EPTI wanted to show everyone how to use the ban system, but first a bit of background. Tournament organizers throughout the community have always had the power to kick players from their tournaments, but a few annoying people would rejoin, change their name, or even use smurf accounts. When Z33K was only was running The Daily things were manageable, however today there is much more - a volunteer Z33K admin team in EU is running multiple daily tournaments, a new SEA team spooling up, and there lots of organizers that have no affiliation with Z33K but who are putting on all kinds of awesome events - all told, an average of 50 StarCraft 2 tournaments per week. With all the events and people spending time dealing with annoying players, the idea of a ban system was born.
We considered creating a global blacklist, similar to what has been done in a few other games, but ultimately we concluded that it is up to tournament organizers to maintain a blacklist. Some people may want to have really strict rules and ban for any kind of BM, while others may ban only the most egregious cheaters, and some may choose not to use it at all. Here is how it works:
Step 1: Go to the tournament team list.
I am assuming you have a tournament, if not, you can easily create one from the main menu. First find someone you want to ban from future events, and then get ready to share some love by clicking ban.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/J6I7G.png)
Step 2: Add ban details.
You can leave a public reason for the player, so they know why they were banned. This tournament happens to be organized by the ALT-Starcraft tournament group. In this case, we are banning the player from future ALT-Starcraft events, but keep in mind that if you have been designated as an admin for other tournament groups, they will show up here as well. In other words you can ban the player from all of your tournament groups at the same time!
![[image loading]](http://zeekmarketing.s3.amazonaws.com/images/pr/ban_system_2.png)
Step 3: …Profit!
woot - now the player cannot join any tournament that tournament group is associated with, and their IP will be banned as well. A ban does not automatically kick the player, since sometimes you want to ban someone while the tournament is already underway, but that can easily be done from the tournament team list. This is what a player will see when registering for your tournament after the ban hammer has been dropped:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/QSEtm.png)
Step 4: Manage Group Bans
From your tournament group page, in this case ALT-Starcraft’s group page, you can see all the bans, update their details, add additional bans, and remove them.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/XAFZn.png)
That is pretty much it. I really hope this ban system is simple and flexible enough to help improve the quality of tournaments. I don't know that this will encourage everyone to be respectful, or elevate good sportsmanship to new heights, but it should save the tournament organizers some time. I think this is especially important for StarCraft 2 because there are so many events, but Z33K recently made it so anyone can create tournaments in any game for free, so perhaps others will find it useful someday.
I would really love to hear feedback and ideas for improvement. For instance, should we add time-based bans that expire after a certain amount of time? Would it be useful if we try to provide more information about who to ban, for instance some kind of abuse reporting system?
A question to players, what sort of policy for banning do you think is fair? Where should we be drawing the line? Are there specific examples of tournaments you have seen that got hurt because of their policy? what about tournaments that did the right thing?
will be very helpful in the future im sure, good job and thanks man !
