Server Rules

Revised for clarification December 2, 2020.

NOTICE: While we would love for everybody to be on the same page of what being a douche/asshole is, we recognize that in some cases clarification or expectation of behavior is necessary. This page is intended to be a guide for the spirit of the rule, not specific line items of rules. It is at the discretion of staff to rule appropriately on a case-by-case basis.

Be forewarned - we record everything. If you post publicly that you were unfairly treated on an investigation - especially you lie about the circumstances or outcome - we reserve the right to publish your case, in full, to the public to set the record straight.

#1 Don't be a douche

That's it.  Only one rule.  It may be simple, but it is very far reaching.

Examples include, but are not limited to, such douchebaggery (aka being an asshole) as the following.  (We may add or adjust the examples to better communicate what this could mean.)

• Ignorance of the rule - every game server that allows custom titles we will put this website in that title so that players may review the rules of the server - as many game servers do - before playing on that server.  Accessing this rule page does not require logging in or ever playing on any of the game servers - this is common practice on every private game server. Not checking the rules before you play on the server is no excuse.
  
  
• Warnings - warnings will be given when and if applicable to the situation.  A good example is stream sniping (below) - we will make every effort to warn people in global chat about the consequences of stream sniping if we see a potential stream sniper approaching the streamer or when someone is being toxic in global chat.  However, depending on the situation or the action done by the player, we don't always have a chance to warn ahead of time or the situation doesn't allow it (or even should be necessary). Staff does not have to issue warnings before kicking or banning and if they don't, it still doesn't excuse the bad behavior.
  
  
• But-this-person-did-something-and-they-weren't-kicked/banned - if you have proof that someone broke the rule, report them. Staff cannot be everywhere all the time, sometimes things slip through and we never see it. Staff are volunteers, not paid positions with fixed work times.  If you genuinely believe that someone broke the rule and have proof, we expected to receive a report when it happened - not after the fact to try to justify your bad actions.
  
  
• Threats against the server - threatening to or performing any action against the server itself such as DDoS'ing, connection denial/delay or any other action calculated to interfere, disrupt, accelerate, slow, etc.; threatening physical or mortal harm against a specific player, group of players, Staff or the server population as a whole; threatening to or performing any action or behavior calculated to, intended to or otherwise resultant in, directly or indirectly: intentionally causing the server to crash, mislead an investigation, causing disproportionate loss, causing a reset of progress, or using game mechanics to disrupt or frustrate player progress or movement against a specific player over time, group of players, Staff or the server population as a whole.
  
  
• Stream sniping - following a player with the intention of harming, harassing or interfering with their game and are streaming a game from their video feed can be a bannable offense. Usually Staff will teleport these snipers to unfriendly places as punishment, but have the option to ban on-sight of this activity. Streamers are streaming their gameplay for the entertainment of others and, unlike the sniper, has no advanced knowledge of other players' locations or that they are even being hunted.
  
  
• Hackusations - publicly accusing another player of cheating (e.g. aimbot, ESP, etc.) without sufficient proof and especially without reporting the player. If it is not an emergency as in the server crashing or an active cheater mass killing everyone on the server - it is expected that the player will actually report the suspected cheater which will alert Staff and not alert the suspected cheater. This also encompasses numerous unfounded reports of cheating that have been proven to not be cheating.
  
  
• Community Events- community events are run for the enjoyment of the community as a whole. For the purposes of the events, event operators (Staff or community members running an event) have final interpretation of the rules for the event and can kick or ban players for any violation of any event rules. In addition to any event rules, any person that provides information integral to the event that is otherwise generally unknown (e.g. locations of players/teams, event points of interest, items needing to be recovered/collected, etc.) or actively interferes with the operation of the event, at the discretion of the event operators, apply to all events - whether the player is actively or directly participating or not. All scenarios listed on this page are also applicable unless explicitly stated otherwise in the event rules. If a player is found in violation of the server rule and/or event rule(s) can be disqualified from any prize and/or participation in future events. Other sanctions may also apply as determined on a case-by-base basis by Staff.
  
