The Last 24 Hours.

[DeletedUser15165]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The last 24 hours has been a frustrating time for all concerned, players and Support Team.

I would ask for restraint at this moment of time to allow things to get back to some form of normality.

The Support Team has a job to do and we work under a strict set of guildlines set out for us by InnoGames.

We are unable to talk about the tools that are used and are unable to share any data that the tools provide us with.

If you have to vent your anger and frustration then please do so in this thread only and in a respectful way.

I don't particularly want to add fuel to the fire by handing out warnings, infractions, points or even bans, but if I'm forced to then I will, so please keep your posts respectful, clean and within the rules of the forum.

I will edit posts if I feel it is necessary to do so.

Thank to for your patience.

Lurks,
Forum Admin.

 

[DeletedUser16040]

This thread is one step away from saying the B-word (rhymes with Anne), presumably because such discussions are against the rules.

Keeping to the subject matter I have a recommendation: make all of the cases unatttackable while this mess is pending review. Or better yet run a clean slate and start over.

Your systems failed. They have been faulty for some time. Innocent players were affected. It is not the first time, the difference here is too many happened at once to be written off as an isolated event.

If it’s a mess for the support team imagine the mess it is creating in private channels for players.

Hundreds of hours, dollars poured into their favorite hobby, to have their progresses destroyed. An account is dismantled in 1 day what might have taken 4 months to build.

Disclaimer: I myself am not affected by this issue, nor are any of my teammates, but I disagree with the handeling nonetheless.

 

[DeletedUser3750]

Inno has cast its net trying to look for cheats and instead has caught a bunch of innocent players including myself (under a different account than Dow Jones). I use the same legal scripts and account in two worlds yet I am banned in one and not the other which must cast doubt to the credibility of these bans.

I have no doubt many many innocent players are suffering the same way as myself. The response from Inno and the mods is woeful, a form response and my ticket closed without resolution or any satisfactory response. You would think common sense would see the bans changed to non-attackable ones but no.

It is very frustrating considering the time and money put in by the players we deserve better, a lot better.

Since it is clear that the tools used to catch cheats is inept I would suggest game play needs to be changed so there is no incentive to use bots. Maybe no recalls within 20 seconds when attacking. Make farming easier to max the resources in a day.

 

[DeletedUser15357]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The last 24 hours has been a frustrating time for all concerned, players and Support Team.

I would ask for restraint at this moment of time to allow things to get back to some form of normality.

The Support Team has a job to do and we work under a strict set of guildlines set out for us by InnoGames.

We are unable to talk about the tools that are used and are unable to share any data that the tools provide us with.

If you have to vent your anger and frustration then please do so in this thread only and in a respectful way.

I don't particularly want to add fuel to the fire by handing out warnings, infractions, points or even bans, but if I'm forced to then I will, so please keep your posts respectful, clean and within the rules of the forum.

I will edit posts if I feel it is necessary to do so.

Thank to for your patience.

Lurks,
Forum Admin.

This coming from a MOD who makes up their own rules and hands out BS infractions and plays favorites. THE US COMMUNITY IS BEYOND FED UP WITH EVERY MOD AND THE COMA. It's time for you guys to go! You ban people for "using bots", yet 90% of the people NEVER have used one much less even use a script/add-on at all!?? You guys a massive joke and have NO clue what you're doing, even with the "Rules/Guidelines" set before you. Players are even getting messages back from other MODs that are vague, and inconclusive and ill-founded with NO evidence to support their bans.

Then there's you guys deleting and hiding threads from the community that's upset because you don't like what the community/players have to say. HOW ABOUT YOU DO YOUR FREAKING JOB CORRECTLY AND WE WON'T HAVE THIS PROBLEM!!

But guess what, the community is going over your heads now and straight to Inno. WE'VE HAD ENOUGH!! You only have yourselves to blame for this crap and it's time to step up, man up and own your crapshow you guys created by ignoring us and not doing anything. It's crystal clear you guys have never been in any kind of leadership position, management, or otherwise a case of ownership.

