Hello there!

I've seen a lot of people being recently temporarily ban for 30min because they played with internet off, is this really happening?

Playing with airplane mode or internet offline doesn't really brings any big advantage, people usually do to check how many coins would been spent in mazes, or to check rewards before hand, rewards that doesn't change because of that might I add.

And this is so wide spread and kinda of a innocent tactic that even the mods here that are so restricted with rules and stuff use it openly, just like everyone else. Why are they banning only now for that?

Besides, I took a quick read on the rules, and didn't find anything saying that playing with no internet is a violation.

But well, that's just my thoughts, would like to hear what you guys think about it and if that temporary ban happened to you (it didn't happen to me yet)

While I agree with you using AP mode from the point of view of the devs could actually be seen as a disadvantage to them. I am hoping that they are not testing to eventually get rid of AP mode but unfortunately it looks like this is where they are going with it. After all think about it, we use AP mode to test whether we will make a move or not down specific paths and I am sure the data mners probably use it too. However I think SP will end up hurting themselves more than they think. After all if they take AP mode away from us as they'v done other features it will change how I play and not in the way they think. This will not encourage me to buy coins or moves to use without ap mode. It will in fact encourage me to hoard my coins and moves and move less.

And that is my 2 cent on the subject.

FYI I tried testing it earlier with one of my gaming accounts and I did not get a ban, I wonder if they are testing specific regions or other factors.

@nynaevelan Not sure how are they criteria either. I'm from Brazil. I saw a few people complaining about the ban in facebook and 3 or 4 of my guild mates reported the ban as well. It lasts for 30 min as first incident, not sure if the time increases for reoccurrences.

Btw, all of the people I'm mentioning are from Brazil as well.

It appears the bans are happening when logging back in after playing offline for awhile (30 minutes?), and logging back in with an unusual amount of rewards, loot, or even special moves in the match-3 (like multiple stars).

This would also explain why I was unable to get into the game after I ran the whole tower (island).

@amanda-wallace But if you play offline e logoff, nothing on your account will change. Everything will be the same as when you hit offline

@leafar-rop said in About airplane mode:

@nynaevelan Not sure how are they criteria either. I'm from Brazil. I saw a few people complaining about the ban in facebook and 3 or 4 of my guild mates reported the ban as well. It lasts for 30 min as first incident, not sure if the time increases for reoccurrences.

Btw, all of the people I'm mentioning are from Brazil as well.

Hmm I wonder if that is where they are limiting the test area at. I've seen the complaints in fb also but I did not research to determine what they had in common.

@amanda-wallace said in About airplane mode:

It appears the bans are happening when logging back in after playing offline for awhile (30 minutes?), and logging back in with an unusual amount of rewards, loot, or even special moves in the match-3 (like multiple stars).

This would also explain why I was unable to get into the game after I ran the whole tower (island).

You might be on to something there. Did you ever get any popups about a ban or anything?

@nynaevelan Maybe is the amount of time people spend in AP mode? Like Amanda suggested, like for example, more than 30min = ban or something like that

@leafar-rop said in About airplane mode:

@amanda-wallace But if you play offline e logoff, nothing on your account will change. Everything will be the same as when you hit offline

The ones who reported it to you did they save their progress from ap??

@leafar-rop In my case, for the tower, I ran a path to the top and then tried to reconnect. I was then unable to enter the game for about an hour. The same thing happened to a few more in this forum and was talked about in the last tower even topic.

What I've seen on reddit is some are using ap mode to make a bunch of moves (some creating 5, 6, 7 stars) and trying to reconnect - and being banned.

It appears to not be a problem if not staying in ap mode for < 30 minutes.

@amanda-wallace I can't see why that would be a problem for the tower, since the moves from there never changes. If you get 3-1-2 first time, it'll always be 3-1-2 no matter how many times you restart the game or the internet

Now, the puzzle, I'm not fully sure how it works, if the new pieces are random or always the same, if they are random, trying to get 5,6, 7 stars does kinda feel a little extreme

@nynaevelan Never received a ban notice. I don't believe @GemSpender did either.

@amanda-wallace My guild mates did receive a ban notice saying: "You've been temporarily banned because of a violation of our fair game policy."

