To all server admins

[Astaa 11]

I don't think server admins should be able to global ban players, simply because there are too many douchebag admins. They should have better tools to report players though. I also have no problem with people passwording their servers. If it stops the script kiddies then surely it's a bonus?

[{sas}stalker 108]

I dont know a single admin that would want to globally ban anyone. Its completely outside of our remit and is what BE is there for.

[Gogster (DayZ) 626]

Although I am talking about a shared ban list. Doubt you get 100% take up though.

[Gogster (DayZ) 626]

Shame the impetus has gone out of this thread - we had a dev's ear for a while :(

[Wo3dy 111]

like i have seen in several post of people, not only here.

basicly the only effective thing we can do as admins. is just shut down the server, forever.

stop paying, stop playing, stop everything. let the few people struggle with the huge amount of script-users.

im considering it myself aswel, gonna talk about it in my Gaming community and prolly have some shouts in my server to let everyone gather his camped gear, to move to another server.

goodluck,

[virol 3]

I have nothing but support for the OP

The support rendered to server hosts has been and remains awful. For those of us that have been hosting servers since the very beginning its particularly disappointing. We have been providing the servers to allow for the massive player expansion, and we do not get any help with our issues and on top of that our hands are tied on almost ALL aspects of administration. As I said back when this mod started it seems that all the server hosts are permitted to do is pay for the servers and take the rage of players when they break or are constantly accused of abuses that we can not possible have performed.

At my reckoning there are about 2500-3000 servers in total now , if we use an average figure of from $50 - $100 per month ranging from hosted to self run. we will use $75 and we will use 2750 servers.

2750*$75p/m = $206,250 per month

The hosts are paying upwards of two hundred thousand dollars a month to finance the success of this mod and its subsequent stand alone release. We are not feeling, nor have we ever felt even a modicum of appreciation and we have certainly had no support.

We do not expect the earth but something as simple as allowing admins to ban hackers or getting some dedicated support guys to assist the hosts with db related issues. How about processing the massive backlog of server addition support tickets so that we can update our mission pbo's ?

Or even just to have them not threaten us with blacklisting for trying to stop hackers destroying our servers.

Take from this what you will, but I for one am very disappointed.

exactly my feeling, we were so pumped to get a server, to only end up being powerless to the hackers, won't renew it this month & probably my clan will stop playing till the standalone. Also i am not an admin that abuses his powers, I stick to the rules very carefully, and to see so much hate towards admins no these very forums, & from the dev.... well i have to say that also made me choose to stop paying, why pay & get insulted?

Edited August 13, 2012 by virol

[Razzle Dazzle 49]

Why admin abuse is brought up on this forum anyways is terrible. If a admin pays for the server he should be able to monitor it how he wants , if you don't like it go get your own server. Admins aren't the problem here its the devs not listening to the public, For months we asked for stupid barbed wire to go away , and still no answer now hackers move all the vehicles to debug and sandbag them and barb wire them, guess what you cant remove them in debug. Would this of happened in a pass worded server no. More and more people are dropping from the game and that should be a sign , I'm not saying there isn't new people playing but give them a week of getting teleported and they will quit to . If that is how you want to run this mod more power to you. I wont be a part of it

[{sas}stalker 108]

It’s understandable and yet somewhat wrong to bring money into it really. The mod is provided by X but you are paying your money to Y. I very much doubt there is any payment from your hosts to the dev team at this point in time.

As far as impetus is concerned, I’m holding out for our dev to return with an epic post on how things are going to change.

Edited August 13, 2012 by {SAS}Stalker

[Wo3dy 111]

how my server "evolved" cause of script users. kinda funny

[machomanugget 26]

how my server "evolved" cause of script users. kinda funny

Mine is even worse than that, has battleye woke up yet?

Is anything being done about nothing saving in game at the minute?

still the general wall of silence from the people that matter?

[Razzle Dazzle 49]

My 40 man server went from 40 players to 2-8 players a night

[jwiechers 92]

Apologies for the delay (I’m at work).

Hey, we all have day jobs -- nothing to apologize for. :-)

Let me also reiterate that while I am part of the community support team, for the most part, I am simply another admin of servers.

