Ok as a master of Galt's Gulch servers I've been accused of abuse of power recently. I want to know if what I did was wrong. Here's usually how I respond:

1) Continuous calling of votes that always gets rejected

Response: Stopping the third vote. Warning. If he continues, I kick him.

2) Direct personal insult to player, particularly racist or homophobic remarks

Response: Depending on the gravity of the insult, I warn the player and ask him to retract it. Some players apologize and I let it go. Others go further and I kick. If he comes back and still doesn't stop I kickban.

3) Switching from the losing team to the winning team

Response: I warn him to go back. If he does not respond I kick.

4) Teamkilling.

Response: I find out if it is deliberate by asking the players or spectating. If it is, I kick.

5) Calling kick votes with no reason.

Response: I stop the vote and warn, then kick if he does not listen

The current complaint on me is that a player (let's call him Sus scrofa) entered a full game and was unable to play because both teams were full. He chose a particular new player (a noob) who was already playing and called a vote to kick him with this reason:

"I can do better"

The player was kicked, because most of the players were newbies who F1 anything or to busy to find out what the reason was for the vote.

I kicked Sus scrofa because of this. he comes back and accuses me of abuse of power because in his reasoning it 'was a democratic vote'.

Note that Sus scrofa is a longtime player and usually a nice guy. He was rev0. I will not mention names, but I am annoyed because he should have known better. Yes it was a democratic vote, but particularly selfish and offensive to the player he kicked for the playing niche.

I guess I just needed to post this. *sigh* Was I wrong in kicking him?

The consequental action did not overstep the bound of the rules; servers operate on first come, first served basis, everyone is equal in their right for enjoyment.

Erm... what's with the biiiig words, TVR? I'm only a little jungle monkey.

I think you're saying I wasn't wrong in kicking him?

I think you did right Oblivion, i would have done (and re-done) the same. afterall, whats the point in vote masters if the gray crowd is always 'right'? ultimatly i guess its Galt's call to make (if this was a yay or ohno think to do) since hes the one providing the server. if he entrusted you with this power he must your judgement. so unless he tells you to stop it, keep on doing what you think is the right thing.

oh and TVR.. what rules?

i view this as NOT abuse of power. it's right of you to do this as we are getting more guys that are destroying the fun of the games.

Thanks tZork

Indeed Deaf-Oat, I've noticed a growing trend of guys who are obsessive about scores and forget that it's just a game. I kinda miss the er... "old days" , pre-2.4.2 when most everyone was playing for fun with little regard as to who has the highest scores.

Now we're getting players who quit when they're losing (usually well-known and good players too ), because they can't take the fact that they're losing.

Players who continuously repeat non-kickable quasi-insults, like 'PWNED' or 'Noob' etc.

Players who snipe even in games with only 4 players in small maps.

Players who get mad every time they die.

Players who laser you off health packs or weapons that you got to first.

*sigh*

There are still enough people playing who play for fun though, and that's what keeps me playing I guess. The friendly banter more than who's winning or losing. I think people are forgetting it's not a competition.

Oblivion wrote:Thanks tZork

Indeed Deaf-Oat, I've noticed a growing trend of guys who are obsessive about scores and forget that it's just a game. I kinda miss the er... "old days" , pre-2.4.2 when most everyone was playing for fun with little regard as to who has the highest scores.

Now we're getting players who quit when they're losing (usually well-known and good players too ), because they can't take the fact that they're losing.

Players who continuously repeat non-kickable quasi-insults, like 'PWNED' or 'Noob' etc.

Players who snipe even in games with only 4 players in small maps.

Players who get mad every time they die.

Players who laser you off health packs or weapons that you got to first.

*sigh*

There are still enough people playing who play for fun though, and that's what keeps me playing I guess. The friendly banter more than who's winning or losing. I think people are forgetting it's not a competition.

I have to agree. While I dont play in Galts much because I'm in the EU I must admit even I have shouted at team mates before, or left the game for losing (which I hate doing).
Not often, just generally when I'm having a terrible day of it. I absolutely hate people who laser me off health and weapons. I have infact knocked people into void for doing this, or warned them. So yeah, team killing too.

