Ban Appeal 2/11/12 @ 9:24 PM EST.

In-Game Player Name: Glory
A3 UID: 76561198035778053
Banned for lobby ping being too high/bouncing.

Hi everyone, I just wanted to get a bit more clarification on last nights events. Since I was unable to convey in TS what my side of the issue was, here is a walk through of what happened with screenshots provided.

Last night I turned on my computer, opened up the A3 Launcher, and saw that there was only a few players on the Nex Corvus server, so I assumed that the server had just crashed. I launched the game and when I got into the lobby I noticed that I had 150 ping, when I usually only have 40-50. I alt-tabbed out of Arma, brought up Steam from the background, and realized that Arma 3 workshop content triggered by the A3 Launcher was being downloaded. I paused the download, but it would only pause for a second then start again. I've never experienced that before and I didn't know what to do, I clicked it a few more times and it kept starting and stopping. I went to the A3 Launcher to see if I could stop it there, since every time I clicked pause the A3 Launcher would re-trigger it to start again. I couldn't stop it there, so I went back to Steam, went into the Arma workshop, and unsubscribed from the mod it was downloading (Bornholm map). I alt-tabbed back into Arma to enter the game from the lobby, and when it loaded it said that I was banned for high lobby ping. Not knowing why, I tried again and got the same message. The entire time all this was going on, my friend who lives in the same house was playing on the server. After a few minutes I was banned, he also received a message saying he was banned for being on the same IP address.

I got on the forums and hopped into the Admin Help channel on the TS hoping to receive some help and insight on what happened and why. Shortly after joining, Mustang entered the channel and we had a short discussion about what happened. Being caught off guard by a more intense conversation than anticipated, I wasn't able to explain properly about what had been going on. I was accused of sitting in the lobby for over an hour and having crazy bouncing ping which eventually led to the crashing of the server. I hadn't yet figured out that the pausing/restarting of the download was causing the bouncing ping. Not yet knowing the cause of the ping, the only thing I could defend was my lobby sitting for an hour. Even though my computer was turned off for the hour of my lobby sitting, and wasn't turned on until after the server had crashed, it still showed in whatever logs were checked by Mustang that I was indeed in the lobby for an hour with crazy ping and causing the server to crash. Without receiving more help and insight to the issue, and without being able to prove my innocence further, I was banned from TS. It wasn't until after that I realized me pausing and restarting the download over and over again was causing the crazy ping. But at this point I couldn't do anything about it or talk to anyone about it.

The lobby ping was my fault, even though I did it unknowingly. I apologize for that. I went through Windows Event Viewer and captured my computer on/off times and game play times through Steam. Hopefully you will look at these:

Here is a screenshot of my Steam game time. I played at 7:44 PM for 47 minutes, stopping at 8:33 PM. It also shows me starting Arma up at 9:21 PM and ending after three minutes when the ban came.

https://i.gyazo.com/5b41591ec1af264f61a0b4789e246b76.png

Here are two screenshots of the times when I turned my computer on and off under two different windows. The Administrative Events window and System Window. The blue is when it shut off, the red is when it turned on.

https://i.gyazo.com/87a191b5454b22b8e04739245df93b58.png - Administrative
https://i.gyazo.com/f00f0923b21ab23d7138e05b194a32c0.png - System

You can see that the times line up with what was recorded in the Steam screenshot.

Here are two screenshots showing the BattleEye service being loaded and unloaded. Times are in red, BattleEye is in blue. These also line up with the Steam times and computer off/on times.

https://i.gyazo.com/bde98c39f4a69c17b3f36c2f1617108b.png - Loaded
https://i.gyazo.com/179e7ec1b03cbdf9b2b270990f89391f.png - Unloaded

The last screenshot is of the BattleEye service being loaded in time with what Steam registered, right before the ban.

https://i.gyazo.com/1b62bfe159aed50ab4c3127bbbc8ecaf.png

I apologize for the links, the pictures attached were too small.

