You Have Been Banned. Reason: Suspicious Activity

[Lord Nando]

I've been playing Dominations since sometime around spring 2015. I play on my phone (Galaxy SIII until last month, LG V20 now) and on Bluestacks/Droid4X through my PC at home. I'm a late stage British Atomic player and lately I've been grinding out those Amelia university upgrades for that sweet, sweet air unit space bonus. I have over 20k crowns, have done a ton of "offers" and have spent between $100 - $200 on the game since I started playing.

When I attempted to log into the game today, Jun 20 at around 10PM EST time, I was greeted with this message:

http://imgur.com/a/EqFCy

Earlier today at around 3PM EST, I played for about 20 minutes with no issues. I've thought about why the game would think I'd be performing "suspicious activity" and I think I know how this occurred.

The details are a bit foggy, but a few weeks ago, there was a Marco Polo offer/sale where you could trade some trade goods for stag lures. Each stag lure would cause 2 stags to appear, and as we all know, stags give 6 crowns each.

This offer was too good to pass up, so I used up all the trade goods I could to get 20+ stag lures. I used two or three of them and put my workers to work on a few upgrades. Sometime in the past two weeks, I had 6 workers available, so I decided to burn up my lures and get those crowns. I noticed that every time I'd harvest 4 - 8 stags in a row within 60 sec or so, the game would say I was having connection problems and kick me.

After a few minutes I got bored of logging back in and gave up, assigning my workers to do other tasks.

Today I had workers available again and decided to give it another try. I claimed a number of lures, somewhere around 5 or 6 I think? I wasn't paying much attention, I was in a hurry to get back to work and harvested the stags while waiting for some troops to train, then performed an attack and assigned my workers to some tasks, and logged out. This time, the game didn't "kick" me like the previous time, so I assumed whatever had been causing the issue was fixed.

I am now greeted by the "ban" message every time I attempt to log in. I think what happened is clear: there's some check in the game to prevent people from somehow cheating at getting "too many" stags at the same time. I believe the assumption for this check is that since stags only spawn 1 or 2 per 24 hour period, there's no way someone can harvest 6+ stags at once. If this occurs, the game must assume it to be "suspicious activity" and you get the ban hammer.

I'm not mad, just disappointed. I'm fairly certain this is why I was banned and I want to get reinstated because having 20+ stag lures is perfectly normal if someone got them through Marco Polo.

If any customer service reps are out there, please help! I'd like someone to look at my account and look into this.

If any playes are out there with a bunch of stag lures in inventory, I recommend you use them slowly, maybe 1 or 2 a day max, just in case.

LordNando

 

[Radzeer]

Many of us in the same boat check the other 2 threads on banning

 

[Lord Nando]

Radzeer, I'm very disappointed that we are all being blindly accused of cheating. The customer service reply to my inquiry is as follows:

Hi again and thank you for your patience, this is GM Kel and I'm sorry to hear about what happened. Upon checking the records of your account, the reason why your village was temporarily banned was due to the stag related exploit which is not because of the stag lure. Please know that the team performed an investigation on your account and due to this, your village was temporarily suspended and received some changes. Thank you and let us know if you have further question.

Regards,

Then, my reply:

Game Master Kel,


I *strongly* suggest you guys re-evaluate the criteria for deciding what is a "stag exploit" vs what is legitimate use of stag lures.

I have not performed any kind of stag exploit. I know with 100% certainty that I used multiple lures shortly minutes before receiving this ban.

If there is an exploit that can be accidentally triggered through the deployment of a dozen legitimately acquired stag lures, then either stag lures should be disabled or at least a message should be sent out to the community.

I have been playing this game for over two years, spending hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours building my village. To be accused of cheating is quite frankly disheartening and incredibly disappointing. Further, to be banned for legitimate use of a legitimately acquired in game item and then waved off and disregarded as a exploiter when bringing this issue to light stings very much and leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I sincerely hope enough people bring this issue up so that in-game support realizes this is a real problem affecting loyal players, not a some exploit being used by cheaters.

I request a second evaluation of my account, please.

-LordNando

I hope they realize what is going on: WE ARE NOT CHEATERS! Please, someone help!

 

[Empire]

TinSoldier Nb4powerup Many players have complained in the last couple of days about the stag lure. Can you please investigate? Thank you.

