Please read at least my tl;dr if not the entire post before voting in the poll, thanks lol. (If there’s no poll it’s because I haven’t figured out how to make one lmao)
So, I’m starting this thread as a way to see what the communtiy thinks about this, after viewing some of the points I have made here.
I think this is quite a controversial discussion but eh why not.
(For those of you who don’t know what HWID is, it’s basically an identifier that ties you to your pc, more on it later)
Here’s my argument
Why shouldn’t HWID bans be a thing?
a. Without going into too much detail: Unturned cheating is dead. Exploiters/exploit finders have reported all BattlEye bypasses that were accesible by simply patching/messing with unturned’s physical files. Cheating in Unturned now requires, time, experience and/or money (we’re talking >700$).
b. HWID bans are, in my opinion, sort of like a gateway drug. For someone looking for a second chance, they will try and buy a driver that will change their serials and therefore their HWID. These are usually sold by the same people who sell software that enables people to cheat in the first place. You can probably see where I’m going with this…
c. This is probably a more ethical opinion and I can see why a lot of people would disagree with this one - People deserve second chances. In fact, people who played this game before HWID bans probably got quite a few of those (xD). Most players I’ve talked to admit to cheating during their early time in Unturned, and let’s be honest, we all do stupid shit and we all get bored and like to piss off others. It’s natural and human. Now, people without the oppurtunity to play the game will not be buying into the Unturned market, meaning Nelson will be loosing tons of potential customers, which is in his interests as well as the community’s (he will have more motivation to work on U3/UII etc)
Why should HWID bans be a thing?
If you haven’t noticed already, I don’t think they should be a thing in this game, but, I will provide counter arguments because I’m sad like that.
a. Practically: They do a good job at preventing people evading. Adding storage, using a vpn etc will not help you bypass these bans.
b. They do deter people from cheating - but then again, it doesn’t really matter if 99.9% (yes very true pro statistics) of cheaters will get banned as soon as they join a server anyway.
tl;dr - HWID bans do deter cheaters but they’re not worth having because it’s seriously hard to cheat and from my point of view people deserve second chances like they used to get
EDIT: I couldn’t figure out how to make a poll so just comment down below thanks