Unban Appeal - Lawro - GTA RP

[Lawro]

Unban Appeal for Lawro 

In-game Name: Alex Lawrence

Server: GTA RP

Steam ID: 76561198253464045

The date you got banned: 04/11/21

Member of the team that banned you: Ciaran - (Panel)

Reason given for your ban: C2.2 - Exploiting

In your own words, please type why you think you were banned.: Exploiting, buying blackjack chips without losing any money.

Why should we unban you ?: Last night after the car meet, down at the pier, I headed back to the casino to continue to play blackjack. However, I had no blackjack chips on me, so I approached the main desk to purchase some so I could bet. I initially entered slightly more than I could afford by accident (about 45k I think since I didn't get too much cash out) , but I gained the chips for some reason, so I took some more out just to make sure it wasn't a visual bug that was occurring (about 90k total I think, although I shouldn't have done this and should have let an admin know on the first time round). Initially I wasn't able to sell them as I gained no money from it, however after a few moments I gained cash. I was able to deposit it into my bank, however as I went to take it back out into cash again, the money would not appear - which makes sense as the money shouldn't have been there in the first place. I decided to relog to ensure that any extra money that appeared in my bank would disappear, as I believed it was all a visual bug, since I couldn't actually withdraw any of the money. As I got to the character selection screen, I noticed my character was in debt for my cash which I presumed was due to having glitched money from the chips which you could get for free. Shortly after loading in, I went on the slots with about 20k (of my real money that I had) and got banned for exploiting. At the time I was slightly confused on the situation as I had no idea what appeared to be real items and what was fake; however, I can understand that my actions could appear to be exploiting in order to gain money in an unfair way. I had no intentions to deliberately gain money in an unfair way, as I was bewildered to what was going on. I'm aware that I should have immediately contacted an admin to attempt to get the issue resolved, to reduce more people being in the same situation as me. Hopefully, you can take my appeal into consideration as this is by far one of the best UK roleplay servers I have been on, and would be a shame to lose all my progress over the last few weeks. Thank you - Alex.

Please confirm that you have read the unban appeal process and rules: Yes

 

[Robbie]

I believed it was all a visual bug

If you believed it to be a bug why didn't you think about contacting staff about it?

 

[Lawro]

If you believed it to be a bug why didn't you think about contacting staff about it?

I believed it would have just been a client sided bug, as I have seen similar things in other games (such as minecraft for example) before (appears to duplicate/gain items, but disappear after a relog) and I've had another bug occur to me in the casino a few times in the past (while sitting at the slots machine, if you bring your phone out and press 'x' (the hands up emote) it will kick you off the machine and you can't interact with it again until you relog). So, with these past events I've had, I wasn't certain if it was server sided, which is why I didn't initially contact an admin, due to not wanting to waste their time on something that might have only been a visual bug on my end; due to this I then decided to relog, as this usually clears stuff up and I can determine whether it was server sided, and whether I should've contacted an admin about the situation. I think at the time I was in a 5 man queue, so it took me about 4/7 mins to rejoin (can't remember the timings too well). Once I loaded up and got to the character selection screen, I noticed I was in debt in my cash (at this point I knew for certain it was server based), so after a few moments, I spawned back into the casino but saw Father Augustus I think and the original Blackjack chips dealer from a few nights ago (when the chips were first available to purchase) and a few other players who were running around, no clue whether they knew or not about this but Father and the dealer seemed to be guarding the desk, which makes sense to stop others from exploiting it. I presumed that the dealer was an admin (since when the new feature got added, I thought that having an admin sort all of the money for players would have been a likely situation) and that they had everything under control (as during the time I was in the queue, he could have either teleported there or walked in, so I should have tried to be more certain regarding if he was an admin or not); so I decided to not bother with the chips again and avoid blackjack for the rest of the night until the next reset to ensure that the problem would have been sorted. Obviously, I should have still contacted an admin to make sure that the issue was being looked into for certain, rather than going onto the slot machines and presuming that father or the dealer had already contacted an admin to look into it. Guess it's better safe than sorry and I should have tried letting an admin know even if it was already being looked into by one.

Extra note: After the initial 8pm restart, the blackjack chips were working fine, I'm guessing this glitch/bug occurred due to the server crashing around the time when people were going into 'The galaxy?' nightclub after the car meet.

 

[Charles Vane]

I believed it would have just been a client sided bug, as I have seen similar things in other games (such as minecraft for example) before (appears to duplicate/gain items, but disappear after a relog) and I've had another bug occur to me in the casino a few times in the past (while sitting at the slots machine, if you bring your phone out and press 'x' (the hands up emote) it will kick you off the machine and you can't interact with it again until you relog).

Do you not think a bug that kicks you off a machine and a bug that allows you to exploit money are two completely different things and one may be a whole lot more damaging to the server?

What your whole unban appeal sounds like to me is that, you are explaining now as if you are testing everything you can to find out if it is a "visual bug" but in reality to me is just seems like you were trying to do everything in your power to manage to turn free chips into real cash. By logging in and out, storing in ATM and taking out. Explain to me why we should believe you were doing that to find the cause of the issue? Explain to me why we should trust you to play on our servers again when you have failed to report this issue to staff straight away?