@nynaevelan They did save their progress

@leafar-rop said in About airplane mode:

@amanda-wallace My guild mates did receive a ban notice saying: "You've been temporarily banned because of a violation of our fair game policy."

Did they do anything else that would violate the FPP because I do not remember seeing anything in it about AP mode.

@leafar-rop

For the tower, I would’ve been offline for > 30 minutes, then trying to reconnect with all the items I picked up during that time.

I honestly think this is the trigger.

@nynaevelan said in About airplane mode:

@leafar-rop said in About airplane mode:

@amanda-wallace My guild mates did receive a ban notice saying: "You've been temporarily banned because of a violation of our fair game policy."

Did they do anything else that would violate the FPP because I do not remember seeing anything in it about AP mode.

I didn't see anything as well. And no, they are just really bad on puzzle kkkk, so they tried a little hard with AP mode, but nothing crazy. And most of them are middle-age woman, they are not really the kind that makes wrong things in games

No, i was UNABLE To log back into my game at the time and panic.

I think I was using air plane mode too long that it kind of reset my game to where it was before I was using the coins (for the tower).

Seeing that might be the case, I am using air plane mode and it does not kick me out of the game at all.

Sorry about bumping an old topic but with regards to the recent SP stance on Airplane mode, can it be still used for minor stuff? (Checking eggs, Runner Island..etc within 5 to 10 mins) ?

Or is using airplane completely outlawed and there is no more room for maneuvers? (This doesnt mean using puzzle island offline mode for 30 mins and loading in one shot, or something along those lines)

@lordalex said in About airplane mode:

Sorry about bumping an old topic but with regards to the recent SP stance on Airplane mode, can it be still used for minor stuff? (Checking eggs, Runner Island..etc within 5 to 10 mins) ?

Or is using airplane completely outlawed and there is no more room for maneuvers? (This doesnt mean using puzzle island offline mode for 30 mins and loading in one shot, or something along those lines)

It is usable as long as you stay under the 30 minute window. Until we hear differently from SP, stay under 30 minutes per session.

@lordalex It is safe until you do not save the progress. For everything else I would keep it as short as possible.

My last instance last week, I forgot i was still in AP mode and maybe 20-30 minutes later, it forced a restart and the ban popped up. I was doing the entire maze during that and it reverted me back to prior to before AP mode, which was my last runner island run. I know this because i had 5 runner stamps when i logged back in and i always use them up. Do my 5 Runner stamps and 22k maze coins returned, meaning my progress during all of AP mode was not saved. Hope that clears that.

@bettina-löffler said in About airplane mode:

@lordalex It is safe until you do not save the progress. For everything else I would keep it as short as possible.

To confirm, this is the case after their most recent update to the Fair Play Guidelines?

@amanda-wallace said in About airplane mode:

@bettina-löffler said in About airplane mode:

@lordalex It is safe until you do not save the progress. For everything else I would keep it as short as possible.

To confirm, this is the case after their most recent update to the Fair Play Guidelines?

@amanda-wallace said in About airplane mode:

@bettina-löffler said in About airplane mode:

@lordalex It is safe until you do not save the progress. For everything else I would keep it as short as possible.

To confirm, this is the case after their most recent update to the Fair Play Guidelines?

No. They updated the Guidelines because of the missuse of ap mode and the bans because of that. I think nobody thought that players would use it that way.

@bettina-löffler

I totally agree no one imagined that lvl of abuse. I was shocked myself seeing screens of players with 6, 7 stars in the match 3. Someone always has to push the limit and risk ruining it for all

I guess what I want to clarify is the official forums mods opinion on ap mode in the future. The use of the word "recommended" in the updated FPG could suggest mild use of ap mode for short periods of time.

I myself came here first almost a year ago to try and determine if it’s use was acceptable. I saw many posts where the mods spoke of using it for a SLIGHT advantage, nothing like how far it’s gone now though.

Over in Reddit, that same use is now under consideration... to still promote the mild use of it in the future, or to consider it a hack/cheat.

@amanda-wallace As I am a player like you I can just tell you what I decided for myself. I am still using it to check waiting times for quests for example. But I do not save the progress. So it will not influence the game in any way. I didn`t use it for the runner island because I dont want to risk a ban. Everyone has to decide him- or herself. I wont say " yes use it for 15 minutes" and be blamed later when people get a ban.