  
• Game Events - events that occur in-game either by a triggering process or spontaneously occur by randomization or manually by Staff that are meant to be participated by a single player, a group of players or the entire server as a whole. Players will not interfere with, provide information to a participant integral to the event that would otherwise be generally unknown, possess items that are intended for only the duration of the event, or use any means or method to circumvent the established procedure of the event.
  
  
• Impersonating Authority Figures - impersonating a particular Staff member, impersonating by class (e.g. Mod, Admin, Staff, etc.) by name or action confuses players and can disparage the trust in the Staff. This also goes for directly or indirectly impersonating by name or action any position of authority, whether that position or authority actually has the implied powers or not.  If a player truly needs help or answer to a question, that player will not be able to assist the other player as they expect. This includes both official channels (in-game, Discord, this site, etc.) as well as unofficial platforms.
  
  
• Racist/Hate Speech - Promotion of violence against or directly attack or threaten based solely on race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease. This includes inciting harm or targeted harassment as well as imagery, symbols, sounds, avatars, character names, slurs, veiled slurs, etc.
  
  
• Trolling chat - disruptive, inflammatory, derogatory, argumentative, repetitive or continuously off-topic, religious, or political chat, especially if you have been warned about the behavior, is not acceptable nor conducive.
  
  
• Arguing with Staff in-game or in public Discord channels - if a player or their friends have been affected by a Staff action or have any other grievance, players may discuss the action with them (and/or other Staff) in Discord private messages.   Global or voice chat is not the place for this. Players arguing with Staff in-game will be warned and if they continue will be kicked or temporarily banned, depending on the severity.
  
  
• Interfering with other players' gameplay/griefing - this can include spawn trapping (denial of gameplay using map spawn points), causing excessive (constant) lag by placing a ridiculous amount of objects in the world; placing objects into the world that prevents access to areas intended for all players; specifically, obviously and purposefully trapping players in inescapable locations (only feasible option is to die) for prolonged periods of time (5+ minutes in total) outside of a base; exploiting game mechanics in unintended ways to substantially reverse another player's progress; controlling a significant amount of resources by one player or a group of players which is intended for all players evenly (> 12% of the total resource, 2 vehicles maximum); lag switching, self throttling, etc. Assistance will not be given to raiders who placed themselves into a situation that would otherwise require admin assistance if they can get themselves out of the situation, even if suicide is the only option. A "group of players" - for the purposes of this paragraph - are defined as players who spend a significant amount of play time together in the period of time leading up to any enforcement action and has nothing to do with membership in a squad or if they are allied (e.g. group of groups) or not.
  
  
• Buildables - Points of Interest (POIs) are not allowed to be fully enclosed (see preventing access to areas intended for all players, above). POIs are defined as any location or area where there are 3 or less of the same type on the game map, have build protection added by devs, or areas such as medium/large towns (towns with 5 or less freestanding buildings are excluded). A POI may be mostly enclosed as long as there are at least 3 entrances equally spaced from each other spread over the entire enclosure area that each have an opening of a minimum of 15 meters (51 feet) that allow relatively easy entry in and out, and does not harm the player in any way when passing through or immediately before or after the entryway. This also applies to any large area over 150 meters in length from the longest points. Large area bases cannot have another built structure larger than 20 meters at its longest point within 100 meters of the base. "Choke points" - controlled access to key areas that are regularly traveled through - are allowed as long as they do not exceed 100 meters (328 feet) from the longest points. These measurements can be taken by server admins to confirm compliance with reasonable requests. Any structures that do not comply with this section will be reduced in size to comply with the specifications or removed entirety, without notice nor compensation by server admins. Any structures that are at or below 20% health and the owner is found to have not logged in for at least a week can be deemed as abandoned by server admins and can be removed at any time without notice nor compensation.
  
  
• Advertising other game or Discord servers - advertising competing servers when there is no affiliation with NK. Do we really need to explain this?
  
  
• Posting links to questionable or obviously bad taste sites - we shouldn't have to explain this one but examples include porn sites/nudity, threatening or inflammatory sites, warez, torrents, etc. This includes posting images, using insignia, avatars, language related to, etc.
  
