Admins in Design Philosophy

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ID:660181
 
Apr 12 2012, 2:30 pm
I have been thinking recently and I honestly havent seen a single game ever without admins. Even the large games which are based online they have admins(obviously these admins dont interact as much with the players as the ones on byond do) so basically I was thinking what would be the best way to handle them. In byond most of the games have made a tab or something in that manner where you simply use the verbs given. I think that this is just really badly done. I can click a verb and use it when ever I please. So I thought that this could be done better by simply allowing a warning system and count the warning before anything could happen. But then again this could easily be abused by the admin sending out 3 concecutive warning or something like that. So I thought maybe a timer on the warn verb should be used but this could be also abused if the admin hates the player(so he would wait out the timer and still punish him). Anyways the best way I thought an admin system could be handled is that it would be put outside of the Client or Game itself making it well harder to just add an admin(You couldnt just press the add admin verb) and you could make restrictions in this much better by something like downloading the logs of the player and finding if he used any offensive language etc in the game via the admin panel program or client and only then allowing the person to be warned. I know that all of this could be achieved through the game itself but pushing a system like that in could slow down the games performance. Also I think that there should be a verb or proc where 2 or more admins would have to agree on a ban so it couldnt just be done in a rage. All of this can be done in the panel etc.


But thats just some of my ideas. Any ideas how the admins should be done or what other options should be taken into consideration for them.


I did not pre read this so there might be some rambling etc. Kinda tired from not getting enough sleep
#1 Apr 12 2012, 2:36 pm
The best games require the least moderation. I'd hardly call these people with a "KillAll" verb admins. They're 12 yr olds with power in a game full of 12 yr olds.

Are you by any chance playing the games frequented by narutards or something? (Naruto GOA, SS13, etc.) These games have notoriously bad staff because the people in charge are immature brats.

I think the most an admin ever really needs is a ban button. Boots are generally ineffective, and mutes are just silly. "I'm going to mute you because you disagree with me."
#2 Apr 12 2012, 2:41 pm
In response to Lugia319 (#1)
Ye I know that most of the games which have bad admins are something like GOA and are filled with little kids trying to be the best in it. But in some games even the ones that are good there can be someone that has a bad day or something and try to abuse. And no I dont play games on byond anymore. I actually dont play games at all. Focused too much on learning and coding.

Lugia319 wrote:
Are you by any chance playing the games frequented by narutards or something? (Naruto GOA, SS13, etc.) These games have notoriously bad staff because the people in charge are immature brats.

No I dont play games on byond anymore. I actually dont play games at all. Focused too much on learning and coding.
#3 Apr 12 2012, 2:44 pm
If you don't play games then don't worry about the admins of other games. Worry about the ones on your game (if any).

P.S. - None of my games to date have admins. No plans for ones in the future either.
#4 Apr 12 2012, 2:57 pm
Are they online or offline? Kind off a big factor in that area for any admins. And I sorta am worrying about my games too in this post since you never know how an admin will react once you leave the server. Obv logging is a nice feature to keep track of abusive admins but what happens if the admin is so bad that a player/players abandon the game. Then even fireing the admin wont help you. The thing I would like to know is the best way to layout the admin verb(which way would be best?In an admin tab or in a whole different client/app) and whats the best way to control the system so it cant get abusive
#5 Apr 28 2012, 9:58 pm (Edited by moderator on Apr 28 2012, 10:08 pm)
In response to Dj dovis (#2)
Dj dovis wrote:
I actually don't play games at all. Focused too much on learning and coding.

Stop this, stop this right now. If you're learning to code to make games, play games too, if you learn to play guitar without listening to music you'll end up a very dry musician.
#6 Apr 28 2012, 10:21 pm
I think he just meant the plethora of terrible BYOND games. I wouldn't doubt he still plays flash games on his website of choice or League of Baddies or something.
#7 Apr 29 2012, 4:03 am
In response to Lugia319 (#6)
Actually I did mean that I dont play games at all anymore since I cant find any good games anymore
#8 Apr 29 2012, 9:10 am
Dude go on Kongregate.com and play some of those flash games. Some are really good.
#9 Apr 29 2012, 9:11 am
Will do :)
#10 Apr 29 2012, 10:31 am
Most of the problems admins deal with are related to chat (spamming, foul language, etc.). If you give users the ability to ignore certain players, every person can solve this problem themselves. If your game is downloadable so anyone can host, people can easily pick and choose who they play with and you don't need to have admins to control how people behave - if people don't like how another player is behaving, it's not a problem because they're not being forced to play with them.

The only thing you really need admins for is fixing problems. If someone's character gets glitched, only someone with admin powers can fix it. Even this isn't that big of a deal - ideally your game won't have terrible glitches (things that can't be fixed by relogging) that occur very often.

