Admin abuse - What you need to know

[Zoop 343]

Please note: This guide only covers official servers. Many of the things listed below are possible on private servers, but this forum is not here for issues on private servers. If you have concerns regarding admin abuse on private servers, please take it to the private server sub-forum.

First things first, understand what admins are capable of doing;

- Lock the server

- Restart the server

- Password the server

- Restart the mission in-game

- Kick or ban players

These are the things admins are able to do. They're not necessarily allowed to do them. To see the server hosting rules set out for admins, please refer to the following DayZ Server Hosting rules thread that can be found at the following address; http://dayzmod.com/f...-hosting-rules/.

Admins do not have the tools to;

- Spawn in weapons and vehicles

- Remotely kill players

- Crash your game

- Roll back the servers to previous 'saves'

- Spawn nukes on top of players

- Teleport

If anything in this list happens to you while playing on a server, it is likely hackers. Admins can still hack, but then it is not a case of admin abuse, but rather hacking, and BattlEye will likely catch them the next time they roll out a wave of bans.

While admins do not have the tools to roll back a server to a previous 'save', the nature of the Hive is such that sometimes a vehicle/tent does not save its state on the server for prolonged periods of time. If a server is restarted, sometimes the vehicle/tent will return to the state in which it was last saved on the server. Some admins attempt to abuse this in order to get back equipment stolen from tents or get their vehicles back. This is against the rules and is considered admin abuse.

Just remember, though. Every time a server is restarted, there is a fairly big chance that someone would have been busy shooting another player/stealing a vehicle/stealing equipment from tents. Having a server restart when you're doing something like this is highly suspicious, but is not always indicative of admin abuse. It could possibly just have been a coincidence. Keep an eye out for whether the server is locked or password after it was restarted.

If you suspect an admin is abusing his admin privileges on a server, try and get proof of it either in the form of pictures or video. Unless an admin has a track record of being an abusive admin, unsubstantiated claims of admin abuse is not going to do much good in taking action against abusive admins. The DayZ team cannot use a player's word alone as evidence of admin abuse.

Before you make a thread, though, first do a search on the forums to see if there aren't any other threads about the server. It's much better consolidating all the evidence of admin abuse in one thread. It also makes the DayZ team's job a little bit easier.

That said, if you do not have proof and there is not a thread for the server already, make a thread anyway. There is a fairly good chance other players might have encountered the same treatment from the admin, and they might have proof of the incident. The more people chiming in on a report of admin abuse, the better the chance of the abusive admin being stopped. It's also a good way of helping players avoid bad servers.

Edited January 29, 2013 by Zoop

[snajdan 14]

very good post, should be sticked :P

[kalskirata 52]

totally agreed...its the same for any host/hostess at an event...

give this fella a medal plz :D

[Venzire 76]

I strongly agree with this post and support it to it's fullest. I'm also honestly sick of people thinking that admins are like gods in DayZ. We're not, we're merely providing a server for the DayZ community FOR FREE so you can play.

Take this as a personal note if you're one of those guys that throws false accusations around about admins.

STICKY THIS!!!

[SumoS 168]

Well said mate. Agree with everything you said.

People just tend to jump on the Admin hating band wagon.

+1 for Sticky

[boomnet@blueyonder.co.uk 17]

[Pickerd 1]

+1 for sticky. Well read thread sir.

[caeden 1]

+1 for Sticky.

[Reo 26]

+1 for sticky

[Greg-UK4 31]

+1 for sticky.

I'm glad you've put to words the feeling of many hosters. Thanks.

[mrsherenai 64]

+1 for sticky

[Legacy (DayZ) 1091]

Stickied

[Reo 26]

Sure? Still not on top!

[Zoop 343]

Hehe, I think he forgot to press the sticky button.

[xtali700 17]

I have been kicked by admins,but what pisses me off is that even hackers can kick you...

[shawnbayer75 83]

Stickied ;)

[Rough89 1]

2 - Understand what powers admins have. We can:

- Lock the server

- Restart the server

- Password the server

- Restart the mission in-game

- Kick or ban players

Actually admins can't password the server. You can password the server while it's down and under maintenance, but not while you and your buddies are playing or clan members are running around looting places.

So yeah, shouldn't list the password part.

[Leavaris (DayZ) 8]

2 - Understand what powers admins have. We can:

- Lock the server

- Restart the server

- Password the server

- Restart the mission in-game

- Kick or ban players

Actually admins can't password the server. You can password the server while it's down and under maintenance' date=' but not while you and your buddies are playing or clan members are running around looting places.

So yeah, shouldn't list the password part.

