They already have the default Apple popup UI, and since some people don't check their email (myself included), they could just have a popup saying they've been caught cheating, what they've done wrong, what they can do to to NOT get banned, and what will happen if they continue (temp ban/pot penalty/energy penalty/permaban).

There are a myriad of ways that GA could improve their customer service, and I feel that this approach is better, because no cheating detector is perfect, and no cheating detector is fool proof. Much like with Bliazzard and Linux, people are getting flagged as cheaters who aren't and those who do cheat are rarely caught. (For those of you who don't know, Blizzard irrevocably banned all Linux-using WoW players who used WINE for 'using an emulator'. WINE stands for 'Wine Is Not an Emulator'. They were completely sure of themselves that Warden, their anti-cheat software, was correct that they failed to notice that /every single linux user was immediately banned/. I was one of those players, and I can tell that GA is heading down the same path already).

In my opinion the reason people are getting more and more disrespectful is that there is no respect from GA towards us as the community. The best/easiest way to solve this is for GA to improve their communication to us.

The current ban system is a joke. If a player were a true cheater what does banning them actually do? They just create a new account and cheat again potentially learning how to better cheat in order to not get caught. You only hurt people who weren't purposely cheating or due to errors in your detection algorithm (if GA thinks their detection algorithm is full proof then they really have a lot to learn).

While GA have certainly added features and content over the past 6 months I think what most people have been annoyed about is the reduction in weekly events. In the beginning we were used to changes almost every week. That has been drastically reduced. The only response from GA was that they weren't meant to be regular occurrences and were for "special events". I'm not talking about the events like "take a picture", "tell your story", etc. etc. that simply bump up their Facebook status. Those are great for them and I understand their purpose but a simple "this week spirit X is worth more energy" or some such thing every few weeks.

The weekly events are small gestures that show they are still engaged in the game and take little to no effort on their part. It should be a slight configuration change in the server potentially with a restart. Small gestures make big affects in the community.

There are those of us who continue to play the game because it is fun but still believe that things need to be changed. I'm not ready to give up on GA but I'm also not ready to let go of the issue of bannings. I hope that the continued discourse on the forums of this issue will eventually stick in the brains of GA and that they will reconsider their angle on it. Realistically they have the most to lose from this situation. Players like Tomasso and Limbus are valuable to the game since long time active players make the game more fun and in turn increase the player population. A percentage of players will spend money on mana which means that larger populations produce more money to GA. Most of us may never spend money on the game but that doesn't mean our playing doesn't contribute to GA making money. That's the way the play for free model works, you need active populations to drive incentives for others to pay.

This is a social game yet GA has become less and less social with its own community.

I miss Limbus. Even if he was a cheater (allegedly). He was a great rival. I think future player bans should be handled by a nine person tribunal - three GA representatives, three mages from the bannned player's academy (two from the BG and one from outside the BG) and three mages from the opposing academy (two from the BG and one from outside the BG). Mages would need to be nominated by three mages in their BG or three mages generally for the outside BG mages and the banned player would get one veto. This framework could be refined but I think would generally work well and benefit the overall community and would likely yield just results.

Edited by Foxstar (July 9, 2012 20:16:25)