Thousands of Hearthstone Players Banned For Using Bots

[roseofbattle]

Thousands of Hearthstone Players Banned For Using Bots

Blizzard states it will not tolerate cheating; this round of bans end in 2015.

Blizzard Entertainment announced it has banned thousands of Hearthstone players for using third-party programs that automate gameplay. The company states use of bots does not constitute fair play, and these thousands of players are banned from Hearthstone until an undisclosed date in 2015.

This round of bans appears to be akin to a harsh warning as 2015 is nearly two months away. However, Blizzard stated any accounts cheating will be banned permanently and without warning.

Bot software allows people to play the game endlessly in the background. This makes leveling up significantly easier. In August, the presence of bots in Hearthstone prompted the community manager to make a locked forum post [http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/forum/topic/13840004036] noting "a fun, fair, and competitive environment is at the very heart of the Hearthstone experience" and that using of third-party programs to automate gameplay is a violation of the company's Terms of Use.

"We're committed to creating a fun and rewarding environment for our players, and we will continue to closely monitor activities within Hearthstone and take appropriate action against cheating in any form, as outlined in our Terms of Use," Blizzard stated yesterday. "From this point on, accounts found to be cheating will be permanently closed without warning."

Blizzard asks people who think they have encountered a bot to report it to Blizzard's Hacks team.

Source: Blizzard [http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/16481223]


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[Fappy]

While I resent Hearthstone's business model I'd never consider cheating to circumvent it. Truth is this is a competitive game, so you're not just making things more convenient for yourself. Problem with that argument, however, is that instead of using bots you can just spend tons of cash on cards

:/

 

[Atmos Duality]

If it's preferable to automate a game, there's something wrong with it.
Of course, without the time-wasting bullshit, the game couldn't be made "free".

 

[Falterfire]

If it's preferable to automate a game, there's something wrong with it.
Of course, without the time-wasting bullshit, the game couldn't be made "free".

I'd only agree if a majority of players are cheating. Every game I've ever played has had cheaters of some variety or another, so either they're all broken or some people are just going to cheat no matter what the game is.

 

[Zato-1]

Bots aren't just a way to circumvent Blizzard's business model of paying to accelerate the expansion of your card library; those bots have to play against someone, and those people who have to play bots (and it's readily apparent when you are fighting one) tend to find the experience rather frustrating. If I'm going to be playing against bots, there's plenty of single player games I'd rather be playing over Hearthstone.

To put the cheating into perspective, if you only log in to complete the quests that refresh every day (of which you can accumulate up to 3 before you stop gaining new quests, until you complete some of the ones you already have), you will gain ~70 gold a day this way; a card pack costs 100 gold, and starting an Arena run costs 150 gold. Bots will also gain the ~60 gold from the daily quest they complete, and will then gain 100 extra gold from spamming normal games; you gain 10 gold for every 3 victories from games vs. other players, up to a cap of 100 gold a day gained this way. So we're talking ~160 gold gained a day for bots vs. ~70 gold earned a day by players who log in every day but don't play for hours on end, which I consider to be your average Hearthstone player; the difference in gold income and therefore card acquisition rate is huge.

For months, us legitimate Hearthstone players felt like idiots for playing by the rules while we were surrounded by bots who broke the rules for massive profit and got away with it. This is very happy news indeed.

 

[This Place is DEAD]

I rage-quit Hearthstone after they "nerfed" that card drawing bird for the hunter to manacost 5. I hate games that punish their players for lack of balance... from one day to the other, my favourite deck didn't work anymore, while obvious bots and scammers (starting a game and stalling it for you to concede out of frustration) had fun "playing".

I sunk some money in cards and arena tickets because I liked the game but didn't have the time to grind all the gold to make it fun. A dead investment... maybe I'll reconsider playing after this bot purge... if I can overcome the sadness when I look at my hunter deck.

 

[Neverhoodian]

Maybe I'm just out of the loop here, but can someone explain the appeal of cheating at an online card game? I would think aimbotting/wallhacking/speedhacking in an FPS would be far more appealing to the sort of people that resort to such things.

EDIT: Answered for me, thanks.

 

[Zato-1]

Maybe I'm just out of the loop here, but can someone explain the appeal of cheating at an online card game? I would think aimbotting/wallhacking/speedhacking in an FPS would be far more appealing to the sort of people that resort to such things.

I already answered that in my own post. There's a 10g reward for every 3 PvP games you win, up to a cap of 100g worth of these rewards per day. A Hearthstone card pack costs 100 in-game gold. So essentially botting nets you an extra card pack every day, which greatly accelerates the growth of your card collection for free.

I rage-quit Hearthstone after they "nerfed" that card drawing bird for the hunter to manacost 5. I hate games that punish their players for lack of balance... from one day to the other, my favourite deck didn't work anymore, while obvious bots and scammers (starting a game and stalling it for you to concede out of frustration) had fun "playing".

