PingFraudClan.com

[Apologet Ⓢ]

I was thinking about the PingFraudClan.com Servers.
They explained their ping fraud is a side effect from their DDOS protection. But that is just, friendly expressed, a lame excuse.

How so? I can easily explain.
They say that the request will be transmitted to a DDOS protection proxy server in the EU which will return the response to the game client.

But in order to return a proper response to the game client, the request needs to be forwarded to the server. The server will then gather the list of clients and return the response through the proxy to the client.

That means, that the ping response would be even higher because of the additional proxy step.

Or they run the server in the EU. But then it wouldn't be such a high ping if you actually connected to the server.

Anyhow, there is no feasible connection to the DDOS protection lie.
They just do ping fraud.

Would be nice if you don't reward this behaviour and remove this fraud server from the official ingame browser.

[!^]

Well, your explanation sounds logical but I lack the technical knowledge to check the validity of it. Anyway, the underlying point is servers shouldn't lower their ping artificially no-matter-what, and that's what counts to me.

So my stance on this is I'll be giving a few days for the offending server to fix whatever issue is that prevents them to report actual ping to clients. If issue persist then such servers will be removed from the server browser.

[craZy_y0™]

Hey Apologet & Rebel_Y

I made a thread on the GFLClan forums to let them know about this because I wouldn't want them to have their servers be blacklisted without any warning (due to them not checking up on the Steam discussion forums).

I believe their forum manager (Liloz01) has reached out to GFL's founder (Roy) and it is possible that Roy will try to reach out to you (Rebel) to negotiate what can be done to save the server.
You can see the thread here: https://gflclan.com/forums/topic/59800-the-fof-servers-could-be-cancelled-whats-next

My personal thoughts

GFL should definitely do something to display the real server's ping. I believe that Garry is doing the exact same thing and is blacklisting Garry's Mod servers displaying a fake ping as Moat, one of the biggest Garry's Mod communities and a potential competitor of GFLClan's has been hit by it - their servers got blacklisted for faking player counts and ping.

The one thing that worries me about GFLClan's servers being blacklisted though is that fastpath.fr's server is currently on the rise and I can estimate that around 25% of players (including myself) are blocked from connecting to the server already because they either have a VAC, game, trade or even a community ban (which in reality should block you from every server anyway) on record. I have personally spoken out about this and I fear for the worst if fastpath takes the top spot because I am almost certain it will also take a hit on the ever so small playerbase this game has. I have my thread here and was told by their founder that I need to read this thread on how to get unbanned, basically if you don't want to read everything, you are locked behind a paywall automatically even if you were falsely VAC banned on Modern Warfare 2 back in 2010 - what a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ joke if I'm being completely honest.

If any other servers were to be on the rise however, I wouldn't have a problem with that and everything would be fine. However I already see far too many people on fastpath as of now to even see that happening, their server was full on the day of Tortuga being released actually, that is until I asked GFLClan if they were updating and restarting their servers.

Final thoughts

Hopefully everything goes smooth sailing from here, just know I will most likely quit FoF if fastpath becomes the top server - solely because I don't want to switch to my alt account which has a clean record just to play FoF for 15 minutes to an hour max and go back to this account to do anything else on afterwards. It sounds a bit soppy but honestly, my life goes so fast that I don't have any time to mess around doing anything unnecessary anymore, so I do apologize to come off that way.

That should be everything off my chest as of now :)

[Liloz01]

Hey, I'm Liloz01 as mentioned above. As Roy is busy, I'll be acting as a messenger for him.

If you'd like to have a conversation, Rebel_Y, I'd be happy to. (Friend request sent)

[Mazer]

https://gflclan.com/forums/topic/59800-the-fof-servers-could-be-cancelled-whats-next/?do=findComment&comment=268007

[Liloz01]

Update from our end: https://gflclan.com/forums/topic/59800-the-fof-servers-could-be-cancelled-whats-next/?tab=comments#comment-268007

Edit: https://i.imgur.com/vemf4TX.png lol, unlucky timing.

[!^]

Well, I have no time to discuss this matter sorry. Hope they can keep their ddos protection and report pings that are closer to reality. If both things aren't feasible then reporting actual latency stands. It's been too much time with this thing going on and it's quite unfair for players and other server owners.

[Apologet Ⓢ]

First: Thank you @Rebel_Y for unbanning me here.
It seems that member(s) of this Clan have admin rights here and "solve" their issue by banning the messenger.

To make things clear: I have no beef with that clan and i must admit that their solution can partly protect their servers for ONE specific kind of DOS/DDOS attack.

I also understand the wish of server admins to protect their server against these kinds of attacks.

I assume that GFL is using anycast cloudflare and I hope you can find an option in your cloudflare settings to only use end nodes in the same country location where the server is running.

If that doesn't work, maybe you can enable this protection on demand when such an attack is actually performed?

Please give Roy a nice greeting from me.
He obviously does a great job with your Server(s).

cheers
Apologet

[Liloz01]

You were banned for making this post?

[Apologet Ⓢ]

Originally posted by Liloz01:

You were banned for making this post?

yes. the reason was that I should stop my "beef" against this clan.

[Apologet Ⓢ]

update:
1. they say that they disabled their ping fraud: https://gflclan.com/forums/topic/59800-the-fof-servers-could-be-cancelled-whats-next/?do=findComment&comment=268007
but it's still showing a very low ping. I'm not convinced that they deactivated it.

2. besides that it's funny how they treat players who confront them with detected ping fraud.
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1478821226566481521/5338832B129F81B5B88F4B0EC3A38258E662E617/

[Muckle Puckle]

Originally posted by Rebel_Y:

Well, I have no time to discuss this matter sorry. Hope they can keep their ddos protection and report pings that are closer to reality. If both things aren't feasible then reporting actual latency stands. It's been too much time with this thing going on and it's quite unfair for players and other server owners.

I think that's fair enough.
The GFL server gets a lot of traffic from EU players (judging from the pings). Playing with such a high latency doesn't really give the best reflection of the game to any new players that might be trying the game out.