Why do these people even bother “playing” the game when they’ll just afk farm/lvl?
Not cause it’s not illegal makes it a reason for you to do it. Even if you say you’re clean, you’re making your character act like a bot and people wont really know the difference.
BOT Report button powah!!! Pew pew pew
cool story - but youre not being banned just by leaving your char afk for a few hours ONCE and “by accident” your ban must have a reason - and you mentioned you got baned after you came back…theyre not banning you in a few mins just like that
Protip: Devs aren’t evil people. They actually WANT you to play and give them money. They don’t ban you randomly.
Talk to them instead of us. We’re not going to believe you nor can we help you. But they might on both counts.
First of all, nobody gets reported when they are AFK, they are when their character is playing while nobody controls it, like you where.
But to be honest afk time should be like 20 minute, then your character goes back to the house, and if the character doesn’t move and do Z like a bot, he should receive a notification, that’s simple.
And your picture says that you can’t login because of server maintenance, not because you were afk.
nice! i keep telling everyone “just go read the news, jeez.” and yet i manage to miss it myself, too.
it sounds like a really decent system they’ve got going on.
there’s really no way to actually tell, unless when he filed a ticket, that was the reason given as explanation.
if you’re just AFK (or afk with Z held down), then the system logs will reveal that.
neither of these are bannable offenses.
that’s going to result in you having a very low weight to your reporting index, if you report lots of people that aren’t actually bots.
meaning: that the reports you make are going to be ignored. (read the news article for more about it.)
yea i noticed that too, but the original post was many hours after the maintenance.
i assumed that he wasn’t so completely incompetent that he tried again after maintenance was over… and i assumed that due to the early release state of the game at this point, that there is only a generic message (“server maintenance or other reasons”) regarding inability to log in.
i -hope- that i wasn’t giving him too much credit. lol @ this entire thread if he was “banned” because he tried to login during maintenance, then took half a day to get around to complaining about it.
for the ppl who are bashing like no tomorow… i beg you to read the imc statement about report button function.
I was auto kicked by system due to suspecion, because i reached my RII limit count… that is the real flaw of coding their report button program… afkers should not be reported because it has to be handled differently from regular bots
Dont enter a public forum, especially a video game forum, if you would like to not be bashed. I suppose you live and learn though. Good luck with your resolution.
That’s not botting, that’s AFK farming and currently not against the ToS of ToS 0_0
Botting is manipulating code or using 3rd party software to automate gameplay. As much as I hate AFK farmers using their pet to kill stuff it is 100% not botting.
What? I never said he botted, just that he’s done things that made him look suspicious.
I am happy that you got banned because I am one of those Swordsman trying to finish the highlander and valve quest.
Computer scientist here, time for some enlightening moments of how Machine Learning (ML) works (just annoyed that you kept shoving IMC’s statement around, time for me to shove it back to you)
Quote from IMC:
If a user is reported repeatedly by others, that user is very likely to be a bot. In addition, if the reporter is an influential individual, their report is most likely valid so we can set a priority on which account to ban first. This is where the Report Influence Index (RII) comes in. In terms of numbers, a player with 10 RII has the same impact as 10 different players with 1 RII each when reporting suspicious users.
Accounts with high report counts will then move to the next step of verification. Some have suggested using CAPTCHA, but that too, will be breached eventually. It puts needless restrictions on the players, so we are not considering its use. Instead, what we chose to use is a server-side classifier based on Machine Learning (ML) technique.
The classifier uses the comprehensive activity log of a reported account to determine if it’s a bot in percentages. We will not be revealing the classifier’s exact mechanism, as it can be manipulated by violators to bypass the system. We train our classifier by constantly inputting new data. The fact that we can maintain its accuracy is its advantage, because we’re going to manually determine which factors should be considered to identify bots. The classifier’s accuracy depends on how we determine the behavior criteria, and we examine over 20 basic criteria. The machine showed 99% accuracy on our Korean server when we set the machine to output fewer false positives. If we set strictness value low, the classifier will detect more bot with lower accuracy and vice versa…
End of IMC Quote
Now, I must state this is an assumption, but quite an accurate one given my experience with Artificial Neural Networks and Learning Algorithms.
First of all,
IMC did not state Z botting is ok. They just state that, anybody that report Z botting players MAY NOT be sucessful in their reports, therefore getting their RII down. In machine learning context, a successive report depends on certain inputs, number of reports is one of them --> this gives a certain value of weightage in the probability of your character being a bot. Of course, there are other input factors that they will check for which we don’t know.
However, it is safe to assume TIME CONTINUOUSLY SPENT ON MAP is one of them based on bot logic as bots can spend 24 hours on the same map while most humans can’t. Therefore, the probability of the ML to classify you as a bot is dependent on you staying on the map for too long, without going for repairs, while getting a certain number of kills and STANDING ON THE SAME SPOT (primitive bot like behavior here).
Now, assume that you were Z botting, enjoying your vodka and seafood for 20 minutes of AFK. And goes back to questing or town repair. I can safely assume that you won’t be flagged even you were reported.
Based on eye witness by fellow forum goers, you were there for hours, reported several times. Mystery solved.
