Possible make most people happy solution?

[Roalith 0]

I am a long time lurker and less than 1 week old player and new poster but I agree with a lot of the posts stating that something should be done to help the server owners being generous enough to help people by hosting a server and not abusing admin powers.

My thought is to offer an option in the server config to have ghost slots on a server. These ghost slots would either ONLY allow admins in the ghost slots or the slots could have their own ghost whitelist file to draw from to allow players in.

How this could work:

I pay for a 50-slot server...In the server config I set public slots to 40(the minimum number of slots required for a new server to be approved). I set ghost-slots=10 for the remainder of the 50 slots. On the server list the server could show public slots 40/40. Admin or ghost-whitelisted player joins and public slots on the server select launcher still shows either 40/40 OR could show 41/40 (to let people know there an admin or ghost reserve on the server depending on how DayZ wants this to work).

This prevents abuse, as no one gets booted. Currently, a *SOMEWHAT* common tactic is to restart the server to get friends/admins on. This reboot is kind of underhanded because it's basically a kick-all to make room for me and my friends type of method, but hard for a player to prove, as an admin could just claim they were doing a daily reboot/etc. This still allows at LEAST the required minimum number of PUG/public players on (40) which discourages loot exploiting or looting without risk of player encounters.

This gives server owners just a little bit more control and more incentive to keep their servers online. This also gives people on the fence about purchasing a server more incentive to do so, which in turn prevents the current crowding problem a lot of servers face; some of the crowd would go join the influx of new servers that would potentially pop up.

I personally wouldn't mind a one-off donation to help DayZ if I thought it would actually do so, but I myself can't justify a $100+/month expense to provide an environment for more people to alpha test the mod with a good chance of being very limited in the ability for me and my friends to play on the very server we would be splitting the costs of. These ghost slots, or a variation thereof, would be a great middle ground between development team, server owners/hosts/admins, and playerbase.

Fair warning - Wall of texts, well thought out and articulated posts that consider multiple viewpoints tend to pop up in my threads. Please be respectful and constructive to others in the discussions, and realize we are ALL here because we are passionate about DayZ, and some of us really enjoy intelligent discussion and long-winded conversations...

[MILLANDSON 3]

It might help in future, but currently this isn't allowed, and I don't think it should be until the mod is at least in beta.

Don't think of hosting a server as you actually hosting a server - it's actually closer to a monthly donation to rocket in the form of servers (rather than donating money, and him getting the servers).

[Roalith 0]

Don't think of hosting a server as you actually hosting a server - it's actually closer to a monthly donation to rocket in the form of servers.

I understand this, but the general mood of the community is that there would be quite a few more servers if there was some sort of reserved slot system. I was actually getting ready to enter checkout for my own 60-slot server 2 days ago and with the server in my cart I came onto the server forums to try to find a config/initial setup guide, instead finding the very specific rules that restrict me from playing with my close-knit group that has been playing games together since 2001). We ended up just putting a few <30ms ping servers on our favorites for now, with plans to revisit hosting options at a later date.

This is not because I'm stingy or greedy, this is because this is a mod to a video game, something I cannot easily justify to myself, much less to my wife when in all honesty it would affect us both at least a small amount each month that I provided this server to the community. Top of the line servers and a bigger voice rental for the server you're looking easily at $1800+/year, with some options getting even more expensive than that! Costs easily justified if it would allow us an avenue to keep playing together (seperated by military deployments, job relocations, etc over the years).

We could do what some others do, restarting the server every time our group wants in, but I would rather not circumvent the rules or boot everyone just to play together. I know that most servers are pretty much identical and renting one is mostly to provide an overall larger playground and that it really shouldn't matter whether you are all on your own server or playing someone else's, but I would like to provide a quality server with my own config to call home.

In real life, would I pay mortgage on my own home, let people stay, see that it is crowded, then say "Hey that's ok guys, let's go to the place down the street and spend the night there instead!"? No....If anything, I would let the people have the guest rooms, setting a certain boundary on my own personal space that I would know that I have access to get in and out of at any time, being the guy footing the mortgage bill and all.

And believe it or not, with first time homeowner rates and high down payment, the cost of renting a highest quality DayZ server is over half of a mortgage payment each month, so paying half of your real life mortgage payment amount for a virtual home world.......!

[stardruid 1]

Yeah I was going to host as server but like you decide not to after reading the rules. While I don't mind host a server (already run a minecraft server for the guild), I won't till later when I'll have more control over it.

Most of the guild I'm part of quit playing games like World of Tank and similar (Or not so similar in the case of SW:TOR) becasue there was no guarantee we could all actual play together. Support would die out quick if came to times where everyone couldn't get on a server we rented. Sadly since tent/vehicles etc are server based, and needed for real guild like operations you can't just go find "another" server.

Best option is like some of us are doing, is to wait till server are allow with more control in the hands of those that pay for and maintain them.

[tansien 15]

The problem is simply that ArmA2 does not support reserved slots. It's an engine problem, not a DayZ issue.

[Roalith 0]

The problem is simply that ArmA2 does not support reserved slots. It's an engine problem' date=' not a DayZ issue.

[/quote']

Also didn't support melee combat and I was reading that melee combat would never make it in, then 2 mornings later I wake up to HOTFIX notes saying that melee combat was added. I am sure reserved/ghost slots wouldn't be too difficult to bring in; the problem being that it obviously won't currently be a priority, and will likely only be addressed once servers start shutting down and overcrowding becomes the #1 problem above ever thing else.

I am still going to host one. I may just set the difficulty to recruit and then edit the config to veteran settings, in hopes that people see RECRUIT in the server difficulty and pass it up for the most part.

I will also be doing 12 hour restarts, and I plan to do those every single day at 6am and 6pm most likely. This also offers the perk for most of my friends to at least have a CHANCE at joining after the daily 6pm restart. I figure I can put the restart times in the server motd, and hopefully use the admin control panel to broadcast a 5 minute reminder before each restart...12 hour restarts take place on every server we currently play on already...