DayZ Staff are overlooking administrative abuse...

[Cush (DayZ) 1]

I know people like to go on server admin witch hunts every time an abuse thread crops up, but after looking through many threads it does seem these server restarts due to 'technical issues' are becoming more widespread.

People that do this are really ruining 'end game' play on DayZ...They are putting themselves in a position where nobody can take anything away from them and it totally ruins the balance of the game.

I know its extremely hard in these cases because it is just poop flinging with no evidence, but what evidence can people get really? Even if you record every session incase something like this happens, what then? You still cant actually prove that they flipped the switch and it ends up your word vs theirs. I'm starting to make it a habit of studying bodies asap to try and get the player name, so if a server miraculously restarts I can prove that I killed an admin right beforehand.

I dont know what could be done about it, but it seems like a pretty big issue since on what seems like quite a few servers, raids on camps or ambushes on admins simply doesnt work. I would suggest that anyone who steals a vehicle speed it a short distance really fast and hide it, then save it. That way if there is a server restart they wont find their precious car back at their camp

[phisher34 12]

Until there are dedicated tools for this, which most likely won't happen in the ARMA 2 engine, the best thing is to just get word of mouth out when it happens.

The problem with word of mouth though is it is not always accurate, and clearly people have shown a tendency to lie or cry wolf.

I will say however that I have never restarted the server right before, during, or after a firefight. To me that makes no sense, if the server is having technical issues you shouldn't be out engaging. So maybe the best thing is to show that it was the admin that you engaged or stole the vehicle from quickly followed by a restart. That would be proof enough for me - maybe not for any official action but enough to avoid the server.

That being said, I restart our server usually every 8 hours and give several minutes warning before it happens. Sometimes I can't always give a warning but I am never in-game at those times either.

[Cush (DayZ) 1]

Until there are dedicated tools for this' date=' which most likely won't happen in the ARMA 2 engine, the best thing is to just get word of mouth out when it happens.

The problem with word of mouth though is it is not always accurate, and clearly people have shown a tendency to lie or cry wolf.

I will say however that I have never restarted the server right before, during, or after a firefight. To me that makes no sense, if the server is having technical issues you shouldn't be out engaging. So maybe the best thing is to show that it was the admin that you engaged or stole the vehicle from quickly followed by a restart. That would be proof enough for me - maybe not for any official action but enough to avoid the server.

That being said, I restart our server usually every 8 hours and give several minutes warning before it happens. Sometimes I can't always give a warning but I am never in-game at those times either.

[/quote']

I agree, but right now I suppose the only way to actually 100% show that you killed an admin right before the server restarts is to both be recording your session and run in and study their body before they disconnect and you are dropped from the server.

Then again even if that was done I doubt action would be taken, because there is still no way to prove that the server wasn't taken down because of technical issues.

[phisher34 12]

The odds of it though are small, and I think if players can show a consistent behavior, than something can be done about it.

It's the same thing if a player was in the middle of a firefight and their power went out. To everyone else it seems like an obvious disconnect to avoid combat. But it was completely innocent. The first time it happens, it's suspicious.

But if you can show a pattern, or especially if the server is locked afterwards (which is against DayZ rules anyways), then I think there is enough to blacklist it.

[tiri 21]

Then again even if that was done I doubt action would be taken' date=' because there is still no way to prove that the server wasn't taken down because of technical issues.

[/quote']

Of course actions will be taken. Even if it is really technical issues, that means the server is a liability and it can send corrupted data to the main server.

And as I said before, as server hosts investigate and collect proofs when they suspect someone of illegal playing, you just have to do the same.

Again, moderators are not dumb. Show them some evidences that the server was shut down several times when a clan's vehicles have been stolen or anything else and they will do something, instead of crying like a baby in a new thread every single time. At least make a recording of every suspicious activity.

Try to be aware also of the issue servers hosts must deal with, not all of them are bad and trying to be MrI'mtheKing. Some of them just want a lot of fun without hackers or cheaters or duplicaters or D/Cers or anything else ruining the game.

[Yammazul 0]

Yeah I can admit I was rude to Griff because I felt he was being dismissive/sarcastic to the OP' date=' however its no excuse. Regardless I'm not going to get into it like I usually do with these gentlemen to avoid possibly getting the thread closed.

[/quote']

You are really starting to test my patience.

The OP blamed and belittled the hard-working mods, not the devs (mods who have absolutely no control over players) for in-game things. From your stand-point this fact was obvious, so you immediately labelled my reply as a sarcastic flame.

No I wasn't being sarcastic in my reply. I was actually pointing out that forum moderators have no control over in-game play. Since then the OP has edited his post in light of the fact, there was no need for you to inject your unwanted inflammatory behaviour.

I'm getting a little ticked that people here abuse first, ask later

From what I remember (this was some days ago) I didn't get the feeling he was blaming the mods for what the server admins were doing. I got the impression he was trying to highlight an issue and express his feelings that perhaps the mods could be taking a more pro-active approach in vetting any evidence posters may have presented here and then forwarding it up the food chain for further review.

