Open Note for Admins / Players / Staff

[jskibo 143]

Looks like our community is well over a thousand servers now and still growing. Awesome energy behind an Alpha project, what great support for something that was originally designed as a test of a hundred or so players.

The game is addictive and fun and I really look forward to the final release version in whatever for it takes!

It seems though, that with such unprecidented growth, comes a lot of growing pains that causes frustration with the Admins and Player base, and the Dev staff I imagine as well.

I jumped on the game in May and really liked what I saw, so I found some others I gamed with in WWIIonline and other games and invited them to try it out with me. They liked it and stuck around. We began playing on any low ping server, but then found the advantages in picking a server as a home base. Somewhere to bed down our gear and get to know the folks who played it, much like I'm sure many of you do.

It was shortly there after that we found the server being reset a lot, down a lot, time changed to dark when the admin when to bed and other games like that. Eventually it was down hard and we gave up what gear we had stored there in search of a new home.

In wanting to support the growth of this mod, as well as have a home for our little group, we decided to pay for a server we could call home. A home as in a place to lay our gear that we knew would be up when we wanted to play and wouldn't be managed in a way that is detrimental to anyone on it. An equal playing field per say.

That server quickly grew to two 40 slot servers in case either host had box issues, we wouldn't be down. It seemed like a great idea and would add to the community.

Our little group of folks play fair and expect the same with our server and those who join. We don't combat DC, dupe, hide vehicles, hack, etc... When we find another camp, we take the gear that we need and leave the rest. We don't run it over, blow it up or anything else that would be frustrating to others playing. I've died countless times over the weekend and never thought once to restart the server or DC out of it. In fact I'm begining to enjoy the unknown part of making it back to camp alive with little gear from the coast. Its an interesting part of the whole game. There's no win or lose on this game and we don't need the uber weapons to have fun.

Running these servers has now begun to be a real pain. A pain because of the hackers, script kiddies, GB's of logs to review and making sure things run smoothly. All of us in the group are over 40, have kids, careers and other things to attend to. We do our best to keep our server clean, respond to those posting questions, corrrect bans when they were not put in place properly and try and make the community a fun place to be. Each month I dig into my pocket to the tune of $50 for the Vilayer server, $35 for the HFB one and another $15 to have a Ventrilo server folks can contact us on (as well as a place for the players to use and meet.

We got a note from HFB last night saying they were taking away FTP and File Manager access to our server at the request of the DayZ team.......WHY? How do you expect me to keep the logs pruned and managed?

I know there are some servers out there that are being used to the advantage of the owners, and that pisses off the good admins as much as it does the player base and the Dev Team.

There are also a lot of players running scripts, duoing stuff, DC'ing and server hopping, and that pisses off all of us as well.

What can be done? I don't know at this point.....

For the Player base:

Most admins run a clean server for the benefit of the community. Its rather demoralizing to us to have the constant crap of all being lumped together under the title Admin abuse everytime something goes wrong in the game or in your life. Enough already.

Enjoy the game, move away from the servers that treat you bad. Report those that are truly doing something wrong, but this mud slinging everytime you lose a vehicle or tent is old.

You want us to run clean servers and keep the idiots and hackers out, well that takes some banning, some kicking and a lot of trolling through thousands of pages of logs. AMRA has a lot of holes, BE has a lot of holes, some things in the logs that look legit arent, other that may not look legit are. There's not many good tools we have to screen out the good from the bad. What is there often requires you to look at all three logs to compare and even then its a guess.

You can't ask the dev team for help, they are too busy fixing and growing the game (rightly so) so there will be errors in bans that can be corrected.

New server owners don't have a clue as to what to look for. They rely on word of mouth from other owners and that experience, good or bad, is what they have to go on.

There is no set of tools or instructions given that say this "XXXXX" is a cheat and this"XXXX" is not. I don't expect the Dev team or server owners to publish that in the open either as it just helps the srcipters....so we have what we have and do our best with it.

