steel rake bans [Merged]

[Amarah-KT]

Another day and another locked thread, so here we go again.  I truly hope there will be some sort of compensation for the people who are losing time and their money.  Also damaging their reputations-  For what?  so once again you guys can catch the group of 6 people but punish a hundred for justice?

Look.  Ive been saying this for a long time.  NC support staff guys need to understand how the game works  in order to have a clue what their searches are flagging.   And still there is no consistency as each GM  choses a different copy/paste response as to why these players are being punished.  

Some people are being told they entered more than the allowed number of entries.  How?  Do they count when you exit to turn in a quest and re enter?  Some years and patches later they added a feature that allows you to choose RE ENTRY  or NEW ENTRY.  Is this why?   Did this actually happen in the past and its just part of that nostalgic classic experience?    because everyone who plays KNOWS that as long as you dont break the group,  youre reentering the SAME INSTANCE.

Others are being told they did things that cant be done with the current macro system.  And exactly how do they know this when I doubt most of the GMS could even WRITE a macro?!

It took you almost 2 whole days to say something on the forums,  and there are people who still havent received their copy/paste responses yet.  Can you at least give the players some sort of timeline?  Or stop locking the threads so people can bring their issues forward so you can consolidate and compare.    There are even more people talking about quitting over this and its really sad to see that again and again community members care more about the game survival than the NC team.   Without us, there is no you!  Stop driving my daevas away!  

 

[Itzjustme]

I too was banned for running SR with a LFG group. All we were doing was the hairpin quest (turning in multiple times like I always have done) and snow blessing quest. I had to log in with my daughters account in order to even make this post! My toon is Ocala. I have also posted on reddit:

 

[Stormrequiem]

I was also affected by this unfair penalty, and from the first day I sent an email and it has been almost 48 hours and I still do not receive a response about what is happening with my account, I have had to enter with an alternate account to Being able to post my situation in the forum, now gives me a bit of insecurity that when my situation is resolved (because it has to be resolved, since I did not do anything wrong) the same thing will happen again for reasons such as those expressed by Amarah. I demand an answer because I pay to play not to be in this wait that seems endless.

[Itzjustme]

@Kibbelz

How about some answers for us folks that have been incorrectly accused and treated like cheating scumbags ?

I most certainly expect that your team will do the right thing ASAP and fix this issue as well as compensating all of us for the lost subscription time your team has caused us....your playing with our real money here, not cool at all. Thank You

[Oopsmybad]

I don't think the SR hairpins quest is why people were being banned because everyone does that...so are they gonna ban the whole population. you probably happened to be a group that was doing the chest exploit. it sucks that innocent people are being caught, i wish they would have looked at logs first and not associate everyone with doing that.

[Cherish]

Just now, Oopsmybad said:

I don't think the SR hairpins quest is why people were being banned because everyone does that...so are they gonna ban the whole population. you probably happened to be a group that was doing the chest exploit. it sucks that innocent people are being caught, i wish they would have looked at logs first and not associate everyone with doing that.

The thing is it wasn't groups taking advantage of the exploit. Most people I have talked with on the unofficial discord have all been actively running SR mid for hairpin/blessing repeatable quests. There's only one treasure chest I'm fully aware of that spawns in mid, and that's the one above the fat cat spawn point that can be attacked & looted by just walking up to the platform. That treasure chest has been able to be picked up in that manner since launch in 2009. If that specific treasure box is what is flagging all these LFG groups as "exploiters" they need to remove it or move the location into the area that you can't actually attack and loot it from. LFG groups do go for that one box, and all the LFG groups I have been apart of have only killed that specific box once and continued on their way for quest repeats. 

The exploiters apparently abused the SR entry quest? Or so I was under the assumption. LFG groups are not abusing the entry quest, just trying to run the instance as intended.

[Oopsmybad]

4 minutes ago, Cherish said:

The thing is it wasn't groups taking advantage of the exploit. Most people I have talked with on the unofficial discord have all been actively running SR mid for hairpin/blessing repeatable quests. There's only one treasure chest I'm fully aware of that spawns in mid, and that's the one above the fat cat spawn point that can be attacked & looted by just walking up to the platform. That treasure chest has been able to be picked up in that manner since launch in 2009. If that specific treasure box is what is flagging all these LFG groups as "exploiters" they need to remove it or move the location into the area that you can't actually attack and loot it from. LFG groups do go for that one box, and all the LFG groups I have been apart of have only killed that specific box once and continued on their way for quest repeats. 

