W:ET Admin Basics

Our Golden Rule

Sometimes you can solve a situation with ease, but you may find that you’ll need to use certain commands when dealing with troublemakers. With that in mind, remember this: If a problem can be resolved with a verbal warning, why use any commands? If a problem can be resolved with a warning command, why mute? If it can be resolved with a mute, why kick? If an issue can be resolved with a kick, why ban?
We encourage our admins to try to speak with people before issuing commands, especially if they aren't repeat offenders. Everyone can sometimes get lost in the moment or have bad days with things happening in real life, so on many occasions establishing contact with the person to reason with them is the better solution and also helps develop a mutual respect. This also ensures nobody's ego gets hurt as commands like !warn, !mute, !kick which can be seen by everyone can often agitate the player more - especially if they believe its unjust and extreme, so we always try to use them as a last resort.

Balancing Teams

A big part of being an admin is making sure the teams are balanced and keeping the game fair. Admins and trial members should be the first to move to even the teams if they can. Use idle moments such as when you’re waiting to respawn and when you’ve just left a fight to check the teams with the Tab key. Sometimes a team might have 2 or 3 more players and the game can still be fair, try to focus more on the quality of players if you can. There are a few other ways check and they’re listed below.

Holding Tab brings up the teams, you can see how many players are on each team. Let’s say there’s 15 players on Allies and 13 on Axis. At first glance it looks like the teams are unbalanced but typing /scores in console can show the full story. The scores command brings up 2 tables, one for Allies and one for Axis. Each row shows a different player and each column shows statistics. The columns from left to right are: Players, Kills, Deaths, Suicides, Team Kills, Efficiency, Game Points, Damage Given, Damage Received, Team Damage Given, Team Damage Received and Score. The main ones to look out for are Kills, Deaths and Efficiency.
Some of our servers use n!tmod and silEnT mod. Both of these have other ways to check team balance. The silEnT mod uses Kill Rate (KR) and Player Rate of Win (PRW). You can toggle which of these are displayed by tapping Tab twice, the team average for these statistics is at the top of the scoreboard. While these both have their downsides, they can still give a good indication of balance. For N!tmod the scoreboard shows the kill to death ratio of each player meaning you don’t have to check the console for scores as much.
When holding Tab you can also see a number in square brackets at the top of the scoreboard (if you have XP showing). This number shows how much XP the team has earned since the start of the map. For example, Allies could 450 XP and Axis could have 1000 XP. This shows that Axis are overpowering Allies and something should be done about the teams.

Shuffle

It is recommended to use shuffle roughly 20-30 seconds into the warmup. This way most players are connected and players still have at least 10 seconds to choose a class.
The only time you should shuffle after a warmup is when teams are extremely unbalanced like 15v7 or when scores are something like 500 to 100 kills and no one is moving. Using putteam would take too long to balance and people will get impatient and leave.
Never shuffle during intermission (after a match has ended). Most players want to check their scores and a lot of people leave before the start of the next match so shuffle during the warmup of the next map instead.
Don’t keep penalizing players for changing teams. Not everyone wants to play on the same team all the time and a couple of people will move. So long as their moving doesn’t affect balance, like when 2 players swap teams with each other, there’s no need to be uptight about it. If you think that their moving will affect balance, feel free to move them back to their original team after the shuffle. It’s fine if they go spec after this and wait for a spot on the team they want to go to. The point is to let people play as they wish but most people should enjoy playing on either team.

Trouble Players

Use Your Wit - Not Your Commands

Make sure you keep an eye on the general and team chat when you’re on the server. It’s important to be watchful because the earlier you see a problem arise, the quicker it can be dealt with. You can always open up the console to check what’s happened when you’re waiting for respawn if you miss anything. Here’s an example of something that could happen on the server.

   Player1: WTF WHAT IDIOT JUMPED IN FRONT OF MY PANZER
   Player2: I did it. Don't play such a gay weapon if you don't want that to happen, noob.
   Player1: You should speak running medic faggot. **** off.
   Player2: Lol, stfu noob

Now would be a good time to intervene. Keep in mind that a single line of bitching is okay but when you see an argument like this arise, it’s not that hard to kill it before it escalates. Don’t mute, don’t threaten to mute. Instead, just say something that will make both players realize that arguments like these are pointless. Something like ‘Chill out guys, it’s just a game’ should work most of the time. Feel free to use !warn if talking doesn’t work out, if that doesn’t work either, mute for 10 minutes. It’s important to talk first and use commands only when that fails. We want our servers to provide everyone with a positive experience.

Don’t Overreact When You Get Insulted

This is the internet, insults aren’t a rare thing to see. Add to that the stress of losing a game and eventually someone’s going to take their frustrations out on you. This could be a known troll or a regular player who just lost their temper. Either way, try not to respond too harshly. If it is a troll, then they know that they can get to you and will carry on doing whatever they did that got a negative response from you. If it’s a regular player they may actually apologize to you the next day – it’s happened more often than you’d think. The best way to deal with situations like these is to try defusing the situation. Sometimes simply ignoring what they said is the best way to go. Other times reminding them that we’re just here to have fun is enough. Just be sure of yourself, there’s no reason to be offended by a random player.

Spectating

You can see a lot more as a spectator than playing but try to find a good balance between sitting in spec and playing the game. Keep in mind that the game’s supposed to be fun for everyone – including you. There are times when you’ll need to go spec to watch for rushers or trouble makers but with experience you can still handle these situations while playing. While in spec you can also have some nice conversations with regulars and if you see someone who you think could make a good admin, you can also recommend that they apply. The /follow command is quite helpful when you need to spectate and you have their name or player ID. A partial name can be used on all mods except for Jaymod, this is where the !spec command comes in handy but it only works on players with an admin level less than or equal to yours.

Condumps, Demos and Screenshots

Admins should be familiar with all 3 of these and know how to use them effectively. It’s worth noting that when creating any one of these, you can force them to a folder of your choosing so that you keep your mod folders clean. If the folder doesn’t exist one will be created. Examples are included.