I see this all the time:

"'Somebody_new' has joined the server"
"Welcome 'Somebody-new' - keep it clean and play fair"
"'Somebody_new' has been disconnected from the server"

Just like that; three lines together at the top left of the screen. The necessary evil that is PunkBuster up to its tricks again!

It's nothing the FS Dev Team can do very much about because it's out of your hands, but when you consider that most people are not willing to jump through hoops to get a game to work (even a brilliant free one like First Strike), I think it's definitely costing us players. I've seen umpteen posts on here about it, but there are undoubtedly many more who just give up.

I think we need a big and obvious panel on the home page all about Punkbuster disconnection issues. Make potential players aware of the issues before they even download FS. It needs to include:

-Going to evenbalance.com to download pbsetup.exe so you can manually update Punkbuster.
-Enabling PnkBstrA.exe and PnkBstrB.exe in your firewall, AV and anti-spyware software.
-A warning to expect a 'PnkBstrB.exe heartbeats stopped' kick if you voluntarily leave a server then reconnect without restarting the game.

A link to evenbalance right next to the link to download FS would also be ideal.

On a related theme, I know there are some people who get unplayably high ping (~900ms) if they don't manually open ports for 2142/Punkbuster. I don't fully understand this, but if anyone does, which ports and how to open them would be very useful info, too.

Mmm... vanilla!