Xisix is using a new account to avoid being banned, as he openly admitted to using a bot - but he made some great and very realistic points. In fact, his two posts are probably the best ones in this entire thread.
There's another thing I want to point out:
Using a bot during the big Christmas and New Year events has become a logical, calculated risk because of the short ban duration. Just think about it - in one or two days, a player can gain more levels, collect more Fragments, and boost more attributes than in an entire year.
Player save money, they save time. And for what? A one month vacation from the game? Where do I sign?
In the past, the rules were clear.
It was written something like: first insult = 3-day ban, second insult = 2-week ban, third insult = 1-month ban.
The most serious offenses were multi-accounting, clones, and bot usage - punishable by one year to permanent bans.
But now, the rules aren't so clear anymore.
For some silly, not even necessarily offensive text, just innocent trolling, that someone finds upsetting and reports, you might get a week or two ban. If the text is on a clan webpage, the whole clan's administration can be banned for that duration.
Meanwhile, someone who gains 200 levels in two days and with that really ruin other players gaming experience gets what? A one month vacation? Again, where do I sign?
I understand that long-term bans are problematic. Earlier I mentioned the most heavily punished offenses in the past:
1. Clones
With server merges, that's not really enforceable anymore - more or less irrelevant.
2. Multi-user accounts
Due to the IPv4 shortage, most ISPs now use dynamic IPs. Mobile providers often put users behind NAT, meaning many users share the same IP. Plus, players today use multiple networks - home, mobile, work, hotel... It's nearly impossible to enforce multi-user bans without a ton of false positives.
3. Bots/Scripts
I get why there are no more long-term or permanent bans for this. Bitefight is an old game, not extremely popular, and Gameforge isn't a charity institution. For the game to continue, it needs to be profitable. But if you ban the few remaining active players who still spend real money, kill all the competition, there's not much left of the server. Ban someone for a year, and they probably won't return.
It's a crappy situation, isn't it?
It doesn't really hurt anyone's experience if a player uses a bot to spend those 186 daily points in the grotto or something like that. That said, I think harsher punishments, enough to make people think twice instead of treating it as a calculated risk, should focus on two things:
Stories and the Christmas/New Year events.
Because as I said before, in those events, cheating is actually worth it - even if you get banned afterward. And that sucks.
Even if you've despised cheaters your whole Bitefight career, when everyone around you is gaining 50 (or 200) levels per day during those events, you're left with two options: join the party or fall behind. And after all the money and time you've invested in the game, it feels a bit silly to just fall behind. So there's that.
