[AtlasBarfed]

It seems to me that what is needed is a "provisional" server that grants you access to the "good" server.

So an GUID accumulates reputation after some amount of play in the provisional server. If you get enough reputation by not cheating, the GUID gets whitelisted for the "good" server. You can have multiple tiers, so the really good/fun people get to the third of fourth tier of demonstrated non-cheating.

If they cheat, get banned, they need to climb the tiers with GUIDs again. The cheaters will want to cheat, they won't want to pay the dues. The legit players will happily try to get to the second and third tiers, so you could probably just require 1 hour of not-cheating for the first tier of server, and then maybe 8 hours to get to the third tier.

You could shadowban/honeypot after the first tier, so you shut all cheaters that you detect to their own cheater server where the cheaters can all get shunted to.

[tomooot]

Not really feasible though: even now where players don't even need to buy the game, the server owner has to pay hundreds of $ a month for advertising/promoted ranking on serverlists just to get a decent population.

The VIP system somewhat works for this anyway, regulars who hang around long enough to become familiar to admins, as well as everyone playing through steam, get a couple extra seconds grace in anti-camp areas, reload their guns in 250ms instead of 1800ms, and get green chat text and a "VIP" tag.

Plus, some of our regulars have played the game since release and are so good it's suspicious sometimes. Several regularly have cheating accusations leveled at them cause they're so good. The server automatically records a demo every game and gives admins ESP in spectate mode, so it's simple to spot cheaters, and easy to prove innocence in the case of a false ban.