Also, if we had not caught and banned you then where would the money be right now? sitting in your bank. 

As i have mentioned, you are explaining it as a glitch/bug which you didnt report and seemingly tried to do everything in your power to get real cash from. Convince me otherwise.

 

[Lawro]

Do you not think a bug that kicks you off a machine and a bug that allows you to exploit money are two completely different things and one may be a whole lot more damaging to the server?

What your whole unban appeal sounds like to me is that, you are explaining now as if you are testing everything you can to find out if it is a "visual bug" but in reality to me is just seems like you were trying to do everything in your power to manage to turn free chips into real cash. By logging in and out, storing in ATM and taking out. Explain to me why we should believe you were doing that to find the cause of the issue? Explain to me why we should trust you to play on our servers again when you have failed to report this issue to staff straight away?

Also, if we had not caught and banned you then where would the money be right now? sitting in your bank. 

As I have mentioned, you are explaining it as a glitch/bug which you didn't report and seemingly tried to do everything in your power to get real cash from. Convince me otherwise.

To begin with, I completely agree that the slot machine bug is far less damaging to the server, due to it not giving the player an advantage in any way; the main reason I brought it up was to add some justification for my reasoning in relogging at the time, since relogging in most cases resets my stats and corrects them to the actual status that would be stored within the database; rather than displaying potentially false information in-game. Also, relogging fixes client sided issues almost every time, which is what I thought it was. I was also hoping that by mentioning it, the bug could be passed on to a dev member to raise awareness, just to prevent other players experiencing the same issue (although I'm aware there is a specific section in the forums for bug reports, and shouldn't expect it to be, considering this isn't exactly the place for that.) 

I can understand how my appeal sounds like I'm doing everything possible to try and cheat the system to gain free money, but I was mainly trying to investigate the situation (which was stupid of me, as I should have let an admin know immediately rather than trying to take matters into my own hands), as I wanted to gain as much information on the bug itself, so when I came round to contacting an admin, I could let them know a lot regarding it - such as: if the money obtained was able to be deposited and withdrawn, if relogging would reset the value of the user's balance, trying to find out what the cause of it was and how the bug happened (now I think this bug occurred due to the server crashing when the majority of the users were grouped up at the nightclub and this caused something to go wrong). The reason I deposited the money into my bank initially, was to actually see if it would even be deposited (as I highly doubted it would of), after seeing it was, I immediately took it back out, with the expectation it would have disappeared for certain, which ended up being the case. It still displayed some money in my bank extra which wasn't there prior to my withdrawal, so I decided to relog (reasoning above regarding false statistics being displayed - and believing it was client-sided). As I presumed that a quick restart would have altered my bank balance to the correct value. When I relogged, at the character selection screen it said I was in debt (for cash section, since any fake money that was deposited into my bank, would put me in debt when I attempted to take it back out, since I was taking out money that wasn't actually there), so when I tried taking money out again, I believe I ended up losing some of my real money (earned from trucking and blackjack earlier in the day, as I gained no cash from withdrawing again) since it was paying off the missing fake money that was being withdrawn, although it wasn't too much so I'm not fussed about that and fine about losing it. Later in that night, I was planning to have sold one of my cars (XA-21) for around £1,100,000 anyway, so I wasn't in a position of desperately needing money; so I had no reason to use an exploit to my advantage, although there is never a reason to exploit no matter what.

Regarding where the money is currently, honestly I've got no clue, there might be a small amount in my bank still, which I can't even use anyway (since withdrawing causes me to go into debt for cash), or all of the fake money has already been "paid" with my real money after I cleared out the debt, from  trying to withdraw around 45k to go onto the slots a few times. After multiple attempts, I was able to finally withdraw my actual money, so I'm pretty certain all of the glitched money has disappeared anyway. 

It was really dumb of me to not have contacted an admin when I had the chance, this should of happened on the first purchase of the chips, after mistakenly gaining more than I could afford. I can guarantee that in the future, if I ever discover an exploit, or hear one that's going around from others, I will immediately contact an admin to sort the situation out, rather than trying to look into it myself (as this puts myself into a very poor situation, for example right now). The only reason I decided to not contact one after the relog, was due to seeing Father (a trusted member of the community) and the original blackjack dealer (who I thought was an admin due to dealing with large sums of money across multiple players), as I thought they had everything under control, so it was a massive mistake on my behalf. I can ensure you that I will not end up in this unban-appeal forum again (in the case you decide to unban me), although it is your call after all, and I will respect your decision no matter what. Hopefully, I was able to convince you, but I can only do my best; it's stupid of me to be in this situation to begin with, as it could have easily been resolved from the beginning (if I were to have contacted an admin). If this appeal becomes unsuccessful, I wish the best of luck for the community and staff involved and hope to see it to grow even more (despite being large already and it is by far the best public server, better than most whitelisted tbh). Anyway, thanks for taking your time for this. - Alex

Update: I've now posted the slot machine bug in the bug-report section.

 

[Robbie]

Didn't stop you dropping millions on the floor to give to your mates though did it.

Your exploiting ban is not appealable for 6 months.

Denied