Learn'd Discourse About Server Rules

[Gogster (DayZ) 626]

People who know me on these forums know that I am highly critical of the rules for server admins. Let me explain my position:

11. As a server admin you must not:

You are not permitted to ban players for killing yourself or clan members.

I wouldn't anyway, but what exactly are you going to do about it. Unless an admin stupidly writes in the kick/ban message that they have taken that action the chances of proving this are negligible.

You are not permitted to shutdown your server when your killed.

Very difficult to prove the admin shut down the server as a consequence of being killed, kind of makes this pointless.

You are not permitted to shutdown your server when you lose a vehicle.

I refer you to the above.

You are not permitted to kick or ban for smacktalk.

Why not? If someone can't play respectfully, why should I or my other players have to put up with them?

You are not permitted to ban for suspected cheats or exploits of a non-server-disruptive nature, including but not limited to ghosting, unverified cheating, duping and similar, UNLESS you have solid evidence, IE logs.

Agree to some extent, although to what purpose you think the logs are going to help is beyond me as they are normal text files and could easily be typed by a knowing admin.

These rules are, in reality, a set of goals. An idealistic view of how the DayZ team view the running of servers playing DayZ. Anyone who works in business will know that there are important considerations to setting goals:

• They should be relevant
  
• Actionable
  
• Achievable
  

The DayZ rules in their current format fail on at least two, if not all three. You have moderators like Legacy attempting to add weight to the server reporting thread by writing "approved" on reporting topics. Yet anyone who browses that forum regularly will notice that many of the topics that are being "approved" are not just about locked servers. It seems anyone with a gripe can now post about an "abusive admin" and expect some sort of "justice." It's a situation that has been, in my opinion, brought forth by the creation of a server reporting forum and the rules discussed earlier.

One may ask what the point is in the forum? It is easy to search for locked Arma servers running DayZ, so why do staff need people to come here and post. It's creating friction. Friction from server admins who feel vilified and ignored and players who seek some sort of retribution for some perceived wrong doing.

Battle Eye lacks a remote repository function to confirm the veracity of log files, I've said it till I'm blue in the face, but we still have a cheat reporting forum. Anyone can post in this forum and the posts are roundly ignored. Server admins are already checking their log files for cheat scripts, so one begs the question what is the point in this forum?

Finally we come to the ban appeals forum, possibly the only forum that holds any value. Although it is full of spam and argument as it is not moderated well. Aside from players who don't realise you guys are not BE posting global bans, it's a central place for players to question why they have been banned from a server. Personally I think anyone who posts in this thread, who isn't the original complainent and the server admin should have their post deleted.

So to summarise:

The 'Servers' section of the forums is doomed to fail. It will continue to be a huge area for tension and argument because you have unachievable goals and differentiating views.

As always there are equal and opposing views, I'd like to hear them, whether you agree or not.

[SqTH 260]

Lucid post.

[batflaps 20]

This will go un noticed mate since it is a "privilege" for us to own servers.

[theo@theodormay.com 49]

Most of the rules seem to make sense back when there were a few hundred servers. Now with upwards of 4 to 5 thousand I think a player can easily find somewhere else to play.

[jwiechers 92]

Yeah, the rules were clearly intended to make sense for a small population of servers and while the "gearing up" argument still holds true, there are other ways to do that which are about equally effective at the moment.

I also think a lot of the stuff isn't, at the moment, enforceable, but at the same time, I'd favor still mentioning this as a rule for the simple reason that if there are ever mechanisms introduced which do make this enforceable, it isn't a new rule, just one that can finally be applied fairly. It's not ideal, but right now, things are as they are.

[thesidetalker (DayZ) 7]

Most of the rules seem to make sense back when there were a few hundred servers. Now with upwards of 4 to 5 thousand I think a player can easily find somewhere else to play.

This is how I feel about it sometimes.

I'm not advocating breaking any of the rules, but I don't see the point with so many servers now. Look at any other game, like CS for example. If you get kicked or banned from someone's server for whatever reason, what's the big deal? Join one of the other thousands of servers to play on.