1. Trust, its not something you can create but there is currently none, I would go as far as to say that there is a feeling from the Dev team that every host only wants to cheat and there is pretty much nothing we can do to prove otherwise. Whilst this might seem like a minor point that no one should really care about it’s actually getting in the way of improving things. You have entrusted us with your server code and .pbo files but you think we are all running off to find out where our player base pitches their tents.

I understand your feelings, although I have to say that this is really rather typical of games who feature content that transcends the individual server. As was pointed out before, you're also not allowed to have locked or passworded ranked BF3 servers and there is no observer mode. These things are implemented for precisely the same reasons.

2. Dialogue, pretty much there is none, I’ve lost count of how many times ive needed some information that only a Dev could answer and I’ve just thought “whats the point”. The forum is so bogged down with “ZOMG hackers” posts that I imagine the team no longer bother reading it.

The team does read the forums -- and I can only reiterate my previous comment regarding the scale of this mod. Yes, you may have questions only a developer can answer, but you are not the only one. There are literally thousands of others who *also* have questions -- and that is just the group of server admins. Once we get to the players, we are talking about hundreds of thousands of people. There are currently roughly a thousand unanswered tickets with hundreds of new tickets every day, not to mention the dozens of emails *per minute* that the team has been receiving.

It is not that the dev team or the community team is blind to these issues, it is that they've simply spiralled out of all proportion that can be effectively handled and so we're struggling to get some semblance of order setup.

3.Restriction of information, you had your reasons but the last revision to the .rpt logs made cross referencing and cheat detection a much harder and laborious procedure. You have no idea how useful a “who killed who” entry would be in the log file, which yes “could” be open to abuse but see point 1.

As stated above, these restrictions are relatively typical for games similar to what this mod was trying to be -- and both BE, BIS, as well as the team have been working on improving cheat detection and prevention quite substantially, which has resulted in a very well working scripts.txt file as well as auxiliary detection files that catch a lot of cheaters, even those using a bypass, by now. There is really very little that admin action could do at the moment that would not be drowned out by the massive amount of false-positives it would likely create because you need to very closely understand ARMA scripting to correctly identify cheating. Just to point to the newest improvements, here is a recent thread from $able (BattlEye) on the BIS forums. This will likely curb a lot of the problems with vehicle spawning and remote execution. We also have a pinned thread on this forum now.

Yes, a section for admins to talk to each other undisturbed, compare script logs effectively, etc. would be nice, but we simply don't have the manpower of people experienced with both the mod as well as ARMA to do that at the moment. In an ideal world: sure, I'd love to see that and many other things to further admin interaction.

4. An admin section. This has been requested repeatedly and fallen on deaf ears. I know there is some google group but it may as well not exist for 90% of hosting admins. The volume of posts that get lost in this forum (which is a shocking mess I’ll add) is alarming. I personally have been desperately trying to establish what a #60 script restriction for skipping scenes is, has a Dev seen this post?, because I assume that only a Dev that can answer it. We need an area that people who aren’t as experienced at admining can “safely” post log snippets where they will get looked at, not lost on page 8 buried under a mountain of crap.

In the last 10 years I have closed beta and open beta tested several games and on every occasion I have had the ability to engage directly with somebody in the team that can help when it’s needed. We don’t have that here because of point 1

We don't have that here, because this was a mod started by one guy, helped by a couple of other guys, not an "open beta" for a title with a million dollar budget and dedicated paid support staff.

When it was a couple of hundred, even a couple of thousand, players, we had a couple of updates per week and a lot of interaction. If you really think an unpaid hobby mod can sport satisfactory community interaction with a million people, I don't know what world you're living in.

Just adding all the current admins to an admin section -- that did exist, by the way -- is an nearly insurmountable task because it'd take many hours and could only be done by a handful of people (those trusted enough to have full access to both the ordering system and the forum system) -- and those have better things to do, namely ensuring that this can doesn't fall over. Yes, these things could be automated, but we haven't gotten there yet because someone has to program that, too.