This has been by far the WORST generation of management the US servers has ever had by a landslide. Send out bans all you want. Hand out infractions all you want. You're only going to screw yourselves over even more. People are leaving this game in FLOCKS and with the current bullcrap from you guys, you can be promised MANY MORE are leaving forever. Hell, I'd be willing to bet you'll hand me an infraction for this post (which is NOT against the rules in any form or fashion), or even ban me from posting anymore.

Regardless, the community is fed up with you all, and so fed up that we're going to "daddy" about your guys' incompetence, favoritism, and abusing of powers. The ONLY way to fix is, is for you guys to be removed, or resign of your own will and let other who DO care to run this game's Moderation team and a new COMA who DOES care, will be active, and WON'T make emotional decisions based on people they like or don't.

 

[DeletedUser4460]

It is hard for me to believe that players would cheat on a world where their activity is close to zero, but don't cheat on their primary and most active world(s)? Such anomalies make me think the real cheaters haven't been caught and maybe some are wrongly accused.

I disagree that we aren't all effected... in less than 24 hours more players were called cheaters than under a regular year maybe, meanwhile when we find a player who shows the signs of hardcore bottting and request investigation they are hardly ever caught. As I understand this is because investigation and getting proof isn't / wasn't easy rather time consuming. So if the current detection method has flaws it would be time consuming to prove someone didn't cheat and only a few ingame mods have permission to handle such appeals, therefore these players can not get adequate time and attention if they were wrongly accused.

I hope you consider this:

Keeping to the subject matter I have a recommendation: make all of the cases unatttackable while this mess is pending review.

Witchhunt is only good for creating fear... less will cheat for a couple of weeks, those who weren't caught will continue, but imagine the fear of the players who did nothing wrong... a friend wrote this: 'will i just get banned again after the 3 days is up?' - very good question. This is how we lose interest in this game, alliances mass ghost, worlds become boring...

 

[DeletedUser13666]

I am a "banned" player that got swept up in the latest edition of grepolis. I am not here to argue my case, as I already know the result will not be changed. So let us talk about the consequences that my accounts received first and fore most.

In the world Nicaea, I am a founder and leader for my team with my account sitting on 1 of 2 remaining WW's that my team had possession of. This world was to close within 4 days of the time my ban was handed down. Consequently the other WW sitter on my team was simultaneously banned, as he was on mobile and had CS's inbound to his WW that we were both communicating in skype and working on sniping. His WW is lost.

In the world Dyme, I am also a founder and leader for my team, I sat with 103 cities of which 90 of these cities were on the front lines fighting against "enemy" alliances. (I use the word enemy in it's truest form, as I will say the amount of help and compassion shown by them when my account was banned was more than the amount of attention I was given by Inno when I appealed my case). I have currently lost 18 cities (not sure how many more in siege, and my troops have been completely cleaned out), this coming immediately after the close of an event where I personally spent hundreds of USD on the game.

Like many of you front line players in this game, I prided myself on answering alarms throughout the night and not losing cities while I slept. Had a nice set up with my lap top next to my bed sitting on a chair with an extension cord running to it, so that all I had to do was roll over and dodge. lol.

Now you may ask yourself why did I map this out? So let me explain.

We choose as paying customers to play an online Real Time Strategy game. Meaning we choose to put ourselves through the endless alarms, and restless nights, because we know that if we are found offline for any amount of time the damage to our accounts will be catastrophic. The ripples of said offline times can effect our friends and "family" in the game that we have been playing this game with for years.

As I am now leaving Grepolis, and will not be returning to play this game any longer. I only hope that maybe, just maybe someone from Inno, and not the moderator team takes time to read this post, and fully understand that a delay in responding to an appeal for let's say 7 hrs. (the length it took to get an auto generated response from one of your mods to me). Or simply closing an appeal ticket without answer, (yes this is how I was answered when I asked to speak to someone who could do more than simply copy and paste), will cause catastrophic ripples on a players account.

Your customer service needs work, and a lot of it. Users of your product should not be ignored, after investing both money and time. They should have a direct line contact for immediate grievances, and or "appeals". To prohibit them from at least contacting you, is to say you do not care about them. Therefore myself and many more will be leaving grep. Our money, and our time means nothing to Inno, and that my friends is the real problem that should be discussed here.

