In general we do not recover player corpses if the corpse death was due to normal game play or the corpse is reachable via normal gameplay methods. Keep in mind normal game play includes Rust glitches such as riding a horse under a low hanging entity that clips you and kills you. That is but one example and there are many more. Reachable via normal gameplay includes, but is not limited to, things such as having to crouch jump to reach the corpse. Or requiring a minicopter to reach the corpse.
The corpses we do assist with involve bugs in our plugins, maps, servers, or other things completely out of player control, completely not intended by our design, not already posted in the known issues, and not a vanilla Rust issue. One example could be a mistaken hole in the map causing you to fall under the world and die and not be able to retrieve the corpse. Another example could be a server crash.
In any situation, if you die by one of those things mentioned in the previous paragraph and cannot retrieve your corpse please place a support ticket in immediately or we will not be able to assist you. Rust does not log these things. Once that corpse is gone, it is pretty much gone unless you were smart enough to press your shadowplay hotkey to clip some footage that might show your inventory.
Unfortunately server crashes are an inevitable side of Rust. There is no amount of hardware that can avoid these situations. Our two largest servers at full capacity with queues typically only use about 6-10% of their CPU and RAM. RustDedicated.exe (the software that runs server side) is just not very optimized and frequently has issues. They are unpredictable and completely out of our control.
Any server crash will almost always mean a roll back because servers do not save constantly (that would be impossible). The most it can be is 10 min. The least is 0. But it is inevitable that some progress will be lost. Additionally, other major actions could not be saved such as completing a quest. Plugins typically save their data immediately upon action. If you put something in your backpack, it gets saved right then for you personally. If you complete a quest, that completion gets saved to the quest data file for your personal SteamID immediately. But a Rust save file is global meaning it saves everything on the entire server (vanilla things) at once, and thus must be on a timer rather than constantly saving per action.
So for an example, let's save you just pulled 10 rockets out of your backpack into your inventory. When you closed your backpack the plugin saved your backpack state as no longer having those rockets. But the Rust save file has not saved you having those rockets in your inventory yet (remember it saves every 10 min). Now the server crashes.... You no longer have the rockets in your inventory because the server had to load up the most recent save file (which was before you put those rockets in your inventory). But your backpack, which saved immediately, also does not have those rockets anymore.
Some players get lucky and experience the opposite effect. If you reversed the above scenario (took the rockets from your main inventory and put them into your backpack) you would in essence be duplicating those items. When you placed them in your backpack they were immediately saved, but then the server crashed and rolled back to when those rockets were still in your normal inventory. Now you have them in both places.
The examples can go on and on. Now multiply that times 100 players. Then remember that on a good day only about 5 of those 100 players would actually be running Shadowplay or the equivalent. And out of those 5 players maybe 1 or 2 even thought to get a video of their inventory right before the crashed happened. Basically ... it is an impossible task to try to sort all of this out after a server crash. Players to admins (who play legitimately and have to earn their items just like players) are most likely going to lose some progress in the event of a server crash.
There are no exceptions
We will not spawn in items as a solution to a server crash.
This does not mean the admin team just sits back and watches the world burn. Here are the things we try to take care of in the event of a server crash:
- Our top priority is rescuing players that died from the crash and getting their stuff returned. When a crash takes place we issue an "all hands on deck" in our staff Discord. As the server comes back online we search our console activity log for any player deaths. We assemble a list of names and coordinates from those logs and we one by one teleport to each coordinate and attempt to save the player's inventory. We then deposit it into their base if one can be located. If not, we place them in a box in or around town with a sign containing the player's name and use the /share command to grant access to that box to the specific player.
- Our second priority is to get people back into their raids. We clear all raid timers for the entire active player base on that server. We then have players submit tickets if they were in the middle of a bought raid. We verify via activity logs that the player had indeed purchased a raid and had not completed it. We then spawn a raid and lock it to that player, all attempts are made to spawn the same raid.
- For players that run Shadowplay (which should be 100%) and had the wherewithal to capture a clip when the server crashed we will use admin abilities to not only spawn the same base, but destroy entities of that base in an attempt to get the player as close as possible to how far into the raid base they had already progressed.
The short statement on this is that we do not spawn in items for players under any circumstances without concrete proof through video or an admin physically witnessing the loss themselves in person. Seeing a player complain in chat about it does not constitute an admin seeing it happen. There are many ways for players to lose items and we provide countless resources to cover yourself from being a victim to losing items.
We provide you with a backpack that does not drop on death (except during PVP). This backpack also comes with a command you can bind to a hotkey to pull specific items from your backpack right to your hotbar. And you can set as many of those hotkeys as you wish. You could quite literally carry all of your important things in your backpack and just use hotkeys to pull them to your hotbar as you need them.