I sunk some money in cards and arena tickets because I liked the game but didn't have the time to grind all the gold to make it fun. A dead investment... maybe I'll reconsider playing after this bot purge... if I can overcome the sadness when I look at my hunter deck.

First point is, Starving Buzzard was very OP. In a single player game it can be fine to let it slide, but in a competitive multiplayer game it just made everyone sick and tired of playing against overpowered Hunters over and over again.

Second point is, Hunters are still very much a viable class after the Buzzard nerf. They're just not far and away the best one. But don't take it from me, take it from this article on a specialist Hearthstone site that makes tier lists for Hearthstone classes every now and then based on the opinions of 20+ Hearthstone pros:
http://www.liquidhearth.com/forum/hearthstone/467532-power-rank-classes-pre-hunter-nerf

What do they say? That before the Buzzard nerf, Hunter was very overpowered, and was by far the best class in the game. In a competitive multiplayer game, you can't just let that be.

 

[VanQ]

Maybe I'm just out of the loop here, but can someone explain the appeal of cheating at an online card game? I would think aimbotting/wallhacking/speedhacking in an FPS would be far more appealing to the sort of people that resort to such things.

Like was said in the article, people do it to level up and earn gold in the background. So they don't have to personally grind away game after game and waste countless hours doing so. Which to be fair, is understandable considering how frustrating it is to level up and earn gold in Hearthstone. I still quit because it required far more hours than I could possibly manage or a buttload of disposable income to stay competitive.

 

[This Place is DEAD]

First point is, Starving Buzzard was very OP. In a single player game it can be fine to let it slide, but in a competitive multiplayer game it just made everyone sick and tired of playing against overpowered Hunters over and over again.

Second point is, Hunters are still very much a viable class after the Buzzard nerf. They're just not far and away the best one. But don't take it from me, take it from this article on a specialist Hearthstone site that makes tier lists for Hearthstone classes every now and then based on the opinions of 20+ Hearthstone pros:
http://www.liquidhearth.com/forum/hearthstone/467532-power-rank-classes-pre-hunter-nerf

What do they say? That before the Buzzard nerf, Hunter was very overpowered, and was by far the best class in the game. In a competitive multiplayer game, you can't just let that be.

I absolutely believe you when you say hunter was ovepowered and had to be nerfed. And I confess that my rage was purely rage out of egoistical motives. My problem is that a overpowered mechanic like that should have been nerfed during beta, the Buzzard was a core set card. If they had adjusted him (like in the first nerf, when they made him 2/1 istead of 2/2) carefully to 3 or 4 mana, it would have been ok with me. But nerfing a card with 3 additional "to play" mana is the admission of complete blindness in the design team. I wasn't angry at the fact my favourite deck didn't work anymore but at the clumsiness of the developers that gave me time to fall in love with the Buzzard and then killed it.

 

[Janaschi]

I agree that Hunters were pretty OP with the original buzzard. But there is a problem, in that they nerfed the buzzard too much... Hunters have a lot of ways to thin out your own deck, yet we have essentially nothing to cultivate hand size throughout the game now. 5 mana with low health means it will only be played in the late game (at least 8 mana available), and if you are not set up to run a buzzard/hounds combo, then there will be little payout unless the other player has really backed themselves into a corner with no board-control/removal. Which is almost never that late into the game.

Every other class has low mana card draws, that do not require much of anything to pull off (that includes Warriors, as they have way too many cards to feed into Battle Rage), so the nerf was pretty devastating to us Hunters, as we struggle against players with full hands.

*Warrior - Battle Rage (2 mana)
*Priest - Thoughtsteal (3 mana)
*Paladin - Divine Favour (3 mana)
*Warlock - Hero power (2 mana)
*Mage - Arcane Intellect (3 mana)
*Rogue - Not even going to list theirs off, as there are way too many, for as low as 1 mana costs, with their big one being 7 mana.

 

[Zato-1]

First point is, Starving Buzzard was very OP. In a single player game it can be fine to let it slide, but in a competitive multiplayer game it just made everyone sick and tired of playing against overpowered Hunters over and over again.

Second point is, Hunters are still very much a viable class after the Buzzard nerf. They're just not far and away the best one. But don't take it from me, take it from this article on a specialist Hearthstone site that makes tier lists for Hearthstone classes every now and then based on the opinions of 20+ Hearthstone pros:
http://www.liquidhearth.com/forum/hearthstone/467532-power-rank-classes-pre-hunter-nerf

What do they say? That before the Buzzard nerf, Hunter was very overpowered, and was by far the best class in the game. In a competitive multiplayer game, you can't just let that be.

I absolutely believe you when you say hunter was ovepowered and had to be nerfed. And I confess that my rage was purely rage out of egoistical motives. My problem is that a overpowered mechanic like that should have been nerfed during beta, the Buzzard was a core set card. If they had adjusted him (like in the first nerf, when the made him 2/1 istead of 2/2) carefully to 3 or 4 mana, it would have been ok with me. But nerfing a card with 3 additional "to play" mana is the admission of complete blindness in the design team. I wasn't angry at the fact my favourite deck didn't work anymore but at the clumsiness of the developers that gave me time to fall in love with the Buzzard and then killed it.