The exploiters apparently abused the SR entry quest? Or so I was under the assumption. LFG groups are not abusing the entry quest, just trying to run the instance as intended.

There are too many speculations as to why people are being banned and no real reason was given. Telling someone you are being banned for suspicious activity but offering no transparency as to why is where NCsoft went wrong. It has been two days and they have yet to offer any details to the community or evidence to the countless of innocent people being banned. 

If they issue with SR is the quest, then simply remove it instead of banning people for something that has been accessible since launch, don't punish people for your mess up. If people are seriously using some sort of exploit, then review logs before banning people that were in their group who had no idea about what was going on. 

 

My gf joined an SR group. grabbed 10 hairpins and left and now she is being banned...that to me seems unfair.

[Cherish]

1 minute ago, Oopsmybad said:

There are too many speculations as to why people are being banned and no real reason was given. Telling someone you are being banned for suspicious activity but offering no transparency as to why is where NCsoft went wrong. It has been two days and they have yet to offer any details to the community or evidence to the countless of innocent people being banned. 

If they issue with SR is the quest, then simply remove it instead of banning people for something that has been accessible since launch, don't punish people for your mess up. If people are seriously using some sort of exploit, then review logs before banning people that were in their group who had no idea about what was going on. 

 

My gf joined an SR group. grabbed 10 hairpins and left and now she is being banned...that to me seems unfair.

I agree. They've had no explanations for anyone outside of the few of us who have been lucky enough to get their copy & paste support scripts. But even so it's doing nothing but telling us they have us in the logs "abusing an exploit", yet refusing to show us exactly what we have done. All we have been doing is running SR and doing quest repeats, so what exploit are we abusing exactly. It's a crappy situation all around, and we are losing play time we paid for as a result while going unanswered by any of them. Not surprised with how awful NC support is as a whole, but all we can do at this point is wait and hope @Kibbelzcan get more definite information for us.

I for one don't want to be banned again, if not permabanned as I was told by my scripted response that would happen, for running an instance as intended when I can log back in and go back into LFG SR mid groups to finish my repeatable quests.

[Oopsmybad]

1 minute ago, Cherish said:

I agree. They've had no explanations for anyone outside of the few of us who have been lucky enough to get their copy & paste support scripts. But even so it's doing nothing but telling us they have us in the logs "abusing an exploit", yet refusing to show us exactly what we have done. All we have been doing is running SR and doing quest repeats, so what exploit are we abusing exactly. It's a crappy situation all around, and we are losing play time we paid for as a result while going unanswered by any of them. Not surprised with how awful NC support is as a whole, but all we can do at this point is wait and hope @Kibbelzcan get more definite information for us.

I for one don't want to be banned again, if not permabanned as I was told by my scripted response that would happen, for running an instance as intended when I can log back in and go back into LFG SR mid groups to finish my repeatable quests.

Yup, i guess we will just have to wait and see. I, if i decide to go back, will probably not run SR anymore unless i know exactly why people are being banned. I am sure that even as we speak there are others who have are doing exactly what is being discussed here. are they also going to be banned for doing something that they have access to?

[Rubyel]

in fact I don't give a damn why the accounts were banned as this is part of the deal we accepted when we created the account to play.

what I can't accept as someone who invested money to have leisure time in the game.

1- there is no response from the administration, it seems that they run away from the topic when someone highlights what is happening.

2- It seems that the administration has never worked at NC because they can barely answer you and when they answer you they give you a copied answer to every ticket you send.

3- One week not knowing what's happening and several people being banned for the same reasons and when I sent the ticket the only response I had from a GM who was extremely unreasonable to the case was "the account was closed and that's it".

my only question is how many more players will you have to lose to understand that what is the solution that you implemented to catch the supposed BUG EXPLOITERS from STEEL RAKE is banning ALL PLAYERS IN GENERAL. if you weren't banned, you went there. soon you will be too.

[Rubyel]

let's take a look at this line from the Itzjustme post. his ticket response has an interesting line.