Sincerely,
ZS - "Ex - Loyal Grepper"

P.S. - Your system of finding botters, yeah it failed. There are 2 known botting accounts (admitted to me in skype), still active in a world I played in that did not get swept up, while players not running the bot were swept up. I know I know, you won't disclose "the tools". I don't want your details. You should simply stop using this current one though and find a new one.

 

[DeletedUser13531]

I was affected by this ban as well, and I am not someone who has ever cheated, or even played in a disrespectful manner.

I would never use a bot.

I understand that mistakes happen and glitches happen. I do. But what I can't tolerate, and what I can't accept, is the manner in which this is being dealt with. I appealed the ban of course, and received the same form letter that I'm sure everyone else received stating that their finding were conclusive and they would not lift the ban.

This form letter should never have been sent out. Anything would have been better in this situation than adding fuel to the fire. "We are working to resolve the situation and apologize for the inconvenience" would have been way better. But I, and I am sure anyone who received this unfair ban, were instead treated like cheaters who don't deserve an actual answer. It is made worse further on in the form response to threaten further action in the form of more bans. How can I not feel at this point that more bans are not inevitable as I can't fix something I'm not doing. I can't delete what isn't there. So the next time their tools find me using a non-existent bot what happens then? Am I permanently banned for it?

I don't believe this will happen. I believe this to be an error that occurred and messed things up royally. I have tried to convey to support in the past that their ability to communicate with players needs to be looked into. Their method of sending form responses to clearly distraught players needs to end.

This form letter has more far reaching affects than just me and my account. The players I have been with for years are so frustrated and upset they are threatening to quit this game as well. Players who not only enjoy this game, but also buy gold and keep this Grepolis game profitable for Inno should be treated way better than this.

 

[DeletedUser14648]

Banning world wonder sitters kills a year's worth of time, effort, sleep and money from an entire alliance of players. The fact that this isn't immediately resolved within minutes is unacceptable, let alone leaving it ongoing for days. Your customer service and policies are a farce. I will be contesting all gold charges and quitting this game.

If you want to administrate a real time strategy game, it is a baseline minimum that you offer real time support. Anything less is so stupid it can't properly be conveyed by words.

 

[DeletedUser14633]

Where to begin? As most of you can see I "never" post on the external forums. There is enough smack talk in game as well as on Skype channels that most of us are on so I've never really come to the external forums. That all be said I am going to say my peace here.

I'll begin by stating I am on the list of banned players that don't cheat list. Now currently I am playing in Nicaea and Dyme. As most know Nicaea is "finally" in the last days of the world. As Zhao stated himself and myself are the last two wonder sitters holding down the wonders that the enemy needs to conquer to take to get to seven before the end of the world ends. So within 2 minutes of each other we both get banned. AS WE ARE TALKING TO EACH OTHER. I haven't farmed, haven't attacked, or haven't done anything except move troops and boats to the two islands for days. I run two approved scripts by Inno on my laptop. Grepo reporter and Dio tools. Have been doing that for years and have never had an issue with Inno. So as you can imagine a ban was a shock to myself and my team. At this moment according to reports from my team mates my wonder is now lost because of this sweep of banning players that don't cheat.

I stated I am playing in two worlds for a reason. I am not "active" in Nicaea and am banned. I am active in Dyme and am not banned. Logically if I'm going to run an illegal script it will be on a world I am active and fighting on all fronts. Now yesterday Dyme was hit with the great sweep of banning players that don't cheat and now that world will be wrecked by Inno. We are currently on day two of having players that don't cheat on an attackable ban that has hurt two worlds I play in and it doesn't seem to matter.

What can Inno do to make themselves better for the players that don't cheat don't get banned? Who knows but I do know I have played against botters. Guess what, with a "team" of fighters the bot doesn't win. A backsnipe with a cs or FT should be a good indicator for the mods to know that player doesn't know how to play or is playing for a bot. As an experience player it doesn't take much to know when you are up against a bot. This is a simple game and is a blast to play with players that understand and play the game the right way. I am proud to say that I have played with some great people and am proud to have lead and stood by the side of these fine ladies and gentlemen in this silly game we call Grep.