 

[RottPhiler]

Yeah, I hoard everything. I still have the bazooka tower in my inventory, as well as every single event reward I earned since the inventory was introduced. I wonder if I will get banned if I use them sometime in the future.

I'd used all my stag lures immediately though, since I wanted the crowns.

 

[heist]

Just wait until everyone gets banned for exploiting wolves in a few days.

 

[Skilladilla]

I had a lot of stag lures, around 160 total, and I didn't get ban. Also I couldn't use more than 2 lures (4 stags) at the same time, whenever I clicked on a third lure game popped broken connection window, so I just used 2 lures and kill them and repeat repeat repeat.

 

[Kaiser Shag]

I got around 400 crowns thanks to this event in a total legal way, and the game also kicked me because I used too many in a short time but for the moment I wasn't banned, I hope it will stay this way.

 

[Lord Nando]

I've received the following reply to my request for "re-investigation":

Hi there Fernando,

Thank you for writing back to us, this is Game Master RM of the DomiNations Support Team and I will be assisting you with your concern. Upon re investigation, we have found out and confirmed that you have used an exploit in the game that allows you to hunt excessive number of Stags and collect Crowns from them multiple times. As a result, you have been banned for 72 hours and your progress was modified to the period before you were using the said exploit.

Please note that all of our decisions and taken actions are final, and further inquiries regarding this matter will no longer be discussed.

Thanks for playing DomiNations! We hope that we have answered your inquiry with regards to this matter. Should you have any other concerns or reports please feel free to contact us again.

Regards,

In no way was I using an exploit. I deployed a handful of legitimately acquired stag lures. Each lure spawned two stags. Each stag was hunted and gave me six crowns. I was then banned for having the audacity to trip some kind of invisible anti-cheat mechanism which labeled me as a cheater. It's becoming clear to me that this first level of support is deaf to my complaints and will steadfastly stand by their determination that I was "cheating". This is very frustrating. What other unknown anti-cheat landmines are there in the game that I could accidentally trip tomorrow?

Is there no recourse? Can anyone beyond the first level of customer support take a look at how something like this can occur? Treatment like this makes one lose faith in the game very quickly.

 

[obsidi]

'adjusted grammar' .... like in vietnam; we need to kill them to keep them safe.
or in medicine ... the anaphylaxis isn't from pharmaceuticals; it's defined that way by law. it's your genetic inability to handle meds.
etc etc etc.
once someone commits to an adjusted grammar they sacrifice logic for rhetoric, and you need to just walk away.

irony: the stag lure reward was an apology for the night witch bug...
so now do they have to compensate for the apology for the bug?
comedy?

 

[TinSoldier]

We have begin lifting the bans on those who had tripped the Stag Lure Issue.
This had been an exploit in the past, and it is my best guess that security was increased recently around Stags.

I would like to appoligze to all players unable to get into the game. If you are still unable, please reach out to myself (here or on Discord TinSoldier#6808) or Nb4powerup so we can help get you back in.

 

[Lord Nando]

TinSoldier I'm still banned, help? I'd send you a private message but the system says that you don't allow private messages. I'm hesitant to post my player number on here, as I've heard it can be used by hackers to screw up people's accounts.

 

[TinSoldier]

Hi @Lord Nando

I'm sorry that my private messages haven't been set up yet.

I also agree that it's best practices to not post your number here. If you are still having a problem logging in, would you be able to contact me through Discord (TinSoldier#6808) or through Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/thebighugegames/) or Twitter (@BigHugeGames)?

 

[LordJestix]

When will you have PM abilities? Ive been wanting to pm you for a week now since its getting close to 2 weeks of my PMs sent to 2 other mods going unanswered.

 

[Krieg]

Nice gesture, TinSoldier. Acknowledging mistakes is the way to do it right.

 

[Lord Nando]

My account was finally unbanned, but was rolled back to a point roughly 4 days before the ban occurred. I lost 200k oil worth of Amelia upgrades and a bunch of other food/gold. I sent in a support ticket and I was reset the the appropriate point (just before the ban) and regained all the lost progress. They finally made it right. If anyone lost progress or is still banned, keep at it and they will help you out (eventually, haha).