/mannercookie
But they didn't perm-ban people that just simply tried out the exploit once or twice (Mistakes happens - so not saying they couldn't have slipped into a "perm-ban" by accident)..
Not according to their statement at least - or according to the few people I know, that wanted to see what the exploit was all about.
They only got a 2 weeks ban. That's it.
I don't think it's about the severity of the bug itself - but more about abusing an exploit, over and over again (no matter what it was).
They'd have to come to a point, where they'd need to simply ban (either for a period or a permanent one, depending on severity) people that are abusing exploits. They've "threatened" with doing this - they can't just keep holding that above the players - they have to enforce it - no matter how silly some people find the terms.
...but I do agree, that the botters needs to be taken care of - but I just don't think Blizzard has a way of detecting them all - I refuse to believe, that they'd just ignore all the reports, just because they don't wanna lose attention (or something like that) gotten from a streamer that is now finally banned (Maybe not for botting - but he is still banned...).
It's gotta be because they haven't found a way to detect some of the bots - I really can't see any other way they would "leave them alone".
most botters are using software/scripts that are made easily accessible by the few who actually program these things.
a bot in the end is a bot, as sophisticated the current bot that most users are using is, in the end it's still a bot and it's actions are all timed and rotated.
the real answer to botting is to create a game environment where the risk/reward for botting is not enough incentive that the majority of players will not bot.
but now we're going into some next level stuff that Blizzard isn't capable of these days.
just gotta stay on top of the latest trends in botting and clamp down on bots that get popular, it's not that hard imo.
http://www.youtube.com/mannercookie
http://www.twitch.tv/mannercookie
time to quit smoking too
you need a perma ban from the stores.
http://www.youtube.com/mannercookie
http://www.twitch.tv/mannercookie
Botters not getting banned does not affect the integrity of banning exploiters.
totally different issue, imo
Should botters get banned, though? Damn right I agree with that!
Im starting to think that they permaban in hope of selling more cdkeys. There were more extreme bugs in vanilla but ofc none even got warning for them either (twice wizards were immortal).
Like wtf the emails include this.
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ModeratorIn fact yes, it's hard to detect them because they a) don't intervene on client files and
The program themselves are not sophisicated at all, it's the way they work that is basically really really safe.
I agree completely with the second point - only way to fight botters is to make their task so complicated that it's not worth anymore; though i don't really have any ideas about this apart crypting the memory data, but it would have very negative repercussions on game performance.
This whole post is just a joke. The whole argueing about what is 'more bad' or 'you should ban botters first' is nonsense. It's like telling a police man who catches you speeding to go solve murder cases instead. Wont work, sorry.
Anyone who used this exploit didnt do so on accident. The steps required were so specific that there is no way anyone just randomly stubled into this, especially for multiple passives. Anyone who sais he didnt abuse it extensively and got perma-banned is simply lying.
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Moderator@Willemh: this. Both tech and legal issues makes detecting bots much more complicated than one thinks.
I can easily see 15 different patterns in those bots that I could use to detect them. Ontop of that blizzard can scan your memory, the fact the bot doesnt interect with the diablo memory doesnt mean it doesnt have its own memory entry, every program does.
Hell to catch the biggest offenders they could just ban everyone who had less then 4 hours sleep on average this season.
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ModeratorWe had this discussion just yesterday, and a million times before. Can we just stop promoting this nonsense, which might lead some people to just "try stuff out" which then in turn gets them banned?
Of course scanning your memory is illegal, but not if you ask for explicit permission to do so. You give Blizzard this permission by signing the EULA at the first start of the game, otherwise you won't be able to play D3. Of course you can't just go and scan people's memory, but there are always loopholes - or what do you think how virus scanners and those things work.
Seriously, let's please stop promoting this nonsense hoax.
Back to topic (if that's even possible): I personally agree with you MannerCookie. Not with everything you say - I think the bans and suspensions for this thing were warranted, and I hope Blizzard gets even more aggressive in the future. I mean, no one just gets a second amulet when the first one breaks, you simply REPAIR it. I really don't see how people use this "by accident", sorry. But it's also pretty obvious by now that bots have not been banned, and while I'm happy about seeing some action being taken, it makes me sad. And as you said - it might be difficult to fight bots, but then at least design the game in a way that disincentives botting which was sort of the case in the first three season, but S4 is just a botter's heaven, as I predicted long time ago).
A company can write what they want in their EULAs. It does not supercede a nation's laws. At least in Germany, any terms in a company's EULA, that conflict with national or case laws are nullified, even if you agreed to them. They can scan my memory based on their EULA, but they should try their best not to be caught in the act.
The above is what you have to agree on before playing Diablo. Blizzard doesnt force you to agree on it, you can just press 'no' if you dont agree. But that simply means you cannot play their game.
Anyway I'm sure a ban wave will be coming to Diablo soon. Its not a matter of if, but a matter of when. Hell even the creator of the bot itself (if anyone would benefit from saying it's safe, its him) sais the bot is not 100% safe. You really are extremely stupit if you believe you're safe 'because the bot doesnt write memory'. As I said before, I can easily list 15 ways of detecting if someone is botting for Blizzard, with a few days work and a patch they could detect all with 100% catch rate I'm sure.
Please show me the German law that states that software cant scan a persons RAM after explicitly asking for permission to do so. I really do not believe such a law exists. I guess there are no virus scanners in Germany then?
The basic right
The basic right to "Informationelle Selbstbestimmung". Your virus scanner comparison is lacking. Of course the virus scanner is reading my memory but it doesnt tell its company anything UNLESS I want it to send data to them regarding malware. The issue lies in sending data of myself to 3rd parties without my explicit case-by-case consent-
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Curse Premiumif you do stuff that is obviously against the TOS, don't be surprised or even get angry if they ban you...
In this thread. Exploiters who got banned are complaining. People who play legit are not. How about that.
Good guy blizzard for finally doing the right thing. Perm bans should have happened on all previous exploits as well.