Ladle 74

[sinewav]

It appears we had a security breach on CT LIV during the last few rounds of the finals, about 22:45 GMT. We had several spam messages from "swag." When I went to the list of players he was not visible in the server. He name changed repeatedly. I looks as if he was spamming from outside the server. As a moderator I did not have access to change change shout settings. I tried to set max_clients to 0 from 60, but I am not sure if that worked. I don't know if level-2 mods can set that parameter anyway. The problem was uncontrolled.

Kyle if you see this, can you look into it? Thanks.

[RoterBaron1337]

Phoenix getting better and better, hope to see you next ladle again and get another seed

Good game(s) CT, guess you lacked at first and then later came good back in 2nd match but it was not enough, still well played and hope to see you next ladle

CT LIV +1
Loki US +1

[Soul]

Ggs Phoenix, Brilliant Team, and CT.

Gz to my team and dreadlord for most ladle wins

[Gazelle]

Ggs Phoenix, Brilliant Team, and CT.

Gz to my team and dreadlord for most ladle wins

^ what he said.

[Z-Man]

I caught said last bit on recording. That was all I got. Yay me! Do I get a cookie?
final.aarec 5660kb 722s

And yes, setting the max_clients to 0 worked, both ways. You were able to set it and it seemed to have stopped the trolling. Later came more, but AFAIK, those were previously signed in clients. So I suppose the drive by spam came from a custom client that just signed in, then sent a single spam message, then disconnected right away. Source code workaround: make those linger for a bit in the /players list so they can be banned with remote admin commands.

Immediately possible settings remedy for tournaments: what sine.wav tried. Restrict shouting to logged in clients. At least active players are not affected, then.
ACCESS_LEVEL_SHOUT 15
should do the trick.

[sinewav]

So I suppose the drive by spam came from a custom client that just signed in, then sent a single spam message, then disconnected right away.

Nice, that's what I thought to. I was going to edit my post to speculate on that but you beat me! Good catch Z. Let's try to get kyle to change that setting in the ladle.cfg for next month.

[Lowkey]

Ggs I swear gaz those centers Urg!!!! Lol gj gz cya next ladle.

[voodoo]

I've sent you relevant part of the log Sine.

The guy was just spamming, leaving, rejoining, etc...

[Gazelle]

Ggs I swear gaz those centers Urg!!!! Lol gj gz cya next ladle.

Loool was a team effort my friend :p

My boys followed up really well! Made my life 10 times easier as center.

[Nanu Nanu]

Gms Phoenix and gz on another win, Redemption! I had fun, hope y'all did.
Pings were terrible in Loki's but I rarely experienced any lag.
+1 Loki's

[sinewav]

Global stats attached.

[orion]

Milestones updated. Big congrats to dreadlord taking the leadership of ladle wins.
Also congrats RD on this heavy run along the year.

[dreadlord]

Heh, thanks. Good matches Brilliant Team, Phoenix and CT and congratulations to my team.

AOT UK: +1
owkey's ( ): +1
CT's LIV: +1

[theo]

Ha, for the first time I can remember we have more servers than teams! But this is a very, very good sign.

At the risk at sounding pessimistic, I see that as a bad sign.

That means that we have less teams registered.

Except for ladle 72, there has always been more than 10 teams registered since ladle 27 (4 years ago).

CT or phx might not even bring two teams every time. Not sure if brillant team or ks will do anymore ladles.

Will there still be an octa rounds next ladle? In 3 months? After that?

[sinewav]

Ha, for the first time I can remember we have more servers than teams! But this is a very, very good sign.

At the risk at sounding pessimistic, I see that as a bad sign.

Nah, don't worry about the numbers. Fortress is still healthy. You know, there was a period of time when Fortress almost died completely. Here is a frightening peek at Ladle 12. The thread starts with these two lines:

this might be the last one...
who knows if we will be able to pick it up next season...

Check out the participation in this thread: Ladle 14

There was even a period of time were Ladle wasn't even played for several months. And here is why I'm not worried; there are more people in Arma now than back then and participation is higher. There are still a lot of players who have never won a Ladle and won't stop until they do. Plus, there are occasional influxes of players returning due to nostalgia. Also, there is another TRON movie coming out so we can probably expect another wave of new players here just from that. Finally, there is a growing number of Linux users worldwide who will eventually discover the game because it's in popular distros.

I have no worries. This game is over a decade old and the servers still have players 24 hours a day. Not many games can make that claim. Arma will be around a long time and so will Ladle.