Hi everyone,
As of late, we’ve seen a lot of hackers using VPNs/proxies to bypass their bans, and so there is talk among the staff to ban most VPNs and proxies for non-trusted users.
However, we’re aware that this would affect legitimate players using VPNs for whatever reason.
If you use a VPN while playing AoS, please comment below and tell us what you use it for, as well as your thoughts and ideas about solving this problem.
Cheers,
No, this isn’t a problem. And it doesn’t need solving.
A large portion of the staffs’ job is to find and ban those using VPN and proxies, that’s why you are in that role and it’s part of your job. It’s also why there seems to be a large admin base to begin with.
The “talk among the staff” should be about how we get more public interest in the game; not how to make the staffs role slightly more comfortable so they can all sit on their arse’s more often.
I used VPN to play on aloha servers, the reason is staff having access to /ip and /from, they’re abusing it, every time i would join the server the staff would identify me by my country/ip (just to find out who is behind “alias”), sometimes i just want to have some privacy and i’m not in mood to talk to someone. i think those commands should be removed / stop being abused.
Aloha does not have blacklisted paid VPNs and even most free VPNs.
Also because your IP is constantly logged, and is written to PUBLIC banlist.
Of course, because you’re staff here, and you know how things operate.
And not make the game enjoyable for the current playerbase which is plagued with hackers?
so they can all sit on their arse’s more often So we can focus on more important things, such as your last point?
Regardless of what ‘position’ I have or any knowledge of how things operate (which aren’t hard to figure out for a gaming community) I am still able to point out what clearly is a problem and what isn’t. As an Admin yourself Kunnikal, I didn’t expect you to childishly refer to my position to somehow suggest what I said is irrelevant.
Take a look at an Aloha server. The problem isn’t hackers or players bypassing; it’s lack of players. The idea that banning specific VPNs and proxies is somehow going to prompt staff to focus on expanding the game’s reach is clear bollocks.
Please Kuunikal, focus on the point of what I am saying; not some emotional response or by saying that because I am not of a certain rank what I say must be waved away. That’s what children do.
the staff exists to keep the gameplay experience positive for as many people as possible - a part of that is keeping banned players off the servers, yes. what problem do you see in making that easier, other than that we aren’t doing what you want? why do you think you’re better able to decide whether this is a problem or not than the people who have to actually deal with it?
if you want more public interest in the game, feel free to come up with ideas. 
i’m more than happy to help out if my skillset matches whatever needs doing, and i’m sure a few other people here are too, but i’m not a brainstormer. it would be a lot easier to find motivation to promote the game if people actually put some actionable ideas forward rather than just saying “hey, you should do something!”
what exactly has any staff member done that makes you think they check your ip or location, especially when you’ve been doing nothing wrong? i would appreciate details
yes, your ip is logged, as it is pretty much any time you do anything on the internet. our banlists are semi-public because we want our work banning people to be easy for other hosts to benefit from. considering ips are the only way we can ban people, what alternative do you suggest?
one problem is very much that too many people cheat, and that a few people do it repeatedly and evade their bans.
nobody has claimed that the goal of making it harder to evade bans is to expand the game’s reach, where did you get that from?
I usually play better than other players with good accuracy, i get 5 kills in a row after joining server with alias (that’s when staff use /ip or /from), and i instantly get called in the chat by staff “hey core”, what’s the point of me using the alias then?? And if i’d want to greet someone I’d do it myself. I don’t see the point of using these commands if you’re not identifying hackers but instead are invading someone’s privacy…
I can’t blame the staff either as most of them are my friends, they just have never been informed about the proper use of these commands
I take the blame for that. I apologise for not realising you actually didnt want to be recognisedyou shouldve said so if it was an issue and i wouldve stopped x.x.However it can be done without the use of commands as status page is a thing.Afterall its not hard to recognise the only good player of a country 
Bunch of admins do this, i don’t think that should be proper use of the command, also you’re right about the status page, didn’t even think about that
That’s why I think use of VPNs is completely normal (for privacy) as long as you’re not using it to do something bad.
You are right, the reason aloha servers stay semi-populated is because you have active staff - which is great, the only thing keeping the game alive imo. But I would say;
“why do you think you’re better able to decide whether this is a problem or not than the people who have to actually deal with it?”