So after years of building troops, boats, farming, dodging, sniping, supporting, breaking sieges Soupy is stepping down.

From the Desk of Soupy

 

[DeletedUser13531]

Where to begin? As most of you can see I "never" post on the external forums. There is enough smack talk in game as well as on Skype channels that most of us are on so I've never really come to the external forums. That all be said I am going to say my peace here.

I'll begin by stating I am on the list of banned players that don't cheat list. .......

From the Desk of Soupy

This and another post relating the same experience here makes me rather sad. I know what it is like to play with a good group of players for years. It becomes more than a game - it becomes "do you need any resources to rebuild those LS you lost, and did your son get into the college he wanted?" These "players" become an online family of friends.

When I finished Corinth I was proud! I know that sounds silly, but it was a speed 1 world so it took two years to get to the end of world wonders. That was such an endeavor and we did it. We lost, but we did it, and I was so proud to be part of the group of players I was with (still am with in another world now) I'm sorry Soupy that you and Zhao won't get to that ending and that this is how you will remember your time in Grepolis.

And I am saying I am sorry because I know Inno and the support team won't.

 

[DeletedUser9133]

In-game mods are getting a bad rep over this. I get it that they didn't create this script, and pretty much have their hands tied over lifting bans here. That was an INNO thing, but they could have responded without use of canned scripts. As someone mentioned above "We are investigating sorry for the inconvenience" would have been way better than (paraphrasing) "Our detection methods are flawless, you were cheating, suck it up". On top of that, they closed ticket with no option to reply and deleted entire threads in the externals. This only shows they were trying to sweep their dirt under the rug. Whoever made those decisions should be removed from the moderation team.

INNO has accused their customer base of cheating on a MASSIVE scale. The sheer volume of players caught in the sweep should have been an indication that there was a problem. So here we go into the weekend with no resolution. INNO developers will go home for the weekend and it will be Monday before they deign to make a correction. By then the game of Grepolis will be dead, as the banned players leave in disgust, and the non-banned players leave because there is no one left to fight. It would not surprise me if some lawyers among the wrongfully banned (I am not a lawyer) chose to take legal action. A class action suit with the number of players affected could be quite damaging financially not to mention the PR nightmare that already exists will balloon even further out of control.

Lastly, I spent 200 of my precious gold in Nicaea to activate Administrator and Priestess with only 5 days left in the server because my team was building a wonder taken from the enemy BEFORE the bans. 7 hours later I was banned, I want my gold back.

 

[DeletedUser9037]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Support Team has a job to do and we work under a strict set of guildlines set out for us by InnoGames.

We are unable to talk about the tools that are used and are unable to share any data that the tools provide us with.

Lurks,
Forum Admin.

The Support Team has a job to do, but unfortunately, it is hard to do a job if some of them do not know even know how to actually play the game, or anything about the scripts that are actually approved to use in the game. To be in a position such as this, the individual should have more than basic knowledge of what they are doing support for. They should know the game, the approved scripts and what they do, and if they choose not to, then probably should not be on the team.

You might be unable to talk about the tools that are used, but you are also unable to let people prove that your findings are incorrect, and this is huge issue right here. The fact that 'The Support Team' does judgement immediately and gives no ability what so ever to let someone try to even prove their innocence is a huge failure on InnoGames part, and has cost you some really good players on more than just the US server.

And the strict set of guidelines set out by InnoGames is in great need of being reviewed and updated.

For example:
An Alliance gets in trouble for their Alliance name. All founders and leaders are the ones held responsible. Yet leaders do not have the ability to change the Alliance name, so therefore they should not be held accountable for something they did not do, and could not have done in the first place anyways. And the fact that something like this carries over to another world, so the next time it happens, the punishment is worse.

Inappropriate city names. These also carry over from world to world and the punishments get harsher. And this one used to be that you were locked out of the game until you responded and agreed to change the name of said city and it was over that quickly. Now you see city names get changed that were not offensive at all, but others that glorify drugs (illegal and prescription) are fine.