Support the admins out there giving you a place to play, a home for your gear free of trolls, scripters, idiots and those poor souls who were told growing up that you're entitled to everything in the world because you exist.......(democrats....sorry had to go there)

Please, if we are doing such a horrible job in your eyes, step up and help out. Put your money on the table and try running one for just a month for the experience. Perhaps you won't come away jaded and really enjoy it....

Once again, we have no special powers. we can:

Stop / Start / Restart

Ban (our server only)

Temp Ban (up to seven days while we look inot the issue)

Kick

Set Ping Cap

Set Crosshairs on / off

Set Map On / Off

Set Third person On / Off

Say Hi to you over global chat

For the Admins:

Lets do our part to keep the servers clean. If you only got a server to farm gear or keep it to you and your buddies, then drop the hive and go private. Don't be part of the problem and bring the rest of us down.

For those of you running a good server within the rules as best as you can, I applaud you! Lets demand better tools to operate our servers with! Lets demand the Dev team make us part of the solution, not act like we are part of the problem. Let's work togther to weed out the morons, players and admins alike, and share our knowledge of what works and what doesn't. Help the new server owners with what we have learned so far and share the ways to find and ban the new exploits developed.

We spend our hard earned dollars to support the mod and we expect a little help when we do so.

For the Devs:

Thanks for making a great mod. I get that you need to focus on improving the game and getting it ready for a hopeful Beta, then full release. I know you don't have time to answer every question the player base or Admins have. I hope to see this game really grow and be polished for its full release!

Plase stop further restricting the admins who are here to help you in that effort. Stop taking away tools we have to monitor our servers and give us more that help keep it clean and free of idiots.

Please don't act like I should be grateful that you let me spend my money to help you. We all want to help but we want to feel supported in our efforts. Without those of us willing to spend our money and time to help you and the players, there would be no servers. I seen none labled DAYZ Owned.

I think its fantastic that you can get our community to step up and be involved, however I grow tired of being lumped in with the idea that "All admins are bad" so therefore we must further restrict what they can do. All players aren't hacking so we shouldn't lump them together as one as well.

Give us some decent tools to screen our logs, not control access so we can't even FTP to them.

I'm asking you to take some time to really work with those that are here to work with you. We share in your vision, so help us help you!

I've vented enough, and kind of expect to be banned for what I have laid out here. I hope this mod does well and continues to grow. I enjoy playing it a lot and only wish I had more time to do so.

As a bit of a protest in the Dev team instructing HFB hosting to remove some of our tools, I will be taking down my servers for 24 hours begining July 20th. I encourge others to do so as well.

John

[bayers 28]

You have written the unwritten code of server conduct - we follow the same principles on DE8. But whats all that about them taking away FTP and File access from you on DayZ staff request? Why would they do that? If I rented a server from someone, I would demand full access to it at all times.

[Guest]

I agree -

I've been running US335 - uRxP for a week now, and if access is going to get even more limited for server administration, and not to mention limited tools, incomprehensible log files, and the over-scrutinous eye of the player base calling admin abuse for no reason, I am really not seeing the point of forking over $50 for a server every month.

Additionally, I can honestly say that it's the most unintuitive experience I've ever had. I can't understand the log files for the life of me, I haven't found proper documentation on how to update scripts files for BE, nor have I seen any kind of server admin forum that we can use for knowledge transfer (THIS WOULD BE HUGE). Where's the support for the new admins?

We admins (at least the good ones!) are here to help run a fair playing environment for everyone and keeping it fun. By taking away access to core server functionality, it is, in turn, affecting the player base. Got a problem with hackers? Welp, we'd love to help, but our hands are tied.

Please, stop making it more difficult for us to admin our servers.

[azunai 32]

i guess this is one way to make sure that those servers all run the same working version, same configs, etc

if it was even possible before? i never had a HFB server till now so correct me if im wrong

about what OP says about hosting and maintaining a server, thats what causes ppl to stay long!

[Lith 80]

@Jskibo

Fortunately I'm not affected by the restrictions due to hosting a dedicated box but I feel for you and I couldn't agree more with your post. Nailed it spot on man.

