Tree of Savior Forum

Am i been reported by x times for afking then got banned?

General Discussion
#21

When people AFK in the Crystal Mines, they have a tendency to rob me of my quest mobs. I remember one instance of chasing after Vubbes with Question Marks (? <— that look like that, for those who don’t know) floating above their heads. There was an AFK archer (I’m assuming), shooting every which way.

I’d see a ? and gun for it, only to have it snatched from me by the jerk-faced archer shooting arrows all over the place like Stevie Wonder in a pitch black room.

I wanted to PK the hell out of that butthead, except this game doesn’t allow PKing outside of Guild Wars, and he probably would’ve accidentally killed me, considering he was level 60+.

:no_mouth:

1 Like
#22

For me i do t care if your boting or z button holding, if your not there and I see you ill give you 1 min to do anything besides bash air, then Im reporting you.

#23

Nothing is wrong with the pet itself obviously, I was noting multiple things he stated that could very well seem suspicious at first glance.

Plus it’s safe to say if his pet is 60, he is near that level himself. Almost the only reason higher level people would go back to crystal mines is for vubbe fighters and they’re on the 3F and due to how they spawn, you really can’t afk farm them. Yet he is in 1F. So much content in his post makes him suspicious.

#24

They don’t ban you if you were reported even only three times. To actually have a valid report, the person would have to have x how many much reports to actually deem “Maybe worth looking into”. Since they exactly can’t look into every report (Since there are probably a lot of reported users out there with only 1-2 reports. Which would be worthless looking into those if there are users who have more than 10 etc.).

I can confirm since shotacon people report me for no reason.

So no, having someone just casually walking by reporting everyone on their screen won’t mean each one of will get banned.

If you got banned it was probably because probably because you had multiple reports claiming you for whatever then IMC looked into it and tried to figure out what was going on. They found something and then banned you.

#25

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

#26

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

#27

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.

#28

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.

#29

And your picture says that you can’t login because of server maintenance, not because you were afk.

#30

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.

#31

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

#32

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.

#33

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.

#34

What? I never said he botted, just that he’s done things that made him look suspicious.

#35

I am happy that you got banned because I am one of those Swordsman trying to finish the highlander and valve quest.

#36

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.

1 Like
#37

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.

#38

^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.

#39

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?

#40

My god, why do you keep asking us. At least use the @whatevermod function or just private msg one of the mods.