This is about the ban of a F2P player wanting a safer, fun and transparent gaming experience. AGS has been handling bots and RMTs poorly in the past and now more and more innocent players are getting banned by their “specialists” for bussing or in this case for market flipping. Sadly, there is no player support to listen to his plight and he’s most likely not the first player left in this situation. The lack of efficacy of the appeal system is leaving players in terrible situations so this post’s objective is for the community to get some visibility on a real situation, to hopefully get a change for the better for many others in the future. This is narrating Bagelzz’s point of view on the situation and the journey he’s going through, and I am posting this on his behalf since players receiving a suspension are no longer able to post on the forums to share their point of view with the community.
Quick context:
I’m a f2p player (except for battle passes and character expansion tickets) and I’m proud of it. I grew up on games like RuneScape, so paying real money for gear has never made any sense to me and it doesn’t provide me satisfaction to do so. Around 2 months ago, I started to realize that I was falling behind other top players especially for content like GvG so I tried to find a way to keep up with them.
Legal F2P Farming of a market enjoyer:
I have done quite a lot of market flipping (i.e., buying items when their price is low and selling them when they’re higher) in RuneScape so I tried to give it a shot. After some research, I realized there was a consistent way to make profit with the auction house, even though it was insanely grindy. Quick example, low level T3 gems (LVL 2 to 5 usually) are cheaper than they’re supposed to be. If you keep buying low level gems and fusing them into higher level gems, you make profit.
An example with accurate current numbers: Level 5 gems are around 1720 each and level 9 CDR gems are around 150k (more profit if you hit a level 9 DMG gem). So, after removing the 5% tax, you can quickly realize that this is a 3k profit from buying 81 level 5 gems and fusing them into a level 9.
Banned for being F2P:
At that point in time, nothing bad happened to me. I was grinding my ass off in the auction house for extra gold while playing the game like everyone else until today. A suspension dropped on my account for Cheating: Real-Money transactions. I appealed the matter of course, basically providing all the information I did above, only to be told that their “specialist”, aka a bot detection system most likely, detected a RMT transaction for over 600k gold and that it was merited.
The ban was effective immediately until March 2023 and AGS will deduct 600k worth of gold from my account. I tried appealing many times but got nothing except automated messages by bots. My account is 100% clean, no RMTs, no suspicious trades, every single one of my transactions can be checked, it’s all buying low level gems and selling level 9 gems for the cheapest price on the market so I can go on to flip more.
The Convenient Ban All System:
The whole point of this post is to draw the attention of a Game Master or a real human specialist working at AGS concerning this situation. I assumed the 600k gold detected by the “specialist” was from 4 level 9 gems I sold, and were bought with ‘dirty gold’. That is the only way the math could check out. It is really disappointing at this point that the situation is as follows.
This no clarity banning system ruins the experience for genuine players, the so called ‘dirty gold’ inflates the market as well. Now it’s not even safe for anyone to sell things in the auction house at normal prices without taking the risk of getting flagged by a “specialist”? How do sellers know if the gold is dirty? Innocent players are getting banned for no real valid reason because AGS has no working solution to ‘Dirty Gold’ floating in the game. This is the convenient way of eliminating the ‘dirty gold’ they have no control over.
This matter is simply getting worse and AGS will have to take this matter seriously if they don’t want to risk losing all their loyal players.
What’s legal turns illegal in seconds:
Players fear bussing and selling/flipping things nowadays (which are both completely legal) because of the risk of getting banned by a botting system that’s faulty and an appeal system that’s negligent. If bussing and flipping is getting riskier because of the faulty system, what’s going to be next on the list? Players shouldn’t be living in fear because the items they try to sell might be bought with dirty gold.
Closing:
All I want to do is grind my ass off in the auction house and in the game to earn my gear and compete at the highest level in this game. So, if this post could get attention from someone like Roxx, I would be forever grateful. All the transactions that were ever made on my account can be checked, I have nothing to hide. I just want this community to be safer and more rewarding for people who play the game fairly.
Thank you,
Bagelzz
