And then the hammer fell.....

jaggeh

EA to ban modified ranked servers

By ohaire Yesterday, 00:23
EA is working on exploiters and padders who visit custom servers, claiming they violate the terms of service. The servers under fire are those that either advertise informal rules (usually enforced by an admin) or that modify the game 'server side' to restrict the weapons.
The clans and owners of these servers say they should be allowed to customize the servers they pay for and that they add 'variety to the game' but EA maintains that these should only be used in unranked games. EA is working closely with its providers to stop the abusers. Anybody caught playing on these servers could face a ban.

news post from http://www.gamedrome.com/

ouch, better stop playing on those knife/pistol/defib only servers boys

LoLth

unless they're unranked......

doesnt stop you agreeing to all use hand to hand combat and small arms only during a round. Just means you cant have a server rule saying so

the_syco

F3ck. This means no more "no vehicle" maps That some of us like to have on the odd druken night [font=&quot]
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Stephen

Where's the fun in hiking miles across the map all the time?

the_syco

Stephen wrote:

Where's the fun in hiking miles across the map all the time?

On a small 8 or 16 player city map with 32 or more players... its fun.

jaggeh

We have noticed an increase in behavior where leased servers are being used by clans solely to pad players stats, even to the extent where clans are institutionalizing rules that forbid normal play. Currently the favored method is for player admins to set rules where players must use either a knife or Pistol, players must revive each other, and players must not take flags. This creates environments where players gain stats unrealistically and creates an imbalance in the ranked server playing field. In our opinion, these players are breaking EA’s Terms of Service, and we have begun taking action on the clans involved. However, clan coordination to this extreme requires us to create a long-term solution for this (separate from any scoring changes in 1.03).

As a group, Ranked Partners included, we need to work together to aggressively crack down on any server that is found to be promoting stats exploiting in order to maintain the integrity of the stats system.

The following steps will be taken each time we locate a server exploiting through enforced admin rules:

1. Customer support will strip the stats from those caught on the server at the time of discovery and anyone sharing a clan tag with the offenders that seem to have any anomalous stats.

2. We will contact the Trusted Partner who has leased the instance in question to the offending clan and request that the clan is immediately moved over to a non-Ranked server. This clan should not be given an opportunity to lease another Ranked Server from said partner, as they have too many avenues of coordinating exploitative actions.

3. If said clan continues to have access to a Ranked server, we will be removing the IP of offending server from the validated list shortly after contacting the Ranked Partner connected with them.

Please keep in mind we are not holding the hosting partner responsible for the actions of these clients. Also note that the tools we need to employ if we reach step 3 may impact other clients you are hosting. Because of this, we do ask that each partner works to ensure that clans/groups that engage in this behavior are removed from your clientele. We have ‘busted’ a few servers already and those partners have been exceptional in their response to correct the errant behavior.

Notify your clients that if they are running their servers in the manner described above or in any manner which could be questionable that they must cease such actions and run pure servers. Please forward any reasonable questions your clients have to me, off list, and I will reply.

theres what the news article is about

DannyD

the_syco wrote:

F3ck. This means no more "no vehicle" maps That some of us like to have on the odd druken night [font=&quot]
[/font]

this is only for ranked servers !

Ponster

DannyD wrote:

this is only for ranked servers !

Yeah, but take a look at the knife servers, 4 are ranked and 1 is unranked.

The 4 ranked are almost always full and the unranked never has more than 2 in in for the past week.

Lucutus

'knife & pistol only' ranked servers are there for a reason, stat padding.

in enforcing these rules on a ranked server, the owners are encouraging stat padding and that's what EA want to prevent.

They have no problem with it for unranked servers.

Keyzer

I was on one of those knife servers.
Some dude as a medic scored 300+ in one round...
Madness...