Limit ban vote

[AA™| fetidness]

   I would like to present my proposal, which I discussed with several teammates and I received an affirmative answer from them.

   I think that the ban option on our server should be limited. We all know too well that Live for Speed needs players, it is not very populated. And the newcomers among us, due to lack of experience, are banned too quickly and thus lose interest in the game. Our server is among the most popular, and if they are banned, they will be hit by the lack of players on the other servers and by default they will uninstall the game. They must be received with a lot of understanding from us because today's amateur players can become tomorrow's professional players with whom we can have an honorable match.

   Therefore, my proposal is to limit the ban vote and to make accessible only the kick vote. In most cases, there is always an admin / limad on the server and it would be advisable for them to decide whether or not a player will receive a ban.

   I hope that my proposal will be received and sent for study by the server administrators. Thank you!

[AA™| simgint]

This is a very good idea, however I think that a person should be able to get vote banned, if he received 3 vote kicks within a certain period of time (lets say 3 hours). This should be the best of both worlds, as newbies won't be banned as soon as they join the server and do something wrong, and crashers will be able to get banned if they are annoying enough.

[AA™| rane_nbg]

Hi fetidness, I hear what you are saying and it is a good proposition. Thank you for your efforts to improve gameplay on our servers.

What gintas is proposing sounds very nice, but we are not able to do such and advanced conditioning using airio. This is a complicated task that requires programming and this is simply not possible in airio. I said many times that we do not have a source code of airio and we are not able to add new features to it. We are using it as is.

Now, down to some solution. What comes to my mind is not to completely disable the player ban voting, but to see if there is an option to set a shorter ban length. By default it is 0.5day (12h), maybe we can reduce it to 1-2-3 hours? I will need to have a look if there is such an option available in our airio. I do not have high hopes for it, but maybe it's doable.

[AA™| rane_nbg]

After searching through airio these are all voting possibilities we have available:

# -------------------------- Race Voting -------------------------- #

# The following settings turn on and off vote canceling and management.
# Cancel means the vote is always canceled. Manage means canceling
# the vote during race according to additional settings below.
CancelEndRace=true
ManageEndRace=false
CancelRestart=false
ManageRestart=true
CancelQualify=false
ManageQualify=true

# In which lap the race can still be restarted by voting - integer
# 0 = never, 1 = only in lap 1, not in later laps...
VoteLap=1

# Number of players for which race restarts are not managed - integer
# If this many or fewer players race then normal LFS restart rules apply.
VotePlayers=4

# Time (in seconds) after race finish before restart voting - integer
# This setting should let everyone finish the race.
VoteWait=45

# Disallow restart/end race vote when the countdown is running - integer
# Set to true to ensure race restarts cannot be speeded up, so that
# everyone knows when will the restart really happen.
NoCountdownVote=false

# FULL: Whether to support priority votes - boolean
# If limad/admin with sufficient rights votes (by pressing 1) against
# someone, the voting is finished.
VotePriority=true

# FULL: If to protect limads and team members from voting - boolean
# If true, everyone voting against such people is kicked.
VoteProtectLimads=true

# FULL: Whether to allow people to vote against themselves - boolean
# If true and someone votes to kick or ban himself, Airio fulfills
# his wishes immediately.
VoteOwnSupport=true

# FULL: Minimum rank/rate level for kick and ban voting - integer
# If the rank/rate level of the player starting a vote is lower
# than specified, the vote is canceled.
VoteRankMinimum=2
VoteRateMinimum=5

# FULL: Starting a vote against higher-ranked/rated people - integer
# If the rank/rate difference is this many or more, the player
# initiating the vote is kicked for bad voting.
VoteRankDifference=4
VoteRateDifference=3

# FULL: Starting a vote agains higher experienced people - integer
# If the LFS Experience Index (LFSEI) difference is higher than this,
# the player initiating the vote is kicked for bad voting.
VoteLFSEIDifference=200

# Kick people for removing others from start grid - boolean
# Only limads of AllowNoKick or higher level and admins may remove
# people from start grid (on the race end screen).
KickForRemove=true

# FULL: Manage kick/ban voting by limad power - boolean, integer
# If the management is active and the sum of connected limad/admin
# levels is equal or higher than the set number, driver voting is
# turned off, otherwise it is turned on.
VoteDynamic=false
VoteLevel=8