I'm sorry most of your complaints boil down to you apparently not understanding how big all this has become. DayZ overwhelmed the GameSpy servers -- and while GameSpy is in decay if you ask me, it's still a pretty big service; the DayZ update releases look like massive dDoS attacks to most ISPs. There are 90.000 registered users on this forum, there are a million unique players, thousands of people writing emails, asking questions, etc. -- and there is a development team of maybe five to ten people, plus a support staff of another ten or twenty. Sorry, if you expect the kind of service you get in an open beta for a Triple-A title, or even an indy title that has maybe a hundred beta testers, not a hundred thousand, you're simply being ludicrous. I understand the frustration, really, I do -- I'm frustrated a lot myself -- but you're asking the impossible and not recognizing that.

Edited August 14, 2012 by jwiechers

[{sas}stalker 108]

Firstly thanks for the reply, I don’t think that I have asked for passworded servers or indeed spectator mode so I don’t really understand the relevance to comparing the Dayz with BF3 unless it’s as an analogy regarding the player to host relationship. At the end of the day though its comparing apples and oranges, BF3 has kill cam and the ability to take screen shots of people playing on the server and the ability to stream to external sites who offer additional protection to the server. Dice don’t need to trust their hosts (although for the most part they do actually) the fact that the BF series has above features negates the need for anything that you mention. I understand that the DayZ development team can’t be compared to that of DICE (but then it’s not me comparing BF3 to DayZ) and it’s because they can’t be compared that you need trust in your server hosts.

With regards dialogue, you misunderstood my post, whilst I mentioned that I had a post that was likely unread I wasn’t making the point that “I” have un-answered posts and rather that 99.9% of posts remain unanswered and inevitably get buried under a mountain of spam. This really is because the forum is unorganised and needs improving. You highlight that you cant organise the forum due to having 90K members, I would say that having 90K members proves that you need to organise it.

As an example there’s a bug feedback thread but it’s a shambles, it would take under an hour to organise into something useful. Produce the following sub forums;

Weapon Feedback

Map Feedback

Vehicle Feedback

General Feedback

Character and Items Feedback

Then remove the ability for users to create new threads and force them to use the official ones. As you like the Dice comparisons I suggested this to them also and they put it in place for BC2 and BF3 and it worked very well.

You could do a similar thing in the server general thread, as you won’t create an admin section clean the server general area up. Make a script review section and sticky it so that people can post bits in there and people can see it all in one place and reply to it. From this create a known list of what to look out for. Again it would take under 20 mins to organise this and there are no applications or forum permission changes needed.

Restriction of information, the transition period of time between my post and your reply really makes my initial point moot. The latest BE update negates the need for anyone to look in the RPT file. However see my point regarding dialogue as to how this could have been relayed to “us” and done away with 90% of the bad feeling created by the RPT changes.

Finally “most of my complaints” are not really just mine; they represent a much broader cross section of your community and to suggest that they are borne out of a lack of appreciation as to the scale of the project is frankly insulting. I am under no illusions as to the scale of the project and fully understand the man power issues but the fact still remains that many of the issues are simply due to a lack of foresight and organisation. Again 90K isn’t a reason to not organise your forum it’s a reason TO organise it. If you organised your forum you would relieve, to a degree the pressure on your ticket and email system but as it stands now people log in here, see a mountain of spam and think “arse to that, I’ll raise a ticket”. I don’t expect triple A service either for the record but I do expect it to be the best that it can be and the problem is, it isn’t.

Edited August 14, 2012 by {SAS}Stalker

[Greg-UK4 31]

Mine is even worse than that, has battleye woke up yet?

Is anything being done about nothing saving in game at the minute?

still the general wall of silence from the people that matter?

This is the issue with being a pro-active admin:

If you actively hunt down hackers, ban them with proof, they come back harder with their friends and make your server an impossible place to play on.

I have lost ~90% of my regulars, donations have ceased, it is now taking up more of my time to manage and administer a server that caters for ~15 players at any one time.

I used to have to wait 15-20m to log into my own server it was that popular, now any time of the day it is no where near peak.

I'm sure others are experiencing a similar decline in player base.

