Character Name: Don't remember. It's a variation of my main ign (most likely 'MizManPan') Last thing you did: Probably redeeming a lot of APRs from the cash shop in Ludi. Why do you think you got banned?: *mistakenly* for vote abuse? Ban message: "This is an ID that has been deleted or blocked from connection." What GM banned you: None Here's the thing. I wake up every day and I make it a priority to vote for NX first thing in the morning. Sometimes I forget and do it later in the day instead but I make this a routine. I didn't know this until like level 80 but apparently I need APRs if I want to fight bosses as a warrior. So I'm taking a break from the game to farm APRs every day so that when I level up I could HP wash and buy items to HP wash with. If this is genuinely what I was banned for I am beyond disappointed. I am going to assume you can accidentally vote twice in one day which I didn't think was possible, because as I said earlier, sometimes I forget if I even voted in the morning or not, so I do it in the evening just to be sure. In my eyes not only did I not do anything wrong (on purpose or more accurately did nothing wrong maliciously), but you guys actively *encourage* voting and the risk of getting banned for accidental vote abuse. Voting gives in game advantages such as APRs and Gachapons which you can both sell and make yourself stronger with. This is an advantage over other players, or in other words: it is a completely vote-to-win concept that you guys actively encourage that is *a risk of a ban apparently*. If this is what I was banned for I am genuinely at a loss for words. You'll have to excuse my agitated mood but well.. I think I am right to be upset. Now I have to use this 2010's forum that I can barely navigate and plead like some kind of convict-bad-person peasant to the administrator gods *in a public forum of all places* for my account back as if I even did something malicious in the first place. No warnings, no email, no GM asking what's up, not even at the very least a god forsaken system to check if I voted twice a day to prevent people from accidentally getting banned. I am so unbelievably disappointed and agitated right now. Hours wasted and I wont even be able to speak with friends I made in game now. I'll again apologize for being very agitated right now and I hope no one takes it personally even though I sure did, but I would be lying if I said this hasn't ruined my evening (the only time I even have to play the game). Also seriously consider finding a better place for support like emails or Discord. There's no reason to fear talking to support because potentially anyone could watch it. These things should be private, especially ban appeals. This feels degrading and humiliating.
I understand your frustration, however as I told you in Discord it could be a plethora of things that even we don't know about, which is why we ask everyone who gets that message to make a ban appeal so we can see what is happening. Your voting habit is fine because we now changed the 24 hour timer to voting before reset. You can vote 5 minutes before reset, and then right at reset and be fine so you were not "banned" for that. Your account itself isn't banned, however the IP you're connecting from is. With that out of the way, are you using a VPN? Or did you make any adjustments to your router recently, that caused an IP refresh?
OK, why in public though? You can see how this feels really uncomfortable right? It makes it a thousand times worse seeing how literally at the bottom of the page it says how many people are reading basically what is your 'plea for forgiveness'. Anyways no, I'm not connecting with a VPN and if I did it was probably by accident (though I barely use it, I think the last time was a month ago). In addition to that, I already told you on Discord as well - my ISP is using a Carrier Grade-NAT meaning my public IP address is literally shared with my entire city and god-knows how many other people have access to it, and in addition to that, it changes every hour or so probably. I don't know the exact lease time for my IP and a bunch of other people probably went through it already. There is *nothing* I can do about it besides beg them to give me a static IP address which they will probably charge me an arm and a leg for. Again, I do apologize for being heated but.. Urgh. Just feels bad.
I wasn't in Staff when they made ban appeals public, assuming they were once private before. Perhaps you could make a feedback on that and explain your side. As for your ISP, yeah... That's most likely going to kick you where it hurts, and unfortunately we can't do anything about that. My only suggestion would be to purchase a paid for VPN (Free ones have IPs that change every time you log in) or possibly search for a new ISP if possible. We don't unban previously hacked IPs.
I can't change ISPs, they pretty much have a monopoly in the region I live in and I can't believe I have to explain this but IP banning is *terrible* practice. What you basically potentially just did is banned the entire northern side of my country. What's most likely happening right now is that the guy you banned was now assigned a different IP address *ANYWAYS* and is back to cheating or scamming or whatever he did on this new IP address, which you will later ban AGAIN, and now everyone who lives in this part of the country and is most likely going to get that new IP address is going to get screwed over once again. CG-NAT is *common* in many countries and areas around the world. Most online games don't IP ban for this exact reason; IP addresses are dynamic. Isn't there a whitelist system for these exact situations? It is ridiculous to even suggest to me to pay for a VPN service because of a mistake you guys did. EDIT: Well it's the next day and for the moment I tried to log in and it actually did let me. I guess my IP changed. Again. Kind of like that other guy who got banned. This kind of makes me not want to play if I know that at any moment my IP could change again and or be blocked.. I have no guarantee that the time and effort I put into the game wont be taken away from me... I seriously recommend doing some reading on CGNAT and why it's such a bad idea to IP ban. Static IP addresses are almost always reserved for businesses while every day regular customers are going to be using dynamic IP's because there are a finite amount of IPv4's in existence and because it saves crappy ISPs money. IP banning someone is not only ineffective, but is like a ticking time bomb to anyone else who will use the IP in the future; there is a finite pool of IP addresses we will get assigned to from my ISP. IP banning is usually reserved for extreme cases such as denial of service attacks where you have no other option, not because Timmy decided to use magnet hacks and take down the entire northen part of my country with him..
We're more than aware of whatever you just described. Given that we don't have a fully functioning autoban yet, that's unfortunately something we have to do. However, once our autobans (which are currently being worked on) are implemented, we're doing away all connection related bans (IP, MAC, etc), since any attempt to hack would immediately be detected and the player suspended (i.e. making new character would be futile, since you get banned the moment you start hacking). I hope you understand why we do what we're currently doing, and we're working hard to get autoban out as soon as possible so this kind of situation doesn't happen anymore.
I do understand, and I will apologize for my heated posts if they felt harsh or hurtful, though I still stand by them. I think this is a bad system, both the forum appeals and the IP bans but it's not my server and you don't owe me anything. You do you. Just feels like a bad treatment and a stab in the back after making it a routine to vote for this server every day only to get banned for something completely out of my control (which again, I can't log in). Oh well. I might give the server another shot when you have released the IP bans.