@bettina-löffler said in About airplane mode:

@amanda-wallace As I am a player like you I can just tell you what I decided for myself. I am still using it to check waiting times for quests for example. But I do not save the progress. So it will not influence the game in any way. I didn`t use it for the runner island because I dont want to risk a ban. Everyone has to decide him- or herself. I wont say " yes use it for 15 minutes" and be blamed later when people get a ban.

I am with @Bettina-Löffler on this. Prior to today I used AP in only a few situations. They are:

1. Temp Quests - used to determine cooldowns, costs and rewards - progress never saved.
2. Tower islands - used to determine wheel spins - progress rarely saved
3. Runner islands - progress saved most times, but used only for 1-3 runs.
4. Tree of Life - when I am too lazy to look up how long it will take a dragon to summon, recall or empower - progress never saved

There might have been other times but I cannot think of them right now so they must not have been used too often. The only usage I am concerned with is #3. I have not decided yet given the change to the FPP if I am going to change my usage for #3 but I can give up using it for #2 and since I never save for #1 or #4 I do not mind giving those up. If I do decide to continue using it and I plan to save my progress I do think I will shorten the time periods of its use to ensure I do not go over 30 minutes nor that it will save too many rewards to generate any types of flags to my account. I've put too much time and money into my game in order to risk it being flagged or banned.

But as @Bettina-Löffler I am not sure why you are looking for us mods or anyone to give you all "permission" to use or not use AP. As with most things in life I say make your own decision, as you are the one taking the risks you are the one who will have to live with the consequences of your actions. As we will as well.

I'm also a player who uses AP mode sparingly.
For tower islands, to check if I have enough spins to progress where I want. If I do then it's no problem to log out without saving and then spin normally to get where I want to go.
For runner islands. Here I find AP mode enormously helpful, and do save after a successful flight, by which I mean over 100 pinwheels. If people use AP mode for this then I don't understand why you wouldn't save after each successful run, as a second that was bad would require doing both over again. And the rewards for one run are small enough that I wouldn't think it would trigger an alert.
I know of other ways to bend the game to a player's or alliance's benefit that i think are similarly questionable, but technically don't break existing rules.

@Nynaevelan @Bettina-Löffler

Than you so much for your responses. My intentions have never been to try and put you guys in a difficult position.

I finally get it

@susan-mclaughlin said in About airplane mode:

I know of other ways to bend the game to a player's or alliance's benefit that i think are similarly questionable, but technically don't break existing rules.

please do tell.

@apoli said in About airplane mode:

@susan-mclaughlin said in About airplane mode:

I know of other ways to bend the game to a player's or alliance's benefit that i think are similarly questionable, but technically don't break existing rules.

please do tell.

EEEKK !!!
( plug’n ears ... )

i find its dangerous to make "using" airplane mode a bannable offense.

i find its a nice property of this game to keep working even if you have a spotty internet connection. thats one of its strengths compared to others (i often hear players of clash royale or brawl stars swear when they lose internet during a ride, while dragon city doesnt care as long as you reconnect eventually).

i dont want to live with the fear of getting banned because my next overland trip is trough areas with bad connection.

what they should do instead is remove situations where this can really break the game, and i think they basically already did it. you cannot open chests offline any more, you also cant start breeding. because these were points where looking ahead really changed the game. but running a path because you're too lazy to do the maths beforehand? who does that hurt? its a game, its supposed to be more fun than work.

also if they really feel that they dont want people to play offline, they should code it into the game. i find it weird to punish people for doing stuff which the game allows them to do. living in fear is worse than just not being able to do it. but as i said before, being able to play offline is a strength of this game.

in short, my ranking of possible behaviors of this game are:

1. allow offline play, make sure that "abuse" of that brings no game changing advantages (thats how it is/was).
2. prevent offline play.
3. really bad: punish people for stuff the game allows, make them live in fear. (thats what this thread seems to be discussing).

i applaud that one of the regular players here who has a good standing with SP has spoken about this ( I meant apoli off course).