GM replied that the exploit bug was proven for two reasons

 

"confirmed both by report and through the game logs"

 

by my understanding you were not banned for doing something wrong but because you were REPORTED by a member of your group who saw you leaving and entering the instance to deliver the hairpin quest. in my view anyone in the group reports people doing the quest he will cause the automatic ban system on everyone he reported. this is very dangerous because if a player knows this he will run STEEL RAKE just to report people and make them get banned unfairly. that's why the number of bans has grown with each passing day. i got banned last friday i was probably one of the first to be banned.

[Itzjustme]

19 minutes ago, Rubyel said:

let's take a look at this line from the Itzjustme post. his ticket response has an interesting line.

GM replied that the exploit bug was proven for two reasons

 

"confirmed both by report and through the game logs"

 

by my understanding you were not banned for doing something wrong but because you were REPORTED by a member of your group who saw you leaving and entering the instance to deliver the hairpin quest. in my view anyone in the group reports people doing the quest he will cause the automatic ban system on everyone he reported. this is very dangerous because if a player knows this he will run STEEL RAKE just to report people and make them get banned unfairly. that's why the number of bans has grown with each passing day. i got banned last friday i was probably one of the first to be banned.

That is an interesting theory, however the LFG group I joined was specifically advertising in LFG for "SR - Hairpin/Wine quests". So we all knew what we were doing, at least it seemed that way. We even went to do turn ins in 1/2 group (3 of us would go at a time) since our hairpin numbers did not match up exactly and this was the closest we could get without half of us having to stack hairpins for a long period of time. So not sure why one of the folks in the group I was in would have reported any of us leaving SR and going back in multiple times since the entire group of us was doing it......and how I wonder if any of them got banned as well heh.

[Rubyel]

simple itzjustme

 

bad players , when someone report the reported get ban . not the one whos did the report

[Vantheria-DN]

15 minutes ago, Itzjustme said:

So not sure why one of the folks in the group I was in would have reported any of us leaving SR and going back in multiple times since the entire group of us was doing it......and how I wonder if any of them got banned as well heh.

It is more likely that someone else (not in your group) saw you and reported you. Either way, it's pretty crummy to report someone for something when you don't actually know for sure they're doing anything wrong. Like??? If you don't know what you're talking about, how about just minding your own business??? Jeez.

[Amarah-KT]

If its being reported by another player, they dont even have to be in your group.  They could simply sit at the entrance or quest turn in.   

[Wsnow]

2 hours ago, Itzjustme said:

That is an interesting theory, however the LFG group I joined was specifically advertising in LFG for "SR - Hairpin/Wine quests". So we all knew what we were doing, at least it seemed that way. We even went to do turn ins in 1/2 group (3 of us would go at a time) since our hairpin numbers did not match up exactly and this was the closest we could get without half of us having to stack hairpins for a long period of time. So not sure why one of the folks in the group I was in would have reported any of us leaving SR and going back in multiple times since the entire group of us was doing it......and how I wonder if any of them got banned as well heh.

TBH it seems more maybe someone was watching outside SR and think you was doing the exploit by going in and out I don't think it was any of the group. If you watch the video of the SR exploit bug then a person is just sitting watching. 

[Jake-DN]

5 hours ago, Oopsmybad said:

I don't think the SR hairpins quest is why people were being banned because everyone does that...so are they gonna ban the whole population. you probably happened to be a group that was doing the chest exploit. it sucks that innocent people are being caught, i wish they would have looked at logs first and not associate everyone with doing that.

Although you can do the SR exploit while in a group, it's not a group reliant thing. 

IF someone goes to the SR entry NPC, and goes inside the instance, they are NOT doing the exploit as well as they CANT do it. 

Won't explain the exploit in detail obviously cause rules, but it's based around something that you can't do ever again if you're able to join into SR. Thus anyone who was doing an SR run, was not doing the exploit. 

edit: If players are being reported after entering SR, with their cooldown into effect, then Support should clearly know it's a false report. If this is true, it's more concerning that Support doesn't know an exploit that was used well over 10 years ago. 

 

Once again, if you enter Steel Rake, via the Instance NPC, i.e. for Asmodian's  it's Raninerk in Pandaemonium located at the Airship docks, you cannot ever do the exploit. It is no longer possible.
 

[Rubyel]

11 minutes ago, Jake-DN said:

Although you can do the SR exploit while in a group, it's not a group reliant thing. 

IF someone goes to the SR entry NPC, and goes inside the instance, they are NOT doing the exploit as well as they CANT do it. 

