Boneyard - banned

[AbsoluteZero]

Please un-ban me. I played two games and setting up my stuff and now I am getting banned from the only server with people in it. Maybe I was banned for minimizing to turn off firewall rule that was causing lag. No idea, no warning, just trigger happy with the bans

Connected to 64.94.238.27:27015
Disconnect: STEAM UserID STEAM_0:1:1008821 is banned.

[9u-9u-9u]

i can't help you with your ban but are you a known player? your name has familiarity in tf. there was a clan in tfc called absolute zero. there's a guy named absolute. and there's a guy named zero.

[AbsoluteZero]

Yes, that is me - I was 'masterMAN' for a while when I was younger and switched my name to AZero short for Absolute Zero. I was also on the Decepticons and before that Corpse Squadron. I been playing since before steam came out, but my ID is a little higher because I was not super pumped about switching over to steam. I also did not know they were incrementing the IDs and lower ones would be such a big deal at the time. I have always had the same ID and never cheated on this or any ID. Elwood, Riddler, Alphatronics all know me in person. I also participated in one of the last TFC tournaments where they actually had a cash prize and people came out of the woodwork. We got our ass beat in the first round by the winning team, but it was still nice to play again.

I was asked in another server if I was still banned. Yes - I am and I still am not sure why. Maybe someone who has access to the logs could check. I do like the admins on Moto's Funhouse (74.91.114.247:27015) and in their MOTD they do encourage reporting of admin abuse. Everyone I have talked to in voice comms has seemed real nice. It could be that I lagged out because I was still getting the firewall settings right to allow server interactions and that caused some automated ban process to occur (though I have never seen such a process ban steam IDs and have operated several servers myself). I did see another post about someone being banned from the same server and just assumed I got banned for "cheating" or seeming to be too good to just roll back into the game and happen to know how to play. I do hope there is some accountability. Not even mad at all, I get banned often from small community counter strike servers for playing a little too hard when I get in the zone and it is always called "cheating". There is never evidence and it is just guys who are trying to keep the game at a more enjoyable level for them and others. I totally get it and I am happy to use other guns or change play style to make it more balanced and still interesting and challenging for me.

Please unban I just want to play FF and sometimes there are people in there playing and it sucks to not be able to play with others. I think after a while I will just remove it from view since that is all I can control by adding all the others to favorites. It is strange that it is such a small community and that seems like the most active server and no admin seems to be available to figure it out. Usually these are pretty quick once it turns up no evidence for active communities, then again this is FF so I am not sure where everything is on recording demos/screenshots and all of that. I also have seen a lot of really good players playing on the other servers, so I am not even entirely convinced I got banned for that unless they are banned from that server too .

[FDA_Approved]

You may want to find and message Juicey directly on steam. He and the rest of his admins are quite jaded. They assume any new name that comes in and knows how to play is an aliased cheater.

[AbsoluteZero]

Found his username on Steam from someone who was in there playing with him. Asked him to please unban me and I realize it is a private server and is up to those who own it. Really wish people played in more than one server most of the night. Still no reason and no idea who actually banned me.

Makes me appreciate automatic matchmaking in newer games. I'll have to get my nostalgia playing an even older game that is also near death, Dark Reign. It is funny how easily it comes back to you.

[AbsoluteZero]

PikE told me he got in touch with JuiceY and my ban was related to:

"real alias "apeZero" Multihack _ tenter"

Thing is my name is AZero not apeZero and I have never installed any multihack or any game hack. I have set sv_cheats to 1 so I could noclip around on my own servers when practicing smoke grenades in counter strike, but that is a server setting. Does anyone know what this message means or what it is supposed to indicate?

Is there some old school setting that I have set that gives me some unfair advantage that I can just set back?

I have a PFsense router that has Snort enabled that has caused me some connectivity issues. Could that have triggered this issue? It certainly was not helping my game play as I had to disable several defensive rule sets to not have it block the gaming servers.

Maybe my hardware info or config will be helpful:

Windows 10 Pro
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30 GHz
8.00 GB
64-bit Operating System, x64-based processor

DirectX runtime version: 11.0

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260
Driver version: 342.01
Direct3D API version: 10
CUDA Cores: 216
Graphics clock: 590 MHz
Processor clock: 1296 MHz
Memory data rate: 1998 MHz
Memory interface: 448-bit
Total available graphics ... 4095 MB
Dedicated video memory: 896 MB GDDR3
System video memory: 0 MB
Shared system memory: 3199 MB
Video BIOS version: 62.00.4C.00.08
IRQ: 16
Bus: PCI Express x16 Gen2

PC
1920 x 1080 (native)
Refresh rate 120 Hz
Color depth: Highest (32-bit)


3D settings:
Ambient Occlusion - Off
Anisotropic filtering - Application-controlled
Antialiasing - FXAA - Off
Antialiasing - Gamma correction
Antialiasing - Mode - Application-controlled
Antialiasing - Setting - Application-controlled
Antialiasing - Transparency - Off
CUDA - GPUs - All
Maximum pre-rendered frames - Use the 3D application setting
Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration - Multiple display performance mode
Power management mode - Adaptive
Preferred refresh rate (Acer HN274H) - Application-controlled
Shader Cache - On
Texture filtering - Anisotropic sample opti... - Off
Texture filtering - negative LOD bias - Allow
Texter filtering - Quality - Quality
TExture filtering - trilinear optimization - On
Threaded optimization - Auto
Triple buffering - Off
Vertical sync - Use 3d application setting


...

Okay - maybe someone can narrow down what might have triggered this and maybe Juicey can confirm that is indeed the message he found that is related to MY steam id (STEAM_0:1:1008821) that is banned. I am NOT ApeZero.