The 3 strike with players using illegal scripts/tools. This is one that actually SHOULD carry over from world to world since it is a bigger infraction, but does not. Instead you get the same chances every world, how does that make any sense at all? This just tells me that its not considered as important as the lesser infractions.

Those are just a few, I would do more but would probably get in trouble for pushing what they don't want mentioned in the forum anyways.

 

[DeletedUser16069]

I made a post last night and it was deleted, though I saw my post as respectful and poignant and had gained some responses in it's brief history on the forum. Luckily for me it was primarily a copy of a message I had sent to support, which was answered with a sterile email and then closed, in spite of no resolution being achieved - and closed not by me, but by a mod, or some other higher up, who clearly did not care about my frustration as a customer. I paste the message here, as my own effort to continue the protest and offer my voice to the infractions listed above. Like some others, I joined the forum only because this is such an egregious and widespread offense that even my enemies in the game deserve my voice. Note: I am not (as of yet - but who knows for sure) a banned player and yet I am just as outraged.

Inno, unless you respond with responsible professionalism as a good business with a thriving clientele base should, my loyalty to Grepolis, which will forever be tarnished, may never be recoverable. Perhaps it's just as well and will afford me other opportunities that time spent on this game currently precludes.

write1red2018-04-19 15:37:16
You’ve got to be kidding me! I am sorely disappointed in Inno. Surely by the inordinate numbers of players getting banned in Nicaea (a world where no one even cares about the botters any more because it’s over in three days) your decision makers can rationalize that something is seriously wrong in the detection algorithms rolled out this last few days. Why in the world does Inno not revert back until they have fixed it? Why are they continuing to destroy the game play of every person hanging on loyally to the bitter end? Some of these players are mobile users when they are getting banned.

It’s clearly a fiasco on Inno’s end, but I see the company ignoring the pleas of reasonable players who don’t cheat. Why doesn’t Inno simply admit that they screwed up royally and have the decency to apologize rapidly and offer some recompense to the people wronged?

I am seriously considering quitting the game after this display of incompetent leadership. I have seen mods play favorites on servers. I have seen a game so driven by owners to make money that play is now determined by who can afford the most gold. I have seen players bamboozled into golding to win, rather than skill-playing to win. I could list more frustrations, but the last 24 hours of ban discoveries has been the height of disappointment for me.

I hope to have a response from someone in Inno who cares and is proactively helping to resolve the miscalculations of Inno’s bot detectors.

Thank you.
Grepolis - Customer Support2018-04-19 19:48:04
Hello write1red,

Thank you for your comments.

I am forwarding your concern to the Community Manager.

Please have patience.

Sincerely,

TAZ
Server Admin

 

[DeletedUser3750]

I have zero confidence in the tools being used to detect illegal scripts. They have not been able to do a good job of detecting actual cheating for a long time and now they are falsely detecting legal scripts as illegal.

Therefore as I mentioned in my original post it would be better to change the game so the cheats don't have an advantage by using scripts. Maybe only allow one attack and recall within a short time space and tweak the farming system.

 

[DeletedUser14385]

I will echo many of the voices that have spoken here today. This has been a debacle to say the least. I am with others, that someone getting banned in worlds that dont matter, but not in their active worlds. I just as Z, was told by someone who was actively using the bot, that their account was not touched at all and they had been using it religiously to do everything for them. This screams of a bad system of detection. I am one that is banned in one world but not in the other albeit mine is my active world..

I sympathize with the support team as I have been a mod before here with grep, they are understaffed, not paid enough for what they deal with, they are not given the tools needed to actually do their job and they have their own lives to deal with outside of being a Mod here. The epectations that Inno places on them is pretty bad.

With that being said, the lack of genuine responses has been disheartening. Using canned responses that the player base knows are canned responses for the sake of getting the ticket an answer is not acceptable customer service. The fact that "proof" is never given because they dont want to reveal their tactics is bogus BS. You can reveal what the evidence is, without disclosing how it was obtained. My guess is the Mods have no actual insight into the autodetection script and therefore they cant do anything about it.

I as many others think that these type of bans should be unattackable for at least 24 hours, so that the mods and players have plenty of time to appeal the decision. This way the Mods have time to actually investigate and players are not shredded when/if the ban is lifted.

