berlow

for the 3rd time, the graphs were a spoof, but they still have a point. You don't know if someone playing on a "public" GUID is a cheater unless they have a cheat program enabled ... so don't punish them for it until they do! If you want to save yourself the trouble of individually sorting it, then a system of having an auto-kick which tells you that your GUID has been used by a cheater and is suspect "so change it" would be a more time-efficient and user-friendly alternative. and no, i'm not really sure if this is the right place to argue for a change of "the system", but if anyone understood what I've written then they'd be able to point it in the right direction " We ban GUIDs which have raised a punkbuster violation, so only cheaters." no, you ban non cheaters who happen to use those GUIDS too (well, you ban them to the same extent you ban anyone... "Get a new GUID")

well, looking around on this forum I'm reading about other people who had legit keys which soon turned sour.. but even so, the point is still: are you punishing cheating or are you punishing supposed piracy etc? there are cracked servers which don't mind "piraters" playing the game, but also use punkbuster to stop cheaters... punkbuster then bans the piraters who happen to have a key once used by a cheater...

no, I'm here because I was given a cheater's ban from about 5 servers without having even so much as hit the team selection screen [with no cheats etc.]. That suggests a flawed system to me. the means by which one acquires a GUID has nothing to do with his/her propensity to cheat, [although you probably think it does, like thinking that poorer people are more likely to steal], which is what this forum (should) be about. there's actually a whole lot of logic in my arguments, though I didn't initially have all the facts. Some of the more constructive members here helped me out with those, and I'm genuinly glad they did.

p.s. sorry to offend the twilek person, here's to hoping you don't vote BNP

yeah, I would also guess that gaming companies only care about sales. In the same way, I don't care about their sales, but I do occasionally like playing games (cheat-free). I do at last grasp your methods, I think. If you connect with a key/serial which other people may have, but haven't cheated with yet, you don't get auto banned... right? and, you're not permanently banned it's just a timewaster/semi-ban meaning you have to apply for 'case review' etc. ..too, right? It would be ironic if someone's keys were 'stolen' and they got one of these semi-bans for "cheating" by their own server... Is that possible? I guess it's just "tough luck" to everyone who has a key used by someone else to cheat.. as for me, I can't even remember the names or IPs of the servers I tried to connect to and got banned from.. p.s. if the cheaters do use these keys to cheat but keep their own ones to play normally (we presume), then wouldn't it be better to have an IP-ban system or something as a punishment ? p.p.s. cute drawing benway, and your link didn't work. The point of the graphs was that nobody can know how many people who use public keys want to just play the game, and how many want to cheat. If this site was an anti-piracy site it would make more sense having the auto-ban over auto-kick, but it's an anti-cheater site, i presume? I played a pirate cod2 for a while before buying it (not very relevant, but yeah, a bit about me, as they say).

if anyone's still not sure, check out my charts on post #1, they're gripping stuff

if a serial is 'leaked' by someone else and not used for cheating I'm betting it's still banned.... you're not banning with evidence of cheating, only of having a serial/key other people may know. and what extra work does auto-kick put on you if it's automatic? Auto-ban puts more work on the unlucky sonsofb!tches like me, unnecessarily, and for you too, having to deal with our appeals (or is that "someone else"s job?) p.s. if you're going to insist on doing us the favour of awarding yourselves with this "burden" of sheriffhood, you should be at least willing to do the job properly (see above/below). and git is found between genius and great in the dictionary, what of it? [To reiterate for mr BOTA:X: An auto-kick would mean that if you've been hacked (or by some other means your key is public) but you are not intending to cheat, you aren't punished like a cheater, and you don't have to spend the rest of your virtual life begging forgiveness from people who think sympathy sounds like syphilis. You are unable to play the game, but if you realise it's your key's fault then you can sort that out and get playing before too long without unneccessary deliberation, draining your will to live, and, frankly, inspiring a good amount of contempt for the fascist rulemakers out there] Oh and by the way, honest players who don't use cheats will not be expecting bans, and likely expect them to be "freak" occurrences for the first few connection attempts (remember, no reason is actually given to you - at least, in english - as to why you've been banned) and they may well end up banned from more servers than the actual cheaters. p.p.s. any intelligent cheater would use the numerous cheats which go undetected by punkbuster. (I guess helping patch the holes in that cruddy software is less fun than being all Merciful and sh!t?)

My CD key has appeared on "the lists" as a public one.. (is my conclusion)... and I am now banned from any server i try to connect to. This can probably be fixed, but that's being covered elsewhere.... in the mean time, a suggestion of policy change: Instate Automatic Kick instead of Automatic Ban for blacklisted CD keys, giving the unsuspecting innocents (such as my former self) the same sense that "something's up" without having to cause him/her the hassle of negotiating his/her return to virtual civilization with X number of unsympathetic, uninterested people, who would also rather be playing games than guessing at the purity of our virtue and previous intent. So, a poll. And another for luck. oh yeah, p.s., i posted some bogus charts to sway the "undecided voter" types... A testament to the amount of free time I've got now that I cannot connect to servers (..waiting for other Merciful Leaders to assess my worthiness for stuff)