Please consider my case, I don't know why I wasn't given more benefit of doubt, but I do understand what the situation from your viewpoint must have looked like. I don't know much about running servers and checking their logs, maybe times could have somehow got mixed up. All I do know is that when I opened up A3 Launcher, there were only a few people on server, which leads me to believe the server had just crashed and restarted prior to turning on my computer. And that even after I was banned, the server was still running because my friend was still on it and playing until he was also banned. If I did indeed crash the server, I am truly sorry. I wouldn't ever intentionally crash a server and I wouldn't even know how to if I tried. I've played Arma for a long time, and I've played on a good servers with good people, and bad servers with bad people. This is the best server I've ever played on, and I've only played on it for two days. The DonkeyPunched community seems like one of the best Exile communities that I've seen. I would love to be a part of it and be able to play on your servers again. If I need to provide more screenshots or explanations, just let me know and I'll respond as soon as I can. I can even provide references from past server admins.

Thank you for your time,

Glory

Hey GLORY, lots of info there to look at and I will ask the staff to read it over also.

To put things to light to all.
Your character GLORY with your UID and your steam name GLORY connected to the server at 645pm cst and stayed in the lobby for a few hours until server crash and then joined again after the crash.
I noticed that after your connection to the server at a ping of 44ms, went straight up to 5000ms, then within the exact time frame of a ping check went back down, once check was over it went back up.
All the other players pings were unstable during your connection to the server.

So I took action and gave ya a kick since there was no reply from you, nor a reply from anyone in the server saying they knew you or were your friend and could relay a message to you.
Pings on the players settled down, but then almost immediately you joined back up, your ping still doing the same stuff and again everyones connection went goofy yet again.
This time I banned you from the server. I then went back in game chat and asked if anyone knew GLORY...... No reply for many minutes, I then noticed that Joel had the same IP as you in game yet not one reply in the 15-20 minutes this went on....
So I asked again about GLORY still no reply. Joel then got the ban.
Several minutes later you as GLORY showed up in TS3, asking about the situation.

I asked you several questions, the one that interested me the most was your decision to say you weren't connected to the server prior to the crash yet my reports show 2 hours of connection from the same IP and port as you were just connected with. I then had another person check the log for that information, I dragged you to a public channel and asked you yet again "So you were never connected to the server prior to the crash?" your answer was still no. At that point there was no sense in even discussing the lobby/ingame 2 clients ping going crazy, high bandwith from GLORY and low bandwith from Joel issue.... I went ahead and removed you from all servers and from TS3.

The data in the reports don't lie, Humans do.
If you hadn't deceived us about the connection we could have discussed this even farther, but one lie means nothing but more lies.

Good Day sir, your current BANS for your 2 clients are locked in place and will not be removed at this time.
As I mentioned in the top of the reply, I will have several staff members read your post over as well.

I get that your reports don't lie, I understand that while being an admin you must deal with lying and deceitful players all the time. It hurts to be labelled as one when I've never done anything like that in a game. I always reply to messages in-game, I am always ready and willing to talk to or help an admin, I donate when I can, I try to be as active in the community as I can be. I searched through logs, gathered evidence, and put time into a thoughtful post. I don't understand how I could be lying with the information I provided. I don't know why anyone lying would put so much effort in trying to rectify a situation with a person they will never interact with again. Or even care about what kind of impression they're leaving behind. I don't know much about servers and connection, but just for the sake of argument and so this doesn't happen to me again, is there anything or any reason why I could have been connected to the server when my computer was off? Could the crash that had happened around 7:42 EST somehow messed with the data? Am I somehow staying connected to the server when I exit the game but leave A3 Launcher running, or somehow just staying connected in general even with my computer off?

https://i.gyazo.com/d593e5352a10f19a578e4934684ac9e0.png

This is the last screenshot I have, it shows that I connected at 7:38 EST and played for four minutes until there was a crash. It seems like all the data you have for me about the ping and being connected despite my computer being off happened after I reconnected at 7:45 EST, as shown by your log and my Steam screenshot. I strongly feel that something must have happened when the server crashed at roughly 7:42 EST that is causing skewed data. Go back and look at past data for me, compare the pings and the log out times and I'm sure everything will match up and be straight up until that crash at 7:42-ish EST. At least look into the possibility of that.

Please look at everything I've given you. If you put so much stock in data then what I've given you must raise some kinds of questions.