Honesty, I am sick and tired of how wiimmfi is being ran these days, just banning whoever the hell they want without explanation. First theres Blaze who has been banned for months now, but ive already made several posts on that topic and all have been ignored.

Ive also heard of another person whos gotten a ban that normal moderators cant see, when asked about this, the response we got was

" I see that there is an internal ban for these profiles / consoles, but I don't know why."

What the hell kind of a response is that???? Why are they banned then?

And now we are banning people for no reason for changing their login ID's. Dont you guys have better things to do (like fixing the leaderboards that have been broken for over a year, or fixing the natneg/suspend issues??)

I respect you guys for what you have done, and I understand that the two of you are busy with real life stuff too, but this management is really bad. I'd appreciate if someone like bean was given full powers, because he is way more in touch with the community.

Hang on.

The first guy we banned was using a login region of 20102 - which is an invalid region - and Wiimm and me contacted him to figure out what he is doing, he said he wanted to use the login region as a "clan tag" and we told him that that is not the point of the login region, and that you can only use regions assigned to you, or, for use in a cutsom track pack if the region is assigned to the creator of the CT pack. He wasn't banned for that (yet). Then, a bit later, he used another invalid region (chinese) despite being asked not to, and thus I banned him because he continued messing with his region after explicitly told not to. The other ban on the ban list was also due to use of an invalid region, because region 4 is not being used by the game at all.

I understand people wanting to play in other regions like the japanese regionals, and we've never banned people for that.
I don't understand people wanting to use the login region display on Wiimmfi as "clan tag" even after being told not to.

About my response with the ban: I can only tell you what I see. And I see, that there is no normal ban in the interface, but a direct database ban. This can be for many reasons, mostly in those cases where we need to ban a large number of profiles / consoles because of abuse (like when a profile is used on hundreds of consoles), and we don't enter textual comments for those bans into the database, so Wiimm and me will be looking into the ban. Would you rather us not giving any status update at all in this case?
Nearly all of the bans do have an explaination in the ban comment, or will get explained on request. This is not something I am deliberatly keeping from that user, I just don't know the reason about this ban, and it was probably set up by Wiimm because I never set database bans. I asked that person to provide more information to help me figure out a reason, and I mentioned Wiimm so he can take a look at it. What else am I supposed to do?

Yes, we are banning people for changing login IDs. We always have, and we've always made it clear that we don't care about what you do in your friend rooms or WhackR, but we do care about invalid data sent to the server, and transmitting false login IDs is just that.

The patch these two people used is NOT the standard region change, which we have always tolerated. They are modifying login information about their region, not just matchmaking. Had they just patched their game to region 4 or 3 or 6 or whatever using normal region patches, they wouldn't have been banned. Thats the risk in using newly-published cheat codes

And we do indeed have better things to do, if you had read my post in the "Wiimmfi server" topic you would have noticed that we are currently working with MrBean on figuring out a fix for the root cause of the suspend bug. And for the leaderboards, everyone has moved to the CTGP rankings anyways and the in-game ones would be full of cheated shit within minutes anyways.


People are using cheat codes to arbitrarily fuck up the data they sent to Wiimmfi just so it can display "20102" instead of their actual region where it is supposed to display their actual region. And then people wonder why we do something against that? Cheat all you want in your friend rooms, but don't where it impacts the public in any way. And using regions not assigned to you does impact potential owners of that region. You might be "sick and tired of how Wiimmfi is being run", and we are "sick and tired of cheaters always messing with everything".

If a user requests a region, he can use it as login region as well - as I said above. Region 20102 is not assigned to any user, so independently of how anything "is supposed to work", there is a process one can use to request a region for a pack, and then be able to use it as login region. This has not been used, thus, these invalid regions have been banned. For "cd" and "vx", Bean did not just implement "cd" as countdown region - he asked us if that would be OK, to differentiate between versus and countdown. He didn't just start sending invalid stuff.

Some rules are just to prevent chaos, and for a single infraction there is rarely an exact answer to "what specific exact thing is wrong with this one player doing that thing?". But if we'd let everyone use every region without any coordination, we'd have a huge mess with everyone using any region he wants and people "fighting" over their regions.

Had that guy approached us and requested a region to use, he wouldn't have gotten a ban (this is just a temporary one - no permanent or long-term ban ...). How would you react if you had a CT distribution and other people used your assigned region and we would be like "sorry, it's intended to be free for everyone, not going to stop it"? It's not his region, he's not supposed to use it.

Maybe a ban isn't the best approach to tell a user about this, but it's the only way to contact specific players we have

Change your region to 0, using standard region cheat codes (no login region stuff ...), to play in japanese regionals? Why not. Use regions not assigned to you even though there is a process for requesting a region? You get banned, simple as that.

In the past we have a logon param called "sdkver". It was always 1000. It was never shown or used in any way.

With Wiimmfi I made it to a region value with the idea to show and protect regions. And now I will protect regions. That's all. Where is the problem.

People who are using a code to change their login region to what they want are getting a ban now. That's the problem.

then maybe dont change it to a region that DOESNT EXIST.

Yes. Because they are using a new, unintended cheat code only intended to be used in a distribution using a special patch.

You can play in other regions. Using the age-old, known, tested, region patch.


We have ALWAYS and EVERYWHERE, when asked about allowed cheats, stated that the login IDs are not to be messed with, and the login region belongs to those. This is different from the in-game playing region. So what is the problem with us enforcing that now that people mess around with it?

EDIT: To comment on datraptors post: "... or to a region not assigned to you or the CT distribution you use, in case of custom regions".

