Link Ban Message to Alti Forums

[yankinlk]

It would be nice if there was a generic link back to the Alti forums for ANY ban message from Alti. Currently all a users gets is a time and the simple message the admin puts in.

A nice canned message that is clickable back to the forums may help new players discover there is a community behind that ban. Some users probably look for this themselves, but making it easier for them to find would be a plus I think.

Update: It would be nice in Ledows case if this was an opt in only feature. Some admins dont want to give any reason for using the ban hammer - or care about what a banned user thinks. Said admins total control over their servers and a constant flood of Noob players.

Update2: I know that we have a link to the forums in the ladder lobby - so maybe that is enough. I dunno. Whatev.

[Premier Stalin]

After theyve been banned? Raging noobs on the forums is not exactly the best way to promote the game, imo.

[yankinlk]

Originally Posted by Premier Stalin

After theyve been banned? Raging noobs on the forums is not exactly the best way to promote the game, imo.

I think you are taking a very narrow view of this. A user can be banned for a lot of reasons. DC during a ladder match and not coming back is one. Being a racist and spouting rubbish is another.

I would let the ban dictate the severity of the punishment, but the forum is where a user can find out how to better themselves. At present a user can be banned, and other than the short message from an admin in the "Reason: ..." part - they have no idea of what they may have done wrong.

Connecting the game of Alti to the community on the forums is one way to keep this game alive. Its difficult enough to get players to look past the 2D graphics to get themt o even try the free demo. Once they play they are either hooked or they arent. They either buy it and stay or they drift on to other games. If they stumble on the community they may stick around longer and eventually <gasp> give something back.

[ledow]

That would just create confusion over how "official" the ban is. You'll get people saying "Altitude banned me for no reason" rather than "Admin on his own mistakenly-public server banned me".

If you're banned, you either KNOW what you did or you didn't think you were doing something bannable. Either way, your complaint will be with the admin of that particular server, not the altitude forums. And what would you do if you were linked to the forums? Whine about being banned, that's what.

As an admin that has had people hound me for WEEKS through the forums because they didn't think they should be banned (1st - It's not their opinion that matters, 2nd - chasing/annoying the admin isn't helpful to your cause, 3rd - The admin probably just doesn't care or they wouldn't have banned you), I think that could possibly be the worst suggestion ever.

If someone is banned, they were banned. They did what they weren't supposed to. A generic FAQ won't cover anywhere near the number of possibilities of their ban and/or the particular reason an admin banned them (you can swear on my server, for instance, so long as its in context and not gratuitous - but on some servers that would be an instant ban and on others that would be completely ignored no matter what you said to anyone), and it certainly can't "speak on behalf of" that particular admin. They are unlikely to read a treatise on why they were banned and then go "Oh, okay, I didn't know" and become a upstanding Altitude citizen. If you genuinely have no idea why you were banned, or disagree with why you were banned - why on EARTH would you want to play on such a server again, and what good would having something to read or post on do about that?

A spammed forum full of people whinging about private bans on unofficial servers is probably one of the worst things I can think of to "introduce" people to a community.

[yankinlk]

Another person with a narrow viewpoint.

Originally Posted by ledow

If you're banned, you either KNOW what you did or you didn't think you were doing something bannable. Either way, your complaint will be with the admin of that particular server, not the altitude forums. And what would you do if you were linked to the forums? Whine about being banned, that's what.

Ledow - in all due respect. I really have no interst in getting into this with you. I was banned on your servers without being given a reason - and you it did it several days after the event. I only posted about it after seeing others you banned complaining about similar treatment by you. You did me a great service banning me from your football servers as I was forced to play on PUBS and then eventually venture onto ladder. This thread is not about you or your servers.

Originally Posted by ledow

As an admin that has had people hound me for WEEKS through the forums because they didn't think they should be banned (1st - It's not their opinion that matters, 2nd - chasing/annoying the admin isn't helpful to your cause, 3rd - The admin probably just doesn't care or they wouldn't have banned you), I think that could possibly be the worst suggestion ever.

I would agree with you that my suggestion will not suit YOU. I did not create this suggestion for your servers - and I will amend my suggestion to allow an ADMIN to disable the feature, or maybe the admin has to opt in on the feature. I was leaning towards a normal server setup where there is a group of admins - whose policies may be subjective. I suppose I was thinking mostly for the ladder servers where rules are specfically laid out clearly in the forums - whats the point of posting the rules there if no one reads them? Users can get the ladder servers password there - but they can also get it from other friends in alti - meaning they never have to read the rules of ladder to play there.

Anytime a user is an obvious noob - the crowd in a ladder server will direct them back to forums. (sometimes they ask them to slit there wrists on the way to the forums, but you get the idea).

[Ajuk999]

^
Another person with a narrow view of this. -.-

If you send ragey players that were banned, they will create stupid threads, get trolled and more drama would be added to the community. And Evan will get 1,000 more posts.

[ryebone]

From a ladder perspective:

The reason we put the password in the rules page is that is that it serves as an informal EULA: you read it, understand it, you get the password into ladder servers. In essence, by playing on ladder, you affirm the fact that you have read and are willing to abide by the rules. It was our way of eliminating the "I didn't know the rules" excuse, when people were appealing bans.

Before season 2 started, we acknowledged the fact that there would still be people who didn't know the rules, because they got the password from someone else. Granted, we could probably add a disclaimer that current players should direct new players to the rules thread, instead of giving them the password. However, we decided against this because it would be impossible to enforce anyways.

And for perhaps the first time, I agree with ajuk in that nothing productive can happen from sending banned players here (who didn't already know about the forums).

[Tekn0]

Originally Posted by yankinlk

Update: It would be nice in Ledows case if this was an opt in only feature. Some admins dont want to give any reason for using the ban hammer - or care about what a banned user thinks. Said admins total control over their servers and a constant flood of Noob players.

Answer: Don't play on Ledow's server. It's not really a 'community server' like ladder. It's a personal server (which is fine with me, idk) so don't play in it if you're not up to being banned for no reason whatsoever.