Has anyone else come across this in mmos that having a bad internet connection is a bannable offense because Face of Mankind has that policy.

While I feel sorry for the people that because of that are or might be excluded from gaming I at the same time have to agree with that policy. People that have bad connections and therefore mess group play up or lag and teleport around making PVP against those players a pure nightmare just should be got rid of. Sounds harsh but for me a certain minimum when it comes to connection quality is about the same as a certain minimum requirement when it comes to computers.

I have heard of other games (mostly FPS though) where people with bad connections got banned.

Originally posted by genkisel

Has anyone else come across this in mmos that having a bad internet connection is a bannable offense because Face of Mankind has that policy.

I think it has something to do with (speed)hacking (and other ways of cheating). Where the server can't match the data of the client. Heard the same thing in Lineage II a while back, where GMs reason that having a huge ping and lag/low FPS might be caused by using 3rd party programs.

Or course, I think it's plain BS and ppl should be able to play at any lag they have (if it's real bad they'll leave themselfs), and it's up to the publisher to add some anti-cheating method...

From a PVP viewpoint it makes sense, and FOM is all about the PVP from what I understand.

Originally posted by Kabaal
[mod edit]

aye but it does bring up a point if you can get banned for slow interenet can you get banned for a slow computer, a first offense for having a slow connection shouldnt result in a account permament ban if anything a warning but not a ban.  most modern games that have lag issues will either rubberband you back or freeze you but Face of mankind continues playing even with lag that in and of it self just shows me how poorly made the game is banning people for the games own screw up.

[mod edit]. I personally don't enjoy running after people trying to knock them over when they port and lag around may it be due to connection issues or cheats. The effect in many games is the same: A damn annoying game experience for the others involved because the one with inferior connection/computer. The own team gets annoyed because the guy underperforms (in PVE and PVP), the enemy struggles to get the guy dead in PVP. Not to mention that the one with the bad connection will hardly have any actual fun like that either.

It's fine if you are of the "gaming should be everyone no matter what" approach. I personally don't agree in such cases.

Originally posted by Saydien

[mod edit] I personally don't enjoy running after people trying to knock them over when they port and lag around may it be due to connection issues or cheats. The effect in many games is the same: A damn annoying game experience for the others involved because the one with inferior connection/computer. The own team gets annoyed because the guy underperforms (in PVE and PVP), the enemy struggles to get the guy dead in PVP. Not to mention that the one with the bad connection will hardly have any actual fun like that either.

It's fine if you are of the "gaming should be everyone no matter what" approach. I personally don't agree in such cases.

So where do you draw the line then?  How many megabits does a connection need before someone is acceptable to group with?  How many Gigahertz should their processor have before they are safe from being banned?

[mod edit]

I agree with the policy in a PVP oriented MMO, I hope SOE implements it in Planetside 2, because people with horrible pings in Planetside really had a somewhat huge advantage. Also, back before client > server authentication, people used to unplug their cat5 and plug it back in after like 2-3secs to gain a high packet loss, to also trick the server to thinking they have a "High Ping", so they would "warp" around the battlefield. Again, it's shitty for the person who has no access to a decent ISP, or can't afford it. But it really is a major annoyance towards other players who pay their dues and want to have fun. So I agree with the policy, but only in a FPS setting, or tournament based MMORPG feature, like the Arena's in L2/WoW etc.

As much as i hate lag, and gaming with or against laggy people, the bannable offense should be to stuff like this, looking down on people who do not have a high end computer and super fast connection. It's the same with "you hay to pay more? it's getting released later/not at all? Your fault for not living where i do".

More often then enough, low FPS is because many developers do not care about perfomance. Like when games released at the same time using the same engine have like 30 FPS difference on average. Or when a game that was released two years ago still doesn't run comfortable on an average PC bought today.  Or when there is like a 5 FPS difference between standing still, looking at a wall directly in front of the character, using 640x480 and everything turned off and a battle scene with dozens of explosions @ highest settings. Yes, happens. It's a good thing if you always have 60+ FPS, but a bad when you always have 20 or less.

Similar with lag, it's often not the ping, but bad prediction code and other stuff.

Or it's simply because the servers are on the other side of the world. Which is often enough  the developers/publishers fault, for not providing servers closer to the people. If you release a game in some country, you want them to play, so imake it playable.

And if you do not release it, you're stupid for actively lowering the numbers of customers. By now it should be common knowledge that if someone wants to play a game, he will do so, whether it's a singleplayer game that got downloaded illegaly, or if they playing the imported version of an MMORPG by using a proxy.

Originally posted by kadepsyson

Originally posted by Saydien

It's fine if you are of the "gaming should be everyone no matter what" approach. I personally don't agree in such cases.

So where do you draw the line then?  How many megabits does a connection need before someone is acceptable to group with?  How many Gigahertz should their processor have before they are safe from being banned?