  
• Posting disparaging remarks about the servers - posting something inaccurate or speculative on any platform such as on YouTube chat, Steam forums, Discords servers, game servers, etc. which are untrue, with the specific intent of painting the server or staff in a bad light. Constructive criticism is fine - groundless allegations are not. If you have an issue with how staff handled a situation there is an option in the Report Player form to report staff specifically which goes to senior staff only - use it. But really, if you don't like the servers or the staff to the point that you're making things up in public, why would you even care if you're banned?
  
  
• Glitch bases/areas - phasing into areas in order to build bases or store items - by itself - is fine, as long as the means to do it are public knowledge and other players can access the same area using the same, legitimate means. However, if the area that the player has accessed effectively allows them to shoot another player because collision physics does not exist on their site (e.g. not a solid object) and can see the area to other players, and the other players cannot see them or return fire because collision does exist on their side, this is a douche move. This effectively allows a player to have godmode while in combat. Any glitch or bug in collision should be reported to the game developers and not used. Anyone caught using such methods will be banned immediately - you should know better.
  
  
• Base Advantage - Using game mechanics in an unintended manner to partially or fully limit access, gain access to or compromise ownership or transfer of ownership of a base or player area that could significantly impact a player.
  
  
• Illegitimate combat advantages - using methods to gain unfair advantages over other players while in a combat situation is not allowed, specifically if the other players are not able to legitimately counter the move using existing game mechanics.  Examples include, but are not limited to: using glitched guns with more ammunition than they should have so a player can fire more rounds at another player without reloading; knowingly using render-based bugs (not config file changes) for combat advantage where objects do not render for the killing player but the victim legitimately is relying on those objects as cover and has no legitimate way to counter the effects of the bug exist; phasing into any area to gain access to or hide from other players during combat situations if it is a legitimate, accessible area (which includes glitch bases, above).
  
  
• Exploit/hacking/cheat programs - It goes without saying why using hacking or using cheat programs and/or exploits is frowned upon.
  
  
• Items duplication - item duplication is normally caused by programming bugs in a game and will exist in every game from time-to-time and patched by the game developers. Most item duplication is negligible such as weapon or ammo duplication which, while can allow using them more, certain mechanics such as reloading, item decay, etc. usually result in little advantage over other players, if any.  If there is a set of items which can be duplicated and can be used in a way such as to gain more in-game currency, etc. which can cause huge advantages over other players - they will be addressed on a case-by-case basis.
  
  
• Limited Purpose Items - acquiring items provided by the game or an admin intended to be used or held for a limited time or purpose which can be used to gain an advantage over other players or game mechanics outside of the intended purpose.
  
  
• False Reporting - causing or providing false information, misleading an investigation or repeated reporting of players that are unfounded.  This includes spamming or abusing report or communications methods.
  
  
• Doxing - publishing the real life personal information of a player without their consent (e.g. full name, addresses, phone numbers, etc.) will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis but will likely result in a ban.
  
  
• Ban evasion - if staff ban a player, the intention is not to cause a minor inconvenience but as punishment for bad behavior. If an account belonging to a player is banned and rejoins the server(s) using an alternate account - all accounts found to be in association with that player will be permanently banned. Due to the frequent use of proxy or VPN connections to evade bans, usage of either will result in any flagged account being banned until the usage is stopped.  If a ban is lifted for proxy/VPN usage and a connection is flagged again, the account will get progressively restricted up to and including a permanent ban.

Spawning Policy

In order for Staff to spawn any items, you must submit a loss report through our website that includes:

1. Video clearly showing that you lost the items/vehicle due to a game bug (showing actual loss)
   
2. All video footage must include a time correlation - either you type something in local chat or the footage includes someone else typing
3. An accurate list of items you wish to recover which are clearly shown in the video(s)

Without this information Staff will spawn nothing for you.  If you lost items/vehicle due to a Staff action, you will be teleported back to your body to recover your items or a new vehicle provided.  Fame points will only be restored to the specific death due to the loss and the player must provide a full screen screenshot including chat text from an admin with an admin drone visible in the screenshot. Game server admins have to justify their spawns and provide Senior Staff with verifiable reasons and proof on why they spawned in items. If you want game server admins to replace lost things, you need to provide them with this proof.