UHG!

[TiTnAsS]

sean is really getting on my nerves... he makes new names in tron and follows me server to server starting shit. 24/7 ask anyone ive played with. I havnt got one match without him there harassing me in near a month. I WANT A WAY TO BAN HIM!!!!!!! he has dynamic IP i beleive. I was trying to make a recording this time for supertard and he kept ruining it.....

I think people have been tolerent up until now..lots of people leave games cuz seans there etc.. authenticating would fix this problem wouldnt it? GRR dont mean to whine or anything, but hes becoming a real issue.

[Jonathan]

A firewall ban worked for the total of a few hours that my server has run. He kept going in and out, and then "somehow" he didn't come in again. But I think his IP is dynamic nevertheless.

[hang3r]

Just drop packets from the entire network that he’s coming from, hopefully no one else that’s from that network plays, this is rather a lame idea but maybe it will stop him long enough that he will just quit.

EDIT: He also stalks me, same with a lot of people, so don’t feel like your the only target

[Jonathan]

His block has 2^19, or about half a million addresses.

[hang3r]

hmmm banning a network of that size maybe a bad idea

[Z-Man]

authenticating would fix this problem wouldnt it?

Not alone. Authentication plus a registration process that makes it hard to get new user IDs (a club where the chief decides who gets in, or a paid membership) plus servers than only let in authorized players from these restricted authorities (won't be the default setting for sure) can do it. Every other method (letting the client send a unique machine ID, for example the CPUID) won't work in an OS game.
Just silence him. I don't want to hear no "but then I won't be able to counter the bad things he says about me"; nobody else is listening to them. There are just two possible reactions, either get mad at him or ignore him. And he wants you to get mad.

[juwb]

Instead of a complicated authentication method, how about the possibility of adding password protection to servers, so all users have to know the server password to join?

About banning networks: depending on the network, you don't have to ban the whole thing. At least my experience with big German networks (like T-Online) was that although the IP you get is dynamic, the ones you can get actually depends on where you live (so the available IPs for one person are just a small slice off the big network). And while banning the complete network was not possible (because far too many people come from there), it's possible to ban just people coming from one specific location.

If other big dialup networks work the same way (IP range you can get depending on location / knot you're using to dial-in) there probably would be a way to do the same...

[hang3r]

Yes some form of authentication would do it, as armagetronad becomes more and more popular these breads of people are going to come flooding in.

Authentication could also help to aid in preventing nickname abuse.

I mean a form of in game authentication where you have to register your nickname on the website, then once in-game you just login:

------------------------------
Login:hang3r
Password:*********

Welcome to armagetronad hang3r, you have logged in 4345 times since registered (1/9/2001)

You have 2 new private messages.

......

[Z-Man]

Instead of a complicated authentication method, how about the possibility of adding password protection to servers, so all users have to know the server password to join?

I'm afraid that won't work well; all it takes is one act of deceit, and the password is leaked to someone who should not have it. Then it needs to be changed, and all legal players need to be notified. You'll end up building a system around it that is just as complicated as full authentication, and less convenient for the users. And mind that I don't suggest authentication as a solution to the Sean problem at all
If you want a members only server, just keep its connection data secret by not letting it connect to the master server. It's just as good as password protection.

[Revan]

Can't you just like go to player police menu and 'silence' him?

Then you can kick him too...

[Phytotron]

Here's the problem with your recommendation, z-man: it's not just his mouth. More often than not, at least in my experience, it's his vote-spamming that's the problem, not his mouth. Silencing him won't stop that. What he does is he enters, sometimes talks some trash, then puts up as many votes as the server allows. Then he leaves and comes right back 5 seconds later. In the meantime, the vote gets either approved or rejected, which clears it, and he puts up a whole new set. He'll do this for 15 minutes on end, more or less.

Obviously the best tact, at least in theory, is to ignore him, which I always do and try to encourage others ( ::coughhangercough:: ) to do as well. The main reason he continues this childishness is because other hot-headed teenagers keep feeding him. But even though I ignore him he nevertheless keeps it up, so it's not entirely a valid solution.

And Revan, no, kicking him doesn't work either. Kicks aren't permanent; a person can (and he does) just come right back. Kicking actually tends to encourage and entertain him even further.

So what solution is there? As far as I can tell, the way things are, there isn't one other than those he stalks changing their names so that they can't be readily identified on the server list. Still, you guys—hanger and TnA—do seriously need to stop feeding him.

[Z-Man]

0.2.8 will have banning and auto-banning from all forms of kicks and the voting spam detection is more configurable. This should soften the problem a bit. I'll also try to make the vote spam remember its status across connections, so you can't refresh it by reconnecting.
However, I find vote spamming quite unannoying. It only pops up between rounds where you have some free moments anyway. It disturbs chat a bit, but so does gameplay

[Phytotron]

It's quite annoying when you have other idiots in the game who will approve the kick, and you're the subject of that kick. I'd say getting kicked for no good reason would qualify as a disturbance. And it's annoyingly tedious having to repeatedly reject 6 (or however many are allowed) polls at the completion of every single round for 15 minutes or so. And it's annoyingly tedious having to constantly press 'page down' in order to clear the screen of the "new poll" announcements.

Deal with this crap day/night after day/night, sometimes more than once a day/night, and I doubt you'll remain as dismissing of it.

[Jonathan]

However, I find vote spamming quite unannoying. It only pops up between rounds where you have some free moments anyway. It disturbs chat a bit, but so does gameplay

So you have time for the game, votes, and chat if you die early. OK, it's not that bad, but IMO it's very annoying when the poll pops up while I'm typing.

[Lucifer]

There're those things. Then there's also the fact that as long as a person keeps the number of polls maxed out, you can't start a poll on him, only admin intervention helps, and then he just comes back anyway.

On a slightly different note, I'd like to have macros for chat, where I could hit "s" to talk, and then a macro, and then it fills up my input with the macro at the cursor position. So I could hit F4 to get a list of players, then I could hit "s" F5 and it would fill in "/admin kick " so I just have to type the player's number.