Freeze

Freeze stops a player moving so you can question them or run a screen share check without them running off, logging out, or hiding evidence. The frozen state is stored, so it survives a rejoin and a server restart.

Freezing a player

You have three ways in.

A player who holds atstaffmode.bypass.freeze cannot be frozen by /freeze or the freeze tool. The staff member who tried gets told so, and nothing happens to the target. /freezedebug skips that check, which is what makes it useful for testing your own setup on another staff member.

See Permissions for the full node list.

What a frozen player cannot do

Every blocked action except a command sends the player the freeze.cannot-move message, so they know why nothing is happening. A blocked command sends freeze.cannot-command instead. Both lines live in your language file.

freeze:
  prevent-movement: true
  prevent-commands: true
  prevent-damage: true

Set any of the three to false to lift that one restriction. Movement, commands and damage are the only blocks with a switch, the rest are always on while a player is frozen.

Chat is never blocked. A frozen player can always talk to you.

Commands during a freeze

With freeze.prevent-commands on, a frozen player gets the freeze.cannot-command message for anything they type that is not on the allow list.

freeze:
  prevent-commands: true
  allowed-commands:
    - '/report'
    - '/helpop'

Two things to know about the list.

• Entries match with or without the leading slash, so /report and report behave the same.
• Aliases are not resolved. Allowing /helpop does not allow /ho, so list every alias you want to let through.

Leave your ticket or appeal command on the list. A player who has been frozen for ten minutes with no way to ask what is going on tends to log out, which is the outcome the freeze exists to prevent.

Screen effect

While frozen, the player gets a blindness effect that lasts until you unfreeze them. It is removed as soon as the freeze is lifted.

freeze:
  screen-effect:
    enabled: true
    blindness: true

Set enabled to false if you would rather your staff work with a player who can still see.

The repeating warning message

A frozen player gets a block of chat lines repeated on a timer. This is the right place to put your Discord voice chat link, because a frozen player who does not know what is happening tends to log out.

freeze:
  spam-message:
    enabled: true
    interval-seconds: 5
    messages:
      - ''
      - '&#FF0000&#l[FROZEN]'
      - '&#FFFFFFYou have been frozen by a staff member!'
      - ''
      - '&#FFFF00Please join our Discord voice chat:'
      - '&#00FFFFdiscord.gg/yourserver'
      - ''
      - '&#FF5555Disconnecting will result in a permanent ban!'
      - ''

Colour codes work in these lines, both the & short codes and &#RRGGBB hex codes. Blank entries give you spacing.

Freeze survives restarts

When you freeze someone, their UUID is written to storage. On startup the plugin loads that list back, and anyone on it is frozen again the moment they join, effects and repeating message included. A frozen player cannot escape by relogging or waiting out a restart.

See Storage for where that list lives on each backend.

Punishing a logout

When a frozen player quits, every command under freeze.quit-punishment.commands runs from console in the order you listed it, with {player} replaced by their name.

freeze:
  quit-punishment:
    enabled: true
    commands:
      - 'ban {player} Logging out while frozen'
      - 'broadcast &c{player} has been banned for logging out while frozen!'

This is on by default and the default commands do ban the player, so change the list or set enabled: false if that is not your policy. The commands are run by console, which means they need to be commands your punishment plugin accepts from console.

Whether or not a punishment runs, every online player holding atstaffmode.use receives the freeze.quit-punishment message when a frozen player disconnects, so your team always finds out.

Talking to a frozen player

Use /freezechat <player> <message>, or the /fc alias, to send a line straight to a frozen player. It needs atstaffmode.freezechat, and the target has to actually be frozen. You get a copy of what you sent as confirmation.

This matters because a frozen player often has chat scrolling past with the repeating warning. A direct line cuts through.

A typical check

Placeholders

With PlaceholderAPI installed you can read freeze state anywhere placeholders work.

Full list on the Placeholders page.

Related pages