Won't explain the exploit in detail obviously cause rules, but it's based around something that you can't do ever again if you're able to join into SR. Thus anyone who was doing an SR run, was not doing the exploit. 

edit: If players are being reported after entering SR, with their cooldown into effect, then Support should clearly know it's a false report. If this is true, it's more concerning that Support doesn't know an exploit that was used well over 10 years ago. 

 

Once again, if you enter Steel Rake, via the Instance NPC, i.e. for Asmodian's  it's Raninerk in Pandaemonium located at the Airship docks, you cannot ever do the exploit. It is no longer possible.
 

you talking about the exploit of treasure chest , but we are not talking about the ENTRY QUEST exploit , its already fixed . since THEY REMOVED THE BOXES FROM THE IMAGE MAP when you are doing the SR entry quest.

but for your notice removing the chests from the entry quest , remove the chest for the normal SR instance too , you can check that . if you run a normal SR the 4 treasure boxes are deleted from the SR LOWER.

its means the AUTOMATIC SYSTEM are catching EVERY SINGLE TREASURE CHEST OF THE INSTANCE as suspicious. 

because they are same boxes even in MID , even in lower , in upper and IN THE IMAGE MAP of entry quest.

what we are talking now is the NC has put a AUTOMATIC SYSTEM to see the plp exploit.

to think better.

lets do a theory:

AUTOMATIC SYSTEM - 

* HOW MANY TIMES YOU ENTER IN INSTACE

*HOW MANY BOXES YOU OPEN

 

the system dont care if you doing our not the BUG. its appear taking each time you talk whit npc and ENTER counts as 1 run SR

so SR has 5 hours CD. so you can RUN like 3 times a day.

QUEST OF HAIRPIN MID you can turn in and out like 3 times so 3x3 =9 SRS IN A DAY. 

i think is that the system taking as suspicious .

[Airashi]

Its been 48 hours since I've sent the ticket in and still no response yet. Not even a generic copy and paste response to start the chain of communication. I am still scratching my head, speculating on the reason/s for the ban.

If it is the treasure chest in mid in the borakiki room, you can easily hit it from below and loot it by jumping onto the table below, no hacks needed. If it is the sr entry quest, well I entered SR through sanctum in a group. If its the hairpins quest, you can easily complete 3 quest turn ins each run by running in and out of the instance. If it is for botting, I only have 1 toon, so you can easily track that. If it is for IP issues, yes I have used mutiple internet connections which may have raised suspicion but I have entered in the correct verification codes every single time. If its for RMT, you can easily check logs once again.

 

48hours so far and time and $$ is ticking....

[Squid]

I left and entered SR 50 times today lets see if i get banned or not. To see if it is even an SR entry related ban.

[Cherish]

37 minutes ago, HealingSquid-KT said:

I left and entered SR 50 times today lets see if i get banned or not. To see if it is even an SR entry related ban.

[TellyTally]

i was also ban for 7 days running SR on Monday. i am so sad because i dont even know why.  i dont think i will come back after the band lift goes away.

one thing that really bothers me is the NC Soft team dont even know them self's what to do. now having been tainted for this i am so scared to even log in just to even move to one spot to another to get a permaband. if i where to get another ban NC Soft team would do nothing . face it this is a game killer. i will not be surprised to see the game die before it barely even open . so good luck everyone maybe ill see you all in some other MMO.

Love

Bocc

[Rubyel]

1 hour ago, HealingSquid-KT said:

I left and entered SR 50 times today lets see if i get banned or not. To see if it is even an SR entry related ban.

give us the name of your character for us to report, because the automatic system does not have the foresight to know whether you did it or not SR it needs someone to report you

[Squid]

3 minutes ago, Rubyel said:

give us the name of your character for us to report, because the automatic system does not have the foresight to know whether you did it or not SR it needs someone to report you

That is abuse of the report system not an SR bug then. That is something completely different.

[Amarah-KT]

It seems like there might be several compounded issues here.  People are reporting being banned as far back as Friday, to as recently as yesterday. Im not high enough to volunteer as tribute to test the  reporting theory.  Wouldnt it be tragically hilarious if it was a bot outside the instance spam reporting players?!  I mean.. if you run past one near broker in sanctum you get whispers to buy kinahs from several bots.