I'm with Trickster and Grantrithor here. Yes, I understand that the idea of alienating a sizable percentage of the playerbase is unappealing at the least. But when we go to minigames, half the server leaves. When we go to empirescup, half the server leaves. When we go to Hobbes, most of the server leaves. When we go to Rainbowroad or Octagons, a good number of players either leave or sit in spec the whole round. They're the type of maps that should be on the server but not in rotation or the nominate list. Something that players specifically ask an admin to put a vote up for. They're great as novelty maps, but that's all they have going for them. If they became a rare treat, something to be different every now and then, they suddenly become much better. I remember when rainbowroad and octagons first came on the server. Only an admin could put them into the nominate list, and when they were on the list everyone voted for them because they retained that sense of novelty. The moment that they became part of the standard rotation, they would still get enough votes to be played, but it would alienate a sizeable number of people. I know for a fact that making them uncommon will make them more popular again. Take money, for example, because it's a novelty map to a degree. When the server kept crashing every two or three maps, it would always default to money. Now, money is a decent map in its own right, but having to do it so often made it so tedious. But once the server stopped crashing so much, after a few weeks people liked it again, simply because they didn't do it so much and the novelty of it came back. What's happening with Rainbowroad and Octagons is what happened with Money, but ten times as strong because they're only novelty maps. Shit, I started ranting again. TLDR: The maps should be removed from the nominate list and standard rotation to give them back their uniqueness and novelty. Even though it'll initially create some backlash from the playerbase, the end result will be a general improvement. EDIT: Here's a bit more to prove that novelty maps degrade the playerbase. Right now, we just did Coast, District, Hobbes, and now Canyon. There were about thirteen people on Coast at the beginning, ten on District, four on Hobbes and none on Canyon. There's always the people that leave when the map changes, normally two or three. A sizeable number of players left when it went to Hobbes. The ones that stayed through Hobbes left on Canyon because it either it wasn't a novelty map, or because the loss of players made an actual map too annoying to play. So now, I'm the only person left on the server and I have to switch to a map that actually attracts players that will play. As it stands, my only choice is Money because if I attract players that only want to novelty maps, they won't stay for long, and it's the only map that's small enough to be playable with few players and give enough resources to be able to actually do something. Obviously, this does not contribute to a stable server population in any way because the hardest part of getting a full server is seeding it, and when players are leaving due to novelty maps and players that only want novelty maps leave when the maps change, initial seeding becomes far more common.
And divide our playerbase even more... Pretty soon you're going to black hole the universe. *Point being, No. We do not have the population we need for this.
Just delete the gimmick maps from existence. If we ever got a playerbase of 300+ at any one time, then maybe dust them off. But until them, I'd prefer to never ever ever see them again.
No, but if we had a good patch, a genuine personal appeal to all other server owners to just remove them entirely for a couple of months could work. Or they could turn round and tell us to fuck off. But it'd be worth trying.
enjoy the bitching. with "accepting" such maps in the first place you opened the box of the pandora. i told you bout common law years ago, now live with what you created ... you in the more general form.
Candles sums up everything I've ever said on this matter in one post in a much calmer tone. Server admins are still fucking blind to the problem though. Honestly, the people who play these fucking gimmick maps are all fucking terrible anyway. I'm rusty as fuck, but when we pay a gimmick map I can roll the fuck out of most of them (bar the 1 or 2 vets who are sticking it out through the maps to hopefully play a decent one) There's literally nothing of value in people who play empires for gimmick maps. They're not good at the game. They're not fun to play with. They don't get better at the game. There's too many of them so anyone who wants to play EMPIRES can't, due to the RTV system. It just seems to me that server admins are being pathetic and weak and acting like they have to bow to the majority of players on a server. Just because a majority wants something doesn't make it right. Besides that, it's not like losing every gimmick map on rotation would kill empires or any servers running them, the playerbase is still here, we'd hurt for players for a while but we'd pick up as soon as everyone who's left due to these maps hears they've been removed. Not to mention the fact that out of the hundreds of retards playing rainbowroad 24/7, none of them has the time, money or intelligence to host a server to compete with viper or EPIC anyway.
EPIC server doesn't have the gimmick maps on it, not that it's ever populated anyway, but I totally removed them from cycle or nomination list. I just can't fucking stand them. In return, I get an empty server. Just the way it works, but I'd prefer to stick by my principles and have an empty server, rather than put those shit maps on.
Admins should also make sure to only have one version of escort/district. Too many times has it happened where all the versions get nominated and we have to suffer through 4 rounds of like escort and district.
On a related note. I can't download custom minimaps from viper? Is there like a valid reason for this or what.
this was a problem a week or two ago, it turned out the /materials/ directory on the viper server was deleted, I believe Vicki fixed it
The reason I play on Viper is because it's one of the two server's where I get less than 200 ping. The other server is MEG, and that one will give me choke when fighting hasn't even started yet. But if the EPIC server was populated, I'd be perfectly fine playing on it because that would be where the players are.
Are you using the custom content trick "playing empires threw the source mod folder" ? If so load the maps with the normal version then recopy the map folder.
Yeah it's understandable. But there are more American players these days than European, and so VIPER is the only logical option, which sucks when players constantly nominate those shitmaps.
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/648748815513264185/4B10CF812A731D674D43EF001D4D9850D935C4F3/ That just hammered the nail right into the coffin, get a boring map and make it ugly.
