So far the public opinion on this thread is from someone who claims vpn evading is a non-issue and from someone who uses a vpn to evade their current ban. Anybody else?
No, it’d decrease players even more, which would be pretty bad seeing the numbers at the moment.
The only people I address as lord are my profs, and that is because they are the ones who give me marks. /s
Attacks on your character you say?
I rest my case.
You do understand that vpns have been banned since before I have been a mod?
I don’t use a VPN but I still have some feedback. From reading this thread, what has stood out to me the most is what topo said about staff speculating to allow members of the forum to login to the game to bypass a kick for a VPN. Also, I of course don’t know the numbers but it seems like that would at least be easier to test with minimal “loss” rather than a blanket ban that reaches more VPNs because the forums would serve as a potential “loss prevention” during a testing phase. (easier to reach people who are registered than those lost in the wind)
You do understand that vpns have been banned since before I have been a mod?
[/quote]
This may be the case, but I’d estimate at least 25% of players have or use one regularly.
Estimation based on what? They still can use a vpn if they make an account here and have the approval. The server would of course give them a message telling them how, in more than just English, before they were auto-kicked. If they logged in during that period then the messages would stop and they would be free to play. We’re at the point where the community isn’t made up of random new players so much as people that have been around for a very long time. They’ll want to continue playing so they’ll just simply make an account to continue. In my opinion this is better than banning the same people that we’ve been banning for months/years.
I am suggesting keeping the existing practices, and not adding some VPN ban or some forced member login VPN only.
And there’s the thing, we are talking about people using VPNs to persistently evade their bans as if it’s a ‘problem’ … But is it problem? Really? Or is it just apart of your job? I don’t want some reply of moral outrage in the forms of sarcasm, put-downs or ‘look down your nose’ responses for merely asking the question. Because I don’t see Aloha servers suffering from hackers; as I said before, the admins do a pretty swift job in getting rid of any disturbances in games already.
Players have always used ways to evade bans… So what have you been doing for the past 5 years to combat that? What has suddenly made those methods now really difficult, to the point where we now need to suggest curbing ordinary player’s access to VPN as a consequence? Because, again, I don’t see this ‘problem’ spilling into the server affecting everyone playing. I’m all for making things easier, but not at the cost of a large portion of players being inconvenienced in accessing the server, or in some cases being unable to join.
So just like my first post, I am suggesting asking whether this really is a problem. I’m not interested in increasing or decreasing staff numbers, the great looming problem (actual problem) of lack of players is more interesting to me however.
There are less players now than in past years, less for staff to monitor, so why is this really a major problem? Simple, it’s not.
I have played enough games that became insufferable due to cheaters and griefers without an Admin being there to sort things out.
When an Admin is in the game, then it is wonderful to see one cheater after the other getting kicked out of the game. However, this is seldom the case.
Based on this, I am all for automated systems that make life for cheaters hard.
Therefore, Mr. Chicken, I am afraid that I have to disagree with your opinions above.
just to clarify, you do understand that logging in would be required only for the small number of players who use VPNs, right?
it’s enough of a problem that we’re exploring options such as this to help us improve the experience for the majority, yes. really.
i know you’re not asking if this is literally our job, but i just want to point out that we do this out of our goodwill. we don’t get paid for it, we volunteer. in fact, we even contribute our own money to keep things operational. we put in a lot of effort to try to keep things as smooth as possible for the majority because we want you to enjoy the experience so that we can also enjoy it. it’s not fun for us when someone is upset.
i agree that our admins are incredible at taking care of disturbances. just because you don’t see that happening doesn’t mean it’s magically easy. i don’t expect you believe me, but there’s so much more effort going into maintaining all of this than you’re imagining.
again, a lot more than you’re imagining… for 6 years, not 5, actually. that’s not suddenly.
again, please consider that maybe the reason you don’t see the problem is because our efforts have been so focused on providing you that luxury.
what we’re trying to do is improve the efficiency of our efforts so that we can continue helping the majority of players have a normal experience. your claim that a “large portion of players would be inconvenienced” is quite exaggerated because the truth of the matter is that only a very small portion of players use VPNs and we’re already thinking about ways to make it as easy as possible for them to continue playing.
considering that lack of players is such a concern to you, you should be grateful that we’re proactively taking steps to curb VPN abuse.