P.S I didn't find anything belittling directed at the mods in his post but its possible he edited it before I read it as you claimed, my response to his post and your reply could have only been based on what I was able to read at the time (edited or otherwise), in my opinion I found your reply to his (seemingly edited) post to be a little sarcastic, its possible you didn't mean it that way though so I'll take your word for it and write it off as a misunderstanding that can sometimes occur when conversing via text.

P.S Why do you get a green name and the other mods have their names in blue? Are you King of the Mods or something? :P

---

Now let me just correct some of your factual errors' date=' Server Admins can not;

Relive themselves

Recover lost gear after dying from being shot

Recover lost gear after someone found their camp

Fly

Become UbEr L33t W0rr10r5

They are not given a free pass, I recently jumped on two accusations of admin abuse which didn't have any evidence.[/quote']

With absolutely all due respect, let me respond.

You under state admin powers as they currently exist.

First, vehicles exist at their last known save point according to the hive. So if someone raids a camp, steals a vehicle and then drives away a server restart will absolutely set that vehicle back to the camp in question - and usually back into the hands of its original owner. A server admin, coming upon a raid in progress, can simply wait 60-90 seconds after the players drive away and then restart the server. The players will be wherever the vehicles were in most cases, but the vehicles themselves will be back at the camp. This is when some particularly shameless admins lock the server too - so they can login, load up the vehicles and move them to safety. Ask them later and they will say it was locked to fix some technical issues.

There are other ways to use this - such as saving a vehicle in a hiding spot with plenty of gear, and then driving it into town to start some shit. If you die and don't want to lose your vehicle, a server restart will simply set it back to the hiding place. Even though you're a respawn, you can quickly return to the vehicle and retrieve gear.

Second, they can become "leet warriors" by exploiting many well-known item duplication exploits that result directly from server restarts and the behavior of vehicle and tent storage. I will not go into any more detail than that, suffice to say a single item can be turned into 16 copies of itself with four server restarts and I have heard many admins admit to this untraceable form of abuse.

Third, and most imporatntly, admin abuse in the form of server restarts/crashes will never have proof attached. How could it possibly? Admins will simply claim the server had to be restarted for technical reasons and that's that. End of discussion. Nothing the player could post would ever be accepted as proof. TS and chat logs can be faked as easily as anything. So asking for "evidence," even professionally and politely, is kind of a kick in the pants to someone who already feels victimized.

So I think it deserves a bit more consideration than just saying "You have no proof so go away." I realize you weren't that dismissive, but it's more or less the feeling I get from reading these posts. This is a serious problem in a game that relies on private server hosts exclusively.

I also appreciate that it's Alpha and the powers admins wield will dwindle as these holes and exploits are patched but honestly there will ALWAYS be the possibility of server admis flipping the switch when they're in danger (before they're deaths).

Last night, I was on US 66 and my brother and I were ambushed by a bandit in Berezino. Only ~5 people on the server, so if an admin was online there's a good chance that was him. Silenced rifle breaking all the windows, we hid out in back. Suddenly we hear an explosion out back - he tried to throw a grenade at us and it rebounded apparently. Then zombies, tons of them, and more silenced gunfire. Just as we're about to head outside to take advantage of him while he's distracted by zombies we get "Sesssion Lost."

Coincidence? That a highly geared person with NVGs and a silenced assault rifle on a very low population server happened to be saved at precisely the perfect moment by a server restart while in an incredibly vulnerable situation? Maybe... it wouldn't matter either way because I could never, ever prove anything but.

You raise some excellent points, I'd love it to get a reply to this from Matt or one of the other Devs.

P.S This is what alot of people have been accusing EU40 of coincidentally, its definitely going on, across at least, several servers. Granted 90% of it is probably just "butthurt" and unfounded but there are some real cases of it out there, hopefully it gets some more attention in the coming months.

---

I have seen a lot of complaining but no real solutions given.

Vehicles in motion need to be saved to the hive more often first of all so that a server restart cannot roll a vehicle back to a safe point. Also' date=' anyone entering or exiting a vehicle should save it's position and state as well.

Fresh player corpses need to be stored on the hive so that a server restart cannot clear loot and prevent a victorious player from claiming their loot from a defeated admin.

Server locking should be disabled in all but the most extreme cases. Any request to lock a server or any server locked for greater than 5 minutes should be immediately flagged for audit and review by moderators.

Server restarts should be scheduled. 15 minutes in advance at least and announced with messages on the server. Any [i']unscheduled or unannounced reboots should be subject to investigation by moderators. (I get that instability would make that an insurmountable task at the moment, but they could still run random audits on the logs). Servers with many, frequent unscheduled reboots should be blacklisted.

Staff should publish server statistics on reboots, crashes, average uptime, average ping etc. so the community can review server stats and make educated choices about the servers they frequent.

Hire this man. IMMEDIATELY.

