Do you know what I really hate about the internet? It's this idea of freedom.

Every idiot believes that "personal freedom" means that they can do just what they want, no matter what the consequences for someone else might be.

Hey, it's only the internet, so it is not real. Other users are not really annoyed by my stupid behaviour, they aren't even real people. Game maintainers don't really lose money because I am being a complete idiot. What do they complain about! They have too much money anyway.

You set up your servers in the first place, so it's your fault. You don't need to have a server if you don't want me to be a complete jackass.
Hey, don't be so self-centered, the fact that you pay for something doesn't mean it is your property! Nobody forced you to connect to the internet, now live with it!

I am not stealing your car, nor setting fire to your house, so it is not immoral. I am just doing it online, so no harm is taken.
What? You buy stuff on ebay and pay your bills via telebanking? What a fool you are! Didn't I just tell you this isn't real!

What do you mean, bandwidth costs money? You live from subscribers paying you? Losing subscribers means losing money? Oh come on, what's those stories you're telling! Who could live from a game anyway! Who would pay for a game, for that matter!

I have every right to be a mentally disturbed, fucked up maniac and enjoy living it out. I even have every right to pretend being one when I am only just bored.

Yes, I feel good if others are affected by it. After all, if everybody else's day is ruined, I don't feel my own inferiority that much.
Heck, and don't you dare to ban me! Banning is immoral because it hurts my feelings.

Quote:Original post by Kittie Rose

Quote:If someone messed up your front door every friday and you had to replace it, would you go to the offender and ask him why he did it, each time? Wow.

Quote:My impression is that Kitty Rose has had firsthand experience with being banned and is hijacking this thread in order to Vent about it?
Maybe its time to add one more ban to her/his list of experiences?

For expressing an opinion? You call me a troll just for expressing my opinion, and now you want me banned? And you're posting anonymously?

All you're doing is reaffirming my view that people aren't really allowed have a say against this nonsense. They're seen as "whiners" or "immature" and nobody wants to be like that. So nobody makes this argument, except for people like me who've had enough.

Thats fine by me, feel free to let whatever I say reaffirm whatever you want it to.
Because franky, it doesn't matter what you think; what matters is what the moderator of the server in question thinks.


P.S.
Anonymous is Legion
I am everyone!

I don't think the point is when you should ban people, but how to enforce it when you do. Let's not get carried away (too late?) with this crusade against forum admins; I'm sure everyone agrees that sometimes you need to ban people (like hackers, in-game thieves if it's against the rules, perpetual noob-bashers etc).

I'm a forum and online game user, and I've seen people banned for bullshit reasons, but I'm also a forum and game admin and I know that there are people who find it fun to piss off other users and with whom there is no reasoning. Sometimes you just need to ban them. (We operate a sliding scale of temporary bans, with only repeat offenders or serious rule breakers like hackers getting a permanent one.) And when you've been driven to ban someone, you need that ban to be enforceable.

Anything which relies on info from the client (MAC address, a 'hardware ID', a CD key or whatever) is hackable, and potentially pretty easy to hack with just a packet sniffer/modifier on the connection. Your game will be CD-cracked, apart from anything else. Unless you force everyone to register with their CD key before they can play (and duplicates can't sign up), I suppose; that might work (unless someone reverse-engineered the generation algorithm to create unique valid CD keys, but most cracks just use one key).

Any free online game is going to be difficult, though, because a player can always get a new account for free, and there will be no CD key. (Or if there is, they can just go get a new CD.)

Now I was going to suggest a checksum based on the user's OS registration key, but that's already been taken. But with all the discussion of emotion and when to ban rather than how, I think it might be more effective to ban the person rather than their machine/account/ip.

In the chapter "I Can Hear You Typing" (I think) in Silence on the Wire, Zalewski describes profiling a person based on their typing style (speed and rhythm of keystrokes) to keep track of them as they switch IP. In a game this could be implemented as frequency of combos used, camping spots on particular maps, player's favourite weapons, common taunts etc. I imagine profiles of troublesome users would be kept on the game server and checked with probability (ala the hardware config idea) against players. No matter where or how they got around security, it would still be able to ban them; even cracking the client wouldn't work as the user's keystrokes have to be sent to the server in order to play.

However, it's a very Big Brother idea, and would take a long time to implement.

Quote:Original post by T1Oracle
Why is this so complex, I've seen this topic so many times and never has a better answer than the following arrivned. Ban the user account and CD key (I did forget to mention that key previously).

The reason this suggestion wasn't made immediately was because lots of games are not distributed via cd. :)

Quote:Original post by Deyja

Quote:In the chapter...order to play.

Any banning system fails when it also blocks innocent users (The reason I wouldn't allow wildcard bans of big providers, such as AOL, or regional domain names, such as .ru) It also doesn't seem that the cost to benefit ratio is at all worth it.

I don't think that's true. Many independent games I've known have actually just banned the entirety of AOL and have been happy with that. Often it's worth the chance of losing a small number of potential players to ensure the exclusion of one grief player. The ban need not affect existing players, after all. Obviously it's a decision you have to make for yourself based on how big the domain is and how much trouble that player causes.

Quote:Original post by PaulCesar
Actualy, presuming you are dealing with someone whos just being foul of mouth to your games inhabitants, may I sudgest a more transparent solution?

1. Ban them by IP address, but dont exactly ban them. Block their chat, but dont make it obvious to them. In the game, allow them to see what they are writing, but so noone else can see it. Eventualy they will probably get bored and give up, thinking you arnt doing anything to clean up the mess, and people could care less. Ban both user and IP that way, most likely if he doesent see a "your accounts been closed" or "your chats been blocked" sign, then hes not going to even bother changing IP addresses or users.

i think this is the best idea since it gets realy annoying in mmo's if you cant chat


i dont know which game your talking about, but if its a "level up your character" game i think baning there account is enough

p.s. where can i download this game?