You said so yourself, so don't claim you didn't know: avsys.xyz/mkwii_wiimmfi_allowed_cheat_guideline.txt

These cheats are not allowed anywhere, including cheating regions and friend rooms:-Any identity spoofer (console ID, different Mii name in server than in client...).

"Identity spoofing" relates to any identification sent to Wiimmfi during the login. As we have said multiple times during the endless discussions about 23915 when it was introduced. You said it in your text file linked above, the riiConnect24 people said it in their rules (github.com/RiiConnect24/CFH/blob/master/eula/en.html), and we said it numerous times when asked. And I'm sure there are lots of other sources. And if there is a new cheat code, you should assume it is forbidden, until told otherwise. Especially when the cheat code name contains "Wiimmfi" and thus has any special feature messing with Wiimmfi at all.

As for why we suddenly started enforcing this, this is because the login region is supposed to inform the server about the in-game region and rules set to that region by its owner, which are rules set by a region owner about what should be allowed or not allowed in that region. And part of that enforcing is making sure people don't use invalid values.

That patch these people are using is NOT changing a normal region.

Had you changed your SYSCONFIG to Antarctica, that would have looked differently in the logs, and you wouldn't have gotten banned for that.

All people we banned for that did NOT have a legit region change, either by a normal patch or by SYSCONFIG. They deliberately used a new cheat code designed to mess with the data Wiimms tools insert into the game for CT distributiion creators to manage their regions.

NOBODY using a normal region patch or mod to play in Antarctica or on the Moon or on other planets has been banned.

I still think you misunderstand that a bit.

The normal region patch, which can be used to spoof japanese, Chinese, or taiwan regions, is fine.
Changing the SYSCONF to japanese, chinese or taiwan is fine as well.

A while ago, Wiimm started using sdkver in its tools to simplify region management on the server by writing the patched region into it.

In the past, when people used normal ways (cheat, main.dol edit, SYSCONF edit) to change their region, everything was fine - they just were in another region.
Now, there is a cheat code which modifies this sdkver thing because people found out it is being displayed on Wiimmfi. And because Wiimmfi uses this value to determine the player region at login, for example, to lock the player into the region-specific world if the region owner wants to, modifying this sdkver region set by Wiimm messes that up. Setting your sysconf region is fine.

The region your cheat code sets isn't any matchmaking region. It is currently displayed in the "region" column on Wiimmfi (because in the past, it was always equal to it because nobody messed with it before you made that code ...), but it is for WIimmfi's region managment. We, for example, use it in MKW fun to lock the MKW Fun region" vs_138" into the "sdkver"-region 138 (displayed as "login region") on Wiimmfi.

Your cheat code doesn't let the player play in that particular region since the matchmaking string is still "vs_X" with X being the original region. The only thing your cheat does is mess with the region management by telling the server false info about the region your game is using.

And that you are all asking about "the impact on the server": The impact is that you are getting banned. Period.

We are not forbidding people from playing in another region. We are just forbidding people from using this particular cheat you made, because it is not working properly and messing with the region management.

Nope, it only works for Wiimmfi because Wiimmfi is evaluating that particular parameter. We tried using the rk_ parameter at first, but in order for the "locking into a world"-thing to work, Wiimmfi needs to know the region at login. And the rk_ string is only transmitted when you join the region.

The "priv" region display means you are currently in a private room - because you are not sending a vs_ string to the MS. That column "region" basically contains info from multiple sources. We noticed you using it in the past, but thought it was just a fluke of Wiimmfi recognizing something incorrectly, thus we didn't say anything. Is there a specific reason / a specific outcome you are using it for? What do you get from having it display "priv" while in a regional race, instead of your actual region?

I haven't exactly looked into how that works, so I can't tell yet if that messes anything up or if that is allowed.

The code seemed to have popped up again because "Star" at mkwii.org made another code that works similar to yours and released it a few days ago. Would you mind posting a reply in both threads ("Wiimmfi Login Region Editor Code" and "Game Region Spoofer") telling the guys that this code is not to be used cause it will get people banned and mess up the system? They stopped responding to me (and IP-banned me from their forum ...) when I told the admin of the forum that he's banned on Wiimmfi because of all the Wiimmfi identifier modifier codes (similar to this ...) he used, because he is angry I banned him for that ...

Yeah that would be cool. Can you send it to me in a PM?

2 year ago, no one knows about "sdkver". The value was ignored and not shown at any Wiimmfi page. Because of this, I decided in 2017 to use sdkver and vx_NUM/bx_NUM (instead of vs_NUM/bt_NUM) for region control. In the beginning it was only an idea. I made a test series. I used MKW-Fun for it, so it takes a long time.

I started with vx/bx. Then some other people thought to use vx for fun. And then they wondered, when they banned after activating region protection (short time bans).

Then I started tests with sdkver with displaying. And now it's time activating region protection (with short time bans again).

And with each step, I updated Wiimmfi and my tools and published the new options. And the next step is to verify valid login regions.

Conclusion:
Login-regions is an idea by me with long term plans. And it is irrelevant for me, if anyone do other unwanted things to use use side effects.

Unrelated, but SDKVersion is just something added by DWC_SDK as part of the RevoEX package. It's never moved from 1.0 because Nintendo probably never updated the GameSpy SDK (or, if they did, they never changed versioning).

We sourced these rules from Wiimmfi itself; we wanted to ensure our rules are in line with yours, and clearly they are.

Perhaps it can be implemented an automatic system ban when the user is using a weird region login number of a custom region that doesn't exist (or hasn't been enabled yet)?

(I hope you can understand my English)

That is definitely planned as part of the region management system, we just didn't get around to it yet. That way, people wouldn't even be able to login using a non-existant region. Of course if people try to fake their way into an existing region (for another custom track distribution) an automated system couldn't detect that.