I'm a bad man, but most of Obv's points stand anyway.

I think you were absolutely right in your course of action. I would of done the same.

lol you're acting alright, you seem like someone who is acting reasonably and with thinking, and on FFA servers many players seem to be somewhat ... from an earlier time ... ehrm... (*cough* apes with keyboards *cough*). At least they behave like that.

and what do we do with such a species: action is the only thing they understand. In other words: you can, in most cases, not solve the problem by talking to the people.

There are always exceptions, though. I've acted wrong with my own admin rights too, I kicked someone, assuming that he hadn't read what I said. But the thing is that I cannot blame people to not read chat, I mean, I never read FFA chat either. Contacting a player on the server in a way that he sees a centerprint in the middle of the screen would be the most effective. Use this command: adminmsg ID Message, e.g. adminmsg 3 can you read, if yes, say yes, if no, don't say anything xD

Oblivion wrote:Players who laser you off health packs or weapons that you got to first.

*sigh*

Hmmm.. I also noticed that. My opinion: warn and if they do it again, kick.
The only difficulty is that usually to catch him red-handed requires spectating him for a while, as it's not so obvious.

(in a very few cases it might even be ok, especially for the flag carrier)

I agree with everything you said Oblivion. If you don't lay down some basic rules and apply them every time, gameplay will deteriorate until no one wants to play.

You've done it the right way.

What a bitch!
Thumbs up Oblivion

I wouldn't kick anyone just because he changed the team. Or if someone clicks at the beginning "auto" and doesn't look at the teams and doesn't give answers because he listen to music or whatever. It's public, winning team joiners will always be there. And?
Let them join the winning team, if they have fun with that They don't become better with this behavior.

In all other points I've to agree with C.Brutail.

if the situation was as objective as you presented it, then you acted reasonable.

Fisume! wrote:I wouldn't kick anyone just because he changed the team. Or if someone clicks at the beginning "auto" and doesn't look at the teams and doesn't give answers because he listen to music or whatever. It's public, winning team joiners will always be there. And?

Oblivion didn't talk about people who are in the winning team from the beginning. He was talking about guys who change the team in the middle of the game once they loose, often even to the bigger team. And they surely can't do that with auto...

I also observed some of these guys recently, and they did it in several games.

Even a game that my team looses can still be a "good game". But these retards mess up the games for me (and others), regardless of which team I'm in.

Fisume! wrote:Let them join the winning team, if they have fun with that They don't become better with this behavior.

And spoil the game for all the fair players?

RoKenn wrote:Oblivion didn't talk about people who are in the winning team from the beginning. He was talking about guys who change the team in the middle of the game once they loose, often even to the bigger team. And they surely can't do that with auto...

But not always Let's say 4 (Team Blue) - 7 (Team Red)

Team Blue has got players like Ronan, tZork,... and Team Red newbies. The next player
must be auto-joined Team Blue. To say that the new joined player must spec because the teams wouldn't be fair isn't the right way, because everybody can play if he wants, and other players couldn't join because the slots are full(I allready saw people who voted for master and kicked someone just because a friend can join, but that's another story). An idea would be that Team Red let join two of them to Team Blue and Team Blue someone of them to Team Red. But really, that didn't work well the last time.

RoKenn wrote:And spoil the game for all the fair players?

Of course wtjs can be kicked, but not after the first warning. Well that's my opinion.

Fisume! wrote:But not always Let's say 4 (Team Blue) - 7 (Team Red)

Team Blue has got players like Ronan, tZork,... and Team Red newbies. The next player
must be auto-joined Team Blue. To say that the new joined player must spec because the teams wouldn't be fair isn't the right way, because everybody can play if he wants, and other players couldn't join because the slots are full(I allready saw people who voted for master and kicked someone just because a friend can join, but that's another story). An idea would be that Team Red let join two of them to Team Blue and Team Blue someone of them to Team Red. But really, that didn't work well the last time.

so he could join the noob team ..

Switching from the Winning Team to the Losing Team isn't a problem. In fact it's encouraged. I switch from the winning team to the losing team sometimes when the teams are so horribly mismatched the game isn't even fun anymore.

