Not only is creating a new account to circumvent bans against Blizzard CoC (https://us.battle.net/forums/en/code-of-conduct/#circumvent) but it’s also just promoting a toxic game environment.
If you get banned for being toxic more than 2 or 3 times, the entire IP should get banned so you can’t pollute the forums or the game environment with their repetitive toxicity.
They’ve had plenty of warnings. Plenty of suspensions and bans. They shouldn’t be allowed to be here.
A paywall of less than 50$ isn’t enough.
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unfortunately, those who play Overwatch on the same IP would have to suffer as well…
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IP bans do very little in today’s online gaming. Most ISPs do not utilize Static IPs so the IP can be changed as easily as requesting an IP refresh.
Also, the prevalence of VPNs means that an IP ban can be circumvented quite easily.
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If it is ONLY for toxicity, I suppose it would be fine; however, with false reporting being a thing, I am really hesitant to call for more drastic punishments. So I am glad Blizzard is at least vaguely measured.
Honestly, I think it’d be worth it. Take out the entire barrel of fish because one of them would kill the rest in the pond.
Oh I know how that works. The thing is, IPs have 4 parts. These parts lead to a very specific network. Everyone on that network shouldn’t be allowed to play. The non-static IP addresses don’t change this.
While VPNs would circumvent this, OW’s network heavily suffers from the use of these VPNs (talking a 4-5x increase in latency/ping).
Honestly, I’m quite shocked Blizzard hasn’t come down on false reporters yet. They have said they would do it, but have yet to even implement such a system or take drastic action against such false reportings.
If we fix the false report problem (or atleast make every perma ban overviewed by a human), then the argument still stands. They’ve had enough warnings. They’ve had enough suspensions. They shouldn’t be allowed here anymore.
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Most people can simply change their router or computers MAC address and get a different class B IP. Also, college campus networks, mobile networks, as well as anyone who plays at internet/gaming cafes would be hit and I know I personally would be upset if one day I logged on to find out someone else who uses my ISP and lives close by got my IP address banned.
There’s multi metric ways to tell, like giving a computer an ID based on it’s hardware and various software settings as well as other factors, but these things can all be spoofed or they can just use another computer. Payment methods can also be circumvented easily so in the end… there’s no real way to police it short of giving everyone an implant that identifies them and idk about you but I’m not too much for being part of the Borg.
IP’s can be changed with just a few clicks if I’m not mistaken. Wouldn’t work.
The difference is, most users won’t be able to figure out how to change MAC or IP addresses like this successfully.
Even on college campuses, different networks are mapped differently. Banning an entire building is not banning everyone on the entire campus. While banning an entire building (assuming they’re on the same network) could be bad, it doesn’t make sense why other games are successfully IP banning players without affecting others in the area.
ITT: Someone who doesn’t understand how networking works.
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This is a case where false positives would have a much larger undesired effect than false negatives. You start denying access to paying customers who don’t deserve a ban and there’d be a huge outcry, even if it was just a couple hundred people and banning classes of IPs wouldn’t create just a few hundred false positives but potentially millions.
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Except I do though.
Considering that many other games are capable of doing IP bans, there’s no reason that OW couldn’t implement it as well.
Not to mention banning a gateway from a specific router or a serial number from a motherboard/GPU/CPU would also be capable of doing this sort of ban/suspension.
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew
Oh look, IP ban dodged.
Hardware is also spoofed not too difficultly.
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So is your solution to everything you don’t like just “ban it”?
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IP Bans end up being busy work, same with using computer IDs based on multi-metric parameters. Bad actors will get a new IP or change the metrics you measure their ID with. Then some new customer wonders why they can’t play your game and go through tech support only to find that they have an IP that was banned and now you are banning IPs and unbanning them and introducing a lot of overhead that is hard to prove it’s doing much to keep out bad actors. I mean, I’m as much for wanting this to work as you are. I hate playing with toxic players. It just isn’t so simple sadly.
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Maybe banning serial numbers? The application has access to that information considering it needs it. Serial numbers are unique and replacing hardware is expensive. This might be a more effective solution.
Edit: No, I didn’t mean to respond to you. But since I clicked the wrong profile, I will:
Please, stay on topic to the current discussion and don’t be toxic.
That is banning an account, and unless I’m mistaken that’s what they do now. The only problem with it as you have said is they can just buy another copy. But it’s at least some deterrent and it doesn’t have false positives assuming everyone is banned for just reasons. Unless you mean computer serial numbers and I mean, I custom built my PC it doesn’t even have one I also don’t think even for computers that do all of them have a way to access it from the OS, and the ones that do have different ways of going about it. I don’t think Windows will share your OS license number with 3rd parties either but that just means using another copy of windows if you ban by that anyway.
They could maybe pair having really strict reporting rules for new players and watching closer players that perform well despite being lower level or something to catch them quicker but they might already do something like that and not tell us.
What IP Bans accomplish :
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that is the whole list.
iirc they have hardware bans
what ‘hardware bans’ accomplish :
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change network card, oh look new MAC address.
You can edit the mac address of your network card from Windows. No need to buy a new one