[jwiechers 92]

Firstly thanks for the reply, I don’t think that I have asked for passworded servers or indeed spectator mode so I don’t really understand the relevance to comparing the Dayz with BF3 unless it’s as an analogy regarding the player to host relationship. At the end of the day though its comparing apples and oranges, BF3 has kill cam and the ability to take screen shots of people playing on the server and the ability to stream to external sites who offer additional protection to the server. Dice don’t need to trust their hosts (although for the most part they do actually) the fact that the BF series has above features negates the need for anything that you mention. I understand that the DayZ development team can’t be compared to that of DICE (but then it’s not me comparing BF3 to DayZ) and it’s because they can’t be compared that you need trust in your server hosts.

It was mostly with regard to the other posts, even though I replied to yours. I fully agree with you, we need to trust server admins -- and I don't think anyone doesn't want to extend trust to you. A lot of things went sour when this mod suddenly grew from small to huge in a matter of weeks and a lot of broken china needs to be kitted.

With regards dialogue, you misunderstood my post, whilst I mentioned that I had a post that was likely unread I wasn’t making the point that “I” have un-answered posts and rather that 99.9% of posts remain unanswered and inevitably get buried under a mountain of spam. This really is because the forum is unorganised and needs improving. You highlight that you cant organise the forum due to having 90K members, I would say that having 90K members proves that you need to organise it.

Absolutely. It's actually one of the reasons I offered my assistance relatively early, because I've done community support before for projects of a similar size. It's just that all these things take time and that the community team and forum team haven't been able to do it yet -- which is regrettable, but it doesn't mean we're sitting on our hands.

Then remove the ability for users to create new threads and force them to use the official ones. As you like the Dice comparisons I suggested this to them also and they put it in place for BC2 and BF3 and it worked very well.

I don't, I mostly used BF3 because I host BF3 servers so I know EA/DICE policies and also the cheating issues.

You could do a similar thing in the server general thread, as you won’t create an admin section clean the server general area up. Make a script review section and sticky it so that people can post bits in there and people can see it all in one place and reply to it. From this create a known list of what to look out for. Again it would take under 20 mins to organise this and there are no applications or forum permission changes needed.

I didn't say that, I said we haven't been able to program something to automate the group change -- or found a better way of organizing things. Creating forums isn't a problem, having people to reply to stuff or making these script lists is.

Restriction of information, the transition period of time between my post and your reply really makes my initial point moot. The latest BE update negates the need for anyone to look in the RPT file. However see my point regarding dialogue as to how this could have been relayed to “us” and done away with 90% of the bad feeling created by the RPT changes.

You seem to expect that we knew -- we didn't. I don't know about rocket, Matt or Dwarden for that matter, but all we knew was that $able/BE was working on things and that was what we could communicate.

Sadly, Anti-Cheat providers generally don't comment all that much on their software for obvious reasons -- and I know this can drive admins mad.

Finally “most of my complaints” are not really just mine; they represent a much broader cross section of your community and to suggest that they are borne out of a lack of appreciation as to the scale of the project is frankly insulting. I am under no illusions as to the scale of the project and fully understand the man power issues but the fact still remains that many of the issues are simply due to a lack of foresight and organisation. Again 90K isn’t a reason to not organise your forum it’s a reason TO organise it. If you organised your forum you would relieve, to a degree the pressure on your ticket and email system but as it stands now people log in here, see a mountain of spam and think “arse to that, I’ll raise a ticket”. I don’t expect triple A service either for the record but I do expect it to be the best that it can be and the problem is, it isn’t.

"many of the issues are simply due to a lack of foresight and organisation"

Sure they are. I never doubted that -- but the thing is, we're now in a situation and we need to get out of it without breaking even more things -- and rash actions, just reorganizing things amongst them, is not something that will help. I agree with you on most of what you said now and I think there will be changes to alleviate these issues in the near future, but it's taking time.

Edited August 14, 2012 by jwiechers

[Bacon Surfboard 61]

want to assure you, the DayZ Development Team is receiving no funds from server hosts. Your claim that you and other server hosts are somehow financing the DayZ Mod is utter fantasy.

Just wow. The point over there ---------------> "I" - you missed it by a football pitch or 3.

[chisel 50]

Let me just say a few more things then I'll be done on this subject at least in this thread. These points are random at best and are in no specific order. I did not plan this post and I'm writing on the fly here.

