Player ranking and stats on an Arma Reforger server
A leaderboard of kills, playtime or headshots is one of the things that brings an Arma Reforger server to life. It is also one of the most asked-about, because the game exposes none of it anywhere. This guide covers what can be measured, with what, and how to build a ranking that does not reward what you do not want.
What RCON cannot see
Over RCON you only get the connected list (#players: number, identity id and name). No kills, deaths, chat, or when each player joined or left. The most you can build from that is a presence history: polling #players periodically tells you who was on and roughly for how long. Good for "when did this player join?", useless for a combat ranking.
What you need: a server-side mod
Kills, deaths, weapon, distance, headshots, teamkills and exact playtime are only visible inside the server. The only way to get them out is a mod running on the server that sends them somewhere. What to look for:
- Truly server-side: players install nothing and the server stays "vanilla" for them. Add it to
game.modsand that is it. - Identifies by identity id, not by name: names change and repeat; the identity id is unique per account on PC, Xbox and PlayStation.
- Tells teamkills and suicides apart, otherwise the ranking rewards shooting your own side.
Rules of a healthy ranking
- Teamkills do not score for the killer; they do count as a death for the victim.
- Suicides (falls, own explosives) count as a death and as nobody's kill.
- Playtime capped per session (say 12 h): a client left hanging all night should not top the table.
- Several sortable columns: kills, K/D, headshots, longest kill, time. Every community values something different.
- Platform shown (PC / Xbox / PS) so crossplay does not breed baseless suspicion.
Seasons
A ranking that never resets freezes: the top spots are taken by whoever has been around longest and newcomers cannot compete. The fix is closing seasons (monthly or weekly), archiving the top and starting over. The close is also the best excuse for a Discord post with the podium.
Showing it to players
A ranking works if it is seen. Two approaches that work: a public page with no login (for the clan website or the Discord description) and a Discord message that updates itself with the top 10. Both save the admin from pasting screenshots.
How Reforger Ops does it
The companion mod (server-side, on the Workshop) reports every kill with weapon, distance, headshot and vehicle, plus every join and leave. The panel builds the ranking with the rules above, closes seasons by hand or on a schedule, publishes a public link with the table, keeps a live ranking message in Discord and announces the podium on close. Without the mod, you still get the presence history from #players.
Why RCON cannot give you a ranking
Worth understanding before you go shopping: Arma Reforger's RCON tells you who is connected right now and little else. There is no command that returns kills, deaths, playtime or anything like it, because that information does not leave the game through there. No tool can produce stats from RCON alone, however well built.
What you can do with RCON is keep a presence record: by reading the player list every few minutes you learn who was on and roughly for how long. It is a poor substitute for playtime and gives you no kills at all, but it needs nothing installed.
Real stats need a server-side mod: code running inside the match that sees deaths as they happen and reports them out. Players install nothing — the mod goes in the server's list — and that is the only thing that changes the ceiling of what can be measured.
The key is the identity, not the name
Any ranking that groups by name is broken from day one: people change names, and two players can share one. Group by the Identity ID, which is the Bohemia account and does not change. Keep the name alongside it, for display only.
One detail is easy to miss: when someone joins, the game may not have resolved their identity yet. If your record discards those joins, whole players vanish from the ranking silently and nobody notices, because nothing errors. The right move is to ask for the identity again a moment later instead of dropping the join.
Teamkills, suicides and seasons
Three decisions that determine whether the ranking is used or ignored:
- Teamkills must not score. If they do, first place is won by killing team mates, and the ranking stops measuring what it claims to. Count them separately, in their own column, which also puts on display who has a problem.
- A suicide is not a death to someone else. Counting it as a normal death worsens a player's K/D over an accident; counting it separately is fairer and more informative.
- Seasons keep a ranking alive. A ranking that never resets is won by whoever has been around longest, and someone joining today has no chance. Closing every month or week, archiving the final table and starting over gives everyone something to play for.
And one thing that costs nothing and pays off: a session's playtime needs a cap. A player left connected all night, or a disconnect that never arrived, can invent twelve hours of play that never happened.