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How should Admins... Admin ?.


RimBlock

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We have all heard of numerious servers where one or more of the server administrators are highlighted as abusing their admin powers.

 

This, I think, opens up a interesting topic on how admins should perform their tasks which may be different from players and admins points of views.

 

My own personal opinion (which I am fully aware may not match other server owners or players) is that there are two acceptible types of administration (with the possible combination of both).

 

1. Out of game administration.

Administration via RCON only.  No in-game administration at all. 

 

2. Referee Administration.

Have a character in-game who is not part of the game (activity wise) like a football ref.  They perform admin tasks, check reports of abuse etc but do not participate in the game at all (no shooting, looting or rooting tooting).  To make this doable, the admin should be in God mode with an easily identifiable skin and their may be a central base for the admins with vehicles etc to make the movement around the map fairly quick without hacks.  Conversly they may also be configured so they cannot carry or hold weapons

 

If an admin wants to play the game they should use their own game character and not the admin character.

 

So what are other peoples views on my own views above and any other suggestions of their own and what is acceptible behaviour for admins and what is not ?.  Please keep in mind that admins have tasks to perform and so expecting an admin to perform admin duties in-game but be a standard player if fairly unworkable (would you expect to have to wait 30minutes for an admin to walk across the map to check out a report you filed or to have a vehicle at their disposal ?).

 

 

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I think that if you own a server, or decide to accept the role of admin on someone else's server, your play time there should be over. Nothing kills a server quicker than having players get killed by someone that they aren't sure is playing clean. 

 

Players never think anyone is clean, if killed by an admin, it's admin abuse, if killed by another player, hes a hacker. It truly depends on how you run your server personally, I've seen admins play among players on their servers no prob, but don't tolerate players calling out "Admin abuse" every time something doesn't go their way. It just depends on how you enforce your server.

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We have both on our server.

 

We have an admin who does no PVP. He will hang out with players, help them do missions, help them build, and take care of in game administration such as death by glitches, and admin ran events. He of course also has access to RCon, and the in-game admin tools.

 

I on the other hand am the Developer, and even though I do all the coding, I don't give myself access to the in game tools, only RCon. I don't want to be called a cheater when I play on the server to have fun by PVP. I also have access to the database of course, but there is hardly a need to modify anything in there other than traders.

 

Although I do agree with Mr. Snatchit, I had a player get killed by roaming AI, call admin abuse (even though no admins were on), and quit the server. There are always some people who can never have fun unless they are in the lead.

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I have admins and mods.

Admins gets infistar menu and are not allowed to PVP or build bases (if they do, they have to delete it later and got to be away from players).

Mods are generally regulars we trust, they are given only BEC admin with few commands like kick, warn and ban for 10 minutes. These guys can fully experience the game and take care of abusive community if admin is not present. Mods also gets reserved slot if server is full.

 

We are also running badwords.txt on BEC that warns/kicks when people says "admin abuse" (or any other targeted bad language and racial slurs).

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Good info.  Keep them comming.

 

How about players views who do not run servers.  How do they expect an admin to behave and what should be allowed / not allowed to the admins.

 

Well, you pay for the server, so you do whatever you want really. You've run it successfully this far and you got yourself some awesome regulars, why should anything change?

We also get a lot of "this is how you should run your server" and "I used to run my own dayz and minecraft server succesfully, yet I am playing on yours, so here's how you run your server now..." type of guys... and I mean ... a lot.

 

Also think about it - people who has never had a server, they will only have inexperienced opinions and completely different (not necessary wrong in all cases) view on how stuff runs behind the curtain.

 

The "entitled generation" is the worst, imo. They are completely oblivious when it comes to questions like these, I'd strongly suggest thinking twice before taking any advice or opinions from them.

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Well, you pay for the server, so you do whatever you want really. You've run it successfully this far and you got yourself some awesome regulars, why should anything change?

We also get a lot of "this is how you should run your server" and "I used to run my own dayz and minecraft server succesfully, yet I am playing on yours, so here's how you run your server now..." type of guys... and I mean ... a lot.

 

Also think about it - people who has never had a server, they will only have inexperienced opinions and completely different (not necessary wrong in all cases) view on how stuff runs behind the curtain.

 

The "entitled generation" is the worst, imo. They are completely oblivious when it comes to questions like these, I'd strongly suggest thinking twice before taking any advice or opinions from them.

 

Yep but I am more looking at promoting a decent debate on the subject rather than looking for advice. 

 

No doubt there will be good suggestion s that have and will be made based on this but that is not really the intention of the thread. 

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Yep but I am more looking at promoting a decent debate on the subject rather than looking for advice. 

 

No doubt there will be good suggestion s that have and will be made based on this but that is not really the intention of the thread. 