[/quote']

what we "can" do and whats against the rules are 2 different things in this case. He listed what we can physically do and what we cannot, such as item spawning.

Logging in with admin password leaves you the above options only.

+1 interwebz to this thread.

[Korbac 4]

This post is very informative and thank you for taking the time to compose it. I agree with everything here although I do find one part of it to be slightly misleading.

We cannot:

- Spawn in weapons and vehicles

- Remotely kill players

- Crash your game

- Roll back our servers to previous 'saves'

- Spawn nukes on top of players

- Teleport

Within the current game mechanics, It is entirely possible, ( despite wether or not it's intentional) to roll back a server by restarting it. This may not prevent you from death but It can cause items and tents to be duplicated, vehicles moved to a previously saved position, items recently aquired to not save to the players inventory, and distance traveled to be reverted. This may of course be a flaw in the the way information is saved to the hive server. ( I don't know the reasons... I'm no a dev or tech expert)

Finally before anyone attacks me for this post, to sum up my point, abuses of this nature have and do occur and it may be extremely hard for someone to gather up evidence against someone who has done so.

I know it wasn't your intention to defend every admin good and bad, but let's not overlook the fact that admin abuse does occur, (mostly because of current design flaws) and they go largely unnoticed.

Again thank you and I personally think there are bigger fish to fry then his whole topic in general, especially after the server I was playing on last night was nuked.

[Greg-UK4 31]

Even in that case, the "rollback" will only affect vehicles/tents that were not saved recently.

players inventory/states are streamed to hive regularly.

If the server can't stream to hive, then the "rollback" isn't caused by the server restart, more due to the lack of synchronicity to hive and is indeed a(n un)lucky coincidence.

Any "rollbacks" are not the direct intention for admins, more a symptom of another problem that was probably justification for the restart.

[Skydive (DayZ) 71]

Thanks for the post, Zoop! My thoughts exactly.

Also, remember to apply Moore's Law to anything "glitchy" when it comes to DayZ.

It is still ALPHA and should be taken with a grain of salt. We should all be thankful that Rocket and the DayZ devs have allowed this to be developed and tested openly so that we can explore this mod as it's developed and help give feedback to make it an even bigger success.

[Reo 26]

We should all be thankful that Rocket and the DayZ devs have allowed this to be developed and tested openly so that we can explore this mod as it's developed and help give feedback to make it an even bigger success.

Unfortunately I never read something like

"Thank you server hoster for giving us the chance to collect so much data/feedback and help to make this mod even bigger"

or

"Thank you server hoster for providing so many slots to us players for free"

_______________

It's more like:

"dont break rules, observe the restrictions or blacklisted"

or

"admin abuse, spawn items, kill all members, ban cry bla bla"

_______________

We pay money, we have to deal with accusations, have to proof that a ban/kick was legite, we do not have one single advantage, etc.

We provide that this mod keeps growing, we take care that servers perform well (in collaboration with our server provider - big thx to John/Lee from Vilayer), we try to treat our players with respect (can only speak for myself) by giving warnings before restart, etc.

There are people in the background, better give some respect to them instead of kicking their asses...

just my 2 server-hoster-cents...

[Pallidum 33]

Added a clarification in the original post. The OP states what an admin is able to do as admin. Some of the things an admin is able to do may constitute admin abuse, but may also be done for valid reasons. For example, locking or passwording a DayZ server is generally not permitted, but may be done so for specific purposes - for instance troubleshooting and maintenance or as a temporary preventive measure against heavy connection spam or severe hacker attacks.

[waflebot 1]

Today, I was playing on a server, and i saw a player running thru the railroad near a cow, i shot him with a makarov, then 30/60 sec later, the server was restarting...I checked the server list, and this was the only server "loading".I don't know if he was an admin, but damn, i hate those players who disconnect when they die....On another server, 2 players immediatly disconnected after being shot..I wish devs gonna fix it.

[Psyl3nt 125]

Only thing is though, how do you propose the players "get evidence" when they are banned without warning ?

How are they supposed to achieve this ?

Please inform us.

(there is no way, which is why the onus of proof is on the server admin, in both accusation and defence, this is the way it is for most online games aswell, if you've run gameservers for other games you would know that this is the case, any other way is open to a lot of abuse)

Making statements that tell players to "not post on the forums without evidence" is basically saying to never report anything as unless they are recording their every move / game then it won't be possible.

Being a server admin means you are going to cop a lot of flak, there are plenty of people who want to abuse you and accuse you of various things, it is however one of those things that is unavoidable, you need to get some thicker skin if this bothers you.