I am saddened by what has happened, as I truely have enjoyed this game. I started back on the EN servers in 2010, and to see it end like this, is disappointing to say the least. I too will be most likely taking my money and time somewhere esle.

 

[DeletedUser16071]

Mods can speak up for what is right just like players but they have all chosen to completely ignore the situation or worse yet threaten more bans for giving an opinion that is not in line with Inno as we have seen above. Way to stand up and be the voice of Inno Lurks! You really gave everyone what they wanted to hear. These are paying customers being banned from what they have paid for and everyone from mods on up is doing their best to save face and hope the situation somehow disappears. There is absolutely no excuse for 36+ hours to have passed with nothing from Inno or their liaisons addressing the issue of why paying customers are being treated this way.

 

[DeletedUser15357]

Everyone, please remember to mail INNO themselves. info@innogames.com

My last post on it got put into hidden status to where only I could see it (by the MODs). THIS is how we're going to fix it. And if this post gets deleted, I'll simply join every world and MM every team in there about it. Sorry Gen 4 MODs, but it's time for you guys to step down, and leave.

 

[DeletedUser12999]

This is an excerpt from "Changelog 2.159" :
https://us.forum.grepolis.com/index.php?threads/changelog-2-159.11932/:

Dear Community,

On Wednesday March 21, 2018 Grepolis will be updated to version 2.159.

The most visible of changes improves the readability of the city list within the farming village overview. Furthermore we made some code adjustments to improve the situation with 3rd party scripts a bit and fixed some bugs along the way.

Some changes were introduced to the way the positioning of the user interface is determined.
This change should ensure that less issues arise with 3rd party scripts whenever we make smaller interface adjustments.
Disclaimer: Albeit us making some adjustments for your convenience, custom user scripts remain an unsupported, unofficial addition to the game and therefore continue to be used at own risk!

I don't know exactly how these things work but could maybe the changes made to make the scripts better be what caused the false positives?

I use some of the same approved add-ons that many of the banned players use. Why have I not been banned?

Why are players in multiple worlds only banned on select worlds and not all worlds? If you are using something I think you would always have it on.

Why is the number of players being banned so high all at once when people getting banned previously for the same reasons are few and far between?

Seems like if anyone responsible for implementing the banns asked themselves just one of these questions they would have held off on issuing them.

 

[Rodrk]

I'm not in this world but in reading through the thread, sad times are certainly upon us. As someone who has been a victim of much of this in past worlds, i can certainly relate. I think 2 of the most critical things mentioned here were Zhao's comments about commitment and HMZepher's comments about mods who don't understand the game (not to take anything away from everyone else's comments that are spot on).

See these two MASSIVE issues work hand in hand. The truth is that most mods first don't understand the game play like players do, but moreover, do not understand the commitment. When players get mad, sometimes we default to leaning on gold or the $ we've invested. But really, that has little to do with anything. The $ does not matter to most players, we gladly spend it.

It's the blatant disregard by mods for the COMMITMENT from the community of Grepolis players. The willing sacrifice of personal time, sleep, dare i say productivity at work etc. which when minimized by Mods/Inno really hurts. And they do it almost every time there is an issue by how they respond to support tickets. Every time my teammates and I have had an issue, the lackadaisical and/or unapologetic template response's really suck. Sorry for the inconvenience and other template garbage should never be sent to players of this game who work their butts off.

And yes it's a real time game, so why is there not real time support? Another great point by someone above.

If mods had a clue, they would understand the potential impact of a 1 hour attack-able ban, let alone multiple hours, days ect...

Sorry to jump on everyone's bandwagon here, but the players in this thread deserve the support of every player in the Grepolis community, blue or red.

Good Luck All

 

[Selectron]

I think everyone who was affected by this game error in banning should calculate how much money(gold) they have lost because of Inno's mistake. I believe Inno is responsible for repaying the players for losses that occurred because of a false banning. I hope a class action lawsuit wouldn't be necessary.

(And note, I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV. I just know that Inno should be responsible for damages since it was their mistake.)