Community ratings / Rankings for servers to help identify dodgey servers

[agippo 37]

*edit, I just realised this is a long post, so if you cant read it all, my suggestion is to provide a community ranking / rating / review system for servers that can be seen by all players at the multiplayer login screenplayers to assist players to identify servers that have heaps of hackers, cheating admins, or are just generally rotten.

Having a good server to play on is essential for the DayZ experience, and it seems enough admins abuse this privilege that this forum has an entire topic http://dayzmod.com/f...rver-reporting/ line devoted to reporting cheating/dodgy admins.

I understand that more servers is better, but I have come across some admins that are clearly teleporting, spawning vehicles, kicking players for clan members and in extreme cases banning players for the crime of killing the admin in question. I admit it's nothing like as much of a problem as hacking, but hacking is just idiots cheating, where as admins cheating actually changes the whole field of play. To my mind, hackers are like your boxing opponent hitting you with a loaded glove (or a thermal scoped AS50 for a DayZ example). You almost expect cheating from players from time to time, because you know there are idiots out there. However admins cheating is to me, like the referee smacking you in the back of the head while you are concentrating on your boxing match, then the boxing commission fining you for headbutting the refs hand. I can live with cheaters, but its hard to live with cheaters who essentially represent DayZ.

I understand that this game is so big they can no longer monitor all servers, so here is my suggestion:

Institute the ability for players to “rate” or “review” servers they have been on. The ability to swiftly leave comments, or even a simple 5 star ranking system on each server would mean the community could police these things themselves, and it would free up resources at DayZ HQ.

If in my login screen I could then get a meta ranking of this servers player comment, next to such details as Ping, server version etc. I would then have the ability to avoid servers with high reports of admin interference, or just high reports of hacking.

I understand that there will be false reports, and even people claiming “hacking” or “admin cheating” when they are just useless and got themselves shot. Conversely, Admis may start a campaign for people to falsely rank their servers upwards. However this community ranking system would collect a lot of rankings, so overall the true nature of a server would show through. This sytem could even have a "minimum" overall rating, once a server got below that, then the DayZ crew could start looking through logs and issuing warnings.

Ultimately I don’t care if admins want to cheat, or a server is overrun with hackers, I just want the ability to avoid these dodgey servers.

Edited August 29, 2012 by agippo

[agippo 37]

If you need an example of where this could be useful, check out this example from Australia that lead to this post :

http://www.reddit.com/r/DayZAustralia/comments/yypvt/hey_guys_just_a_heads_up_avoid_au46_suspected/

A few players were banned after killing some clan members (who also owned the server) they then told the admin the players were hackers and he banned them based soley on the word of his clan mates. The amazing thing is, the admin gets on reddit and incriminates himself.

[timairborne 1]

this is dumb, soon as you post good things about a server and it gets highly rated it will get flooded with hackers oogling at noobs who suck at the game because they dont know where everyperson and their mother is at on the map at all times, cant teleport and use god mode. omg what noobs cant even shoot me while im speed running type of deal. Yea no. I prefer to keep my server off the mainstream just so it doesnt get painted with a big a** bullseye. Good intentions, Bad Idea.

[liquidcactus 719]

its a good idea but needs more ideas to counter the chap above my posts concern.. atleast you are puting some thought into this(OP).. i myself have stopped playing the game completeley due to the army of shit cunt hackers..

Its a shame so many wankers say " oh fuck it. this is to hard and time consuming to play properly " therefore they decide to cheat.. it really does go to show the level of simple retarded mind set that exists in this fine gaming community because nothing can beat the original experience of this game. Hacking kills the whole experience.. ( for the hackers i mean) i speak for these idiots even though im not hacker because i know if these dickheads were enjoying the game as much as you and me they wouldnt be hacking in the first place.

So to any hackers who read this please kill yourself in RL. As if these tight bastards will ever be punished for their BS ways.

[agippo 37]

Implementing my idea above on the alpha at this stage is useless. The hacker issue won't be fixed by this idea. Only the standalone with tighter restrictions and a system built around not allowing scripting will do that.

However this idea is for the standalone, and I was making the assumption that in the standalone their would be 95% less hacking. If hacking was in the minoritythen you could have ratings on the server then these could be used to identify those that had suspect behaviour.

Also hackers be hacking... The idea was more about allowing the publiic to identify shithouse admins who get a server and then think that allows them to break the rules at will.