I thought Aloha already kicked VPN users, I recall seeing several kicks from “using proxy” or some such.
I say if it helps the admins then do it.
Sorry, just don’t buy the argument of hiding your alias because you don’t want people to know who you are to be valid.
No. You’re not responding to what I’m actually saying Izzy.
The fact that it’s 5 or 6 years isn’t the point; I simply plucked the number 5 from my behind. The point is that since those past 6 years you have always been dealing with players evading their bans. The very ‘problem’ you speak of has been existing since Aloha’s beginning really. So what has made the existing methods for those past 6 years so incapable that we now have to suggest curbing everyone’s access to VPN? In a time where BnS is at its lowest player count, and this is now a ‘problem’? Seriously? The sudden thing is that you are suggesting this now.
Unless this suggestion is actually about making your job ‘easier’, which means this isn’t a ‘problem’ then is it? Because it would be perfectly fine to carry on in the existing methods in dealing with ban evaders… just that it’s a little annoying and inconvenient for staff, is that right?
Because tell me if I am wrong, but I don’t see persistent hackers disturbing a beautiful game of Babel where everyone gets angry and rages or leaves. I don’t see that. Rather than tell me it’s “a lot more than you’re imagining” bollocks, why don’t you tell me how this problem is affecting the server and player-base exactly? I have ran enough servers, forums and communities across platforms to understand the basic effort that goes into maintaining things smoothly.
Now I chose to say “a large portion” because it doesn’t give a specific number; I can’t give a specific number. But, I do know if you did go through with this suggestion you would see a negative affect on the player count - because I’m not talking about a handful of players here, I’m talking about enough players to consistently show an affect; which is why I said “large portion”.
Because luckily for you and I, Izzy, living in our lovely western civilizations, we don’t feel the need to have to use VPN. With governments in various countries in South America and East Asia, a lot of user feel they need to use such things for their own safety. A lot of whom don’t have Aloha accounts, don’t speak English, who won’t know why the server keeps kicking them and will simply leave or attempt another server (which doesn’t sound hopeful given Babel seems to always be top).
Even if you want to disregard that, I think fundamentally everyone should have access to VPNs without being forced to create or login to an Aloha account. If this ‘problem’ did have obvious disturbances in games, I would probably say it is worth the cost. But not at some notion to simply make it “easier” or more “efficient” nonsense. Especially given the games lifetime.
Fair enough. If that’s what you truly see on Aloha servers then I can’t say what you experience is false. It’s just not the game I see. Whenever I join I see hackers getting rid of pretty quickly, I see Aloha as like the only ‘safe space’ where I can almost guarantee the game won’t be ruined by a gay aimbotter. Aloha is the main reason I think BnS has quite frankly survived.
yes, currently a small list of VPN providers aren’t allowed, but we want to change it so that all VPN providers are allowed with slightly increased use difficulty, which would add significant hurdles for abusers.
it’s not “just a little annoying and inconvenient” because some evaders have nothing better to do with their lives than troll around all day… talk about wasting their own youth! :’( anyway, imagine you’re at a party and there’s a mosquito that consistently buzzes in everyone’s ears, or a fly that consistently lands on everyone’s food. now imagine that mosquito and fly are a thousand times their normal sizes and aggressively attacking everyone’s fun to the point that it’s not fun anymore. well, still “fun” for the evader, but everyone else will leave if we do nothing. sure we could continue consuming our efforts to shoo him away every few seconds, but currently he has the easier advantage. can you see my point yet? good, because we’re essentially proposing the use of a bug zapper to more precisely target him and stop him dead in his tracks without everyone else knowing what hit him.
as have i since 1996 or i’m pretty sure before that, i don’t really remember exactly. various communities on varying platforms for various interests. 8) all of which weren’t nearly as taxing as AoS players are. love you though, AoS players! :-*
how can you be so sure? you’re only assuming. your understanding of our plan isn’t even accurate anyway. the server wouldn’t kick them for using a VPN – it would disable their building and weapons then spam their chat to inform them that they need to be logged in to build and shoot, no pun intended. we’ve already thought about translated localization for those messages as well.