Edited July 16, 2012 by Lith

[kiotie 23]

I completely agree on this. First they take away our server names in which we were already comfortable with. Now, they take away practically every access we have to our own PAID servers. I don't know how they expect this mod to grow if admins can't even have access to their own server files to look over things. It really boggles my mind that it has to happen this way. I really hope they change their mind on this, because it's starting to get ridiculous.

And I will do the same for my server. 24 hours of downtime starting July 20 unless we are answered.

Edited July 16, 2012 by Kiotie

[wcski 5]

@Jskibo pretty much said it all in his post.

I to have a server with HFB servers as well and do not understand this move by the Host / Dev team. I may be new to running an Arma server, but I have been a server admin for many years and just do not understand it.

I think the Dev team should be helping server admins more by providing script.txt files with the latest hack information in them that we could use to update our servers and keep the hackers out of them. Things like this could be in a "server admin forum that we can use for knowledge transfer" as was said by @Tremu1ant.

I hope this policy changes as well.

Ski

Edited July 16, 2012 by Ski

[Flail 10]

Mister, you forget the password settings... thats a very nice abuse, too. Often used, just check the list.

[SYOPS 0]

@jskibo

As I read through all these topics and post about Dayz I'm learning at best. Coming from a FPS for over a decade (SYOPS) I was told about this game and it seems to be cool. As the Counter-Stirke (CS) community awaits for the next release I needed to find something else to keep things rolling, and I found or was told about Dayz.

With that said _ we are a gaming community and always looking for new games, server admins and players so I thought this would be a good thread to post in..... I've just ordered a dedicated box in GA, USA waiting for setup so if you want to ADMIN this server let me know and we can get it rolling.

Thank you,

SAPPER,

SYOPS LLC

SYOPS.net

[kiotie 23]

We need some light to be shed on this. Come on devs, at least acknowledge our concerns. You're taking away basically every control we have over the servers that we spend our own money and time on.

[jskibo 143]

@jskibo

As I read through all these topics and post about Dayz I'm learning at best. Coming from a FPS for over a decade (SYOPS) I was told about this game and it seems to be cool. As the Counter-Stirke (CS) community awaits for the next release I needed to find something else to keep things rolling, and I found or was told about Dayz.

With that said _ we are a gaming community and always looking for new games, server admins and players so I thought this would be a good thread to post in..... I've just ordered a dedicated box in GA, USA waiting for setup so if you want to ADMIN this server let me know and we can get it rolling.

Thank you,

SAPPER,

SYOPS LLC

SYOPS.net

Sapper,

I appreciate the thought and offer, however my time is so limited. I'm a Program Manager in Military Aviation as my 9 to 5. Just now I arrived in St. Louis for a meeting tomorrow and headed back Tuesday evening. I'm afraid I already give what limited time I have to the two boxes I admin now. Any more time spent in game, or 1am wake ups chasing hackers off the box and I'm afraid I'll Agro my wife even more :) She's deadly with a hatchet and a lawyer so that could be a bad thing.....

Again though I do appreciate the thought and will stop by your server if you let me know when its up!

John

[SYOPS 0]

Sapper,

I appreciate the thought and offer, however my time is so limited. I'm a Program Manager in Military Aviation as my 9 to 5. Just now I arrived in St. Louis for a meeting tomorrow and headed back Tuesday evening. I'm afraid I already give what limited time I have to the two boxes I admin now. Any more time spent in game, or 1am wake ups chasing hackers off the box and I'm afraid I'll Agro my wife even more :) She's deadly with a hatchet and a lawyer so that could be a bad thing.....

Again though I do appreciate the thought and will stop by your server if you let me know when its up!

John

Ah, roger that on time - I so understand that. Thank you for the reply back and best of luck with you servers.

I'm waiting for support to get back to me on how to setup and once it's done will let you know. I hope I just didn't waste 100 bucks on a server for this though. ( getting mixed feelings now reading forums )

[darthsatan 2]

drop the hive and go private.

you can do that? I thought you'd get stuck at "waiting for character to create" or something like that if the server isn't connected to the hive

[achillius 40]

Y U NO GIVE ADMINS PAWER !

Edited July 17, 2012 by Achillius