It's a tough one simple as that, must be since no community as far as I know has solved it... It's nice with a complete black or white but sometimes - that's just not fair either.

Punkbuster straight out banning you for multihack or something - should be obvious. I am NOT a fan of the "random relative did it!" excuse, especially in cases when the player in question is the least bit known in the community but absolutely nobody ever knew anything about it; which is of course possible but not very likely and definately not in "small and close" communities.

But cvar's... Newbies will be newbies and while they're harmless to others their lack of knowledge might set themselves in a tough situation. No pinned topics in every forum in the world will guarantee people even knowing they exist. Most kids don't know to, or care to, be careful until they felt themselves what it's like having your finger in that pretty light on top of a candle...

Just look at every community in every game with customizable configs. While the people who think that using the config of an already good player will do miracles are certainly annoying, they're harmless and not really doing anything mischievous when /exec'ing that .cfg that was so praised on the website where they found it or by the (as it might just have appeared) player who sent it to them.

As for a few other commands you just have to use common sense to see if it probably wasn't a mistake... In SoF2 some cheats set the sensitivity of aimbots with "fov", while the real command was, as here, "cg_fov". Some aimbots also needed sensitivity to be set to "0" to work, and while that's pretty senseless to use, 0 IS next to 9... Nothing new here but it DID cause a lot of unneccessary flaming and paranoia back in my old community.

Basically, I would agree with HQ. We just want it to be fair and banning some one who just didn't know better isn't that at all. The player needs to be informed and helped, and only on refused cooperation or repeated violations (with no way to blame ignorance) be banned.

Also, again; common sense. There needs to be "more" than what a simple written rule can achieve. ClanBase, the league where we used to play, tried to make things better by just adding more and more rules and be stricter on them; but there's ALWAYS something overlooked and honestly, half of the time the ones getting the hardest times are the ones who just want to play and not worry about too much, while the deceiving, lying, two-faced cheating little ****s will do what they did with their lack of skill - find a way around it.

So, "CoolBoy17" joins a server, plays a bit and suddenly gets kicked for various cvar violations. Now, if he has been playing before and has always been and still was nothing special, no way I'd feel good "just banning him".

However, if he that particular game was playing better... Eyes on, and if anything THAT is something nobody needs to tell this community.

If CoolBoy17 also was the bearer of a tag, it might change stuff. And if we were actually talking about an official clanwar here - ban. Official clanwars don't just happen, there are agreements involved and usually, like here, you just can't have joined a clan, community and started playing real official wars without knowing stuff.

In conclusion; individual cases all the way. There's a nice forum here, those interested here can handle it. "But bla bla, treat everyone equal, same rules for everyone, it's the only thing that is fa- " WRONG! It is NOT fair because every case is not the same, different people, different circumstances, different approach to take. What we need is REAL common sense and a couple of people who actually know anything factual, but there are always a couple of those around aswell.

Zero tolerance for cheating indeed; but do be 100% sure it was.

Sometimes when typing something like this, there's some one posting "omgg man y r u helping teh cheaterz!???" If you feel this way, please read again. If anything is unclear because of any language barrier, consider asking nicely and I will re-word/elaborate. If the feeling persists, save yourself the trouble of replying and rest assured that I despise your kind at the same level of cheaters themselves.

-edit-
Just noticed that Mad's post was one of those free of question marks but still containing a straight out question hehe, but I guess my answer should be clear. Unban, if they fit into the "might just have been uneducated"-category. They certainly should've learnt their lesson by now and the "real" cheaters are probably already back or gone, as is custom.

Exactly, agree with pretty much everything you said. Didn't spend the time writing my post because it has anything to do with me or anyone I know, but plain because sometimes people are too harsh and every now and then you see a newbie (and now, as in my previous post, I mean it in it's true sense; new player - so I hope nothing in your addendum had anything to do with me since then you misunderstood pretty much my entire post -edit- cleared, me misunderstanding ) getting a way too hard punishment based on other players sins...

If I didn't already come from games like this, probably the first thing I'd do is ask or search for a config. Lacking routine, I'd just run it because I wouldn't know what anything was if I checked it in notepad first anyway. Then it'd be totally random whether it was a good config or not, and the possibility could always be it contained some less fun commands... Would it, in a sense, be my fault? Yep, definately. But come on, wouldn't it just suck to be banned like that.

Again, common sense and individual case handling. As for Mad's question, Wonko might have had a point. So I guess I could change that to "allow them a second chance if it was just a one-time cvar mishap - mostly yes" rather than just "unban everyone" because that's just unneccessary work.

Are there any people "knocking on the door" trying to get back anyway? I have no idea obviously but that's kind of how it sounds from the initial post

If you really want to know, then maybe you have to read it or wait for some one to post a shorter version

A "normal player" doesn't have a clue there exists such a thing as fov or enemymodel. And by the time he knows about the latter, chances are he's pretty curious - or even got a config with the enemymodel set. ...and maybe lots more.

my opinion is to bann all newcomers of e+ with cheatz cuz as impro they can try other cheatz and try cheat again.
but people like phyrex they are old players and u know them u can ask the community for giving them a second chance.

I’m not really referring noobs who don’t know better(perhaps).

my zero tolerance stance is for people who do know better, and exactly what they are doing, freak is a good example he had played for a while before he got caught. He chose to cheat imo

@raven I don’t agree the longer the person has played the less tolerant I would be