Several people I know also do it, also often masters themselves - Kiwi, Etoile, Ace, Summer Willow, Ann, nifrek, Battle Babe, etc. Seldom does it actually turn the game around but it does keep that sense of fairness.

And yes, I've observed and have negotiated myself switches with noobs when necessary to even out the skill level on both teams. But that's often tricky since most don't even know how to chat LOL.

Of course wtjs can be kicked, but not after the first warning.

Ok I usually warn twice, even thrice especially when nothing was said as he switched. Sometimes it's so blatant - e.g. They say "My F%$# team sucks, I'm switching you L0sers", and then reply with insults when I warn them once. Those get the boot right away. Not a ban, mind you, simply a kick - which in the case of team switchers isn't that bad, considering that they've abandoned their scores anyway.

There are some exceptions of course. When the difference between the losing and winning team isn't that great or when the winning team has less players etc.

if the situation was as objective as you presented it, then you acted reasonable.

Yes. It was the situation as presented. Several regular players even encouraged me after witnessing it themselves. I can remember hm... akhilleus, ann, and warf@re among the witnesses.

Obi, you done good, son

Folks will always whine. If you ever come up against something that really doesn't sit well with you, just shoot me a note. An email will do, or a private message here.

Oblivion is a good mod imo, he kicked a bonehead that was teamkillin today, but he DID put it up for a vote first, in reality we all kicked the idiot.

[Edit] Blah, just realized I'm 2 weeks late with this reply... oh well. [/Edit]

You did right, and IMO you're the most responsible admin at Galt's. What you did was fair and whoever you kicked, no matter how a respected or what clan he was in, deserved it (I wouldn't even question your judgement/side of the story). Even the fact that you didn't mention his name is respectful, so yeah, you're doing a good job

It does get annoying sometimes at night, sometimes you are there around 5am but there's usually no admin and I play often at that time because I can't sleep. I can't believe how dumb some people are. Galt's Gultch is pretty much the only NA public server being used, so it needs good admins like you. When all 24 spots are taken and there's no admin, it's HELL. There's so much chat and insults flying aroud "BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP", votes getting called every 2 minutes, etc.....

With 20 players on at the same time, the ratio between good players/newbies is usually horrible and makes for very bad/unfair games. I started playing on euro servers lately because they have less player slots so even if there's idiots, you don't notice them as much. They just sit on their ass with crylink anyway. I prefer one idiot with crylink sitting on his ass than 10 idiots with crylink spamming in every possible direction.

Anyway, back to the situation, the problem is that other than kicking there's not much you can do. If it was possible for an admin to force a player to a team (ie: if he switched from losing to winning team mid-game when the winning team already has more players), that would be a good start, would be a better warning than "hey don't do that" before kicking. And he would definitely notice that even if he doesn't read the chat. Or force a player to spec for the remaining time of the map, as punishment. Also muting a player (I think that's already possible), but also mute that player automatically based on his ip for a period of time. Wouldn't that be great? That would actually fix the problem with the BDE guys, who I rather enjoyed playing against, was a good challenge to get their flag. No matter how rude they are, I kinda feel bad that they have nowhere to play now. (yeah I realize I might be the only one).

Ah some people are just asses full stop. Today I had someone spawning camping on Greenes was it? I cant remember. Anyway.

It was Facing Worlds and someone was sitting behind my teams base spawn camping with the crylink. I mean COME ON! Shot him off the side with the laser and warned him to stop it. He did, my next step would have been to call a vote. I mean spawn camping on Facing.... what a pointless excercise.

Oblivion, is it only admins who have kickban rights? If so, I can't explain what happened tonight. A certain player showed up earlier today with the name "IhateLinux". He then tried to kick me for no discernable reason. The vote failed. Later today, I was playing and he again tried to kick-vote me, supposedly because I commented that my team played poorly on a previous map. The vote failed. Next, he changed his name to match mine and then called a kick-ban vote on me. He succeeded in tricking everyone to kickban me from your CTF server . This is not the first time this has happened on Galt's Gulch, as I've seen this happen to someone else. Someone changes their name to match another player's name. they then call the kick-ban. It makes it appear that the player is calling the ban on himself and furthermore, most players don't realize its a kick-ban.

