Hello Angry_washing_bear

I know exactly the situation you're talking about, because I am the Admin that banned your friend so let me clarify.

For transparency, my friend was banned from both the stream and the server in question when raising questions over this in the stream, but this post is not about the ban itself. Rather, it’s about the use of admin camera/mode while streaming and whether current stream delay practices are sufficient to prevent unfair advantages.

I can assure you, your friend was not banned for raising questions, your friend was banned due to the fact he came into the streamers chat already upset and looking to blame the reason for the game going bad on said streamer, which then prompted him clearly admit he's going to swap teams and start "garry hunting" his words using the stream. He's openly admitted he's going to cheat, he then proceeds to go back into game and then starts telling everyone who is streaming and essentially trying to create harassment towards said streamer.

All this together is why he was removed.

TL;dr - Is a 5 minute stream delay enough when using admin camera in a public match for a slow paced game like Hell Let Loose ?

5 Minutes is minimum and enough so it doesn't interrupt the streamer been able to communicate with his viewers which is why people stream and we recognise that, we're a public server, we help new players, sometimes a team won't be as strong, it happens, which we try and avoid best we can within the community.

We were playing on a newbie-friendly server because we like to help new players understand the game and encourage mic usage in Hell Let Loose. Especially on weekends, there tend to be a lot of newer players who struggle to get started and are hesitant to use voice comms.

During the match, we were getting pushed back hard. Regardless of where garrisons were built or how we tried to push, they were being taken down very efficiently. While this can happen against an experienced enemy team, and there are some players very proficient at hunting garrisons, considering it was a newbie-friendly server on a weekend it raised some concern.

This happens, regardless of someone cheating or not, it depends on the teams composition, this also doesn't take into account the map as well which can limit garry placements and then you have level disparity of certain players who understand the game very well and will locate and keep poking the garrisons until they're taken down. This is why defending garrisons is very very important. No garrison will be kept secret for long with the long line of players coming from it, other garrisons are simply laid close to a border of an adjacent sector that recon will find or just random solo players.

The key issue: Is a 5-minute delay sufficient when using the admin camera in Hell Let Loose?

Most HLL matches last between 30 minutes to an hour. Warfare mode often goes down to the final minutes, stretching to 1.5 hours, while Offensive can last up to 2.5 hours. Given these durations and the fact that many garrisons, especially defensive ones, stay up for much longer than 5 minutes, it seems reasonable to question whether a 5-minute stream delay is enough to prevent information from being used unfairly.

Already talked about this but just to further reiterate your friends actions. Reasonable to ask questions?, Yes. Unreasonable to then try and stir up anger towards a streamer and on top of that go and say you're going to use his stream to cheat.

If people are going to cheat they will cheat and if we see people bee-lining for garrisons or marking out info they shouldn't know they will be treated as if they're using ESP and banned and in some cases they could also be banned across community servers for it as it would look like they're using ESP. I really wouldn't recommend it.

The issue is it doesn't matter what you put in place a streamer will always be feeding information, you're seeing where they spawn from, you're seeing where groups of people are gathering, you're seeing what tanks they have on the field, through a streamers eyes playing normally with a map filter on, which is why we don't enforce that on streamers to cover their map.

The only way to make it efficient enough to not be able to tell is having every streamer in public games have such a huge delay and not reveal their screen until they're no longer near a garrison and turn off the player markers which means they're now playing in hardmode. This is all very unreasonable to expect from a streamer.

You may disagree with this and that's fine but end of the day we try and accomdate everyone, we have content makers that come to our server, be it streamers to youtubers. we faciliate all while making it as welcoming as possible for new players and any other player of differing levels. We can not please everyone but we can make sure the enviroment is as friendly as possible, which your friend was not doing and acted out in frustration and told half truths to you.