1. Everyone knows (or should know) this is an alpha test. If you don't know what that means you need to sit back and stop complaining and just listen for a bit. Everyone wants to play a fun game, dayz is/used to be fun. Yes we all want to play. But again this is an alpha test. We need to worry about the testing first and the playing last.

2. I've been in many alpha/beta tests, usually during these tests there are no servers for rent or for running, they are usually closed to the general public and under much stricter control of the developers. The cost for the beta servers are absorbed by the developer or by "partner" server host companies in exchange for deals upon actual game launch.

3. Dayz has no real "server" model yet to follow so it was likely very hard for the devs to gain support from server host companies to host their alpha (ie invest or at least host the servers). This lack of support likely led to the alpha being "open" which coincidentally created a new need... onto #4

4. New server hosting companies sprung up magically as if from nowhere... Likely those directly involved with this mod are running these companies, effectively solving two problems. Server hosts to provide alpha servers, and two cash flow to continue developing the mod coming from the influx of money from these "new" server host companies such as HFB and the like.

5. They take our (server admins) money so we are paying for the development of this alpha mod. All the while taking our money they call us the worst kind of people. We abuse our powers, we cheat, we ban everyone that looks at us cockeyed, we use admin power to get ahead in the game. Whatever.

6. We (server admins) fund the development of this game mod and future stand alone game and we get shit on. Some comparisons have been made to BF3 or similar games. Jokes flew around early after the BF3 release that we all just paid money to beta test BF3 (the actual real game after release) and it wasn't ready for release etc. At least with BF3 it was a one time fee, not a monthly fee we have to pay for the devs to continue development. At least with BF3 the server admins aren't treated like the scum of the earth.

7. Here's a bomb shell for the development team and all the shitty snotty nosed players of dayz and any other game you play on that someone else pays for the server for you:

We rent servers to create a clean safe cheat free environment for US and YOU to play on. We do it so the cheaters and the hackers have some opposition in this world and we man our posts ready to do what we must in order to keep the asshats off our server so your day isn't ruined by some idiot. In return the devs who we FUND and the players who play for free on our servers whine and complain if something doesn't just go their way, admin abuse. Get over it.

Folks we're funding this whole mod, I don't care who tries to deny it, I'm sure monies from server rentals goes directly into someones pocket that is directly involved with this mod. WE ARE PAYING THEM.

My server is paid through the month. It will not be renewed. I suggest if any admin truly wants to see/make a change that we cancel our server subscriptions and let the devs alpha and develop this mod on their own tab. Stop paying for this for them.

What the devs accuses and makes admins out to be is MUCH worse in my mind than any hacker. The make admins out to be the worst kind of people in this world.

I have never seen any development group treat what amounts to be their partners in such a poor way. To treat the very hand that feeds you this way is unacceptable and I will no longer be part of it.

I'm not asking for locked servers or private servers. I like public players. Our community thrives on public players. I was once a public player on my community BF server. We don't alienate the public. The public and the devs should NOT alienate us.

My money has just dried up rocket. Enjoy your vision.

[azunai 32]

i dont want to comment......................

please read what you wrote

[mjrhzrd 3]

There was an earlier posting that I also posted about in another thread that got a number of likes. I put forth the idea that as many server admins or communities that agreed that the devs and BE are turning a blind eye to the problems or simply letting the alpha die on the vine should unite and shut down their servers for 24 hours. Someone else in this thread suggested 3 days. Hows about a 48 hour shutdown?

Telling the communities and admins that pay for the servers that support the DAYZ alpha test to shut up and bear it and allow the hackers to kill them 4x a night or make them dance or teleport them for entertainment while they work on the actually $$$ money version is something so despicable that it can't be labeled. I was on a server 3 nights ago that a teleporter got 46 kills and somehow missed me although I shot a cow that disappeared 4x that night. That teleporter did not even show up on the player list..... Brilliant. Been killed 18x by hackers in nukes, Thunderdomes, etc. Fun playing this game. Not anymore. Stop scripts at the client level in the Beta.....

[beans 93]

Good Post

This is spot on, feel exactly the same.

I await a response from a Red.... Or purple.