assuming again. 
i’ve been living in Southeast Asia the past few years and i’m still here now. i use a VPN myself to improve my routing/lower my ping. however, as i’ve tried to explain before, our logs show that the vast majority of players don’t use VPNs. those who do are the minority, and (i’m repeating myself) our plan already includes options specially for them, so how can you say we’d be disregarding them?
are you forgetting that most games these days require some kind of central login/verification for all connections, not just VPNs? AoS is one of the few games that doesn’t require any of that for its main playerbase. it’s too open for its own good. we’re not trying to change that, though! we’re only trying to make it more difficult for VPNs to be abused.
you’re assuming that there’s always a staff member in-game who can simply ban a hacker, which is frequently not the case.
I’d also add that you might have not seen many hackers ruining games because of your time zone, in which there are more admins.
I’ve seen exactly that at least a few times.
I have not used VPN(s), but have been on other games, so I’m not sure if my opinion(s) would be of any value.
It requires a great deal of effort to block and prevent griefers/cheaters and other problematic players.
VPN(s) provide a method of bypassing bans to these people.
While this will be a bit controversial, I’ll provide some of my thoughts.
Privacy is one reason stated that someone will use a VPN, but in the original proposal.
One would have to be a trusted user to use a VPN, which in term means, they already know you, so what would there be to hide?
Unless someone goes to a large extent to remain completely hidden, this would be a difficult argument to buy.
Large companies like Google, Microsoft and Facebook know a lot about you, in fact more than Aloha.pk knows about you.
If the concern is staff, they would know far less than any employee from Google, Microsoft or Facebook.
To avoid this from becoming too one sided, I will provide another position on the subject.
The part of providing a restriction to trusted users only is one with a bit too much zeal.
In term this defeats the purpose of privacy and will perhaps discourage some from perhaps joining.
How can it be made difficult enough for where problematic people will face some strong difficulty and where it is easy enough for a regular user to enjoy the game and play?
A possible solution is to require registration for any and all VPN users, so they will remain without issue on join if they are registered.
(I’m assuming it is easier to ban a user than banning an IP. If I’m wrong, please correct me.)
It should be a fairly easy approach as many services require one to register to do any form of interaction.
This approach should help prevent some of the abuse which happens in game.
(Thankfully it has not been much, due to an active staff 
.)
In term this is not the best solution, but should be an effective one.
The only way to see how this potential solution works is to try it out and see how effective it is and if it creates some issues which are larger than expected. (This would be signified by a player drop which is larger than expected.)
As an added footnote, there is no way to know the full outcome, although with the limited knowledge I have of this, I think this will be a good solution for now.
Long term the solution is to bring automated methods for dealing with abuse which are integrated in the game.(I think.)
-Zehra
From what I understood youre suggesting we have some sort of registration method, after which the use of proxy will be allowed. The initial idea was to allow only trusted players to use proxies though as trusted isn’t simple to get, simply logging in with an aloha.pk account was thought to be the best option. In my opinion, creating an aloha.pk acount doesnt require that much personal information so it isnt an unreasonable requirement.
Yes, I think it will work alright and should be a good compromise.(Not too hard to use VPN and not to easy for abuse.)
It can be adjusted if needed in the future, but will probably be a good starting point for now.
-Zehra
Just to hop off the train, I don’t think the VPN usage is that big of a deal that we make it seem to be. Making an account just to simply play babel is a hassle and removes the fun of playing. Usually, people hop on and start playing and with the login system implemented, it would remove the accessibility that makes the game simple to play. It takes time to logon and would require a script to somehow keep the people invincible and stuck until they’re logged in to also prevent the spawnkillers. I think that it’s unnecessary to force everyone to login just for the sake of removing the problem of hackers using a VPN.
I think the sudden change to a login system would hurt the server population. I would say “Nay” to this proposal.
Only those who do use a vpn though would have to login, which means that the affected playerbase is much less than the entire playerbase. The rest of the players do not have a need to.