Zen wrote:Maps like DryIce-ECE, Hollon2-SE, The old Spiffingrad (not TSE), Julia, Dinora, Sandcrack. Dawn & Dria usually worked ok from the stock maps as well. I'm not just whining because I would like to see things like "the good old days", but this trend of making maps that are 100% vehicle spam has got to stop. I know you have pretty much every ONS map avaliable on your server, but the crappers like Bitchslap still get picked right away every time.
No joke that a couple weeks ago when I re-installed UT, I went to the server browser and DW, UTPub, and Omnipotents were all on Battlefront. You mentioned that Cains had a limited map selection and not enough CPU, and that was true but the maps he ran were usually pretty good. The server did really take a dive in the later days when they had BF2 running on the server though, and the USSR server had it's share of issues as well to be fair.
Even though most people consider 32p ONS to be noob, in the past some really great players came from 32p and some great players use to visit the servers. DW has some good players but nothing good comes from the total vehicle ownage maps. Understand my frustration of being killed by a tank at least 25 times in a row spawning at 3 different nodes carefully dodging around, while my whole team just sat back trying not to get killed by uber tank whore guy. I don't know why it got me so riled up, I went at looked at the UT stats page and this guy has like 13,000 tank killed and 130 shock rifle kills...come on now, how bad can you be. Pomona playing in Japan could get 130 shock rifles kills in a day.
I completely understand the frustration, and I agree. I usually leave when bitchslap comes up myself. But I am in a difficult spot.
I run a 32p server. I run it for people to fool around and have fun, not compete. A lot of people like bitchslap and maps like it. I cannot explain it, and it makes me wretch, but for this server, I've chosen to create something that most everyone will like. At this point in the game, people who like "big" servers, like numbers, like vehicles, like spam. As I said, most of the really highly skilled players (like those you are talking about on ONS Central) are gone. So for me, it's about getting the numbers, getting the masses of people to play. And for that, I need maps with loads of vehicles, and loads of power and spam because at this stage, that's what most (not all) of the people like.
There's also a lot more competition out there. There's 5-6+ legitimate 32p servers out there, and there's not that many players. So what happens when those other servers start hopping? I get 4-6 people wandering in and out, and I never reach the critical mass I need to get to 32p. that's what happened when I got rid of a lot of these "crap" maps.
I'm all for intelligent constructive discussion, and if anyone has ideas to improve the playability for everyone to enjoy, I'm all for it. But right now, the server is what it is, and I really do not have a lot of options.
And agian Zen, if you want a server somewhere in between SV and SCK, ("good" custom maps) I'm all for it. But I need to know people are going to be interested and play there and enjoy it bacuse my spare time is practically non-existent, so I don't wnat to go through a days long exercise to have the place sit empty.
Do you think there's interest in such a thing?
Rich (TW)
