Makes me wonder myself.... although I did enjoy the challenge of figuring it out.Not sure why pooty put in the effort to modify alien2 with actual aliens when it only got played 2 times.
It is discouraging that there's no real desire to figure out any new maps with the bulk of the players, and sometimes the first/second/third cuts of non Randomizer maps need tweaks, but between the playing the same shit over and over, and general bitching by a few doesn't make me want to spend much time on doing it. There's probably dozen (or more), that I've spent more time on (not even counting learning curves) than we've spent playing. Admittedly some are better than others, but anything that requires learning a new map, new vehicle use, managing the node layout (amazing how many times still many of the players have NO CONCEPT of cut off nodes!)....
The other things that come to mind, regardless of map
- The OP flyers (sorry Enyo) but I think flyers dominating the maps turns off some (many?) players. I mean Enyo/Leon/Xexx in a few select flyers generally ruin the balance and discourages team play (is this the "Enyo effect"? ). These flyers for the most part if you're not really good at aim, can take out 800-1200 pt tanks pretty easily. So you spend 25 seconds driving only to have the same Falcon pop up out of now where, blast you alt-fire for 480 pts twice in 3s and your tank is pretty much dead... meanwhile you're desperately trying to kill it with lasers, score a few hits and then die. The evidence is if that one good player in a good flyer (or the mino for that matter) can completely turn the map and it loses the team aspect... at least mino is easy to find, hit and track vs flyers that zip away, hide behind things. Consider how long it takes a falcon to get from 8/9 minus vs. even the Mino which has huge range -- but has to track basically in one direction, while a flyer can ignore ground obstacles and use buildings for cover.
- Tolerance for different playing styles. Everyone has different techniques, not all are aggressive node hunters, some like to "Leon ambush" or sit back and snipe. Take the "Tribble spot" on Nevermore, personally I think sitting there in a tank and spamming 5/6 isn't something I want to spend the majority of the round on, BUT it is effective at keeping that node under control -- same with zapping flyers with RailGun. I think we should go easy (especially admins) on these styles and reserve the vitriol for some of the really egregious play(s), players (like when Coldcut wastes the link nuke). I think too much griping turns off some players even if they aren't the target.
I'm cautious on this, as this would make the Enyo/Xexx/Anon/Leon/Tater very hard to kill foot vs foot, they are bad enough already...still hoping for multi-dodge and quad jump.
Map Packs would be all manual, but its not difficult, just delete / upload the maps to the server as needed, which once set up shouldn't take more than few minutes to do (and server restart to immediately load the new map list)Maybe one or two days a week, we just lock the top 8 or 10 maps (Djunk, MB, MTMU, etc.) and force the server to vote new maps. I still like pooty's idea of rotating map packs in and out every couple weeks. How hard would that be to implement?
We could try a week or two without all those commonly played maps available. If player attendance drops dramatically, then we know we're stuck playing the same 8 to 10 maps until this game dies.