Is there a way to disable kick-ban votes on your server?

Although Nexuiz does not reserve nicknames, such ingenious malice had yet to occur before the referenced person did so.

Any command stored within sv_vote_commands is callable.

Vote-masters are only capable of performing valid vote commands, therefore any command performed by a vote-master must also be callable [IIRC].

A temporary solution may be to use restricted rcon in the place of vote-master logins.

TVR wrote:A temporary solution may be to use restricted rcon in the place of vote-master logins.

It's not temporary, that's what restricted rcon was designed for :p

Though there could be a sv_master_commands cvar, that would not be hard to design at all.

Agreed. Actually, I'd be all for phasing out master-logins in favor of restricted rcon. The only real difference is that the other players do not see who did a command. But well, should it really be any of their business?

So basically, vote master rights now are meant to be LESSER rights than restricted rcon. E.g. it would be perfectly sane to allow just kisks to votes/masters, and give kickban access for restricted rcon only.

Neuromancer wrote:Oblivion, is it only admins who have kickban rights? If so, I can't explain what happened tonight. A certain player showed up earlier today with the name "IhateLinux". He then tried to kick me for no discernable reason. The vote failed. Later today, I was playing and he again tried to kick-vote me, supposedly because I commented that my team played poorly on a previous map. The vote failed. Next, he changed his name to match mine and then called a kick-ban vote on me. He succeeded in tricking everyone to kickban me from your CTF server . This is not the first time this has happened on Galt's Gulch, as I've seen this happen to someone else. Someone changes their name to match another player's name. they then call the kick-ban. It makes it appear that the player is calling the ban on himself and furthermore, most players don't realize its a kick-ban.

Is there a way to disable kick-ban votes on your server?

Wouldn't kick-bans affect the IP instead of the name?

And Neuro, take this as a warning. You're not exactly a model player yourself , and yeah a lot of guys don't like you, I'm being honest. LOL. I've kicked you on offenses before. Stop typefragging, stop teamswitching, and most of all stop those 'My team sucks!'/'My team are a bunch of losers'/'My team are noobs'/''Pwned' comments. They ruin the game atmosphere by making the target of your comments angry.

You're one of the guys we like to call 'Serious' players, because y'all seem so serious when you're playing. Get mad when you die, dedicated camping, etc. basically making a career of the game.

It's just a game darnit.

Oblivion,
Yup. I know I'm not a model player. When I first started playing this game a month ago, I'd occasionally switched teams. Usually it was because my team was doing utterly stupid things (like running past a dropped flag and ignoring it, two or three times in a row). The funny thing is, It was only noticed when I switched from a losing team to a winning team, not vise versa...*Shrug*. anyway, I stopped doing that several weeks ago. If my team is totally frustrating me, I just spec for the round.

I do typefrag but, only because everyone typefrags me so I assume everyone typefrags everyone else. Last night, I was accused of typefragging an enemy in our base right near our flag . Then I was accused of typefragging him again when he was hiding and his "chat" icon wasn't visible . I get a lot of complaints ranging from the benign complaints you said to the anal retentive. I've been accused of botting, I've been accused of camping simply if I use a nex (regardless that I'm often hopping around A LOT)

Yup, I occasionally comment that my team "sucks". I can name at least 2-3 other players on that server that do the exact same thing. Anyway, I'll try to hold my temper.

I am NOT a dedicated camper. I help out where I can and where the team needs help, even if it means *gasp* defending the flag all on my own.

My point is, I've never done anything malicious. No big explitives, racial remarks, intentional teamkilling or griefing...non of that. So, there was no justification for me being kickbanned by some malicious player/imposter.

Well, in your defense if an enemy is in my base anywhere and typing I just kill them. Serves them right for typing in such a stupid location.

Even I get annoyed at my team and get annoyed if they are playing shit. Everyone does whether they admit it or not. Some days the game is just bad.