We also provide a trade plugin so players do not need to throw items on the ground in order to pass things between each other. There have been situations where throwing items on the ground can cause them to disappear.
We also continuously ask players to install Shadowplay, AMD Relive, MedalTV, or some such similar DVR style software. This is a topic mentioned in every meeting, mentioned in the filing of every support ticket, and is posted with flashing red lights in our support channel of Discord as a requirement for all tickets. Yet for some reason 80% of support tickets completely ignore this request or flat out don't even know about it (which proves most people do not read since they quite literally have to answer it while filing a support ticket).
These recording apps do not flat out 'record' your gameplay. They do not lag your system either. We've seen players run them on bare minimum spec laptops with no issues. You simply pick a time length, set a hotkey, and then just play. If something happens you want to record you press the hotkey and the software saves the last X minutes of gameplay to a file for you. It is that simple.
Our policy for not spawning items is firm. No amount of cussing at us (yes this is a common occurrence with these ticket types), no amount of "but why would I lie?", and no amount of "bro, you know me though" is going to change that stance. It is probably the most firm stance we have on our servers. But not for the reasons one may think.
We believe in fair treatment for all players. From the newest, to the meanest, to the most tenured and polite. We handle all support situations equally. We really do believe you most often. And we do know you would not lie to us most of the time. And we do "know you" and like your presence in our community. But that does not mean we can spawn items in for you without proof because that would mean we would have to do it for everyone. See, the problem does not fall on you for lying, it falls on other players knowing we will take someone's word and spawn in items. With fair treatment for all that means if we take the word of someone we know and like and are sure would never lie to us, we also have to take the word of everyone. And that is where the issue comes in.
This means that anyone at anytime could just claim they lost whatever stack of anything they desire. And we would have to spawn it for them. Because we did spawn it for you, despite you being truthful and them not being truthful, we have no way of differentiating that. And this would spread like wildfire. Rumors of "Just put a ticket in the admin team will spawn whatever in for you" would spread. And if we then applied scrutiny to who we believed and who we did not believe (the only logical solution to taking someone's word for it) we would then open ourselves up to massive claims of admin favoritism or admin abuse. And that is a server killer, period.
So our stance is firm. We make every effort to alert players to this stance. We make every effort to provide players with means to never being a victim to losing items. And we provide numerous ways of making sure players always have means of providing proof. We have done our due diligence on this topic, so if a player refuses all of those methods of insuring they do not lose items, then it is the player's fault when they do lose an item. We cannot force you to read or educate yourself on all of these methods of protecting yourself, but that responsibility still lies on you.
You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink ...
The staff/admin team on our servers are strictly forbidden from handling any administrative business via voice or DM/PM or any other method outside of a support ticket. While this may seem restricting it has many valid reasons.
For starters we utilize our support ticket history for training purposes. It is quite common for new staff to spend countless hours pouring over old tickets to see how we handle all of the unique situations that arise.
Secondly, we pride ourselves on our integrity here and handling all administrative work through our ticket system allows us to keep checks and balances on ourselves. We as a team can monitor how each other handles tickets and communicates with our players. It also allows those in leadership roles to provide a sort of quality control on our support system making sure admins are giving the correct answers, handling situations in the correct way, and not overstepping their bounds or taking actions outside of our policies.
And finally, handling things via our support system allows us to allocate the correct personnel resources that can best solve your problem in a fast and accurate manner. Players might see an admin in game and not realize he/she could already be working another ticket, could be working a serious server issue, or could even be taking some personal time to just enjoy themselves not realizing there are a dozen other admins on stand-by that could easily help. It is quite common for players to see an admin in game or just assume one is watching and type "admin!" which will get you nothing more than a snarky answer from our automated chat bot. We know which admins are on which server, which ones are currently busy working tickets, and which ones are currently swamped with behind the scenes tasks. It is better for players to put in a support ticket, which then allows the admin team to pick who is best suited to handle that issue and who is currently the most available to handle that issue.
Ultimately, if you are having a true time sensitive emergency, such as falling under the map and slowly freezing to death, then yes you can scream out "Admin I fell under the map!" and we will assist you if there happens to be an admin present in game. Even then, it would be smart to get a shadowplay clip of your inventory and even of you being under the map just in case. But if your issue is something that could still be solved without an immediate reaction, please put a support ticket in. It is extremely important to us and a very strict policy we have.
If your teammate logged out in a bad spot and you need them moved, they will need to log into the server and move themselves. We are not an Uber.
If your teammate built or deployed something and you need it removed or destroyed, your teammate will need to log in and /remove the item for you.
We do not assist in these type of situations, there are no exceptions.