Yes many of my country men/women play this game even if they don't have as much expendable income. So, being loyal fans of the game but living in a spotty internet capable country is not our fault. It is because we live in those countries - so don't take away the game from us because we don't have 247 very good internet connection.

I don't know if this is the right place to say this but I got a temporary ban yesterday... Probably for using AP mode to check my League opponents. But I used it for only 3 minutes! My God, I am scared now. Can this happen again? ️

Some players told me that getting banned prevents participation in heroic races, alliance chests and chats; MP is also reduced to 0. But none of these happened to me, I can still progess in the race. Are there several types of ban?

I am on lap 16. Another ban at this stage and I will lose the Titan.

@anurag-ghosh said in ***Heroic Race, July 23 - Aug 3,2020***:

I don't know if this is the right place to say this but I got a temporary ban yesterday... Probably for using AP mode to check my League opponents. But I used it for only 3 minutes! My God, I am scared now. Can this happen again? ️

Some players told me that getting banned prevents participation in heroic races, alliance chests and chats; MP is also reduced to 0. But none of these happened to me, I can still progess in the race. Are there several types of ban?

I am on lap 16. Another ban at this stage and I will lose the Titan.

This is just my opinion so do not take this as anything official. To me there seems to be two distinctions of bans. One which is used for using cheats and hacks, they can be either temporary or permanent. And this kind will result in blocks from the social features like the arenas, races and alliances. The second is the temp bans for AP mode. So far these seem to be a short time period and it does not affect your ability to participate in social features. Now here is where I think it gets tricky with AP mode. The community opinion seems to be that you should keep your use of it under 30 minutes for each usage. However I would not recommend using it in the arenas as this could be seen as "cheating", regardless of the time period you use it. After all you could just use AP mode to pick all the players you can win against and it would advance you much higher up in the arena rankings. I don't know if SP has done something to ban users who do this or not but personally I think they should. I also would not recommend using AP mode at all during races. I would avoid doing any actions that could potentially get you banned during a race and could cost you the ability to earn the heroic.

FYI will all that typed, I will create a separate topic for AP mode discussions, if one does not already exist, and move these over to that one.

@Nynaevelan Thank you for clearing my doubts. Is it possible I might get banned again? I will stop using AP mode during races as you said. I guess the devs are aggressively tracking us now.

Speaking of hacks/cheats, I saw a pretty unique High Relentless dragon in the Leagues. That dragon critical hit my High Positivity with a PURE attack! How is that possible? None of its elements is pure. I naturally lost that fight. I am sure it was hacked. Why am I seeing a hacker in a social feature like League battle?

@anurag-ghosh said in About airplane mode:

@Nynaevelan Thank you for clearing my doubts. Is it possible I might get banned again? I will stop using AP mode during races as you said. I guess the devs are aggressively tracking us now.

Speaking of hacks/cheats, I saw a pretty unique High Relentless dragon in the Leagues. That dragon critical hit my High Positivity with a PURE attack! How is that possible? None of its elements is pure. I naturally lost that fight. I am sure it was hacked. Why am I seeing a hacker in a social feature like League battle?

Anything is possible, I do not know what triggers it or how often they check. As to the hackers, as fast as they find and ban them, more pop up.

nice good ok

Hi everybody,

I just got banned for (I guess) 30 min for violating the fair play rules.
This is absolutely not cool. I am in a speed lap in the current heroic race and this ruined my "schedule".

I was NOT using AP mode! Definitly not.
And I am very sure that my internet connection was good. Actually sitting in the same room as the WLAN router.

I was just feeding dragons for the heroic race, when the game told me to restart and the ban popped up. There is no use for AP mode while feeding dragons!

So, what ever triggered the ban, SP has to adjust their measure.

I am quite p*ssed right now.
I don't like being punished for something I did not do.

@jarozeb

Please send a ticket in to customer support. When new ban policies come out in any game, unfortunately the auto bans will scoop up "innocents". It is vitally important for ALL that you report this to them! Thank you!!

One of my alliance members got a 30min ban today for no reason than possibly playing during a wifi outage. Unacceptable. Queries and complaints have been sent.
If this is the result of their discouragement of airplane mode, they need to reconsider. A bad wifi connection is punishment enough, we don't need a ban on top of it.