Most BYOND games are made because the game's owner wants to have control over other people. That's why so many games aren't made available for download. If you let people download your game so they can play offline, you can't be an admin and control them.
#11 Apr 29 2012, 10:59 am
In response to Forum_account (#10)
I agree. I am putting in the ignore feature in my game now. Thanks for feedback. I am trying to create a game that is completely self independant now. So I some good systems that can allow the game to live on its own.
#12 May 7 2012, 10:26 am
i and a friend are making a game that have admins but no OP verbs basically the OWNER only have boot/ban/war/mute , thats it.. we wanna play a game like any other players without abusing anything.. i think this is how games should be also i agree with Dj Dovis, i think making a game that live on its own is the best thing to do.. like if some 1 abused a glitch , he gets auto booted, if he gets auto booted 3 times then he gets banned
#13 May 7 2012, 11:03 am
Sers, having only the owner be admin doesn't remove the admin problem. It's very open to abuse. A well made game shouldn't have glitches to abuse, so there should be no auto-boot issues. Also, the only way you could even HAVE an auto-boot system for glitch abuse is by knowing the glitch exists, and why you didn't fix it instead of just booting someone for "abusing" it, I'll never know. Mute verbs are useless, just go with ignore verbs. The only verb a GM really needs is the ban verb. Remove those unsavoury players from your game. Other than that, you just open yourself up for admin abuse.
#14 May 8 2012, 4:41 am
The only real time a game would need administration is if you're looking to go really big and you'd need outside sourcing and with such outside sourcing the investor might want some guarantee it's not going to be a game that flops entirely because of it's lack of stable and friendly community.

That, and because the game gives players the ability to abuse via poorly programmed structures. But, maybe that can't be avoided? What if, even still greatly programmed, the game has eventual loopholes?

The method I usually use, since I cannot find cooperative and competent administration when developing a project, is to develop a sort of Auto-Admin.
Basic abilities are a 3 warning system. 1st warning is a noticeable warning as both pop-up and text. 2nd warning is an instant boot. 3rd warning is a temporary ban. Now, the permanent bans are handled manually by an actual person.
The auto-admin works from various ways of either spam-check, variable-check, as well as a few other keys.
Spam-check is quite tricky, considering many would also want a filter as well and I don't ever put text filters in my projects. Spam checkers, however, I do considering no one wants to see the same text over and over again. And no one needs to type 5 sentences in a row within a certain amount of time.
The variable-check is a looping check around certain intervals and checks to see whether or not you could have possibly gone from 100 gold to 100,000,000 gold in less than a minute. Now, gold is hard to do, so that's probably a bad example. But things like going from Level 1 to Level 100 in less than a minute, where the game is specifically made so you cannot do that, now that's relatively easy to tell that someone is cheating.
Also, I don't believe in this Level 1 GM, Level 2 GM stuff. It's ridiculous. Unless you have someone who is specifically the Boot-er, and someone is specifically the Ban-er, there isn't a need to give one admin a higher ranking than the other. They're both there to serve one purpose, (besides refilling your cup of coffee anyone?), and that's to moderate your project from harmful people and things.

Now, there's another issue that comes to administration/moderation and that's personality. Many people favor one admin over another due to said admin is more 'friendly', or 'forgiving', or 'easy to manipulate'. In my projects, I haven't once found a flaw to create anonymity within my administration. If someone wants to be a moderator, their key is hidden and their player remains a ghost and is unable to interact with players within the actual game-play. Basically a spectator with the right to moderate.

Or, I just follow the basic laziness of letting people host their own servers and give them the basic essentials that they need: "Report Bug", "Report Abuse", and "Ban".
#15 May 8 2012, 10:40 am
When moderators are anonymous, that gives them a bit of leeway to abuse. At least recognize them by number so people can report moderators.
#16 May 8 2012, 4:55 pm
In response to Lugia319 (#15)
Lugia319 wrote:
When moderators are anonymous, that gives them a bit of leeway to abuse. At least recognize them by number so people can report moderators.

I meant the players don't know who is anonymous. This would fall under everything that's moderated is logged. So, even if a moderator was trying to abuse, it gets logged.

Sorry.
#17 May 8 2012, 5:03 pm
You seem to have adopted the model that I spoke about from a few months back (possibly a year), with the exception of the anonymous bit. I'm perfectly fine with it. A more serious issue is making sure you don't have glitches in the first place, and a way to see whether or not a person cheated. I will note that your gold/level checking system is still open to that obvious flaw.
#18 May 8 2012, 5:04 pm
In response to Lugia319 (#17)
Lugia319 wrote:
You seem to have adopted the model that I spoke about from a few months back (possibly a year), with the exception of the anonymous bit. I'm perfectly fine with it. A more serious issue is making sure you don't have glitches in the first place, and a way to see whether or not a person cheated.


Right, hence my wall of text.
I've had this method for a little over 5 years now.
#19 May 8 2012, 5:12 pm
Your wall of text ignores the obvious issue. Which I thought was so obvious you would've seen it.

Suppose you have 5 stats, str, def, agi, hp, sp. Now you know the maximum rate any of these values can go up. But they all can't go up at the same time at the maximum rate. Since you only check the rate, but not the overall rate of gain, a person could level up all 5 stats at the maximum rate at the same time and beat your system.

And that's it for me. This topic will go way too far off-topic if this continues.
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