[mod edit]

Was about to say the same. I'm playing a lot of MMO's at 'the other side of the Atlantic'. Some even at a 9hour GMT difference. As long as I can play 'pretty normal' and don't lag out (often), I'll keep playing. Heck, for some game I know I have ~350ms latency (which is a lot from my location ;), but performance is not really suffering from them.

I think it should be up for the player if the connection (or the PC ) is too slow to actually play, and not for the publisher of the game. If the connection/PC is really too slow, that player will get a 'bad reputation' in the game anyway because of the lag (and his/her performance because of it) and leave sooner or later anyway...

To me that sounds too ridiculous for words.

Being banned  because someone halfway round the world made a configuration error on a router? No thanks.

If that's in their terms and conditions, I suppose we can at least be grateful that they gave us warning so the game can be avoided.

Originally posted by Reizla

Originally posted by kadepsyson

Originally posted by Saydien

It's fine if you are of the "gaming should be everyone no matter what" approach. I personally don't agree in such cases.

So where do you draw the line then?  How many megabits does a connection need before someone is acceptable to group with?  How many Gigahertz should their processor have before they are safe from being banned?

[mod edit]

Was about to say the same. I'm playing a lot of MMO's at 'the other side of the Atlantic'. Some even at a 9hour GMT difference. As long as I can play 'pretty normal' and don't lag out (often), I'll keep playing. Heck, for some game I know I have ~350ms latency (which is a lot from my location ;), but performance is not really suffering from them.

I think it should be up for the player if the connection (or the PC ) is too slow to actually play, and not for the publisher of the game. If the connection/PC is really too slow, that player will get a 'bad reputation' in the game anyway because of the lag (and his/her performance because of it) and leave sooner or later anyway...

Right.  Also, what if a person DOES have great internet speed and a blazing fast computer, but one day something outside of their control happens with their ISP to cause latency in the game.  This should ban them?  Give me a freaking break lol.

Nowhere was stated that this would happen after just one time or at 350 ms latency or whatever. Making up cases of it happening after lagging 1 time or at a certain latency number is questionable at best.

Though a question for our good-hearted idealists: If the impact an ongoing bad connection quality has on PVP games is basically the same as some cheats have. Should the cheaters be banned but the ones with bad connections should be allowed to keep playing just like before?

Originally posted by Saydien

Nowhere was stated that this would happen after just one time or at 350 ms latency or whatever. Making up cases of it happening after lagging 1 time or at a certain latency number is questionable at best.

Though a question for our good-hearted idealists: If the impact an ongoing bad connection quality has on PVP games is basically the same as some cheats have. Should the cheaters be banned but the ones with bad connections should be allowed to keep playing just like before?

Cheaters do so on purpose, people with high ping, not so much.

Edit: And again, how many milliseconds is not cheating then?  Where do you want to draw the line?

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Originally posted by kadepsyson

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Originally posted by Saydien Nowhere was stated that this would happen after just one time or at 350 ms latency or whatever. Making up cases of it happening after lagging 1 time or at a certain latency number is questionable at best. Though a question for our good-hearted idealists: If the impact an ongoing bad connection quality has on PVP games is basically the same as some cheats have. Should the cheaters be banned but the ones with bad connections should be allowed to keep playing just like before?

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Cheaters do so on purpose, people with high ping, not so much.

Edit: And again, how many milliseconds is not cheating then?  Where do you want to draw the line?

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That's the obvious difference but the effect remains the same. In most FPS games players have the chance to cast kick votes if they don't want to have someone on their team. High latencies in many cases will make that happen rather quickly. Other genres are (fortunately) rather hesitant to implement such features because of the risk of them being abused. Still there has to be a way to deal with people that continuously ruin the game experience for several others in extreme cases.

I am not talking about the case of 350+ ms because that still might allow being involved in the game without any teleporting or whatever. I also am well aware that drawing any line at a certain connection speed, computer spec or latency would be silly. The way it is handled with cheaters that get recorded and reported when they teleport around or end up running idly against the wall being invincible till they time out after 5 minutes for the 29th time within 3 days is suitable though.

Don't take it personally if you're prevented from playing because of your high ping. It needs to be done to keep other players happy.

Not really surprised by their poor decision, given the poor design and implementation which led them to a point where they'd even need to do that.

What is surprising is that people are even still bothering to play FoM at all.

What gets to me is that you get banned permamently on one account but when you accept that account is gone forever and try to rebuild only to be told oh you have the slow connection your banned for life from the game that really ticks me off.

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Originally posted by genkisel
What gets to me is that you get banned permamently on one account but when you accept that account is gone forever and try to rebuild only to be told oh you have the slow connection your banned for life from the game that really ticks me off.

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Well, it wouldn't make much sense to just ban your account and let you create another one just to let you lag around just as much again. I don't know that game at all but while I can understand their reason to keep you out of the game I certainly hope that any purchase or other costs would get refunded.