@amanda-wallace said in About airplane mode:

@jarozeb

Please send a ticket in to customer support. When new ban policies come out in any game, unfortunately the auto bans will scoop up "innocents". It is vitally important for ALL that you report this to them! Thank you!!

Yes, I did so.
I contacted SP before posting here, because I did not know about this new "anti AP mode policy". I asked for a reason and to lift my ban.
Now I am waiting for their responce.

I hope, they don't get to many "false positives". Because not everyone is searching this forum or the internet for answers. Being banned without a given reason, could disencourage players.

Because I did not know about this "anti AP mode policy", I had several thought what this ban could be about. Did they forbid grinding terra dragons (breeding, hatching, feeding, selling, repeat) in heroic races? Or did I post something bad in the alliance chat? AP mode did not come into my mind, because I wasn't using it. I was just lucky to find this thread.

@jarozeb

I agree the updated policy should not be that hard to find. Perhaps a new popup in game with a link to follow would be very helpful to some.

But of course, we all know if sp put the updated policy info in the game via a pop up when the game was opened, personally I believe fully 75% of the players would click right past it and never see it

Actually the FPP is already in the game, ---->> Support -> Game Policies -> Fair Play Guidelines. While I agree that there seem to be some errors in their flags, the only way to resolve this is if players send in tickets explaining "fully" their issues. Spotty wifi connections will obviously need to be taken into account. Though I am not sure how that would be accomplished as I am not a programmer. But on the user side I get a popup notification perhaps users also need to ensure their settings are adjusted so that they are notified their wifi connection is lost. Though you really do not need the notification from the device, within the game you get that wifi icon with the line through it so that should be a warning that you are not connected.

Perhaps some tips and ideas can be shared on how we can help each other avoid falling in the danger zone rather than just ranting about what SP should be doing or not doing.I would be interested in seeing what you all come up with as I do not use wifi when playing, due to it being much slower than my data connection.

Something goofy with DC the last few days. I’ve been getting forced restarts during collections.... maybe I’m doing it too fast but they’re gonna put a kajillion requirement on heroic races to collect/feed/breed, what do they expect?

@nynaevelan said in About airplane mode:

Though you really do not need the notification from the device, within the game you get that wifi icon with the line through it so that should be a warning that you are not connected.

I have not gotten this icon since before I stopped playing on mobile, the icon just stopped appearing when I lost connection, which was over a year and a half ago. I came back on pc 8 months ago and I haven't seen this icon the whole time. Maybe they just haven't put it on pc but it makes it very hard to track if I'm online. I too have been offline for over 30 mins before without noticing, but I only got a force restart, not a ban.

@fadeless In that case that should be another thing to add to the list to report to them. If they are going to be issuing bans for those in AP mode then they need to add that back to avoid users being in AP mode unintentionally. Actually giving the issue of spotty wifi connections, they need to be more intelligent in how they implement bans, they just cannot put out a generic condition of no connections for a specific amount of time, not all lost connections are users in AP mode purposely.

I think this weekend I will pull out one of my non used baby accounts and see if I can replicate a time period of how long it would take before my region gets the ban.

Should we start making a list of do's and don'ts that trigger bans to help each other out??

@nynaevelan said in About airplane mode:

Should we start making a list of do's and don'ts that trigger bans to help each other out??

Sure, I'll also start testing to see if I can get a ban. One thing I would like to add to this list is maybe check every 5-10 minutes if you are online, to avoid being offline for extended periods of time accidentally.

@nynaevelan that's the sad truth about online games these days for every cheater/hacker banned 3 more are there to take their place you just have to look at the king of online games TF2 about 2 weeks ago you couldn't go into 1 match without their being 5-6 cheaters so while these devs seem a bit too trigger happy with bans it's better than the alternative of not being able to have any hope of doing anything without outside help

Sadly......most of the things happening aren’t even “hacking”....it’s just sloppy mistakes by SP themselves that they are too slow to fix or when they finally do fix it, it creates more problems. If they don’t want AP mode, get rid of it instead of implementing an idiotic policy of it’s ok but we don;t recommend it and sorry if we accidentally ban you.....ridiculous.