Hm. The reasoning that the developers themselves offered is that one of the things that they value in Hearthstone is a feeling of stability; they'd much rather sit back and let players find counters to powerful cards and decks than to step in all the time and nerf the seemingly overpowered card du jour. As a result, they prefer to be really cautious when it comes to nerfing cards. Were they overly cautious with Buzzard? Probably, and I agree with you that they took too long. I'm just offering the Hearthstone dev team's take on the issue here.

Hunter is still a strong class- in the most recent high-level tournament where each player had to bring 4 decks, one from each of 4 different classes, 7/8 players chose Hunter as one of their 4 classes:
http://www.hearthpwn.com/news/662-battle-of-the-best-deck-lists-versus-series-spiffy

Buzzard itself isn't very popular at the moment, however.

 

[Zato-1]

If it's preferable to automate a game, there's something wrong with it.
Of course, without the time-wasting bullshit, the game couldn't be made "free".

Pretty much this right here...
If someone would rather not play your game...then you have gone astray.

What if someone plays the game, but leaves a bot running while they're at work? That way, they have extra cards to play with in the limited time they have for playing the actual game. You're assuming people were botting _instead_ of playing, when the only point of botting was to have more cards for when you do play (or to sell accounts with a bunch of cards unlocked to other people).

 

[kajinking]

Oh please tell me this was accompanied by a wave a rage filled fourm posts by the cheaters calling the bans "bulls**t" and talking about how terrible the game is and how Blizzard has sold out or whatever. Those type of posts are my favorite part of these ban waves in games.

 

[BoogieManFL]

You can only cheat and get advantages by giving Blizzard money, duh.

 

[JSRevenge]

I rage-quit Hearthstone after they "nerfed" that card drawing bird for the hunter to manacost 5. I hate games that punish their players for lack of balance... from one day to the other, my favourite deck didn't work anymore, while obvious bots and scammers (starting a game and stalling it for you to concede out of frustration) had fun "playing".

I sunk some money in cards and arena tickets because I liked the game but didn't have the time to grind all the gold to make it fun. A dead investment... maybe I'll reconsider playing after this bot purge... if I can overcome the sadness when I look at my hunter deck.

The hunter deck was as broken as the bot problem. It is frustrating, however, to build up an entire deck around beast cards, including buying supporting cards for constructed, just to only be able to refund the nerfed cards for full value. It's not like I can refund every beast bought at full dust cost.

 

[heroicbob]

it probably didnt help that the most effective decks basically just rush the opposing hero down while ignoring their minions so they would be pretty easy to automate

 

[malnin]

I agree that Hunters were pretty OP with the original buzzard. But there is a problem, in that they nerfed the buzzard too much... Hunters have a lot of ways to thin out your own deck, yet we have essentially nothing to cultivate hand size throughout the game now. 5 mana with low health means it will only be played in the late game (at least 8 mana available), and if you are not set up to run a buzzard/hounds combo, then there will be little payout unless the other player has really backed themselves into a corner with no board-control/removal. Which is almost never that late into the game.

Every other class has low mana card draws, that do not require much of anything to pull off (that includes Warriors, as they have way too many cards to feed into Battle Rage), so the nerf was pretty devastating to us Hunters, as we struggle against players with full hands.

*Warrior - Battle Rage (2 mana)
*Priest - Thoughtsteal (3 mana)
*Paladin - Divine Favour (3 mana)
*Warlock - Hero power (2 mana)
*Mage - Arcane Intellect (3 mana)
*Rogue - Not even going to list theirs off, as there are way too many, for as low as 1 mana costs, with their big one being 7 mana.

You know hunters have flare right? A one mana drop that draws and removes all enemy secrets(not even friendly secrets) and stealth, and with the heath boost to buzzard it's hard to kill with cheap spells making snake trap much much better, it wasn't really nerfed that much just can't be used with way over powered combo's so cheaply anymore.

Edit: I forgot to mention they also have tracking, 1 mana drop, pick one the top three cards in your deck, can hurt but usually doesn't.

 

[Zato-1]

it probably didnt help that the most effective decks basically just rush the opposing hero down while ignoring their minions so they would be pretty easy to automate

lol, you clearly don't know much about Hearthstone at the competitive level if you're saying this. Easily more than half of the decks at Legend rank atm are slow, control oriented decks where decision-making is very nuanced and where fighting for control of the board without overreaching is the name of the game. By contrast, the majority of bots are Shaman decks full of minions who hit a glass ceiling around Rank 5 or so (new players start at Rank 25, and you climb through the ranks all the way up to Rank 1 and possibly Legend rank after that, if you're that good and perseverant).

The decks where you just rush the opposing hero down while ignoring their minions are popular in weaker ranks because they're cheap to build, and fast and easy to play. But they are a minority in higher-level play, only serving to keep slow decks in check when they become too greedy trying to stuff their decks full of more powerful, expensive cards than their opponents.