Because a staff member made a thread to start a discussion on it, and here we are. I’m assuming then, that staff had a conversation before posting this topic, which means you wanted to get feedback? Of course I’m in no better position to say how much of a problem something is, that’s just stating the obvious, but why criticize the guy posting his valid view on a forum if you actually wanted players’ views?
“nobody has claimed that the goal of making it harder to evade bans is to expand the game’s reach”
I was responding to Kuunikal saying “so we can focus on more important things, such as your last point”. The fact that you have the job of banning hackers who evade using VPNs and proxies keeps you on your toes, it justifies a somewhat large admin base. So a blanket ban on certain VPNs would give staff less to do, not more, giving staff little reason to remain active much if the majority of ban evasion is automatically done for while at the cost of normal players not being able to use the same VPNs. That would be a step back imo. I could be missing something, but it seems staff do a pretty swift job of keeping on top of the potential problem constant reappearing hackers would bring, curbing everyone’s access to some VPNs just doesn’t sit right and frankly seems a little ott as things are going.
I would also love to here a topic on expanding the playerbase, I could be wrong, but I havent seen any staff instigate one on that yet? There have been some calls for suggestions in the past, but never having the weight of developers and staff really behind it.
sounds almost exactly like what i remember you doing to me for months… weird!
the only time i can see in my logs that someone has done that was spykaps. every other time is someone asking if it’s you (and fairly often they aren’t staff at all), or you accusing other people of being you
i’m sure you can understand why “this isn’t a problem” in a thread asking for public input on something that we have already decided is a problem for us isn’t very helpful
I was responding to Kuunikal saying "so we can focus on more important things, such as your last point". The fact that you have the job of banning hackers who evade using VPNs and proxies keeps you on your toes, it justifies a somewhat large admin base. So a blanket ban on certain VPNs would give staff less to do, not more, giving staff little reason to remain active much if the majority of ban evasion is automatically done for while at the cost of normal players not being able to use the same VPNs.it's honestly not the majority of evasion, just (some of) the ones who are doing it intentionally and persistently
That would be a step back imo. I could be missing something, but it seems staff do a pretty swift job of keeping on top of the potential problem constant reappearing hackers would bring, curbing everyone's access to some VPNs just doesn't sit right and frankly seems a little ott as things are going.that's a fair perspective. from mine, i don't think giving staff less work to do is a step back at all. as well as trusted users, it was suggested in the staff section to allow anyone with an aloha account to log in to avoid being automatically kicked for using a vpn or proxy. it's pretty easy to ban forum accounts, so an extra step for anyone trying to evade with an easy way to shut it down would at least be a step in the right direction imo. what are your thoughts on that?
I would also love to here a topic on expanding the playerbase, I could be wrong, but I havent seen any staff instigate one on that yet? There have been some calls for suggestions in the past, but never having the weight of developers and staff really behind it.the problem is that it's difficult to gather a group of people willing to do work if they don't first know what the work is - having the weight of developers and stuff will most likely require ideas to come first
Honestly allowing anyone with an aloha.pk acount to use a vpn is not a bad idea.It would be most efficient if a unique e-mail would be required to create a new acount as well(cant use same email twice) so even if one does take the “ill just create a bunch of acounts to evade” aproach creating a bunch of emails will get abnoxious after a while.Not sure if a unique email is required to create an account already but if thats the case, then we’ve got a headstart i suppose.Allowing only trusted players to use vpns however may be too extreme of a countermeasure and it may reduce playerbase by a significant amount.
Right… ban evaders aren’t a problem… okay… now I’m wondering if you’re trying to be difficult on purpose.
there’s no one single problem. There are many problems, and this is one thread about one of them, that is ban evaders using VPNs. No one’s saying it’s the only problem. If you wish to raise other problems, use or make separate threads, don’t puke all over this thread.
and “the problem isn’t hackers”. lol that is quite a stupid thing to say imo
I know! That’s the whole point of this thread. sigh
Okay let me rephrase it. I’ll break it down into nice easy steps for you.
Lately there have been many ban evaders that use VPNs. This is a problem for us. We wish to solve it.