Edited August 14, 2012 by Beans

[Cerven 80]

Some sort of acknowledgement that they're even reading this would be nice. I'm not threatening to shut down my server - if we make the decision to shut it down, we'll just shutter it and be done with it.

I'm willing to endure the bugs, the radical changes to the game, and everything else that comes with an alpha - rampant hacking and being hamstrung into mock acceptance of it really has little to do with the fact that it's an alpha, however. We've heard very, VERY little on this particular front from the development team, even though it's clearly one of the issues that is most plaguing the mod.

If this is the endgame, if this is how it's going to be when the mod is done being worked on and the standalone is released - why even pursue the mod at all? The answer is simple: the mod is keeping people engaged. This mod is going to ultimately be the object that sells the standalone to a lot of people, and if the mod is riddled with hacking and is virtually unplayable for a lot of people, that hurts the validity of the standalone product.

We're still in the infancy of this mod, and I expect that hacking will continue to be an issue for quite some time. That's expected and understood, at least for me.

What I don't understand is, while you're still in development, why not give admins the ability to police the servers if you obviously can't do it yourself? I'm seeing servers continuing to get blacklisted for violating rules, so obviously that system works, at least in part. However, people getting hive banned for hacking seems to be a LOT harder of an issue to tackle, especially with it being increasingly harder for admins to gather evidence to substantiate a ban.

You're going to have hackers on servers for the forseeable future - very few people legitimately believe Battleye has a chance in hell of fixing this problem, at least in the short term. Why not give admins the tools to fight back? Even if some servers use their admin powers for less than legitimate reasons, that still leaves many servers with good admin personnel that will work to make better places for people to play. Isn't that worth taking a risk for?

[l0p 4]

You're going to have hackers on servers for the forseeable future - very few people legitimately believe Battleye has a chance in hell of fixing this problem, at least in the short term. Why not give admins the tools to fight back? Even if some servers use their admin powers for less than legitimate reasons, that still leaves many servers with good admin personnel that will work to make better places for people to play. Isn't that worth taking a risk for?

Not to mention "admins" without admin powers can still use cheats like anyone else and do the same damage they would do with real admin powers. The whole excuse of abuse prevention is just retarded.

[ch3shir3 14]

Maybe its "abuse" for me to ban people, but logically since I cannot protect my server from them, and there are a crap ton of dupers/hackers/asshats pretending to be hackers etc... I will ban anyone I dont know. I dont care if it pisses people off or my server gets shut down. I do not care.

I care about playing the game with people that dont cheat, and that want to play fairly.

Infact, Im looking into private hives right now.

I understand that a lot of people think "oh shes doing this to server jump and cheat" but legitimatly, IDGAF. I dont even leave my server. i dont care about cheating, I just want to play!

I pay 70 bucks a month, i will do what I see as right. If that gets my sever shutdown, so be it!

Do you know how much stress ive saved myself over this damn game and hackers by just kicking/banning people? Its unreal. I have a had a great time playing with people who play fair. If thats not whats its about, then I dont want to play!

[mjrhzrd 3]

One Nuke on Electro, one Teleport Hacker(That chased me as I was on a bike near Debug) And some players teleported out into the sea with no gear/GPS/map and no respawn button. If Rocket player for 3 days on regular servers he might have some appreciation for the level of hacking and stop giving the community his ostrich impression.

Edited August 15, 2012 by mjrhzrd

[greigsj2001@hotmail.com 2]

im with sevral members of this forum on the " im done with this B.S" i to am shutting the doors on my server come the end of the month also ive now kicking thouse i dont know

and to be fair its made the game almost enjoyable again but to much damage has been done and untill the end of the month i shall be continueing my "if i dont know you kick policy"

ive payed my money its my server and as far as im conserned if people want to play on my server they have to abide my rules players should respect the admins not treat us like shit

i think evryone should look at this the same way while we are paying to run these servers and further the expansion of the mods playerbase then we should have the power to efectivly administrate our

investment if not then we should shut down our servers and let the dev team run "offical servers" let them front the bill maybe then they would treat us a little better rather than blameing us for evrything

haveing a "Vision" is a great thing in theory but most visions are forced to change when set against reality