# FULL: Number of bad kick/ban votes - integer
# Bad votes are simply canceled until this number is reached, then
# the guy is kicked for bad voting.
NumBadVotes=3

[AA™| rane_nbg]

# ------------------------ Joining Filters ------------------------ #

# Number of automatic kicks in a day before ban + ban length - integers
# Counted are kick commands caused by bad language, bad setup, bad name,
# flooding, bad tyres, poor time, repeated joining, security (time),
# spectatings and double name. Ban period is set in days, 0 is 12 hours.
MaxKicks=5
BanLength=0


Looks like that 12h is the minimal amount for ban length. We may try to come up with some modified values from the options in my previous post. There are some ways to limit the ban vote, have a look and let me know. Maybe we can enable dynamicVote, or change VoteRankMinimum, VoteRankDifference, VoteLFSEIDifference..

[AA™| fstarter]

Problem can be divided into multiple problems
-Low game activity
-Actions taken by limads

Regarding reduced game activity there's nothing we can do, lockdown LFS craze is kinda long gone and there's nothing we can do about it. According to many the game has aged and is not worth their time. Again nothing we can do about that.
However we can advise to limads to be aware of their actions. Afterall voteban only lasts 12h, while limad ban can last for years. Dont know about y'all but I consider 12h ban not to be really long ban, one can even forget about it and try to join next week. Even so I prefer pitlane and kick command over ban.

Now regarding voteban, we can look at the both sides of the spectrum, 1) having no voteban 2)free voting. Currently our system leans towards free voting with only new or really toxic drivers being cut off. IMO is really important for demo server to have voteban active cause toxicity on demo is such that it will eventually turn into crash server unless limad is active or players are able to kick bad people out. We could play around with the voting AIRIO voting settings however I dont think we should remove voteban entirely.

Looking at what Rane has provided I would suggest increasing the VoteRateMinimum value to 10 or 11 and perhaps rank to 4. Though for the 2nd one I'm, not sure it will produce any results.



While I was typing this I went to the server to check something on the server, shortly afterwards few players joined. Guess the outcome.
https://www.mediafire.com/file/t5lpi82we...gstate.mpr

[AA™| fetidness]

I read your ideas. Very welcome option with permission to vote based on ranks and rates.

I consider that those with the right to vote for bans should have a minimum rate of 90% and a rank between 6000 and 8000 (from my point of view, the rank of 8000 would be the best choice) for normal players. Admin/limad to have permission regardless of these two factors, Even if they had to fulfill them anyway.

Among the rules of the server, its nice if will be passed the paragraph to kick 2-3 times before the actual ban. This rule must be mandatory by all players with the right to vote and the victim must be warned repeatedly about the 12-hour restriction that will come after the 2nd or 3rd kick.

[AA™| Jacques]

Glad to see fresh views brought into discussion and consideration. If memory servers right, limad issuing a ban vote results in 12h ban. Player majority vote issues 24h ban duration.

Strict vote limitation based on rank would´ve been feasible if we had historical points intact, to identify veterans from newcomers. Currently this is not the case and thus would consider looking at what lap/point amount we expect in member applications and reduce that by 50%?

Adjustments based on safety rating, someone with ~90% rating can quickly plummet when crashers/toxic players come to our demo servers, everybody above 80% I´m considering safe enough anyway. Then add a factor that rating slowly deteriorate over time. Do we wish to block voting from someone who hasn´t visited servers recently?

Free voting has been a strong point of our servers for over a decade, where many others have disabled the function. I´ve seen positive feedback on it, rarely negative.
Also consider the fact that voting still requires majority votes to take any action - counting out limads - so it bring added communal factor.


Disclaimer, with memory like Swiss cheese. Opinion and view expressed here might be (very likely) based on corrupted data.

[Fatal Unfair]

Glad to see fresh views brought into discussion and consideration. If memory servers right, limad issuing a ban vote results in 12h ban. Player majority vote issues 24h ban duration.

Think vote ban is 12 hours when airio on server, think it kinda cancels vote as it reaches 8/8 or whatever is required and just issues 0.5d airio ban. As you can see, people can try to rejoin a few times until the server itself bans the person for bad behavior and then it's either 12h more from that point or 24 hour, cant remember.