Game Tweaks for Admins Ingame

So the admin UI is clunky, our abilities are good and solid but still limited, and I had some ideas to improve these.

First off, FBB has helped out a lot with learning how to use the admin functions ingame, but they still aren't very intuitive. Here is a list of tweaks I'd like to see some or all implemented ingame.

1. Admins shouldn't be votekickable. I have yet to actually have a votekick followed through on my server, but it annoys me that people can even start them against me in the first place. It's usually someone who griefs and when I'm about to freeze them initiates the vote.

2. Admins should be able to "cancel" votes. If I'm on a server and someone griefs but nobody says "griefguy101 griefed the base" and instead just initiates a votekick, I want to be able to cancel that vote. I don't want the guy who initiated the vote to be kicked (He might be trying to kick a legit griefer after all) and I might not want the alleged griefer to be kicked (After all, I didn't see it with my own eyes and in this scenario, nobody in chat said anything).
-Also this should be the same with all votes, such as stalemate or next map votes.

3. A hotkey to ban someone on click. F3 freezes people right now, so ideally I could either:
-Freeze someone then press a hotkey, like F4, to ban all frozen people on the server (See number 4 below)
-Press a hotkey to ban someone my mouse is pointing at
Frankly, I'd rather have option 1 though. (Option two could cause an innocent to get banned if he jumped in front of my cursor.)
(Also while I could install a hotkey program like Kouji, that seems like a runaround for something that should be default in this game and this feature should be implemented, in my opinion.)

4. Configurable ban lengths, if they aren't already configurable. (Kouji was hesitant on whether they were or weren't) and also a way to choose the default kick/ban length. (So by using the above method, if I freeze-banned someone they'd be gone for three days, or forever, or whatever my preference was.)

5. Icons in the TAB button interface for players ingame showing what class someone is currently playing, (This might be visible to everyone or just admins) and possibly an icon that appears in that interface viewable only by admins, like an exclamation mark, showing people who had caused major collapses or mass destruction in the last 30 to 45 seconds.
-Furthermore, maybe even make it so if an admin checks the "kick" box in the TAB interface, a person is immediately kicked for the default time and skip the vote.

6. In spectator mode, you should be able to see all player names by default, as in not on hover, but just showing above their heads. There should also be a setting that would change this to "Show only on hover"so you could use the hover option. Note that sometimes I even hover my mouse over people and I can't see their names, which is very bad. At the very least, admins should be able to do this.


I could probably think of more, but these for me are the 6 essentials. These are what I crave in my daily admin routine and these would enhance an admins abilities greatly.

 

I looked in the thread and your name was the last one there so I assumed you were the helpful admin. It was totally FBB lol.

Yeah I knew about that but it's annoying to get to and you can be murdered while you're scanning menus trying to find the right guy. Pressing tab and clicking "Kick" right next to a name would be much easier. (Honestly, putting most of the admin functionality into right-click variants of the tab menu would be more intuitive and neater than the current setup)

I can see your point on this though. To be fair though, he could still complain if he wanted to, but nobody would take him seriously.

Yeah I considered that too, but 9/10 times I'm only freezing one person at a time (Dual griefers is exceptionally rare for me) so just banning everyone I've frozen is good enough, plus requires less mouse precision. Try to imagine having a fun, exciting match and then having to take a full minute or longer out of your time to ban/kick somebody, in a game where seconds mean the difference between winning or losing. That's the current situation right now.


Anyway, you bring up good points and I agree with them. So geti/mm, you guys should work on this in a future build, I think it should be considered critical functionality.

--- Double Post Merged, Dec 4, 2013, Original Post Date: Dec 3, 2013 ---

No comments? Come on fellow admins, I know you guys want this stuff! It's not just me!

 

Yes i would like some of this stuff.
Also maybe making the spectator screen not move when opening the admin bar.
Its annoying when your trying to freeze or kick a guy and it keeps moving.

 

I agree strongly with all points (except 3 perhaps, I probably wouldn't use it myself but see no harm in it existing).

All names on cursor for admins, whether in spectator or on either team, is an absolute must. Its the biggest difficulty in administrating new-KAG over classic. A couple times I've moved to spec, watched a griefer and frozen him before he can finish his collapse (or whatever) and found myself still unable to work out his name. From this point I can't ban the person because I don't know who he is, so I have to either get him to speak to me or switch to his team and get close enough to enable the cursor-name. If they don't want to talk and auto-balance won't let you on his team (a problem on servers without thorough admin seclevs), you've very little choice but to just leave them frozen there until you can work it out.

 

To be fair, if you're opening the admin menu, you won't really need the screen to stay in one spot (You don't have to focus your pointer on that person at all). Not to say that this isn't a suggestion I agree with, because I do agree that it shouldn't move when you're in the ESC menu.