One way to do that is by banning said VPNs. We recognize this might not be a good idea, because even legitimate players use VPNs, as you said.
We want to know more about these legitimate players, their reasons for using VPNs, suggest alternatives to them, and use their inputs in considering our decision.
This thread invites (only) such legitimate VPN users to provide their inputs.
you won’t be able to prevent people from using VPNs so i don’t get the point of this
unique emails are already required, and there are other anti spam measures already in place that add difficulty to the registration process… and there are other steps we could take to add even more hurdles. but even without all those registration difficulties, creating a forum account is still a much bigger hassle than simply changing VPN connections
it’s not about preventing VPNs, it’s about making it more difficult to use VPNs for in-game abuse
It’s a nice thought. But I still don’t agree with it.
There still is a large portion of players who use VPNs, who don’t speak English or have an aloha account… they simply join this game to play with little interaction. There may well be a small number who will come to the forums saying ‘why I am always kicked’ or whatever, but the rest will simply attempt another server or leave the game entirely (seeing as most just want to play Babel). I also think having this auto-kicking-if-using-VPN-and-not-logged-in system doesn’t encourage any newcomers who will just want to play.
So if the majority of evasions aren’t VPNs and proxies, then I don’t see how the small number of players who do persistently evade using these methods are considered a ‘problem’ as opposed to an annoyance. Especially to the point of trying to force a portion of the playerbase to register on these forums in order to play (and I suppose type /login each time).
And this I guess goes back to my earlier point;
Of course I want to make the staff’s job easier, but at the cost of some players’ time and convenience? No thank you. I don’t see this a problem, the staff do a great job already in the existing practices that the focus should be on taking on more responsibility, not dishing it out to automation. The very job of admin isn’t to be worshipped by everyone on their knees shielded from nasty words, but to be criticized in order to make things better overall. To take some damn responsibility; to start the thread on bouncing around ideas to improve the playerbase for the server, for example. Lack of players is, and definitely will be, the biggest problem.
If your low IQ makes you unable to address the point of what people are saying, then I really can’t help you and I really don’t care.
Evidence please. . . I guarantee you that you don’t have the numbers to support your claim. That has been the the modus operandi for years now.
If you have no idea how staff works then please stop talking.
Please don’t try and put words in our mouth. We don’t make policy around YOU we make it as we see fit for the community, sometimes that involves input from the community, sometimes it doesn’t. The fact remains, that most (oddball number 88% of all proxys are there to cause trouble).
I don’t see anyone else saying anything other than YOU. So people? Last time I checked people =/= to person. Low IQ huh?
You’re right I forgot that part; Of course I could be wrong, I’m not in a position to dig out server stats and say what they may or may not mean. But I am pretty sure that a huge portion of players, especially in South America and in East Asia, use VPNs and proxies as their governments monetize and are a lot more cautious in allowing their own people access to freely surf the web, something that sounds unimaginable to us privileged lot in the US and UK as examples. But even if you want to disregard that, I think fundamentally that players should have the freedom to use VPNs and proxies without being forced to register here and continuously log in. It is a step backwards and doesn’t encourage newcomers imo.
And of course you don’t make policy around me… why have we now resorted to saying the obvious and short put-down commentary Scipio? A staff member put forward potential changes and I voiced my opinion on it, a moderator put a sarky reply but then topo put forward some good arguments which led to actual discussion… why are we back to this ‘don’t put words in our mouths’, ‘stop talking’, ‘you have no idea’ bollocks? Everything I say is my opinion, every post I make is my opinion. It is your own interpretation if what I say is somewhat threatening to you that you feel the need to tell me to “stop talking” and to imply I am putting words in people’s mouths.
Is it too hard to say, “thank you for your opinion Lord Almighty KungFuChicken?”.
I have told you my view, but instead of addressing it, you resort to weak attacks on my character.
KungFu, other than “staff do more” what’s your specific suggestion to curb troublemakers who use VPNs? the whole reason we’re exploring ideas such as this is to ease certain admin tasks because our current system is already overly taxing on us
increasing our staff numbers is not as simple as it may seem… each additional staff member brings lots of complexities that affects pretty much everything