[mofokk 6]

Now let me just correct some of your factual errors' date=' Server Admins can not;

Relive themselves

Recover lost gear after dying from being shot

Recover lost gear after someone found their camp

Fly

Become UbEr L33t W0rr10r5

They are not given a free pass, I recently jumped on two accusations of admin abuse which didn't have any evidence.[/quote']

With absolutely all due respect, let me respond.

You under state admin powers as they currently exist.

First, vehicles exist at their last known save point according to the hive. So if someone raids a camp, steals a vehicle and then drives away a server restart will absolutely set that vehicle back to the camp in question - and usually back into the hands of its original owner. A server admin, coming upon a raid in progress, can simply wait 60-90 seconds after the players drive away and then restart the server. The players will be wherever the vehicles were in most cases, but the vehicles themselves will be back at the camp. This is when some particularly shameless admins lock the server too - so they can login, load up the vehicles and move them to safety. Ask them later and they will say it was locked to fix some technical issues.

There are other ways to use this - such as saving a vehicle in a hiding spot with plenty of gear, and then driving it into town to start some shit. If you die and don't want to lose your vehicle, a server restart will simply set it back to the hiding place. Even though you're a respawn, you can quickly return to the vehicle and retrieve gear.

Second, they can become "leet warriors" by exploiting many well-known item duplication exploits that result directly from server restarts and the behavior of vehicle and tent storage. I will not go into any more detail than that, suffice to say a single item can be turned into 16 copies of itself with four server restarts and I have heard many admins admit to this untraceable form of abuse.

Third, and most imporatntly, admin abuse in the form of server restarts/crashes will never have proof attached. How could it possibly? Admins will simply claim the server had to be restarted for technical reasons and that's that. End of discussion. Nothing the player could post would ever be accepted as proof. TS and chat logs can be faked as easily as anything. So asking for "evidence," even professionally and politely, is kind of a kick in the pants to someone who already feels victimized.

So I think it deserves a bit more consideration than just saying "You have no proof so go away." I realize you weren't that dismissive, but it's more or less the feeling I get from reading these posts. This is a serious problem in a game that relies on private server hosts exclusively.

I also appreciate that it's Alpha and the powers admins wield will dwindle as these holes and exploits are patched but honestly there will ALWAYS be the possibility of server admis flipping the switch when they're in danger (before they're deaths).

Last night, I was on US 66 and my brother and I were ambushed by a bandit in Berezino. Only ~5 people on the server, so if an admin was online there's a good chance that was him. Silenced rifle breaking all the windows, we hid out in back. Suddenly we hear an explosion out back - he tried to throw a grenade at us and it rebounded apparently. Then zombies, tons of them, and more silenced gunfire. Just as we're about to head outside to take advantage of him while he's distracted by zombies we get "Sesssion Lost."

Coincidence? That a highly geared person with NVGs and a silenced assault rifle on a very low population server happened to be saved at precisely the perfect moment by a server restart while in an incredibly vulnerable situation? Maybe... it wouldn't matter either way because I could never, ever prove anything but.

deserves to be quoted untill it's acknowledged, good post sir.

Devs, mods, and all authority involved would do well to appriciate that watching said server admin take the piss at our expense and us as mere players having practically no chance to prove abuse, does sting a little.

I understand mods/devs are busy people. but if you can not enforce the rules you set to server admin then perhaps review the current rules to better compensate ?

[hunter2123 106]

As Griff states above.

Now let me just correct some of your factual errors' date=' Server Admins can not;

Relive themselves

Recover lost gear after dying from being shot

Recover lost gear after someone found their camp

Fly

Become UbEr L33t W0rr10r5

They are not given a free pass, I recently jumped on two accusations of admin abuse which didn't have any evidence.

In the case you cite, there are some questions, why would wutno sell out his clan etc? But plausible cause for questioning does not give me proof.

What I need to actually be able to make a reasonable and sound judgement is evidence, which was not provided. Now to then post criticism about forum mods for closing a thread which was just really tit for tat and wasn't going any where constructive, isn't helpful.

So when someone brings a case with reasonable evidence I will take action and things will not be fine and dandy

[/quote']

I'm a Adminstrator of Dallas 1, I want to stay out of a majority of the conversation here as I am not a head-admin, but Wutno was never [AG]. He had his own little clan/group =AG=

[Legacy (DayZ) 1091]

Thread title changed.

[shadowrwolf 3]

FYI matt works for CQF exploting fucks

[Spartan36 0]

I honestly wish this thread wouldn't have turned into an argument between a player and someone of higher authority. If it's possible... Would it be alright for you guys to delete the posts that contain the arguments and drama? I would rather it stick as a discussion thread, no need for people to read through all of that, it just wastes their time.

[Ghandi 0]

Don't question the Mods mate, ever, else this happens.

THEY'RE DOING A GOOD JOB...

[Zoop 343]

Can someone please point me towards these admin super tools we keep getting blamed for using?

Because I run a server and the only tools I have access to is kicking people, banning people or restarting the server.

I also want access to these flying hax, insta-kills on non-admin players, the ability to magically access the DayZ central server and roll back my server, as well as the ability to give myself uber l33t equipment.