Sorry that was a bit off-topic, just a reply to your single post.

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Players never think anyone is clean, if killed by an admin, it's admin abuse, if killed by another player, hes a hacker. It truly depends on how you run your server personally, I've seen admins play among players on their servers no prob, but don't tolerate players calling out "Admin abuse" every time something doesn't go their way. It just depends on how you enforce your server.

I probably could have worded what I said better. I didn't mean not playing at all but I would rather them not be pvp'ing because I've found that you're right when it comes to non-regulars. If you have a good, stable group of players that can weather a lot of new people coming and going, I think its fine. Not that all new players leave, but I've just personally seen more new players than not leave a server if they die to an admin. For a server that doesn't have an already large player base, those one offs end up making or breaking your server. Raymix was spot on with his entitled generation comment. But for most new, or low pop servers, those one and two guys coming in is what can keep your server alive while its builds to a bigger population of regulars. I'm like Vampire in that I'm the guy that writes the code so I'm not really in game all that often but I'm always in ts to jump in game if someone needs help. I made the choice, though, that the only time I actually play on our server is to help people complete missions or something non-pvp related. The sad reality is, with things like infistar, there are tons of servers out there where the owners/admins think its ok to use those tools to gain an advantage and it only takes one person to ruin a player's trust in all future admins for the rest of the time they play that game. 

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My servers are purely PVE so we don't have to worry about admins killing players. I play the game like any other player. I help players with my admin tool if someone needs help, like they placed something that they want to remove, but for some reason it can't be removed by them, or maybe their vehicle glitched into a wall during restart, I'll help them out, but other than that I don't use the admin menu. If I die, I try to get a ride back to my body before the restart. If I don't make it, oh well. I have other admins on my servers with access to the admin menu and they are allowed to build, do missions, etc with no restrictions. I expect they do not use the menu for their own advantage, as doing so ruins their own gaming experience. I didn't set up servers just so I could admin. I set up servers that were configured in a way I liked, so I could play on them.

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Sounds like none of have trust in your admins to be honest.

 

All my admins have access to all tools on every server. They are players first/admins second.

 

If they help a player out they state it in chat that they are enabling god mode and teleporting to the player unless they are engaged in combat.

 

My admin logs are publicly available for all to see to so if they have any doubt they can see any action the admin takes with the menu.

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I'm the only admin on my server - not because I don't trust those around me, I just need to get off my lazy a$$ and show them how Rcon and the various tools work. Unfortunately, I spend too much time tinkering with things and addressing whatever the issue of the day is. I don't play much on my server anymore, and when I do it's to run a quick AI mission or just hang out. I never pvp. The majority of my online time is spent alt-tabbed, until someone needs help with removing a base object, unlocking a car for a key they lost, etc. When I do have an itch to go shoot something, I play on other servers. 

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Sounds like none of have trust in your admins to be honest.

 

All my admins have access to all tools on every server. They are players first/admins second.

 

If they help a player out they state it in chat that they are enabling god mode and teleporting to the player unless they are engaged in combat.

 

My admin logs are publicly available for all to see to so if they have any doubt they can see any action the admin takes with the menu.

 

Curious, Cen - how do you publish your logs? Must be automated somehow as I can't imagine doing that manually..  :blink:

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only problem with godmode is that I sometimes forget to turn it off after testing stuff, and get shot and people cry admin abuse the second I don't die

 

Unless you are specifically testing whether something will kill you, I don't see why godmode has to be on.

Zedshield works just as well.

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Honestly, I don't get why any admin would abuse admin powers in order to piss of the people keeping their server alive. Thankfully I've yet to play a server where an admin abused powers, and now that I run one, I don't intend to ever use them outside of testing new features on the server, or rectify issues caused by bugs. If I was able to run an admin account and normal account without being required to buy an additional copy of Arma 2, I would simply in hopes of preventing false accusation of abuse, but then again, odds are some people would find a reason to complain anyway. That being said, when my server reaches a point I get a steady base of players, odds are they'll be killing me more then me them. I'm not that big on being a bandit, not to say I don't kill people, but I only do it when I feel I have no choice.

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Players are no longer allowed to use the Bandit2_DZ skin on our server since it allows you to just walk up to a bandit. That latest patch broke something so that the bandit ai seem to see you as friendly with it on. While working on code on my local test server I use zedshield and that skin. That way I'm not constantly looking at the sky while trying to test something or other as I'm being shot.

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Players are no longer allowed to use the Bandit2_DZ skin on our server since it allows you to just walk up to a bandit. That latest patch broke something so that the bandit ai seem to see you as friendly with it on. While working on code on my local test server I use zedshield and that skin. That way I'm not constantly looking at the sky while trying to test something or other as I'm being shot.

 

All bandit skins (male/female) or just that specific one?

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