TBH it totally depends on what features they use and how often they train on new data. There is a lot of literature in the security informatics space that looks adversarial behaviors, and findings conclude adversaries pretty much always can rapidly evolve their tactics to avoid detection.
Creating more human-like bots in this game is not too difficult, and a ML classifier that only catches primitive bots is not that helpful. I don’t see how they can detect more advanced bots without a lot of false positives, unless they actually are able to identify a few different features that are key for picking out the most advanced bots. Even then, this has been done in other games and failed - people can easily make bots that change maps, visit vendors occasionally log off with cooldown periods. It’s been done before.
Only a few MMOs have really succeeded in staving off bots, and the way they do it is by client-side monitoring. VAC and Blizzard’s Warden program they use for WoW are both examples. ML always sounds sexy but it doesn’t work well in adversarial environments.
^you clearly have no comprehension of what you read.
RII represents how “important” the system considers -your- bot reports. it has no relation to how many times you have been reported.
AND the system does not auto-ban anyone. it only flags people, and alerts GM’s as to how “significant” a suspicious account appears to be, based on the number/weight of the total reports it has seen. the system will also report if, according to the various trends it has been taught to look for, the reported character appears to conform to typical bot behavior.
Hello Savior,
Thank you for contacting us. You are receiving the message because your account has been locked due to suspicious activity within the game.
If you feel that this decision is unjust and wish to ask for a re-evaluation of your activity in the logs please submit an email to tossupport@imc.co.kr. Upon receiving an appeal, we will conduct a intesive examination of your logs and unlock your account if it is clear of any violation. Please provide the following details:
1)Team name
2)Server name
We hope for your understanding and patience.
Regards,
Tree of Savior Support Team
heres the reply…it’s stated i was locked because of just a suspicion. but until now its been almost 4days still no reply from my email… how long will it take to evaluate my logs?
My god, why do you keep asking us. At least use the @whatevermod function or just private msg one of the mods.
Lol so many liars claim they are afk leveling their pet. When the community does know there are players botting at the gem chest further down the mines. OP are you the one I reported? huehuehue even though I am not BR
they said “you were doing something shady, and got banned for it.”
they didn’t say what, or when.
maybe it -was- something at the mines.
maybe it was something that happened days before that.
the GM’s investigated SOMETHING, and believe you are guilty of improper behavior in the game.
what they said means “we got reports about you, and when we checked into it, it appeared like the reports were correct, and you were doing something improper.”
a GM investigates every case before a ban is placed.
sometimes, i’m sure it’s a very short investigation – the GM goes to the character, the character is warping all over the screen, and the GM records a minute of that (just in case, right?), before applying the boots to him. other times it would be a much more in depth investigation, requiring reading all kinds of logs, tracing money here and there, seeing who bought what from whom, etc. (these are the cases where the automated system is helpful, because it can point out the relevant records – a computer can locate the string of 5 related lines out of 10,000 lines so much faster and more accurately than a human can.)
yes, there’s an automated system. it helps indicate whether a suspected account is likely to be a bot, or likely to be a legit player.
BUT:
there is NO auto-ban system.
(there aren’t even any cars, who needs an autobahn? HAR HAR HAR i think i’m funny.)
every case must be checked by a gm, otherwise everyone will just say “the computer was wrong, unban me!” and then the GM’s will just have to go over it themselves anyway.
…
so.
think about it, long and hard.
what were you -really- doing with your account? not just on tuesday afternoon (or whatever was local-time for you)… but all the rest of the time as well.
were you botting at other times? or any other kind of automated activity?
did you buy silver, or anything else, from RMT’s ?
were you using some kind of hacks? range hack, damage hack, duping… whatever else…?
did you let your little brother play the game using your account, and maybe he did some of these things? remember, it’s all on the same account, they aren’t going to ban you character-by-character, and the account owner is responsible for all activity that happens through the use of that account, whether it was the owner of the account personally, or someone else they allowed to use the account.
anyway…
i don’t care what the answer is, and i doubt anyone else does either, now… especially when the official response says “you were being bad, and you got spanked.” i’m only providing these comments for -you- to be able to consider what you did.
if you think you did nothing wrong, stick with it. if the GM’s agree that their first evaluation was in error, you’ll probably get an unban.
but if you secretly know that you were doing something wrong, just give up and move on.
I think people started to forget the meaning of the word “SHOULD” when all this thread started to surge.
Should =/= as dont do it. Example: you should not pay your bills late, but people still do.
My point is the GM are warning people, that reporting afk farmers like you, could lead to a lower reporting score as many will be deemed innocent. That being said the retarded i afk for 10 hours are rightfully banned.
TLDR: They never said you 'COULD" not report afk farmers, they just said most of the time that will impact the RII score negatively as many will be found innocent.
finally I got unbanned <3 
I really hope they will improve report bot system in the feature.
thank you. imc 
Hello,
Apologies for the late reply.
We have investigated your case and concluded that your account was indeed banned unfairly; it has now been unblocked.
You should be able to access the game now, but do let us know if you still find it unavailable.
Sincerely,
IMC Games