Are Master Bans forever?

[LadyDarkchild]

I'm a little confused. Are Master Bans forever?

 

 

I ask, because several months ago I viewed the BC2 MBL and there were over 18,000 bans listed. A few days ago, I look and there are 15,000 bans listed?? How is this possible? Are bans removed? I also saw some 1400 bans lifted, but these bans were due to wall hacks and aimbots? SO why were they lifted?? That doesn't make any sense. How do you forgive one person for hacking and lift their ban, and ban someone else for the same thing, forever?

 

 

I'm just confused how this whole ban process works. Either, people are banned forever, or they are not. Can't have it both ways. Either hackers are tolerated, or they are not, and personally I'm getting sick of seeing them in the games I play. Really sick of it, and I find it hard to believe that only 14,000 players have been banned from Bad Company 2 when I encounter one almost every single time I play.

 

 

 

Thank you in advance.

[Duality]

Bans on the MBI are permanent.

 

The only reason a ban will be lifted is if the ban is proven to be innacurate or false. This sometimes happenes with detections made by PunkBuster. In these cases the player is given the benefit of the doubt, to maintain the integrity of our ban list. Nobody is "forgiven", ever - to the point where any past hacking history of any member of a team that applies to stream to us results in the denial of applications to stream from that team until the hacker (or ex-hacker) is removed.

 

I would suggest that you need to re-evaluate which servers you choose to play on - find a few well run, streaming servers and you will very rarely encounter cheaters. After all, only 1,597 of all BFBC2 servers stream to us at the moment. Find the ones that stream and you will be fine.

[LadyDarkchild]

Bans on the MBI are permanent.

 

The only reason a ban will be lifted is if the ban is proven to be innacurate or false. This sometimes happenes with detections made by PunkBuster. In these cases the player is given the benefit of the doubt, to maintain the integrity of our ban list. Nobody is "forgiven", ever - to the point where any past hacking history of any member of a team that applies to stream to us results in the denial of applications to stream from that team until the hacker (or ex-hacker) is removed.

 

I would suggest that you need to re-evaluate which servers you choose to play on - find a few well run, streaming servers and you will very rarely encounter cheaters. After all, only 1,597 of all BFBC2 servers stream to us at the moment. Find the ones that stream and you will be fine.

 

 

Almost every server I play on 'says' PBstreaming, and PB enabled servers are ALWAYS checked when I search for servers to play on. It would be pointless to play on a Non-PB enabled server, unless you like being seriously abused.

 

 

It's not like I jump onto a server and everyone and their brother is hacking, far from it. At most, I might encounter 1 or 2 people per night that are suspicious.

 

 

 

However, I still don't understand how a list can drop from 18,000 bans to 15,000 bans. That's nearly a 20% false positive rate.

[LadyDarkchild]

Is it possible for a server to SAY they are PB streaming, like in their Signature, but not actually be PB Streaming?? I've got 'PB Enabled' checked in my 'search' function, but will that guarantee I'll find a PB Streaming server?

[Crotan]

Is it possible for a server to SAY they are PB streaming, like in their Signature, but not actually be PB Streaming?? I've got 'PB Enabled' checked in my 'search' function, but will that guarantee I'll find a PB Streaming server?

 

I think you are a little confused on what it means when a server is streaming to PBBans. Just having a server with PB enabled does not mean it is streaming here.

 

PB is the anti cheat created by EvenBalance.

 

PBBans is a community that allows servers to stream it's detections and add bans to a master ban list that is then sent out to the rest of the servers that are streaming here. It offers further help by adding bans from submitted PBSS and MD5 confirmations to the master ban list. If a server just says they are "PB" streaming then it's probably a misnomer on their part and they think when they see a server say they are streaming to PBBans they are running with PB enabled. Which is not the same thing.

 

There is no in game server browser that detects servers streaming to PBBans.

 

A server with just PB enabled is pretty weak, because most detections will just trigger a 2 minute kick, a server streaming to PBBans will take that detection and add it to the master ban list and ban that player from all streaming servers.

Edited May 14, 2011 by Crotan

[HSMagnet]

http://www.pbbans.com/forums/mbi-news-f424.html

 

you can find announcements here about when bans are removed from the MBi

 

also overall ban stats here http://www.pbbans.com/mbi-overall-ban-statistics.html

 

 

here you can find PBBans streaming servers

 

http://www.pbbans.com/master-stream-index.html

[Duality]

Pertinant ban lift announcements for BC2:

 

http://www.pbbans.com/forums/viol-79542-bans-removed-bc2-t136903.html

http://www.pbbans.com/forums/viol-132110-132352-and-132322-bans-removed-bc2-t133556.html

 

We do maintain some transparency here, so we announce all ban lifts when they are false positives from EB violations.